Maximizing Your Google Business Profile for Local Search Success

Maximizing Your Google Business Profile for Local Search Success

Are you looking to boost your business’s visibility in local search results? One effective way to achieve this is by optimizing your Google Business Profile

Update Your Business Information

The first step in this process is to ensure that your business information is accurate, complete, and engaging. By providing essential details such as your address, phone number, category, and attributes, you increase the likelihood of appearing in Google Maps and Search results. Let’s dive into how you can update your business information to enhance your online presence and attract more local customers.

Verify Your Locations

Next, it’s crucial to verify your business locations on Google. This step not only helps Google authenticate the legitimacy of your business but also improves your local search ranking. By following the verification process outlined in your Google Business Profile, you can enhance your online credibility and increase the chances of appearing in local search results. Let’s explore the significance of verifying your business locations and how it can benefit your overall online presence.

Improve Your Local Search Ranking

In the competitive landscape of local search, every advantage counts. Verifying your business locations is a direct way to improve your local search ranking and increase the visibility of your Google Business Profile. Google prioritizes verified businesses in local search results, making it easier for potential customers to find and engage with your business. By verifying your locations, you’re signaling to Google that your business is legitimate and trustworthy, which can lead to higher rankings and more visibility in local searches.

Keep Your Hours Accurate

Consistency is key when it comes to updating your business hours on Google. Whether you’re adjusting your regular hours or announcing special hours for holidays and events, keeping this information accurate is vital for customer convenience and trust. By ensuring that your hours are up-to-date, you help customers plan their visits effectively and demonstrate your commitment to providing reliable service. Let’s delve into the importance of maintaining accurate business hours and how it can impact your online reputation.

Manage and Respond to Reviews

Customer reviews can significantly influence potential customers’ decisions. By actively managing and responding to reviews on your Google Business Profile, you showcase your dedication to customer satisfaction and enhance your business’s credibility. Positive reviews can boost your visibility and attract more customers, making this a critical aspect of optimizing your online presence. Let’s discuss how you can effectively manage and respond to reviews to build trust and establish a positive reputation online.

Add Photos

Visual content is a powerful tool for capturing the attention of potential customers. By adding high-quality photos to your Google Business Profile, you can showcase your products and services in a visually appealing way. This not only helps customers better understand what you offer but also sets you apart from competitors. Regularly updating and adding new photos can enhance your profile’s visibility and engagement. Let’s explore how incorporating captivating photos can elevate your online presence and attract more customers.

Highlight Your Product Selection – If Applicable

If you run a retail business, taking advantage of the option to showcase your in-store products on your Google Business Profile can significantly enhance the shopping experience for potential customers. By offering a glimpse of the products available in your store, you provide valuable information that can influence purchasing decisions. This feature is particularly useful for attracting customers who are looking for specific items and want to see what you offer before visiting your store.

Relevance, Distance, and Prominence

In conclusion, optimizing your Google Business Profile for local area search is essential for increasing your online visibility and attracting more customers. By updating your business information, verifying your locations, keeping your hours accurate, managing and responding to reviews, adding photos, and showcasing in-store products if applicable, you can enhance your online presence and stand out in local search results. Remember that relevance, distance, and prominence are key factors that Google considers when ranking businesses in local searches. By focusing on these aspects and consistently maintaining your profile, you can improve your chances of appearing at the top of search results and attracting local customers to your business. Stay proactive, engage with your audience, and make the most of your Google Business Profile to drive success for your business in the digital landscape.

Need Help?

If you need help managing your Google Business Profile get in touch. We offer a free 30-minute digital marketing consultation.

Digital Marketing Is Like Running The London Marathon

Digital Marketing Is Like Running The London Marathon

Digital Marketing Is Like Running The London Marathon

The London Marathon has been on this weekend. Firstly, I would like to say congratulations to everyone running the London Marathon today., it’s an amazing accomplishment to get to the starting line, let alone the finishing line.

Watching it and hearing about it on the radio over the last couple of days got me thinking about how digital marketing is like running a marathon, so here are my thoughts and comparisons.

🏃‍♂️Marathon runners need to be trainers. They need to train regularly to build their fitness up

💻 You need to spend time learning about digital marketing to get the most out of it.

🏃‍♂️Marathon runners need to be prepared. They have to eat the right foods, make sure they are suitably hydrated, etc.

💻In digital marketing you need to prepare your content. Plan how and when you are going to create it and where you are going to share it. You can wing it for a while but you will fail if you aren’t prepared.

🏃‍♂️Marathon runners need the right equipment. Good quality running shoes, training clothes, food and drink, etc.

💻In digital marketing you need good equipment too. From a laptop / PC to a good smart phone, microphone, camera and then the right apps and software to allow you to produce and publish your content.

🏃‍♂️Most marathon runners are obsessed by their performance. How mong has it taken them? Have they beaten their previous record on this courses? Have they set a new record for their marathon running?

💻In digital marketing you should be obsessed with your analytics. No matter which digital platform, you get shown analytics about your content, how many people have seen it, have they interacted with it, where they are, etc. Everyone doing digital marketing should be looking to get better.

🏃‍♂️Marathon runners get rewarded. Whether it is a fun run or a major event, if you take part you are normally given a medal to show you have taken part.

💻In digital marketing the reward should be a growth in visibility, credibility and hopefully profitability as a result of your digital marketing.

The different types of runner-

🏃‍♂️Elite runners are aiming to break records and are at the front of the pack. They are able to dedicate their whole life to marathon running, it is their business.

💻In digital marketing these are influencers. They spend their whole life online, creating content and making their living from appearances and product placement.

🏃‍♂️Club runners run a number of marathons each year and dedicate a significant portion of their non-work life in training.

💻In Digital Marketing, these are businesses who have outsourced their digital marketing, are big enough to have someone focused on their digital marketing, or have put digital marketing at the heart of their marketing activities.

🏃‍♂️General runners make up the main bulk of the marathon. They are people of all abilities out there running, either for themselves or to raise money for charity. There are people of all abilities and their finishing times will vary tremendously.

💻In digital marketing this is any entrepreneur using digital marketing to promote their business. Some will post content more frequently than others, some are more prepared than others, but they are all able to create content regularly.

🏃‍♂️Fun runners are those runners who run in costume of one sort or another, to get noticed and often to raise money for charity.

💻 In digital marketing, this is when a post that goes viral

If you’re struggling with getting going with your digital marketing, contact us.

 

 

Discussing Digital with Karen WIlliams – Transcript

Discussing Digital with Karen WIlliams – Transcript

In this episode of the podcast, Rob Osborne is Discussing Digital with Karen Williams, a book mentor from Libertas, to discuss her journey in the publishing industry and her strategies for successful digital marketing. Karen shares how she found her passion for writing and publishing in 2006 and how her first book in 2009 transformed her business. For the past decade, she has been helping business experts write and publish their own books.

One of the key topics of our discussion is Karen’s use of digital marketing, specifically in the development and promotion of her upcoming book. She explains how she has embraced video marketing, despite not initially enjoying it, by using platforms like Zoom to record, scripting her videos, and establishing a distribution process. Karen believes that video is a crucial aspect of her digital marketing strategy, alongside her website, blog, and email marketing.

🗝️ Key Tips:
1️⃣ Collaborate with experts and outsource tasks to streamline your digital marketing efforts.
2️⃣ Amplify your influence and spread your message far and wide during a book launch.
3️⃣ Prioritize a select few digital marketing channels and master them impeccably.
4️⃣ Test, measure, and track your analytics to fine-tune your strategy for optimal results.

This transcript of Discussing Digital with Karen Williams has been produced using the transcription function of Easy-Peasy.AI

You can find out more about Easy-Peasy-AI here

 

