Things That Turn Customers Away Fast

It does not matter if yours is an online business or a physical store, there are some things that will make customers leave without buying what they wanted, and these are things that can be prevented with some effort and perhaps extra training for your employees.

Online Businesses

There are millions of online businesses and if yours does not come up to scratch the viewers will soon move on. It is said you have 5 seconds at the most for them to be attracted enough to stay on your site, so what things should you be avoiding?

• Your site not being responsive to all digital devices as consumers expect to see the same thing whether they are looking on their PC or their smartphone.
• Ignoring any questions. The best way is to have live chat so they can get instant answers. If they find it hard to contact someone, they will move to a site where they can get the answers they are after. FAQ’s are rarely the solution, either because people have not got the time to trawl through them, or their own question doesn’t appear.
• Not delivering what you promise. If your goods or service are not as good as your website says, they will not be a repeat customer and are likely to tell of their experience on social media. People tend to do this more with bad experiences than they do good ones.
• Not being user-friendly is probably the biggest mistake of all. If your site is difficult to use they will soon move elsewhere.

Just these fours things can lose you a lot of business without you even realising that potential customers are lost. The safest way to prevent this happening is to use the services of a professional like Darren Langley web designer, who will already know of all these pitfalls and will ensure they do not occur. Yes, it will cost you more in the short-term to hire a pro, but in the long-term, it will make you more money!

Physical Businesses

One of the worst things any physical business can do is keep customers waiting to be served longer than they expect. Consumers do know they sometimes have to wait their turn and are prepared for this, but not if it is going to take too long or they think other people are being given priority over them. They will soon put the goods they had in their hand back, and you can say goodbye to another sale.

Surly staff will put people off buying anything and can be a huge problem if someone is asking for help. We all have off days, but your employees should not show that on the shop floor. Service with a smile is an old cliché, but one that still needs to be adhered to today.

Unclear signage and pricing will stop people from buying a product, as they do not want to get to the checkout and find it costs more than they thought. Do not be misleading about any special deals either, as consumers appreciate honesty.

There is no doubt many other reasons why people have not bought from you, but all you can do it try to stop some of the most common reasons happens, and hope that you find out about the others so you can correct those as well.

Business Strategy Consultations

What do you get from a Business Strategy Consultation?

Do you have a dream of where you’d like your business to be in 1 year? 5 years? 10 years even? Do you know how you are going to get your business to that dream business? I  mean do you have concrete plan to execute month by month? With realistic goals and targets? Do you know the help you can get? What services you could use? What free options are available? Who you could network with?

How you could make more money by doing less?

That’s where a business strategist can help. We look at where you are now, and where you want to be. Using my network and experience I help you set goals, explore new ideas, and maximise your business’s potential. Typically my services will see your customer list grow.

My business strategy consultation help you get your business from where you are now, to your dream business as quickly as possible.

How am I qualified as a Business Strategy Consultant?

Whilst I do hold a diploma in business, I have to say my knowledge comes from over ten years of running various businesses. I have managed all sorts of businesses from dog walking, through to personal training, through to freelance writing! I have served local customers in person, I have served people on the other side of the world online. I have worked with animals, children and adults! I had businesses before Instagram even existed!

And all of them were a success. 

The only reason I don’t have those businesses now is because I created a better business. When I say better, I realised what I wanted in life. Where I wanted to direct myself, how I wanted to live. I stopped having work or businesses that dictated my life to me and reversed it. I now have a business that I love and fits my lifestyle and I want to share everything I learned with you!

Click here to book in and find out more!

The Whole Truth: Keeping The Authenticity In Your Business Brand

Your brand is everything and it encapsulates every single aspect of your business that can be seen from the outside world, from your online presence to the internal processes that are witnessed by clients. But, when we are coming up with new and exciting ways to communicate ourselves further afield, we can sometimes lose track of our authenticity. Authenticity is what will give you that extra edge over your competitors. In many ways, it’s a given that you should be as authentic as possible, but we sometimes don’t follow this modus operandi. So by making your business brand as authentic as possible, what simple processes can you undertake?

Crafting A Detailed Blueprint (And Sticking To It)

If you have felt your way through the branding process, and you’ve been (luckily) successful so far, creating a blueprint that should be adhered to in every manner may have fallen by the wayside. When drafting a blueprint to follow, it’s not just the business marketing that benefits, it’s every procedure from within the business. It creates a personality, an ethos for you to follow. And once you’ve got this right, this can impact every part of the business, from your website, to how you present your product. Once you know exactly what you want out of your imagery, it’s far easier to go to product labelling services, marketing agencies, or your clients, with a more comprehensive and confident approach in how to undertake your call to action.

Asking For Feedback

On the other hand, if you are going through the process blindly, or you have a plan of attack, but it doesn’t seem to be generating the results you hoped for, it’s time to reach out to the people that buy your products and use your services. Feedback from the customer is something that should form an integral part of evaluating your processes, which is why you should craft a questionnaire or a method of asking feedback that encourages open and honest criticism. It’s the only way you can heal and grow, and likewise, you can do the same from within the business. Just be prepared for that smile to be wiped off your face.

Go Back To The Drawing Board If Necessary

And if everything is not going according to plan, there is nothing wrong with starting again from scratch. Maybe your business plan wasn’t as detailed as you thought, or there is something wrong in how you generate ideas or maybe you were too busy chasing the money rather than the actual important aspects. Once you get to the core of what your business brand is, you’ll discover your identity. And once you’ve done this, it makes every other process easier, but it will encourage more custom because they have more of a trust in who you are and what you do.

Authenticity needs to be the through line in every product, promotion, and personality you present. Once you’ve achieved this, you would be surprised as to how easy everything else can fall into place. Once it is nailed, and you will make life a lot easier for yourself and provide that integrity you’ve been searching for.

.

A Step By Step Guide To Growing Your Online Presence

Growing your online presence is so important if you’re going to make a name for yourself, grow your brand, and make a profit. The online world is vast, and it can take a lot of work to get your business out there. You need to make sure you’re differentiating yourself from your competitors, consistently working on your growth, and keeping that momentum up so you don’t get complacent and fall behind.

In this step by step guide, we’re going to talk about growing your online presence. Read on if this is something you know you need to do:

1: Create Your Website With Your Target Market In Mind

Make sure that before you build any part of your website, you’ve done a ton of market research so you can build it with your target market in mind. They should be at the forefront of everything you do. How will they like the layout? The branding? The content? Will they find the site easy to use? Make sure you consider everything and make the experience as enjoyable for them as possible.

2: Choose The Right Platforms To Grow Your Brand

You can’t use every single platform online to grow your brand. Well, you could, but not at the beginning. In the beginning, you’re going to need to choose the most effective platforms. You’ll need to work out where your audience is, for starters, and consider which type of content suits your brand most. Pictures, like those posted on Instagram, or short bursts of info used on Twitter? Hiring a social media manager could be a good idea if you want to master social media, as it can indeed take up a lot of time.

3: Incorporate Video

Video is huge: in fact, YouTube is the second largest search engine right now. If you can create video content, you’ll increase your chances of people sharing your information, improve your reach, and help your users with valuable video tutorials. Video allows you to get more information across in a shorter amount of time, and usually in a more attractive format!

4: Work With An Experienced, Established Company

To grow your online presence, you’re going to need a company that offers SEO Services online, as well as other services that can help you to get your company name out there. It’s important to note that not all marketing companies are created equal, so you must do your research.

5: Be Responsive To Your Audience

Being responsive to your audience is a must. It’s how you build relationships, generate returning customers, and build loyalty. It allows you to show your brand personality, provide fantastic customer service, and more.

6: Ensure All Content Is Valuable And Shareable

All content you create must have value, whether that is because it’s helpful or humorous. Make it as shareable as you can!

7: Track And Analyze

Tracking and analyzing consistently is the only true way to know how you can move forward with your strategies. Keep an eye on your analytics and you’ll get a good idea of how you can grow!

