 Podcasting seems to be the digital gold rush that all creators have been dreaming of! Learn about podcasting from the early stages of launching your first episode to establishing yourself as an industry expert in your field.
This blog post is brought to you by Minnestar, who's known for some of the largest community events in Minnesota where thousands of technologists come together to learn, build, connect and grow. Each month, Minnestar hosts a virtual AMA (or Ask Me Anything) session on a different topic with subject matter experts from our community. Ask questions, and learn from the best of the best - all via an easy Zoom webinar link. This month, we are lucky to be joined by panelists Jackie Biederman of StoryPop Media and Twila Dang of Matriarch Media, hosted by Maria Boland Ploessl of Minnestar, and this post produced by Dick Polipnick of Online Growth Systems.
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 You are leaving money on the table if you’re not actively marketing your business online in proper ways. But there is a problem. Online marketing can be seemed very daunting and complex. This can totally deter the most focused entrepreneurs from implementing an internet marketing strategy.
So, the goal of this article is to dissect internet marketing into its most basic strategist ways. And simplify those strategies for the business owner or market. You may have seen lots of blog about the same topic. Can you guess why we are special from other blogs? Do you know what timeless means? It’s a strategy that will work in the future too, so you don’t have to waste your time learning about little hacks that will quickly die off. You will notice there are a couple of overarching strategies, there are various tactics related to that strategy. Let’s begin!  If you are a brand, today there is a high possibility of you being in social media in some kind of way or form.
Many brands own an active social media presence. But exactly how many of them exist? What makes them different from other brands that they get so much attention? This questions must have crossed your mind. Reality is you really can not expect to post some random links and dream to make a huge difference. You need to have strategies and solid plans for your brand to grow in a fast way. Although some of these brands have a huge budget ideas they use to get attention can be replicated and used by businesses of all sizes. If you are struggling to get followers in your social media pages and really don’t have a clue what to do next. Let’s be honest, we all have been there. That’s why we have collected the tips and tricks you need to know to get a good start. Now let’s get started.  *Drums playing loudly and people clapping and cheering*
Because Instagram’s brand new video platform is here! IGTV is a place for long duration videos which is available in the native Instagram app and the standalone IGTV app. Here are 3 things you need to know about IGTV also we are going to answer a lot of questions that pop in people’s mind when they encounter with IGTV.  Do you want people to find you through a google search? If so then search engine optimization also known as SEO should be at the top of your priority list. You won’t be able to lead anyone towards your business if they can’t find you. Do you know that almost 93% of people have their first Internet experience with a search engine?
Have you ever imagined what happens after someone makes a search? How much possibility is there to get your content to get noticed? Let me break it down to you. Only if you can make it to the top of showing results 33% chances are there that people will click to see your content. That means if you can’t make it to the first page of the search results you just missed one-third of a potential traffic. You will be astonished to know that most of the people don’t even bother to see the results showing on the second page. The reason why other people are ranking higher than you is that they are putting in an effort to improve their SEO ranking. But it’s never too late to get started. There are certain tricks you can use to improve your SEO ranking. Let me present you the top 17 ways to make it to the top of Google ranking.  Anytime a business operates, they need email. Yes, there's Slack; there's Skype; there are many other communication channels, but businesses still revolve around email, and if businesses still use it, you can bet that if you get an email in their inbox and they read it, you can generate sales.
So, email marketing is a thing now. Gmail ads are growing in revenue. The question is now, is email marketing making value? Yes, it is! Because some people still read emails. The problem is your email not getting read by people. So, how can you send out emails that get opened by readers? A good place to start is to not include the four reasons people don’t read or open emails.  Being an entrepreneur means you need blaze your own trail. You will get no career guidelines, counselors or maps to guide you from one step to the next. You’ll have to make it up as you go. But if there was a set of guidelines, here are our tips to make your journey easier as an entrepreneur.
