He, she said. Everyone has an opinion about how you should run your business. What marketing works-newspaper or Google? What words should you take out of your email newsletter? Should you get a Facebook Fan page? And so on.
To clear the clutter, here are my Top 1o strategies for your small business kingdom.
1. 2x Social Media Tip
I post dozens of times a day on Twitter. I experiment using these sites here, here, and here to find great content that is already popular on the social networks. By posting content that is pre-tested, I know that others will share my content with their friends. The key here? I mix in my content that other popular content. This does a few things right off the bat:
- It “wraps” my content with all of that popular content that people already like. This increase my popularity, relevancy and authority in my market.
- It allows me to promote my site while also promoting other people’s sites.
2. Newsletters Work
Like Brian Clark over at Copyblogger says “Email in-boxes are sacred.” He’s right. The only thing better than having a customer or client sign up for your email newsletter is having them invite you out to dinner or to their home. It’s as close as you can get without joining their family. People guard their email like a fierce polar bear-the only thing they guard more is their phone number. I use Aweber.com to have folks sign up to my newsletter (see the box on the right of this page to sign up), and it works great. And, at $19 a month, you can’t beat it.
Test headlines using Aweber’s Split Test feature. See which version out-performs. Then, test that headline. You can set all of this up in Aweber-and the results are incredible. See how many people opened the email and clicked the link. You can even create a list of people who did not open or click the email link and send to them the next day with a new headline-instant split test!
3. Educate & Share
I have a Logitech headset that I got for about $30 at Best Buy. I use a free service like Screenr.com to make screen-recordings of websites or any other tutorials I want to show my audience or readers. Then I download that video and upload it to YouTube. You can do the same thing for your business. Screenr can post to Twitter automatically if you want, so people can see your video right after it is finished encoding. Nice!
4. Tweet A Quote
Twitter loves quotes. Popular quotes from movies, books and songs. Inspirational or spiritual quotes. Jokes and funny sayings. People go nuts on Twitter for these quotes-don’t ask me why, they just love ‘em. A few places to get great quotes are here:
5. Ask A Question on Facebook
Some of us are too prideful to ask for help or advice. Others see the value in it and ask anyway. What about you? From asking the silly (What’s the best hamburger you ever had, and where did you have it?) to the serious (Where can I find a great tool for presenting online?), asking questions to your audience is key. They want to know you, they long to feel involved. So, ask away. (That hamburger question was mine, btw-folks loved it!)
What’s # 6?
So, what tips did I leave out? I will add 5 more tomorrow. But, until then, leave me your thoughts and strategies below or tell a friend on Twitter.
flickr photo by dotbenjamin
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