Transcript of Discussing Digital with Karen Williams

**Rob Osborne**:
Hi and welcome everybody to this edition of Discussing Digital and today I’m talking with Karen Williams, the book mentor from Libertas. Karen, would you like to give a bit more of an
**Karen WIlliams**:
introduction to yourself? Absolutely, thanks for inviting me Rob. So yeah, I’m Karen Williams, I’m the book mentor and my journey started out in 2006 when really fate, difficulty at work prompted me to get my own coach and I found a coach and thought actually I found a job, a career, a business that I’d quite like to run. The first few years were a little bit challenging but everything changed for me when I wrote my first book in 2009 and I would love to say it was easy but it wasn’t and I think if it was easy I probably wouldn’t be doing what I do today. I went through where do I get started? What if it’s no good and how do I get the book published? And it did. 18 months later I was at my book launch, amazing success and it really turned my business on its head and changed it completely and I did say never again after that first one but here we are today. I’m just about to publish a second edition of the fifth book and book number 10, a planner to accompany that book will also be out in September 2023 and really for the last 10 years I’ve supported business experts to write their own books, taking them through the whole process. From idea through to publication, marketing and launch and I love what I do every day.
**Rob Osborne**:
Wow that’s great to have done so much success and be doing something you love. One of the things that I know is a feature in the book you’re about to publish but also has been a feature of what you’ve been doing over the last few months is actually using digital marketing and digital channels not only to promote your book but also at times to kind of help narrow down some of the things in it. So for instance I know you’ve done a I’ve seen and responded to polls about what should I call the book and things like that so I’d really love to kind of spend some of this episode today not just talking about the great way you use digital marketing in general because you do but specifically how you’ve been using it to help develop the book and also how you will be using it to promote the book as it goes live if that’s okay.
**Karen WIlliams**:
Absolutely one of the things I learned when I wrote that first book is one of the coaches I interviewed for it he said choose three ways of marketing your business and do them well and I think these days there’s so many things you can do that we can get overwhelmed and we think oh we need to do everything but actually you don’t but I also believe that once you’ve got three things in place like website blog email marketing you can layer other things into it and I suppose it’s the layering that I’ve been doing most recently in terms of for the book launch itself I’ve been focusing on video marketing so I’ve started doing a video blog on a Friday to take people through my own process as I approach the launch. I started it um gosh where are we now so that was probably the end of June I started it I recorded the first episode now I’m a writer I don’t enjoy videos it can take me two hours to record the five minute video um but it’s really made me up my game and also remember what I’ve done in terms of you know the launch so I’ve been doing things like I’ve been planning an Amazon launch a lot of digital stuff involved with that um setting up my own podcast again there’s a lot of tech I am using someone to help edit it and upload them but I’m doing obviously the recording of that myself um the Amazon launch is going to be a big thing so there’s a lot I’ve been doing around using digital
**Rob Osborne**:
specifically around the book itself okay yeah I mean there’s so much we could pick out just from that section so to start I’m just going to talk a bit more about video because I I mean obviously we’re recording this on video and um my aim is to turn this into a podcast as well and thank you for the introduction to the person that you’re you’re working with so I will be in contact with him there
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah I mean you said it can take you a few hours to do it but is it kind of my life oh I don’t like it but I’ve got to do it or do you kind of once you get into the swing of it and sort of enjoy it because a reason why I’m saying that is I’ve looked at your website obviously I’ll watch some of the videos that you do and you’re using video really well some really interesting stuff you’re doing so I just be interesting to kind of just talk about that a bit more uh to try and encourage some of the businesses that might not like doing video at the moment um however yeah make that bit
**Karen WIlliams**:
up well it’s keeping it simple I use zoom just to record it because it’s just easy um so I just literally set myself up in front of my computer my webcam my microphone and I I do it and I use zoom to record it so really keeping it simple I do script it because I do I like to focus on a bite-sized chunk so for example with the launch I’ve been looking at what themes do I want to cover over the launch because it could be a bit repetitive if I’m saying well I recorded a podcast interview or recorded a video and I did this and I did that so I’ve been trying to pick a theme for each um time I’ve done it so I sit here and I have a script not word by word of course but kind of just an idea of what I want to cover I do practice a couple of times I did one um yesterday for this week and I did it in one take you know sometimes you know if I fluff my words in the first few sentences I might start again but actually it’s authentically me at the end of the day if I fall over my words or you know I say a few ums and ahs or you know which is something I think all of us do it’s okay because that’s me so I I joke and say it takes a long time um normally I do it in one or two takes and I go yeah it’s good enough and I think we before before you press record we talked about you know um done is better than not done I think I remember your phrase but it’s just about doing it really and then one of the things I did is I set up a process so to remind myself of what I need to do each week so I record the video I put the captions on it I upload it to YouTube I put it on my blog and I send it out to my mailing list so they’re the five things I do and I also tell my social media manager that I’ve done it so she can do a social media post so I guess that’s five technical things that I do but because there’s a process now
**Rob Osborne**:
it doesn’t take too long yeah and I think that’s really good that you have established a process to allow you to build it in you put some time aside because that’s the other thing that a lot of people struggle with certainly small business owners they’re busy trying to do uh they’re not trying to do the wrong form they’re delivering their services or producing their their products and then how do I find the time to do this but as you say you’ve got a really good process capture some stuff about what you’ve been doing this week so there’s some content and then you put some time aside to produce it and actually uh distributes that’s a really really good tip uh for
**Karen WIlliams**:
anybody sort of uh that struggles with how to do their digital marketing yeah well well I found that you know episode two I went I can’t remember what I did last week what did I do I better write it down um and I do work with people who support me in the business but actually because I am quite technically minded myself it doesn’t take me long to do it but obviously it’s something that people can outsource as well to people who can do it so much quicker than them um but for me it’s it’s a really good reinforcement by listening back to the video and going okay so what were the key points that need to go in the blog what were you know what is the hook that I can talk about on it on a newsletter so that’s why I generally do it myself is because I can bring all of that together as I do it so literally if it’s a five minute video it takes me hour and a half two hours to actually do everything
**Rob Osborne**:
end to end so I’m just scheduling that into my time no that’s that’s that’s really good um and I think you mentioned in context about how you distribute stuff uh email marketing uh your use of email um I’d like to talk about that a little bit more because I think a lot of businesses don’t really use or like using email it’s a bit like video um but I think it’s a really important part of any digital marketing strategy so could we just talk a little bit more about how you use email uh within your um you know sort of marketing and just a raising awareness of what you’re doing
**Karen WIlliams**:
um I have a lead magnet or a couple of lead magnets on my website so a free download that people can leave their name and email address to get something valuable that’s going to help them in their business so I’ve got 21 questions I’ve got a master class as well um that also leads into other products and services that I offer to people so people like what I do they want to look at more though you know I have got a sales funnel set up I’ve been working for the last few years in conjunction with the marketing expert so he’s been working alongside me to set that up um and I keep saying to myself I’m a writer so it’s easy Rob for me to actually write stuff I’ve always got content that’s never a problem so I can take I can see something I’ve done I go oh that would make this piece of content that piece of content obviously I’ve got 10 books to produce loads and loads of content so that’s not a problem for me um I share case studies I share updates there’s all sorts of things I can do um so it’s not a problem with me and I communicate with my mailing list at least once a week and sometimes more at the moment it’s a little bit more frequent because I’ve got more to say but normally it’s at least once a week and that’s the whole idea and I usually follow that once a week um it’s always at least once a week and i’ve been using email um newsletters since i started out in 2006 so it’s not a new thing for me it’s just it’s just become that consistent habit
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah no and it’s basically it happens that you’re a writer so because that’s another thing people struggle with sometimes or i’ve got to write something um but yeah it’s so it’s it’s but it’s good that again you’re building to have it you should say you try and write to an email at least once a week uh so i think that’s really powerful um you also mentioned uh your lead magnet and the structure of your website uh because i have been through that and i must admit again i think your website’s brilliant really well structured uh i love the fact that you’re 21 questions but you’ve got that great video right on right center straight of your home page uh you and cheryl um so i think that’s really good and i have followed most of the lead magnets and stuff like that um which kind of leads us all nicely to something you talked about uh when we said about is this something you’d like me to talk about and that’s your work you did using chat gpt earlier this year yeah um and i know that’s one of the things to link through to um i haven’t had a chance to look of re watch the whole video yet uh but i will because i know it’s something that one i’m interested in but also obviously a lot of people are interested in knowing about chat gpt because it’s an ai in general because there’s so much of it out there being discussed at the moment so yeah could you give a little bit of a chat about what you’ve been doing and what you’re doing and what you’re doing and what you’re doing
**Karen WIlliams**:
and how you did you’ve used uh ai and chat gpt well i think with anything in business when you have a potential threat or potential opportunity you have to see is it a threat or an opportunity so when i came across chat gpt around about january time i signed up for a couple of webinars with other people and i thought let’s explore it i signed up for chat gpt i pay um the 20 a month so i’ve got access to it as and when i want to and to be fair i use it most days um when i ran my first master class which i can’t remember when it was now but it was earlier this year so beginning part of the year i just wanted to explore could it help me to write a book and it did i use i did an experiment saying write me a book it was a 10 000 words it was okay i would never publish it because it was just the book but actually there’s so many tools so many ways you can use chat gpt or any other ai tool to help you so for example um if you’ve got an idea if sometimes i sit down and go i want to write this email newsletter this is the kind of thing i’m i want to write so i’ll often use chat gpt as a research tool and dump it in there and just see what it comes up with normally it’s a little bit flowery it’s not my voice but it might just give me an idea of how to structure it um so sometimes i can use it like that i’ve used it to help with the updates for book marketing made simple so for example if there’s a chapter i did a new chapter on i’m using it having a street team to help promote the book so i said to chat gpt what needs to go in this chapter so it gave me some ideas so it’s almost a sanity check against what i was writing so there’s a couple of things obviously i’ve ran run some training some of my clients use it with my support it’s never going to be replaced replacement of your voice and your style but use it as a research tool use it to help you use it when you’ve got that blank page syndrome and you know you want to write something but you’ve got no idea where to start that’s when it comes into its own but don’t copy and paste it because it’s not your voice it’s it you know there are lots of red flags around chat gpt as well um but just use it in the best use it however you feel you want to use it i said i use it a lot i’ve been um don’t ask me what it’s called but i was um recommended um a another ai tool that to do podcast notes cast magic i think it was someone recommended it and i’ve been playing around with that this week and so it’s another tool i’m probably going to sign up for because again if it makes it quicker and easier for you you might as well use it
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah okay that’s quite good um you mentioned your podcast uh so this is a good opportunity to give it a little plug i know you said you’re launching it next month so give it a little
**Karen WIlliams**:
now so when i updated book marketing made simple i’ve got various experts who talk about different elements of um marketing books so things from blogging websites uh instagram linkedin um podcasts you know all sorts of things and i contacted the people that contributed to the book and said do you want to be on my podcast so that’s series one it’s called business book bites um it launches early september five five podcasts in five more to record from for the initial series and i’ve got a couple of ideas for two more series so see where the first one goes and i’ve been doing interviews like this for for long a long long time yeah but there is something that happens when you do something that’s named podcast because it kind of puts it in a different different sphere in my mind anyway yeah so it’s been it’s been
**Rob Osborne**:
interesting and i’m still learning about the different things to do with it yeah yes well you said that when we were chatting beforehand you said about that when it’s fine having a chat and then suddenly the word podcast comes in and somebody presses the record button and sometimes your mind just goes
**Karen WIlliams**:
what’s going on yeah but i’m quite a planner so i like to plan them out i like to write the introduction so i know that i’m introducing the person in the in the best possible way i don’t want to wing it um but then when the conversation goes it’s so much more organic you know we we have some ideas of questions from from the guest of what they want to be asked around the topic they’re talking about in the book and then we meander and we go wherever on the podcast itself but it’s always good to have a starting point and knowing what where you want to start with it
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah yeah absolutely and it’s they should say it’s good to have some structure but also that fluidity to go where the um kind of just the direction of the conversation goes you know um yeah but but also one of the things i found learning this is like something oh it’s not that easy to be a chat show host is it because that’s kind of what this is a bit like and sometimes you know um you you realize the skill that you’ve you’ve seen uh of of people that do chat shows here okay not as easy as it doesn’t look sometimes
**Rob Osborne**:
oh brilliant um so um talking about you you’ve said you know we obviously were talking a lot about that your book your relaunch of um book marketing made simple so um when it again we give that a little bit of a plug when is when is that going to be relaunched uh when are you launching your new book when is it due to be uh 28th of september 28th september well that’s that
**Karen WIlliams**:
was firmly booked in your head that burn yeah it was yes we’ve been working towards it so fingers crossed i think we’re all on track for that at the moment i should be getting the proof copy within the next few days um i i decided not just to launch one book because i i think i alluded to earlier i’m launching a marketing planner alongside it yeah so that’s just one of those things um tracy my business manager she when we were talking about the launch and i’ve got a couple of planners i created before a writing planner um and a writing journal and she said are you going to do a planner alongside the book and yeah and it was another another job to add to the list but again it’s about i think the most important thing rob when it comes to anything like this is knowing where you can turn to so for example i’ve got someone who does the design for me i’ve got someone who does kind of some of the marketing stuff although i’m quite technically minded and i like to jump in and do some of this um it’s good to know you’ve got other people there to support you as well you don’t need to know everything so that’s if one piece of advice that people can take from this if some of the stuff i’m saying is a little bit too much you know go to experts like you like there’s a lot of people out there who can support in so many ways and make it easy as
**Rob Osborne**:
possible okay that’s and that’s kind of preemptive one of the things i said i normally ask people when i’m recording this one is a a good tip so i’m happy to take that as your actual one thing to recommend unless you’ve got something else you want to share as one thing to recommend
**Karen WIlliams**:
um i think that’s probably my one thing that would be good um yeah i think if i had to add one more thing it’s just about raising your profile especially when it comes to a book launch you know do what you need to do to raise your profile don’t be afraid of um doing lots of stuff because actually you want your message to get out to as many people as
**Rob Osborne**:
possible so you can have that bonus tip brilliant excellent and if there was one thing to say don’t do that just don’t do it have you got one thing that was put for that as well
**Karen WIlliams**:
um don’t try and do everything um because i you know sometimes i feel like there are we talked earlier about multiple jigsaws and there’s a lot of things going on and they do all link together and they’re all on the same theme they all link together um one thing that i don’t do as much as i should do is i do test and measure but i don’t always track my analytics so for example on social media and i think that’s one of the things that’s dreamt into me is check your analytics one thing i will do as a result of the launch because i’m teaching this and because i’m taking people through my process of course i’m going to have all the figures related to that but i don’t always sit down and actually do those figures as i go and go okay so what’s worked what hasn’t worked i think when i launched my first book i pretty much threw everything marketing-wise at it and something you know something i don’t believe i wouldn’t do without marketing and i’m stuck yeah i think now now i know a little bit more about what sticks and what doesn’t um but yeah it’s always about test measure test measure and then work out what do you need to do more
**Rob Osborne**:
what do you need to do less of as a result yeah absolutely and what’s working well so i’ll do more of it and if that really isn’t working then don’t put too much energy into it go and focus on something else as well i think that’s yeah again brilliant brilliant tips um so that’s great um yeah so um before we wrap up um obviously people may well want to be able to follow what you’ve been doing uh so what’s the best way for them to get in contact with you or to be able
**Karen WIlliams**:
to follow you and then kind of maybe from there follow all your other uh channels as well um best place to go is my website libretas.com which is l-i-b-r-o-t-a-s.com and you’ve got all my social media links on there um link to book marketing made simple you can find anything
**Rob Osborne**:
you want to know about me on the website okay fantastic and we’ll put all your links into the description when we post this post the video this on youtube and once i’ve learned more
**Karen WIlliams**:
about podcasting i’ll do the same if i can when i publish this as a podcast yeah you just need
**Rob Osborne**:
some show notes yeah okay that’s cool all right well i just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today um you’ve shared so many great tips about digital marketing um and uh so i i really enjoyed not only watching learning everything that you send and reading everything you send and processing it because you share so much um but i do also like as you said about jigsaw the fact that you have all the bits in the jigsaw going so you’ve got a website you’ve got social media channels you’ve got email you’ve got video and now you’re going to have podcasts as well as well as books because that’s what your actual base business is so you’ve got it all covered um that yeah you i personally as a i just think as a personality you’re brilliant at digital marketing so yeah no it’s really good so thank you so much

