‘How to use Video in Digital Marketing’ with Niamh Guckian from Go Motion Academy
‘How to network’ with Melissa Curley from Social Bee
FirSt OF ALL, Let me start with Niamh Guckian’s presentation about developing a video strategy that works.
1. Videos create engagement
When doing an email campaign, research shows that an email with a video has a 96% increase in Click-Through Rate. Furthermore, videos up to 2 minutes get the most engagement. Additionally, 92% of mobile video viewers share videos with others.
2. Other considerations to think about with video marketing
However, when you plan your video marketing campaign, you must remember to start in the funnel by following the customer journey. Next, you need to drill down with video content and think about which type of video content would suit your business most. Do not ever do videos for the sake of it!
3. The customer journey
Indeed, when doing video marketing, take into consideration the different stages of the customer journey:
Awareness – your product/service is unknown to your targeted audience
Consideration – your audience has found your product/service
Conversion – your audience is ready to buy your product/service. It’s the sale stage
Retention – your audience is ready/open to come back and buy your product/service again.
4. Who is your audience?
This is the key question you need to ask yourself.
Where are your potential customers?
Insider Business Tips: Statistics show that 88% of Business-to-Business (B2B) videos are viewed on a desktop. Consider as well if Social Media would a good platform for your video. Note that YouTube is very competitive.
What do they want?
And you, what do you want from them?
What are the others doing in the business?
Do you need a disposable content (punctual events) or an evergreen content (tutorials/explainers)?
Is your content relatable (not over-emotional)?
What is the story (curve)?
Is your content useful/educational?
5. Choose a video genre
Once you have identified your audience and what content to go for, choose a genre:
Ask Me Anything – responding to questions, providing an engaging expertise
Vlog
Video tour
Event highlights
Review
Tutorial
Explainer
Demo
Interview
Live Streaming
At the end of your video, remember to add a strong Call-to-Action by asking your audience to do something. Your call-to-action must be specific (not just ‘subscribe’) and get people talking/guessing.
6. Video genre and the customer journey
Incontestably, each video genre corresponds to a specific stage in the customer journey.
Awareness stage: A video tour or a vlog
Consideration stage: Ask Me Anything, demo or explainer video
Conversion stage: Event highlights or tutorial video
Retention stage: Review, interview or live streaming video.
7. Video marketing campaign CALENDAR
In that regard, you need to know if your video will be episodic (occasional events) or if you want to stay in your audience’s mind (evergreen content).
Consequently, if you want your audience to follow you through, you will need to create between 6 and 12 videos. In other terms, you must remain consistent in your posting and sharing of videos. If you are short with time, you can start your campaign by sharing one video a week.
8. Other BUSINESS tips
Finally, if you are going for an explainer video, you must ensure it is animated and engaging enough. Other genres can be used for a more personal and authentic delivery.
Budgetwise, if you want to hire an agency to do it for you on an episodic basis, forecast a budget between 800 and 2000 Euros for several videos.
Otherwise, you can make your own videos with the following sites:
Then, let’s move on to the second and last presentation of the evening by Melissa Curley about small talk for big gains.
1. Why is networking a key marketing tool for business growth and success?
Foremost, we need to be interested in and curious about one another.
Why? What matters about networking?
The creation of Like/Trust/Respect
The importance of conversation.
In other words, networking allows you to grow your social capital before you ever need them. It’s like a social currency. To be good at it, try to have fun at it!
2. What is a conversation about?
Most importantly, a conversation is a two-way listening and talking. Therefore, you need to focus on listening to understand, not just on saying something. So, to be a good networker, you need to understand emotions and feelings about words.
3. Tips to improve your listening
Undeniably, listening means:
Receiving
Appreciating
Summarising
Asking.
4. Preparation for a networking event
Still, if you are introvert and uncomfortable with networking, don’t worry. Remember this! Extroverts don’t always make the best networkers, as they aren’t always good at listening and connecting with the others.
