Social Media – PR, marketing, and media production | Alchemy On Demand

Why Social Media is Important for Small Businesses

Admin — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 10:53:27 +0000

I hear this one often: you’ve got a small business, so why even bother with social media?

As much as we might like to ignore it, social media has become a major player in today’s internet. As a business owner, it’s not something we can ignore, and with Facebook’s Two Billion+ reach, why would we? Lamenting your lack of business shouldn’t be an excuse if you’ve got a decent product. How many times have you said to yourself “I know that people will want what I have to offer if I could only reach them.” Well, writing a killer blog and correctly utilizing SEO is essentially free advertising – as is maintaining a social presence.

Generating some quality content is a great way to let these people know what your business is about. Keep in mind, however, that it’s imperative that your social presence be a quality social presence, as this Neil Patel blog will tell you. It’s also important that you don’t hard sell your customers, at least not right off the bat – do this and you risk losing your fan base. What you want to do is engage them, build a rapport with them, and then link them to your services.

Start things off slowly, and give people some quality information. Think of this process as making the web the best possible experience and you’ll do just fine. A sort of “Give the people what they want” ethos for the long run.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How To Find Your Ideal Client And Rock Them

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 08:06:05 +0000

Let me present a situation to you:

You’re blogging away, creating all this great content, and you’ve been at it for months yet nobody has seemed to turn into a regular follower. Your email #’s remain low, as does your traffic.

What gives?

If your content is good and your capture forms are in place, chances are your targeting is off.

To fix it, know that targeting is about two things:

1.) Knowing your target client.

2.) Finding them online.

Now let’s get crackin’.

Knowing your Target Client is Important

Here’s why:

1.) When you know your target audience you can write to just him/her. You do this because copy reads better if you’re writing to one rather than many.

Think about it. I’m writing to you right now, aren’t I? Note the conversational tone, my casual use of slang, the way I act familiar by using words like “you” and “I” – all these things help foster trust and break down inter-personal barriers. Getting people to trust you is the first step toward getting them to like you. And people listen to people they like and trust.

2.) The more you know about your ideal customer, the better you can present your business’s unique value to your potential clients.

For example, if you know that your target customer is in an older demographic, you’ll probably use different language than when marketing to 15 year-olds that eat lunch at Taco Bell. You’ll also be able to better identify their key pain points and insinuate why your business is uniquely poised to help solve them.

3.) Knowing more about your ideal customer helps you consolidate your efforts. It helps you know where to find them online and elsewhere, so your marketing campaigns can be more effective.

4.) And finally, it’s damn hard to find good content. It’s even harder to create good content on your own.

To continually come up with good ideas, you’re going to need to tap other sources. So in order to find what your potential customers are responding to, you’re going to have to know who they are and where they hang out, what they like and don’t like, what’s appropriate and what’s not.

So that’s why you need to find your ideal client.

Here’s how you go about actually finding them.

Step 1: Use That Grey Matter

Fight the urge to skip the “Target Client” step. It’s really in your best interest.

Example: Let’s say that you’re a contractor who specializes in high-end home remodels. You might first think that you want to rank like crazy for “Custom Home Remodel in [insert target city],” but in reality, most high-end home remodel jobs come from word of mouth, right?

Therefore, you want to:

1.) Position yourself as a leader in your field about construction.

BUT ALSO

2.) Target your approach to those who would give you word of mouth – Designers, Architects, Sub-Contractors, etc. You can make friends with these “complementary” industries who are also targeting your same client, but with a different service.

Take-Home: Think for a minute about who it is you’re trying to appeal to, then see if there are any complimentary industries that are targeting the same clientele, and then consider using their information to your benefit.

Cool?

Ok, now let’s say you’ve thought about your ideal client.

It’s time to get get to work.

Step 2: Find your Target Client: Search and Destroy is Not Just for War Games

Identifying your target demographic, much like writing, is a process of revision. You’re going to start out with an idea, then hone and refocus, hone and refocus, hone and refocus.

Try not to think of it as excluding anybody from your market, but more that you’re targeting the people where your message will have the greatest impact.

