Author: admin

OPINION: What’s Your VISION?

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Always concentrate on your VISION.

For years (now into the second decade) I was sucked into commenting on countless social media posts about politics or social issues I had zero influence on. We all have an opinion right? I even deleted my former Linked-in account because it seemed to be populated by people even more vociferous than myself posting comments from a perspective I could never agree with. In a low level way this made me angry too. Pointless!

But I have come to realise, albeit late in the day, that this effort is doing nothing to further my VISION.

I am by no means cured, it requires a realisation that a post reply will be a waste of energy and has nothing to do with my VISION.

I may never own a Koenigsegg Agera RS or join the Ghost Squadron, but I’ve got more chance by concentrating on what I can improve in my life than by commenting on the ‘Price of fish’ (topical not tropical)

What’s your VISION and what prevents you from achieving it?

Have a great day.

Anger Is An Energy

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“ANGER IS AN ENERGY!” Remember or ever listened to Rise by Public Image Limited? John Lydon yelling repetitively “Anger is an energy, anger is an energy” well, he certainly made it sound like it were! Yesterday I heard a Social Media Tip that proves it.

On Tik Tok, the algorithm promotes posts with greater Comments. This is a platform where the top age demographic (not mine or John Lydon’s I might add!) are very vocal and that includes the Haters, so you need a thick skin before you go dad dancing there fellow Gen X’ers.

But here’s the twist. Haters are leaving a Comment! Then if someone pro your post contests them, or more than one, that’s more comments. More grist to the comments mill.

So, with Tik Tok, the Haters literally drive your post towards the For You Page. RESULT!

Anger, as an energy.

May the road rise with you.

—-
Steve Coulter is a Social Media Enthusiast and Social Selling Evangelist with experience of building websites and e-commerce since they were written in HTML, you logged on with a modem and were desperate for Yahoo to rank your site to take off! ‘Overture anybody?’

Is your Social Media engagement Gold Standard? If not please send a DM and let’s chat. How may I help you?

It’s The e-Conomy Stupid

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Today Car Gurus published the results of a survey across 1500 participants but this information applies to any retail product. It completely vindicates the transformative Social Selling approach to marketing now and in a post-pandemic world. Remember, after the 1918-20 Spanish Flu pandemic there was an economic boom ‘The Roaring Twenties’ so hold tight!

Here are three of the takeaways;

Car buyers start the process full of uncertainty. 72% undecided when to buy at the beginning, over half undecided on make and model.


– An absolute nailed on reason to be interactive with your own customers online and in the groups and forums they discuss buying and ownership. You must be the preeminent dealer and trusted source in the field and be number one for publishing the benefits of ownership. Leave features to manufacturers, broadcast the benefits of the product. If you can buy online and have a product delivered you have to be on the top of the 100% Completely Satisfied Customer Service metric, encourage 5 Star Reviews on Google Business and shout both from the rooftops. Publish testimonials in your evergreen social grids and stories. Be creative with buyer involvement, photography, video and sharing too! Or, a seller 500 miles away who commands the space will deliver a product of your brand to your next door neighbour and keep the margin! Are you Social Listening too by researching your customers? Are you checking for your most effective posts and hashtags? Are you thanking followers for joining your Social Club and asking how you could serve them from first contact? Are you commenting in threads and receiving recommendations from others or having your trusted business and personnel tagged into a thread by a customer?! Priceless.

Buyers narrow their consideration significantly before taking action. 86% wait to submit a lead until they’re at least somewhat certain the vehicle is a good fit.


– More justification of Social Selling underpinning all your marketing. What’s more important than price? Trust. You can build trust without ever meeting a customer if you have third party proof of your values across the Internet. Of those 86% who would they contact first when they have broadly decided on the product spec? Yes, the dealer who is Authentic and has Gold Standard Reviews, and a friendly face in their social marketing. People buy from people.

Due to the pandemic many buyers are considering buying a car online for the first time. Before Covid 42% now 63%.


– How many people outside of business had heard of Zoom or Teams before March 2020? Now we are all becoming familiar with a quick Zoom or even FaceTime to receive some on the spot video shared knowledge. Technophobes, older generations (Boomers are cash and asset rich) and even Luddites are coming around to the convenience. People hate being jumped on by a poorly trained sales executive in a store, peer to peer video is accepted now and eradicates the selling dinosaur and in a recombinative way may demolish the store too. Legislation like Distance Selling Regulations and The Consumer Rights Act have your back should something be awry. But once again, you’re not expecting that to be a problem if you already trust the supplier before purchase.

All the above is basic management, but combined with Social Selling it’s a must to stay ahead of the competition in a world that is less reliant on bricks and far more so on clicks.