Business Tips: before you go to a networking event, ask for the attendees’ list. This way, you can organise, who you want to connect with. This will make you more focused and efficient.
5. 10 pointers to a better conversation
Now, let me share with you a few tips on how to be a better conversationalist.
Be present
Enter every conversation assuming you have something to learn
Ask open-ended questions
Go with the flow
Have courage
Avoid engaging in conversational narcissism
Refrain from repeating yourself
Don’t get tangled up in small details
Listen
Be succinct.
6. Networking budget
On the other hand, 50 -60% of your budget should go into your networking. Likewise, concentrate on building mutually beneficial relationships.
7. What networking is and isn’t
Thus, it’s good to be aware of behaviours to avoid or adopt when networking.
AS A MATTER OF FACT, Networking isn’t:
Salesy/Pushy
Fake/Insincere
About shameless self-promotion
Only extroverts are good at it.
CONTRARILY, Networking is ABOUT:
Making connections
Gaining knowledge
Adding value before you extract it.
8. How to create an effective network
IN summary, follow these last business tips:
Do research about people’s businesses and follow-up
Keep in touch, nurture contacts through social media and face-to-face meetings.
All in all, did you find this blog post helpful? Do you have further business tips or tricks to share?
What is a content upgrade and why does it help you increase your conversion rates more than a lead magnet? Kevin McGrath from Beacon will explain you this and how you can create it with Beacon tips and tricks.
But before delving into the topic, let me start introducing you, Kevin McGrath.
About Kevin McGrath
Kevin is from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Beacon, a plugin that can be used with WordPress to help you generate more leads.
He has a background in Design and initially ran a web design agency called Starfish for about 6 years. But he is now more focused on Marketing and Growth.
Every marketer looks for more leads to gain more clients. However, most people don’t buy on their first interaction.
Indeed, people like to do research before they make a purchase (web price comparisons, shipping rates..). If people spend a big budget, they will want to make sure they get it right. When you do your research, you want to find out things like: How does this company work like another business like mine? Can this company offer a solution to the problem that I’m facing?
As marketers, we want to help you with your research and also available and stay in touch with you through the course of that research.
We want leads and email addresses from people who are likely to buy from us in the future.
Better Leads.
Avoid having an email list of poor leads not interested in your products. This will be a waste of your time to target these people.
So, in order to get email addresses, marketers have been doing this for decades. If you give somebody something of value in exchange for their email address, they are more likely to give it to you. We can give something like an eBook in exchange for an email address.
Generally, when people offer eBooks, they do so on a dedicated landing page to offer the prospect a lead magnet. A lead magnet is essentially a downloadable piece of content like an eBook, or a whitepaper or something that is basically information-based that you are giving your prospects to help nurture to become your customer.
Now, there are two points in this strategy:
1. Landing Page
2. Lead Magnet.
The Problem with lead magnet strategy
The strategy is flawed. Basically, if you are putting a lead magnet up on a landing page, you are going to have to spend a lot of time preparing the content for that lead magnet.
Large lead magnet.
The lead magnet will have to be impressive and well package (100 pages long).
Another page to drive traffic to.
That’s a new page in your website. You are not having the benefit of, say, a blog post, that is already gaining lots of organic traffic. You are going to have to come up with a new traffic acquisition strategy, in order to drive customers to the page.
Visitors need to be ‘warmed up’.
Once your visitors get to the page, you are going to have to warm them up to get them to download an eBook and see its benefits. You are essentially starting from scratch.
Trying to appeal to everyone is another issue with this lead magnet strategy.
I’m sure, guys, to have familiar with various customers’ personas, various stages in the buying cycle. Say, you have 2 or 3 personas with their individual needs and problems that they want to resolve, each may be at a different stage of the buying cycle. Some may not know you at all and others may know you well and just need a gentle reminder note.
eBooks aren’t anymore the new kids on the block.
