This information has important implications for marketers and businesses, now the authors have produced an infographic which sets out significant events and their timing in the swings of the pendulum.

Infographic by Leigh Jeffery

If you need ideas on how the swing of the Pendulum could affect your business.

Jazzed up Social Media

Do you need to jazz up your social media pages or create presentations in a hurry?

You don’t have the time to spend hours on it and it’s not a big or important enough project for an external agency or artist? But it needs to look better than a simple text document.

This is somewhat contrary to my normal advice to business owners; sticking to what you do best – running your business – and delegating as much as possible to experts in other areas.

However, sometimes we do need to be an alchemist, play around with something creative ourselves or delegate a task to one of our own people.

I have been using two free tools that make these small creative projects very easy and quick.

The first is wordle.net  for creating word clouds. It is ideal for lists of values, characteristics, inspirational words, quotations or any other collection of words that need to be displayed with impact.

Here is an example:

Words can be horizontal, vertical or both, colours, fonts and layouts can be customised.

The other is Gimp a free image manipulation programme that has many features, it is a little complicated to use but it does have detailed instructions in an on-line manual.

It is useful for creating blog and stationery headers, graphics for blog posts. Enhancing, changing or adding text to photos, creating logos and much more.

Here is a graphic created with Gimp:

Where to start?

If you are contemplating using it, the best way to explore all that it can do is to start with a very simple project, complete it, save it, convert it to a jpg or pdf file. Then start doing the more complex operations one at a time and look at the results. I found that trying to dive in the deep end and create a detailed blog header as a first project led to hours of frustration.

Gimp can be downloaded here: Gimp.org

Hope you find them useful.

Need ideas how to use graphics in your business?

The conventional blogging wisdom is that more is always better when it comes to frequency and number of posts.

Maybe it is, maybe not.

What is the purpose of a blog?

• To satisfy the publishers yearning to see his or her words in print.
• To entertain, educate, inform or persuade.
• To be a medium for attracting customers.
• To start a movement.
• To save the world.

Whether for personal or business reasons, we need to be sure of our reason for publishing a blog.

This website is to inform customers and prospective customers how my skills and experience can help them in their businesses or personal lives. The blog is part of that purpose. Posts on this blog are intended to provide information that is of value to readers, both existing and prospective clients as well as visitors who may never become clients.

Having a blog on this business website is also intended to improve the SEO and attract more traffic by virtue of regular, new content.

Those are the two main purposes of this blog, it’s a tactic that is part of my strategy as a business and marketing alchemist.

I publish a personal blog where I aim to entertain, educate, inform and challenge readers to view life from a different perspective and of course satisfy my desire to be a published writer.

What I do not do here is publish posts purely for the sake of publishing 1,2 or whatever magic number of posts each week.

That is why a week or 10 days might go by without a new post, I prefer to wait until I have something useful to write about.

Here are a few tools you might find useful.

Spreaker.com

I have been recording as audio versions of some of my blog posts on PeterwrightsBlog as podcasts. These are now available on iTunes. I have recently discovered Spreaker and have posted some of my podcasts there. It is easy to use and could be a useful tool for you if you are building a community of customers or product users.

BeeVocal

Another new Internet radio service is BeeVocal, recorded or live shows can be created. Great for those marketers needing an easy to use platform to speak to customers live.

Need some ideas how to use audio in your marketing?

image by thom via Compfight

HubSpot via Compfight

Have you had a problem with plugins behaving badly and the unintended consequences of changing account log in details?

You are not alone, I recently had experiences of both.

Here’s what I noticed on my main blog:

• Facebook’s Networked Blogs app not posting to my page.
• RSS feed not working.
• Onlywire syndication service not posting to Google+ page.

There were two separate problems. Lets deal with the easy one first.

A few weeks ago. I got a warning message from Google that an attempt had been made to change the password on my main Gmail account, the one that is linked to all my Google accounts. As it provided a time, IP address and location showing that the attempt was not made from my computer, I followed the advice and immediately changed my password.

A few days later, I noticed that Onlywire was no posting my blog posts to my Google+ pages. I had by this time discovered the second problem and thought they were connected. They were not.

I had forgotten that Onlywire requires the correct log in details to be able to syndicate posts to the accounts for which it has been set up. Change these details and Onlywire cannot log in and post.

The lesson here is to check and update all the services that require log in details whenever email or social media account passwords are changed.

The second issue was a bit more complicated and took longer to sort out.

I started with the networked blogs app, every thing looked correct, it confirmed the RSS feed was valid, but there were no recent posts for that blog showing.

