Five Steps to Upgrade Your Online Presence
Do you have a bit of time on your hands while at home staying safe from the pandemic? Are you looking for your online presence to gain you an edge over your competition? Here is a list of five things you can do to sharpen your online brand and draw more traffic and leads your way.
- Sharpen your social media platform presence.
Make sure your logo, header files, and staff images are current and attractive. Update your hours and operation policies as COVID updates and keep your customer informed during the Pandemic of your business happenings and updates. Most importantly, freshen the images with new photography – and look at your social media from the perspective of all of your customer types. Make sure you have content that entices all of your audiences. - Facebook Advertising
Consider Facebook advertising - Facebook, and most other social platforms are now operating on a cost model - in other words, not much is free. Share on XThere are organic ways to engage and gain traction on the social platforms, but Facebook targeting is too powerful to pass up. For a reasonable budget, you can direct new eye balls to your brand. Check it out. - Review Your Web Site
A blog is a mandatory part of a functional web site – it is necessary to keep up to date to gain search engine rankings. Update the photography with images from business and personal happenings. People want to get to know YOU, and not just look at your logo and brand images. Can they trust you? Do they have shared interests? In summary, make sure your site projects what you do and a bit about who you are! - Launch an Email Newsletter
If you have not taken advantage of email communication, the pandemic is a great reason to start. Provide value add content like how-tos, useful articles and industry trends. Brand the newsletter with your logo and brand messages. Make sure your list is up to date – this is a good time to clean it up. You can set up an opt-in email asking people again to re-subscribe to make sure you are sending email to people who really want to hear from you. This keeps you legal and compliant and also helps your open and click rates to stay high. Compose a “2020 in Review” email to get started and tell people the positive happenings and challenges of the year. What strategies worked to overcome obstacles? What didn’t? If you need tool recommendations, ask us, or check out Constant Contact, MailChimp, and Emma. - Google Business Manager
Make sure your Google Business Manager account is up to date and fully populated. Share on X This is so crucial in letting Google know you are in the market and open for business. Update the hours to reflect your COVID operations and create a COVID post to let people know any changes to your business because of COVID. Finally, if you haven’t verified your business yet, do so right away so Google can begin sending your site traffic.
Though the pandemic has brought tremendous struggle to many businesses, it can also be used as a time to sharpen your brand and advertise – in preparation for the return of business once the pandemic is over. Don’t waste the time stewing, put it to good use! When you are busy again you won’t have time, so take advantage of this chance to make things the best they can be online for your business.
What We Do
While many things change in marketing, one thing never changes: Consumers purchase from people, companies, or brands towards whom they feel an affinity.
For small businesses, this should be the best news you’ve heard this year! Your story, your challenges, your passions should be the driving force behind your brand.
You may lie awake at night pondering what you are ‘not,’ but the great news is when you articulate who you ‘are,’ you can make inroads with your customers that will become unshakable.
And this is where Beyond Brand Collective comes in…
We are marketing veterans who have learned the power of harnessing stories. We’ve tried all the big-budget media blitzes and have come back to the simple premise: consumers chose stories over empty-promises. And people hear those stories through social media in a very cost-efficient way.
Stories release oxytocin…the happy hormone. Stories make business relatable. And most importantly, stories about community connection and service make you trustworthy.
All without ever having to say: ‘trust me.’
Please take a look at our website and drop us an email. We’d love to hear your story and find out how we can help you expand your client base just by telling your story.
Sending Polite, Urgent Emails
The heat around CAN SPAM laws has lessened over the years, but it is still important to remember a few things when emailing your contacts. Spam is still not legal, and it is good to be polite when contacting your email list.
Here are 5 ways to urgently and politely send emails to your contacts.
1) Include your physical address. It’s the law and it creates credibility for your brand.
2) Include an easy to see, 1 click way for people to unsubscribe. See this as an opportunity – it is good to clean up your list of people that really don’t want to hear from you anymore. That means your list conversion and other rates like clicks and opens will improve. You must remove the unsubcribes within 14 days.
3) Include an explanation of how this person receiving the email got on your list. Here is some sample text if you need it:
“You are receiving this email because you signed up to hear from John Smith Consulting, ABC Accounting, or John Smith personally”.
4) Limit the number of links in the email to 2-3 max and the images to 1-2. Optimize your images for the web – 400 pixels x 600 pixels works well. Microsoft Paint or similar programs are free and easy to use.
5) Is your email being rejected by major servers like Google, Hotmail or others? PM us, we can help.
To read the law, visit the CAN SPAM web site.
Questions? Leave them in the comments.
New Year! New Brand!
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Welcome to my new web site! I hope you will take some time to read through my new services page and read the new approach to my work! I am excited to serve my clients and work along side them to serve our communities this year!
Happy 2020!
Jennifer Norene & Team
Managing Organizational White Space
The white space of a business is everything that goes on between your people and your projects that is not critical path (stages determining the minimum time of an operation) but critical to your success as a business. This article provides examples and tactics relevant to managing white space.
What is the white space?
A mentor of mine and Modelnetics Management leader taught me that the white space of an organizational chart is all of the activity or lack thereof that goes on between the team members and their assigned roles. It is the missing pieces that are overlooked on a successful project or event, the clashing styles between two leaders or the need for increased knowledge of key team players.
How to you discover white space issues?
Conversation, meetings set to regular rhythms are the most helpful in uncovering white space opportunities.
Most people find it fairly straight forward to perform the duties on their job description, it’s the in between required actions that move the organization forward progressively they may need help with. Providing outside industry training opportunities, coaching sessions can help increase the abilities of key employees and increase project success.
White space in an organization or company occurs in certain areas of business that consist of unclear strategies, lack of authority, vague rules and imprecise budgetary factors. In contrast, black space makes up those areas of an organization that are well-managed and targeted with formal planning and budgeting. Source: Chron
Creating documents that reflect key company processes and clearly assign roles and responsibilities can decrease unmanaged white space. Pay special attention to responsibilities where employees duties cross over others. Also provide increased training and collaborative opportunities to increase success of complicated or often overlooked but crucial tasks.
For more information on identifying and managing organizational white space, read these articles.
https://hbr.org/2001/02/managing-in-the-whitespace
https://innovationmanagement.se/2013/06/13/white-space-mapping-seeing-the-future-beyond-the-core/