We love the power of marketing

Marketing definitely is a powerful tool, and we love the power that it holds in the business world. It’s that powerful, that there shouldn’t be a business out there who aren’t using it as a technique. In fact, it’s one of the main ways that a company can gain exposure, push for growth, and boost the appeal of products or services. But, for all of the power that it holds, some companies just don’t know how to use it. Instead, they’re using the wrong techniques, investing in the wrong companies to help them, and could potentially be doing more damage than good to their company. Remember the recent H&M scandal with the supposedly ‘racist’ marketing campaign? Well, it just shows that whilst marketing has the power to bring a company to the top, it also has the power to completely damage a reputation. So, we want to show you why we love the power of marketing, and how you can use it right for your business.

What It Can Do For Your Company

This is where we want to talk about why we love marketing. We love it because it can simply do everything for your company. Whether you’re just starting out, or whether you’re a few months in and still finding your feet with marketing, it can make your business one of the best. That’s only if you use the right techniques of course. If you use a combination of techniques, you increase your chance of exposure and profit increase. But, if you focus on the wrong techniques, or try the right techniques in the wrong way, then it’s never going to do anything for your business. Take social media marketing as an example. It’s usually a great way to market your business, but it’s just as easy to be left in the dark. Everybody is on social media, so getting your posts and your company noticed is going to be hard. But, if you do a lot of research into what to post when to post, and how to boost your posts, then it could work amazingly for you in conjunction with other techniques.

The Areas You Should Be Focusing On

There are a few areas that you should really be focusing on. One of the biggest is your website, the design, and how you market it. Believe it or not, your website design does play a big part in the success of your marketing efforts. If your website content is SEO optimized, and the design is conversion rate optimised, then it should be unstoppable. Afterall, people visit your website the most to make purchases, so making sure it’s in the front of your marketing efforts is key.

How To Use It Right

To use it right, you’ll have to outsource. Unless you hire a team of people to be employed on your payroll, you’re not going to be able to keep it in-house. But, you don’t want to go for a company who is the cheapest, you want to go for the company that gets results, no matter how expensive that might be!

How to create buyer personas to boost your content’s effectiveness

Ever wished you could pinpoint exactly who your ideal customers were? That you could understand what they really want, how to help them solve their most pressing problems, and market your business to appeal to them? Well, that’s exactly what buyer personas can help you do! Follow She Hustles Inc’s guide to improve your marketing today!

What are buyer personas?

A buyer persona is basically a fictional representation of your ideal customer, based on real data and educated speculation. Personas generally include information about who your target customer types are, where they tend to be located, what they’re looking for, challenges they face, solutions they seek, other brands they like, and more. Knowing your target customers is a vital first step in marketing your brand and getting sales. And that’s where buyer personas come in.

In fact, a whopping 71% of companies with documented buyer personas beat their revenue and lead goals.

Not bad, right?

The process of gathering the information needed to make a buyer persona is an excellent way to get familiar with your customer base. As a result, you’ll be able to create content that your customers actually want to see, reach them on the social media sites they spend the most time on, and even improve your products/services to meet their needs.

How do I create buyer personas for my business?

Don’t let the marketing jargon put you off. Creating buyer personas is actually a pretty simple process. You’re basically just looking at your existing customers/ideal customers and making a list of important common traits they share. Who are they? What do they do for a living? What do they need? -List their common challenges and needs. What do they want? -List out the goals they tend to have and how your product/service can help them.

Maybe your online nutrition planning service can help them get healthy despite a busy schedule?

Or your social media management business could help them expand their audience without forcing them to learn the ins and outs of new platforms.
Remember, every customer segment values different things when buying, so make sure you’re not marketing your product’s low cost to a customer who cares more about quality or prestige (or vice versa).

Write out the common objections you hear when they’re deciding whether or not to purchase your product/service. Doing this will help you create content and marketing that overcomes those objections.

What do they look for in a brand? List similar brands your customer base tends to trust and buy from.

This information will eventually help you highlight what your brand can offer.
When gathering answers to these questions, the specific path you take will depend on whether you have existing customers or not.

Gathering persona information from your existing customers:

To better understand your target customer, dig into Google Analytics and Facebook Audience Insights. These two tools can help you uncover:

Age, education, gender, relationship status
Location/language
Devices used online
Purchasing information
Your target audience’s favourite pages
Interests

Don’t worry about segmenting this information into similar types yet. For now, just focus on gathering as much relevant data as possible.

Try a survey; get persona information directly from your customers by creating a short survey with a service like Qualaroo or a free alternative like SurveyMonkey. You can email opted-in customers a link to your survey or simply host it on your site via a pop-up. Offer giveaways for participation and keep the questions brief to ensure more people follow through.

Don’t have a ton of customers to gather insights from yet?

No worries! You can still get the persona information you need, even if your business is brand new.

Two ideas you can try right now:

Do competitor research
Competitor research tools like Alexa or Quantcast can help you get an in-depth view of the types of customers you should be targeting. Just type in the URL of your main competitor’s site to see visitor information like browsing location, sites visited before that site, visitor gender, education level, keywords used, and more.

Follow your completion on social media
Finding out what kind of audience your competitors have on social media is a great way to determine who your ideal customers are and what they’re looking for. Look at their followers’ pages for background on age, location, and profession.

Pay attention to the kinds of posts they respond to most from your competitors, as well as their comments and questions. You’ll find plenty of psychographic information here to fill out your personas with.

Creating your personas:

Now that you’ve done the research, it’s time to start fleshing out your personas.
Give your personas names and make educated guesses based on the data you’ve gathered. If the majority of your target customers have kids and high pressure jobs, you can guess that one of your persona types is pressed for time.

If they follow certain fashion influencers on social media, you can guess that on-trend brands and products will appeal to them. Obviously, you don’t want to get carried away and make stuff up. But it’s very important that you use the data to make informed assumptions about who your customer is.

Remember those social media comments you looked at earlier? Well, take a couple of the most common ones and add them to your persona template under the “quote” section. This will remind you of what your target customers are saying online.

Keep in mind that as you interact with your customers/audience, you’ll learn more about them. Maybe some of the assumptions you made will turn out to be false. That’s absolutely fine. Buyer personas are meant to change over time to reflect your understanding of your customer base.

And finally, keep your finished personas in mind as you create content and marketing for your business.

You’ll be surprised by how much more focused and effective your content is when you’re trying to reach certain types of people rather than just a nameless “audience” out there.

The wrap-up:

Now, more than ever, customers want to feel that the brands they buy from “get them”. Generic content and broad marketing simply won’t do the trick any longer. Luckily, buyer personas are an easy-to-create but powerful tool to help you identify and truly understand your primary customers. Try creating a few of your own to start seeing the benefits to your business now.

Have you created personas for your business yet? If not, what’s holding you back? Share your experiences in the comments below!

Author Bio:
Hulua Seyoum
I’m a digital marketer and business writer. Entrepreneurship is my jam.
HubSpot Inbound and Content Marketing certified and borderline obsessed with helping businesses grow.

Also obsessed with: travelling and finding the ever-elusive perfect cup of coffee.
Follow me on Instagram @inboundmarketinglounge for more marketing tips to boost your business.

How to collaborate with other businesses, even if you’ve never tried it before

Arranging to collaborate with other businesses is a really good idea because you have your products exposed to each other audiences, this means you expand your reach. Often it can be more than that, with you sharing and supporting their normal posts and vice versa, it can really increase your brand reputation.

So how do you go about collaborating as a small business? You may feel unconfident about approaching other businesses or just unsure where to start.

1. LOCATE YOUR IDEAL PARTNER TO COLLABORATE WITH

Find another business that your customers would shop with, but that sells different items to you. Their items should be complementary to yours. For example, if you sell handmade baby clothes, collaborating with a handmade teether business is perfect. If you are a mummy blogger, collaborating with anything child related could work from clothes through to food through to household products and items.

It is certainly easier if you have a product you can swap with them. Bloggers and service providers will need to show what they can bring to the table. Bloggers will need to show that they have a good sized captive audience that makes it worth the other business giving you free stuff.

