Tag: Focus

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Six Steps to the Influencer Outreach Process

In order to find the perfect influencers for your campaigns, it’s important to go through an outreach process that ensures you find just the right people. After all, if you do this with a plan in mind and seriously check your information and data for accuracy, you can practically guarantee that you’ll be successful. Truly, you’re not even taking that much of a risk when you do this work to get it right.

 

Step #1: Create an Influencer List

Define Your Influencer Marketing Goals

Form a list of the influencers you would like to work with the most. The bigger the list at this point, the better. Shoot for locating at least 20 to 30 potential influencers per platform. Focus on one platform at a time to streamline this process.

 

Step #2: Review Their Profiles

 

Find the information required to make decisions before reaching out to the influencer. Find their social media handles and business credentials. Many influencers include links and special e-mails for business inquiries. Avoid using their personal e-mail or profile when contacting them. Instead, follow their accounts and actually view their profiles and content for a period of time before reaching out.

 

Step #3: Develop a Brief Project Goal

 

Determine why you want to work with an influencer at all. What is your goal? Do you want to boost traffic? If so, how is working with them going to do that? Do you want to make sales? How will this influencer help you make more sales? Figure out the mechanism to reach the goal you’ve set by setting SMART goals to ensure that you have a plan going forward.

 

Step #4: Pick Your Medium

 

You may need to be flexible and communicate with each influencer in the way that they desire to. For example, they may choose to use e-mail, direct message, management contact, video chat, phone call, mail merge apps, sponsored product packages, or something else. Typically, the influencer will have guidelines on their business page about what they need from you. If not, choose what you want to present to them and how.

 

Step #5: Create and Personalize Your Message

 

Be specific, clear, and direct about your goals, what your products or services are and how you’re going to work with them on this project if they choose to work with you. Always make sure that you include follow-up information and server times that will work for you to get the collaboration started faster. Be flexible but only within the guidelines you’ve already set for yourself and your campaign’s time limit and deadlines.

 

Step #6: Edit and Review

 

Always edit and review everything before sending it on to a potential influencer. The clearer you are, the easier it’s going to be to work together. You want to be professional as possible when you reach out to them. The higher quality your reach out is, the higher quality they’re going to expect from themselves as they create your campaign.

 

Once you reach out, make sure you record how and when you reached out to them so that you can follow up quickly when needed. The more records you keep, the easier it’s going to be each time you set up a campaign.

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Affiliate Vs. Influencer Marketing: Key Differences to Know

While you will likely give your influencers an affiliate link to help them make money marketing your products and services, there are some differences between straight affiliate marketing and influencer marketing.

 

Let’s explore some key differences between affiliate and influencer marketing:

 

  • Costs – Most likely, it’s going to cost you slightly more to work with an influencer, at least initially. The main reason is that affiliate marketers do not charge anything up front, but influence marketers often make money both up front and per sale depending on the deal you make with them.

 

  • Compensation Models – You will pay your influencer a set fee according to their schedule to create the video or images or review for you. The cost depends on how many subscribers or followers they have, how much engagement they receive, and how motivated their audience is to follow them to purchase. You never pay affiliates anything unless they make a sale and how they make it is not usually your concern.

 

  • Marketing Goals – When you work with affiliates, you don’t involve yourself in their marketing or creation other than to provide the tools for them in your affiliate dashboard. Still, they promote when and how they want to within those guidelines. If you work with an influencer, it’s more likely that you’ll have more control over when they promote your products and services per your contract.

Are You Being Realistic About Your Goals?

  • Performance Tracking Metrics or KPIs – You probably don’t look at the stats of your affiliates as closely as you will your influencers. Mostly because you’re going to work with far fewer influencers over your business life than you will have affiliates, affiliate marketing is more hands-off.

 

  • FTC Guidelines Abidance – There are many guidelines for promoting products and services that you need to follow, and they all actually boil down to the same thing. Don’t lie, don’t mislead, and tell the truth. You may get away with an affiliate breaking a few rules against your TOS, but if an influencer you work with does it, it’s going to affect you more.

 

Both forms of marketing, affiliate, and influencer, can cross over. An influencer may ask for an affiliate link, and an affiliate who is doing an amazing job may actually be an influencer who found your product on their own. All types of marketing are essential to use, but the subtle differences need to be known.

 

 

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Define Your Influencer Marketing Goals

 

A successful and sustainable influencer marketing campaign requires a plan to maintain focus and direction and identifying your goals. This means before you make any content and before you determine your campaign type and find your influencers.