They have been around for a while and as marketers tend to overdo these strategies with this as soon as we see some success with that. People have become jaded with the overall eBook strategy and do not take the time reading a lengthy book.
But don’t worry, there is a solution to that.
the SOLUTION WITH content upgrade system strategy
A content upgrade is a targeted resource for individual blog posts.
So, instead of having a dedicated landing page for a big eBook type of resource, it’s just a bonus offered as part of a blog post. You will place this free bonus just after the introduction of the blog post in a centred embedded box for better results. If you click on the box, you will get a pop-up asking for your details. It will bring you to a checklist or short 1-3 pages long content.
So, a content upgrade is a short actionable download like a checklist or resource guide.
It will build on the subject of the blog post.
So, the blog post is the theory and the free bonus is the practical application of that theory. So, you are educating people with the blog post. They are already interested in and read it and you are helping them to implement the advice in the blog post with your download.
It’s just a simple strategy and that’s why it’s so effective. You basically capitalise on that existing blog traffic.
It is also very targeted as related to a blog post for a specific persona at a specific stage in the buying cycle.
After anyone downloaded that targeted content, you can segment them as, for example, ‘a copyrighter who is interested in SEO’ if that’s the blog topic.
When you have that extra information, you are more likely to sell and market to them more appropriately in the future.
So, they are more likely to purchase his premium products from him.
But most importantly, this content upgrade system strategy results in high conversion rates.
Your conversion rate is essentially the percentage of people that come to your blog post and give you their email address. For eg, if you have 100 people visiting your page and 10 people downloading your content, you have a conversion rate of 10 %, The higher conversion rate is, the more efficiently you are using your traffic. It means the fewer resources, i.e time and money, you will have to spend driving traffic to your blog posts. So optimising for conversion rates is important. You can generate between 5 and 16 times more leads for your business. It’s a life-long evergreen strategy.
So, why is it working? You are offering something is short.
It’s a short article. Most people are more likely to download something short as they have a short attention span.
It’s useful. It is directly related to the blog post to help implement tactical and practical advice. It helps reader getting closer to the goals they want to achieve.
Because this is part of a blog post, readers are already engaged. The next part is to convince them that you can help them further by doing the content upgrade. People are more likely to opt-in when they are already engaged.
People tend to ignore pop-ups when they scroll down the page. So, if you can include your call-to-action within the main flow of the blog post, you will see better results. I would say to use the in-line forms.
Actually, LeadPages did some research into the number of clicks required to opt-in. They said that the two-staged call-to-action is more effective/ than the single stage one and perform better in terms of conversions. So, if you show an email box with an input form straightaway, people will try to avoid it.
So, before we move on, I’d like to recap.
What is the difference between a content upgrade and a lead magnet?
Content Upgrade
Lead Magnet
Embedded within a blog post
Builds on the content of a blog post
Is short
Is actionable
Uses existing traffic
Prospect is nurtured by the blog post (more qualified traffic)
Has high conversion rates
Has a dedicated landing page
Lies on a standalone content
Is long
Is educational
Has new traffic required
Prospect needs to be convinced by the landing page
Has lower conversion rates
Content upgrades should be part of your blogging routine and go along with it.
So, your blogging strategy probably looks like this:
What I’m proposing is that you add an extra step to that process:
I want to show you how you can create these content upgrades.
Beacon can help to speed up the content upgrade strategy for you. I want to show you time-saving tips to implement these content upgrades into your blog posts quickly.
Beacon Time-Saving Tips and Tricks
Set up brand colours. This is quickest overly most overlooked feature within Beacon.
Create a re-usable content library, so that you can drop in any pieces of content into any content upgrades you create in the future.
Create a re-usable template so that you can create your branding and keep re-using it, instead of having to work from scratch every time.
