Tag: small business

October 22, 2019

How Facebook Can Boost Your Sales

How Facebook Can Boost Your Sales | Facebook

I was in a meeting earlier this year and we were discussing using social media to generate leads to do business. Someone in the room turned to me and said “but it is so hard to do business on Facebook”.

No joke.

I was shocked. Did they not know about the BILLIONS of people that are on Facebook? Or the THOUSANDS of people who make MILLIONS of dollars on Facebook yearly? I guess not. So for those of you who feel the same way, I am here to educate you.

How Facebook Can Boost Your Sales | Why Facebook

I talked about this in my Why Every Small Business Needs Social Media post, but Facebook has the most users of any other social media platform, on the planet. With over 2 billion daily users and over 1 billion mobile users, it is the most powerful social media platform for your business. You just need to know how to use it.

I have had several people argue with me that Facebook is for “old people” or it’s dying. Those both may be true to some extent, most Gen Zs don’t use it. But what about all of the Baby Boomers, Gen Xs and Millennials that are on Facebook? They are staying connected with old friends, meeting new people and discovering new products every day. And that is why Facebook is still incredibly relevant.

How Facebook Can Boost Your Sales | How To Use It

The first thing you want to do if you are a business, is create a Facebook business page. This gives people a starting point for your business. This is useful both on and off Facebook (see my post about why every business needs social media here). Now you need followers. The one thing I want you to take away from this post is DO NOT BUY FOLLOWERS. On any platform, ever.

So what is the best way to get followers? By posting things they are interested in. Of course you want to post about your business, but don’t do just that. You won’t gain followers that way. You want to become the preverbal water cooler of the internet. You want people to come to your space because you post interesting things they want to engage with. How do you find that content you ask? Check out my post about Twitter here.

How Facebook Can Boost Your Sales | How To Boost Sales

Now that you are using Facebook, you want to know how to use it to boost your sales. Which is why you are reading this post, right? There is a little something called Facebook ads. You can pay pennies per click or exposure to show people outside of your circle of influence your content. Facebook ads allow you to determine age, gender, interests, and even location of your target demographic. Their ad structure is unlike anything I have ever seen. Luckily you can utilize it on Instagram as well since they are both owned by Facebook.

Facebook ads allow you to create long campaign ads or even just boost one post for a specific period of time. You get to decide. You also get to decide how much money you spend on a campaign. Creating simple, inexpensive campaigns will allow you to grow your audience both effectively and ethically. I’ve done this on my own Facebook page for Breezing Through and I have almost 20,000 followers! That is huge for Facebook.

How Facebook Can Boost Your Sales | Seeing Results

Results won’t come right away. You will need to be patient. Money will have to go out for a little while before you see money coming in. But you will start to see that people are reading the content you post, both original and from other sources. They will click on your links and starting buying things you post about (whether it’s items you have affiliate links for or items you sell directly).

You’re probably thinking this is all well and good to say, but does she have proof? Of course I do! Breezing Through is my biggest example. I have been running that blog for 5 years now and the majority of the clicks for the website come from Facebook. And the people that click on my blog then buy products I talk about. Every single day. And I get a commission off of every one of those!

October 15, 2019

Why Instagram Is the Key To Establishing Your Brand

Why Instagram is the Key to Establishing Your Brand | Instagram

Personally, Instagram is my favorite social media platform. It is where I spend the most time and it is the platform I know the best. But I know that other people don’t feel the same way about it. There are other people who are intimidated by it and aren’t sure how to use it. It is much different than Twitter or Facebook and the algorithm is constantly changing.

While I won’t go into detail about how to use Instagram and how to work with the algorithm, not against it, I do want to talk about why it is important for your branding and how it can help grow your business.

Why Instagram is the Key to Establishing Your Brand | Branding Your Business

No matter what kind of business you have, you need to brand that business. A blog, e-commerce site, lifestyle website, brick & mortar, consulting, all need branding. It is how other people learn about your business and identify you and what you do. In order to do brand you business, you need to be Google-able. However, you don’t want other people to control what those results are. One of the best ways you can do this is by creating social media accounts that you control.