Discussing Digital with Hayley Jones – Transcript

Discussing Digital with Hayley Jones – Transcript

In this episode, Hayley Jones, owner of HB Associates, an accountancy firm, shares her digital marketing strategies. Despite being an introvert, Hayley has embraced TikTok as a platform to record videos and has improved her skills with practice. She uses CapCut to edit her videos within the TikTok app. One of her videos has gained tremendous popularity with over 12.5k views.

Hayley’s content planning involves posting three videos per week on TikTok. She ensures that her content varies from informative to fun videos, catering to her audience’s interests. Additionally, LinkedIn plays a significant role in her digital marketing strategy. With about 100 new followers each month, Hayley started generating inquiries around the 7-8 month mark.

Engagement is crucial for Hayley, and she spends time daily commenting and engaging with others’ posts on LinkedIn. While she schedules posts for Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, she prefers to engage more organically on LinkedIn.

Looking forward, Hayley plans to focus more on her website and Google Business Profile, with guidance from her website developers. She also expresses an interest in learning more about email marketing before implementing it into her strategy.

Hayley’s key advice for digital marketing success is consistency within realistic goals. She emphasizes that businesses should not feel pressured to join every new platform but should focus on what works best for their specific business and target audience.

Listeners can connect with Hayley on various platforms, including TikTok (@the_redheaded_accountant), Instagram (@hbassociates_accountants), LinkedIn, and Facebook under HB Associates.

This transcript of Discussing Digital with Hayley Jones has been produced using the transcription function of Easy-Peasy.AI

You can find out more about Easy-Peasy-AI here

 

