Hey Eva, how do I maintain a public presence right now? I’m used to meetups and conferences and events and just posting on social media just feels like shouting into the ether.

I’m glad you asked.

We will probably never go back to “business as usual” after Covid-19 (I know. It’s a weird thought). Whether there’s a resurgence of the virus or simply higher awareness/wariness of large gatherings in public places, you’re wise to think strategically about how to build a public presence without… going out in public. 

Besides, there might be a day when you’re on bedrest during a pregnancy. Or taking care of someone whom you can’t leave alone. Maybe you live in a geographically isolated place. Whatever the situation, you want more tools in your marketing and networking toolbox than going to events. 

The key is to turn your public presence or events strategy into a convertible marketing strategy.

What do you Want to Happen?

A convertible marketing strategy requires getting super clear on what you want.

What do you want to happen because of going to events? Do you want to…

• meet new people?
• grow your email list?
• get invited to speaking engagements?
• build your LinkedIn connections?
• find new clients?

Once you know what outcomes you desire from going to events in public, you can chart a new course to those outcomes that doesn’t require going out.

A convertible marketing strategy — i.e. your plan for making what you do known, which until now may have been attend in-person events — is your newly charted course to achieving outcomes (growing your network) that is independent of any one medium (in-person networking events).

Say you’re a keynote speaker, for example. How can you take your desired outcomes for keynote speaking and convert them to other mediums like podcasting, writing, videos, or webinars?

Keynote Speaking to Video to Live Video

When I first started working with leadership speaker Selena Rezvani, she wanted to start publishing short videos on social media in which she’d share tips to help you improve your career leadership.

Selena is eminently qualified: she’s a TEDx-er, keynote speaker, and author. The mediums she was used to were writing and public speaking, but when it came to video… she got stuck.

“There’s something about having an intimate one-to-one conversation with a camera that is very intimidating,” she said. “I thought it was okay to approach video, and a keynote, and LinkedInLearning the same way. But when I sent my video to a friend, she said, ‘you’re grandstanding too much. You’re talking like you would in a keynote. You need to be warmer, like a friend in a coffee shop talking to her friend.'”

We worked together on translating what she offers in her public speaking appearances and books into a new medium: video. And it worked! Her Leadership Shorties videos earned 255% more engagement than all the rest of her content. They also led her to start Women + Work Culture, a weekly LinkedIn Live interview series, which is boosting her engagement further and growing her network.

Selena’s public presence is a critical part of her work. But when Covid-19 hit, she was ready to pivot and maintain her public presence by taking advantage of a different medium: social media, specifically video and Live video.

How to Convert your Public Presence into Marketing Strategy

How do you pull a Selena and convert your public presence into a convertible marketing strategy? There are three steps.

But first! A word to the wise: starting to market exclusively on social media can feel like donning an extremely itchy sweater and whispering your content to the dust bunnies under your bed. Be patient and give yourself a lot of grace. It will feel awkward at first. You might harbor some resentment. That’s okay, that’s normal. Here’s how you begin:

1. Figure out what you want

When public presence is a core part of your marketing strategy, you probably have a few intentions for the events you attend. Translate those goals to social media so you are effective and targeted in what you do and say online.

For example, if one in-person networking goal is to collect business cards of prospective clients, you can easily translate that to using LinkedIn to research ideal clients, and reaching out to them through a connection request.

2. The bolder you are, the better

The most targeted, effective and authentic approach to marketing is to have a clear, bold message — just like when you’re speaking in public. The more bold and uncompromising you are in your message, the more you will attract right-fit clients and opportunities like a magnet.

Think about the leaders you follow and the messages you remember. There’s nothing wishy-washy about them, right? Now is the time to challenge yourself to share what you really think, using the most direct language possible.

3. Do the next best thing

A lot of people are in your position: reeling because their speaking engagements and conferences and networking events vanished. Event organizers are in this position, too. If you can’t speak to a crowd of thousands, what’s the next best thing you CAN do? Can you…

• Reach out to event organizers and offer a webinar of your speaking topic, or a free resource?
• Pitch yourself as a podcast guest?
• Host a virtual networking event for a group that normally meets in person?
• Invite people you want to connect with to short acquaintance calls or small group conversations?
• Start an interview series and invite people you admire to be featured?

You CAN maintain a public presence using the powerful tools available on social media. Get clear on what you want, and dedicate yourself to harnessing social media just like you harness in-person events to reach your marketing goals.

And I’d like to help you craft a convertible marketing strategy that feels targeted, effective and authentic to you. So if you want to zoom out of this time period with a powerful strategy that will increase your impact and get you hired, I’d love to connect with you for a Discovery Session.

We’ll map out areas for opportunity to make your marketing crisis-proof, boost your engagement, build your network, and attract new opportunities like a magnet.

It’s free, and it’s fun. Click here now to complete a brief form, and we’ll be in touch to set up your Discovery Session!

Image by Christina of #WocInTechChat via Unsplash.

The post How to Maintain a Public Presence when you can’t Attend Events appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

Twitter is one of my faaaavorite social media networks. I love that it makes people accessible (like that time Stacy London tweeted me back), encourages brevity thanks to the 280-character limit, and is super conversational.

It’s a powerful platform for thought- and business-leaders, because:

• 62% of Twitter users don’t hesitate to spend more money for a product/service if it’s a brand they like – as a leader, Twitter is a great place to generate leads over shared values and the impact you’re here to make
• 54% of daily Twitter users question how important a breaking news story is if they can’t find it on Twitter – so if you’re not on Twitter, it’s kind of like you don’t exist…???

You can imagine my delight when I interviewed Melanie Padgett Powers, a writer, editor and Twitter enthusiast! She shares expert tips for how to use Twitter to build your community, extend your influence and generate leads by being fun and personable on the network.

Watch/listen to the interview:

[bctt tweet=”“You can be a friendly nice person in business and still be strategic and tough and successful at business” – @MelEdits #HealthWriter #WriteAdvice #FreelanceWriter #TwitterMarketing #MarketingMinutes” username=”evajannotta”]

How to Use Twitter Lists Strategically

I. Love. Lists. No other social media network offers the same kind of tool for prospecting, building community, nurturing relationships, connecting with event attendees and otherwise your connections and followers.