Once you’ve located a business you’d like to collaborate with, message them and say you would like to work with them. You could suggest doing a product swap so you have their product in your pictures and vice versa.

2. USE WHAT YOU HAVE

If you are not having much luck with option one, then you may need to invest a little. So you could look at items you already own or you could buy new items. Then when you post tag them in and refer to them. Hint – go with the type of item you want to receive for free! Let’s say you go on a lot of holidays as a family, and you’re a mum blogger. You want to be posting amazing pictures from your hotel, tagging them in and raving about them in the post. Or you could tag a fashion label you always wear or always put your children in. You could tag your favourite place on a day out, your favourite cafe or restaurant. Once your feed is big enough, you should find by tagging the right people you get freebies also!!

If you don’t have existing material then buy it. If you wanted to collaborate with a teether company, then buy a teether or two from them and regularly use them in your pictures. Tag them and give a little review in your post in a natural way.

“Little Sandra is loving the sunshine today and thank God for these teethers from @teethercompany keeping us sane whilst she’s teething. I’m passionate about shopping handmade and natural products and I love these! Anyone else’s little ones teething?”

You’ll notice there’s more to my caption that meets the eye! It’s telling a story, giving a review, working a collab and encouraging engagement! Boom! Read more about captions here!

Post like this a few times and the teething company will be happy to work with you. Try to select a company that’s roughly the same as you in terms of stats for the most success. Shooting for a bigger business would seem better, but they’re less likely to collaborate so it can be a waste of time.

The bigger you get, the better your collabs can be. Check out our new marketing membership for consistent growth for your business.

Here’s little Sebastion and Tizzy brand repping!

3. FIND OTHER BUSINESSES ACTIVELY LOOKING TO COLLABORATE

Search out brands and businesses looking for collaborations. There are a few easy ways to do this. You can search on Facebook just using terms like “collaborators needed”. Or try searching for “brand rep required”.

Brand repping is a good way to go on Instagram also. You can put yourself forward a rep in return for free or discounted goods. You need to make sure your feed is good and you post pictures already that they would easily slot into, so start thinking about this now if you don’t already so you have an established feed.

On Instagram, you can search collaborators, brand reps, or have a good look at hashtags used in your niche. There tends to be certain hashtags dependant on your niche that indicates people are up for a collab. You can also use sites like Collabfinder to locate businesses. But my best advice is to get lost in Insta or the book of Face and have a good look round your niche at who’s offering what.

The benefits of collaborations are huge, you will find you always have support from the other business and the benefit of their audience and marketing efforts!

Simple steps to help you GDPR-proof your email list

You’ve probably heard it tons of times – the money’s in your email list. And it’s totally true. From getting loyal followers and increasing sales to up-selling and keeping current customers happy, building a strong email list can help your business grow and thrive like nothing else. But strict new EU regulations (called GDPR) are seriously changing up the rules of the email marketing game.

If any of your subscribers are EU citizens (no matter where your business is actually located), you’ll need to ensure your email marketing is GDPR-compliant before May 25, 2018, or risk stiff fines. Yikes, right?

But don’t panic! Even if you’ve never heard of GDPR before, this post will help you get up to speed and protect your business in a couple of simple steps.

What is GDPR and how does it affect me?

GDPR stands for the General Data Protection Regulation. It’s basically a new set of EU rules that govern how businesses can gather and use personal data such as subscribers’ email addresses.

But what about if your business isn’t located in the EU?

Unfortunately, GDPR rules still apply to you, even if you only have a few EU-based subscribers or customers. If you’re scrambling to get your email signup forms GDPR–ready, don’t worry, you’re not alone. In fact, more than half (52%) of all businesses are unsure about the potential impact of GDPR and 57% of retailers are not GDPR-ready.

But just what is so challenging about this new regulation?

It all comes down to a major shift in the concept of “consent”. The new standards for what constitutes consent are much stricter than what was acceptable pre-GDPR. Under GDPR, a simple email opt-in doesn’t cut it anymore.
Instead, you now have to be able to prove that you’ve received “clear and affirmative” consent before you can collect someone’s email address and send them messages. This rules out previously acceptable forms of opting in, like pre-ticked consent boxes and failure to definitively opt out of receiving marketing communications.

What constitutes consent under GDPR?

In the past, consent only required you to receive confirmation from people that they were willing to get marketing communications from your business.
With GDPR though, both the way in which consent was asked for and the way in which it was given matter. (For a more in-depth view, check out this GDPR review)

Here are some important changes you need to know about:

Consent must be clear and affirmative, as well as “freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous”:

It can’t be bundled together with other terms and conditions. In keeping with the requirement that it be specific and freely given, consent must be independent and granular. If you’re like most businesses, you currently offer value-packed content like guides, checklists or eBooks to people in exchange for an opt-in to receive newsletters or other email marketing. From a marketing standpoint, this is an awesome way to draw in potential subscribers and provide them with more content, based on the offer they downloaded.

Unfortunately, under GDPR, this is no longer considered freely given consent.
In other words, subscribers must consent to receive your newsletter because they actually want it, not because it’s a pre-requisite to getting the checklist or eBook they really do want.

Let’s check out two examples of the right and wrong way to receive independent consent:

Correct:

Note that on this sign-up form, an individual isn’t forced to download additional marketing communications if they don’t want to. They can simply download the checklist without opting into anything else if they wish. This helps to fulfil the requirement for freely given consent.

Incorrect:

In the example above, the subscriber has to sign up to receive a newsletter they may NOT want in order to get the checklist they DO want. This makes the consent given invalid under GDPR.

Always provide granular options for people, allowing them to download or sign up for only what they want.

The (very) rare exception is in cases where it’s necessary to receive email consent in order for you to render a certain service. It’s best to always clarify that this is the case before proceeding.

Consent should not be passive:

Passive consent, such as an individual failing to uncheck an already checked box, is not considered valid under GDPR. While this may be good marketing, (passive consent options tend to garner higher opt-in rates on forms) it can place your company in non-compliant territory.

This also applies to any form of passive consent, including inactivity, silence, or failure to actively opt out.

Let’s look at examples of active (correct) and passive (incorrect) consent below:

Correct:

In the example above, the individual has to check the sign-up box themselves, meaning that they actively consent to receive the communications offered.

Incorrect:

Here, you can see that the sign-up form has a pre-checked box. This puts the onus on the individual to stop and uncheck the box if they don’t agree.
Under GDPR this is considered passive opting in and is not an acceptable form of consent. For this reason, steer clear of pre-ticked forms, opt-ins through silence or inactivity, and any other form of consent by default.

While double opt-ins were once the gold standard of consent, they’re not enough under GDPR:

Don’t get me wrong, double opt-ins are still an excellent way to ensure every contact in your database has willingly opted in. But with the advent of GDPR, you’ll have to do more. Compliance requires that people explicitly agree to your terms and conditions and your privacy policy, not just that they consent to receive your emails. To facilitate this, all of your terms and conditions and your privacy policy should be clear, easy to understand, and easy to access.

But GDPR goes one step further:

You’ll also need to be able to prove that you’ve told people how you’ll use their personal data and that they’ve agreed to your terms. This proof will need to be stored and presented in case any question of non-compliance comes up. Using a CRM that automatically saves a copy of all opt-in forms for you can make this step a little easier.

Past consent is not exempt:

This news is the source of most businesses’ GDPR-related headaches.
GDPR comes into effect on May 25, 2018 but that doesn’t mean that you can continue to market to contacts previously gathered before that date in a non-compliant way. Its regulations apply to both existing and new data, so past data gathered in a non-compliant manner can still land you in hot water.

Legitimate interest may not be enough:

Many businesses agree with the need to receive explicit consent but feel that, in some cases, proof of legitimate interest may be enough.
For example: If your e-commerce business’s subscribers gave their original consent in a non-compliant manner but then proceeded to open and engage with your messages, wouldn’t that serve as proof they are legitimately interested?
And wouldn’t your business then be justified in continuing to market to them?
The short answer is “not really”. Unfortunately, GDPR doesn’t allow using legitimate interest when marketing to individuals, so I would err on the side of caution. While this could represent a major cut to your existing contacts list, it’s well-worth it to avoid falling foul of the regulation.