1. Keep the big vision in sight. - Stay focused 2. Fuel your vision with perseverance - Be motivated 3. Make a plan, but be flexible - Adapt to survive 4. Embrace your expertise - Know yourself 5. Don’t reinvent the wheel - Start new, don’t start over 6. Don’t burn out - Pace yourself 7. Leverage everything - Find a need 8. Keep your sense of humor - Laugh more, stress less This is a special blog from our Millionaire Mentor series, The Entrepreneur's Mindset (Interview with Dominik Lipinski). Read our highlights from this several hour interview below, or go ahead and find your own golden nuggets by watching the video or listening to the podcast.  👉 Have you ever tried implementing a digital assistant in your office? It may sound unusual, but actually it’s pretty common. It is predicted that almost 36 million people are going to use a voice-activated assistant device at least once in a month which is double the number of users in the previous year.
👨⚖️ Virtual assistants include software’s inside various devices like Apple’s Siri, Google Now, Amazon’s Alexa etc. Voice-enabled speakers also use virtual assistant software, such as Amazon’s Echo AND Google Home. These devices were mainly invented for home use. People ask it various things, and it answers them. Though most digital assistants put restrictions on what developers can do with the system, the systems are always growing. But in the year of 2016, Amazon decided to let third parties develop think programs for Alexa. Most of this content is designed specifically for business purposes. Many of you have already used Amazon Echo or Echo Dot without realizing the fact that you can use it to increase efficiencies in your business. You can go to the main page of Alexa. Amazon.com on your smartphone and click the “skills” button in the left navigation bar, select the skills you want and tap “enable”. Then your digital assistant will be able to help you to run your business smoothly. Once a skill is enabled you just need to give a voice command and Voila! Your work is done. Alexa is mainly an artificial intelligence powered, voice-activated digital assistant. It gives you control over your business via some appealing speakers such as Echo spot, Echo plus etc. But there is no need to buy Amazon products to use Alexa, because most of the smart speakers sold in the U.S in 2017 are Alexa coherent. Checking out the skill finder skill will also help you to know about particular skills and even help you to decide on the skills your company needs for growth.  Without a proper strategy on YouTube, your videos are not going to reach the full potential of viewers. Whether you are a small business owner, entrepreneur, YouTuber, content creator or social media marketing strategist, you have been searching for ways to get your targeted views on YouTube. But how can you crack the goal in your competitive sector?
YouTube Marketing is a tool among the most-talked subjects in social media and entrepreneur circles right now. One of the main questions we get most is how to get started on YouTube. But let’s get real!  If you don’t exist on social media do you really have an existence? This question will definitely put some of you in an awe. But, it’s not something to take in a wrong way. People have been using social media platforms to create their own identity and establish their business. Instagram and Snapchat stories are a big part of it. The battle between which platform is better among its users to have been going on for a long time. But none of them are really slacking off. It just depends on personal preferences and which you want to show your audiences. But while doing business through which platform you want to highlight your Ideas and products have to be very precise and well planned. Clients are often in a daze thinking which social media to adapt to their current marketing plan. As experts, we need to think about the fact that whether one of them actually work for our clients. From audience interest to managing the accounts, everything needs to get taken care of. To put it very simply we need to think that which works for them best
 Brands nowadays trying to find more ways to connect with their audiences using social media platforms. But it’s really unpredictable to say how the social media marketing will change over the year with new trends. Each and everyday user scroll through 300 feet of content and in this small window brands need to grab user attention. So, how a brand starts building social media ideas the make the user a valuable reader or a customer towards the brand. Here are our strategies, online growth system believes these strategies will impact your business via social media.
Entrepreneurs sometimes live in a strange way, and Ray Kroc is one of those people. His revolution in franchising the food automation service and advertising have earned him a place in entrepreneur’s world. He founded McDonald's and opened his franchise when he was 52.