Private Twitter Lists

Private lists are a perfect choice to (gently) strategically stalk potential clients, partners, or influencers. Do you admire members of a certain mastermind group? Create a private list so you can engage with them all from one place.

Do you have list of DREAM clients, investors, or mentors? Create private lists for each so you can connect with them every time you use Twitter.

Public Twitter Lists

Create a Community in your Niche

Public lists are powerful tools to build community. Start a public lists for other CEOs, entrepreneurs, or business leaders in your niche to:

1. Connect over industry topics
2. Build relationships with peers and colleagues
3. Create a community where people can find you: folks who aspire to your position or can benefit from your expertise will be able to follow your public list to get involved in your niche

Connect Before and After an Event

Going to a conference or business retreat? Create a public list so attendees can connect with and follow each other.

Example: my client Lisa Gates is speaking at Career Mastery 2019. We created a Twitter List of all speakers not only so we can connect with them, but so attendees can easily follow all speakers.

Grow Your Referral Network and Influence

The vendors and freelancers you work with are great candidates for a public Twitter list. This allows your colleagues to work with people you can personally vouch for. It also gives you one place to reach out to all your freelance writers or Facebook Ads consultants if you need extra support or to refer a client.

Nearly 40% of Twitter users say they’ve made a purchase as a direct result of a Tweet from an influencer. That Twitter influencer might be you!

How to Strategically Hashtag on Twitter

Hashtags on Twitter are important for a few reasons:

• They help you stand out: hashtags appear in hyperlink color, making them stand out from the rest of your text. When you use strategic hashtags you will stand out for in your niche and be memorable.
• They help people find you: hashtags are searchable, so using hashtags that relate to your niche and brand are a great way to connect with new people who are looking for you and what you do.
• They show your brand: hashtags can be sarcastic, self-deprecating, humorous, cultural references, and more. They are a great way to show your personality.
• Do the research on hashtags that fit your brand here.

It’s tempting to use broad hashtags like #SocialMedia or #Marketing in your tweets, since they’re easy to think of and clearly position you in your industry. However….

Lower-volume hashtags are MUCH more effective. 

They are updated less frequently and used by a more specific, niche crowd. You are far more likely to be found, remembered, and approached for a hashtag like #HealthWriter than #HealthCare.

In fact, Melanie uses #HealthWriter to clearly state the kind of writing she does, and it works! People with whom she had no personal connection have seen that she’s a health writer, gone to her website and contacted her – all from Twitter!

[bctt tweet=”“When it comes to hashtag strategy, bigger isn’t better. Broad, popular hashtags are too high volume and you’ll get lost. Creating your own hashtag, or using niched and micro hashtags make it more likely you’ll be found.” – @MelEdits #HashtagStrategy #TwitterMarketing #MarketingMinutes” username=”evajannotta”]

Tip: Make sure to capitalize the first letter of each word in your hashtag so screen readers can read it #AccessibilityForTheWin

Tweet Chats for Networking and Lead Generation

If you want to share your expertise and thought-leadership, as well as connect with prospects and colleagues, join a Tweet Chat. Or better yet… start one!

Tweet chats around relevant topics in your industry are a powerful way to position yourself, generate leads, grow your following, and connect with colleagues. Plus: the questions asked in the chat are great inspiration for content ideas.

3 Kinds of Twitter Content to Drive Engagement

It’s good advice for any social media network or marketing channel: be fun and show your personality!

1. Share “inside baseball” content: tweet pictures of where you work, of your team, of your office pets or plants or art.
   1. Get clever and show the personal AND the professional: Melanie tweets pictures of her cats while she’s proofreading magazines, which show her personality (cat woman) and the kind of work she does.
   2. Melanie’s selfies with her cats get more attention than anything else she tweets!
2. GIFs: these are a great way to show humor and grab people’s eye. They’re also a great way to make cultural references and inject some “good feel” into your feed.
3. Images: images are very important on Twitter. Original photography, selfies, graphics, or quote tiles are ideal (the stock images that come with many articles aren’t as memorable).
   1. What kind of graphics perform best and drive the most engagement? According to a Venngage survey, 40% of marketers said original graphics perform best, such as infographics and quote titles.
   2. Melanie uses Canva to create images of different writer’s quotes, and tags them with the hashtag #WriteAdvice. It positions her as a writer, knowledgable and involved in her niche, and interested in words.

Wondering how you could leverage the power of Twitter to build your influence, prestige, and business? Set up a free call and we’ll make a plan: https://calendly.com/evajannotta

[bctt tweet=”“Twitter is a long-term, lifestyle marketing of building relationships, connecting with people, being visible and showing what you do.” – @MelEdits #HealthWriter #RelationshipMarketing #TwitterMarketing #MarketingMinutes” username=”evajannotta”]

For this episode of #MarketingMinutes, $10 was donated to Manna Food Center at Melanie’s request. Thanks, Melanie!

The post How to Expand Your Influence and Generate Leads on Twitter appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

In early 2018, the Facebook algorithm “apocalypse” swept the online marketing world. For business pages, organic reach declined, news feed rankings changed, and content success metrics needed a complete overhaul. A lot of people were cranky.

But not Alaura Weaver. Because,

“[T]his has the potential to spark a long-awaited shift in the world of content marketing. Instead of focusing on what makes content popular and attention-grabbing, we need to focus on what makes content personal and conversation-worthy. When content impacts people on a personal level and gets them talking, well, that’s how change happens.” – The Facebook Feed-pocalypse is a HUGE opportunity for story-driven content marketing strategy— here’s why

Sounds like an improvement, doesn’t it?