 

If you do these steps before identifying your goals and setting proper key performance metrics, you are less likely to see appropriate returns. This is because the content and influencer you pick more than likely won’t correlate. Thus, wasting your time and other valuable resources required to run a positively functioning campaign.

 

Each goal you set will require a different type of influencer, budget, and resource needs and for you to produce a set of relevant and unique content. You can’t just use any influencer and throw out poor content and think it will work. Over time this will cause more work, confusion, and eat up at your profits and other resources.

 

  • Brand Awareness and Reputation – Your customers need to notice you several times before they feel safe enough to spend money. The more touchpoints you create using your content, the more notice you will get. Running a social media influencer campaign can make all the difference for your business.

 

  • Increased Sales and Leads – Another goal you can have with your influencer campaign is to make more sales. One way to do that is to use the campaign to build your e-mail list. One tactic is to offer the influencer a freebie to give away that only requires their audience to sign up for a newsletter. This act alone will increase sales today and tomorrow.

 

  • Higher Engagement Rate – Another goal is to increase your engagement rate. When you have more engagement and communication that is two-way with your audience, they get to know you better, and you get to know them better. When this happens, they will be more likely to accept your offers because your offers will be more likely relevant to them.

 

  • More Followers or Traffic – If you want more followers, more leads, more anything, you need more traffic. One type of influencer campaign you can do is designed to bring traffic to your site so that they see what you have to offer. Another option is to get them to another social media account instead, but it’s typically best to push traffic to your website.

 

  • Product Launches and Promotions – Using influencers to promote your next product launch or your sale on your products is a no-brainer. Influencers love to help people announce a new product to their customers because it makes them seem like VIPs.

Analyzing Business Models to See What’s Best for You

Remember when you create your influencer marketing goals not to skimp on your goal-setting process. Instead, use the SMART goal-setting process to ensure that your goal is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Then, you’ll never regret planning and implementing an influencer campaign that you’ve seriously planned out because you’re more likely to be successful and reach your objectives.

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Be Aware of and Follow FTC Guidelines

If you don’t know yet, you have to follow certain guidelines before working with and sharing influencer marketing posts or anything to do with internet marketing.

FTC what they do

The Federal Trade Commission Act is used to protect both the consumer and the business owners. Its main purpose is to protect the credibility of information being shared on the internet while maintaining transparency.

 

You can expect the following consequences for not following the FTC rules:

 

  • Cease and Desist Orders
  • Fines Up to $43,792 per violation
  • Injections by federal district courts
  • Refunds to consumers
  • Costs associated with damages

 

Here are a few main points to be aware of and practice to avoid any legal fees and responsibilities:

 

  • Don’t Share Deceptive or Fake Information – If you do not know for sure that the information you are sharing or promoting is 100 percent legitimate and true and not fake, do not share it. If you do it, it will make you look untrustworthy, cause many controversies, and maybe even cost you money.

 

  • Always Display a Disclaimer – Disclaimers are not meant to allow you to mislead or lie, but they can help protect you from problems. For example, if your product is a special neck pillow, you may want to add a disclaimer that this neck pillow, while it helps you personally with your neck pain, is not a medical device, and you’re not giving medical advice. But, again, talk to a lawyer to help you with your disclaimers.

 

  • Don’t Fake a Product Demonstration – If you’re going to demonstrate anything, never do it in a fake way. If the product doesn’t work as you state it works, then the buyer will find out. Just be real and ask that the influencers you work with are too.

 

Be sure to visit the Federal Trade Commission website to fully understand the guidelines as much as possible before you get started. Knowing and following the law is your civil duty, and you can’t use a lack of knowledge and understanding to protect yourself.

 

 

 

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Influencer Marketing and the Pyramid of Influence

The pyramid of influence is a great model or image to categorize your different audiences and the influencers who represent them. It’s designed to quickly show you who and what makes up the most of your engagement to create the right content and materials to develop and run a successful campaign.

 

To put it simply, a pyramid of influence is designed to allow you to quickly understand who makes up your community and how they each influence your audience. This way, you can easily develop content and strategies to reach your target audience more efficiently and ensure you get the right influencer on board.

The pyramid of Influence is made of the following levels:

influencer Pyramid

First Level: Brand Content Creators

 

They are the brand experts and make up most of your content that your influencers can’t wait to use, share with their audience, or use inspiration to make new content. The content is produced by your company, by those you hired, or even mega-influencers.

