30 Days to Social Media Success

The 30 Day Results Guide to Making the Most of Twitter, Blogging, LinkedIN, and Facebook

Gail Martin

• Publisher: Career Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781601631305
• eBook ISBN: 9781601637192
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Digital Marketing
• Index: Business

One of Lifehack.org's Top 20 Books to Read in 2016.Small business owners and solo professionals know they're supposed to use social media to increase sales, but how should they start?Using a unique Rule of 30 approach, 30 Days to Social Media Success is the perfect resource for busy people who want quick results. Thirty short chapters (one for each day of the month) are packed with real-world tips and proven techniques you can use right away.This book makes it easy to tap into the power of today's hottest social media sites to:Get global impact out of press releases, articles, blog posts, and book reviews. Increase your personal and corporate visibility as the go-to expert in your industry. Build relationships with clients and connect with ideal prospects.Network around the world and around the clock with people who need what you have to offer.Wondering how to use social media? Looking for a way to attract new clients without spending a fortune? 30 Days to Social Media Success is for you.

1

Why Most Marketing Fails

Marketing horror stories. You’ve probably heard them. You may have one yourself. These are the stories about how someone tried a marketing technique, sent out a press release, or ran an ad and “it didn’t work.”

I’ve heard plenty of these stories. And as with most urban legends, there’s usually more to the story than meets the eye. If you’re reading this book, you’re a coach, consultant, speaker, author, or owner of a small business, and you want more from your marketing than you’re currently getting. Or you may not be marketing at all because your business is new, or because you’re afraid to fail. Or perhaps your marketing is chugging along with mediocre returns or muddled measurement.

Take heart. Marketing isn’t mysterious, and once you understand how the pieces fit together, you’ll be in a better position to market your own company or to oversee someone to handle marketing for you. Take the first step in the RESULTS model and recommit to marketing. Let’s start by looking at the seven most common reasons that marketing plans fail:

~ No planning. This is true in both large and small businesses. Many marketing efforts fail because there is no link between the marketing actions and the bottom-line business plan goals that drive revenue. This happens because decision-makers get caught up with a vivid, creative idea that isn’t accountable to the bottom line, or because they take a “great deal” offered by a salesperson for a media buy. Marketing without a plan is a disaster waiting to happen.

~ Inappropriate actions. If there is no plan, then whatever marketing actions that are taken may conflict with each other. It’s unlikely they’ll reinforce each other or support a business plan goal. Disappointing results come about because of a “ready, fire, aim” approach where actions aren’t anchored to business objectives and target audiences. Attempts to copy a successful competitor’s marketing without understanding why (or whether) the action is working for them is also a dangerous approach.

~ Lack of clarity about the target market. Mass marketing is dead. Blasting out marketing without a clear target is wasteful and unsuccessful. You can’t hit a target if you haven’t identified it. There is a sweet spot of potential customers who could become your ideal clients. You’ll need to get to know them to win them.

~ Lack of clear goals. If you don’t have an up-front understanding of what success will look like, you won’t know when you achieve it. Not only do your marketing actions need to be linked to specific business goals, but each marketing action should be measurable. Build in measurability up front so expectations are clear.

~ Unreasonable expectations. A single press release isn’t likely to create a big spike in sales. One ad probably won’t save your company. Many people become disillusioned with marketing, because they don’t understand the benchmarks for successful programs. For example, most direct-mail professionals are thrilled to get a 1-percent response rate. One percent! Yet many small businesses send out a postcard mailing and quit in disgust, expecting a response of 20 percent, 30 percent, or more. It’s important to have realistic expectations so you recognize success when you see it.

~ Unclear on how marketing works. For many people, marketing is a lot like a DVD player: they don’t know (and don’t care) how it works. Your odds of creating successful marketing are slim without some knowledge of how the pieces function and the process required to pull the pieces together. With the Internet, new tools are emerging almost daily. You’ll need to know how to blend New Media and Web 2.0 tools with traditional marketing to succeed in today’s marketplace. Understanding what makes marketing tick is essential whether you’re doing it yourself or delegating it to someone else.

