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Friday Fun – Growing Big Lists Some Practical and FUN Tips

Tara Jacobsen — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:50:17 +0000

Growing big lists is not hard…it just takes some time and effort (sorry, I know that is not as fun as the title sounded BUT might as well get it out of the way at the start!)

So here are my tips for growing big lists, in no particular order:

It Is Just Like Kindergarten Valentines – Everybody Gets One

I talk to lots of people who are proud that they know everybody on their Facebook list. They have real connections with them and feel like they are “real” friends. Growing big lists means suspending that model and feeling like everyone is a friend, whether you know them or not.

Here is my plea for considering this! I have “friends” on Facebook who I have never met, who came to my Christmas party at my house because I invited them. Now you might not want the general population dropping by, but I have tens of thousands of connections across the internet and have NEVER had someone take advantage of the fact that you could find me in person if you wanted to. (one note – I have a house full of people and animals PLUS a six foot six bear of a husband, if you are a single gal, you might want to be a little more careful than I am about publishing your info)

Also, it is not an all or nothing thing…you could keep your Facebook sacred, but grow big lists on Twitter or LinkedIn. Just because you decided to use one for “real” communication does not mean that you have to do that over all your social media platforms.

Also, stop worrying that you will “friend” or “circle” unsavory people. I have unfriended people who spam me, taken porn people off of my Twitter and blocked people who do not add to my general well being. I just take the stance that you are a “friend” until you prove otherwise!

Get Curious

This picture is of me dinking around on the Google Plus this morning. I thought, huh, wonder if I could find an easy way to get some media contacts. I searched and found two neat sites (Circle Count and G Plus Search). From there I searched and found a place that had some media contacts and then another place with some more. BINGO! I made a circle of newspapers.

So what am going to do with a circle of newspapers. I really don’t know right this minute but here is what is going to happen (I guarantee it, I have done this before and the best predictor of future results is past results).

Some of those newspapers will follow me back! I have 72 and will get at least 10 percent of them that will check their followers and find my cute taradactyl picture and follow me back after seeing I am a real person (note, you can’t just put up a profile and leave it at that).
Then, people who circle them will check and more people will circle me because I follow a newspaper they like.
Eventually google plus will open up their interface and someone will make an auto follow tool that will check who people follow and suggest me because I am on a list.
Rinse and repeat.

Seriously, that is my plan? Yep. It would be GREAT if I could just get everyone in the universe to follow me like they do Ashton Kutcher or that dark haired girl who got married and divorced really fast, but that is not going to happen. I am just a schmoe who likes marketing and small business so the universe is not anxiously waiting to hear my every word. I have to get out there and hustle to find them first so that they can find out how cool and rocking I am!

Again Kindergarten Rears Its Head – Share Your Toys

This is a biggie – you have to stop worrying that people will steal your stuff or use what you have before you do! So what did I do with my circle of newspapers? Did I:

A – Hoard it, wringing my hands together and chuckling that I have something and no one else can have it?
B – Send it to one friend who like a lot and who I know will get a kick out it (this happens sometimes)
C – Post it on the interwebs so anyone in the world could copy it and use it – DING DING DING – we have a winner!

When I was realtor (for about 10 minutes), I got to a lot of sales doing a community newsletter. Because of that, real estate offices asked me to come in and teach THEIR agents how to use a community newsletter to get more listings (these were offices in my marketplace). I did, going so far as to give them a copy to take home and use at will. To this day, one agent has used that same format and gotten great results. SERIOUSLY, I gave out about 600 copies and one person used it.

If you share you things, people will like you. If people like you, they will share their things with you (I have a 100 Free Marketing Ideas handout I have made 1,000′s of dollars from and I never have to look for new free things, people email them to me!)

The Wrap Up

So, when you want to grow big lists, be nice, share your things and like other people. Pretty easy peasy!

DISC Personality Types and Your Sales Message

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:04:33 +0000

The DISC personality types and how it affects everything we do fascinates me! When you are setting up a marketing campaign it is VITAL that you take your target’s market personality type into consideration and have something for everyone.

What Are The DISC Personality Types

The DISC actually represents 4 kinds of people, D for dominance, I for intuitive or social, S for steady and stable, and C for compliance or structure and organization.

We are all one or more of these personality types and that determines how we receive marketing messages and react to the world! So how does this effect the small business owner with their marketing?

Selling to each type requires that you talk in a language that they will respond to. The words that you use matter A LOT and will determine how your message will compel them to buy or work with you.

