You must learn from other people’s mistakes. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself. – Sam Levenson

Who Is Your Target Market?

If you are a small business owner, consultant or entrepreneur, you need to choose a target market…who your customers are! Concentrating on your probable customers will save you both time and money because you will be ‘talking’ to the people who are most likely to purchase from you.

How do you find your target market?

Here are four tips to help you hone in on your potential customers.

Problem solve

Think about whose needs and problems you can solve. Your potential customers are those whose problems you can solve.

Think about it this way, the more a person’s need matches your product or service the easier it will be to persuade them to buy from you.

Who are your current customers?

Take a look at who your current customers are. The traits of your current customers can be a guide for what to look for in your target market.  Don’t have any customers yet? Take a look at the next tip.

What is you competition doing?

If you really want to get more insight into your target market, check out what your competition is doing and who their customers are.  Can you do the same thing, only better?

Is there a gap in the market your competitor is missing? You can market to that niche to sell to an untapped customer base.

What makes you unique?

Know what sets you apart from your competition. It’s the added value that you offer that differentiates you from the competition and can win you customers.

Shout this added value from Facebook, Twitter and all your other social media platforms. Have it on your website home page. Use testimonials and pictures of your 

real clients when promoting your services.

Once you’ve defined your target market, it’s time to start letting everyone know who you are and how you can solve their problems. Focus on where your customers are. Now’s the time to go get ‘em!

Happy Halloween!

5 Tips to Avoid the Most Common Mistakes Beginner Bloggers Make

Blogging sure looks easy until you have to sit down and write a couple of posts a week. That’s when beginner bloggers see how difficult it really can be. And that’s when it’s so easy to make mistakes.

Here are 5 tips to help you avoid the mistakes that most beginner bloggers make.

You don’t know where to get your ideas

Don’t write in a vacuum.  You may think what you want to write about is a great idea but does your target audience feel the same way?

Time spent learning what issues are important to your target audience is time well spent. Survey your current customers. Ask your sales staff what questions they’ve heard from your customers. This is where you should be getting your topic ideas from.

Once you start writing your blog, pay attention to the questions your readers post. That is another great source of writing ideas.

Be yourself

Writing a blog post can almost take you back to high school and having to write an assignment for a class. You really weren’t allowed to ‘be yourself’ in your writing for a history essay. Blogging is different. You want your readers to get to know you and your small business. This will build trust and eventually will turn into sales.

When you write your post, be conversational in your writing. Your readers will enjoy that style and come back for more of your posts.

Target your topics

When you start blogging, it can be daunting to write about specific topics. But that is what your readers want.

It’s too difficult to do justice to a broad subject, such as ‘How to Do Social Media Marketing for Small Business,’ in a blog. That topic could easily fill a book! Take the broad subject and break it down into small specific topics. From the ‘How to Do Social Media Marketing for Small Business,’ I can have quite a few blog topics to write on such as:

- How easily Facebook advertising can target your customers

- How to create a Facebook business page

- Is Pinterest the right social media channel for your business?

- How can I make Twitter work for my business?

You get the picture! Also, specific topics tend to attract a more targeted audience which is how you can drill through all the social media noise and find the right target audience for your business.

Be original

Don’t plagiarize content from someone else. Your site could be penalized by Google, which naturally wouldn’t be good for business!

If you really like an article or post by someone else, re-post it and give credit to the author. If you want to use a portion of someone’s post, cite them in your blog.

Stick to a schedule

Consistency is the key to attracting and keeping your audience. If your audience knows that you post twice a week, say Tuesday and Thursday mornings, they will tend to come back at those times to read your most recent post.

Make that commitment to blog on a regular schedule. Use an editorial calendar to plan your post topics, dates, and which social media channel you will post which blog to. By planning in advance, you can write your topics ahead of time and schedule them weeks, even months, out.

Are you ready to start your small business blog now?

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. – Aristotle

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. – Mark Twain

7 Tips to Create Content Strategy for Social Media

Today, it is imperative that small businesses have a presence on social media. That sounds great, but how do you make it happen?

Having a presence is more than creating an account on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. You have to post content….relevant, interesting and educational content….on these social media platforms. You need to have a planned content strategy to be effective. Here are 7 tips for creating your small business social media content strategy.

Determine Your Goals

What do you want to achieve from your social efforts? Be specific. Keep in mind that each social media platform is different and has its own unique audience, so create separate goals for each individual social network you plan to use.

Create Your Brand’s Identity

Social media is a great place for small businesses to strengthen their branding. Know what your business’ unique story is.

Check Out Your Competitors

See what your competitors are doing on social media. What is working for them? You can be inspired by what they do and take it to the next level.

 

Use an Editorial Calendar

An Editorial Calendar will help you determine when and where to post your content. Decide which social media platforms will get certain posts, videos, and visuals, and when.

Take a look at an entire year so you can plan some posts for holidays and any sales you plan. Then, work on your content one month at a time.

 

Which Platforms Are For You?

Don’t jump into social media and join everyone out there. You’ll be overwhelmed and your social media marketing will fail.

Take a look at where your customers are. If they are on Pinterest, then you need to be there too. Are they on Facebook? Perhaps your company would only benefit from being on LinkedIn.

When thinking about which social media platforms you should be on, don’t forget that you should also be blogging. Blogging will establish you as an expert in your industry.

 

Be Social

Part of being on social media is being social. So monitor your comments and respond when someone comments on your post.

 

Analyze and Optimize For Best Results

Make sure you’re not wasting your time with the wrong posts or even the wrong social media platform. Check out your analytics to see how well your posts are performing. Most social media networks provide analytics for business pages so you should be checking them often to understand which posts were popular and which weren’t.