When you meet that new client first ask yourself: “Are you showing up the way a successful business owner would show up?”
[Tweet “Are you showing up the way a successful business owner would show up?”]
You need to “show up” right down to your shoes:
Make a great first impression BEFORE you meet them with a professional headshot.
Look like an expert by using the general dress code (just a bit more formal) of your new client’s office/industry to plan your outfit.
Talk like an expert avoiding “maybe” and “perhaps”. Instead use stronger words like “I believe” or “I would like”.
Act like an expert. Your body language shapes who you are. Walk and stand tall, sit proud, and own your business expertise.
I’m a Social Media Brand Strategist. I help my clients, like you, go big with their business goals using Social Media as the launchpad.
Together, we work to be sure that your digital presence is expert-worthy.
But just like everything in life, the rest is up to them. I challenge you to tackle one of the steps above in the coming week.
Schedule an appointment for a quick photog session to get those headshots done.
Start saving, or set aside time for a shopping trip, to buy that one power outfit that will make you feel amazing.
Practice your pitch, in front of the mirror, in front of family, in front of friends. It doesn’t matter, just start talking.
Or take 20 minutes and watch the fantastic and inspirational TED Talk by Amy Cuddy regarding body language and how two minutes of one specific practice can literally change your life.
As always I would love to hear which item you picked and how you plan to make it happen – tell me so I can help along the way! Come join my new LinkedIn Group and lets talk about it. CLICK HERE to join.
I’ve been talking a lot lately about why I love Twitter and to really get you in the game I wanted to follow it up with a post about hashtags.
What is a hashtag? A hashtag is a word or short phrase (with no spaces or punctuation) that follows the # sign.
Where can they be used? A hashtag can be used on most social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest to name a few.
On each platform the purpose, goal, and use of a hashtag is very similar, but for the purpose of this post I am going to focus on Twitter and the use of hashtags there.
Why should you use hashtags? There are many reasons the effective use of hashtags can be very helpful to your business marketing plan, strategy, and information gathering so let’s dive in and I’ll show you the most productive ways to use hashtags while you tweet!
1. The hashtag is a searchable term.
Trying to find out what your target market is saying? Wanting to know who they follow and why?
Hoping to find out what questions your prospect clients are asking? Needing to know what terms your competition is using? Enter, the hashtag.You can search for these terms your audience might be using and voila – all the answers to those questions at your fingertips!
2. Create your own hashtag so others can find YOU.
Promoting a launch? Selling a service? Asking a question? Reaching out to your audience? Marketing your biz?
Create a unique hashtag that your followers, and those who might be searching for you, a way to find you easily. This may take a bit of brainstorming to find a tag that is not heavily used, but it is very possible. Just use that search function again as you try out ideas that relate specifically to who you are, what you do, and what you offer.
3. Follow a trend that is relevant to your business.
Make use of popular hashtags that are “trending” meaning they are used by a LOT of people. This way you can find AND share valuable content. Your tweet will show up in more people’s feeds who are talking about the same thing you are. Visibility!!
4. Participate in, or start a Twitter chat.
A Twitter chat is organized around a group of people using the same hashtag in each tweet in order to read and follow, or remark on and add to a conversation stream around a specific topic. Consider this like “open office hours.” You can engage your followers on a topic you set yourself (with the specific hashtag so everyone knows how to follow you and comment) or jump in on another Twitter chat that is related to your business adding valuable advice, commentary, or just to see what others might have to say! Follow my Twitter chats here! #AskKarenY
5. Most importantly – add value and have fun!
This goes hand in hand with establishing yourself as an expert and as someone to follow. One, you add great content by tagging it so people can find it, and Two, when you have fun you will have great commentary that people enjoy. Just like everything else in social media, people want to see who YOU are. So let your hair down a little, write a fun tweet, tag it with a funny comment and see what happens!