Also like writing, you’re going to need to be brutally honest about your business and its capabilities.

For example, if you asked me who my ideal client might be, I may say “Direct Relief International.” They have a huge advertising budget, do good work all over the world, and are accessible to me since I’m based in Santa Barbara, California.

But, being honest, Alchemy can’t handle DRI – they’re simply too large an operation. We’d be swamped and completely under-resourced. We’d have to drop our other clients, bring teams of people on, and spend weeks, if not months, training them.

Instead, a more honest answer would be:

This guy.

This is a middle-aged CEO/doctor/dentist/etc in Santa Barbara who:

runs his own practice and, as of late,
has found his business trailing off. He’s not sure why – he suspects it has something to do with the digital revolution, but he
doesn’t have the time nor the inclination to do the work himself. He’s good at his job and he wants someone who’s good at theirs.
He makes more than$100k/yr, has an advertising budget of $2500/month, and “just wants it handled.”

That, is my ideal client. Notice that I’m not going for a big pay-off here. Our ideal client isn’t a windfall of good fortune, it’s the good solid customer that will form the foundation of your business.

I’ve narrowed my ideal client down by assessing his

Pain Points – time (he lacks it and wants more of it), small-to-medium sized business operation concerns, clients (he wants more of them by getting the phone ringing)
Age – 40+
Location – Central Californian Coast
Gender – Male or Female
Income – $100k+ annual
Education – High
Occupation – Doctor/Sciences (or any relatively high-level of income small-to-medium sized business owner. This opens up: contractor, dentist, lawyer, early startups, and so forth)
Occupational Heirarchy -(Manager, Buyer, Worker Bee, etc.) – Owner/ Manager/ CEO
Ethnicity – Any
Marital Status – Married with Children (Probably)
# of Children (2)

In reality, the more information you can gather about your ideal client. Hobbies, personality traits, recreational activities, outdoorsy/indoorsy, everything – the more, the better. Make a spreadsheet. Find a picture. Print it out and pin it to your wall.

Have it look something like this:

This will help you flesh out your ideal client personality profile. And this will, in turn, help you to understand what other information he might be looking at and how he might respond to your marketing efforts.

Ultimately, all your marketing efforts are going to be about building your brand into a brand personality. People resonate with a brand personality that is either closely akin to themselves or one they admire or respect.

This is who you’re targeting.

Now let’s go find them online.

Step 3: Let Me Google That For You

There are a number of ways I can go about doing this.

I can make a list of potential magazines that cater specifically to that demographic:

Conde Naste
Esquire
Vanity Fair, etc.

But this would take too long and be guesswork, nothing solid.

Instead, let’s put that information into amazon.com and see what’s recommended.

A quick search for “Business Owner Magazine” gives me Inc. Fast Company, and Entrepreneur. Click those and see what’s recommended, and your list grows.

You can then read some of these magazines, visit their site, and see how their social media efforts are panning out for them and what language is being used.

Ask yourself: Is humor involved? Is the tone subtle? Are the images racy? Classy? Dignified? You can model your marketing approach and brand copy after theirs.

Option 2: Use Your Competitors

Successful competitors are a treasure trove of customers. Pay attention to their social profiles and which posts do well and you can do likewise.

Additionally, Twitter allows you to search profiles. This is an often under-utilized tool.

In our example of Business Owners, we can search for “INC” “LLC” “.com” and other suffixes that are commonly found in users’ profiles if they’re business owners. This way you can not only see the language that they use, but you can reach out to them directly. Bonus!

Curveball: “Ok Hudson, you say. That’s all good and well, but I’ve got to market to my ideal customers, not just write to them.”

No problem.

Let’s take a look at CityTowninfo.com. Under Employment, we’ll see the list of just about every job in the country.

Click on the job, and you’ll get a breakdown of the professions, top-paying places in the country, job openings, and much more data. You can search for the job your target client has, see what cities have that job with a median pay that fits your target demographic, and then use these cities in your PPC/Facebook/whatever approach.

Not too shabby, eh?

Now you know how to: find your target customer, interact with them on social platforms, and speak to them in their language so that your message resonates with them.