I interviewed Alaura on #MarketingMinutes, a Facebook Live interview series featuring the best and worst experiences of women in marketing. She shares,

1. Why “likes” and “clicks” are on social media are MEANINGLESS, and what matters instead,
2. How the sales “funnel” is actually an hourglass, and
3. Why she went political on social media (despite conventional wisdom against doing so)

Watch the interview with Alaura:

Sign up for the #MarketingMinutes email list to get short (I swear!) weekly updates about upcoming interviews:

Alaura Weaver: The best marketing tip that I can give, been echoed by billionaires like Jeff Bezos, is to actually just talk to your customers.

And don’t just give them surveys! Surveys are great, but they aren’t unique, qualitative data. As marketer we’re a cross between anthropologists and sociologists as well as business people. If we’re not having quality conversations with people when they’re expressing themselves as individuals, then it’s hard for us to bring empathy to our work.

From what I’ve seen, the companies that have the most genuine interactions with their customers are the ones that have the longest relationships. And because they’re listening to their customers, they’re able to innovate faster because they’re changing their focus from “we need to put out products” to “we need to serve our customers and create solutions that transform along with their lives.”

Eva Jannotta: That’s a reminder that the “old” way of doing marketing where you create a need or make people feel a lack in order to urge them to buy, is different than what you’re describing. What you’re talking about is empathy and compassion and deep listening and being a friend to your customer or your client.

Alaura Weaver: There are meaningful relationships and there are transactional relationships, right? The transactional relationships are the ones that were encouraged through Mad Men and direct response advertising. It’s high pressure sales. And you know what? There is a place for that. You say, okay I’ve laid out all of this information for you and now I’m going to trust you to make the best decision that you can, and then you put on the high pressure sales, right?

But you have to establish a trusting relationship with that person. And don’t make people feel bad about themselves for not using your product. It’s just because they are not the good fit for your product or your product isn’t a good fit for their lives.

It’s about creating these meaningful relationships where you are genuinely there to deliver value to the customer. And the transaction happens when they’re like, okay, great, this value that you’ve been delivering to me is fantastic. Where else can we go in this relationship?

Eva Jannotta: I can think of a lot of ways beyond surveys connect with your customer meaningfully and build a long term connection with them. Is there a tactic you’ve experienced that you find really effective for building that relationship?

Alaura Weaver: Do an email outreach and say, I value your time and I want to give you some kind of incentive for having a conversation with me about your experiences. We all get these receipts that say, “fill out a survey and get a coupon.” Well, maybe make it a more meaningful gift, and make it about having a conversation instead of checking off stuff.

The other thing is just go to the communities where people feel like they belong, and where they feel free to talk about what they care about. (Click to Tweet!)

For example, say I’m a business coach and I want to start teaching freelancers. I would go to a freelance copywriting group on Facebook and see, what are the questions that pop up over and over and over again? Say one of the questions that pops up is, how much should I charge for this? So you as a business coach know that this is something people care about and you can either provide a course or offer a webinar or part of your service will be getting them to a point where they are comfortable quoting their clients. That’s an amazing service that you can offer them and it’s inspired by listening to these people.

Eva Jannotta: That approach will inform all of your content writing and will give you all the fodder you need for inspiration and the detail you need to write your blog posts, emails and social media posts, right?

Alaura Weaver: You can also grab emotional language directly from these conversations! One of my colleagues was complaining about editing blogs posts from other people. She said, “I just don’t want to be stuck editing until the cows come home.” I was like, that’s copy gold right there! That’s a headline or a landing page!

It doesn’t mean that I’m not creative, but I’m able to spot stories and my motto is, your story is in your struggle. So go where the struggle is. Go where people are talking about their struggles and you will find that place of empathy. You will find that language that you’re seeking to phrase something without cliches. You’ll find ideas for topics, you’ll find ways of articulating benefits for your products. Where you go for the struggle is where you’re going to discover all of those things.

Eva Jannotta: In Finding Your Ideal Customer: A step-by-Step Guide To Building A Pre-Launch Startup Buyer Persona, you have a long list of specific places you can go to find this kind of language, to identify this struggle, to see the questions being asked. And at the end you offer a valuable content upgrade for a Buyer Persona worksheet.

Alaura Weaver: Yes, so that you know the questions are you should be asking when you’re creating this customer persona. Once you have your questions answered, I use Xtensio’s drag-and-drop User Persona Template to create a profile for your customer avatar.

Eva Jannotta: I’ve used the research-based approach we’re talking about and I’ve been intimidated by how time-intensive it is! When you do this work, do you have a way of keeping yourself from diving too deeply into a rabbit hole?

Alaura Weaver: There’s a canvas that I like to use called Jobs To Be Done. It helps you focus on the use-case scenarios that influence a buying decision. So you’re not figuring out your customer’s pet names, you’re looking at:

• What is happening in your life that leads you to purchasing or hiring?
• What leads you to that first interaction with a business?
• What leads you to the decision to have a transaction?

It’s an interview technique and it helps you center instead of going into analysis paralysis. But you have to realize that your customer persona is a living document. It’s going to change over time. So as you learn more and interact more with your customers, add to it and take away what you think it isn’t relevant anymore.

Eva Jannotta: What would you say to a business owner who is going through a pivot in her ideal customer, or maybe she feels torn between several different customer personas. How do you help your clients narrow their focus, put down boundaries, or work through a transition process when the world feels new and full of possible buyer personas?

Alaura Weaver: This is probably the biggest struggle my clients deal with because they want everybody to buy from them. I’m trying to get them to focus on getting your to your first 10, 20, 50 customers. Where are they going to come from? Are they going to come from everywhere? Probably not, right?

You want to focus on the group that will benefit the most from your product or service and is willing to pay for it. It’s about testing and treating your business like an experiment and not treating failure as a, Oh, I have a failed business. You don’t have a failed business just because you go in the wrong direction. That just means that you have an opportunity to learn and to change, to iterate and to optimize.

That’s a fundamental belief that I have. When I’m talking to my kids, I’m like, that’s a mistake. It’s there for you to learn from. It’s not for you to beat yourself up over. It’s not for you to stop doing everything just because you failed at this one thing.