Why Instagram is the Key to Establishing Your Brand | How to Start

In order to start, you need to create an Instagram account. Personally, I think it’s best if you can get a username that is the same as your website and other social media platforms. That way people always know how to find you, no matter where they are looking. Then you need pictures. These don’t have to be of you or necessarily what your business is about. There are lots of places to get stock photos, but I will talk about that on another day! If you do want to have pictures of yourself, go do a photo shoot. Grab a camera, it can be your phone, and a friend and take a bunch of picture in good lighting. But that is the easy part.

Next you need text for your pictures. You don’t want to upload pictures without any context. Again, the pictures and the text, don’t have to be related. But you do want the text to be related to your business. This can be broad, but you always want to be able to relate it back to your brand.

In my mind, the hardest part is the hashtags. You can use up to 30 hashtags per Instagram post. I think it is best to use all 30 and you should be strategic about those hashtags. So you need to figure out what those hashtags are. To figure out the best hashtags to use, you can visit the original blog post here.

My advice for deciding on hashtags is the ones you use should come from a pool of images that don’t exceed 500,000 and larger than 1,000. This will ensure that your content is seen by people who really should be seeing it.

October 8, 2019

How to Get Over Your Fear Of Twitter

How to Get Over Your Fear Of Twitter | Why Twitter Scares Me

I am the first to admit that Twitter is terrifying. Give me a blog, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn and I am happy to learn more about them and rock the platforms. But Twitter is an entire new ball game for me. There are parts of the platform that make me a little nervous and I am just not used to. But that doesn’t mean that I should disregard it all together.

Twitter has 321 million monthly users. So not being on Twitter is not an option. You need to be on Twitter. You need to get over that fear of messing up or not knowing how the platform works. You need to make sure that whatever you are doing, is at least showing up. The bare minimum is to show up. Even if you don’t feel like you can like, retweet or start a thread, you are at least showing up.

How to Get Over Your Fear Of Twitter | How I Got Over It

If you don’t already, set up a Twitter account. Get a username just like your others and put up a profile picture that matches your other ones, this creates brand consistency. Then start following accounts that are similar to the content you will be creating & pushing out.

I have talked about Buffer before. You know how much I love the platform. If it isn’t for you, that is fine, but you need to have a scheduling app for Twitter. Schedule out Twitter posts from your content as far out as you can. This will give you some buffer room to find other content to post (see what I did there).

But how do you find content that fits with your brand and is relevant to your audience. That is an excellent question! Of course, you want to have your own original content included in your Twitter feed. But you can’t have only original content, that would be exhausting.

To read more, and get a download for better utilizing Twitter, you can visit the original blog post here.

May 23, 2019

Step 7. Franchise Award

Franchise Award

Getting the Franchise to say YES to you! Because the franchise is a business in itself and they are trusting their system to the care of each franchisee, the franchisor has a process that will determine if you are a good ﬁt for them. This is important to their business to ensure they will be successful in the long term and that they are only bringing the best candidates into their business. Our goal with this step is to work with you and ensure that you have everything you need to impress the franchisor on the things that they are looking for.

This step usually includes something called Discovery Day. This is when you go to the franchisor’s corporate office to get to know their management team and they will decide if you are the right fit for their company. Depending on the company, you may sign the paperwork for your new franchise during Discovery Day!

The Rest of the Steps

8 Steps to Buying A Franchise

Step 1: Start Franchise Shopping

Step 2: Acquire Funding

Step 3: Compare Your Options

Step 4: Prepare Yourself

Step 5: Franchisor Introductions

Step 6: Due Diligence

Step 7: Franchise Award

Step 8: Become a Franchise Owner

March 7, 2019

9 Apps for Running Your Business From Your Phone

9 Apps for Running Your Business From Your Phone | Business On the Go

If you are a small business owner, influencer or even someone who just works on the go, you know that your phone is a powerful tool that can help you get things done. Between running several small businesses and having a micro influencer on our team, who know which apps are going to help you the most when you are working from your phone.