 

Second Level: Influencers or Leaders

 

This is where digital influencers come in and make up the bulk of the content and engagement. They spark interest within those who want and must get your products. They inspire and influence transactions and engagement. They are the ones that will do anything to get their hands on your product and share it with their audience because they love your products or services. They are the leaders of your content and mission.

 

Third Level: Prosumers or Seed Planters

 

Prosumers are active in the community consistently, usually using third-party platforms such as Facebook or YouTube. They are the ones that build groups and posts questions or spark interest in topics supporting your niche or brand. In other words, they plant the seed of interest and increase engagement and interaction.

 

Quite a few people in this level of the pyramid will eventually move on to the second tier as low level, or nano influencers can also be found in this level as they often plant the seed. They look up to those above them in the tier to help them create content, answer any questions, or sound the alarm to a common problem within the industry.

 

Bottom Level: Consumers or Readers

They consume content but don’t generate it. They are known as consumers and will make up the bulk of your audience and are responsible for revenue. They are the ones that are influenced by the rest of the pyramid and make purchases or other actions that can positively affect your conversions.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Landing Pages

Understanding the pyramid of influence helps you see how your customers, influencers, and content writers can influence different types of people. The ones on the top have the most impact, while those on the bottom make purchases and increase your conversions.

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Set Up A Product Creation Schedule For Yourself And Your Team

Let’s talk about money. More importantly, let’s talk about how you profit from your online properties. You do it through ads, by making affiliate sales, or my personal favorite – by selling your own products. Those products are what we’ll be talking about today. More specifically, we’ll be discussing creating information products consistently. Why information products? Because you create them once and sell them again and again. No supply line, no storage, no overhead. When you make a sale, it’s almost pure profit.

 

I’m going to let you in on a secret it took me a while to discover when I first started out. It’s much easier to sell an existing customer a second product than it is to find a brand new customer. It’s even easier to sell them the third, fourth, fifth one. You get the idea. That’s because you’ve done all the hard work of earning this person’s trust already and if you’ve done your job right, the first thing they purchased from you is already helping them solve their problem. That’s what information products are all about. Solving a problem. To create that next product, look at where your customers are at and think about what they need to do next. What’s another problem they will face and how can you help them solve it.

 

For example, your first product may be an eBook or course on setting up a WordPress site. Next, your customers may need to learn about creating content that attracts the right type of reader. And then they need to learn about traffic, and list building, and effective social media strategies. Each one of these could be a new info product or new content for your paid membership site.

 

Once you have an idea of what types of products you want to create, it’s important to get them out consistently. You want to have a new product out there for your existing customers to buy. Of course, you’ll also attract new buyers along the way who will then not only buy the new thing you’ve come out with but hopefully also some of the other titles and courses you have out there.

 

Start with a list of products you want to create. Do your best to estimate how long it will take you to create the product and all the infrastructure that goes along with it like a sales page, a download page, autoresponders, and solo emails to promote it, a promotion schedule, etc. Make a list of everything you need to do before you can launch this new product. Then get to work. Chip away at it every day and continue to consistently work towards each of these new product launches, adjusting your timeframe as needed.

Outsourcing: The Key to Success for The Life Affirming Entrepreneur

In the beginning, it will probably be just you working on this product creation. Maybe you’re hiring out the graphics. Put that on the schedule and communicate with your graphic designer early to avoid bottlenecks. As time goes by, you may choose to outsource some of the product creation. Maybe you’re hiring an editor to proofread your work. Or a VA to help with the setup, infrastructure, and customer service. Eventually, you may even hire some writers to create these products for you. As your team expands, it’s even more important to have a schedule everyone works off to make sure these new products come out regularly.

 

 

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Struggling With Social Media? A Calendar And System Can Help

Do you have a hard time with social media? Either you aren’t finding the time to get around to posting regularly and getting discouraged by a lack of results you’re getting. You know what I’m talking about. You aren’t getting a lot of new followers on your page on Facebook for example and when you post something only a small fraction of those people see the post. It can be discouraging and feel like you have to pay to play by buying ads if you want your content to be seen. Thankfully that’s not true. What is true however is that consistency can help you grow your reach on any social media platform. It can help you with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and anywhere else where your ideal customers choose to hang out.