With that said, if you’re getting to a point in your business where you have reached critical mass with those 10, 20, 50 customers and you realize, oh, there’s more opportunity over there… do the same thing you did before! Learn as much as you can about the customers that you’re going after. You can either adopt them into your personas and you have multiple personas now or you can pivot off altogether.

I had one client that was shooting for the stars. They hadn’t even launched their product yet! I’m said, I’m telling you this group over here that you haven’t even thought about yet will take you to the next level because they will not stop talking about your product. But my client didn’t see the value in pursuing that group because they were thinking enterprise-level clients.

But it’s about competition too, right? When your competitors are going over to enterprise level stuff and you’re just starting, why would you try to go after these big fish when you’ve got all of this little part of the pond to dominate? Figure out where the most opportunity people are that you can serve from where you are right now – not where the biggest accounts are.

Eva Jannotta: Earlier you spoke about failure and mistakes and how those aren’t the end of the world. However, there are some marketing strategies or tactics that fail multiple times or you hate them or something about them as not a good fit. It’s equally important to talk about those as it is to talk about the marketing that works well. Can you share a tactic or an experience that was terrible for marketing?

Alaura Weaver: I come from a business-to-business background as a sales rep and part of my job was to go out and sell advertising to small businesses. It was all about hitting the quota and not taking the person’s genuine needs and limitations into consideration. So I found myself trying to get this guy to buy a print ad in the phone book at the same time as smart phones were coming out, there was an economic crisis, and this was the Detroit area.

A phone book ad was not going to get this guy out of the mess that he was in. But the shareholders of the company that I worked for demanded that we grow and instead of adapting to the marketplace they just kept going in the same old direction. When you’re maintaining the status quo, I think that’s a terrible marketing tactic.

Eva Jannotta: It’s so comfortable to maintain the status quo and to do what you know, and it’s scary and risky to try something new and unproven. But you have to do that anyway if you want to move forward.

Alaura Weaver: I think that the marketing reaction to Facebook’s algorithm change was because digital marketers had settled into the status quo. Even though the algorithms change all the time, it was still the status quo of, “Reach, Likes and Shares are the key metrics that we’re seeking.”

But those aren’t true metrics! Those are not indicators of how powerful and how much value you’re delivering with your content. It’s not measuring how you are connecting with people because first of all, you’ve got the bots, you got to get the trolls and then you have the people who are just pre-scheduling their stuff, right? They’re just looking for branded tags and sending it out. If you’re automating your marketing within an already automated platform, you’re going to get automated responses, right? (Click to Tweet!)

Eva Jannotta: Folks have been seduced by the idea that social media marketing should be free (because it was for a time) and it should be able to run itself and we shouldn’t have to try all that hard at it. We got used to the way it worked in the early days of Facebook. But of course everything is changing and they’re going to continue changing. That’s the only thing we can rely on.

My impression is that we all need to market less and instead of rolling out articles or memes or whatever, to take the time to empathize and have conversations and be thoughtful and genuinely helpful and maybe do it less. It takes longer to produce quality content, but that’s how you’re going to serve to people and be memorable.

Alaura Weaver: Look, the tendency is to mass produce things so you can reach the masses, right? But when you do that, you’re diluting your ability to serve the people who most need what you offer. Take a look at retail: the mass produced items tend to be the lowest quality items. Look at food: the mass produced food tends to be the least nutritional food, right? (Click to Tweet!)

So when you mass produce something, you’re removing the quality from it. And Lord knows I’m a big fan of tech. I’ve been a computer nerd forever, so I understand the power of automation. I think it’s fantastic that there’s artificial intelligence (although we have to be very careful about how we direct it and what kind of world we’re teaching them about). But when it comes to mass production, if you’re treating your job as just output and not doing any input and not considering who you’re impacting and how you’re impacting the world, then when you’re probably doing a disservice.

Eva Jannotta: The online marketing world is saturated, but it makes me really happy when I see a good ad: a thoughtful, clever, humorous piece of marketing material or campaign. In that vein, what is a great advertisement you’ve been on the receiving end of as a consumer? Some companies are getting this right!

Alaura Weaver: It’s hard for companies to win me over since I’m wise to their ways! But I’ve been really impressed on the tech side with Drift, which is a conversational platform people use for chats on their website, because man, they ooze transparency. They are letting everybody into their world.

As far as a consumer brand, I’ve been impressed with Blue Apron. They disrupted the whole shopping and cooking experience by making things very compact. They’re serving the needs of people who are aware of food waste and of where food is sourced. They knew that these people are probably going to be a little more educated and be an NPR-type of listener. So they went to the podcast world like crazy and became big sponsors of This American Life and Serial. They recognized the fact that people who love storytelling also find meaning in family meals. It’s a great example of positioning.

And you can tell they put thought into their packaging and they anticipated problems. Their app is easy to use and their customer experience is seamless. I got a subscription for blue apron for my 72 year-old mother. She tech savvy enough that she spends all her life on Facebook, but she’s not tech savvy enough to like use an app so she uses the customer service phone number. She tells me every time, “oh, they’re so nice. They take such good care of me.”

That’s what I’m thinking about with my own marketing: how do you create this entirely seamless customer experience where there’s no dropping the ball on customer service? On the other hand, I just got on the phone with my cable company. The guy puts me on hold for a half hour and it was like this game. It’s this horrible manipulative game and my blood pressure’s rising just talking about it!

The cable company has the opportunity to create a seamless customer experience like Blue Apron, but they don’t have a reason to because they’re monopolizing the industry. That’s what it comes down to with marketing is if you really do care about the impact you’re making on people, then

1. Ask them questions,
2. Find out what’s important to them,
3. Create the experience that they need to feel like they can trust you and that you are doing what’s in their best interest.

Eva Jannotta: Customers service is a huge part of marketing. And it reminds me of something you’ve mentioned before: the sales funnel is actually an hourglass. You hold the prospect’s hand through this experience of going further and further into your funnel. But once they drop through the funnel they have this other half of the hourglass where you want to make working with you as pleasant and easy as possible. So they feel like they’re being cared for, that their needs are being met, that they’re valued.