Then I went to Feedburner, same thing, feed was valid but no recent posts. By using the troubleshooting option, I arrived at a list of several errors that could have been the problem. Most of the fixes required the editing of files that was beyond my limited abilities. For some reason I thought of checking settings on a few plugins before going further.

More by luck than design, I found that my cache plugin was not set up correctly, I still do not know what had caused it to go out of sync but as soon as I deactivated, un-installed and re-installed it, all was back to normal.

The RSS feed had not been working for 3 weeks before I fixed the problem, that meant that not only was my Facebook page not being updated, my email and RSS subscribers were not receiving updates.

There was one more unintended consequence. My autoresponder is set to email a summary of the previous 5 blog posts as soon as that number is reached. That is about every 10 days. No summaries had been sent for 3 weeks, when the problem was fixed, the system sent out two email summaries the same day which meant an explanatory email was required. A third summary went out 2 days later.

The takeaways here are:

• Check automatic syndication and curation services frequently.
• Check that RSS feeds are valid and up to date.
• Check settings and operation of plugins.
• Think about all the consequences of changing login details.
• Fixing the original problem sometimes causes more problems.

Valentines Day themed promotions are not just for chocolate retailers, florists, card shops and restaurants. They can work for many different industries, product and service categories.

Here is an infographic created by Warner Leisure Hotels which shows just how big a boost Valentines Day gives to sales in the UK.

This Valentine’s Day infographic was created by Warner Leisure Hotels – click here to view the original blog post.
That’s a lot of roses!

Now that Valentines Day is here, Easter is just around the corner. Time to start planning how to use it to promote your business.

Need ideas for creating social media content with an Easter theme to promote your sales?

Call me at 1-519-467-0275 or email me at peter@focusedprosperity.com

 

 

Marketing Alchemy That Works

 

 

Good customer relationships were one of the most powerful marketing tools available to small businesses before the digital age.

The hype about social media seduced many business owners away from the basics. Now, businesses are discovering that the viral nature of social media makes good customer service more important than ever.

Benefits of good relationships with customers.

• Repeat sales
• Referrals
• Predictable sales patterns.
• Good word of mouth Public Relations

Here is an example of how good customer relationships are still vitally important for getting repeat business from satisfied customers. It also demonstrates the long term value of one customer.

In mid 2004, my wife Sue and I moved into an old farmhouse a few miles outside Woodstock, a small city with a population of 35 000, in South West Ontario, Canada.

We had left Zimbabwe in Southern Africa because of violent political upheaval that cost us our farm and all our assets, arriving in Canada with little cash and just 2 suitcases each.

The only luxury we indulged in was take-out pizza every Friday evening. The product and the people at most of the local Pizza outlets left us unimpressed until we found Tony’s Pizza.

The pizza was good, but the people were better.

From our first visit, the owner and his wife remembered our names. Subsequently, they commented on our accents and asked where we were from, what our former country was like, why we chose Canada, and more. They didn’t just ask, they remembered all that information.

As middle-aged, virtual refugees suddenly uprooted and transplanted into a new country, we had no friends, family or social network for support. The kindness and warmth we experienced from the owner, his wife and their staff made a huge impression on us. An impression big enough to make us regular customers, spending close to $30 every Friday evening.

The pizza is good, but not the best we have tasted. Prices are higher than average, the shop is small and often crowded, we have to drive a few miles to get there. However none of that matters, we return every Friday because of the way we are treated. As friends not customers.

Sometimes our order is not ready on time because the shop may be extremely busy. We are always told about the delay, no excuses, no passing the buck, just a straight forward and honest explanation and apology. If the delay is longer than 10 minutes we get a discount or occasionally a free pizza. Many times we have been given samples of new additions to the menu and asked for our opinion.

We recognize many familiar faces on our Friday evening visits, we know that there are many other long term customers like us.

Soon after arriving in the area, I started a consulting business to advise farmers on irrigation and greenhouse management. My largest client employed over 50 workers from Spring to Fall, many of them from offshore with a well developed taste for fast-food. Frequently they would work late on Fridays when the farmer would provide them with supper. They generally asked for pizza.

The person responsible for ordering the meals continually complained about poor service from the outlets she was using. I asked the owner of “our” pizza parlour if he could handle the extra business. He assured me he could, I made the introduction giving him a good endorsement. The result was that for the last 6 years, he has been the exclusive pizza supplier to the farm and has picked up more business from some of the workers themselves.

Let’s put some numbers to this:

We miss a couple of Fridays because of other plans, but we sometimes order extra for guests, for ease of calculation we can assume $30 a week for 50 weeks a year = $1500 a year or $12750 for 8 1/2 years.

The farm spends on average $300, 3 times a month for 4 months a year = $3600 a year or $21600 over 6 years.