In this Amazing Book, there is the story of this business legend in his own words. You will go through irrepressible enthusiasm in here. This perceptive people-watcher and born storyteller will fascinate and inspire you in this book. This book will make you never forget Ray Kroc for his successful journey of McDonald's.  The world is going to take a new step in Virtual Reality and 3D model era, and place the remarkable technology in the e-commerce platform. This year Shopify United announced their first step to becoming a 3D enabled e-commerce platform. In addition to this, they are adding new partners who will help the merchants to create 3D models of their products. Also, they will find new ways to reach their audiences using augmented reality. This will turn future of AR into reality.
But, how will e-commerce reach their potential goal? How will a person with zero knowledge or a person who is a web designer or an app developer who never done 3D before use such a product? They begin to enable them to create 3D models. E-commerce platform such as Shopify is creating a real opportunity to deliver value to the merchants and their customers. Read on to learn more about how e-commerce business can expand their customer experience to immersive AR, VR, and 3D where shopping will be a reality for everyone.  ✎Why You Really Need Artificial Intelligence in Marketing? This year, we have seen many brands use Artificial intelligence to build an instant connection with customers all over the world. Chatbots are solving their issues with customer interaction.
 It is without doubt that the internet has advanced in recent years, and with it new online systems such as social media have been developed. This has enabled individuals to easily interact, share and access information. Social media has grown to become a key factor in marketing, and firms are using it to enhance their brand popularity, increase sales, enhance communication, share business information and for social support to consumers. In addition, social media interactions by individuals is thought to have a positive impact on trust. This has developed a great interest by researchers to study consumer behaviors and see how it affects customer's intent to buy goods and services online.
✎ In this video, we will discuss how to get started with a video production company starring Jeff Johnson. If you are a creative story-teller, filmmaker or even just starting a video production company- you can learn how to be successful and make money in the video production industry.
 Starting your own small business is the number one step to achieving the American dream in our world today. However, there are a lot of people, especially young people, with the business mind, but they lack the skills of starting and launching the business. Are you that person?
When launching a business, expectations are it will grow and become successful. This can take years of hard work and struggle, but by using the right skills and following the right steps you can be on the right track to making your business the next Apple. For the success of the business, the following steps are essential to be observed.  In a modern world of the information revolution, showing up on the front page of any search engine may become a complementary factor between a well-functioning business and a poor-functioning business. Showing up on the front page ensures visibility of the content and website on search engine pages. SEO stands for search engine optimization. Using search engine optimization you get a perfect control of what others do, think, and read on the sites. Search engine optimization maximizes the visitor numbers to a specific site by ensuring the website appears high on results from the search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. It involves directing traffic from free search results on the search engine results pages. Equally, it increases the sale proportionately without the increase in related costs, therefore, permitting the growth of business profits over time. So can Social Media help Improve SEO?  Yes, social media can play a large part in getting your site to rank high on Search Engines especially for a startup business struggling to get onto their feet. This has been overlooked by many business not realizing how related SEO and Social media are. First you need to understand that there are many factors Google and other search engines use to determine how a site ranks. Social signals such as Facebook likes, post likes, comments, and Twitter followers doesn’t influence your search rankings. However, social shares received on an updated social media status affects your rankings. If an update gets a lot of shares it means that users find it useful and are more likely to click on it and learn more or even visit other pages in your site.
