Know-How Exchange : Social Media

Ari,

There are several factors to getting people to follow you. First, you have to be found - you've achieved that, IF your target is California. You've achieved nice organic results on Google - for "California HR Help" you were 2nd and for "California Small Business HR" you come up 1st. Good show! If I leave off the "California," not so good, so nation-wide, you don't have a presence. But, I am assuming you don't mind that.

The second factor is you have to be found by the right people. Who are you targeting? I suppose you are going to tell me you want to get to small business owners. Not narrow enough. That would be an owner of a sole proprietorship, one with 10 employees, 50 employees, 100 employees, 500 employees (the SBA definition), or a business owner under five feet tall. Narrow your target as much as possible and personalize the message to that target.

The third factor is you need to provide information people need. To find this out, you have to ask your narrow target what they need that you can provide. This is the ONLY way. You can't decide for them. That would be like developing a product based on what you like and dislike to solve problems you have without ever checking if anyone else has a similar outlook and similar problems. This doesn't work.

The fourth factor is credibility. You have visibility, but if no one knows who Ari Rosenstein is and why one should listen to him, then you're stuck. You seem to be doing pretty well here. When I google you, I get all kinds of independent listings of articles you have done. You may want to add speaking engagements to your bag of tricks. Get out there in front of people and make some noise (Press releases, etc) about it. Doing social media alone doesn't work as well as if you combine other parts of your marketing strategy and plan. You need to develop a personal network and utilize that to point people to your social network. Join organizations (like BNI, chambers, etc). Be highly visible personally. Build physical links to your targets.

The fifth factor - does social media line up with how your target is influenced to buy your services? You could be out there very well and have a huge following, but if it doesn't lead to a sale, who cares? Maybe your target isn't influenced by social media. Again, you have to ASK them to find out.

The sixth factor - and probably this should be first - what is it you're trying to achieve with social media? Since you are putting a bunch of work into this and you feel it's not paying off, what is it you expect? How many people (of the right kind) do you expect should follow you? More importantly, what is your business objective of this effort? One prospect a week? A month? A year? How many of those do you expect to convert to clients? At what revenue impact and profit impact? You want to understand this because you want to invest your time and money in the most effective methods to obtain clients (unless you aren't interested in clients and relieving them of their money).

I hope this helps.

Wayde

You are doing things that are too passive. Get from behind the desk and combine your online efforts with offline. There is no replacement for a good old fashioned sales call.

Think about it. You have to have "followers"-- how limited is that. And if you find a prospect-- they have to be in a discussion group that you might post-- or they won't see you.

I have two target niches that I identified recently. Neither of them post a single thing. So I guess I could stalk them-- and be reported as spam. Do I gleem a couple things from their profiles to leave great smart warm calls?? you betcha. Would I ever get to a sale without traditional methods-- no friggin way.

Bloggin shoud be part, but not all of your marketing efforts. Your plan is short -- and that is why your results are short.

Before you started blogging, what was your goal? During the past year, how much were you analyzing the results of your efforts (traffic, followup, contact, etc.)? How do these efforts compare to your website? Is your website getting dramatically more interest than your blog (if so, then consider posting your top searched qns on your home page)? Does your blog match your visitors needs? If someone visits the home page, why would they visit a "blog" - what's the value for them to click-and-see? Finally, does your target market actually need/trust the information in your blog (vs. an "authority" site)?

OK. So you've really learned a lot.

You've learned that maintaining a blog takes a lot of time and effort if you're going to do a good job.

You've learned that this is not a case of "if you build it they will come." You have to have a way to let the right people know you have a blog that might be useful to them.

You've learned that a blog alone isn't a marketing plan. You need to integrate the blog into a total plan if it's going to be of any use.

You might want to comment on some other people's blogs as a way of becoming part of an interactive community. The whole idea is that you will interact with your target audience, not simply distribute your own musings and information.

And I'm probably missing some other important points. At least now you have a sense of what a blog can and cannot do.

Take the advice of the others (above) to heart. Make sure you know how success will be measured, get out into the real world and interact one-on-one with your customers and potential customers, use analytics to figure out which of your topics is most read, shared and appreciated by your readers and do more like them. All good ideas for you.