So, in Beacon’s normal interface, I create a workbook with one of our standard templates. The template contains a cover page, a short introduction, a worksheet with some questions to answer. This kind of school-like exercise helps people think about strategic things by working through the process on their own. The content upgrade finishes with a call-to-action.
If you choose that template, go through each page to see what you can customise for your business. First thing, you are going to have to change that logo. You will need to pick your brand colour on all pages to get the colour scheme in line with my brand. I would advise a more sullen kind of colour but there is no colour to avoid.
Obviously, that’s not ideal. So I want to show you this trick. It is buried a little bit under the document settings (4th icon down the left-hand side). Once you click on it, it will open this ‘default styles’ panel. You will notice that the colour template is set up for you. This means that if you set up your template colours, this will be updated throughout the document.
What you are going to find in content upgrades is that you may be re-using certain types of content in every single content upgrade that you make.
One example of that would be an ‘about the author’ page to give readers context about who prepared the content upgrade. Why should they trust you? The purpose is to nurture prospects into qualified leads.
Let’s create an ‘about the author page’. Underneath the first ‘pages’ tab, I’m going to click on the ‘Add New Page’ button. I’ll look for a text focused page template. I’ll filter that. I’m going to choose the two columns layout. I’ll include an image. It’s always good to add an image of the author. I’ll also add some information from social media in a headline box/card at the bottom.
Every time I make a content upgrade, I don’t want to go through all those steps each time. Instead, I’m going to go to ‘Pages’ tab, then click on the 3rd button down ‘Page settings’. Then I’ll click on the ‘Convert’ button under ‘Convert this page into a template’. I’ll save that template and refresh the page. So, next time you click on ‘Add New Page’, you will have your template saved if you scroll down the templates.
How to convert an entire publication into a reusable template. I want to show you how to convert a document into a template.
Let’s create a re-usable template as a starting point. We are not going to have a worksheet in each template, so let’s delete that. You can your logo/image. You will be able in a week time to save image library as well.
To convert this into a reusable template, I’m going to click on ‘Document Settings’ tab on the left-hand side and click on the ‘Convert’ button. I’ll give this template a name and save it. Then I’ll leave the editor, go back to the ‘Dashboard’. When you go and click on the ‘Create New’ button, then ‘New Editor’. This will lead you to the ‘Pick your Magnet’ screen to choose a template. Let’s say we create a ‘Checklist’, select ‘No’ to import content. Then, on the next screen for ‘Choose a theme’, scroll down to the bottom and you’ll find your re-usable template. Then, you’ll click on ‘Add New Page’, filter for the checklist and add what you saved.
Note: Some of the features that I did show you are Premium Features. The part where I showed you the convert templates (page and document), you need a paid account to use that feature. However, the brands and colours are available for free. To justify going for a paid account, you will get exclusive bonuses.
EXCLUSIVE BONUSES
These will be available to you if you upgrade to a paid account after this webinar (Kevin will be notified once you do so). For that, just shoot an email to Kevin so that he can send them to you.
Lead Magnet Learning Pack is a swipe file of 13 content upgrades used on our blog to help Beacon grow to 25000 users. This is a good source of inspiration for a content upgrade to make. They are all different in design.
Expert Audio Interview with Laura Roader, founder of MeetEdgar. Laura has grown to 7 figures business. She developed a software product that uses content marketing, content upgrades and lead magnets to grow her business. I’ll be sharing with you some of the strategies she uses.
Free Beacon Template Design that I will personally design for to your business worth $1000. I’ll have a consultation with you to understand your needs (2-3 days work).
If you have any questions, drop an email to Kevin@beacon.byand he will be more than happy to follow-up with you individually.
To finish off with this talk, you want to watch its demo and presentation:
The first presentation was delivered by Tilo Kmieckowiack from @quintlywho talked about:
What excellent social posts have in common in terms of length, content type and hashtags
How to write the perfect Social Media post.