Under normal circumstances, people perceive large business as more established, successful, and having a good reputation, and thus develop a certain kind of trust. People tend to buy products and services more Being a small business that is still growing with few reviews and small name recognition can be quite a struggle to survive with the high competition from big brands. Therefore, learning the art of creating a big impression in the market can boost your business and also accelerate its growth. Here are a few ways small business owners can create a big impression of their business to fit the marketplace. 1. Have a website/ Update your website  Many small business survive out there with no website, which in today’s world makes them nearly invisible to new customers and miss a lot on growth. The first thing a customer expects in a trustworthy business is the presence of a website. This is one of the first indicator that your business exists and is somewhat legit. You wont get as many customers if you exist without a website. The first thing a potential business customer thinks when you approach them and your startup has no website, is that you are a scam or you are not serious, and all you want is quick buck. Today website designing has become so cheap that you can afford to have even a simple website to start with. Nowadays there are many tools for building a website that you yourself can build one. However to avoid the hustle, get a website developer or an agency to design a professional website for you. Just make sure the website is modern not looking like the 1900’s design. It should be clean, professional, beautifully designed, and easy to navigate. Then once you have it make sure you are updating it now and then. For example, most of these websites have a blog section where you can add content, articles, videos, and so on which helps you boost SEO, and get noticed out there. A website positions your company as an expert in your industry and assists customers relate with your business easily. 2. Use social media  Social media has become a necessity for every business looking to grow faster and build trust with customers and fans. Through social media you can create awareness and grow your business faster than ever before.
According to a twitter study, 75% of fans following a small business and reads its tweets, reported to feel better about the company. This shows that social media wins you trust and loyalty from customers. It shows you are a serious business, and that you exist. The more you engage with them the more the trust and likelihood of doing business or buying services or goods from you. Using social media doesn’t necessarily mean you create a profile on all platforms, but just select a few platforms that suits your business. The main ones are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Google+, and Pinterest. For example, if your business sells a physical product like food or clothing using Instagram and Pinterest in addition to Twitter and Facebook will be a great fit for your needs. LinkedIn fits professional businesses that offer consulting services. Hiring a social media manager or a marketing agency to post and engage with your customers can help if you are not sure how to do it or are busy on other things. In addition you can use social media to market your products or services. It is significantly cheaper compared to other traditional advertising methods.  Whether you recently started a business and beginning to gain customers or you are already have an established business, learning how to build trust with your customers is key. This asset can even lead to attracting more customers to purchase your products and services. As an entrepreneur you need to learn key skills to keep your customers, and in this article we guide you on what to do to have customers storming your store or website for your products or services. 1. Be Honest and Transparent  Big brands are not there by just coincidence but through years of hard work, building trust, and defining their products. In building trust, honesty and transparency is vital. One mistake business men and women make is focusing on making profits all time at the expense of the customer’s value of the product. Always be honest about your products features, capabilities, and your business services capabilities. Don’t try to convince them to buy a product that doesn’t have features they want just because you want to make a sale. Tell customers the truth and let the them make a choice whether to choose the product and services or continue with the search for the specific product. Honesty and transparency shows you care about your customers and their needs, and they are more likely to trust your brand. Trust will lead your customers to write positive reviews about your business which in turn attracts more customers. By using this positive cycle in a few years you will be getting bigger and bigger. Lying about your products and services will lead to negative reviews and put off other potential customers willing to do business with you. You Might Also Like: Trump: HOW TO GET RICH Animated Book Summary  The Holiday season is here, the busiest season of the year. Buyers everywhere get into a frenzy shopping mood looking for last minute gifts, electronics, clothing, Christmas decorations and more. This being the busiest time of the year, businesses tend to make more sales at this time. At the same time business are competing to outdo their competitors in terms of offers and services that is why applying the right marketing strategy will get you more sales and help your business stay ahead of your competitors. But before all this, it is important to understand the psychology of buyers especially during the holiday season. Here is what is in the buyer's mind during the holiday season and how to use this to make your business successful.  1. What gifts to get their loved ones? December is a holiday month that people focus on offering gifts to loved ones. Shoppers this month are not only doing shopping for themselves but for their family and friends both young and old. Shoppers are always thinking of the best gift ideas and they have to do some online research before deciding on what to get. As a business, let’s say selling at a store or online you need to put yourself in the buyer's shoes, and this will help guide you on what to do. One thing is making it easier for the buyer to find gifts when searching online, another thing is to make sure you are promoting products that are popular gifts or that are trending for that season, also offering the gifts in age categories will help the shopper select the gift categories for the persons they are buying for. So how do you implement this ideas?