Alaura Weaver: It’s a self perpetuating sales cycle that way. I just spoke on Facebook Live about Blue Apron. They’re not paying me for that! When you treat your customers like you care about them, they care enough about you to want to help your business grow. That’s part of that meaningful relationship that we’ve been talking about instead of a transactional relationship like with my cable company. I’m only as good as the dollars that I’m willing to spend with the cable company. It’s a terrible way to treat people.

Yet people out there shrug their shoulders and say, “what do you expect? It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.” No, it freaking is personal. This is my life! That was my money and you were trying to take it, and that money goes towards food and education for my kids, but they felt entitled to my money and I wasn’t allowed to say stop.

Eva Jannotta: Thank goodness there are companies disrupting that status quo. Can you share a time in your business where you did something disruptive? A time when you had to trust your instincts, go against the grain, or do business in an unconventional fashion? I like to hear examples of women in business having to trust ourselves and rely on our instincts rather than follow all the free advice that we’re bombarded with.

Alaura Weaver: I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I have strong opinions and I’m not afraid to share them. But in the freelance and copywriting world, you’re encouraged to keep your politics to yourself because you never know who’s going to hire you.

But I want to know who’s going to hire me because what I’m doing for them is helping them make an impact in the world! And if that impact isn’t aligned with my values then I’m doing something that’s completely against my moral obligations to the world that I want to help shape.

So I will tweet out my political stances. I will retweet stuff that I believe in. I’m a strong intersectional feminist. I am also a story editor for a podcast called Inflection Point, which is all about achieving equality.

No judgment to people who aren’t comfortable taking a stand. But I do feel like that if you’re not taking a stand, you’re not being brave. You’re not being courageous. You’re settling into the status quo. And right now for so many people, the status quo is not acceptable. So when you are helping to reinforce the status quo, you’re actually harming people by doing that.

Eva Jannotta: Someone said to me recently that the political candidates who are embracing the margins and taking more radical and outspoken stances on issues are actually garnering more support than those who tend toward center. And the same is true with brands.

There are so many examples of brand activism right now. I heard of one started by a college student called Lip Slut, and their proceeds are donated to political nonprofits. That’s a very political angle and this company is going gangbusters. Taking a stance is drawing like-minded, values-driven clients and customers to your business, even if it feels a little risky. It’s curious that we’re seeing it pay off to take that brave stance and to draw a line in the sand and stand for what you value.

Alaura Weaver: But let me point out that if you’re going to take a stand, you better be willing to walk the walk, right? This isn’t a marketing ploy. Pepsi, cringe. Bad, bad Pepsi!

I heard somebody say, you have to pray with your feet. If you genuinely want to see change in this world, you have to walk the walk. If you don’t want to see change in this world and you’re just being a mouth piece for a marketing ploy, do us all and your company a favor and don’t bother because people who genuinely care will sniff it out and you will become a Pepsi.

Eva Jannotta: Years ago, Pop Chips had a commercial in which Ashton Kutcher was wearing brown face and pretending to be like a Bollywood director. Hasan Minhaj torn it shreds, and I’ve never touched a Pop Chip since. Yes, I’m only one person, but those missteps that are in such poor taste DO have an impact. They do. They do affect people for better or worse.

Alaura Weaver: These aren’t just individual moments, they’re a reflection of a pattern when it comes to larger companies, especially ones that are focusing on revenue or gross margin over the relationship they’re having with people.

I’m offering a mastermind course with Nichole DeMeré called Purpose Beyond Product, focusing on how you need to get customer service right from the beginning. When you create a model for customer success, that goes a long way with your marketing and customer outreach. That’s how relationships are built.

Alaura Weaver is a story-based copywriter and content strategist who specializes in helping businesses speak “human.” As a contributor on Copy Hackers, Copyblogger, Foundr Magazine and Conscious Company, Alaura has written about the impact that storytelling can have on your business and how you can use your story to create meaningful relationships with your customers. You can learn more about working with her at wordweaverfreelance.com

The post How to Write Non-Cliche Copy that Attracts Your Ideal Clients appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

1. How and why to use free events + challenges to build your email list (and business)
2. Why consistency is key on social media (“I don’t have time for anybody’s algorithm!”) (Click to Tweet!)
3. How she trusts herself to keep moving forward and serving the people who need her – even when she can’t see her destination.

Get Marketing Minutes updates to your inbox: http://eepurl.com/dxiBEH 

Eva Jannotta: How many years has Finances De•mys•ti•fied been in business?

Dominique Broadway: I think we may be going on the sixth year, which is weird. I didn’t catch my stride until about two years ago, when I really got clear about what I was doing. I feel like I’m two years old, but I’ve been a full-time entrepreneur for about five or six years.

Eva Jannotta: I’m glad to hear you say that because I’m halfway through my fourth year, and I feel like I’m starting to get it and I’m starting to be more clear on what strategies I want to use and where I want to move towards in a way that for the first few years things felt haphazard.

Dominique Broadway: Totally agree!

Two Free Email Marketing Tactics To Build Your List

Eva Jannotta: In your experience building Finances De•mys•ti•fied, what are the best marketing strategies that have worked for you?

1. Host Free Events to Build Your List

Dominique Broadway: I started Finances De•mys•ti•fied by doing free Happy Hours to generate leads. That way I could touch people in person and they could see my personality.

We would have these free events and maybe 200 people would sign up. My rule of thumb is anytime you do a free event, only 30% of the people are going to come. But even if 30% or 40% of people would come, we’d still have all 200 people’s email addresses.

That’s how I was able to successfully start growing my list. The first couple thousand people that were on the list were super engaged because they met me. They didn’t just fall into my funnel off a random ad. So I had a stronger touch-point, which was good because it also made the word-of-mouth better.

2. Host Online Challenges to Build Your List

Another effective tactic for me has been hosting challenges. People love a challenge and doing these challenges has been great to grow my list. Partnering with other entrepreneurs to do challenges allows us to mutually grow our lists.