Transcript of Discussing Digital with Hayley Jones

**Rob Osborne**:
Hello everybody and welcome to this edition of Discussing Digital and today I’m discussing digital marketing with Hayley Jones who’s an accountant. Hayley would you like to introduce yourself, your business and then just sort of talk a little bit about your digital marketing
**Hayley Jones**:
in general and then we’ll sort of go from there. Yeah so my name is Hayley Jones and I own and run the accountancy firm HB Associates and so we are a bunch of chartered accountants who look after all your compliance taxation needs. In relation to digital marketing I tend to try and really have a presence across every kind of channel but I very much focus on the ones that tend to work more for me. Those tend to be my personal
**Rob Osborne**:
LinkedIn and TikTok seems to be quite responsible too. Oh all right well because I’m fascinated by TikTok at the moment and we were having a bit of a chat beforehand about it so let’s dive straight in with TikTok because obviously everyone knows that TikTok’s a bit about video and content and so let’s talk to start with about the challenges you said you face with recording video but then actually I’m going to
**Hayley Jones**:
encourage everyone to go and look because Hayley’s videos are brilliant. Yeah I mean for me I’m quite an introvert person probably that is a bit stereotypical accountant but I like to think I’m not a stereotypical accountant and so the whole concept of recording myself on film and listening to it back and I’m quite a perfectionist so in the early days when I started doing it I would probably spend hours looking like trying to do a video and editing it deleting it and all this so it’s definitely out of my comfort zone completely but it’s something I think the more you do the more you kind of get a bit better at it and yeah you just kind of go along with it
**Rob Osborne**:
really. Yeah yeah I can resonate perfectly with you about comfort zones and I have a weird thing right so I’m a bit old school right so I’m used to recording videos like we’re going to release here which are in landscape format but the whole switching it to short form and portrait is just a bit of a bit of a enigma to me still at the moment so I’m you’re ahead of me in that getting
**Hayley Jones**:
over that. think it’s trial and error a lot of these things you know you can listen to a lot of videos you can listen to a lot of people and a lot of professionals but when you start doing it yourself you tend to pick up a lot more. One of the things that I came across was CapCut with TikTok
**Rob Osborne**:
and that’s a really good tool as well to use within that and it’s free as well which is good.
**Hayley Jones**:
And you found it quite easy to use? Relatively I think if you find like a template or something in TikTok already and then you click on the link and then do it that way it’s a lot easier sometimes when you go in the app itself I find it a bit more clunky to find like what maybe I want but yeah
**Rob Osborne**:
that tends to work for me. Okay well that’s good that’s good good tips I’m gonna go away and play with. I’m going to talk a little bit more about the content that you generate because you did say
**Rob Osborne**:
have a content plan to of a certain extent and you found it so you found a way of knowing in advance
**Hayley Jones**:
what you want to do? Kind of yes I mean I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a content plan I think that’s a bit ambitious but I tend to think of it kind of the week before and I kind of set myself a realistic target of what I can realistically post each week and the time I have to do that content and things like that and for me it was I would do three posts on say Facebook, Instagram and Threads although I’m very on the fence with Threads and they tend to be the same sort of posts purely because I know those channels don’t really get me much into reaction they get me a little but not to the extent of the other channel so it’s really just there for a bit of a present and then I wanted to really push this year getting more involved on TikTok and driving that a lot more being in the chat room and I think that’s a really good point I think that’s a really good point in the industry I am it can be really perceived as quite a boring topic to discuss so it’s quite sometimes challenging to make that more fun and people to interact with so that’s kind of one of the challenges I have with TikTok but my aim is to really post three videos a week across kind of the week so that could be anything from something really informative to something maybe that’s come up in the news or just maybe mocking us as a stereotypical account since half the time but yeah just to have a bit of fun with it as well and get people engaged
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah well I think that’s really good so you’ve got six ever target and you are finding time because obviously you’re an accountant just we’re recording this early in February so you’ve just been through the the tax return deadline but you still managed to kind of keep producing that content even when you were snowed under with new clients and clients going got to get this in by the end of January and all that sort of thing so I think that’s that’s that that’s a really good
**Hayley Jones**:
that’s um credit to you to to be able to in that sense it’s bulk planning so with the videos I try and now record in a bulk setting so that then I’ve got say three videos sat there in drafts ready to go and edited um with the posts I put out there you know scheduled for the week ahead that takes up a lot of pressure the only one that I would say I don’t schedule is me personally on LinkedIn because a lot of people follow me on LinkedIn because they like me as a person and I tend to kind of share maybe work stuff but also other other stuff that might be I’m doing in the week so for example I had a meeting up in um Claridge’s I uh I go to the gym and I’m showing that progress you know and different things that happen and um that tends to be a little bit more well it’s definitely not structured but I tend to post every day really on my own personal page
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah yeah I’m I think there’s nothing wrong with that I mean I I always encourage here’s a you know a stock of things that you can go to or you pre-plan at the beginning of the week we record in bulk and then you layer that personal level on the channels that work to kind of give you that personal feel as well I think that’s a a really good mix of the the batch stuff and and the this
**Hayley Jones**:
is what we’re doing and in the now type thing I think a lot of people think you know you can’t recycle material as well um and there’s certain things you know I do like a snippet on a TikTok video that actually would then work for you and then you can go and do that and then you can do that really well in an Instagram reel so at some point then I filter that information earlier and over so it it takes off a bit of pressure as well because you know or feel like a full-time job yeah
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah um but I think I think that’s really really good about how you how you sort of talked about that um and one of the things I did ask you uh sort of in the pre-planning was what’s your best post and you do say you’ve got this uh a TikTok uh real uh video with over 12 and a half thousand
**Hayley Jones**:
um and uh interaction which I think is great yeah it’s really funny how that kind of works because um you know like I say being a perfectionist at heart you know you sit there you edit your videos you take the time and do it you know I’ve recorded two today and that probably took me somewhere between half an hour 45 minutes to do two videos and that video in question I literally sat in this chair um at the beginning of January having to do all the stuff I need to as an accountant in January like that and to uh HMRC legislation sat behind me in relation to side hustle tax and that just
**Rob Osborne**:
rolled for like two days and I was going viral on that for two days which was just mad but it’s brilliant though I mean it’s just something something just clicked in the moment sort of
**Hayley Jones**:
thing you know um and then um I’ve gone back to like 200 view Jail so I’m waiting for the next
**Rob Osborne**:
thing to kind of send me again oh I’m sure I’m sure it will happen and when it does shout about it on all the other channels so we can all go and have a look uh that’s really good so obviously we talked quite a lot about Tick Tock there uh and you said your other main channel that that works really well for you is is LinkedIn I know we touched about it a little bit on your personal personal side of things but um you know sort of say a bit more about how your how LinkedIn’s working for you because I know you said you actually said you’ve got some really good growth
**Hayley Jones**:
stats and it’s starting to actually generate business for you as well as just being um so when I was at the agency firm it was back in January 23 um and I’ve never well I hadn’t got a LinkedIn profile set up they encouraged you all those years back in uni to set one up but I think I did it at uni and then deleted it so I never had one um so it was really starting from scratch back then and getting myself out there you know showing what HB Associates could do and then it just really kind of materialized from there and I’ve gained roughly about 100 followers a month on my personal LinkedIn page and I would say probably around the seven month eight month mark was when I then started generating um inquiries through LinkedIn and then building meetings from there so it’s been
**Rob Osborne**:
a really useful tool that’s that that’s really good and is all that on the back of um just just
**Hayley Jones**:
posting and making comments on posts or do you use the messaging side of it as well a bit of everything so some of those connections were um through people like me who are working in the field I’ve met face-to-face networking where I’ve done you know in the early days I was in every single event you could think of um a lot of them was then built on word of mouth I get such a lot through word of mouth which I’m really really you know fortunate for and grateful um and then I got a lot of other kind of accountancy professions start following me and then naturally I think their followers then filter in as well so I get a real mixed bag of people following me on a weekly
**Rob Osborne**:
basis that’s good as well and and as part of did you do any did you put any aside time aside every day to kind of just
**Hayley Jones**:
do a little bit of commenting and liking or anything like that or is it ad hoc I think we live in such a world where everything is so instant with social media so if you’re anything like me I’ve got it all through my phone so that’s constantly there if it flashes up and you know I’ve seen it then I’ll comment underneath it I think one of the key things I would say is if you know it’s all well and good spending the time and effort doing social media posts but if you haven’t got the time to communicate and you know bounce off of people that are commenting on sharing your stuff it’s almost redundant and it’s that
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah having that time to be able to do that well excuse me so do you make a lot of use of the the
**Hayley Jones**:
notification features on on LinkedIn definitely um my like you could be flitting from one thing to the other I mean I’m sat here now talking to you but on my screen is my LinkedIn screen chat set up where people have popped up to speak to me. so it’s really helpful off this call and then if that wasn’t there I would
**Rob Osborne**:
probably have forgotten about it without yeah I know exactly what you mean those little red circles with the white
**Rob Osborne**:
there comes a time when you go shut it all down so I can do some work
**Hayley Jones**:
yeah and that is key as well it’s it’s one of the things I learn um really I think from Steve O’Neill and his clear training is blocking out time and that becomes really really important because things like social media can be such a background noise whilst it’s good it’s not artwork it’s not my main job so it’s actually having that time to say no these hours are solely focused on this rather than replying to this message this that and the other so having the balance between the two
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah yeah I know exactly what you mean I’ve deliberately blocked my calendar out this is it’s time I’m working on my business is where I’m working on client business this is time for where I’m just browsing or learning that sort of thing so um I’ll do my best to stick to that don’t always but you know
**Hayley Jones**:
Steve would be very proud I’ve color-coded my calendar this morning it’s really helpful to me
**Rob Osborne**:
oh it’s amazing what works I have to say mine’s mine’s that’s one of the things I’ve always been quite good at um thank you right from back when I used to do project management and I’ll be running multiple projects so they all had different colors just so I could work out
**Hayley Jones**:
I’m quite a digital person so that helps me a lot
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah yeah I know I know exactly what you mean obviously we talked about social media and things like so what plans do you have uh going forwards on on other elements of your digital marketing so for instance we haven’t really talked to you haven’t really mentioned email
**Hayley Jones**:
marketing or sort of website development yeah I think for me email marketing I don’t understand it enough so it’s one of those kind of nemesis in in a room um that I probably haven’t looked to look into I worry about GDPR and things like that so um for me my focus this year really is a to continue with the LinkedIn side and the TikTok side but also to then move my attention more to my website um I’ve done some good things from there so far I’ve you know been generating inquiries through there but I just want to take that a bit to the next level and I’m going to try to as well i tend to kind of really do a review process like every kind of like three six months and then whatever’s gone on or then you know build on that and move forward so i’m not saying i’ll never do in um email marketing but i’m an accountant if i don’t understand it i’ll feel a bit uncomfortable with it yeah yeah yeah i need to really like understand it a bit more before i
**Rob Osborne**:
consider it yeah yeah and that goes back to again you’re saying you’re you’re a perfectionist but the thing is you’ve got a lot of things already working for you so it’s actually just sort of making you know when you’re ready to put that into into the mix um and things like that so um yeah
**Hayley Jones**:
have you got a do you use much of use of um the google business profile as well just yes i do and i’ve just had a chat with the people that are helping me with my website and they give me some really good pointers on there what i need to do to bring that more up to date um so i’ve got kind of some homework to do in the next month and i like that we have kind of a bit of like a monthly chat or monthly kind of touch point because it makes me accountable yeah and when you’re running a business you wear so many different hats and it’s very easy to let something slide so for me i now know by the time that next month comes around a report i need to have done these things that
**Rob Osborne**:
she’s given me on the tick list to go through um now i haven’t done my homework yeah no i think that’s really good so as you say you’ve got that accountability you’ve got a bit of a plan and you’ve got a longer term thing so yeah yeah no that’s what that’s really good i think again that’s a really important thing so you’ve got a digital marketing effectively you’ve got a digital marketing strategy in place even though it’s something short term something longer term doesn’t feel like it but if you say so yeah no also well you know you’ve got a vision that’s that’s that’s all sort of like what a lot of it is about um it’s been like you know all marketing it’s important to have some sort of goals and direction of travel as well so that’s cool thank you um just conscious of time so um as uh i sort of gave you a heads up i i ask all of my guests if they can give two tips one is something that’s really good work for you and other people should try doing this and one is don’t do that it’s really really not a good thing to do so let’s start with a good thing so what’s what’s your
**Hayley Jones**:
piece of good advice to anybody that’s watching or listening i think it’s just consistency uh but for me i knew it wasn’t realistic to post every single day on every single channel i knew i would never have the time capacity to do that i would never have the time capacity to do that i maybe in the early days but definitely not something i could sustain for the future so it was about creating something that i knew was realistic and was sustainable and i think if you can be consistent in that approach you’ll then start generating and seeing results and
**Rob Osborne**:
the more active you are with people the better the better better it is yeah that’s absolutely right i think you know consistency is such a big part of it and what about the don’t do this what’s your what’s your don’t do this tip
**Hayley Jones**:
um i think there’s so many people nowadays that are experts in so many different things and they’re telling us you should do this you should do that and it becomes a lot of white noise to oh gosh i must jump on that bandwagon when when threads came around it was this massive thing you know jump on it it’s going to be great it’s going to be amazing if i’m honest i don’t think it’s that great or amazing and no i i think i think that was a complete damp squib in the end completely and again it just proves the hype that people kind of have with these sort of things um so my my tip is you know work out what channels work for you just because your competitor is maybe now got an instagram or they’ve got a facebook and they’re going look at me i’ve got all these followers that might work for them but it might not work for you so what’s the point in trying to compete with someone just to save a bit of space if you like on on that side when actually you’re you need to focus your attention and channels into the channel that does work for you and i think that’s really crucial
**Rob Osborne**:
knowing what works for you and your business yeah absolutely absolutely it’s so easy isn’t it oh look there’s a new shiny thing over there yeah no i think i think that’s really really really good advice um so finally um if people one if people want to get in contact with you because they need an accountant or if they just want to kind of be able to follow you um on on um any of your digital platforms and i should say all the links will be shared uh in the show notes but what’s the best
**Hayley Jones**:
way to sort of get in contact with you um so again depending what channels you use the most as a user we are on instagram facebook spread linkedin and tiktok so for instagram threads and facebook and linkedin business it’s hb associates underscore accountants for tiktok it’s the redheaded accountant which is obviously myself and for
**Rob Osborne**:
my personal linkedin it’s hayley jones with the ginger emoji as well i have to say i love the
**Rob Osborne**:
title i think it’s a great title great handle so brilliant um it’s just sort of uh for me to say thank you very much for for uh taking the time to be on uh our show today really enjoyed chatting with you um and i’ve shared you know if you and thank you for sharing all the hints and tips
**Hayley Jones**:
uh that you’ve uh have shared with us about digital marketing well thank you very much for having me it’s been good