If you’re in business and the above resonates with you please contact me to discuss Social Selling, Content marketing, or any other gaps in your online sales process.

I am an early tech adopter and Social Selling & Customer Service Evangelist. How could I help you?

Fun Sells

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Fun Sells. If it was your objective to sell the product, imagine the social selling potential of tapping into the interests and contributing to the social media discourse of young people who might consider (say) buying a Fiat 500 car. Social media is an opportunity for business brands to create buyer awareness, to be holistic, not just advertise the features of a random new model as the manufacturer is already spending millions on that! But if you don’t provide any value you won’t attract invested followers which means they will never convert into a sale. By all means include a product in your Social Selling, but be subtle and make it fun.

Try to follow a 80/20 ratio. 80% building brand trust with authentic posts and stories and 20% advertising, make it stylish and colourful. Use filters like Mayfair with photographs on Instagram which is a powerful filter to stop a scrolling potential follower in their tracks. Make the post content entertaining and avoid duplicating hashtags too much. Go local, use localised hashtags to have a greater chance of appearing at the top of the feed. Be entertaining and approachable.

We all like to be liked, but with Instagram it’s more important for people to comment, save and share posts, and in Stories to share and ‘pull up’ the content available at the bottom of the screen as this all has a more positive effect on the algorithm versus simple likes. When posts are shared, your audience and reach grows. All this can be monitored in the Insights section of a Pro account and you can run similar posts to compare the outcomes of your chosen metric. Gradually creating the perfect post for your ideal buyer.

Social Selling can seriously influence your potential buyers, and prospects who over time following your interaction have formed trust in your brand and products. Also they are more likely to buy at ticket price and recommend others too. That’s a Win-Win!

How may I help you improve your Social Media effectiveness and Return On Investment? DM or call me today for an informal discussion.

Play The Game

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Struggling with your Instagram post reach & interaction?

My own Instagram account is very new, in fact it’s a week old today. As such, even as somebody I would hope you would trust with advice on digital development, social selling and content creation, I don’t think you would expect me to have thousands of followers. I am not going to say no, nor discourage you to have a significant follower count, if, and a big IF, they are interested in you and your product or brand and regularly interact with your posts and content. Social selling!

Followers alone is a fickle metric. If you have thousands of followers, which for a price are available to buy, each time you post the platform algorithm will measure response, likes and interactions. If these followers have no real interest in your post they won’t interact and the algorithm will bury your post. We both want your post to reach the perfect follower, someone invested because they may in the future want to buy from you. When you’re not dealing with your ideal follower no amount of posts will make them buy.

Tip. It’s worth regularly cleansing your followers of accounts who never interact. Posting solely to true fans has a positive effect on the reach of subsequent posts!

Achieve great engagement by tuning your post with relevant hashtags and speaking directly to them, satisfying a demand and including a call to action, the more people who Like, Share and Comment will boost your ranking in the algorithm and it will assume your audience likes and relates to your content.

Your post will be seen by more people and if the system is sensing your content is desirable and relevant it will appear in more searches. A virtuous circle.

Go Pro!

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Tip Of The Day. If you elect to run a professional Instagram account you will activate Insights data and Promotions functions. The data is invaluable to compare the performance of your posts. The Promotions data will give you important reach and Return On Investment (ROI) statistics.

The advertising guru and pioneer of data in advertising & marketing David Ogilvie once said ‘Not using data is like a General going into battle with no tanks’ so please do it today, if you’re running a business or promoting a personal or business brand, switch to pro.

If you have any difficulty, DM or call me and we’ll work it out together. Go Pro!

Social Listening

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My philosophy is to use Social Media to buy Social Currency, your authenticity builds trust and you give value to followers. The objective to be in the Box Seats when these new followers are in the market for your product or service.

Occasionally though, yes, let’s throw in some unobtrusive offers – specific to your followers. But how do you ensure that your followers are interested and proactive? The answer is Social Listening.

For example, your brand, let’s say ‘Fitness Supplements’ can drop into similar accounts and forums who are discussing this product or discipline, find relevant conversations and engage with interesting comments. These same people will check out your feed, follow and even click through to your website and be captured by your e-mail marketing system. But back to social media, once they are following you, either do a global platform offer, or target the offer to them personally via Direct Messaging (DM). Hopefully by then they trust you as a supplier and have seen the great testimonial of others – publish those they’re hard won!

You can stay on top of industry keywords and the competition and make this a central part of your Social Strategy. When in the past was this even possible?! It’s also free, or low cost if you employ a specialist.

You will also identify which platform your buyers use. Numerous times a week the question is posed? Which are the best platforms for my business or product? Well, the answers are out there if you go looking. Using this intel can only be positive towards your outright social media goals.