The second presentation was delivered by Patrick Whatman from @Mention who dived into Social Media Strategy:
How to and Why focus on engagement
Learn from your competitors
Monitor your campaigns.
1. Let me share with you a bit about Tilo’s background
Tilo is the Brand/Product and Communications Manager of Quintly for the German-speaking markets, i.e Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He works from Cologne, Germany.
His daily job is to create a Social Media Campaign analysis and case studies to optimise the company’s social media strategy. One of the perks of being part of this company is access to a big database. Indeed, the Quintly Marketing team analyses over 10 million posts from Facebook and Instagram per month. In this presentation, he shares his findings of how the perfect social media post looks like.
2. So, let’s start with the Facebook Analysis
a) Data Range analysed
January 2018
239,327 pages
11,472,559 posts
b) Analysed Dimensions
Message length
Message type
Date
Tag
Likes
Comments
Shares
Interactions
Reactions
Emojis
Hashtags #⃣
c) Means of Success: Average Interaction per Post
Results:
Users most commonly post links, however, videos and also photos receive much more interactions on average
The Post volume is highest during the week but posts on weekends get more interactions
Most posts contain either 0 or 30-150 characters. According to the findings, a text of 1-50 characters receives the most interactions
A large number of posts does not contain emojis. Nonetheless, moderate emoji usage of 1-8 shows higher interactions
Hashtags are seldom used on Facebook, besides posts without hashtags receive more interactions.
Consequently, what does the ‘perfect’ Facebook post looks like? It looks like this:
Limits to 50 characters in length
Uses emojis moderately
Doesn’t use hashtags
Is posted at weekends
Uses videos and images wisely
⚠ Bear in mind that content quality is important, too! This analysis only covers objective technical factors. Analyse your own performance and compare it to the presented results, in order to optimise your own strategy.
3. Now let’s move on to Instagram Analysis
a) Data Range analysed
January 2018
41,389 Instagram profiles
1,019,978 posts.
b) Analysed Dimensions
Message length
Message type
Date
Tag
Likes
Comments
Interactions
Emojis
Hashtags
c) Means of Success: Average Interaction per Post
Results:
Users post images most often, yet videos get the most interactions
Most posts are published during weekdays. However, posts on weekends receive more interactions
Most posts contain between 0 and 150 characters, but posts with up to 50 characters get the most interactions
Many profiles don’t use emojis, yet posts with 1-3 emojis show most interactions
Most posts contain no or few hashtags. Posts with 1-3 hashtags receive most interactions. Note that with Instagram, you can up to 10 hashtags but you need to ensure that they are relevant to the post.
So, what does the ‘perfect’ post on Instagram looks like? It looks like this:
All in all, Social Media Analytics can help you benchmark your content performance against our analysis.
The second presentation was delivered by Patrick Whatman from @Mention.
1. Now let’s move on to Patrick’s background
Patrick is from New Zealand and works in Paris, France. He is the Digital Content Marketer of Mention. His presentation focuses on Social Media Strategy around the following topics:
Amongst these hashtags, the top 4 are coming from this K-Pop band.
4. YET, how do they do this?
It’s all about engagement. They engage with their fans by:
Holding contests. They ask their fans to draw, respond, and tell stories about their faves
Rewarding fans for their re-tweets. They send personal ‘Thank you’ messages
Creating their own emojis.
Their success lies in the creation of online communities, mainly on Twitter, but also a bit on Instagram and a lot of forums, where fans do all the stuff for them.
5. then, why engagement matters?
It is important to emphasise engagement in your social media campaign because of:
a) The Snowball effect
Indeed, Social Media is all about connections: your followers, their followers…Your message reaches much further if shared with all these connections
b) Platforms reward engagement
Organic Reach is about winning in ‘the feed’. The more likes, shares and comments, the more likely Facebook, Twitter, etc will promote your post for you.
c) Respond early and often to foster a community. This is valid for viral campaigns or simple customer support
When a social media user gets in touch, you need to be there to help
Build momentum for key posts and campaigns
Catch issues before they get out of hand.
d) Social Listening comes in handy
Here are the reasons:
You can’t respond to messages you don’t know to exist
You may not be able to stay glued to all your social media account at all times
Social Listening tools tell you when you (or your keywords) have been mentioned and let you respond directly.