Send out re-permission emails

Of all marketing operations, the new rules hit email marketing particularly hard. In the face of GDPR, you might be tempted to just delete your contacts and data altogether.

All isn’t lost, however. While these new requirements are certainly challenging, you can turn GDPR into an opportunity.

Savvy marketers are already going through their databases and working to salvage contacts through re-permissioning.

Re-permissioning is the process of getting a definite opt-in from your database. By sending out re-permission emails that seek clear affirmative consent from your existing contacts, you can move forward with a clean and engaged list.

Benefits of re-permission:

Will you lose some contacts after sending re-permission emails?
Almost definitely. There’s no sugarcoating that fact. Industry statistics show that re-permission opt-ins range anywhere from only 10% to 50%. But while you’ll likely end up with a lower number of contacts, getting opt-ins from contacts who do want to continue hearing from you will allow to market more confidently in the wake of GDPR. And sending re-permission emails offers your business benefits beyond GDPR compliance, including:

Better deliverability:
Contacts who are willing to opt in again are more likely to open and engage with your emails. This will give your deliverability and sender score reputation a major boost. Don’t worry about losing a couple of names on your list.

Higher conversion rates:
Your smaller list may actually be way more powerful, as every contact on it actually wants to hear from you and is actively interested in your business’s offerings.

You probably have a much better chance at turning a subscriber who has taken the trouble to opt-in again into a customer than you do with someone who may originally have passively opted in.

You’ll also spend less time and valuable resources marketing to people who just aren’t that into your content.

A clearer analytics picture:
Your current list may be larger but it probably includes a number of subscribers who aren’t genuinely interested in receiving your messages.
As a result, their lack of engagement with your emails can artificially drag down your analytics, giving you a false impression of your content’s effectiveness. While you may be doing great at converting those who are interested in your emails, you’ll still end up with a cloudy idea of your strategy’s effects.

Cleaning up your list with re-permission emails helps you gain analytics clarity.

An enhanced reputation:
Asking current contacts whether or not they want to keep receiving your emails is a fantastic way to gain trust. If you stress the fact that you want to provide real value, not just clutter up recipient’s inboxes, your brand’s reputation will definitely benefit.

Tips to keep in mind when sending re-permission emails

Start sending now:
Keep in mind that there’s going to be rush of re-permission emails from other brands in the lead up to May 2018. Many businesses are probably waiting until the last minute, still unsure of how to deal with GDPR. This gives you a head start. Staying ahead of the pack means you can get your emails sent before recipients get tired of the flood of eleventh hour re-permission messages in their inboxes.

Only contact those who have given consent:
But be sure no to send re-permission emails to those who’ve already opted out before. Current regulations require you to ensure you’re only contacting those who’ve given you consent. The alternative could mean major fines, as organizations like Honda and Flybe have learned to their cost.

Don’t use a blanket approach:
While a general template will work well for most subscribers, single out your best customers for special treatment. In select cases, try a highly personalized email. Go for relevant, targeted messaging that reminds contacts why they like hearing from you. Use first names, thank them for being subscribers, and be genuine.
Acknowledging valued customers is the best way to ensure they stay on board after GDPR.

Be clear and direct:
While GDPR is an important issue to businesses, your audience is likely less interested. Sending a clear, to-the-point email will go a long way towards ensuring your message actually gets read. A long-winded email that sounds like marketing, on the other hand, is a surefire way to get opt-outs.
Instead, focus on grabbing attention with punchy subject lines and keeping it with purposeful keywords in the brief body copy.

Remember, silence equals an opt-out:
If a recipient doesn’t open your email, (or opens it and doesn’t definitively opt-in) take them off your list. GDPR is very clear that anything less than clear and affirmative consent is not valid, so resist the temptation to reach out again.
Clarify which organizations will be relying on the consent received:
Make sure that your business and any third party organizations gaining this consent are clearly named. So for instance, if your organization “Bella Trading” and a partner company called “The Beauty Group” will be relying on the consent, both must be named.

Provide a clear opt-out:
Your message should state clearly that people have the right to opt out or withdraw their consent at any time. Include clear information about how to withdraw consent. Focus on making it as easy to opt out as it is to opt in.
Bonus: Your subscribers will appreciate it and will be less likely to opt-out if they feel like they have a choice.

Keep records:
I can’t stress this enough. Going forward, it will be super-vital that you protect your business by maintaining records of consent received.
Your records should also demonstrate how consent was asked for and given. If you haven’t already done so, start re-vamping processes now to prioritize the maintenance of thorough records. Everything from automatic screenshots to copies can help.

The wrap-up:

There’s no doubt that email marketing can help you take your business to the next level. Customers absolutely love hearing from their favourite brands via email, as it’s a more personalized experience.

But with GDPR right around the corner, you’ll have to make changes now to make sure that your email list is 100%GDPR-proof. Businesses everywhere are rushing to deal with this change but instead of worrying, keep your focus on getting ahead and being prepared.

Making a few important adjustments can help you protect and grow your email list, so you can actually turn GDPR into a business opportunity.
With that said, however, these regulations and the repercussions of non-compliance aren’t to be taken lightly.

If you have any questions about compliance, I’d highly recommend consulting a legal professional. Clarity about your business’s specific situation will allow you to craft long-term strategies that make the best of these new email marketing rules.

Have any questions or comments about making sure your email marketing is GDPR compliant? Share with us below!

These 8 simple tips will supercharge your SEO strategy with little extra effort

Types of content on your website or blog

 

1. Chose a keyword.

And that’s it!

Okay, so you have 8 points. But think of it this way. You’re sat there to write your next blog post. You are brimming with ideas. Start with the body of your post, sometimes I write the intro last because it’s easier to explain what you’re going into after you’ve written it! But just have that keyword in mind and use it throughout and in sub-headings. Write your intro with the keyword. Get yourself a catchy headline with the keyword in it. Add a few pictures and put the alt description in there and then using the keyword. Lastly finish the meta description, SEO title and slug and chuck a few tags on. It’s not extra work, it’s just optimising the work you are doing.

If you are looking for more tips and professional help with your search engine strategy check out The Search Marketing Shop. They have offered me help and advice that’s been really useful!

If you have found this useful please do drop me a comment, follow on social media for more tips or contact me here!

Automate your Pinterest strategy for long term blog and website traffic results

Follow my Pinterest here!

Tool number 1 for Pinterest growth

Tool number 2 for Pinterest growth

The next tool I recommend is Tailwind. There are many different schedulers such as Buffer and Hootsuite, but I particularly like Tailwind. I have found I get the best results from it. It’s very intuitive and I find the statistics really helpful to work out what pins are working. It pins to separate boards and spreads out the pins, so I spend a few hours creating pins on Canva, then upload them to Tailwind, get the captions on and links. Remember to get the keywords in your captions and ensure you get them on your group boards. By getting them across different boards you will find you can do about a months worth of scheduling in a few hours!

Again Tailwind offers a free trial (which again I do not profit from) so even if you just use the free trial to make your life easier for a few days and to give your Pinterest a boost, it’s better than nothing!

Automate your Pinterest strategy as much as possible!

Using both of these will make life much easier and give your Pinterest a much-needed boost. Pinterest is an amazing long-term solution to traffic as those pins are long-lived and just keep getting repinned! Remember to make attractive pins, consider using a free service such as Canva.

If you have found this guide useful please drop us a comment below or sign up to get even more tools here!

Follow my Pinterest here! You can also request my group boards here!

These are 5 simple strategies to up your Twitter game

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram… the list goes on! It can become very overwhelming having to manage so many social media platforms when running a business/blog. The trick is to understand each platform and use them correctly. Here are 5 Tips that will definitely help generate traffic and kind of set the tone of how Twitter is played.

