In the same storm, but not the same boat

Originally published in “This Month in Elgin May 2020”

A recent Facebook post began with the words “I heard that we are all in the same boat, but it’s not like that. We are in the same storm, but not in the same boat. Your ship could be shipwrecked and mine might not be. Or vice versa.”

For some of us, our jobs means we have to go to work every day, constantly under threat of something insidious and invisible. We then have to bring the same threat back home to our family. For others, this is a time where our jobs have moved to a home office and taken on an urgent note, at the same time while we try to homeschool our children. And for still others, it's a pleasant opportunity to spend more time with family and bake bread. We need to understand that for some of us, this situation means merely surviving everyday, and for others this could be an opportunity to create something new.

Since my column deals mainly with how our businesses function with relation to the internet, I'd like to talk about some of the successes I've seen coming out of this period of time.

My favourite local chiropractor Dr. Peggy Malone, has been talking for awhile now of including an online model to her business that would allow her more flexibility and travel. Obviously being a chiropractor is a hands-on profession which requires her to be always physically present, and so setting up a plan that would give her some flexibility into the future. With the forced closure of her clinic, she's spent the last few weeks setting up courses online and building the marketing she needs to bring her services to the wider public. This was always her master plan, but before it was something that was more of a “I'll get to it later”. Now that we are in an extended period of “later”, she's been able to use this time to create what she's always wanted in the first place!

Another client of mine was building a website for his comprehensive service offering. In a weird twist of fate, we launched his site the same week he was laid off. Even though this new entrepreneurial journey was originally intended to be led in conjunction with full-time employment, at least he now has something in place with which to build an audience and income. Without a plan like this, his new circumstances could have been much more dismal.

My last example involves a vegan “cheez” company for whom I created their branding, again merely weeks before its owner was prevented from officially launching the product because of the Covid 19 crisis. Since she was now sitting on a significant amount of product, she decided to drop off samples to local vegan fans who were fairly active on social media. The response was so incredibly positive that she was asked to quickly build an online site so people could order items for delivery. Although this wasn't her original plan as a sales channel, she now has the ability to move product during an unusual time.

In other words, this may be a time to find that silver lining if you are able. And don't forget to take full advantage of the tools we have in our community, which you can always learn more about through our Chamber of Commerce and other channels.

How to stay safe and stay working

Originally published in “This Month in Elgin April 2020”

I'd like to start by saying: for those of you who put yourselves on the front lines daily, we are very thankful and the sacrifices and risks you are taking are not lost on the rest of us. And for those whose livelihood depends on physical interaction and people coming through your doors, I won't state what's already obvious, but this will be a trying time indeed.

Whether you have a brick and mortar business or are a service provider, this just might be the time in your career to consider bringing some (or more) of your business online.

If you have been hemming and hawing over whether to bring your physical products online and start selling, here are some points to consider:

1. Start by considering your top ten best-sellers, and selling only those: These could be a mix of low and high margin products, but essentially what brings people in your doors will also bring them to your site. Make sure they are either 1) a products that competes well on price with your competitors or 2) are unique enough that they are difficult to source elsewhere. Anything that doesn't meet these criteria put you at risk of selling them at a loss, as keeping this inventory and the overhead to ship might not make it worth it.

2. If you want to get up and selling online quickly, with an easy user interface, then Shopify and Squarespace are great options. Although they have high monthly fees, you get a very simple interface that gets you up and running in as little as one day. The alternative would be more comprehensive software with lower monthly fees, but these have higher upfront costs (as you would likely have to hire an expert to develop the site for you). This is only a good idea for an established business who have a compelling reason to sell a large number of products online.

If you are subject matter expert (SME) in your field, now might be a good time to consider monetizing your expertise by creating courses online. But before you do, consider the following:

1. This is a tough gig. It requires enormous effort to market yourself online, in competition with possibly hundreds of other people. Before you begin, determine who is already offering what you intend to sell, and what price. The more unique and valuable your expertise, the higher price point you can look at. But if there are already plenty of other people doing what you do, you will have to do some math to figure out if this will be worth your time and money to build and market. Yes of course, this business model can scale to a world-wide audience, but people still ultimately trust other people. So you will need to build that trust by either promoting to your existing network first and growing from there, or consider offering free snippets of your course as a “try-before-you-buy” model to people who don't know you personally (ideally a mix of both).

2. Again, there are plenty of web-based software options to build out your service. Some practical, easy to use ones are: Udemy, Teachable, Skillshare . Do your research and read about each option carefully. Sign up for the free trials to see how they work. You need to get very comfortable with the software and its features, so that you can build a course offering that is authentic and valuable.

Having software do the work for you

Originally published in “This Month in Elgin March 2020”

If you have a product or service that can easily be sold on-line to an audience that extends beyond geographic boundaries, you should be absolutely taking full advantage of automated marketing tools.

If words like “MailChimp”, “Kajabi” or “ConvertKit” gives you hives, fear not. Spending some effort in learning these tools will give you the ability to tailor and broadcast your message to the people who are most likely to need your product or service.

One online guy I'm a fan of is Paul Jarvis (I mentioned his book Company of One in a previous article). Every Sunday he sends out a comprehensive newsletter on topics that he has researched and that he feels his audience would appreciate. He has been delivering this free content for years. If you find you like his tone of voice, his expertise, and the topics he covers, you'll find yourself looking forward to the next one.