A good Social Listening tool such as Mention saves you time and efforts. It also lets you focus on creating winning campaigns.
6. SINCE SOCIAL MEDIA IS CONSTAnTLY EVOLVING, WOULD YOU CONSIDER a Bot AS PART OF A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY?
In short, the answer is ‘No’ for Social Media and here is why. On Social Media, bots aren’t necessary or advisable. Unless you are a very big brand, you are not going to miss too many things. However, Social Listening will help you not miss all these little things and details.
Still, if you build or use a bot for your website, make sure you set it up with narrow parameters, it can be a good thing. Though, don’t show too obvious automated responses.
7. CONSECUTIVELY, The next step of YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY success is to work with influencers
Social-power users help build the brand by:
Expanding your reach (because their customer/fan base is engaged)
Increasing buying decisions for your products/services through their audiences thanks to their advice
Making you look good! When you hang out with the cool guys, it makes you look cool, too!
8. NOW, How to get started?
Find influential users relevant to your business (similar brands/topics within your network). They can be macro-influencers or micro-influencers. This article will help you find cost-free micro-influencers
Figure out what you can offer: free product, exposure, money
Reach out to influencers and kindly suggest to work together. Many will say ‘no’ but not everyone.
9. AFTER ALL, Why should you care about what your competitors do?
Because a competitive analysis helps you solve your problems, and understand and learn from your prospects and customers.
It will allow you to easily find out:
What your customers are interested in
What content or marketing strategies might be effective
Possibly even find new customers this way by interacting with them.
10. BESIDES, How can you track campaigns? And why would you bother?
Simply because you need to evaluate with tracking tools for the success of your campaign.
Indeed, the best campaigns are data-driven:
Learn from your last campaign to optimise the next
Influential people and outlets talk about you (eg on public holidays when your business may be closed)
Find out key events in the campaign that affected your performance
Assess the overall response to the campaign based on factual evidence to build engagement (eg top 10 content pieces per month or year).
11. Last but not least, Patrick shares his top tips
Use unique and branded hashtags for brand awareness and engagement. Why? Because non-popular branded hashtags are easier to track
Watch for sudden changes (spikes and dips) and understand why
Identify your most and least effective content
Measure key metrics such as volume, reach, countries, languages…
Finally, SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY presentations were wrapped up with Questions and Answers.
Q: Can 15-30 hashtags work?
A: No. You need to concentrate on using relevant hashtags. Bear in mind as well that some hashtags are banned, temporarily or permanently. Let me give you one piece of advice: relevant hashtags in Instagram captions (descriptions). You may add some other hashtags after the description following blank spaces but they may not be as relevant.
Q: Do you think it’s good practice to post the same content on multiple platforms?
A: No. Every platform is different. Cross-posting isn’t recommended. Besides, consider that Twitter has recently changed its rules. They do not allow anymore the same content posted on different Twitter accounts or similar channels. Furthermore, hashtags aren’t been used on Facebook. As for the message length, Twitter restricts messages to 240 characters, which is lower than most other Social Media Networks.
Q: How to better utilise Instagram for stories?
A: Keep an eye on trends and news and be aware of the new features and tools. As discussed previously, stay engaged with informative or funny content. Another important piece of news recently surfaced on Later, the exclusively Instagram scheduling app. They said that the algorithm prioritises people’s different content. Indeed, Instagram can tell and promote brands and people who use all of its features and have varied content (not only the same format or type of content over and over). Thus, they will bring further up your content into the feed. An interesting feature that has been rolled out is Instagram ‘highlights’ on your profile page. You can highlight a particular story to be viewed over and over again without any time limitations.