It should be noted that you don’t NEED to use a hashtag for your post to come up in a Twitter search. There’s really no need to use it mid-tweet, but it IS valuable to call attention to specific topics you may be tweeting about.
Ready to try it? I’d love to know how it goes! Click here to tweet your new campaign at me (use @karenyankovich) and I’d be glad to comment, retweet, and high-five you and your post!
Last week I talked about how you can get started with Twitter, and how to manage your account. This week I want you to start using Twitter to declare your expert status!
With Twitter you can reach people you might never have access to all over the world. You have conversations with people from all walks of life. You can tweet @Oprah and she just might tweet back. Meet millions of people online talking right.this.minute. about the live March Madness basketball games. You can just jump in and join the conversation!
Twitter helps you find your niche and jump into the river of people out there waiting to find you as just the expert they need. The general consensus by “social media scientists” (oh yes they do exist) is: “Twitter is key for all forms of online marketing and communications.” Science Of Twitter 2013 from HubSpot
[Tweet “Want to know the top three words to use in your Twitter bio?”]
Today I want to tell you exactly how to establish yourself as an expert on Twitter and start using this wonderful tool to your business advantage.
1. Fill out your profile – Having a profile picture increases your number of followers by an average of 1000%. Yup that is a real number.
2. Make sure your bio tells your followers why they should believe you. – Are you the founder? Are you an expert? Guru? Speaker? Author? It has been proven that official, founder, and speaker are three of the top words to use in your micro profile. Please please please include a link to your website!
3. Link to the stuff that makes you smart! – Add links to your tweets about 60%-80% of the time. This is the sweet spot to promote engagement (aka re-tweets) and to show that you are a valuable resource to follow.
4. Be the first to know something and share it. – Found a fantastic article that appears not many people have read? Found the most comprehensive list on the best green smoothies, best way to stay organized, top business tricks in your niche? Share it and share it fast!
5. Aim to tweet at least 22 times per day. – Last week you saw this and made a lot of noise about it, so I’m going to say it again. It is very difficult to over tweet. This is the one place no one will tell you to stop sharing, stop posting, or complain you talk too much! Wondering how to manage this? Take a quick read of my post here that tells you exactly how to set yourself up for success and not get overwhelmed with posting 22 times/day.
6. As always, talk about your prospective client. – People like to know you are interested in them. Tweets with the word YOU are statistically the most often retweeted.
7. Talk about your niche in a unique way. – There might be many life coaches, real estate agents, consultants, writers, etc out there, but there is only one YOU. You have your own special brand of advice and knack for sharing that with your followers (and soon to be followers!)
8. Finally, and most importantly: Use your own voice. Your people will listen. So, my fellow business experts, what is the first step you are going to take this week to set yourself up for success on Twitter? Click here to tell me, and I promise I will retweet!
I love Twitter. I didn’t always! It wasn’t more than a year or so ago that I was whining that Twitter takes up a lot of time, and I wasn’t seeing any real results. Some business friends called me out on it, said that basically Twitter is the great equalizer, you can tweet directly to Oprah, Richard Branson, your favorite celeb, really anyone you want! [Tweet “Twitter is the great equalizer.”] They were right. I quickly stopped whining, and started building my Twitter following. It might be the single most effective thing I’ve done to grow my business in the past year. The more followers I have, the more followers I get. The more followers I get, the more respected I become as an industry expert. The more respected I get, the more interview requests I get. The more interview requests I get, the more profitable my business is. Now, I’m a HUGE Twitter fan! I tweet all the time. Twitter is fast, it’s chock full of information, it’s sometimes hard to understand, but it IS an important place to be and here’s why:
Twitter is democratic: Unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn’t screen your posts based on most liked or commented upon, it lets each post be equally visible in the stream for anyone to see.
Twitter is a trove of information: Search what your competitors are saying, search for the people who like what you like, find out what your ideal customer needs. Bam! You have enough information to create your next service offering, to find your next tribe of followers, to write your next blog post and more.