That is $5100 a year or a total of $34350 over 8 years, with no advertising cost, no time spent on social media, no coupons, competitions, special offers or discounts (other than a few for late orders).

Not a bad return on an investment of a few minutes to create a good impression on the first visit and a few more minutes every Friday nurturing the relationship.

A brilliant example of the true long term value of a customer.

How much time do you invest in nurturing your customer relationships?

Image courtesy of Jeanne Claire Maarbes / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sascha Uding via Compfight

Wishing all of you a Happy New Year. May your 2013 be filled with personal and business success.

What will the landscape look like for small business owners in 2013?

Hours ago, the US House of Representatives approved a bill to avert the economy falling off the “fiscal cliff” in the short-term, but the government has yet to address a reduction in spending.

The rest of the world can breathe a little easier but all indications are that 2013 will be a difficult year for most businesses in the West and many in developing countries who rely on exports to the West for the bulk of their sales.

Crystal balls are notoriously difficult to operate, mine is no exception. I have been reading the predictions of a few big names in social media, some I agree with, some I have been predicting myself for some time and some I am not sure about.

Here are a few of the ideas and expectations about marketing and social media that could have an impact on your business in 2013.

The post 8 Content Marketing Trends for B2B by Patricia Redsicker in Social Media Examiner, although not a prediction, examines businesses use of and challenges with content marketing.

Some significant statistics:

• 64% of those surveyed had difficulty in producing enough content.
• 52% in producing engaging content.
• 83% used Linked In, vs 80% for Facebook and twitter.
• 54% planned to increase content marketing budgets in 2013.
• 26% lacked knowledge, training or resources.

Social media were the most popular promotion platforms for content marketing, with articles on websites second.

Surprisingly, 45% still used social sharing as a measurement tool. Marketers of consumer products still place high value on sharing and likes, but that level for business to business marketers seems high.

Here is my reasoning, I frequently share links to articles like this one on twitter, Linked In, Google + and less frequently Facebook. I share them because they contain interesting and useful information, not because I endorse or want to promote the authors or the sites on which they are published.

I may or may not want to do that, but that would be a separate motivation for sharing. (In this case I do suggest you follow the link above and read the article.)

Yes, there is a strong possibility that a visitor to this blog or one of my followers / friends / connections from a social media site could become a client / customer / subscriber of the author, but it is a tenuous link at best.

Peter Platt makes his predictions in 6 trends that will shape digital in 2013, on iMediaConnection.com . They make sense and his forecast of the death of QR codes is accurate, they are a good example of a technical solution to a problem that does not exist.

Back to Social Media Examiner for 21 Social Media Predictions for 2013. Also worth reading and one of the best is David Siteman Garland’s prediction that the email list will remain one of the most important tools for marketers.

That’s 3 articles worth reading, they will not take you long to read.

What does all this mean for small businesses in 2013?

More businesses are using social media in their marketing strategy. If your competitors are already active, you might need to look critically at your own involvement. If you have a big advertising budget but sales and profitability are declining, maybe some of that budget should be re-allocated to content marketing.

Lack of knowledge, training or resources (especially time) are all real problems mentioned by 26% of businesses. That would almost certainly be a higher in a survey restricted to small businesses.

But those handicaps can be overcome cost effectively by using external resources. Freelance writers and consultants can fill the gap to get you started and provide continuing support.

If you need advice to determine how to include social media in your marketing strategy, call me at 1-866-250-4504,

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for me, but it has caused me to neglect this blog.

It was all about commitment and being a good neighbour.

A family farming operation nearby has one son who is seriously ill, bedridden and unlikely to recover. Another son had left a couple of years ago to pursue a different career in another country.

The family have been very good to my wife and I since we arrived in Canada, they needed help with the corn harvest. Particularly someone with experience who could operate the corn drier with its elevators, conveyors, augurs, scales and heaters.

Weather conditions in late November and early December in this part of Ontario are not normally mild or dry enough to allow 2 continuous weeks of combining. They asked me if I could help out for a few hours a day over the 3 or 4 weeks they expected the harvest to take.

The weather has been unusually warm and dry, only one day was lost for snow in the almost 3 weeks since 25 November.

That was good in that it got the combining finished but difficult for me in that it was many hours a day for days on end, meaning my own work suffered. It did bring in a bit of cash so I am not complaining.

It was also good to be actively involved in a farming operation again and not sitting at a computer all day. I also lost 5 lbs of excess weight which was a bonus.

That is why I have not published a post for a while.

Two articles of interest on the social media front:

The first in Forbes, by Ryan Holmes on 5 ways Social Media will change the way you work in 2013, makes some interesting predictions about how businesses will increasingly rely on social media platforms to communicate with customers and staff.