 

This brings up an important point. Before you dive in and invest a lot of time and effort on every single platform, take a look around. Where are your people hanging out? What media does your tribe prefer? For example, if you’re running a recipe blog, you have to be on Pinterest, and depending on your particular niche, you may also want a Facebook presence, including a group, and possibly a YouTube channel. If you’re into sourdough, you’ve got to be on Instagram… Do your research and do your best to determine where you want to be before you get started.

 

Once you have that figured it, it’s time to come up with a posting schedule. Remember, consistency is key. You’re better off doing fewer posts and shares more regularly than overdoing it and burning out. Start with a conservative number that you’re comfortable with across all platforms and write it down. For example, you may choose to do 5 tweets per week, 10 pins, 3 Facebook posts, one Facebook Live video, and a new YouTube video every other week.

 

Once you have your schedule, it’s time to schedule the actual content using a calendar. You can use Google Calendar or an old-fashioned paper one. The key is being able to stay organized and having your social media goals in writing to ensure it gets done and posted regularly. How far out should you schedule? That’s up to you. If you like to plan in big batches every few months, go for it. If you prefer to be more spontaneous, do it once a week. Play around with different time frames and see what works best for you. When you know what you’ll be posting about and have the text and images ready ahead of time, it’s quick and easy to keep up with social media.

 

To save even more time and make social media content more hands-off, take a look at some of the scheduling tools available. I like Hootsuite, MeetEdgar, PostPlanner, and Tailwind (for Pinterest). Use them to schedule and loop posts that will go out without you having to log into your social media profiles every single day.  Instead, you can set aside time once every couple of weeks to do the bulk of your work. Then check-in from your phone throughout the week to respond to comments etc. Getting organized and figuring out a system that works for you can be such a game-changer when it comes to being consistent on social media and growing an engaged following. When you have those main posts going out on schedule, you can then pop in and interact & post in real-time as and when time allows.

 

Tools and Tips to Help You Automate Social Media Marketing

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How Does Consistency Affect Your Bottom Line

You want to be more productive, right? Get more stuff done. Make a lot of progress.

Start to move the bottom line to make your business more profitable. It’s the goal in some way, shape, or form for all of us. And most of us think we have to make some big leaps to get there.

But here’s the big secret. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you focus on consistency and do something to make progress every single day, you’ll greatly increase your chances of success.

Think back on the parable of the turtle and the hare. There’s a lot of truth in that old story and it applies to all areas of your life, including your business.

Yes, you can go all out and get a lot of work done all at once. There’s a time and place for that. For example, you may put long and hard hours in for a week or two to prepare for a new product launch, or when you’re first setting up your website. It shouldn’t be your default strategy. Why? Because you’ll burn out.

Burnout is a serious problem. Most entrepreneurs and small business owners have experienced it and it can take a long time to get over it.

A much better strategy – aside from those brief periods of hustle – is consistency. If you make an effort to get something done every single day, you’ll make a lot of progress in the long run.

Over the course of a year, you will go further and your business will grow more than if you overdo it and then go into a slump because you have no energy for anything else.

Remember, slow and steady wins the race. It’s much easier to motivate yourself to get something done that takes fifteen minutes and to do it every day, than something that takes you hours. It’s much easier to justify not doing something that’s hard or takes a long time.

Instead, keep it easy, make it fun, and get into the habit of doing it each and every day. In the long run, you’ll get a lot more done if you put in half an hour per day, six days a week, than working for two hours once or twice a week.

Habit is one way how consistency can help you grow your business.

But there’s something else that will work in your favor when you start to put in a small bit of effort every day.

You will start to build momentum that will carry you much further than you would have gotten otherwise. More on that in a future blog post.

I encourage you to shift your mindset towards a focus on consistency that will allow you to continue growing, expanding, and most importantly moving the needle in the right direction when it comes to your bottom line.

Do This to Be More Consistent in Life and Business

 

 

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Invest a Percentage of Your Income for Your Future

As you work on your daily habits that help safeguard your future, one of the daily habits that will pay off the most is learning to save and invest a percentage of your income for your future by habit. It’s hard to save money for the future if you’re not able to really think about the future much, but there is no willpower needed if you just think about what you’re doing today, and keep doing it as a matter of course, you’ll end up benefiting exponentially.

 

  • Determine Your Priorities – When you know what your priorities are today and into the future, through your life, it’s going to be much easier seeing your daily spending and savings goals.