1. Twitter Branding & Promotion

Don’t forget to constantly look for ways to improve overall. That can be in the way marketing has been managed or lack of networking. Or even restructuring and coming back extra strong when it’s ready. The market is so saturated on any social media platform, including Twitter. Having a unique brand and logo that has a consistent theme will grab viewers attention and begin to create a loyal audience.

2. The Tweets

The distinction between Twitter and other social media platforms is the limit set to what can be posted. Tweets with characters under 100 are the easiest to get noticed and generate organic engagement. Make sure the tweet gets to the point and does not beat around the bush. Include videos, pictures, gifs, memes, links to create a Tweet that grabs someone’s attention.

For example a potential tweet we would use for our blog would be,

| Check out fellow blogger @shehustlesinc #SheHustlesInc |
| May Challenge is HERE! #SheHustlesInc |

3. RT’s & Mentions

Part of engaging in the Twitter consistently is participating in the platform by Retweeting others tweets, mentioning them in responses or ideas or promoting their blog/business/product. The more engagement put out, the more engagement reciprocated.

4. Twitter Hashtags

I’ve discussed the importance of engaging with the audience before and Twitter is no different. Not only is Twitter designed to generate real-time conversations, but it also allows everyone the opportunity to brand and market their business. Hashtags are the best thing to use in a Tweet. Make sure the hashtags used are consistent with the theme of your business/blog/product. Try to make the hashtag unique, yet easy to find.

For example a potential tweet we would use for our blog would be,

| Are you ready to join the May Challenge? #SheHustlesInc #IncreaseTraffic #Blogger |

The Tweet not only requires the reader to answer a question, but it also has the potential to drive that reader to the website and join the May Challenge, or at least subscribe. Along with having a good hashtag, make sure to research Trending hashtags and topics in order to stay up to date with the audience.

5. Engagement & Consistency

Tying everything together will be engagement & Consistency. No matter how much work is put in or rule and tips followed, if there is not enough engagement consistently with the audience, the audience will slowly be lost. Engage with readers and put in the effort to be genuine and take constructive criticism well because, without the audience, there is no traffic, there are no views. Being consistent will show determination and the passion that exists for the business/blog/product to make it successful.

If you found this useful drop us a comment below or contact us here!

Big brands use Instagram stories; the reason is for true engagement and growth

Instagram stories, love them or hate them they will help your social media account grow and encourage engagement. If like me you don’t particularly like being in front of the camera you may have been shying away from doing them. Never fear She Hustles Inc is here to help you use Instagram Stories to your full advantage!

What are Instagram Stories?

You can post a “story” to your profile, this can be videos or pictures, and people can see it for 24 hours, or you can have it featured permanently on your feed.

It’s very much like Snapchat, but on Instagram. The videos don’t appear on your feed (unless featured), and you can also share it to your Facebook stories directly from Instagram.

Why take advantage of Instagram Stories

Instagram stories should help with engagement and growth when used correctly. Apparently using Instagram stories can help you beat the new algorithm. It is thought that the interaction with your story let Instagram know you are achieving engagement, and even if it doesn’t get your post into your followers feeds, at least your story will be at the top of their page!

I really like stories for adding more personality to your brand. You could show behind the scenes content. Often our feeds are polished to perfection, but on your Instagram stories you can show the authenticity of your brand and take your followers on a journey.

It’s a really nice way to collaborate with other brands as well. According to Social Media Examiner, taking over someone’s stories for the day is a great way to use stories. Or you could do a collaboration with someone. Keep in mind you want to be offering value to your followers and enticing potential followers.

Why not tag people in the story to engage with followers?

How to get the most bang for buck with your Insta story

Okay so how do we make a story that’s not going to fall flat on its face? If you have nothing interesting to post, my advice is to think engagement. Go with a poll, ask a question, give a call to action. By inviting your followers to do something, you’re going to get that engagement you want on your social media accounts, but you’re going to give them something interesting to think about. Just posting a picture of your pizza is not exactly going to create a buzz is it.

Again with stories we can tag people and locations, so take full advantage of this. It doesn’t cost anything and could mean new people engaging with you over a familiar location for example or following you because of it.

You can use hashtags in the post, obviously not all thirty! But one or two hashtags won’t hurt!

Have a play with the different video features and text overlays to snaz up your post.

Remember Coco Chanel always said – take off the last accessory you put on!

I’d love to hear how Stories have helped your brand or if you found this useful! Drop me a comment below! Or get in touch!

This is how to master the perfect Instagram post

You’ve prepped your Instagram account to perfection, you are ready to embrace your Instagram followers, you are ready to watch those notifications explode, you’re ready to engage. The traffic to your website is going to make it crash. You hit that “share” button, and you sit back and wait. 24 hours later, 3 likes, no new follows and no traffic to your site. You wonder what’s gone wrong? Where are the hoards you were so ready to engage with?

The cold reality is you may not have been #instaworthy, or you’ve not used the right hashtags or even hashtags at all.

This guide will help you to produce quality content to attract the right people to your business or blog on Instagram.

(Picture credit – Pixistock.com – visit for beautiful free images each month)

Cohesive Instagram feed

It’s really important your overall Instagram is cohesive. It must link to your brand and business. Think about it, if you are a hairdresser, and you want to attract people to your business you should be posting pictures of beautiful hair. It doesn’t have to be hair you’ve done, you can post inspiration, you can share other’s content, but you want to show what quality of hairstyles you believe in. If you posted about your pet dog, why on earth would anyone follow you to find out more or seek out information on hair? It amazes me how many people treat their business account as a personal one and post irrelevant images to their brand!

The feed should be colour coordinated, even if that is using all bright colours or just shades of blue for example.

When you post always ensure you are “on brand”.

Here are some examples of great cohesive Instagram feeds.

The image you post on Instagram matters

It’s not just about pulling the feed together overall. The individual picture matters. It needs to say open me, it needs to appeal to your audience. Scroll through your feed or through search results and you will see what I mean. What posts are you drawn to? Notice how some posts you stop and look at and want to read more, others you scroll on past. Search for images within your niche and see what appeals to you. Don’t directly copy these, but work it in a similar way.

Images need to be clear. No one will click on a poor quality image. I really recommend free stock websites such as Pixabay, Unsplash and Pexels. Pixistock has beautiful images and you get several free ones each month. You could also use Canva to create beautiful images that are #instaworthy.

Captions that leave your audience wanting more

You have a beautifully curated feed, you’re ready to post a stunning eye-catching image, now it’s time to draw your audience in with your caption. Captions that are more “real” tend to get more engagement. People can identify with it, or you’re answering a question they have or clarifying something. You are offering VALUE! These can be short or long, mix it up. Don’t think your words have to directly correspond to your picture, for example, a nice picture of scenery posted with a caption that contains a motivational quote and details about why you are posting it can work very well.

I scroll through search results to engage with my followers (read more about engaging with your prospective followers here) and I like to comment on posts. Sometimes I literally can’t comment. The caption is so boring and offers so little I can’t think of anything to reply that won’t sound like one of the spambot replies!

Ask a question, try to get your followers involved. Just make sure they feel a pull to comment because engagement is Instagram currency.

Tags

Tags are a highly unused method to supercharge your posts. Tag a location every time. Whether it’s where you are, or your country or where the picture is taken, just always put a location in. Obviously, if you are a local business it should be the area you are based in to really boost local traffic. If you are an online business it’s still worth using the location tag as you can come up in searches so why miss the opportunity!

You should also try to tag people. You could tag accounts that might feature you, you could tag products you are using, you could tag people you are with or people who might be interested in your post. This pulls you into their feed, it’s a networking or promotional opportunity, and they may reciprocate.

Sharing

Some people don’t like to share the Instagram post with their other social media channels as they feel like people should have different content on each of the channels. To an extent I agree with this, however, depending on your time constraints it’s difficult. I don’t necessarily have time to post on all my social media channels for The Female Entrepreneur Hub several times a day! So I do share on Facebook and Twitter. However, I tend to top up the other accounts with their own content in addition.