I put together a challenge in a week with a friend of mine and we got close to 4,000 people that signed up. Between 40% and 60% of those were new people! And even though we had people signing up that were already on our list, it’s re-engaging them and preparing them for a potential sale. Plus we had all these new people that had never heard of us before who were coming on. It’s a very effective marketing strategy.

How to Build Awareness and Entice People to Attend Your Event

Eva Jannotta: When you were first starting, did you rely on your personal network? Inviting friends and asking them to invite their friends? Beyond that, did you use Meetup or Eventbrite? How did you grow awareness of these events?

Dominique Broadway: I was hustling, inviting everyone that I’d ever met! Instagram wasn’t even around, so it was just Facebook and Twitter and I would definitely use Meetup.

I would sit for hours on Twitter and @ the DC Young Professional Group or whoever. I would be like, “hey, come to this event.” So it was a personal invitation and a lot of times they would retweet it and their people would come.

That was my strategy and it worked. It also helped that I was hosting those events in a city that I was from. But surprisingly, a lot of people that were showing up were people I had never met!

One other thing that I would do is I always had events at super dope venues. People were already going there for Happy Hour anyway. I did one at The Park. Everyone loves The Park! It’s one of the hottest happy hour spots on Thursday.

And so I was having events at those places and negotiating with the venues to get the happy hour deals extended. Sometimes I would ask certain venues if they could even send out the event to their list. So it was really just asking and putting myself out there.

Eva Jannotta: There are a lot of things you were doing strategically there:

• relying on your personal network, but also
• putting in the time to have these one-on-one invites and leveraging social media for that, and then
• leveraging the venues, not just the reputation of the venue itself, but getting special deals and working with them to extend offers and ask if they could promote to their crowd.

What I like is the combination of high-touch, investing your personal time AND using social media to support it. You weren’t knocking on doors or handing out flyers but you were putting in the time via the Internet.

Dominique Broadway: It definitely paid off.

Why People Love Free Challenges

Eva Jannotta: The other thing you mentioned was the hosting challenges. What network do you use for your challenges?

Dominique Broadway: I did one this year called Your Wealthy Year, which did really well. We kicked it off in February and it was just five days of emails and a Facebook Live every day and it was great.

It was great engagement and it introduced Finances De•mys•ti•fieda to a whole new group of people. Now, because challenges have been so effective, I have brands reaching out because they want to partner with me, which is great because we’ll be able to create even better content and start giving away prizes. That’s going to make the challenges even more exciting.

Eva Jannotta: What do you think people find so compelling about challenges? If you’re not dangling a carrot in the form of a prize then is it the community? Is it the connection with other people who are following the same steps? What is it about these challenges that is so resonant?

Dominique Broadway: I’m in personal finance. It’s not the most exciting or sexy space, right? People like the fact that challenges are condensed. It’s five days that you can dedicate to get your finances together and people are like, this is what I need. I need the kick in the butt, I need the daily activities in there.

They’re looking at it as free content, a free class, a free opportunity to work with me. That’s what’s so enticing. It’s like, wow, here’s an opportunity to work with this person. And people love anything where they feel like they can fix their life in a few days’ time. (Click to Tweet!)

Why “Pre-selling” Is Critical To Actual Selling

Eva Jannotta: Now I want to flip it and ask you: what are some of the marketing experiences or tactics you’ve tried that have totally sucked?

Dominique Broadway: There’s been a lot. It’s usually more failures and successes. One thing that has flopped is not warming my list up for sale for a specific sale. Not prepping them. So I never do that. I pre-sell everything. (Click to Tweet!)

Forget the Marketing You Know…

I try to be strategic in the things that I do. I try to listen to my audience so that I’m not wasting a lot of time and money. When I first got started and I didn’t have as much market research, and marketing myself was different than the marketing I used to do when I worked for big firms. When I started Finances De•mys•ti•fied I had to literally forget all of that high net-worth marketing I used to do so that I could remember how to market to myself.

And I think that’s when things started to click for me. Instead of trying to market to people as if you were trying to get these high net-worth clients, it was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Come off your pedestal. Get to people on their level. Relate. (Click to Tweet!) That made things work. Trying to market the way traditional companies did just didn’t work for me.

Eva Jannotta: I like hearing that because there’s so much marketing advice and it’s not that it’s bad advice, but it’s critical to consider your own tone and your own audience. Sometimes that means forgetting the conventional strategies or good ideas that aren’t suitable for this stage of your business, or for the audience that you’re serving.

Dominique Broadway: Exactly.

Consistent Connection Makes The Sale

Eva Jannotta: Speaking of big firms doing marketing, I’m wondering if you have a favorite commercial or piece of marketing that you were on the consumer end of that really worked on you.

Dominique Broadway: It is so hard to sell me! But there are two Internet marketers that get me, I don’t know why. One is Russell Brunson. I mean, his products and stuff are great, but they’re not amazing! Yet his tactics always gets me. The other is Ramit Sethi. He puts out the most amazing content. I bought something from him and I think I’ve had it for two months (without using it) which is sad to admit.

Because I am such a hard sell, because I am a salesperson at the end of the day, it’s about timing. It’s being sold to at the right time. If I’m not ready for something, it’s very easy for me to click away. 

The same is true in our business and personal finance. People have to be in the right state of mind and have to be ready to tackle their financial situation. It’s a matter of finding people at the right time. I’ve noticed that marketing, it’s not about reaching out to people once, it’s those constant reaches because you never know when you’re gonna hit that person in the right day. (Click to Tweet!)

Eva Jannotta: There are a lot of capabilities with paid ad targeting that can be very specific about what someone is researching online or what they’re going through so you can try to understand when is a good time to sell to them.

But what you’re speaking to is how critical it is to build an email list and to build an audience just by being consistent and friendly and available because you can’t control what they’re going to be ready. But if you’re ready to be a resource to them when they are ready and you have that rapport, then that’s only going to help the growth of your business over time.

Have You Asked Your Clients What They Want?

Dominique Broadway: I did something recently that was just testing this out: I sent an email that said, “Hey, I’m going to do one-on-one consultations at 50% off.” And I was thinking, people may buy. And over 30 people bought! It was crazy.