Once you're on his “list”, you are a valuable potential sale. His business model is centred around delivering course materials online and so once in while, he will send a message that a particular course is going to begin, or that he is hosting a live Q&A webinar if you are curious and want to know more. Since you already appreciate the information he has been giving you for free and see him as an expert in his field, you are less likely to bristle when he is in “sales mode”. And if you ever do find yourself wanting to learn the content that his course delivers, of course you are most likely to register for his course versus anyone else offering similar products.

Jarvis exclusively uses MailChimp to create and automatically schedule the messages for his Sunday newsletter list (to deliver the free content); and in the case that you signed up to learn more about a particular course via a webinar, to automate follow up emails that get sent every few days immediately following the webinar; and even to deliver his actual courses. In other words, during his day-to-day he creates all of this content and sets up how it should be automated, but doesn't have to present when the actual content gets sent out. Building this all out naturally takes a great deal of time, but once the process is in place, it is just a matter of maintaining and tweaking it from year to year based on updated information or customer feedback, with minimal manual work on his end!

If you are a creative writer, you might consider sending out a newsletter with excerpts from the novel you are writing. If you are a retail store selling pet products, you might send out seasonal info about pet health. If you are a charity, you might send out stories about the impact you are making on the community.

I mentioned Kajabi, which will do all this and a great deal more, as well as ConvertKit, which is a product similar to MailChimp. All of these tools will not only help you understand who your leads are, but can even process payments and help you deliver messaging that will make a fierce believer out of your customers.

Happy automating!

The value of associations

Originally published in “This Month in Elgin Februrary 2020”

This month's column goes back to a more traditional way to grow your business network. Joining your industry's association, while perhaps not having a direct relationship with how your business grows, can be incredibly beneficial to you in many indirect ways.

A tradesperson's association may offer courses in skill development or safety that you may not otherwise seek out on your own. They may be able to bring in experts in your field from whom you can glean knowledge and ideas that you wouldn't otherwise have access to. Belonging to a certification body in your industry will help distinguish you from your competitors, especially in sectors where there are many professionals offering similar services, such as interior design or photography. Often times with this level of exposure amongst your peers, there is even opportunity to work as a subcontractor to larger players in your field, which is a huge bonus when you are just starting out.

I belong to RGD, the Registered Graphic Designers of Canada. Before even becoming a member, I took full advantage of their free events and online tools that ultimately helped me do my job better. After a test and portfolio review, I am now a member and have been able to take full advantage of their impressive annual conference, enjoy a multitude of webinars and reading materials, as well as extend my network of like-minded peers who share the same daily struggles and challenges of working in this industry. I have also joined their events committee, so that I can contribute my own ideas as to how I see the organization working in the future. In this way, I can shape what the association offers its members and ensure that it will continue to be relevant to myself and other designers.

Whether you are one year or 10 years into your business, getting involved in your industry's association will continue to offer benefits to your own company's growth. While it may initially seem like yet another expense, you may be pleasantly surprised on the return you get on your investment. Some associations even offer a trial membership, or a free pass to an event, in order to “try before you buy”. Of course, no two associations are alike, so it is worth doing some investigating as to how the organization is run and what they offer their members before you commit.

Have fun researching!

Starting small but staying consistent

Originally published in “This Month in Elgin January 2020”

Many people admit that the real key to success is small gains over long periods of time. Of course, that's not what it looks like when we consider the YouTube-famous, or Instagram influencers, but as we all know that kind of success is extremely rare and quite fleeting.

Instead, making small, but consistent, steps toward achieving something great is likely 1) much more attainable for most of us who aren't crazy talented and 2) has a longer payoff.

If you are looking for a great way to help you get on that path to consistency, I have a book, a podcast, and a journal to recommend:

1) The book that basically preaches exactly what I say here is called Atomic Habits by James Clear. He strongly advocates that you can really only get to where you want to be as a happier, more productive person by implementing tiny changes-whether you are looking to take on a new good habit (like drinking more water in the day) or shedding a bad one (like quitting smoking). His writes about four laws of behaviour change 1: make it obvious, 2: make it attractive, 3: make it easy, and 4: make it satisfying that will help guide you to finding the right motivation and the necessary persistence to make the new behaviour stick.

2) I'm going to just go ahead and plug two dear colleagues of mine and their podcast “The Improvement Project”. Recorded right here in St. Thomas, this podcast is about creating better habits and becoming a better human! Dr. Peggy, a local chiropractor and Jenny Couse, a marketing specialist, take on a new habit challenge every 30 days and share their insights as the challenge unfolds. Not surprisingly, Atomic Habits that I mentioned earlier came from their recommended book list. It certainly helps that these super smart ladies are also fun to listen to and have a great rapport. Learn more at https://drpeggymalone.com/podcast/

3) Another great habit that is affecting my overall productivity and outlook also came from Dr. Peggy and Jenny. Last year I started writing in a “Five Minute Gratitude Journal”. Like the title says, I spend about three minutes in the morning and two in the evening slowly changing my perspective and expectations for the day by reflecting on the things for which I'm grateful and what areas I can consciously work on as I go about my day. There are many, many kinds of journals out there; the one I like to use is from intelligentchange.com.