Instagram Hashtags

You can use up to 30 hashtags on Instagram. This is across your caption and your comments (made by you). If you try to post more it won’t publish the comment. If you notice your image has gone on but the not the comment it’s likely this is why. You can put your comments in your post or in the comments. A lot of people use full stops to push them further down the comment so they are not as much of an eyesore. Another way to get around this is to post the picture then comment on it with your hashtags. It will pull you into the results just the same.

My advice is to use all thirty, particularly whilst you’re trying to maximise growth. You don’t want to go too high level with your hashtags. Instagram hashtags such as #motivation will mean your post falls in with literally millions of other posts and this isn’t going to help you. Much better to use more specific hashtags. So for The Female Entrepreneur Hub, I use hashtags such as #femaleentrepreneur or #workfromhome. It just narrows down your audience to people you really want to target. You want to aim to get in the top 9 pictures for that hashtag search.

I like to use hashtag generator such as Leetags (available on Android and iPhone)

Comments

Now you have posted your content you should start to see some likes and comments coming in. Hopefully, in time you will start to see some engaged comments. At first, you may just get spambot comments. You should still reply to these! I thank them for their comment. Use 4 words or more. Why? Because Instagram sees this as engagement and pushes your post further up the ranking for that hashtag.

By following these tips it should give you premium quality content for your Instagram feed and help attract the right followers for your business or niche. Get in touch or comment below if you have any questions or enjoyed this post!!

These basics will make your Instagram account more successful overnight

Why is my Instagram account setup important?

Instagram is a shop window for your store. No matter what you sell or do! It’s where prospective customers/visitors see at a glance what you’re about and whether they want to look at what you offer any further.

It has to look interesting and appealing at a glance.

Your branding has to be upfront and apparent.

On top of that, did you know that you can set certain things up so you can be found in searches? It’s Instagram SEO! No no no – don’t run away! I know SEO stuff sucks and boggles the brain at the best of times, but I’m going to give you the bare basic facts. You can set these up once and really that’s you done! I promise to keep it no frills and easy.

This is what I want you to do to get your Instagram marketing ready

Get Instagram setup correctly

If you don’t already have an Instagram account, it’s not too late! If you want to try an Instagram account for your business, give it a go. I personally find Instagram the easiest platform to market on, It’s way simpler than Facebook, and I find I can get engagement much easier. Set yourself up an account and then turn it into a business account in settings by linking it to your Facebook page.

This is going to give you lots more stats and options. If you advertise products in your posts you can tag them. (To do this you add products to your Facebook page shop and they automatically pull through to Instagram.) You’re going to get important stats like when you get the most engagement with your posts.

What name to use on Instagram

So now you have your business account. There are no silly rules like on Facebook about changing your name. I want you to consider two things; your name (e.g. The Female Entrepreneur Hub) and your username (e.g. @the_female_entrepreneur_hub) on the profile.

If you can get something in here that is searchable for your business this will help you be found. So, for example, my name is easy to do this with, I want to appeal to Female Entrepreneurs… “The Female Entrepreneur Hub” covers this pretty well!

What if your business is called “wags and tails” because you look after dogs?! It’s not very searchable, so consider something like “Wags and Tails Dog Walkers” and “@wags_and_tails_dog_walkers. When people search “dog walkers” this should get you on the list.

Like Google, you start lower down and work your way up using engagement and growth strategies, but at least you’re on the list!

Instagram bio

Okay onto the bio. You can now use hashtags in the bio which will also pull you into search results. The bio needs to be what you offer the person. You might think it’s about you. It’s not! Sorry! The bio needs to tell the person why you are good for them, what you can offer them, why should they follow you? Try to answer this in your bio. Finish with one or two hashtags that are predominantly your niche.

Ensure you’ve added a link to your website. You can change this link as often as you need. You may want to direct them to specific pages or posts at specific times and with certain promotions. Test the link to make sure it works.

How your Instagram feed should look

Looking at the images now on your account. Look at your Instagram feed first. Does it reflect your brand? Is it cohesive? My “The Female Entrepreneur Hub” Instagram has a mix of different pictures, but it follows a pattern. You will only get certain types of pictures. I’m never in them (I hate having my picture taken!). If people are expecting pictures of travel, if you start posting pictures of your dog, it’s not why they followed you and chances are a few will unfollow. Are the colours cohesive and tied into your brand? You can see in the grid below how colours and images can be different but still on brand. Go back over your account and delete any posts that ruin the flow of your feed.

You Instagram profile picture

Now, look at your profile picture. Your options are your logo or an image that personifies your brand. This absolutely must be cohesive with your brand.

Brand Leader

By following these five tips you will ensure the basics are taken care of with your Instagram account. You will attract followers as they have a clear view of who you are and what your brand offers. You will gain more Instagram followers and this is essential for establishing yourself as a brand leader.

If you have any questions get in touch with us!

May Marketing Challenge – 10 minutes a day and you will grow your business!

Join the May Marketing Challenge on any of our social media channels!

FACEBOOK

INSTAGRAM

TWITTER

Or have the challenge sent directly to your inbox by registering here.

SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF PAGE TO SEE THE CHALLENGE FOR EACH DAY AS IT’S RELEASED!

Why marketing is so important

Marketing is essential for any business, however with the sheer quantity (and quality) of the information available, you can easily get overwhelmed! You can get so bogged down in reading and trying to work out what to do, you don’t actually spend your time wisely implementing thorough marketing strategies.

The May Marketing Challenge is going to cut through the noise and every day you will have a challenge to complete, that won’t take longer than ten minutes!

What you can expect to gain

You can expect to

• gain genuine social media followers
• increase engagement
• boost blog/website traffic

I’m not going to give you crazy promises that you’ll gain 1000 followers in day! I can tell you gaining followers that aren’t engaged or interested in your content is pointless. They offer nothing and are unlikely to convert to readers or customers. You need to stop wasting your time on methods that gain you followers that offer no value!! With my methods, you’ll learn the basics for gaining followers actually interested in your niche or business. We’ll do it on a small scale for the challenge, but you can upscale it to grow your followers as you have time! You can use these strategies ongoing.

Focus

We’re taking a “little and often” approach across four platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest. I would advise doing a little every day. We’re going to spread our time over the different platforms to give you a lot of ideas in May, however, once the marketing challenge is complete I would suggest picking one platform and focussing on that, even if that’s for a week at a time. You may even just have a preference for just one platform. But I would advise keeping doing little and often!

Join the challenge!

The challenge officially starts on the 1st May, however, you can join at any time, just get stuck in!! You will find the challenge posts on our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter account every morning!

Resources & links for the May Marketing Challenge

On certain challenges set by the May Marketing Challenge, you will need various resources and links. You can find these here! They will appear as required for each post and remain on here!

DAY 1 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS

DAY 2 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS

DAY 3 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – scroll to the post on the Facebook page for full instructions

DAY 4 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – scroll to the post on the Facebook page for full instructions

DAY 5 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – add a story to your feed today!

DAY 6 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – ensure Twitter account is on brand and post 5 Tweets throughout the day

DAY 7 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – post is on Facebook feed today!

DAY 8 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – automate your strategy

DAY 9 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – post is on Facebook feed today!

DAY 10 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – post is on Facebook feed today!

DAY 11 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – supercharge SEO – write with intention. Go back over old posts and make sure you have hit all the points.

DAY 12 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – post is on Facebook feed today!

DAY 13 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – post is on Facebook feed today!

DAY 14 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – post is on Facebook feed today!

DAY 15 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – post is on Facebook feed today!

DAY 16 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – post is on Facebook feed today!

DAY 17 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – post is on Facebook feed today!

DAY 18 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – GDPR proof yourself!

DAY 19 CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS – Collaborations!

This is how to grow your Instagram to 1k followers in 30 days

Hello! So today we’re going to look at Instagram. Many dismiss Instagram as a low value source of traffic, but I’m here to tell you they are wrong my friend!!

How do I know this? Because I have a side hustle that makes me money consistently that we only really use Instagram to market!