Almost everything I was going to suggest has been said above. So these are minor and/or reinforcing notes:
1. Have you checked to see what the actual Google (and Bing, Yahoo) searches around HR, are? The phrases and keywords could be surprisingly different from the ones you use. According to one of my SEO tools, none of your most frequently used phrases have any measurable search presence. Learning and using and repeating the actual search terms people use is another way of getting to know your prospects.
2. Narrowing down your prospect universe is critical as stated above. However, realistically, it might not be just one narrow slice. That's okay too. But try to identify which well-defined types of companies are your best prospects -- and as a fun and useful exercise, create personas for each. Give them names, back stories, pets, etc. Then when you write for each group, you can visualize a real person you're trying to help.
3. The way you're helping them is not just to repeat news items, by the way, although of course you can always start with that. What impact does that news bit have on that persona's business -- you know, Alicia, with the business she's trying to run for her dad, who's still trying to help, but is actually interfering...
4. As was said, you need to be out on other people's blogs, commenting there and (as appropriate, and politely) referring to blog posts of yours that go into more detail. When you're reading other people's blogs, you can also give them a shout-out when they make a good point.
5. Setting goals, even guesstimates, for what you expect to happen is important. Then you can course-adjust. But you need to have the sales funnel in mind all the way. The just-helpful blog entry may catch someone's attention, but then you should have a link to an appropriate landing page with more info on that subject, and perhaps a signup for info on just that topic. (Whenever it comes up.) Then you can begin getting more pointed in the sales effort (pointed as in deeper in the funnel, too!).
5A. How to set goals: work backwards from the business goal. Say you spend 4 hours a week on the blog. How much profit should you be making per hour of your time? Knowing your profit margin, you can figure how many sales you need to get that profit per week or month. How many steps will you have in your sales funnel? What percentage of each stage will convert to the next? So say you need 2 new clients a month (longterm contracts, say), and you think it's realistic to convert 20% of people who receive special offers to clients, 10% of email newsletter or specific topic RSS to special offers, 3% of blog visitors to newsletter recipients....(These are not unrealistic conversion percentages, I'm told.) So of the 1300 unique visitors, just 4 might get the newsletter...You're definitely going to have to increase your blog readership -- or readjust your expectations -- or decide, as was suggested, that maybe blogging is NOT worth as much time as you're giving it, for your target slices. Hope this helps!

Ari,

You serve a wide range of businesses - yes. We're all capable of service "Everyone who has money." We're not talking about the act of "making a choice to serve only one narrow focused customer category." Sure, serve ANYONE who comes through the door as long as you can make a profit. We are, however, talking about in whom you're investing your marketing spend to acquire. I'm sure that the entire range of customers you have ever served don't result in the same profit margin. If that's the case, why would you spend equally on each when some will net you very little return on your investment. In a strategic sense, you need to know exactly who you want to go for - those big fish who will keep you eating for years versus the minnows that just bite your toes. Targeting a wide audience means you have to double, triple, quadruple, quintuple - maybe increase by a decade your investment of time and effort to have an effect. However, if you target a place to start, nail that, then use your results to hit the next area, etc, you can have much better results earlier and eventually have great results in a broader sense. If you haven't', read Sun Tzu's Art of War Plus the Art of Marketing. (https://www.amazon.com/Sun-Tzu%C2%BFs-Art-Plus-Marketing/dp/1929194234/ref=...)

With respect to honing your message when YOU want to cover a broad range...I ask you: Who are you writing for? YOU or the prospects and clients who you want to read it? If it's prospects and clients, then shouldn't you write what THEY want read - stuff that's relevant to them? How you find this out is ASK them.

Social media works best in niches. If you have something that is HIGHLY relevant to a particular focused target, you will get a huge readership and following from that niche. Broad approaches don't work well. Again, it's the principle of landing a beachfront, driving a wedge in, and then moving to the next beachfront.

Wayde

You got really good replies above. You have decent followers and with Twitter, no one uses RSS due to its limitation compared to twitter and its apps. That's based on my experience!

With these tools, twitter and social media in general, there are tons of information. People are getting a lot from you and from others, so it was a great idea from above to combine online with offline. Also, have the business grown even a little?

I can tell that you easily can gain confidence and who ever visits your site, knows that you know what you do, and that is great.. You are not just an HR firm that has a static website..

Finally, it might be useful to add a question a the end of your post, something to engorge the reader to ask a question and communicate.

Good luck, I have read some of your posts and really enjoyed them.. I'm following you now on twitter :)

You don't miss anything but only; consistency and right places to link and right people to aware.

In facebook, develop a facebook page of your blog and do postings one or two daily. Use tabs; discussion, notes and start topics where your page fans interact with you and each other and share comments. Suggest this page to your existing users and also find some new profiles on facebook that meet your requirments and send invitations to them.
at twitter, follow the related blogs and people having interest in small business ideas and besides tweeting on it, send thanks everytime a new follower join and also reply others massages.

Besides these, you can also join forums like wisebread and use yahoo answers and answer questions related to your blog posts and also add links.
You can also used ppc (pay per click) advertising if afford in order to get huge traffic on your blog.

And also digg your blog posts.

Here is the great article that further help you, 'the importance of blog marketing'.
https://ezinearticles.com/?The-Importance-of-Blog-Marketing&id=4156654

must know, no strategy failed if implemented properly.
But it demands persistent efforts too.
Thanks