That's it! A few small but positive ways to change you outlook, keep you focused on your goals, and take agency for your life. Please drop me a line and let me know if any of these worked for you!

Happy 2020!

Disappearing content? Why bother?

Back in August 2016, Instagram was a very strong platform for businesses, but there was one trend that its owners noticed: given that the platform is so dependent on visuals, the pressure on users to only post perfect content was very high. This need for the absolutely perfect composition, lighting, etc… make some users less likely to post often, as it was both daunting and time-consuming.

At the same time, SnapChat was the new social media platform du jour, and it’s main differentiator was the ability for users to post content that would disappear after 24 hours. Given that the content wasn’t going to be stuck on one’s feed forever gave people the opportunity to post more spontaneously, and not worry about achieving the perfect photo. SnapChat users felt less constrained within this structure, and hence posted more often. Eventually Instagram took notice.

Enter the “Instagram story”. Instagram stories are a great way to pique your audience’s interest via text, photo or video, without having to commit to that content staying on your feed and forever defining your brand. It’s also a great way to experiment with live video. It sits at the very top of one’s news feed and so new stories are always highlighted for users when they are using the platform.

As a business, you can either rely on Instagram’s funny and particular algorithm to select your regular post to be visible in your audience’s feed, or you can post a story and have your brand highlighted at the top of their screen immediately. You can do this every time you post “regular” content, to bring more eyeballs to that post.

Stories, in many ways, work just like regular posts in that you can tag people, locations, or use hashtags. People wanting to know what happened in St. Thomas in the past 24 hours for example, may choose to watch the stories based on “#stthomasontario”. What a great way to get your company noticed! Like SnapChat, there are also plenty of fun filters and stickers to keep things interesting and fun.

People got so into using stories that, eventually, there was demand to save the stories beyond the 24 hour window. So now you can create “highlights” that can be a succession of archived stories. These get featured right on your main profile page and so again, they are a great way to entice new visitors to your profile with rich content.

With even further tweaking, you can have your stories link directly to products that people can purchase from your e-commerce. In just a few clicks you can increase your audience reach by leaps and bounds.

For older users still getting used to this whole “social media” thing, posting videos and frequent content can be an intimidating task. You can easily eliminate some of the stress while still keeping your content very fresh and relevant using Instagram stories. Your community will love and appreciate the sneak peeks they get into your world, thereby keeping up the hype around your brand, and making your audience part of your tribe for life!

Happy “storying”!

Instagram for business

Perhaps you are already using Facebook for your business and happily find you get a good deal of exposure and are able to increase brand awareness for your company fairly easily through posts, videos, and maybe even Facebook stories or live video. People walk into your store or visit your shop online because of the relevant, engagement content you present them. Why bother with Instagram then?

Instagram has seen rapid growth since its launch way back in October 2010, currently boasting over one billions users! Given that its platform is built primarily on imagery versus any one language, a single Instagram account can easily spread its content to a worldwide multilingual audience.

The premise of the app is extremely simple: post a picture and optionally add a caption. Your business can provide beautiful photos of your products, happy customers, promotions, and examples of corporate responsibility, all in a way that can easily be consumed by your audience. This is arguably even easier than browsing your website, as with a website, the user has to decide how to navigate it, whereas Instagram is just one, continuous scroll of photos. Of course, the fact that the content can be easily digested means that your photos must be highly engaging, otherwise the user has the option to quickly scroll past it. Engaging photos tend to have striking composition, are well-lit, and ideally include a face or person as often as possible.

A smart, well composed photo is just the beginning. The use of hashtags in your caption, similar to Twitter, means that people who are searching for the very thing you are selling can quickly get to what they are looking for. Hashtags are also great if your business is centred on a specific geographic location or category. This means someone looking for ice cream on a hot summer day can easily find a local dairy bar without too much effort. Beyond the hashtags, captions are your opportunity to describe the photo, or talk about the features of your service, and allow you to underline its benefits to your customer in a very direct way.

The ability to make your account a “business” one means you can capture leads by providing your website or a contact number at which you can be reached. With some customization, you can also have your customers purchase directly from the platform with just a few simple clicks. Just because you don’t necessarily shop from your phone yourself doesn’t mean you should discount the >60% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last 6 months!

The richly visual platform is very engaging, particularly with a younger audience, so if your customers are millenials and younger, this social media experience is not one you can ignore.

In my next column I’ll talk about the use of stories and how to advertise your content on Instagram, which are methods to take your business even further with the platform.

Happy posting!

Women in Business

The Numbers Are In: Economies Grow When We Bet on Women 

Canadians are most active women entrepreneurs in the world 

Female Entrepreneurship Is on the Rise

As Entrepreneurship Thrives, Women Are Starting More Innovative Businesses Than Men

These are the headlines from the last year that came up when I Googled “female entrepreneur”. It was very encouraging to read such optimistic-sounding titles. But it led me to wonder: what are some numbers behind all of this good news?

You may have read the recent headlines about Kylie Jenner, who at only 21 years of age, leveraged her celebrity status to grow her cosmetics business to a value of $900 million in less than 3 years.

Or about the Canadian company Knix, started by Joanna Griffiths, who launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2015 for her bra design, eventually raising just over $1-million (U.S.) from nearly 14,000 backers. In 2017 Knix surpassed $20 million in sales. 