Here are some real life examples…

Selling Fitness Services

Let’s start with how to sell an exercise class. Each personality type has a need for different kinds of motivation and you better have something for everyone in there.

D Marketing Message – D’s are concerned with winning and are very goal motivated. Talk to them about meeting their fitness goals, challenging yourself and being better.
I Marketing Message – I’s are social creatures and want to be with their friends and other people. Talk about how you are all in it together and how fun it will be to this together.
S Marketing Messages – S’s are stable and steady so you can pull on their heartstrings. Explain that exercise can help you be there for your kids or your family. You can even say that they can bring a friend to help HER!
C Marketing Messages – C’s need to know that you have a plan and structure. They want to know all the details of what you are going to be doing. Tell them that they will get a handout to take home.

Selling Real Estate

Selling real estate seems to be pretty straight forward, but each type of personality will “hear” something different in what you say.

D Marketing Message – D’s will want to know that they can sell or buy fast. Your sales message can include REALLY strong words like winning, making the most money, taking less time. Simple, fast and easy and great sales words for D’s.
I Marketing Message – Because I’s are people, people, they will want to know that you will talk with them throughout the process. If you are a buyers agent, you can tell them how fun it will be to look for houses and that you will be going to lunch during the search – I’s like to do social things!
S Marketing Messages – When talking to an S about real estate, focus on family (people, furry or friends). You can talk to them about how fun it will be make a home and have their loved ones around them.
C Marketing Messages – C’s will want to know that you know your stuff and have the experience to help them. Oh those C’s! If you are listing a house for a C you better have all your ducks in a row with figures and data explaining why you recommend a price or repairs. If you are looking for houses with a C, it pays to ask them if they are considering BUYING that house before getting all of the data about it. You can spend A LOT of time researching homes they don’t even like.

Retail Store Sales

Dealing with the public everyday can make you less aware of how you act when you have customers in your store or business. I have gone into retail establishments more often than I can say where I felt like no one even cared if I was there!

D Marketing Message – Getting D’s in the door will be simple if you tell them that you have what they need and that you are efficient about selling to them. For D’s actually in your store, restaurant or building, make sure you acknowledge them and ask if they need something right away. Many times D’s will know what they want before they get to your store and will appreciate getting in and out.
I Marketing Message – In your message make sure to talk about fun, meeting other people, getting together and other people-friendly activities. In your establishment, make sure you say hi and ask how they are doing today. You will know that they are I’s if they tell you that and then engage you in a longer conversation. They like to have someone to shop or talk with, so you can spend time with them, knowing that your efforts will probably help increase sales.
S Marketing Messages – Be aware that S’s are going to want to have family and friends around also, AND that they want to know that they are buying from a reputable company. They may also want to know that you have strong social and ethical practices in your business. S’s spend a lot of time doing things for other people and do not want to put you out. If you do not engage them, they are likely to come and go without asking questions that could help you make the sale.
C Marketing Messages – C’s are going to want to know the details about what they are buying. In your marketing materials, make sure you list all of the details of your product or service.

As you can see, it is pretty easy to figure out personality type when you know how people interact with you. Make sure to have a little bit of something for every one of the DISC personality types in your sales message.

Social Media Marketing – Should Facebook Be Your Main Site

Tara Jacobsen — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:33:49 +0000

In our social media marketing world, the option of using Facebook as your main site is coming up more and more frequently! I cannot tell you how opposed I am about this being a viable option.

I KNOW, Facebook is one huge party and there is nothing that cannot be done with it! If you listen to the current wisdom, you should tank ALL of your other marketing activities and spend all of your time marketing on Facebook.

If you are in the FB is the only option camp, you may be surprised to know that the other half of the people email me and ask me if they should do anything on it because it is not effective at all.

Seriously, Facebook and social media marketing in general is not the second coming, nor is it the devil incarnate. It is simply a marketing channel that most companies can use effectively as long as they have a clear vision of what they are trying to accomplish.

Why Facebook As Your Primary Site Is A Terrible Idea

I do not know if I am saying this strongly enough, but having Facebook as your only marketing focus is a TERRIBLE idea. Here are just a few of the reasons:

NUMBER ONE reason it is a bad idea – You DO NOT own anything on Facebook. Per the terms of service, Facebook has the right to cancel your account for any number of reasons that you have no control over. Our number one suggestion is to have a blog or website as your main hub as you have absolute control over it, can back it up and re-launch it if you need to. We have seen MANY people grow a large following, only to have to start over if their account is canceled.