Instagram is a gold mine – IF you have engaged followers that are interested in your content. For this reason doing follow trains and buying likes and followers is not going to work!! If they are following just because they want you as number in their follow list, it’s kind of pointless, they’re unlikely to engage with you, and even more unlikely to bring any revenue to your website. People then get discouraged thinking Instagram is rubbish and not for them, but it’s just because they went about getting their audience the wrong way.

That said I do have some theories about follower level influencing followers… read on!

1. Instagram content

You are going to focus on a few things. Firstly you need to be posting high quality content. This means eye catching, clear images. You need to consider if the images look cohesive together in your overall feed. Is the post going to make someone want to read the caption? People may even unfollow if you suddenly start posting content you didn’t previously! You don’t need to be in the post if you don’t want to be. You could repost other people’s content, you could post inspiration, you could just post your products.

2. Hashtags

You need to aim to trend in the top 9 posts of what your audience are searching, this is how you are going to be seen. It’s the equivalent of the first page of Google. Hashtags can be a tricky territory. You most definitely need to use them. Hashtags are like SEO on Instagram it’s how you are found. The other error is using really popular hashtags as there are literally millions of posts with the same hashtag and you get lost and end up with auto spam comments constantly and not proper engagement. You can use up to 30 hashtags – use them all!! Jennstrends.com offers some useful information on getting your post to the top of search results.

3. Engagement

This means engaging with current followers by replying to comments. It also means reaching out to accounts that would be perfect followers for your account. The way to find these accounts is to search a hashtag you would use for your business, then find a post, and either comment on their posts, or look to the followers of that post to see who is engaging. Go to their feed and engage with them. When engaging try to write 4 or more words as Instagram seems to think this makes for more genuine engagement. Chances are if it is genuine, it could well be more than 4 words!

4. Your captions

Think of this like a micro blog post. Think of giving value here, asking questions, it needs to be interesting content. Don’t share the same info over and over! Try to remain on the theme of your blog/business for example parenting, or travel. If your feed is about dog walking, people don’t want to all of a sudden hear what you had for tea… it’s not your audience!!

5. Tagging

This is really powerful way to increase visibility. You can location tag or tag people. The location tag doesn’t need to be where you are, it could be where the image in the post is. You can tag people who are relevant to the post, for example what you are wearing, the tourism board for where you are, the product you are using. Or you can tag people you work with or feature accounts. Make sure you tag location and accounts.

6. Ten minutes a day on Instagram

Spend 10 minutes per day interacting with other people who use hashtags that are relevant to your niche. Engage with them, drop comments, follow them.

7. Why follower level influences future followers

It’s better to have targeted followers rather a general audience. These are more likely to convert to customers. Instagram is very good for getting engaged followers. What I would say is that as your account grows, you will find your rate at picking up followers increases also increases. Think about it if you only have 200 followers, people may not see you as a big business or industry leader, if you have 10k plus, it’s going to look like you are a business that can be trusted. The good news is as you grow it will get easier to pick up followers.

8. Consider your profile

Use your keywords in your name and username, these are searchable. Your bio should be more about your customer than yourself. This should make your Instagram profile come up in search results.

Following these 8 tips should lead you to a vastly increased specific audience. Remember to just be consistent, try to engage for ten minutes per day.

I’d love to follow you on Instagram – send me your username here or drop your Instagram username or link in comments below!

Following these simple 13 tips will make your daily traffic go through the roof

Traffic is the very air we breath as business owners. It’s absolutely key to get the visitors through the online door. But how do we get the visitors to our online shop window? We have to use all the tools available to us to ensure we drive traffic to our websites. Then our words can do the talking. Check out this post on headlines (These 9 amazing headline tricks will make you have more traffic to your blog) to make sure the traffic then converts and clicks on your links.

Read on to find out how to grow your traffic starting from now.

Content

1. Quantity and Quality of content

Quantity and quality is a very fine and difficult balance. The ideal is plenty of top quality content. What often becomes the case is that there is pressure to produce quantity so quality slips, or vice versa. Producing content that people genuinely want to read and engage with will be picked up by various places. Search engines such as Google will notice and they will reward you by placing you higher in search results. The same will be true for social media. This will drive traffic. If you can have a post go “viral”, you’ve hit jackpot! I’ve written more about the balance of quality and quantity here.

2. Keywords

Keywords are search engine currency. However SEO has changed somewhat over the years. They are much cleverer and it’s really important to ensure the article has a good readability factor. Don’t just try and cram it full of keywords, you won’t be rewarded for it by the search engines and it won’t be enjoyable for visitors to read. This means less subscriptions and less repeat visits.

3. Tags & Image alt text

Tags are another quick and easy way to drive traffic to your posts. They don’t take long to put in and it’s a nice way to get relevant key words attached to your article. You can also put the keywords in the image alt text. This means if people search the images using those keywords, your image will pop up.

Linking to get traffic

4. Links & Trackbacks

Including links and trackbacks within your website and posts is a good way to drive traffic. It can be noticed by who ever you tag which can be reciprocated driving visitors your way.

Google also rewards this, they like the links between sites. Try to make sure you include at least one outbound link in every post.

5. Blogroll

Including a blogroll is such an easy way to put a list of links to other blogs. As above this linking could be reciprocated and it will be rewarded by Google.

6. Comment on other sites

Where it is appropriate you can visit other blogs and comment leaving your website address in your comment. I sometimes find this a bit difficult, it can feel a bit rude! it’s helpful if it’s not quite your genre, so for example if I was on a beauty blog, and someone asked a question about traffic (random I know) but I’d feel like answering that wouldn’t step on the toes of the original blogger. Some people might be more blatant, but I would be deleting any comments like that on my blog, so it could be a waste of time doing to others!! Where you can drop your link, Google will pick up on this as well, so you indirectly benefit.

Sharing and engagement

7. Social booking marking sites

StumbleUpon and Digg are great sites to share your best content with for an easy traffic boost. Consider these as well as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. My advice is generally to focus on one platform at a time, don’t spread yourself too thinly and ruin the entire approach.

8. Forums and online groups

Forums and online groups are an excellent source of traffic. You can share your link, your expertise, people that you engage with won’t just support you directly, but they may recommend you and drive even more traffic to you.

9. Respond to comments on your site

Engagement, engagement, engagement!! So important across all your social media and also on comments that are put on your posts. As always this is two fold. Your visitors will appreciate it, and then return to your website, and the search engines like this repeat behaviour and engagement, pushing you further up the search results.

Get found

10. Submit to Google and other search engines

It’s always worth having Google crawl your website and pick up your sitemap. For the analytics alone it’s helpful, but it will help with Google ranking you as well. As I’ve said 3,427 times Google ranking = traffic! Sign up for Google analytics here.

11. Yoast

Yoast is a WordPress plugin. It’s perfectly placed at the end of your posts so you can optimise SEO. Traffic!!

12. RSS feed

RSS feed will notify people interested in your content to your posts. It’s a good idea to include a way for people to sign up for the RSS feed to not miss any traffic this way.

13. Guest Blog

Guest blogging is an amazing way to expand your reach. The bigger the blog you can land a guest spot for the better, use their valuable traffic and divert it your way!

Use the 13 tips above to maximise the traffic to your website. It’s essential to use multiple methods to gain traffic as if any source fails (for example if Goggle changes it’s algorithm) you still have the other methods to rely on. I particularly recommend Pinterest for long term traffic strategies. There are a few tools in our free 25 resources for bloggers to earn money in their sleep guide also which includes resources to grow traffic. Hint the majority of the 25 resources are free!

What has worked for you to get traffic to your website? Comment below or contact me here.

These 9 amazing headline tricks will make you have more traffic to your blog

Here at The Female Entrepreneur Hub we have seen everything from a headline that is dull as dish water through to headlines clearly aimed at shoe horning in as many keywords as possible.

Dull as dishwater headline – “I might go out tonight”

Unless you’re the Queen, or Oprah, chances are no one cares. Sorry. Not sorry.

Keyword stuffed headline – “Beefy beef is tonight’s beef dinner in a dish named Beef Beef dinner”

Don’t ask, my mind only thought of beef as I was writing this….

Neither are any good!

The reason? No one is going to click on them.