Discussing Digital with Naomi Stonier – Podcast Transcript

Discussing Digital with Naomi Stonier – Podcast Transcript

In this episode, we dive into the world of organic digital marketing with marriage coach Naomi Stonier. Naomi shares her unique approach to building relationships and connecting with her audience through social media.

Naomi reveals her daily content strategy on Facebook and LinkedIn, where she shares stories and insights about relationships. She explains why she moved away from batching content and now focuses on writing one personalized post per day using a problem-solution-process-result formula. By anonymously sharing content ideas from her client sessions, Naomi ensures that her posts are relevant and valuable to her audience.

One of the key strategies Naomi uses is going live on social media after her client sessions. She discusses various topics and makes offers in just 5-10 minutes. While engagement isn’t her main goal, she has seen how live videos boost her reach in algorithms. Naomi emphasizes the importance of connecting genuinely with her audience, rather than obsessing over numbers.

Authenticity is a crucial aspect of Naomi’s digital marketing approach. She shares photos of herself and her family instead of using stock images, which helps to build trust with her audience. Naomi also explains why she stopped creating graphics, finding them to be too time-consuming.

As her business continues to grow, Naomi plans to outsource more platforms, but for now she focuses on Facebook and LinkedIn, where she gets most of her business through networking connections. She also emphasizes the importance of repurposing content across platforms and pitches, which saves her significant time and helps her move people from social media to her email list and future online programs.

Throughout the episode, Naomi highlights the importance of adapting and experimenting with different strategies to achieve the best results. She firmly believes in taking an organic, authentic, and capacity-focused approach to digital marketing, centered around genuine human connection.

This transcript of Discussing Digital with Noami Stonier has been produced using the transcription function of Easy-Peasy.AI

You can find out more about Easy-Peasy-AI here

 

Transcript of Discussing Digital with Naomi Stonier

**Rob Osborne**:
Hi everybody and welcome to this edition of Discussing Digital. Today I’m discussing digital marketing with Naomi Stonier. Naomi is a marriage counsellor. So Naomi, can you tell us all a bit more about what you do and then how you use digital marketing to promote your business?

**Naomi Stonier**:
I absolutely can Rob, so thank you so much for having me on. My name’s Naomi Stonier and I am in fact a life coach for marriage. And so I work with people, I don’t work with couples, I work with people on an individual basis, teaching them the skills that your parents didn’t model for you that make marriage a hell of a lot easier and happier and healthier. And so how I use digital marketing is I’m on socials all day long, sharing what I do. I’m telling stories all day long about relationships and what you can do to make them a lot easier.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah, I know. One of the good things, obviously we know each other through networking, but one of the good things is seeing each other’s content and you post every day, which is really good. And you don’t seem to repeat yourself, although it’s a similar theme. So it’d be interesting to discuss a little bit about how do you come up with your content ideas? Because some of it relates back to your own experiences and others are kind of new.

**Naomi Stonier**:
Yeah, well, so for me, it’s an approach, called organic marketing, which you and I both know, which means I am organically one person at a time connecting with people on socials and growing my audience. I’m not paying for any traffic, any advertising, and I’m just organically networking on socials. And what I am doing, for me, everything I do is about service. So this is my approach. Everything I do is about service. And giving value. So when I help you, when I give you value, and I really help you in your relationship, it creates that know, like, and trust. And if I help you enough, you’re going to think, wow, if just interacting with her on socials is enough, it’s helping me this way, what must it be like to work with her? So you talk about my content. Well, I’m just telling stories. I’m telling my clients’ stories and my stories about the everyday experiences that we have in our relationships. And, you know, there’s a lot to write about.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. So do you actually have almost like a planned set of stories that you’re going to be doing? Or is it kind of every day, what story am I going to create and then just doing it when you think I need to put some content out there?

**Naomi Stonier**:
So I’ve tried lots of different methods. Rob, and I have, you know, had, it’s been, I’m in my fourth year of business. And this is not something that I learned overnight. So first of all, you know, I was putting stuff out all the time. I don’t, so what I do right now is I wrote, I write a post every day. So that is what works for me. I’ve tried batching contents. I’ve tried all the, the plans. I’ve tried platforms where you batch a month’s worth of contents. But for me, that didn’t work because of the way I write content, because I am writing a story about a relationship. So it will be a relationship. I’m working in a formula called problem, solution, process, result. So the problem in your relationship, the solution, my process, and then the result that will create you. And, and, and so what I have found work for me is to write one post every day. And that way it’s a fresh inspiring to me content. When I batched it, when I used to write 20 posts in a go and batch them for the month, it got very formulaic. Cause I was just like, oh, just got to get this out. I’ve just got to get to my 20 so I can, I can batch this programming all in and forget about it. And that didn’t work for me. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. And I think that’s really important that you recognize that, that it wasn’t, it wasn’t working for you and you were losing that personal touch. Cause obviously some of that was, you know, sort of your very specialist market and it’s all about your experience and things like that. So actually being able to kind of lose some of that in your content, wouldn’t be good. I’m guessing. I think it sort of came across as being a bit for one of a better term. It didn’t work. It didn’t work.

**Naomi Stonier**:
And so for me, I am prioritizing connecting with you like genuine connection. I want to connect with you. I want to tell you a story. I want to help you. And I am doing that in, you know, what I actually learned to do, Rob is I, I spent a lot of time on socials. When I first started, I felt like a drop in the ocean. No one cares. No one’s watching. This isn’t work. King. I felt awful. And I actually had to step away from socials and I went off networking and I met real people and I started signing clients. And then I was able to, you know, then I really was a coach. And also I was being fed from the connection of real people. And what I learned was to take that experience that have a networking and bring it back onto social. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
No, I think that works really well as well. Yeah. And I mean, one of the other things about your, your, your content as well is that actually you’re not using stock image photographs, all the photos, all the pictures of you or of you or your husband or your family, you know? So with those, do you deliberately go out and, and kind of stage them or are they actually, well, this is a picture of my husband alive from my holiday or something like that.

**Naomi Stonier**:
Yeah. I, I, you know, it took courage. It’s taken courage to sort of get out there, share my story, my story about my marriage problems and, you know, share, listen, I never thought I could do this, but I did it. And so I, I believe very deeply in what I do and I’ve got my husband’s, my husband’s on board with what I do. He thinks it’s important to share this and I’m just all about stopping the scroll, Rob. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah.