It showed me that this is what people wanted. They wanted that one-on-one time, I just hadn’t asked them. We sent it out again and more people signed up. Afterward people were saying, wow, I’ve wanted to work with you, or the session was exactly what I needed.

We made money from it, but I was also doing it because I’m the process of building out new programs and so all this information that I’m getting, when they’re filling out the form telling me what their pain points are, telling what they want to talk about, it helped me to do market research to understand, what do you guys need? Do you need more in-person? Do you need more group stuff? What are you dealing with?

Eva Jannotta: That’s a great reminder to diversify your offerings. If you don’t ask or if you don’t offer, you may never know what your audience is quietly hoping you’ll give them.

Dominique Broadway: Exactly. I was surprised. I was like, this is what you want!?

Instagram: Consistency > Algorithm Hacking

Eva Jannotta: You have a huge following on Instagram and I’ve heard from other Instagram marketers that with new algorithm changes, they’re seeing engagement rates plummet. Have you been adjusting your strategy?

Dominique Broadway: I try not to overthink Instagram. You can waste a lot of time trying to keep up with, oh no, Instagram changed their algorithm. Really? I don’t have time! (Click to Tweet!)

What we’ve been doing is trying to keep the content consistent. I’m actually in the process of splitting my personal account, Dominique Broadway, from my company account, Finances De•mys•ti•fied. So that’s going to be interesting.

I just approved all the Instagram content for the next 30 days, and we’re just going to keep the content consistent. We plan our content out a month in advance, and we only do 30 days because stuff changes and there’s different things that come up, especially in finance, and we may want to add something.

And then also Stories – I love InstaStories. We get really good numbers with them. Plus, with the ability for people to swipe up you get higher conversions. The Instagram analytics on the backend are getting so much better. It’s interesting to see the things that people are swiping up, and when they’re swiping out. After maybe four or five stories people swipe to the next person.

I try not to overthink it because I think that if you’re consistent, it’s fine. I haven’t seen any huge drops personally. I am noticing that people tend to like pictures of me? Weird! Anyway, as long as I’m posting pictures of me doing stuff and having motivational stuff in the bottom, it’s fine.

Eva Jannotta: What was the motivation behind deciding to split Dominique Broadway and Finances De•mys•ti•fied brands on Instagram?

Dominique Broadway: I really want Finances De•mys•ti•fied to be its own thing. I want to be tied to it, the vision for it, but I would love if somebody bought it one day, I would love that! But no one’s going to buy Dominique Broadway.

The new Finances De•mys•ti•fied Instagram is something that I’m still the face of, but it could run without me. And that’s what I want. Having a separate Instagram for my name will help with personal brand partnership possibilities and speaking. Speaking is a huge part of my business.

But I want Finances De•mys•ti•fied to be that go-to place for all things personal finance. That’s why I’m splitting up the two. Honestly, sometimes I get tired of talking about personal finance!

Eva Jannotta: Sometimes you just want a break from your main gig and you want to talk about other stuff!

Dominique Broadway: I just want to talk about traveling. Sometimes I want to talk about food. Sometimes I want to talk about business stuff. I don’t want to just talk about budgeting all day.

How Trusting Yourself Lets You Serve Others

Eva Jannotta: That’s a great segue into the final question I want to ask. I would love to hear about a time when you had to really trust yourself, listen to your gut instincts, make a decision that was unpopular or went against the grain or felt uncomfortable but was the right call.

I love hearing stories about that because I think it’s so important that we cultivate trust in ourselves rather than always Googling the answer to any question.

Dominique Broadway: You always Google first, right?

I would say this whole entrepreneurial journey has taught me how to trust myself. Quitting my job to start this was crazy. I didn’t even know I was starting Finances De•mys•ti•fied. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just knew I didn’t want to do that anymore.

They say entrepreneurs jump out of the plane and build a parachute going down. That’s literally what I was doing. I jumped out of the plane and just hoped and prayed that there was a parachute in this backpack.

Even from there: starting the business and having tons of money saved and going broke and my house entering into foreclosure and having to trust myself to push through that. I had to just trust myself the whole time. I could’ve given up on myself a long time ago. It would have been easy to give up and just go back and get a job. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But if I had done that, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t have the business I have today. I wouldn’t have traveled the places I’ve traveled. I wouldn’t have helped the people that I’ve helped.

When I look back on it, I understand that me trusting myself wasn’t just for me. It was for those people who needed my guidance. Who, if I didn’t trust myself, I wouldn’t have been able to help and turn things around for them.

This whole process is about learning to trust yourself, having faith in whoever you believe in (for me it’s God) and understanding that where we are, where we’re supposed to be, the things that we go through… in the moment you’re like, really? Why am I going through this!? I learned through all of that, that entire experience, it’s given me a whole different level of education and now I can help more people.

Eva Jannotta: A lot of entrepreneurs are motivated by discomfort, by not liking what they have, but not necessarily having a clear vision of where they’re going. When you’re in the dark, you have to trust yourself and it’s very easy to get impatient and to have a lot of doubt and uncertainty. I appreciate that reminder that you’re meant to be where you are and to cultivate faith in that. That is incredibly powerful.

Dominique Broadway: It really is.

Eva Jannotta: Thank you so, so, so much for your time today. This was a fantastic conversation.

Dominique Broadway: This has been so fun! I enjoyed it.

Eva Jannotta: Is there anything that you’re promoting right now or that you want to share that’s going on in your business and your life?

Dominique Broadway: Right now we’re in this rebuilding, rebranding stage and nothing super exciting is launching right this second, but please make sure you go to DominiqueBroadway.com or FinancesDemystified.com. Get on the email list, follow me on Instagram. We are giving away a bunch of money in the next couple of weeks, so make sure you follow us there. And stay tuned. I have some exciting things coming down the pipeline!