Thanks for listening (socially!)

If you would like to work together to improve your website content relevancy and / or social media effectiveness please contact me for an informal conversation.

Social Sellers Are The Top Performers

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Why do large follower counts not always equate to increased sales? This came up in a conversation yesterday where some social media accounts have follower counts in the tens of thousands but little interaction and few post likes. That’s a red flag.

It can be difficult to establish why social followers are not converting into sales so it’s best to avoid common mistakes such as simply posting offers on your social accounts that are preventing you from turning posts into dedicated followers and then Raving Fans.

Social Selling is a process that plays the long game, it’s a process of ongoing communication and relationship building between the business and followers through social media posts. 80% of social sellers outsell peers who don’t use social media. The top performers in retail are all social sellers and I know a number of them.

This is a contemporary model for sales, where social networking, engagement and product education combine to bring people to your website who are more ready to buy from a brand they trust.

People who rate your business and trust your services and products also recommend you to others, if you see a customer recommending your product using social media, make an effort to connect with them too. You’ll be notified whenever you are ‘tagged’ in on a post.

The idea of this method is to ensure that your business is the first on a buyer’s mind when it comes to that product or service. That’s the amazing thing about the internet, once this would have been out of the question without investing a considerable amount of money, now the tools available, it’s democratised business and your small and nimble brand could move ahead of larger competition by interacting through social media.

Please contact me if you feel a Social Selling strategy would improve your business.

Social Networks

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Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, WhatsApp, Clubhouse, Pinterest, SnapChat, Tik Tok and more…. I found one link with 100 plus alternatives!

How could you possibly create original content and update all these at the desired frequency and cope with new entrants? That’s a fast track to an asylum! Here are just a few of the considerations;

Specific to the brand, you need to study who uses each platform to decide if this is where your ideal customer posts, comments and shares posts.

Concentrate on the top three platforms. These combine to build your brand and lead prospects towards your website landing page or Call To Action. *If they arrive at your website capture names, and contact details to utilise e-mail marketing and newsletters which is a whole other discipline.

Look at your demographic and ideal customer and note which hashtags they follow.

Be sensible with hashtags. For visibility and reach, research hashtags with 1M posts and use three to six, and less than 100K posts and use another three to six. Your post is more likely to show at the top of the listings (and clicked on) using the lesser used keywords.

Determine when and what to post and the frequency to be picked up by the platform’s algorithm.

Many of these have more than one element, regular posts, stories (often higher visibility than regular posts), short video, longer format video etc. One may carry greater weight and require more frequent posts.

Post appropriate to platform content that positively reflects your brand and values. Consistent appearance.

Track the likes and comments on posts, compare the stats of each metric ‘Likes’ ‘Comments’ ‘Click Throughs’ to determine which posts are most effective and at what time of the day. Rinse and repeat!

For example, Facebook Business has a fabulous amount of demographic data you can check against each post.

Contribute by commenting, liking and sharing content, on each chosen platform, preferably for 20 minutes prior to posting.

Now begin your working day!

Actually, this is why this is best subcontracted to specialists who study this all day every day, are aware of changes to the algorithm and leave you to build your business that you know far more about!

For an informal discussion about your Social Media strategy please contact me.

If Not Me, Who? If Not Now, When?

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I had in mind a different post this morning but inspired to publish this great quote after listening to a number of contributors in a superbly managed Clubhouse* club ‘Breakfast With Winners’ the room entitled ‘Winners Mindset vs Self Doubt’.

At some time or another, everybody suffers from self doubt or ‘Imposter Syndrome’, I learned that this is a precursor to the fight or flight reflex for when we feel threatened. Our inner voice is sending a warning and triggers the nerves and doubts that hold us back – ‘saving’ us from the scenario our brain wishes to remove us from. The key seems to be to recode our mind so that the scenario is no longer threatening, and affirmations and training are perfect for this.

A number of highly successful people running the club expressed examples when self doubt appeared and the tactics they employed to overcome. One admitted it was rare but went back to basics and read the numerous self-help and business books they have collected then RESET. But that takes time. Another quoted the Louise Hay book ‘Feel The Fear & Do It Anyway’ which mentioned that 90% of the time, the fear that is holding us back usually turns out to be only 10% of what we feared in reality. My own I learned from my daughter’s first employer a decade ago. If not me, Who? If not now, When? Think about that, take a deep breath or two and Just Do It! Okay, I lifted the last slogan!

Let me know of any strategies you use when self doubt holds you back.

* I have a number of Clubhouse invites if you would like to join, iPhone is required presently. Please DM