Better Goal Setting Tips for Maximum Productivity

  • Automate Investing and Saving – Once you have set up your goals, you can automate most of the process by having a percentage of your paycheck go directly to savings and investment accounts. If it’s never there to spend, you will be more likely to save it.

 

  • Avoid Consumer Debt – When you are setting up your daily habits, you know that avoiding consumer debt is an imperative for anyone who really wants to have a safe and stable future. Therefore, you don’t buy things without a daily plan for saving and spending.

 

  • Borrow Money Like Rich People Do – When and if you borrow money, only borrow it when you really don’t need it, and the interest rate is super low. If the rate is lower than what you can earn on your money, borrowing is smart. For example, if you qualify for a zero-interest car loan, why wouldn’t you?

 

  • Plan For Big Expenses – When you habituate your spending and saving, you will always plan for big expenses (and really all expenses) so that you’re never caught off guard. You will know that at this particular time in the future, you’re going to buy a thing, and you know how much you need to be saving daily to ensure it happens.

 

  • Plan for Emergencies – Even though it seems impossible, you can plan for potential emergencies, making them less tragic. In everyone’s life, they have things happen. People get sick. People get hurt. People lose their jobs. People even die. Plan for at least one emergency by saving six to eight months of living expenses in a liquid account.

 

  • Save All Windfalls – During a lifetime, you’re going to get monetary windfalls once in a blue moon for birthdays, inheritances, or bonuses and raises at work arrange for every single one to be saved or invested without even giving it a thought.

 

  • Take a Cooking Class – Most people waste money by eating out at restaurants and not even good ones. Decide to learn how to cook so that you can make good quality food at home.

 

  • Buy Experiences Not Stuff – When you do plan expenses, consider having more experiences and less stuff. When you spend money on an adventure, you always learn something that gives you value far beyond what you buy.

 

  • Track Your Efforts – Whatever you track and pay attention to is what will grow. Track your savings efforts by checking up on your accounts at least quarterly. This is important when you’re doing automatic deposits just to make sure it’s all working as planned.

 

When you start thinking of the daily habits you have as good things that automatically take care of your future, each day becomes a no-brainer. You just save money just because that’s what you do and not something difficult to do.

 

It’s part of your priorities and a driving force for your lifestyle, and that’s what you set up to be important. Do you see a method to the madness now? Set your goals, schedule the actions you need to take to reach your goals, and then simply live your life doing a little bit each day, and one day you’ll arrive in the future automatically, and all will be well.

 

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Learn to Laugh More Often

Sometimes you can make yourself feel happier and more successful by simply seeking out more laughter. A daily habit that will pay off big time is simply not taking life or yourself too seriously while finding ways to laugh about funny things even if they’re hard.

 

Developing the habit of laughter simply requires that you give yourself permission to laugh and let go and seek out more humor. Let’s look at several ways you can bring more laughter into your life.

 

  • Spend Time with Funny People – When you really want to feel light, there are likely people in your life that you can make sure you spend time with. When you hang out with funny people, it will rub off on you.

 

  • Try New Experiences Often – One way to bring laughter back into your life is to keep trying new things. When you open your life and mind to new experiences, you also open yourself up to funny things happening to you that are out of the norm of what might happen if you just do the same thing day in and day out.

Tips to Help You Practice Positive Thinking

  • Watch Your Favorite Funny Go to Sitcom or Movie – Sometimes, you have to pull out the big guns and watch a rerun of something that made you laugh when times were good. Bringing laughter back into your life in any way you can is a healthy habit that pays off for years to come.

 

  • See The Situation from a New Perspective – Everyone sees things from their own perspective and information bubble when you realize that you can become more like a child or a baby or a first-time parent by opening up your world to new ideas and perspectives.

 

  • Go to a Comedy Club Show – Choose the type of humor you like but burst through your comfort zone and go to a comedy show near you. You may not even realize that people still do comedy shows at clubs, and you don’t even have to put up with smoking nowadays if you don’t want to.

 

  • Understand Human Nature – When you know how humans really behave, on average, it’s a lot easier to see what is happening to you through the eyes of experience. When you understand that this is just how things are, it is way funnier than when you think it’s only happening to you.

 

The great thing about bringing more laughter into your life is that it pays off in numerous ways. It will lower the stress you’re experiencing, which will lessen your chances of experiencing stress-related diseases like obesity that lead to serious cardiovascular disease. Not only that, but it’s like you’re also doing a ton of sit-ups to your stomach muscles. It’s a way to get in shape that doesn’t feel like work at all.