You Might Also Like: How I became a MILLIONAIRE by age 22" Evan Carmichael Interview  You see businesses left and right saying how their Facebook Ad campaign exploded the sales of their products and absolutely skyrocketed their website traffic. “Damn. I gotta get a piece of that action!” You’re right! You should get a piece of that action. Businesses that utilize social media for their marketing and reach have seen great results in their efforts and a healthy increase to their bottom line. But how do you get started? What works? Where should you invest your time? Should I do it myself or hire it out? All good questions. Here, I’ll explain some “Best Practices” that you can use today to help explode your business using social media. 1. Post Consistently The number one mistake I see businesses make is that they don’t post consistently. Let’s say that you have a great few weeks of posting, you are excited after reading this article, and you actually start to gain some traction! But then you stop. You have too many meetings this week, you’re going on vacation next week. So what do you do? I recommend the best way to avoid this is to use a few tools. Check out tools like Hootsuite and Buffer. They are automatic schedulers and for most platforms (thanks Instagram…) they can post your photos and videos without you being near a computer. Customers are frequent users of social media, even if you’re not. If they visit your page after seeing one of your posts and discover that you haven’t made a post for over 2 weeks, they’ll assume that you’re not serious and you’ll miss out on that subscriber, like, or follow. 2. Diversify Your Content You’re customers are people, not robots. They won’t read all your posts unless you peak their interest. Sooooo how do you do that? Have different kinds of content to appeal to different kinds of people. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Examples: For Twitter, don’t just post stuff your staff is doing that day. Have some quotes, images, videos, different hashtags, and heck- even go Live once in a while! Some people like to watch videos, some people hate it. Some people are too busy to watch your live stream, for some people that is the only time they actually check out your page!  3. Have a Branded Account
Don’t have a picture of your dog as the profile picture for your business Facebook Page! Use what’s appropriate for the platform. For Instagram, if you’re a restaurant have a pic of your famous dish. For Facebook, have a pic of your logo. Use your own stuff. Don’t post pics of food from Google Images, show off your own talent! Show people a reason to give you their business! After all, whats the point of doing social media if it doesn’t bring you in some sales??? Refine your bio. SOOOO many business make the mistake of not optimizing their bio, and they are losing sales because of it. Without an effective bio, you’re time and money are just as effective spent using radio ads! Yuck! Here’s a great video for you to learn how to optimize your bio to instantly get more sales. Bonus: STOP PUSHING PRODUCTS! When you stop pushing your products or services and start providing VALUE first, you will see your business explode! The whole reason TV is dying is because there are too many commercials and not enough content. Don’t make that same mistake on your social media. They companies that I have helped grow the fastest agreed to a heavier “Value First” strategy. Depending on your business, that value might be something that makes people laugh, helps people learn how to build their own raised garden, informs people of changes in your industry, etc. People will naturally want to do business with you if you give them free value first. Take this article as a great example… Many people will leave this article after reading it and start to apply some of the advise I have given them. But a few exceptions will either google my name or click the link leading to my website because they are curious about what I do. You might not have the time or expertise to do this yourself. If this sounds like you, I highly recommend working with a marketing agency. The best results come from a combination of you and your expertise of your business and our expertise of how to make the best return on investment for your dollar. If you’re not sure if working with a team of experts is right for you, perhaps signing up your business for our “Free Business Audit” is more comfortable. Thank you for reading! I appreciate your time and I hope that you apply what you learned here to help your business EXPLODE!!! Sincerely, Dick Polipnick, Online Growth Systems  Each and every business has different objectives and each uses different approaches to market themselves. Use of posters, flyers, billboards, television advertisements and newspaper adverts has been the way to create awareness and market products for many years. However, with the birth of the internet, marketing has seen drastic growth and many companies have now gone online to create more awareness and drive more sales to grow their business.