~ Insufficient patience. “We ran an ad once and nothing happened.” We’ve all heard that. But did you know that marketing research shows that it takes between seven to 30 “touches” to make a sale? Customers won’t buy until they have an urgent need. Until then, all you can do is create name recognition and a good reputation. That’s the value of the Rule of 30. Marketing has a lot in common with farming. You wouldn’t plant seeds one day, then go out the next and dig them up in disgust because full-grown plants hadn’t sprouted overnight. Seeds take time, and you can’t hurry that. Marketing seeds also take time to grow.

Putting the 30 Day Guide to Use

Remember the RESULTS approach? In the next 30 days, you can see your social media marketing go from zero to full speed by applying the RESULTS formula.

Recommit to set aside at least 30 minutes each day (yes, weekends, too) to devote to developing your social media marketing strategy for the next 30 days. (Thirty minutes is a minimum. Once you get started, you’ll want to spend an hour, so block out the time now.)

Expect success by throwing yourself whole-heartedly into this 30-day commitment. If the little voice in the back of your head keeps saying, “This is ridiculous. This isn’t going to work,” you are programming yourself for failure. Program yourself for success by writing down 30 things you would like to achieve from your social media strategy. Some ideas include:

~ Reconnect with old colleagues, friends, neighbors, and associates to broaden your active circle of contacts.

~ Attend the world’s biggest 24/7 business networking event with a global audience (otherwise known as the Internet) and put your best foot forward.

~ Take advantage of all the free information, education, and competitive intelligence at your fingertips.

Now that you’ve seen those three examples, come up with your own list of 30 success expectations and keep them handy to check back on.

Seek partners. Social media is “social.” You can meet amazing people on sites such as Facebook, and get access to experts you might not be able to reach any other way. Sites such as LinkedIn are particularly good for finding out what friends and colleagues are currently doing and who they know. Make a list of 30 friends, colleagues, and associates whom you’ve lost track of, and commit to finding them and touching base via social media.

Understand your audience in more profitable detail than ever before with the exercises in Chapter 3. Make a list of 30 things you wished you knew about your best customers, and create 30 questions you can use for quizzes, surveys, and social media discussions.

Look for win-win scenarios by posting valuable content on the right social media sites to attract more of your best prospects. You offer solutions, and they become your best clients. It’s a win-win. Write down 30 ideas for useful tips, articles, videos, or other content you could post right away by reusing information you already have.

Take strategic action by putting what you learn in this book to work for you. As you read, be sure to do the exercises at the end of each chapter. Complete all 30 chapter exercises in the next 30 days and watch your social media soar!

Stay visible by keeping your social media sites fresh and relevant. Create a list of 30 upcoming events, newsworthy items, or announcements you could make to your new social media audience to get them talking, create dialogue, and demonstrate your credibility.

Most people put off doing marketing because they think it’s too difficult or too time-consuming. By using the principles in this book, you’ll do more in 30 minutes a day for 30 days than most business owners do all year. That’s the Get Results secret weapon: strategic, consistent effort in pursuit of clear, measurable results.

Results Reminder

Planning + Effort + Consistency = Results

The Rule of 30

How many times are your messages touching prospects prior to making the sale? How close is that number to 30?

Exercises

1. Describe your primary target audience in detail: age, gender, education, location, income, key concerns, hobbies, aspirations, etc.

2. Justify why this is your primary audience. Now identify your secondary audience and explain why it’s in second place. Look at your answers. Are they consistent with your ideal customer? With your current customers? How are they alike and different?

2

The Most Powerful Marketing Tool: The Business Plan

If the idea of creating a business plan makes your eyes glaze over, don’t worry. This chapter isn’t about the kind of detailed business plan you’d need to get a loan from a bank or money from a venture capitalist. In fact, the kind of business plan I’m going to show you just might be the most dynamic document you’ve ever created, and it is likely to be the most profitable.

First things first. If you’ve already written a business plan, print it out or dust it off and take a look at it. If it’s more than two years old, its shelf life has expired. Why? The global economic changes in 2008 and 2009 require a whole new way of looking at the business world. Assumptions made based on market conditions prior to 2009 just aren’t a clear picture of the real world anymore. So be prepared to make some changes.