Q: What channels do you advise focusing on?
A: That depends on the market(s) you are working for. You need to adjust your strategy to the country/market specifics. For eg, in Germany, there are very few people using Twitter, while there are 30 million users on Facebook. Twitter is quasi-exclusively used by journalists and politicians. However, journalists can pick up topics to write about, which will be brought to the mass media. So, Twitter shouldn’t be completely written off.
First of all, thanks to all attendees for coming to this event advertised on Eventbrite website. Most importantly special thanks to Emma Boylan from‘Outside the Box’ for coming to talk to us at Bank of Ireland Grand Canal Square venue in Dublin (Ireland) about Content Marketing.
Secondly, let me talk to you a bit about Emma’s journey and story before going down to the content marketing piece.
Emma went a trip to Australia, where she did all kind of jobs. Then, she got back to work in Ireland. She left her 9 to 5 job four years ago to fulfill her dream of starting her own business.
She set up her ‘Outside the Box’ company when she saw that most marketing was all the same. She realised that businesses were really struggling to attract the right clients and have a message that made them different. At the beginning, she learnt a lot by doing. However, she started implementing a business plan about 2 years ago. She highly recommended you to have a plan when you get started so that you stay focused and motivated to reach your goals.
Using her passion for creative content and background in psychology, Emma has helped 100’s of businesses get crystal clear on their message to get them noticed and fill their businesses with clients in record time! So, I hope this will help you, too!
Please find below the talk topics and her visual presentation with her contact details. Please note that this slideshow can be downloaded and saved in your SlideShare account as well as shared through Social Media.
Thirdly, I will detail a little more the explanations she gave beyond the slides themselves (transcript) so that you can understand them in the right context.
Step 1: To find the right client with the right message, focus on actually taking actions and avoiding procrastination.
Step 2: when you go about looking for clients, ask yourselves these questions:
In all means, always make sure you are being your unique self. Don’t copy others as clients will notice this and it will appear unauthentic.
Step 3: Once you have done your research, start meeting people like you. Tell your unique story, that should answer the ‘Why’ and the ‘What’ about your business. Keep in mind that your story matters more than offering discounts. Emma suggested not to offer too many discounts to attract customers. Instead, give something people need and that they will buy. Indeed, your company must resonate with their needs and offer solutions to their problems.
Step 4: Create your branding message. For that purpose, keep in mind that people, in general, have the attention span of a goldfish, so you need to be brief in your message to grab their attention. When creating your message, you need to focus on your business benefits in 10 seconds. Yes, you read it correctly, your benefits and not so much your features!
Step 5: Think about the results you want to get. A good way to deliver an outstanding message is to reflect on the top 10 problems and solutions you can offer to a client. Again, it’s all about the client, so your content should revolve around him/her!
Step 5: Write a first marketing plan. This doesn’t need to be lengthy but instead highly focused on your goals. For example, ask yourself: ‘how many clients do you need to make X Euros? How many clients per week do I need to get?’ In other terms, focus on your Return on Investment (ROI). Do not worry if it’s not 100 % perfect, you can always revise it as the time goes on and your business evolves.
Step 6: Be social and engaging. It’s not all about how many followers you have but rather how engaged they are. You need to increase the quality of organic followers by measuring your engagement rate on your social posts.
Step 7: Be clear in your message about what you want your clients to do. In other terms, lead people by the hand by providing a clear call-to-action. Do not ask questions that may bring a ‘no’ answer.
Step 8: Represent your own self in your brand. People buy from people. So, be out there in picture or video. People want to get to know you, see who you are and feel connected to you. For example, a photography frame business taking pictures of themselves with their framed photography will see better results than just publishing the framed photography on its own. Your imagination costs nothing, so don’t be afraid to be different and unique!