The introduction of social media opened new marketing opportunities for many businesses who found the earlier methods complicated and too costly. Many businesses have found success through use of social media. But why? According to Digital in 2017 Global Overview report, there are 3.77 billion global internet users and out of this 2.80 billion are social media users. With these numbers, you can clearly imagine the number of people who can be reached if you use social media as a method of marketing to drive your sales. Taking into account that social media is still young, there is plenty of room for growth and improvement in the coming years. Using social media may benefit your business in the following ways. 1. It will help create awareness for your Business. Did you know that 78% of small business have reported to have found new customers while using social media? The power of social media is impressive. People are using social media to find local businesses selling certain products or services and therefore using social media will help people realize that your business exist and you are likely to get new customers contacting you. Moreover, it is important to keep your social media platforms active by continually engaging with customers and posting updates. It has been found out that 63% of customers who search for businesses on social media are likely to use the active ones as they seem more focused. The most successful businesses hire a social media agency to help keep their brand active and have their customers engaged.  Starting a business is hard work. However, it is safe to say that establishing a successful business can be much harder, as it is both physically and emotionally challenging. Every entrepreneur starts a business with the hope of growing it into a successful and productive one. However, this is easier said than done. To start a business, especially now in the overcrowded startup world, has become quite difficult. To be prosperous, you need to be skilled, committed, persistent and very hardworking. Once you have an established business, you may decide to simply let it run as is or you may opt to find ways to help it achieve even more growth in order to continue to remain stable in the competitive market. I am sure many people would opt for the latter. If you are that person, I have compiled a set of questions below that you need to ask yourself about your business to ensure you stay on top of the game. 1. Are your business goals/plans working? Every business is established on a set of goals or on a business plan. Once running, many factors can lead to amendment of the business plan to make sure that the business is running smoothly. For a business to be successful, these goals have to be achievable and for them to be achievable you must have a way to measure their success to ascertain if there are working as planned. As a business person, you need to constantly evaluate your business plans and make changes where necessary. However, the first step to ensuring a successful business plan is by making sure the plan meets the principles of a SMART goal setting. Ask yourself, are your goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based? If your plan meets these 5 elements, then you have a high chance of achieving great results.  2. Do you have the right team working with you?
Working with a great team can determine the success of your business. Once you have set up a team, it is important to constantly monitor their performance and ensure they are consistently improving with time. There are several ways in which you can ensure your team is constantly growing and improving performance. For instance, through motivational talks, team building activities and short-term training. Each of these can help your team increase productivity. The Small Group Research journal paper "Does Team Building Work?" shows that team building can have a positive impact on your team performance. Don’t forget that monetary rewards such as bonuses, appraisals and promotions also help promote competency among team member and can translate to better performance in general.  As an entrepreneur, your number one goal is to increase your sales which translates to more profits. No matter what your budget is, there are always ways to increase your sales. The following are 7 ways you can increase your business sales even when working on a tight budget. 1. Enticing Your Existing Loyal Customers It is six to seven times more expensive to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. Targeting your regular customers is one of the best proven ways to increase your sales. These customers, know the quality of products much better and can help in pointing out key areas of improvement. It would be great to attract them to buy more by offering them discount or extended credits. 2. Using Social Media to Promote your products  Social media marketing has become one of the best tools to raise awareness and promote products nowadays. It is important to set social media accounts for your business and connect with your existing and potential customers. Use it to post your products, company updates, any offers, and to communicate directly with your customers. If you are too busy to manage your social media accounts, hire a social media marketing agency to help you connect and reach more customers.
3. Offering Promotion, discounts or incentives Offering slight discounts on your products may attract many new customers who are looking for cheaper options out there and if your products are great more and more customers will come rushing in. Promotions are also a great way to increase sales. Clients will try out your services or products hoping they become the winners in the promotion. Make sure you set terms including start dates and end dates for your promotions. Incentives are also a great way to bring in more sales. For example, you can offer an additional free item on your customer's cart once they buy your product or a certain number of products or offer free samples for them to test. |
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