**Naomi Stonier**:
And so, I mean, I fell down the rabbit hole of graphics and, you know, hours in Canva creating graphics and it’s awful. I hated it. I would like, again, batch 25 graphics and they had to be perfect and they had to be right. And if I got the color right, that was going to create a client for me. I’ve let go of all of that. The quickest thing to do is take, take a photo of my face and plonk it on there because we know the algorithm. We know it works more likely to stop the scroll. And it’s also the quickest thing I can, I can do to get to the people who need my help. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. Well, I think that works, works really, really well. And it’s good that you’ve, you’ve been through those experiments. You found out what works, develop that formula and then kind of you’re, you’re following it, which I think is really, really good advice because it just shows that you are looking at what’s working, what’s not, and you’re being able to call upon your experience to create your content, which is, which is brilliant. It’s been trial and error, trial,

**Naomi Stonier**:
and I’ve, I’ve, I’ve had to, you know, navigate that experience of trial and error to get here. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. But I think it’s important to do it. You stuck with it, but also you haven’t just plowed on. You’ve looked at what’s worked and what hasn’t and, and, and gone with what works and do more of that and stop doing the other stuff, which is great. You kind of, you know, in your comments, you, you, you’re working very much on social media. It’s mainly on two at the moment. You’re on Facebook and LinkedIn. You pretend one. So two questions related to that, really. Are there any particular reasons why you’re not trying any of the other platforms as well? And secondly, which will be the interesting question is, is there any, well, are there any difference in clients that you’re protecting landing? And also, are you getting different results across the tape? So there’s a few things there, but yeah,

**Naomi Stonier**:
yeah, yeah. Well, what I have always been taught and what I have learned is that, that there is no magic. There’s no sort of secret formula here that, that hits all the boxes. Like all of these platforms are massive. Okay. And all of these platforms can create infinite business for all of us. Right. There’s no, there’s no secret here. It’s just, you go to the platform that is, you know, resonates for you the most and work it. And so, I was just, I’m of that age where Facebook was the platform that I was on. So I just went on Facebook. And then once I got into our networking group, I then moved on to LinkedIn because, because, you know, Facebook is so enormous and I wasn’t signing any clients on Facebook. And so I thought, okay, LinkedIn, because my whole network that I’m networking with is on LinkedIn. But actually now that I’ve, you know, gone through the trial, trial and error that I’ve gone through and I’ll just get on for the love of it. And I share for the love of it. I do sign clients through Facebook as well, but because I’m organic marketing, because I don’t pay anyone to do this, I do it all myself. I’m not going to go on every platform. I’m very strong on one or two. I mean, I’m probably mostly on, I get most business out of LinkedIn. I’m mostly on LinkedIn now because it really goes well with my networking. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that’s really, again, it’s good advice really. You know, here are the, you know, I’m just doing these two platforms. I’m comfortable with them. They’re working. Um, why do anything else? You know, cause then,

**Naomi Stonier**:
you know what, once I get to a certain income, I’ll be paying someone like you, Rob, to, to get me out on all platforms. But until then it’s just, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
We had this conversation when we caught up a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. It’s really good to be sensible, know what your capacity is and know what’s working for you. So I think that’s that again,

**Naomi Stonier**:
a few things very well, not all of it.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah.

**Naomi Stonier**:
Not very well. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. But a lot of the posts we’ve talked about are kind of, you know, static post picture and, and, um, text, but you’ve been doing video, particularly you’ve been doing quite a lot of live video as well. So, so how have you found that?

**Naomi Stonier**:
Yeah. I mean, I’ve always done it. I went from, from those first early days, like so nervous. Um, and just, I’m now, you know, I just got the reps in Rob and I just would just show up, talk about something. I’ve done it enough that now what happens is I get off a client session and then I’ll just share what we worked on in that session. All anonymously. Of course, I protect my client’s identity, but I will just share, listen, are you dealing with this? Um, and here’s how I, here’s how I’ll help you. You’re with it and make an offer. It’s very quick. It’s a very, you know, in five, 10 minutes, I’m done. Yeah. And it’s quicker than writing a post. I mean, where I want to get to, I mean, my posts are all long story posts and there’s a great argument to be made for, you know, you need to be making shorter, snappier content for now. Those story posts work, but I definitely want to get to, you know, a live, a story post, a short post with graphics. Yeah. And me mixing that content up, but you know, Facebook loves lives. So it bumps me up the algorithm. So even if nobody watches that live one, it bumps me up the algorithm. And two, you, I go past in the feed and it just creates this persona of I’m, I’m there in front of you. It’s that touch point. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. But, but even if so, I should say, even if somebody isn’t watching it live, it’s still there on your feed. So if I come back, come back to it, they can watch it at a later date. So, you know, and that’s one of the things that sometimes you get a bit hung up with. Some people get hung up with, oh, I’m doing a live, but actually there is no live audience at the moment. You almost think, oh, should I do it? Should I stop? But actually just keep going because you never know when somebody’s going to come, come back to that content.

**Naomi Stonier**:
I have really, this is the other real, real piece of success I’ve had, Rob, is I have had to go on a journey to completely let go. Of the kind of response I get. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
So,

**Naomi Stonier**:
know, the, the, how much engagement you get really is not related to how much business you make. Yeah. There are so many people silently consuming your content. And when we talk about touch points, I mean, like I hear it bandied around all the time. Like the latest one I heard is people need 40 touch points before they buy from you. But that touch point does not need to be, they sit through the whole life. They make a comment that they just, a touch point is they just see me go past their feed. It’s enough for them to go, oh, look, there she is again. There she is again. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah.

**Naomi Stonier**:
I have completely let go of the, of the engagement. And it, you know, back in the early days, it was like I had a Facebook group that I could not grow. I worked in it like a full-time job and it didn’t grow. And I was in so much pain about it. And I was so attached to the number in this group. Yeah. That’s all gone. And it’s so much easier to just show up, share, share, share. You know, I believe so deeply in what I’m doing. I’m just shouting it from the rooftops. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. It’s interesting you saying about Facebook groups. On a previous edition, I recorded earlier this year with a business coach, a guy called Ian Dixon. He’d spent a lot of time building a big Facebook group because a couple of, three or four years ago, Facebook was kind of really trying to drive out, build a community, build a group. But he was saying, it is really, really hard to keep anything like that going because you’ve got to put loads of stuff into it. And unless you’ve got rabid fans who are posting stuff as well, it is, it is a nightmare. Yeah.

**Naomi Stonier**:
And it’s borrowed real estate. You don’t own any of it. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah.

**Naomi Stonier**:
It’s all their platform. It’s all their, they’re boosting them, not us. It’s, you know, they get, they’re getting so much out of it. I mean, what I do see is very successful is pop-up groups. Yeah. So I see people, they’re launching a program. They do a week pop-up group to warm you up, to then sell to you into their program. They are very successful. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Groups. Yeah. I agree.

**Rob Osborne**:
I love that term as a pop-up group. I hadn’t thought of it. I’m going to use that now.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. My, my, my community is big on pop-up groups. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Yeah. And, and, and as you, I mean, the other thing to go, to go back around content and growing your business. I mean, one of the other things that we chatted about before is, is you are very clear and very, you know, you have a clear understanding of your capacity and how your business runs. You, you, you know, you can work with X clients at a time. So therefore, you know, you’ve got a very good idea about how to, you know, how big your funnel is and how you feel, feel it. So, which I think is another, although it’s not directly about that, but digital marketing, it’s a clear part of it because actually, again, you, you know what you need. Yeah. And so you know how, and you’ve now developed your content and your process to, to really help keep that full.

**Naomi Stonier**:
Yeah. And it, you know, for me, it really is meeting one person at a time. One person, you know, I’m going to talk to one person, then the next person. And when you break it down like that, socials becomes a much easier experience. Yeah. It’s just one person at a time. That’s it. Yeah. And you just, connecting with one person, one person, one person, and then you don’t need hundreds. Yes.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. Yeah.

**Naomi Stonier**:
And also the big, you know, some of the biggest, I see people with big following, you know, people earning, that I know are earning millions and they’ve got 10 likes on a post. Yeah. You know, it doesn’t correlate. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. But it’s good to, you know, that’s a, that’s a, you know, again, there’s that thing about, I’ve got to chase the numbers sometimes. Yeah. And it’s really good. You’ve got, beyond that, you’ve gone through that and realised that actually those numbers are nice, but they’re not important really. It’s all about, this is what I need. This is the process that works. And it’s filling. And also,

**Naomi Stonier**:
we want to be using socials to funnel people onto our email lists. Yeah. Using socials to funnel people off socials into our, you know, it’s all about, I am going to be using socials to, you know, at the moment it works for me, my model to sign a client. But as I say, on a scale, it will be, I will be harvesting email lists and getting, talking to them off socials.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. Yeah. And this is something we were talking about, again, when we had that chat last week or so, that you’ve got a vision and a strategy of where your digital marketing and, and your use of digital is going to go as well, isn’t it? You know, from, from startups with, you know, putting a lead magnet in place and email marketing, which you’re working on at the moment through to potentially having a, a learning platform in the future as well. So I think that’s quite exciting. And you’ve got that sort of model in place and,

**Naomi Stonier**:
you know,

**Rob Osborne**:
direction of travel strategy. What are you,

**Naomi Stonier**:
what are you doing around SEO Rob? Because you mentioned that something you’re going into now. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
So, so again, that, you know, that that’s, it’s a big part thing. I’m interested in this content and, and actually SEO, a lot of SEO is driven by content because it’s all about, you know, one of the things that Google is all about is presenting the right websites when you ask a question. And so, you know, following things like the, the, the, they asked you answer kind of strategy. I’ve forgotten the guy’s name who wrote the book. But that’s basically what the idea is. You put lots of content on that’s answering the sort of questions that people are likely to be typing into Google. And therefore Google will present that, you know, if you’ve got that content there, then, you know,

**Naomi Stonier**:
you can check it out. So,

**Rob Osborne**:
so,

**Naomi Stonier**:
you know, in the future, can I be taking the posts I’m putting on socials and repurposing them, putting them in a blog in my website? Absolutely. Absolutely.

**Rob Osborne**:
And because you’ve got good stories already, you know, they’re, they’re kind of keywords rich for the sort of thing that you’re likely to be, people are likely to be searching for you for. And so, yeah, you know, it’s, that’s a great way. And, and that’s another thing that I encourage is actually how can you repurpose content? Because for small business, you know, for small business owners in particular, but it works across all sizes actually goes back to the whole thing. We started off with talking about how to get your ideas for your content and how do you create it and how do you get the time for it? Being able to repurpose content and use it in more than one place is a massive time saver. That’s what I do. Yeah.

**Naomi Stonier**:
I repurpose it everywhere. You know, so I’ll, I’ll talk about it in my networking pitch. It’ll get same post is on LinkedIn and Facebook. I’ll talk about it in a live. It’s all the same piece of content. Yeah. Again, Rob, that has saved me a huge amount of time. And now just have, I’m writing one thing a day and creating sort of four pieces of content out of it. And that’s, you know, I had to practice, but that’s now a very quick process. Yes.