And of course we have our own local success story,  Louise Vonk. Louise Vonk grew the family business, Messenger Freight Systems, from earning $1 million to $13 million in annual sales. Back in Aug 2017 she was listed as one of Canada’s 15 Most Influential Female Entrepreneurs according to opstart.ca.

This all sounds very encouraging, and make great role models for those of us with businesses that are in a state of early growth. On the flip side, some of the numbers are still disappointing:

Women own fewer than 16% of all businesses

• Only 10% of high-growth firms are owned by women

• About 8% of women-owned businesses export

• 36 percent of men planning to open a business plan to do so to become wealthy, while only 23 percent of women planning to open a business do so for the same reason.

• Women-led businesses also face barriers in accessing capital. According to recent data, women entrepreneurs are less likely to seek debt and equity financing and are more likely to be rejected or receive less money. A women business-owner recently told me the story of her personal experience with banks; that their assumption is always that she will be bringing in a husband or father to co-sign her loan!

Obviously we’ve come a very long way, but there is still so much to do. Locally, let’s support our female-owned local businesses (of which there are many!) with our wallets and watch that money get invested right back here in our community.

For further reading, and to find the numbers I cited above, visit: Globe and Mail, Folio.ca, Start Up Canada, Industry Canada, thebalancesmb.com.

Marketing versus Advertising

There’s a saying in the marketing world where the client admits “I know 50% of my marketing dollars is being wasted; the problem is I don’t know which half.”

Lately I’ve had a few meetings with well-established businesses in the area who are unfamiliar with social media and can’t quite clearly see the ROI from such an effort. And so even though I know I’ve touched on this already many times in my column, I figured this topic bears repeating.

Traditional media (print, radio, TV), while beneficial for companies who can afford it, is out of the reach of many smaller, fledgling businesses. The biggest reason why traditional media might be a misuse of marketing dollars for smaller businesses is that there is no way to track how many eyes have viewed, listened to, or watched the ad. Therefore precious money is being wasted on an inattentive audience.

This is where social media marketing might have a huge benefit. With sponsored content within a social media platform, you can clearly define your audience. Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.. already know the behaviours and interests of their users because they asked them right off the bat when they registered for the service! So when you create an ad audience with Facebook, a brick and mortar home décor store can say “Show this ad to people within 50 kms of my store, aged 25-70, who list interior decorating as a personal interest”. Similarly, an online e-commerce site that sells men’s grooming supplies can create an audience of “Males aged 20-70 within Canada and the US”. Of course, you can be even broader than that, but isn’t that terrific that you can narrow your sights on the people who would care about your product or service in the first place?

But that isn’t even the best part. Once you are running your ad, you have access to plenty of data (in Facebook this is called “insights”) which creates instant reports to tell you how effect your ad is. It will tell you your “reach” (how many people saw your ad within their newsfeed), as well as your engagement (how many people liked, commented, or shared your post). This will give you instant feedback as to whether an ad is working or not. If it strikes just the right chord with the right people, you will see plenty of engagement. So you can add even more to the budget and reach even more people with this effective content. Can you get that kind of feedback from a general traditional ad?

I don’t want to discredit traditional advertising altogether as there are certainly still situations where a billboard or trade magazine is extremely effective. But if you think social media is a trend that has no place in your advertising budget, you will very quickly find yourself lagging behind competitors as they capture the attention of smartphone users who now spend as much as 4 hours a day on their device!

Don’t fall behind!

The Psychology of Colour and Your Brand

These are serious considerations when choosing your brand colour palette. Your professional duty is to your brand and company growth, and so your company colours should be chosen not by your favourite niece, or your artistic grandson, but rather by careful study of colour psychology and how it relates to consumer habits in your sector.

At the end of this month I’ll be speak to the topic of “Branding & Marketing” at the Elgin Business Women’s Network’s monthly meeting. I’ll be joined by several great women from the community as we discuss topics related to branding. Two very important themes associated with the design of a brand are typefaces and colours. Since I’ll be delving into more detail about typefaces at the meeting, I’ll save that topic for the audience, so I figured in this column I’d touch on colour.

As you are probably aware but hate to admit, if you are a business owner then whether or not you really, really like green is irrelevant. Your customers associate different colours with different things in a very subconscious way, so your job is to capitalize on this and take advantage of what colour can do for you.

In general, the main colours can be broken down as follows:

RED: Energetic, Youthful. Can also be provoking!

ORANGE: Cheerful, Enthusiastic. Some surveys put it at the least favourite colour but others say it’s yellow…

YELLOW: Optimistic, and Youthful. But also used on hazard warning labels.

GREEN: Peaceful, Natural, Money. Typically used by both “natural” product companies and finance.

BLUE: Trust, Security, Loyalty. Used widely by companies that want to appear traditional and/or reliable. Internationally, it’s the most preferred colour!

PURPLE: Creative, Spiritual. Associated with royalty. Generally not liked by the male gender.

GREY/BLACK: Serious, neutral. Black and white logos can either appear flat and uninteresting or very stylistic and modern.

Obviously there is much more to it than this, and so when putting your branding guidelines together it’s very important to do not take it too lightly, or act impulsively. It’s worth working closely with your designer and relying on their knowledge and any research you’ve done during your business planning stage to determine how your branding should evolve.