SEO or clickbait headline?

The debate has raged whether a headline should entice a person to click or whether it should satisfy SEO and rank in Google. Why do people think you can’t have both?

Google only wants one thing – engagement, engagement, engagement. How can you get this engagement? By getting people to see your content (SEO) and getting them to click on it (clickbait). You see you need both for a truly effective headline strategy.

Follow these 9 tips to achieve a killer headline

1. Get the keyword in the headline – once is fine. Google at least can find your content then. You’ll notice when you use a search engine, the word you search is usually in the title of the results it brings up. Ideally you want the keyword at the beginning of the headline, but don’t compromise the readability to achieve this.

2. Bear in mind Google is smart. You don’t need to have your keywords next to each other, Google will work it out. So for example if my keywords were “coach” and “London”, it would be okay to have a headline that reads “An experienced coach in London” – the “in” won’t compromise results.

3. Be controversial but not inflammatory. For example, “This is why all personal trainers are crap!” Make sure you can back this statement up with facts!

4. Make something “outstanding”, “killer”, “incredible”! Much needed clickbait fodder.

5. Add big numbers when you can. For example, “How Tailwind increased my traffic by 300%”.

6. People love lists – 5 simple trick… 20 incredible ways to…

7. Use “this is why” or “will make you”. These have been proven headline gold. See this research below from Digg.com.

8. Bear in mind you have the option for two headlines. You have the title that you know and love, then you the title that appears at the top of your article in the <h1> tags. If you use WordPress, you can use Yoast to do this.

9. Use Coschedule for help. You enter your headline and it will help you formulate it and improve on it. It gives handy suggestions on words to improves and length etc. Best of all it’s totally free. That’s why I included it in my 25 resources you can’t live without as a blogger list. You can find other resources as useful as this on the list! I really like to enter my headlines and try to beat the score, then once I get a green score I’ll use that headline.

We have created this handy image for you to save or pin to refer to when you write your next headline!

By using these 9 tips to formulate your headlines you should see far more clicks and traffic to your social media and website. Get in touch and let me know if any of these strategies worked for you. You can email me directly at Hannah@www.shehustlesinc.com.

Click here to get your free 25 resources you can’t live without as a blogger!

How to get Facebook to share the right image and caption

Any business needs social media to share their message far and wide. Social media is the tool to market businesses and can be used in different ways, in particular, Facebook has many great features for businesses. However, what do you do when you become aware that the image and caption being shared to Facebook is not at all the one you want? It might be an old image or a random one from down the page. You keep resetting your featured image and it makes no difference!

Frustrated? Yelled at the laptop yet?

Yell no more!

Here’s how to update your Facebook image and snippet about your website to ensure the right business image is portrayed.

If your website is built in WordPress this is going to be a whole lot easier.

Read on for non-WordPress users – hope is not lost!

How to override Facebook’s auto setting to ensure it’s sharing what you want it to share

1. If using WordPress, install the Yoast plugin. Then go to SEO in the left column, click “social”, then click “Facebook” and make sure “Add OpenGraph meta data” is set to “enabled”. If social isn’t on the list you’ll need to enable Yoast’s SEO advanced setting.

You can set up a default image here that will be shown on Facebook, you may want to place a logo here. This can also be done in the step below.

2. Facebook will use the images on each page or post in a particular order. This can be very frustrating! Firstly Facebook won’t take any images below 200×200 pixels. It will then look for the image with the largest dimensions in pixels and set that as the default. For non-WordPress users, you will need to make sure the picture you want is the largest on the page. If you are a WordPress user, then you can use Yoast to override Facebook. If you go to the end of your post or page where Yoast gives you all the information at the bottom, you will then have a few options. You can leave the snippet for Facebook to pick up alongside the rest of the web, or you can give Facebook a specific snippet to use. To do this click the sharing icon.

You can edit the picture and snippet here to override everything else. Note the image ideally needs to be 1200 pixels wide and 630 pixels high.

Test this has worked (it probably won’t have…)

Test sharing the page or post to Facebook, has it worked? Probably not. This is because Facebook only crawls your website every so often for the data and it needs to re-crawl or as they call it “scrape” your website. The good news is you can get it to manually “scrape” your page by clicking here.

This is Facebook’s Sharing Debugger tool. Who knew. All you need to do is put the URL of your post or page in the box and click “debug”. If the tool tells you the page hasn’t been shared before then click “fetch”.

Check the data it pulls up under “when and how we last scraped the URL”, if this isn’t within the last few seconds then click scrape again.

It took me a few goes of publishing my page then scraping again, but after a few minutes, it pulled the data and images I wanted it to.

If you test the sharing again, it should now be working!

Happy marketing!

For the most up to date marketing tips and ways to maximise your potential as well as your business’s potential, sign up for free membership to The Female Marketing Hub here.

If you have any question or need help with your business – contact us here!

How to increase traffic with powerful content marketing

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a method to reach out to your customers by using material such as videos, social media posts, blog posts, articles and content on the pages of a website. Content marketing typically uses certain methods so that it appeals to both the target market and to the search engines. This includes the use of keywords, interesting headlines and eye-catching graphics for example. You can see content marketing campaigns across social media channels and websites.

Why does it help your business?

Content marketing reaches out to your target market and pulls them in. This enables you to sell what you need. This doesn’t have to be a physical product, it could be a service, or simply that you want traffic to your website. Content marketing effectively drives traffic in the direction you want it to.

What strategies can you take?

There are arguments for both quality and quantity. It is usually better to find what’s best for your business. A high quantity of content will drive a lot of traffic to your website, but the issue is usually that the traffic is very general and therefore conversion is very difficult. For example, you have a hairdressing blog targeted at twenty to thirty-year-old females and you receive 500 visitors both male and female, all ages, all interests. How many of these will stay on the website to read the content? If they leave immediately this also increases your bounce back rate and Google doesn’t like this. It could, therefore, harm your Google ranking. You can check your analytics account to view statistics such as bounce back rate.

If you look at posting quality content marketing posts and you specifically target twenty to thirty-year-old females, who have an interest in hair and beauty, even if the content only receives 100 visits, the conversion rate will be much better and drive genuine engagement. Quality content is genuine, informative and interesting to the target reader.

With the recent algorithm changes across social media, it is clear that genuine content, with plenty of authentic engagement, is the way to ensure posts stand the test of the changes.

There has to be a happy medium between quality and quantity. The content needs to be interesting enough to attract an audience, but infrequent posting will not attract the traffic to grow a business.

How can you produce quality content?

You need to be producing original and interesting content with correct keyword placement. The use of graphics will help. There are free programs that can help with this.

If this is something you neither have the time or ability to do there are people who can help. You may wish to use a content writer. This is actually my job other than running this blog. Content writers will provide content for blogs, articles, and websites with the aim of driving an audience to you by using words. You can chat with me about this by visiting my website – Lancashire Freelancer.

You could use a graphic designer to help with preparing images and logos. This is their speciality. They know how to use pictures and graphics in a certain way to push the audience to you.

You could also use the services of a search marketing specialist such as The Search Marketing Shop. This type of business can assist you by looking at your overall approach and pulling the whole content marketing strategy together.

Longevity of content marketing

It is accepted that it can take time for content marketing to work it’s magic. Time and consistency. It is worth considering your content marketing strategy now as a solid base for a business that will last years. For example, it can take time to rank in Google. Google takes statistics over months to decide if you are worthy of a spot on the front page of the search results. It’s not something you can necessarily implement today and see results immediately. It’s therefore worth taking the time and investing now.

That said social media is very instant and you may get rapid results, this is great, but don’t neglect your blog and website in favour of social media as the results come fast, but go fast. With the right content on your blog and website it’s slow and steady meaning it might take longer to get results, but when they come, they keep coming and keep gradually increasing. This can reduce pressure for finding the next big angle on a weekly basis on social media.

Again consider both social media content and blog and website content for a complete approach.

What positive results have content marketing strategies brought you? Please comment below or contact me to tell me what worked, what didn’t work and if you’d like any advice!