**Rob Osborne**:
And that’s, yeah, yeah. And I think that’s, again, another great thing. I know we took, you know, you said you do, you found batching didn’t work, but actually batching works really well for me. And that’s what I do. But I do, I have lots of, I actually have, I, I think of them as layers or I like you’re playing Tetris. So I’ve got a foundation layer, which is something that goes out every day. And then I’ve got a testimonial Tuesday. So I put a testimonial out on a Tuesday. I’ve got around the office on a Monday. So to start people off, people getting to feel a bit about me because it’s not just a Magnolia wall office. I’ve got a lot of personal touches. I do a couple of polls a week and things like that, as well as posts about my services. Yeah.

**Naomi Stonier**:
So that’s how you batch it. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah.

**Naomi Stonier**:
So I would love to learn how to batch.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, interestingly enough, it’s, it’s something I’m looking to set up. One, I’ve got a five day challenge about doing the foundation work. And then I’m looking to actually develop that into a program of actually delivery of talking about how to develop those different, those extra layers called conquering your content.

**Rob Osborne**:
So that’s my strength. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
That’s his working title that I’m getting towards. So, yeah, it’s a, it’s a, yeah, it’s okay. But, but that’s something that really appeals to me. Yeah. I’ve got a really good idea. I want to do a podcast. Again, it’s great content. It’s not too bad. So, uh, produce, it’s very interesting, you know? Yeah.

**Naomi Stonier**:
And then you could write a post about the podcast. I mean, you know, I, my lives, I go through stream yards and I, they automatically go onto YouTube. So I have a library of lives that will, can be turned into podcasts. Yeah.

**Rob Osborne**:
Yeah. Finally, if I was going to come back to you about earlier, we’ll talk about lives. I’m going to ask if you use stream yard or if you use the native one. So it’s good to know you use. I mean,

**Naomi Stonier**:
i mean yeah i’ve been told that the the bet the best for the algorithm is going direct on facebook

**Rob Osborne**:
but stream yard is a is a you know good second yeah yeah most and a lot of people people use it and there’s one of those balancing acts isn’t it it’s like how big a difference does it really make um and and i’m a full believer is done is better than perfect so actually if it’s you know if it saves you a bit of time to do a live on stream yard that you can go across facebook linkedin and onto your youtube channel the fact that it might have a slightly less positive impact on the on on each of those platforms algorithms is more than balanced out by the fact you’re actually

**Naomi Stonier**:
putting content out live on three platforms what is your thoughts about posting more than once a

**Rob Osborne**:
day on linkedin um i do it as much as i can right and i i think it’s for me it’s more to do with visibility and credibility all right now whether or not it truly drives the algorithm and there’s loads of stuff out there um i don’t know but for me um i i think the more frequently you post the more likely are you are people are going to see you and even if they don’t see you at the time they

**Naomi Stonier**:
can still see that you’re very very busy and very active you know what i have heard is that linkedin penalizes you for posting more than once a day so if you look at the the analytics your second post your post will the first post will stop that it will stop reaching

**Rob Osborne**:
and it moves on to the second post i mean there’s anecdotal evidence that might happen sometimes but also there’s whole rafts of anecdotal evidence that different types of posts have different reach and it keeps changing so you know this you know i i’ve seen posts that you know this week’s flavor or flavor of the week and i’ve seen posts that have different reach and it keeps changing and it keeps changing so you know this you know this week’s flavor or flavor of the month this month is just text only posts and then flavor of the month next month could be posting a document or you know and then the flavor of the month the one after that is video so basically what it’s all about linkedin is constantly experimenting with linkedin it was all platforms what the algorithm is all about is trying to put the right content in front of people that keeps them hooked and interested and it really just depends on what people um are responding to and what they’re reacting to so actually there might be situations where if you’re putting lots of posts out but

**Naomi Stonier**:
none of them are interesting and nobody’s reacting to them then you might get downgraded none of them

**Rob Osborne**:
will do well yeah you know so so so it’s it’s a weird thing but that’s what the algorithms are all about really they’re trying to make you as the you know not as the content creator but you as the person who’s actually looking at linkedin or whatever platform it is um they’re trying to make sure that you get the stuff that keeps you interested um and so it does you know it varies from platform to platform it varies all the time because they are constantly constantly changing the algorithm because they’re looking at what works and what

**Naomi Stonier**:
doesn’t well that feeds works and you know it’s a constantly evolving platform you know um you know

**Rob Osborne**:
because people make these sort of statements don’t they and what it’s based on yeah you know and so so for me it’s like what works for you so you’ve found a formula that works for you right and nobody’s gonna say it’s wrong because actually it works you know you’ve you’ve got a a capacity of services you can deliver and your processes you’ve you know you’ve experimented with all these different things and your processes are working right and they’re keeping your business topped up and that’s what digital marketing or any marketing is all about so you actually you know you’ve you’re working at this point but you’re not at the sweet spot of the moment i keep doing this it keeps

**Naomi Stonier**:
working all right that’s that’s what you need um and also it’s learning you know there is an art to selling on the internet you know i’m talking to people who’ve never met me and they are paying me thousands of pounds over the internet okay and so there is a trust element there and trust is built through my visibility and also me genuinely helping people so when and I’ve genuinely helped them enough for free they trust me to pay them and so this was also the why I did it organically because there’s no point paying for ads getting a load of info getting a load of leads in one they’re very cold and two have I got the ability to create enough trust and help this person understand how I’m going to help them for them to actually work with me so that was the you know again when I get to a certain stage I’ll be coming to you Rob and you’re going to be helping me with my ads but until then

**Rob Osborne**:
I’m at a good level to just convert it myself yeah steady at the steady pace yes yeah and the other challenge for you in some ways because of the kind of what what you do is you know you can always ask for testimonials but quite often you’re either going to get something that’s anonymous because somebody doesn’t want to sort of say yeah or you know you have to have a very very trusting client that’s willing to give you that because now it’s

**Naomi Stonier**:
difficult for them for people to kind of it’s very private I mean my testimonials are mainly

**Rob Osborne**:
anonymous do you think anonymous testimonials are still valuable oh absolutely you know and again because of the nature of what you do and how you know the sort of people that need your help I think they would you know most people would expect them to be anonymous because it is you know you have to be very um you know very confident in yourself that you’ve come out the other side to be able to go you know yeah you know I have marriage problems and I’ve been to a marriage counsellor and now and now it’s worked you know it’s great this work but do you know what

**Naomi Stonier**:
I mean so it’s quite you know I mean everything I’m doing on socials is inviting people into a

**Naomi Stonier**:
so usually that one hour conversation is enough for this person to think right she’s the right

**Rob Osborne**:
person for me or not yeah yeah and that’s the other good thing that you’re doing is you’re offering as you say a free consultation that gives them a chance to get to know you uh as well and I think that that again um is quite uh an important thing I’m a little bit conscious of time you know um and uh you know with the storm raging outside how long our internet connections will hold up as well um so a couple of things I should sort of I mentioned this before we sign up there’s a couple of things I like to ask everyone um and that’s to give a couple of good tips one is a piece of advice for people to do all the time because it’s good advice do this so what’s your do this piece

**Naomi Stonier**:
of advice for people doing digital marketing seek genuine connection yeah genuinely talk be a real human being and talk as you would in person

**Rob Osborne**:
in real life to people on social media yeah okay that’s a really good one and conversely what’s your tip for don’t do this it just doesn’t work um

**Naomi Stonier**:
yeah I mean again again in the complete reverse I really think it is if you are just going on with the agenda of making money you will probably fail you know it’s just like networking you know if you go into networking to have a genuine conversation and find out about someone you’re much more successful than you know is this person going to pay me

**Rob Osborne**:
yeah yeah absolutely and you’re absolutely right there that’s cool so if people want to get in contact with you because they might need your services or just interested in what you’re doing with digital marketing what’s the I mean I will share your links uh in the show notes and everything but what’s the best way for them to get in contact with you

**Naomi Stonier**:
if they want to they can email me at naomi at plumocoaching.com that’s p l u m o coaching.com and of course I am on linkedin and facebook all day every day

**Rob Osborne**:
excellent well thank you so much for your time today naomi uh it’s been really interesting chatting with you uh and it’s really interesting we’re looking forward to not only what you’re doing now what you’re doing in the future with digital marketing so thank you ever so much

**Naomi Stonier**:
thank you so much for having me on

**Rob Osborne**:
thank you

Discussing Digital with Melanie Griffiths – Transcript

Discussing Digital with Melanie Griffiths – Transcript

In this episode, Rob Osborne sits down with Melanie Griffiths, the founder of Melanie Griffiths (formerly known as Movement Junkie), to discuss her digital marketing strategies. Melanie’s business revolves around supporting people’s health and well-being through movement, dance, and energy healing work.

Melanie shares her approach to digital marketing, which includes email marketing to regularly engage with her audience through long-form posts and compelling calls to action. She also utilizes various social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, where she shares longer stories and directly promotes her offerings. Lately, she has been experimenting with live video streams and has noticed a significant increase in engagement based on her analytics.

One of the key topics explored in this episode is finding one’s authentic voice and being genuine on video, even when it feels intimidating. Melanie emphasizes the importance of not overthinking content and instead focuses on putting herself out there. She reveals that her most successful posts are often the ones where she writes from the heart and embraces a more uncensored approach.

Melanie also explains how her content creation process has evolved over time. Initially following structured methods, she now describes it as more of an “energetic download,” where she freely writes about whatever is on her mind. While this approach may not be as strategic, it aligns with her authentic personality and has proven to be effective for her.

The discussion delves into breaking through self-censorship both online and offline, with Melanie providing valuable tips and encouragement for others to do the same. She emphasizes the importance of consistency even when growth feels slow, celebrating small wins along the way, such as gaining a single new YouTube subscriber. Melanie confidently states that her digital marketing efforts have positively impacted her business, leading to increased inquiries and bookings.