What’s a CTA? And why bother?

When sitting down with a potential website designer you may find your head spinning a little as they throw out terms like “SEO”, “CMS” and “CTA”. Today I’ll touch on “CTA” (although you can always contact me for further info on those other troublesome terms).

CTA stands for “Call To Action”…Basically your company has a website because, well, you want more business (duh). So when you have a visitor land on your site, not only do you want to impress them with your product or service and provide more information, but you’d also like them to DO something about their visit. After all, they’ve made a certain level of commitment already by merely visiting your site. This is where a CTA comes in: it can be in the form of a button that leads them to yet another page, or a form that they fill out for more info, join a newsletter list, or a “BUY NOW” or “ADD TO CART” button that clinches an e-commerce deal. Essentially the objective is to provide a compelling reason to finish, rather than defer, the sale

CTAs are an integral part of your site as they encourage the user to go further down the sales funnel than just ending up on your site. Obviously this is highly important and therefore deserves some highlighting on your site. But how?

There are a few common tactics to highlight your CTA. One is repetition: make sure your CTA appears more than once, on more than one page. Each individual is unique and therefore absorbs your content differently. Some people see a graphic in a sidebar somewhere, but others might be attracted a large button, centred on the main page. The idea is provide multiple ways of having the user finish that sale, or least contact you for further information.

If you are asking the consumer to commit to a fairly large purchase, you might precede your large request with a series of smaller requests, that eventually lead them to the main goal. For instance, you might have them upload a photo file that can be used to customize a product you sell, choosing different colours and features, so they can see a possible mockup, before you make the final ask. The idea of “no obligation” to start is an important feature of a CTA.

Another feature of CTAs is that they use the familiar tactic of creating a perceived urgency or exclusivity. You might mention that there are only x number of these items left, or that if they complete the sale they might be entitled to a discount that is only in effect today.

CTAs can not only be introduced on your website: they can be implemented in email campaigns, digital banners, Facebook ads, and any or all manner of digital advertising. What can you offer your customers, today?

The mass market is no longer important

Do you still cater to the mass market? i.e. the hundreds if not thousands of people out there who are all constantly bombarded by mass media on their TVs, their daily drive, and even their phones?

It’s time to stop worrying about them and spending your precious marketing dollars in a way that broadcasts to such a wide audience. I love this idea by Seth Godin, my favourite marketing guru. He says “The mass market is no longer important – the edges are what’s most important.” What does this mean?

For me personally, what it meant is that when I started my business, I was a general creative, meaning anyone who happened upon my website or was referred to me was business. Of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and business was steady but pretty competitive as there were many other “general” designers out there who, on the face of things, looked and operated very similarly.

But once I thought about what business I really enjoyed, it tended to be a few specific areas. So I streamlined my website portfolio and used my social media accounts to highlight branding & marketing in these sectors. Of course, this is a scary step as potential clients in other industries may take a look and see that I am not for them.

…I hear this from new businesses all the time when I ask them their target demographic: “Oh, it’s everyone! Man or woman, aged 20-70, anyone really!” They are hesitant to narrow the demographic down as this might mean saying no to potential income. But actually, the reverse is completely true! The people who DO identify within your demographic will see your branding and your messaging and see that it is speaking directly to THEM, unlike all of the other marketing messages they see and hear throughout their day. They will come straight to you, and no one else, because you “get” them. You’ve probably heard all about your brand’s “tribe”, and this is the tribe you should be seeking to build.

This worked for me, too! Of course, I still get new work outside my target industries through word of mouth, and I’m happy to do those projects as referrals are generally great people to work with. But all my new work is (wonderfully) generally within my target industries, and so I can offer even more value as I understand the industry based on my previous experience with it.

So find your “edge” – embrace it, and then find those people who are just as excited about it as your are.

Companies who rock Twitter

In last month’s column, I gave you a gentle nudge toward trying your hand at Twitter if you haven’t done so yet. On the flip side, there are companies out there who have got very comfortable with the medium and add a nice dose of humour to our day.

One great example is Wendy’s; they’ve been ribbing McDonald’s for using frozen beef in their hamburgers for over a year now. It’s been just funny enough that the praise has outweighed the criticism. Taking quite a risk, they even moved the roasting off the Twitter platform and into a Superbowl TV commercial which read ““The iceberg that sank the Titanic was frozen, too.’” Take a look at what they just posted last month:

In general, people appreciate the humour, and give the meanness in their tweets a pass.

Wendy’s has such a great voice on Twitter that its fans even create content for them, which in turn increases their brand awareness to levels that no TV spot could ever do. Consider this exchange:

In the end, Carter Wilkerson got 4.3 millions retweets, so Wendy’s gave him the nuggets anyway, and in the meantime the tweet got the record for the most retweets, surpassing Ellen DeGeneres. It would seem like this just fell into Wendy’s lap, but in truth, the only reason Mr. Wilkerson reached out to Wendy’s in the first place was because he knew their Twitter was managed by real people who engaged and connected with its audience in a regular and genuine way. Crafting that voice and content takes time and dedication.