You have equal reach to all Twitter users: You can talk directly to every user on Twitter. It’s a great way to reach out to influencers in your industry, and to get your name in front of them! Engage with their posts, and you may be able to kickstart a real relationship.
Twitter establishes your expert status: Show what you know without pressure, just a few words and a link and you are set! No need for fancy pictures or perfectly worded posts, just the facts. (Ok and maybe a little funny in there too)
On the flip-side Twitter can feel like a lot of work. I recommend to my clients that they post an average of 22 times per day. No worries! There are ways to take the burden out of the bulk and I’m here to tell you how. Scheduling and automation is key. The one caveat here, automate your tweets not your DMs (direct messages), please don’t risk sounding like a robot. Automated tweets are important foundational posts about who you are, what your business is about, your business WHY, and all of your expert knowledge in one place rotating through queues of topics. You can share quotes, statistics, industry information, and general information about your products and services. Hootsuite and Buffer are two popular scheduling tools, however my personal favorite is Social Oomph. Unlike Hootsuite and Buffer, Social Oomph allows you to create re-occuring queues of tweets. It takes a little bit of time and effort to set up, but in the end, just like everything else, the hard work pays off in time saved and ability to focus on the more meaty parts of Twitter – namely having time to engage. I like to set up Social Oomph with the following queues:
blog posts
industry stats
favorite quotes
promotions
general “my stuff”
Once you have your queues set up, each time one of your posts is tweeted Social Oomph automatically places it at the back of the line to wait until its turn comes again. This could take days, weeks, or longer. The longer the better of course as you want to have a lot of fantastic content for your audience to chew on, to get to know you with, and to trust you because of it. With the bulk of this churning in the background you can finally sit back, relax, and actually enjoy social media again through connecting and conversation. THEN I use Hootsuite to engage and for analytics. I also use ManageFlitter, a paid service that allows me to sort followers by all sorts of traits, helping me to follow and unfollow strategically. That’s a more advanced service. So what’s your first step going to be with Twitter this week? Find me and tell me! @karenyankovich
We all know we need to play nice with Google to have the favor returned in the online world.
There are two ways you can work to do that as you build your business on the web: SMO and SEO.
Today we’re going to tackle the basics of SMO, how it can help you and what to do about it!
SMO is Social Media Optimization.
Google tracks how many shares, comments, re-posts, clicks and link backs to your website/content are done across the web. High numbers establishes “social proof” that you are an expert in your field and thus Google recognizes this and rewards it with higher ranking. You can easily optimize this process by helping your content be visible and easily “re-purposed” across many social networks. You want to continually be feeding the Google Beast! Here’s how…
Steps to increase SMO:
Expert, expert, expert. Show that you either know what you are talking about or have great resources that point to others in your field that do. Hopefully a mixture of both! You want people to see your content, your website, or your blog as the one-stop-shop for information they might need relating to your industry topic.
Do some keyword homework, and use those same keywords across all social media sites. This brings consistency to your online presence, and helps Google present you to the right people.
Engage with your audience. Ask for comments, respond to comments, set up social share buttons on every post/page, and then ‘push’ these posts out to all your social media platforms. Make it EASY for your readers to engage. Just like the rest of us if your reader is more comfortable on LinkedIn then make sure you are sending your content there to be seen and commented on from the comfort of their own ‘home’.
The nitty gritty. Keep your title tags short and shareable, make it twitter friendly! And as we all have heard a thousand times… A picture is worth a thousand words. Use them!
A quick tip. Finally there is some research that states certain platforms are more optimization friendly, notably Google+ and LinkedIn. Both will show up very high in your search rankings. Make it a goal to define a presence on one or both of these platforms in the next few months of 2014!
[Tweet “5 easy steps to increase your SMO, every time.”]
There you have it…SMO basics, pick one step to try this week and make it happen! Which one will you choose?
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