What do you say? Got any additional targeting tips you’d like to share? Fire away.

–Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How To Harness Social Media to Boost Your Business

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 04:42:59 +0000

You constantly hear that social media is the way to build business, attract friends, fans, and followers, and “go viral” overnight. But as anyone who has waded into the web has quickly discovered, you can easily spend hours caught in this “web” with very little to show for your effort.

If only it were as easy as creating a Facebook page.

Don’t lose heart, however. As you’ve heard us say elsewhere on these pages, PR and marketing efforts are cumulative. They build over time. And over time, your investments will pay off.

Here are some bangarang ways to get readers interested in your business, whatever it may be.

Solicit Your Friends

Perhaps the hardest part about starting any new business is this: Owning It. Tell your friends and contacts about your new venture. Don’t be shy – they’re your friends and they support you. Twitter is built upon the reciprocal tweet system. Friend/follow someone and with about a 10% rate, they’ll follow/friend you.

Time your posts

Becoming something of an authority in your industry takes time and effort, but it’s what you want to do in order to assure your clients and customers that your product or service is coming from the best source. The key is consistency. Like the gym, gains aren’t made overnight but by sticking to a planned schedule. Time your posts and social media listings to publish at a set time 2-5 times every week, at least.

And when specifically should you publish your blog posts? Typically, the best time to publish your blogs is between 9:30am and 11am USA East Coast time. Testing has shown that this is the time when most Americans are up and running, but this data constantly changes. For Facebook, you can use their analytics tool to find out what time best suits your audience.

Now that you’ve got the basics covered, let’s look at ways you can go about drumming up that business.

Create Interesting Content

This is the hardest thing of all, right? I mean, if creating interesting content was so easy, we wouldn’t spend hours trolling the web looking for it. Well here’s the golden rule: do what your customers are too lazy to do. It takes work, but it isn’t necessarily hard. Once you know your business (and you do, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be in business) then all you have to do is tell your industry the best things about their business.

Take, for instance, flashlights. Now my girlfriend goes crazy over this, but I recently developed a thing for flashlights. Not a pervy thing, just an interest. So I poke about looking for which flashlight has the best throw, flood, spill, this and that, you know, whatever. Anyway, these people over at candlepowerforums have done more testing than you would’ve ever thought possible about flashlights, their lumen output, their lux output, their ANSI ratings, mods, you get the picture.

Still, if you’re looking into purchasing a light hand cannon, well then you’ve come to the right place. The font of information inspires you, engages you, and they sell flashlights.

Now back to your business:

Find interesting content that pertains to your field: this can be anything from ANSI ratings to the brilliance of radiant cut diamonds. Share this with your readers. It will boost your SERP (Social Engine Results Page) and help to define you as an authority in your field.
Make it new – Below, I encourage you to make a spreadsheet–a list–of others in your field. (That’s right, even your competitors.) Read their posts and spin their content. Take their nugget and add your own value to it. (It’s not stealing; all of society is built off a handful of great people and their work. We all pitch in incrementally, but we all had to learn something from someone.) See what’s happening in the field, what your customers are responding to (by checking out which blog posts receive the most shares) and see how you can add your own creative twist.
Give Away Free Stuff – I know that it’s hard to do this as a budding business, but here’s perhaps the most valuable thing you can give: information. (That’s what Alchemy On Demand is doing here, see?) Use that interesting content and create an eBook or better yet, a training course. Offer a service and have your audience pay with a tweet. Or with, say, a Facebook “like” or email address. The more creative you get here the better.

Get a list of others in your field

What? This is about me, not them, right? I know, I know. But if you’re a regular reader of this blog you know that I’m a big fan of lists–for a reason: editors, readers, and customers love lists – and you should too. For our present purposes, your list enables you to find out what others in your field are doing and spark ideas about what you could be doing to create interest. You identify opportunities to comment to their blog or Facebook posts, thereby alerting their friends, followers, and fans, that you’re a valuable resource too. You might even approach one of these businesses or social media sites with a request to author a guest blog on their site. And offer them the same on yours. Now you’re gaining access to their customers.