Imagine what you could do with your business if you (or an employee of yours) decided to dedicate time to engage with your own audience? Think of the feedback you could get; the negative comments would help you learn how to improve your customer experience and figure out where the pain points are, and the positive ones would find its way into the Twitterverse, thereby increasing brand recognition. Additionally, those ever lovely hashtags would help narrow the audience to your geographic location and/or industry.

Your audience awaits!

Demystifying hashtags

For those of you knowing that you should have jumped on the social media bandwagon long ago, but felt too intimidated to do so, I suspect one of the main reasons for your trepidation was that strangely ubiquitous symbol “#”. What’s it for, anyway? Why use it at all? To a novice, the symbol may seem unnecessary.

In social media circles, the hashtag, or “#” symbol first appeared in Twitter as a way for people to categorize the kind of content they were contributing. Typically you would tweet your thought/comment/status, and attach hashtags at the end that would be related to your topic. Over time, with enough hashtags present, it became a simple way for someone to find all tweets related to a location, theme, or event. With its utility proven on the Twitter, other social media platforms quickly adopted the same convention.

From a business perspective, hashtags have several uses. A significant one would be if you were at a industry event that publicized a hashtag associated with that event. In realtime, while you are in attendance, you can quickly see what others are experiencing/commenting on at the same event. It’s a great way to meet new people, as their tweets can be a great conversation starter.

If you are considering running a contest as a way to increase your social media follower base, you will want to create a hashtag associated with the contest as an easy way to both track who is participating and for other people to quickly find the contest and participate, thereby learning about your business along the way.

Locally, we have some great hashtags that are worth exploring, both to learn more about our community and the great things that are happening here, and as tools you can use to increase your business’ presence on social media. Some examples are:

#stthomasproud #stthomasontario #elgincounty #explorerailwaycity #ontsouthwest #shop519 #aylmerontario #portstanley

Keep in mind hashtags are somewhat fluid; you need to continue to use social media on a regular basis to stay aware of which hashtags are waning in popularity and which new ones are on the horizon. You can’t really go wrong when using them (so long as you are not exploiting them), so have fun experimenting and exploring new content.

Happy Hashtagging!

The M-Word

Money is the source of everything in a business, and ultimately determines many of the decisions we make, from pricing to expenses to marketing decisions. And since this issue is focussing on investing and RRSPs, I thought I would look at finances from an online perspective.

The internet has revolutionized what it means to finance an endeavour. In the past you would have to either 1) sell your idea to a relatively small group of close friends and family or 2) approach large institutions for business loans and/or 3) get backing and support by an industry partner in return for, ultimately, being “owned” by them (as in the case of record labels or publishing companies).

But at present, with just a small amount of online know-how, if you can dream it, you can build it. The basic idea is called “Crowdfunding”, and this describes the process whereby instead of approaching a small group of people for a large sum of cash, you do the reverse and ask a very large group of people for very small sums of cash! In this way you are not asking any one person for a large, possibly painful investment; rather, each individual is giving away a very small amount of money (even as small as $5) Now of course as in any transaction, no one gives anything away for free, so the participants in return are given a small amount of “ownership” in the project, and this can mean anything, depending on how the project is set up.

One major online version of this is Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/). At the time of writing of this article, the website boasted 138k+ projects. Essentially a person or group pitches their idea, the cost of that idea, and then details a multi-tiered pricing structure. At each tier is a suggested donation/investment amount, and tied to that amount might be the result of the project itself (i.e. a book, or membership), or perhaps something larger if you contribute more (i.e. invitation to an exclusive event). The great thing about this idea is that if you are particularly passionate about an industry, and want to consider giving to this cause, you can be very detailed about the kind of project you’d like to support! As established businesses, this is a great way to give back to your community or industry; essentially possibly paving the way for a younger generation who will eventually be filling our shoes.

I found some Canadian examples ranging from a shoe start-up, to a self-published mystery novel, to a group seeking capital to build an indoor children’s playground.

While it seems like a dream come true (you mean people will just hand me money??) in the reality a crowdfunded project requires a great deal of planning and marketing. You will need to build a successful tiered pricing point structure that suits everyone’s budget, and a strong social media presence to build a following. Your idea should be somewhat noble in it’s cause, and if it’s not, you should be prepared to offer an excellent product or service that rivals or exceeds your competitors. You may have to give some of your product away (e.g. share a chapter of your upcoming novel, or offer to write music for a donor, or plan a launch party event) But in the end all of this just builds community and support which will ultimately lead to a more successful launch. What are you dreaming of building?

People to follow

As a creative professional who also self-markets, I need to keep up on the latest and greatest in a variety of sectors in order to stay on top of the game. Continual learning and development is important to keep my skills honed as the market is ever-changing.

One of the way I do this is by following some pretty interesting people on social media. They’ve made it huge in this new economy, by breaking down traditional barriers through unusual means to achieve near celebrity status in their respective worlds. It’s like Justin Bieber getting discovered on YouTube, but for business!

The first one is Gary Vaynerchuk (https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/). He started a video blog about wine back when he was helping his parents run their local wine store. By continually adding valuable content to his niche using a medium that was very new and fresh for its time, he grew a large online audience and grew the business ten-fold in 5 years. Today he runs Vayner Media, described as a “ social media-first digital agency”. He made Forbes best 40 under 40 list. I’ve read his book “Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, where he is right in saying that you can totally win at the social media game, but it will take hard work, daily perseverance, and an eye on the long-term goal. “Know yourself. Choose the right medium, choose the right topic, create awesome content, and you can make a lot of money being happy.” You’ll find plenty of his random musings on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, and on his video blog #askgaryvee.