Facebook changes A LOT – Because Facebook is the boss of you, they can change anything at the drop of a hat. Just recently they changed the entire platform that Facebook custom business pages are built on. They also changed how we can interact as humans and as our businesses (this time was a good change, next time maybe not so much).

Facebook is not Google – Consider your searching habits. If you are looking for something do you do a search on Facebook or do you go to Google? This is not to say there is not a lot of referral business going on on Facebook, just that it is not great at showing up on the Google.

So, am I saying that marketing on Facebook is a wasted effort – NOT AT ALL. What I am saying is that you should have a primary hub website or blog that is the focus of your marketing efforts and that Facebook should be one of the important things that helps drive traffic to that site!!! No social media marketing efforts are wasted, they just are not the only thing you should be doing!

Click here if you would like to find out more about outsourcing your social media marketing.

Facebook Groups, Friend Lists and Business Pages

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:33:51 +0000

Facebook Groups, Friend Lists and Business Pages are hot questions for small business owners in my inbox right now. Since Facebook launched Groups Version 2.0 last week my peeps have all wanted to know what the difference are between the three.

Here is a screen capture of your groups, you find them on the left hand side under your name (if they are not there, click the “see more” to find them). Once there you can see your groups, your friends groups and the groups other people have invited you to.

From reading about where why FB may have implemented these new groups, I get the impression that the 5% of people using the Friend Lists was not enough of a adoption rate for the gang over at Facebook so they decided to make it easier for normal humans to categorize people. Also, the privacy settings that could accomplish this same thing are REALLY onerous to use. In a bit I will break down what seems to be the best uses of the different types of Facebook applications for business.

Making A New Facebook Group

To add a Facebook Group go to www.Facebook.com/Groups (while you are logged in) and then click “create group”. Once there you get a dropdown with the choices of Open, Closed or Secret. I cannot begin to tell you how much I do not believe ANYTHING on Facebook is ultimately secret so I highly recommend you do not pick secret. To add people, click in the big white box and start typing their name. Once you have added people, the normal Facebook box comes up and you have the option to post a link, photo, video, event or document. You can also add a picture to your group or chat with them all at the same time through the group interface.

Adding a message to my group (which I set as open) did not post that message on MY profile but my buddy Deb Ward DID get this message the next time she logged in, “Tara Jacbosen added you to a group”. This is one of the big grouchy things that I have heard A LOT online, ANYONE who is your “friend” can add you to a group – it is more of an opt out than an opt in kind of gig.

Here is a Facebook Groups overview video from the FB gang.

Facebook Groups, Friend Lists and Business Pages

Because my readership is comprised of small business owners, if you are a mega business and have tens of thousands of “fans” or “likes” on your business page, this is not the post for you, nothing to see here, move along. If you are a small business person, I will reiterate what I tell everyone – FRIENDS are the lifeblood of Facebook. Friends are necessary for the new groups AND for making lists of people. I have about 3,000 friends and have added them this pretty aggressively so worrying that you will run out friends fast is an unwarranted fear for most small business owners.

If you watched the FB video, you will see that you can also make an email address to contact all the members of your group offline. I STRONGLY recommend that you use your email database (like Constant Contact or Ace Of Sales) for this instead of Facebook.

Uses for Facebook Groups

Here are some suggestions that I have heard for using groups. As my primary use for FB is business related, most of them have no real draw for me, BUT they could be useful for you!

Contact your family – if you are hesitant to post pictures of your children that everyone on your friends list has access to, this may be a GREAT way to avoid unwanted viewing of your family.
MLMers or businesses with a sales team – you may want to share certain things with your team only. I have to say for this function I use GoToMeeting ($50 a month) or Webex (Free) instead as I can do real time screen captures and also save them for future viewing.
Have a “special” group that you send messages to – I made a marketing peeps group and invited people who were REALLY interested in marketing. Within an hour I had someone request to join the group!
Here is an article from Duct Tape Marketing with some more good uses!

Uses for Facebook Business Pages

As far as I can tell, Facebook business pages are still the only area that FB has designated a “sell” zone. It violates the terms of service to sell aggressively on your profile and I can’t imagine that people on your groups are going to love getting daily sales message emails either. We are seeing great results from our clients who have gotten a custom Facebook page and recommend this for any small business owner.

Online Events – We always make our events attached to the business pages. For online events like webinars and teleseminars, you can notify the people who like your page AND your friends.
In Person Events – We also add our events to the business page as we generally charge for admission. This way I do not even put a toe over the line to violate those terms of service.
Videos – We have handy dandy videos on the pages that help people AND make them more likely to “like” our page.
Notes – Notes are a BRILLIANT way to get some SEO love from Google – they index fast and stay up about a month or so before dropping down in the rankings.
Paid Advertising – It is REALLY easy to advertise with Facebooks paid advertising using your business page.