He predicts that email will become a less effective internal communication tool and that companies will use social media type networks to communicate internally.

The second by J C Kendall in Social Media Today  quotes Mark Cuban as stating that “advertising on Facebook is a waste of time”. He provides a number of statistics to back up this claim.

The most interesting comment, which confirms a belief that I have held ever since I opened an account on Facebook, is that “Commercial intent almost never exists on Social Media”.

Both articles are worth reading.

If you need help avoiding wasting your time on social media, call me at 

1-866-250-4504 or,

James Marvin Phelps via Compfight

Are you getting swamped by all the buzz about social media?

Last week, I listened to a fascinating webinar presented by highly regarded personal development and business management experts.

It was fascinating for several reasons:

• It was about using Social Media and Social Networking in marketing strategy.
• It attracted around 13 000 attendees.
• The type of questions being asked indicated a low-level of social media activity and familiarity amongst participants.
• It highlighted the importance of the new media and its opportunities and threats to business.
• It explained the importance of using the tools associated with social media to improve communication with and collection of information on, customers and consumers.

There was a lot I agreed with in the webinar and some that I did not. The webinar presenter is like all of us, marketing his business, he needs to convince his listeners that they need to get on board the social media train as soon as possible. If they don’t, their businesses will fail and he is the right guy to help them.

Fair enough, there was a lot of valuable information in the webinar and the presenter did not over do the sales pitch.

I still believe that there are businesses that do not need social media, others who might not need an involvement right now and others who do not have the resources to get involved without neglecting another part of their business.

My favourite example of a business for which any social media activity might be disastrous is the Arms Dealer (yes there are completely legal operations too). Secrecy and security for him and his customers is essential.

Next up the line would be those businesses that provide personal security to potential kidnap victims. It would be good to find a way to reach potential clients, but disastrous for that connection to be visible to the bad guys.

Top of the list for businesses that should be active in social media are those selling products that have become commodities, those where the competition is already active. Any business which is experiencing falling sales despite increased advertising spend in “old” media needs to take a serious look at its social media activity.

For a small business owner, there is always a trade-off with time. Time spent on social media, information gathering, writing blog posts is time that cannot be spent on production, research, sales, staff motivation or talking to customers face to face.

If you are operating at full capacity, desperately trying to train additional staff and are turning away new customers, your time might be better spent clearing bottlenecks than tweeting, blogging or posting videos to You Tube.

But, nothing stays the same for long, change is the only constant. All that could change in 6 months when you could be frantically trying to find new customers. That is the argument for at least learning about and making a start into this new world of social media and using the tools to gather information.

Perhaps you will have to use outside resources to make that start, if so, make sure that you use people who understand marketing.

When TV became a highly effective medium for advertising consumer products and services, there were predictions that it would make print advertising obsolete. That didn’t happen. The same with email, it did not make direct mail extinct.

There is no question that social media is here to stay and that the nature of marketing is changing, becoming more collaborative, more customer based, but that does not mean that it will make all the old media and systems obsolete overnight.

Just as hundreds of businesses did very well without advertising on TV, so will some businesses continue to do well without a huge involvement in social media.

The difference this time is that social media allows two-way communication. Customers or any one can talk back loudly, cheaply, instantly and nastily if they choose and they have an audience of millions who will listen.

In the good old days, unhappy customers could only talk by picking up the phone, writing to the newspaper, or in serious cases paying a lawyer. All of those took effort and rarely happened. Most dissatisfaction was expressed by telling a few friends and ceasing to be a customer.

The transformation is not over, who knows what the landscape will look like in the years ahead.

Social media, social networking, collaborative customer relations are all tools, they are not magic bullets that will work miracles. They will not save a business that is operating on fundamentally unsound business or marketing practices. They can make a viable business stronger and more successful.

Don’t wait until your competitors start taking your sales away because they took the time to understand and use the new tools before you.

If you need help understanding which social media tools can help your business,

call me at 1-866-250-4504

Where to start?

Previous posts have looked at how social media can be an effective and important part of social media strategy. I have also written about the downside of social media for small businesses. How it can be a huge time waster, and how many so-called social media experts and consultants do not have a marketing background.

Tyler Jeffries recently published a comprehensive post on social media for small businesses “A Guide to Building Your Business Through Social Networks.”

He has some good ideas and gives detailed explanations on the aspects of social media that should be considered. He also provides valid reasons why small businesses should be incorporating social media activities into their marketing strategies.

Click on the link above to check it out.

To discover how social media can be an effective part of your marketing strategy, call me at 1-866-250-4504,