I mentioned a few articles back another big influencer, Scott Stratten, author of The UnMarketing Book. Scott is a Canadian who made it huge on Twitter and was named one of the Top 5 Social Media Influencers in the world by Forbes.com. His mantra is “Great Brands are built by great employees”, so treat your employees like gold because they are ones who will interact with your customers. One review on Amazon says “There is a huge emphasis in the book about moving away from standard best practices and how to be one step better then your competitors. As marketers we spend time interacting with our customers but yet fail in many ways when it comes to engaging with them.”

Ilise Benun is a marketing coach who specializes in working with creatives. She completely understands the stress and roller coaster life of a creative professional, whether you are a writer, photographer, or otherwise “creatively self-employed “. Her tagline “Advice & Accountability for Creative Businesses” describes her perfectly. She has a great podcast and sells or gives away lots of great online resources for getting yourself on track, either financially (by figuring out how much you need to charge to cover your costs and pay yourself), how to write proposals, and resources for creating a marketing plan. Her best advice to me was to start a newsletter, which I really didn’t think would work but it has consistently brought me business every time I write one!

So there you have it – if you are looking for some new people to add on Twitter or follow on LinkedIn, these would be some great places to start. Happy surfing!

All media is now optional

In the past, if you wanted to engage in some marketing, you’d take out a full page ad in the paper, or perhaps produce a television commercial, or maybe get a radio spot. Maybe you’d even do all 3, spending thousands of dollars along the way.

The great thing about that media, in that time, was that everyone consumed content in the exact same way. There were only so many radio, televisions stations or newspapers to choose from, so it was reasonable to assume a fairly large number of people would view your ad, regardless of whether it applied to them or not. Then they could decide at that point whether or not your marketing was speaking to them. So your large advertising budget, applied across a broad audience, a small fraction of which would become new business for you, perhaps even enough to justify the advertising budget.

Today is obviously much different. Thanks to the self-publishing world, there are now podcasts and the like that compete for radio audiences. YouTube channels, Vimeo and many others take their own share of television viewers, and the sheer dizzying array of mediums with which to consume written content is beyond count.

For the consumer, this means more than choice than ever. It means you can quickly find other people out there who collect fishing lures with as fervour as you do. It means you can find a YouTube cooking channel that satisfies your paleo dietary requirements. This is absolutely wonderful, in many ways. However as a business owner, this leaves you in a quandary. In the words of Seth Godin, “all media is now optional”. In other words, no one is going to engage in your status update, blog post, discussion, tweet or open your junk mail unless they want to.

Since this column is too short to really get into what you need to do to get people to engage in your content, I’ll leave you with some homework:

1. Understand the psychology behind social sharing – this generally involves knowing how to help your readers connect with others, knowing that readers need to trust you before sharing, and that KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) applies to your content, too!

2. Remove the friction behind sharing and engagement – in other words, given people buttons that make it easy to put your content on other channels.

3. Use images to stand out and get more social impressions but please! Keep it authentic. A stock photo of a woman wearing a telephone headset is so 1990…! Use your own images so that you are telling a truthful story.

4. Learn what time of day/week your content is generally consumed and schedule your posts/newsletters/tweets accordingly. Every platform has some kind of “insights” that contain pretty graphs describing everything you need to know about who is looking at your stuff and when.

Something to think about when you want to get your useful/entertaining/informative content out there…Happy posting!

5 things you can do to get you started on Twitter

Following on the heels of my first article in this column, I want to go straight into some practical tips that you can use in your business, like starting today.

Most people unfamiliar with Twitter shudder when I mention it. It’s a scary thing; the little tweet button that, once clicked, will send your thoughts to a….void? Judgemental audience? Viral post? How do you even know what to say that’s worthy of some stranger’s attention?

I had the same trepidation when I first started back in 2012. I certainly wasn’t an early adopter, so the Twitterverse was already well alive and kicking. How could I be sure I had anything to offer that hadn’t already been said? A few months before joining I was browsing the marketing section in the St. Thomas library and a title caught my eye: The UnMarketing Book by Scott Stratten. Picking it up, I went home and learned from just about the best there is in the Twitter business. Scott Stratten is a Canadian who jumped on the bandwagon in its early days and quickly realized the advantages that Twitter can bring any business, in any industry.

Instead of paying huge sums of money for focus groups or consumer data, each and every company has its customer’s opinions at its fingertips. Rather than cringing when you get your first customer complaint on Twitter, why not take advantage of this direct message to you and your company about how it is viewed by the public? Particularly the public who cared enough to even talk about you, whether the comment was positive or negative? This is Stratten’s general premise as to how a company can use this unique time and place to correspond one-on-one with its customers; something that’s never been possible before.

I also liked that Stratten made the foray into using Twitter much less intimidating for me: he suggests thinking of it like a party, where you go from room to room, having a quick conversation with one person here, then another there. You can choose to follow a conversation or thread, or leave it. No one will notice one way or another, but of course, the longer you stay, the more you will have a shared experience with others involved.