If you’ve never written a business plan, you’re about to find out how to make it your most powerful marketing tool. Pull out a pad of paper and a pen, and let’s get started.

Define Success in Your Own Terms

Start off by defining what you mean by “success” for the next 12 months. There is no one definition for success. Success can mean different things to different people. Your definition should be what will satisfy you, and it’s likely to evolve over time. But unless you know what your success target is for the immediate future, you won’t know when you’ve hit it.

Here are some ways to define business success for any given year:

~ Profit.

~ Market share.

~ New product penetration.

~ Media coverage and endorsements.

~ National distribution channels.

~ Percent gain in product sales.

~ Industry credibility—speaking engagements, interviews, board or committee roles.

You may even think of a few more possibilities. The point is that success is more than just money, although for most companies and solo professionals, there is a target amount of money involved.

Ready, Aim...

Now write down your top three business goals for next year. Be sure to prioritize them from most important to least important. Do they match your definition of success?

One of the reasons marketing often fails for small businesses and solo professionals is that the marketing is not aligned with the prioritized business plan goals. Overwhelmed business owners take whatever marketing opportunities cross their paths, or buy into “deals” offered to them by persuasive media salespeople. They don’t know how to say yes with confidence and no without guilt because they don’t have any standard to judge the opportunities.

Your business plan sets that standard. Next to each of your prioritized business goals, I want you to write down who the target audience is for that goal. The more precisely you can narrow down the target audience (for example, instead of “everyone,” it would be better to say “college-educated men between the ages of 18 and 30”), the more precisely you’ll be able to target your marketing. You may have more than one target audience for each goal (for now), or you may have the same target audience for all of your goals. That’s okay. We’ll look at your audiences in more detail in the next chapter.

...Fire! Or Aim Again

Once you’ve matched an audience with a prioritized goal, make a list of all your current marketing efforts. List everything: Website, direct mail, print or radio ads, signage, social media, e-mail newsletters, speaking appearances, press releases, etc. Now that you’ve made a comprehensive list, match each marketing effort to the target audience it reaches, and to the business goal it supports. Do you see any disconnects?

Usually at this point, business owners notice that they have marketing efforts that reach a particular target audience but that they aren’t communicating a message that supports the business goal that is now linked to that audience. For example, perhaps paid magazine ads are reaching the right type of reader, but the call to action isn’t aligned with the top business goal, so if the goal is “increase the mailing list with opt-ins,” the ad should encourage readers to go to the Website and sign up with their e-mail address to receive something.

Or business owners discover “orphan” marketing efforts that don’t seem to connect with any prioritized bu...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Author’s Note
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 - Why Most Marketing Fails
• 2 - The Most Powerful Marketing Tool: The Business Plan
• 3 - Digging Into the Business Plan for Marketing Gold
• 4 - Mining Gems From the Business Plan
• 5 - Creating an Action Plan
• 6 - Finding Your Real Story and True Voice
• 7 - Touches to Transactions
• 8 - Creating the Social Media Marketing Plan
• 9 - I’m on Facebook. Now What?
• 10 - Doing Business on Linkedln
• 11 - The Twitter Revolution
• 12 - Blogging for Business
• 13 - Do You Squidoo?
• 14 - Can You Digg It?
• 15 - YouTube and Flickr: Your Windows to the World
• 16 - Get Business From Forums, Chats, and Threads
• 17 - Raise the ROI From Your Interest and Industry Sites
• 18 - Social Media and PR
• 19 - Social Media and Sales Promotion
• 20 - Social Media for Local Businesses
• 21 - Social Media for Nonprofits
• 22 - Social Media and Branding
• 23 - Going Global With Social Media
• 24 - Social Media and Your Website
• 25 - Great Sites Beyond the Ordinary
• 26 - Social Media and Events
• 27 - Social Media and the Author
• 28 - Social Media and the Speaker
• 29 - Social Media and Your Sales Funnel
• 30 - Beyond One Month: Where Do I Go From Here?
• Want to Know More About Social Media?
• About the Author