Google Alerts is another great way to stay up-to-date about what is going on in your field, but generally speaking, might not be focused enough to be pertinent in your niche. If you’re selling a product or service related to spiritual healing, for example, then you may have a hard time finding other blogs and industry professionals that are keeping you updated with breaking news. But you will probably find a wealth of information regarding healing, spirituality, holistic health, general health, Western vs. Eastern Medicine, etc., in general. Use Technorati to get a good list of 200+ blogs that pertain to your field and then use a service like Alexa or Similarweb to check rankings and order them in order of their readership.

Something like so:

This will give you the contacts you need in order to stay up to date on what is happening in your industry. If you don’t like doing this yourself (after all, you’ve got a company to run), I’ve found some great help using Upwork in the past.

Well, there you have it. Some good info about the beginning stages of drumming up your business. I’ll conclude here with the firm advice to begin conversations with people, like them, follow them, +1 them, Link them, whatever it takes at this point. It’s hard to get your readership off the ground, but once you get rolling, you get rolling in customers, and ooh boy – what a feeling.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

Why Write a Killer Blogpost

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 03:59:48 +0000

Sure, it seems easy enough – all your friends seem to have started one, so why shouldn’t you? But with the advent of the internet and weblogging, it seems that everyone has become an expert and so it’s hard to separate the good content from dross, the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. There are plenty of articles out there from a great many web authors, but the question remains – what’s in a blog post?

Blog posts can be written for a variety of reasons – a blog about your new hobby baking cupcakes is one thing, but if you’re looking to generate some quality content for your business, then that’s a whole other bag. Businesses that maintain a web presence (and who doesn’t nowadays?) will benefit to have a blog that maintains a quality line of content. This not only shows your prospective customers that you are staying informed (as well as informing them) about current trends in your industry, but it also helps to make your site competitive on search engines like Bing and Google.

People are paying thousands of dollars nowadays to talk to search engine optimizers (SEOs), and it only makes good business sense – the better your site does on a Google ranking, the more potential customers will see it and the more business you’ll generate. And so getting back to our point, writing a great blog post not only generates visitors to your site helping to validate it, but it also allows you to add keyword-rich content that helps make your site better “known” to Google for these particular keywords. But writing a great blog post does more than this, it also allows you to establish a community and a relationship with that community.

According to SEO gurus like Neil Patel and SEOmoz, companies see a far better Return On Investment (ROI) when they have loyal, return viewers of their site. Thus, quality content establishes a rapport, builds a fan base, and imbues a sense of your competency in those who would visit your site. With the latest Google Algorithm updates, gone are the days of generating countless backlinks and keyword-rich nonsense content.

And thank heavens for that, eh? Let’s make the web better for all involved. Here’s to generating some quality content and keeping the BlackHats out of it.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How to Generate Free Publicity (Part 2)

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 00:26:12 +0000

OK, so you’ve got a great story about your business you want your local media to cover. How do you get their attention?

Just like in fishing, we call it The Hook.

The Hook is an intriguing email subject line/press release headline that makes readers (and editors are readers) want to know more.

Here are some tips for “hooking” an editor with your press release:

Use numbers. I don’t know why; they’re like lists. Editors–and other readers–love ’em. “Fifty ways to leave your lover.” “Top 12 Films of 2012.” “Five flavorful ways to serve meatloaf.” “Thirty great gifts under $30.” “The 10 worst pick-up lines ever.” Except for the meatloaf one, don’t you want to know more?

Turn conventional wisdom on its head. It’s always interesting when someone goes against the grain. Instantly, observers start to follow that one and ignore the crowd. “Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten” (not college). “Why working out won’t help you lose weight.” (Sorry; I made that up. Last time I got on the scale it still wasn’t true.) “Why raising test scores won’t fix society.”

Do both. “Five reasons nuclear weapons can’t keep us safe .” “Three myths about fluoride your dentist doesn’t want you to know.” “Three things your girlfriend wants besides chocolate, flowers, and a ring.”