So where to start? The first five steps are easy: 1) Sign up. 2) Pick a username (called a “handle”, the thing with the “@” proceeding it in a tweet). 3) Put up a photo and 4) add a blurb about you. Your network will grow more quickly if people know you and your “context”. Then 5) begin by simply following other people. Local community leaders, politicians, and people who inspire you are a great place to start. For fun, add your favourite sports figures, comedians, or entertainers. Your child’s school and your workplace will almost certainly have a twitter account.

When you are ready to start tweeting but don’t know if you yet have anything original to say, begin by simply replying to other’s tweets. Hashtags are helpful clues to following a particular trend on Twitter, and when you start using it for business, this will become important. But in the early stages, you will really just need to get a feel for which party you feel like joining, and which ones you can skip out early.

Happy Tweeting!

#girlboss

Running your own business means learning as you go. To that end, I’ve read many books, on varied topics, from self-marketing to design inspiration to colour theory. Some of the most memorable books I’ve read have been written by women. I’ve selected three favourites below and I hope this might spur you on to further reading:

My original training was in electrical engineering, which was and still is a fairly male-dominated field. In the past, this would pose a problem for women as they may have suffered chauvinism and harassment in a gender-unbalanced workplace. But by the time I was in postsecondary school, I found the doors and barriers to be wide-open: my classmates and professors treated all of us as equals, and despite my being one of only 8 females out of 80 students, our class was very much on equal footing. So if an unfair work environment is no longer common, then why the continued gender imbalance in male-dominated fields? The Sexual Paradox by Susan Pinker explores one theory. She writes that now that women have fought for so long to remove the glass ceiling, it turns out the majority of females don’t think of a career as the only means to life fulfillment. It is normal – indeed common – for highly educated women to scale back their professions once they begin having children. So even though the race is now pretty equal in many ways, it turns out it’s not a race many women want to join. Part of her reasoning is that even though the workplace is no longer openly hostile to women, there is a still a fair amount of unconscious gender discrimination and preference for male qualities as a measure for success that continue to put women at a disadvantage and sometimes the fight just doesn’t seem worth it.

Where Susan Pinker leaves off, Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg does a fantastic job of picking up. The COO of Facebook explores many facets of the current corporate climate and how it does a disservice to women, even men, of certain temperaments. That a man is praised, respected even, for his aggressive tendencies but a woman’s greatest asset is that she is “nice” certainly makes scaling the corporate ladder difficult for females. The push to work longer and harder rather than prioritize family just as much as the workplace also places further stress on anyone, but particularly women, who want to focus on their children during their formative years. Sandberg does a great job advocating very specific policy changes workplaces can implement immediately that can even out the playing field without having to resort to affirmative action.

The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine is just one of those books that EVERYONE has to read. Seriously; I texted the book cover to a friend of mine urging her to read it after I was only on page 45! Brizendine states that even though 99.5% of our DNA is the same between males and females, our hormone levels and when and how much we produce of them has anything and everything to do with how we maintain relationships, make decisions, and react during stress. She also points out that there is almost no clinical data on females (a colleague admitted they never use female animals during studies because menstruation would make things more complicated), and yet there is so much valuable information to gain when understanding the differences between the sexes.

So, if you are interested in learning more about women in business, these titles should do a great job of getting you started. Happy reading!

The Connection Economy is changing how we do business

You may have looked around you and thought: how has so-and-so managed to get their business up and running so quickly? Why do they have customers lining up outside their doors? They don’t have a radio spot, they don’t have a two-page spread in the yellow pages, and I have yet to see a billboard with their logo on it!!

The answer is both simple and yet subtly complex, and it’s been called “The Connection Economy”.

Seth Godin, the author who coined the term, is a well-known guru in the era of digital marketing, and he has a lot of great things to say on the topic. One idea he presents is that we are moving away from an industrial economy towards a connection economy, that is, one where there is a human interaction at the heart of every business. 

He posits that our labour and material production has reached the limits of scalability, and that we have branded ourselves to death. So what does the world need? An economy routed in trust, permission, remarkability, leadership, storytelling, humanity, connection, compassion and humility.

But what does that mean in simple terms as someone who is running a business?

Your job as a modern business owner is to find the right tribe, connect and create a culture of being that tribe. Make your product or service so great that people will happily sing their praises of you on their Facebook update, tweet, or in an Instagram post. Word will spread; but the integrity and dedication to your product has to start with you.

Another way to look at the same problem is to ask yourself this question: Are you invisible or remarkable? Again, using Seth Godin’s voice, in an interview he gave to the blog Craft of Marketing (craftofmarketing.com):

“Basically what happens is people come to me knowing I don’t do consulting. So they’re looking for free advice, and they ask,

• “How do I make a big splash?”

• “How do I get the word out?”

• “How do I get to the size that you are?

• “Please write a post or tell me how to get my Kickstarter to be super successful, or whatever.”

My answer is from my own experience, the way I did it, which is to tell ten people. If those ten people tell no one else, then there’s something wrong with what you built. But if they tell other people, then the word begins to spread. And if you show up, day after day with something important, and notable, and remarkable, and generous, people will talk about it. They will miss you if you are gone. And that is the slow and steady route to actually making an impact, that I know of.”

…Invisible or Remarkable? My column here will take a closer look at what this might mean for you as a local business owner in Elgin County. I can’t wait to get started!