Overall, I can say that we are still going to be focusing on business pages for our clients. There is no sense in building up a great group when that functionality is so easy already in the business page.

Uses for Facebook Friend Lists

Okay, here is my pitch for why friends are so important to small business owners. I KNOW you can get THOUSANDS of likes for your business page, but have yet to see anyone but celebrities, big companies, hard-core internet marketers or silly things gain that kind of following. For business building, I find that having “just” 5,000 raving fan friends will trump having gagillions of people liking something that is inane and not at all related to generating actual sales.

Friend lists allow you to laser target geographic areas – there is a dropdown box at the top of the Friends page where you can select cities. Because I speak in Colorado AND Florida, I have a Tampa Friends list and a Denver Friends list. Just do a search and then add your friends who live in proximity to that list.
Likes on my business page are stuck there – when I do a new business page I can invite my friends by suggesting it. I have yet to find a way to cross promote my business pages to each other.
Events – adding an event to any of my pages allows me to “suggest to friends”!
New Facebook Groups – even your new groups rely on having friends to invite.

All in all, I use a business page to conduct business, I use my friend lists to laser target messages about events and sales opportunities and I am not sure that I am going to jump on the groups bandwagon just yet. If you have some great ideas about how you are using any of these Facebook features, please leave a comment and I will add it to the post with a rocking keyword linkback!

Small Business Marketing Burnout and Failure

Tara Jacobsen — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:39:06 +0000

Small business marketing burnout and failure is not EXACTLY the most uplifting topic ever, but I think it is important to talk about the fact that NO ONE gets everything done and what steps we can take to do better.

When I get frustrated with MY small business marketing I feel like a 10 year old kid who just wants to put her head under the covers and just MAKE IT ALL GO AWAY! Very mature I know, but it is what it is.

So let us talk about small business marketing failure first

I have failed miserably and gloriously at some of my marketing efforts (the mid 2000′s spammy email list debacle comes to mind first). The thing to remember though is that I have TRIED lots of marketing things too and some of them have succeeded.

I know that there are some things I do better at than others marketing-wise. I am TERRIBLE phone caller, sigh. I wish that was not so, but making a marketing plan that drives people to pick up the phone and call me is money flushed down the drain.

I know that I like doing online marketing and that I can measure the results with google analytics SOOO I do more online marketing and plump up the places that send me traffic.

Take a look at your marketing that is failing and either fix it OR ditch it. DO NOT spend one more dime on marketing that is not working without a plan!

Small business marketing burnout

I have a list of HUNDREDS of things I should be doing right now that I am not, which also makes me feel like a failure. When I get to this point, two things HAVE to happen:

I have to make my list smaller. I do not know anyone who has ever gotten through their whole list of things to do, it is just not possible SOOOO I need to make a smaller list. There is not enough time in the day to do everything so there have to be fewer things.
I have to focus my list. Take out your list of things to do or if they are in your head write them down now. Now look at them realistically (I HATE this part). How much can you actually do today…next week…this year. Which ones will drive money to your bank account soon? Do those first, even if they are the hardest or the ones that you do not know how to do!

What if you fall off the wagon?

So you are cruising along doing your marketing and then work happens. You do not post to your blog for two weeks, you do not email your list for a month, you do not send your quarterly newsletter, you stop calling your customers. ARGGGG

First off, they probably did not notice since work is happening to them too! And Second off, just start doing it again today. No apologies, no long winded explanations, just get back out there and start all over again. One day at a time baby, one day at a time.

I am going to be doing my two hour small business marketing consults for $100 until June first when the price will be going up to $250. If you would like to get on calendar to talk, email me soon (tara@marketingartfully.com) to save your place.

Google Local Business Listings – Great for small business owners!

Tara Jacobsen — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:11:33 +0000

Want another way to get more clicks to your website? For FREE? Google local business search is free, easy and sent 22 people to my website last month. Is that a lot? Not compared to the regular search, but considering that I set it up a couple of years ago and never touched it again, I am pleasantly sureprised.

Google sent me a message today that I can now get reports on my local search clicks so I popped back in, added my new Colorado location, uploaded some video testimonials and bang I am live!

Make sure you verify your business with a phone call or email. If you use the phone option, they call you within seconds and give you a pin number to enter to verify your given phone number is active.