See the world through an editor’s eyes. That means being sensitive to what’s timely in THEIR world (hint: what holiday is coming up next month?) and tying your news to it in ways that catch their attention. For local business editors: “Why Mother’s Day is a money-maker”; Lifestyle editors: “What NOT to give Mom for Mother’s Day this year,” or “When Mom is gone: How to remember Mom on Mother’s Day.” For Travel or Food editors: “Beyond brunch: 10 memorable places to take Mom on her day.” Politics and foreign policy: What would Mom do? (Threw that one in there to see if you’re still reading.)

Mind you: these topics are timely a month in advance for daily or weekly media; monthly media typically want six months’ lead time. That means if you want media to run a story on you before the holiday season, send them your press release six months in advance, using any of the above tips that appeal to you.

Share your success stories! What’s the most effective “hook” you ever used with the media?

— Leslee Goodman
Alchemy On Demand

How to Generate Local Publicity (Part 1)

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 00:22:23 +0000

It’s the holy grail of all small businesses – Free Publicity.

But how do you get it?

In this age of information overload, it can be hard for beginning businesses to be heard above the din of more experienced buzz-makers.

The good news is that the more media outlets there are–newspapers, e-zines, magazines, social media sites, and blog-talk radio shows, the more media outlets are looking for quality content. And local media outlets are hungry for LOCAL media content… meaning you and your business.

Sadly, local media producers are unlikely to come to you. If you want the media to report on your business, you have to let them know why they should.

The press release is a business’s primary tool for communicating with the media. A press release is a one- to two-page document that informs the media of a newsworthy event at your company.

What is a newsworthy event?

A new product launch; a new management-level hire; a new location; new store hours; new social responsibility initiative; new partnership – all are newsworthy events. Are you seeing a connection here? What’s newsworthy is what’s NEW. It’s really that simple.

Sure, not every editor is going to be interested in every new offering that comes out of your company, but tailor your news release to the appropriate outlet.

The business section of the local paper may be interested in your new product line, while the news and lifestyle editors will not. Perhaps there’s a trade publication for your industry? Send your new product launch press release to its editor. If your company makes the cover of the trade publication that news may warrant a story in the hometown paper or news broadcast.

Take, for example, Lucky Penny Press. They recently partnered with poet laureate emirata of Santa Barbara to co-create a picture book of poetry for kids and adults. We sent a press release to the Santa Barbara Independent arts editor, who found it pertinent because the poet, Perie Longo, maintains a following in the Santa Barbara area, and April is National Poetry Month. Lucky Penny Press got some good publicity out of the deal.

What are some other ways you can generate buzz for your business?

Do something for your community.

Partner with a local nonprofit to clean up the beach. Start an intern program for local teens. Conduct an office food drive for local fire or flood victims. Take a photo of any of these initiatives, write it up, and send it to the local press. Do it monthly. You’re doing something for the people the media serve and they are likely to cover it.

Create a contest.

This is one of the most effective ways of building social media followers and fans. Offer your product as the prize and give people a chance to win it for “Liking” or “Sharing” your page. Mashable wrote a great post about the creative ways businesses used contests to build their online community. One of my favorites is the Downtown Ithaca’s Alliance, which hides a garden gnome somewhere in downtown Ithaca, NY. People hit the streets in order to find the gnome and post their findings on DIA’s various social media channels. A great way to build community and a relatively free and easy way to drum up press.

Host an event.

Open your doors for the local art walk. Have a monthly open house with wine and cheese. Host a talk about something your business is knowledgeable in. People love free events–especially with food and drink–and most local media will list free events in their Calendar sections–for free.

These are just a few ways you can get the word going about your business. There are numerous other ways to get the media interested in what you’re doing… ways we call “hooking” an editor.

Do you have any creative ways to “hook” an editor?

Let us hear about ’em!

–Leslee Goodman
Alchemy On Demand

Social Media – PR, marketing, and media production | Alchemy On Demand

Why Social Media is Important for Small Businesses

How To Find Your Ideal Client And Rock Them

How To Harness Social Media to Boost Your Business

Why Write a Killer Blogpost

Top 10 Words That Capture Readers’ Attention

How to Generate Free Publicity (Part 2)

How to Generate Local Publicity (Part 1)