Step 9: To be remembered, you must focus on creating habitsand showcasing what people know you for and people will follow. So, be consistent in your posting schedule and allocate regular time to stick to it. If your followers are used to see your video every Tuesday, make sure you post your video each Tuesday.
Finally, if you would like to deepen your knowledge on how to stand out for success and market yourself to get more clients and make more money, Emma is providing a 6-month online programme. Check her Facebook video teaserfor more information and contact her by email if you are interested in emmaboylanpr@gmail.com.
I attended an event advertised on Facebook and organised by Bluefire Dublin called ‘Igniting Change: Funding & Financial Sustainability‘ on Thursday 29th June 2017.
The event was aimed at voluntary and community organisation, social-enterprises, individual artists or community-based project managers, and small-medium NGO’s.
Before launching Social Innovation Fund, he founded his own not-for-profit, Reimagine Cork to tackle issues around homelessness in Cork.Understanding the needs for Not-for-Profits, he felt he could help entrepreneurs best and joined Social Innovation Fund.
The company’s mission is to provide both funding and non-financial support to social entrepreneurs. It has also partnered with the government and every given Euro by SIFI is matched by the government.
Eoghan’s first advice was to think about ‘why’ you want to start up a company and why his company would fund you. He also strongly recommends:
having a clear plan in place,
having a good value proposition,
showing confidence
having good management skills.
When filling forms to apply for funding, keep it simple and answer the asked questions.
2. Hazel Hill, Marketing Executive and Programme Leader at The Community Foundation for Ireland:
Her organisation offers both open grants and private grants. The latter ones are given on a project basis with an end date. The organisation offers funds for mergers (shared between teams) to highlight the importance of collaboration and partnership between organisations.
You will be asked about what will happen at the end of the project to gauge how sustainable your business model is.
Her first advice was to not manipulate your core mission value (reason for existing) to get funding. Instead, only apply to relevant grants that fit your organisation. She also advised to:
have a clear mission statement,
document your research by backing up your project with analytical reports,
listen to your community/audiences’ needs,
take any constructive feedback on board
understand the impact your company will have.
3. Naomi AND MERISSA from Connecting theDots, a start-up focusing on the community engagement in Dublin:
Their company started off when there were many unoccupied vacancies in Dublin during the crisis by putting on events with artists, engineers, researchers. Over the time, they worked on a process for events’ organisation, i.e on improving the engagement with attendees, corporate donors.
Naomi’s advice was to volunteer for different organisations and network that way before you start up. She has been helping a lot at ‘Happenings’ organisation.
It is also important to speed up processes with a technology enabler. They are currently working on a software service (SAAS) application (transferring processes online for co-working events), in order to gain time and increase income streams and viability.
4. Ian AND his wife Monica from Center for Creative Practices, a company helping creative artists to come up with a more sustainable model:
His first advice was to start with a small plan before building a full-scale model and revisit this plan when necessary.
Instead of going through a lengthy business plan, they worked on a one-page business model. It detailed their business model and value proposition:
the company’s purpose,
what problem it is trying to resolve and,
the solution offered.
His first business model focused on having a cash projection, i.e ticket prices’ sales and getting people to utilise the space to generate further money. He feels it is best not to be over-reliant on grants for the day-to-day running of the business.
5. participants needing help on setting up their organisations, PLEASE get in touch with the following bodies:
For those of you who are only uploading basic videos on YouTube but have not thought about their YouTube channel trailer nor about using YouTube to raise funds, it’s time to review your strategy!
As you may know, videos are a great way to sell your idea, service or product, so why not using YouTube to its fullest potential by creating a compelling message for your brand or charity? Don’t you know how or where to start? These below articles should guide you through the essential steps to go through, in order to create successful video campaigns.
Also, as it is suggested in the above Mashable article, you may opt to join the YouTube Non-Profit Program to receive donations but note this isn’t available in all countries.
To find out more about it, check the following link:
emelinejonetcom.wordpress.com 