Dominique Broadway is an award winning Financial Planner, Personal Finance Coach, Speaker, Finance Expert, Entrepreneur and the Founder of Finances De•mys•ti•fied & The Social Money Tour. She has a strong passion for working with young professionals, entrepreneurs and people of all ages to bring their Dreams2Reality. Shortly after launching Finances De•mys•ti•fied, an award winning organization that provides Personal Finance Coaching & Financial Capability solutions, she was named one of the top Financial Advisors in the United States for Millennials, at the age of 28. Prior to that, Dominique worked at major brokerage firms such as UBS Financial Services and Edelman Financial Services, at the ripe age of 21, focusing on clients with $10 million and up in investable assets.

The post Two Free Ways to Build a Highly Engaged Email List with Dominique Broadway appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

Lesson 2 of the course is choose a focus – one of the great hurdles in creating a good blog. Rather than writing about everything under the sun, finding a niche develops your expertise, clarifies themes that readers can identify, and determines what to write. The homework for Lesson 2 was straightforward: “narrow your list of topics to 10 items or less and feature your new list of categories in your sidebar.”

But what if you’re passionate about many disparate topics?  I posed this and other questions to the badass Babes community.

When You’re Passionate about 164,743,765 things: 

Sarah’s lesson asks us to consider which topics we enjoy writing most, our readers enjoy reading most, we have the most ideas for, and are shared most on social media. These are great questions to ask and ask again. But if you don’t have many readers or social shares, or if you have lots of ideas on lots of topics, you may need more help.

The Badass Babes recommended “What to Do When You Have ‘Too Many’ Topics to Blog About or Teach” by Regina. It’s an excellent video. Regina says, “sometimes we’re only passionate about our ideas in theory–it’s like that guy/gal you have a crush on that you don’t even know.” Her advice on how to niche down is practical and effective.

Categories vs. Tags: 

I’ve been using categories for organization and navigation (with categories such as “Me,” “I’m Reading,” and “Videos”) even though I don’t write often on these topics. As a result I have 19 (YIKES) categories to pare down. Should I switch some categories to tags? Combine categories? Take some out all together?

The Badass Babes community suggested switching to tags as second-tier organization for topics I don’t blog about often but still want to group. WP Site Care agrees: WordPress categories are used to create groups of content that fit the primary topics of your site…. tags are best used to create groups of content that apply to multiple categories.”

Back-end Category Organization:

I’m hesitant to eliminate categories and lose the organized post groups I’ve created. I asked the Babes: is there a way to hide categories so they don’t display on my sidebar, but I can still access them on the backend for archive/organization purposes?

The Babes said, “yes!” and recommend using a text box in my sidebar to manually link the categories I want to display (rather than use the “Categories” widget which draws on all categories).

Next steps:  Tackle those categories and think hard about what to keep writing. Lesson 3 is in my inbox!

Do you struggle to narrow your focus?

(photo by Eva Jannotta)

The post Choose a Focus (For Your Blog) appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

Where did you learn about success? From your parents, teachers, friends? The Internet? By comparing yourself to others?

Historically we had peers, our community, perhaps people on TV or in newspapers as metrics for gauging success. Now everyone on the Internet, ever, is a potential comparison point. It’s a big pond. With the myriad personalities, work styles, and circumstances out there, we see many people our age with the appearance of success in jobs, roles, or lifestyles we desire.

But compare and you’ll despair. When is enough, enough? What does success mean for YOU? What are your goals and values?

In “Go with your Gut Feeling,” Magnus Walker calls success “the freedom to do whatever you want to do.” I love the title of the TED Talk, but I don’t quite agree with his definition. There will always been things we don’t want to do, and there are always opportunities to do what we want, even if it’s part time. I think success is a combination of contentment with what you have, eagerness to keep reaching goals, and the flexibility to do so with integrity.

From Michelle Obama, “success isn’t about how much money you make; it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.” I won’t argue with that.

(photo by Eva Jannotta)

The post How Do You Define Success? appeared first on Medusa Media Group.

How many ideas do you have throughout the day? Things to try or create or tell people? How often do you have an impulse to send a message, compliment someone, write a story, or ask a question? How often do you act on these impulses? How many times throughout the day do you think about taking a step towards what you want, only to get distracted and think, I’ll do it later?

Mel has a message: stop screwing yourself over.

You’re never going to feel like doing it. You’re never going to feel like editing your novel, starting a business, or changing the way you eat. You’re never going to feel like doing pushups, asking for forgiveness, or writing a pitch. The end goal or product seems removed from the immediate steps. The reward for doing pushups feels like it’s a million years away. So you think well, maybe I don’t actually need to do that.

After all, you’re fine, right? But the problem with “fine,” Mel says, is that you’re saying fine to yourself. And if you’re fine, it’s easy to convince yourself that you don’t need to do anything differently. You don’t need to make changes, you don’t need to do pushups. (There’s a time and place for “I’m fine” though: it creates boundaries. I don’t want to share my emotional state with everyone. Sometimes I don’t want to go into detail. I say I’m fine. Easy. Done.)

So we hit what Mel calls the “inner snooze button” on our impulses. When our ideas well up, we snooze them. Our routines are predictable, and we are creatures of comfort. As soon as we step outside routine, it’s uncomfortable. Yet as Esther Perel tells us, we have equal needs for predictability and adventure, even (or especially) when adventure is challenging, maybe scary. We must parent ourselves: force ourselves to do what it takes to get what we want.

Sometimes it’s okay to hit snooze. It’s not important to act on every Instagram idea, or text a friends every thought that may interest them. But what about your Big Audacious Goals? You’re never going to feel like doing them. And then they won’t get done. And then you won’t get what you want.

Here’s a trick: Mel points out that if you don’t pair an impulse or idea with an action within five seconds, the opportunity is passed. Remember the Five Second Rule next time you have an idea for a blog post or program. Remember it next time you want to sing but don’t. Or dance. Or do a cartwheel.

Scientists have calculated the odds of you being born when you were, where you were, to your particular parents, with your DNA. One in four trillion: those are your odds. Miraculous, isn’t it?

So what was the first decision you made today? To go back to sleep? Or to get up within five seconds and start your day?

The post What’s the First Decision You Made This Morning? appeared first on Medusa Media Group.