9 Apps for Running Your Business From Your Phone | Buffer

Apple | Android

Buffer is a powerful tool that is going to help you get your social media posts scheduled out ahead of time so you can focus on the daily tasks your business requires. We would strongly suggest spending the $15 a month for the Pro plan. This will allow you to link 8 social media accounts from Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and have 100 scheduled posts for each social media account. There is both a desktop version and a mobile version so you can put content in from your phone and then decide on when each post can go up.

You get to decide your posting schedule and all of the posts go automatically to your social media accounts. No reminder notifications where you have to manually publish the post yourself. Everything is taken care of for you so after you have scheduled your post, all you have to do is watch it work. You also get analytics for each post so you know how your posts are doing.

Emily has done an entire blog post about using Buffer. You can read that here.

9 Apps for Running Your Business From Your Phone | Smartsheet

Apple | Android

Smartsheet is a work execution platform that Dan discovered a few years ago that we don’t know how we lived without it! We have done some additional education classes for this software but it truly is user friendly. You can use it to track tasks, set up a work flow, track purchases and just about anything else you can think of. It is really an Excel spreadsheet on steroids. You can add attachments, make comments and send reminders.

You also have the ability to create and send a form for a specific sheet. So if you want people to put their hours in for a project and the aren’t on your Smartsheet subscription, you can send them the link to the form and they can put in whatever data you are looking for! We use it for all sorts of things including tracking expenses, tracking contractor hours, work flows for projects and task management. The best part is that the app is AMAZING! You can do pretty much everything on the app that you can do on the desktop version.

9 Apps for Running Your Business From Your Phone | Gmail

Apple | Android

We feel like this one is a little obvious but we still think it is worth discussing. Most email accounts can be run through Gmail nowadays. You can manage your email on the go without having to log into the server every time you need to get on. It is easy to use and allows you to toggle between multiple accounts.

9 Apps for Running Your Business From Your Phone | Google Calendar

Apple | Android

We like Google, have you noticed? The Google Calendar app is awesome because you can easily view events on shared calendars. The Adler Stone team shares their calendars so we can all see everyone’s availability and what is going on.

9 Apps for Running Your Business From Your Phone | Google Hangouts

Apple | Android

Do you use Google Hangouts? You should. There are three reasons why you need this app on your phone. 1) Chat windows. You can chat with anyone one your team and it is searchable within your Gmail! This means you can have a conversation about work and then go back to it later if you need to reference something. This is also really helpful for sharing links.

2) Video chat! And not just any video chat. You can chat with multiple people in one location without even having to leave your chat window. You can do this easily from the phone app and you don’t need to worry about wifi connections or if you are in a good spot with your laptop.

3) Screen Sharing! This is one of our favorites parts about the Hangouts app. You can share your screen so other people can see your presentation without having to pull up a separate email or awkwardly listening to you talk without having any idea what you are talking about.

9 Apps for Running Your Business From Your Phone | Google Drive

Apple | Android

If you are using the G Suite, you need Google Drive. It is an easy place to store all of the stuff you need to run your business, including images, files, videos and more. You can organize your drive so it looks just the way you want it and you can share files with other people on your team. This is how we get stuff done on the go and share it with one another without having to send a bulky email or worry about where the files are.

9 Apps for Running Your Business From Your Phone | Tasks

Apple | Android

Everyone needs to have a place to write down a task when they are on the go. Tasks (another G Suite app) allows you to put tasks into your phone without it being complicated. You can also add sub tasks and dates for when you want the tasks to be complete.

9 Apps for Running Your Business From Your Phone | LinkedIn

Apple | Android

If you are running a small business, you NEED to have LinkedIn on your phone. That is how you grow your network and even your customer base. One of our favorite things about the LinkedIn app is their messenger. You can easily message people back and forth without having to leave the app (we are looking at you Facebook). It is just as good as texting to be honest.

9 Apps for Running Your Business From Your Phone | Canva

Apple | Android

Don’t go shaking your head at me for suggesting an app that will help with your social media graphics. People are getting pickier about what they consume and you want your social media posts to STAND OUT. Canva allows you to create dozens of different kinds of graphics for EVERY social media platform out there. There are both free and purchased templates that you can use. You can create content on Canva and then you Buffer to schedule for each social media channel!