Listeners can connect with Melanie through her Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram accounts or by sending her a direct message. She eagerly invites people to reach out and encourages everyone to say hello.

This transcript of Discussing Digital with Melanie Griffiths has been produced using the transcription function of Easy-Peasy.AI

 

Transcript

**Rob Osborne**:
Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of Discussing Digital and today I’m discussing digital with Melanie Griffiths. Melanie could you give an overview of what you what you do
**Melanie Griffiths**:
and name your company for us please to start with. So it’s basically my name it’s Melanie Griffiths although it was formerly Movement Junkie because it was more movement based but I work with people supporting them helping them feel better in their bodies improve their health and well-being and we do this through movement dance and transformational energy healing work.
**Rob Osborne**:
Okay brilliant and obviously today we’re talking about just digital marketing in particular how you use digital marketing to promote you and your business so can you give us initially just a bit of an overview of how you use digital marketing at the moment please.
**Melanie Griffiths**:
Yeah so I’ve been acquainting myself with social media. I had to resist the urge to do that.
**Rob Osborne**:
Not cross fingers no!
**Melanie Griffiths**:
And that’s them so I suppose digital marketing email marketing so I have a very small but building email list and I try and stay regularly in touch with those people with kind of a long post and then calls to action on i’m selling this or doing that do you want to come to this that sort of thing. I actually do the same with social media as well. So I might tweak it slightly but the same thing, longer story posts, telling people what i’m selling literally this is what it is, this is what it costs, this is where you get it. And then collecting testimonials. This is all new this is all what I’m learning. learning collecting testimony sharing the testimonial and i am also starting to do live video which i still kind of i like it but i’m also nervous about it as well at the same time but i’m noticing the live videos when i look at the analytics which i don’t really understand but when i when i look at them on linkedin the analytics seem to go up
**Rob Osborne**:
of the live videos oh that’s that’s that’s really interesting i i mean i mean there’s a few things you’ve covered off there um that we we can explore because i mean before we started recording we were talking about the fact that you’ve recently discovered stream yard which is what you’re using for your uh live um live video broadcasts but interesting we haven’t really sort of talked about the analytics so uh it’s really interesting to hear that actually you are seeing a really positive result from or you see it and you’re not seeing it and you’re not seeing it
**Melanie Griffiths**:
being a positive result from actually doing those live videos i mean i i feel like i’m either rambling or talking absolute rubbish but i think there is probably little nuggets of wisdom coming through but i think it’s the whole thing of just putting myself out there yeah and and what people get is your energy and your personality and so you know we know this that people buy us and not our staff obviously they they are looking at us because there’s something about our stuff they’re interested in but the bit that i think makes them want to connect is is us isn’t it it’s it’s it’s the same for me if i want to go and get something or want to work with someone i want to i want to like them i want to trust them i want to connect with them yeah i want to feel that synergy before i i go and purchase from them so i feel with video even though it’s scary it’s sort of like the quickest route to market in a way because there you are the key is to not wait until your hair is dried or you’ve got your makeup on or you’re and and and and i think and that’s the bit i get i notice i still get a little bit faffy around but i’ll go oh i’m not quite ready i just need to mess around with the camera here well i wore that top yesterday let me go and find something else what do you want me to do i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t
**Rob Osborne**:
know what’s going on with my hair have i you know yeah i mean obviously a few of those like hair i don’t suffer from but i do i do know what you mean but but i think one of the good things is is is um you know once you’ve kind of got over that so you’re doing a lot of done is better than perfect type things because you’re getting it done um because it’s so easy to spend a lot of time um faffing you know sort of as you say it’s easy to kind of really get caught up in the the the
**Rob Osborne**:
um you also mentioned energy and stuff like that and obviously you are a very energetic person well that that’s that’s my my view of you i mean we met well we’ve actually never physically met but we met online through um a a networking group and when you do your 60 seconds your 60 seconds actually gets everybody around the country who’s doing the 60s who’s on that meeting doing some sort of exercise routine i mean i mean i always have to be a bit conscious because i you know because you go stand up and i think when i stand up i’m not quite sure which part of my body my video camera is going to be showing but you know you convert your your your lounge into a studio and stuff like that and it’s all part of the energy but that all comes across on all your other content as well which
**Melanie Griffiths**:
i think is great yeah oh that’s really good that is good to hear and i i think that comment done is better than perfect that for me has been gold that just remembering that in my head the whole time and i and when i think about it i think actually i’m a fairly creative chaotic person in life so to try and be something i’m not
**Rob Osborne**:
on the video it would actually be misrepresenting myself anyway so yeah yeah and and we talked about that beforehand didn’t we a bit about the um it’s important that you are yourself yeah yeah we’ve talked about the the marmite is it is it you know uh but but i think that’s really
**Melanie Griffiths**:
important i mean do you want to get expand a bit more about yeah well i think that’s really important our natural a natural thing as people particularly british people is is to to censor is in the minute that we’re in front of a camera or a video we start to censor ourselves and and i think it’s almost unconscious a lot of the time to the point that people won’t go anywhere near doing a live video because they’re so afraid um and i think and i think it’s sort of baby steps to get into that place and i know i’m getting more and more bold and getting more and more confident about what i want to say and um and it it’s so funny i’ve noticed that i’ll i’ll put a video out there or i’ll say something and i’ll think oh that was a bit that you know that was a bit near the mark as i’m sort of speaking video goes out there crickets and i think oh it doesn’t matter let’s keep going and so i think you’re constantly when if you’re a bit nervous of doing video you’re constantly refining that part of you until you get to that point where
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah you know you’re at sailor speak if that’s where you go yeah and and i think a lot of it is because like you know we see the telly and we see news presenters and stuff like that and they’re all very kind of uh you know for a long time it was weird this is bbc we have to speak like this and we can’t say um and are because they’re all perfect you know but actually most people um there you go i’ve just done um do you know do have those pauses and and they sort of there’s those little that we make just to kind of um just get us get our thoughts in place and it’s not a problem you know and one of the other things i i’d like to sort of think about is the fact that i’ve you know since covid we’ve been all of us spending a lot more time talking to each other on video links on zoom or teams or or whatever and if you’re just in a meeting you don’t quite often most people aren’t self-conscious it’s only when you suddenly go oh we’re doing an actual proper video that suddenly that self-consciousness is gone and you’re like oh my god i’ve got to do this and
**Melanie Griffiths**:
it just kicks in again it’s the performance element it’s that it’s that sort of suddenly you feel like you’re i don’t know there’s some sort of extra pressure you’re on display and you’ve got to provide something extra and i and i really noticed this having done a lot of stage performance that uh it’s stripping away those those barriers between you and the audience and i and i think really the people that are the most successful out there on the live video are those who are uncensored selves yeah yeah and i think it can take a while to get to that because if it also
**Melanie Griffiths**:
if you’re censoring yourself in your own life because we do that too don’t we we yes yeah we
**Melanie Griffiths**:
censor in our own lives so then to suddenly become even more uncensored in front of a load of people that you don’t know at all or you might have loads of people watching or no one seems like a big ask so i think for me i’ve worked a lot more online and i’ve worked a lot more online and i’ve worked a lot more online than i would have wanted to if i were to to enable myself to talk to myself over the years in terms of just being my true self in life then that makes it easier to go
**Rob Osborne**:
right let’s just put the camera in front carry on doing what you’re doing yes yeah no i i know exactly what you mean but but and it’s not just in the live videos is it i know we’ve talked about this in the past about actually um being able to be yourself even when you’re just creating a post post um and this is a nice segue into the uh the linkedin post when i asked you about what’s your most successful post uh and the one you shared i don’t know if you remember it is the one about saying uh what do you think of me is not my problem uh yeah but i seem to remember when we spoke about this a couple of weeks ago you were saying that was actually quite a cathartic post that you were just kind of letting something go that you’d been um trying to kind of flex with
**Melanie Griffiths**:
and things like that yeah exactly and i’ve noticed that i actually find the writing element of content creation easier than the live video so i would be more um it would feel more comfortable to hide in the writing posts i think um and that wasn’t always that case either so it took me a while to get to that point of being able to let let myself kind of loose on the um and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and on the page so to speak yeah and yeah and just be able to sort of write from the heart really and again it’s it’s that marmite factor um and i noticed that those posts where i am more uncensored are usually more successful sometimes i’ll create a post and i’ll think yeah that was a good one you put it out there crickets yeah another one cobbled together in about two minutes i’ll just put oh that’s a bit rough already loads of loads of engagement you know yeah
**Rob Osborne**:
it’s it’s fascinating isn’t it yeah and and that maybe gives us a chance to talk a little bit about um your thought process or your creation process for creating content i mean do you have a process where you think what’s pre-planned or or or an approach just for creating your content in in
**Melanie Griffiths**:
general now i feel like i should say yes i have this amazing strategic process but though that’s not the case at all actually it has evolved so it started off with when i first wanted to sort of
**Rob Osborne**:
go on social media i don’t know if you know the wonderful jade arnell from i don’t but i’m gonna
**Melanie Griffiths**:
have to go and find them now yes yes so jade did a talk for sports for business exchange on how to create content um she was just a 10 minute talk and it was like writing a blog piece out of this blog piece you took eight sentences and fleshed them out a little bit because i didn’t know where to start so i followed i followed this format and at some point i think it started to feel a bit clunky for me and i realized it was because i was ready to just start writing more and and so it went from that structure to mostly it’s i would say it’s like an energetic download and i know we should repurpose i hear that all the time repurpose repurpose repurpose but what i often find is i go oh what shall i share today and then i’ll get a thought and i’ll just just write and it goes from there so it’s probably not very helpful for people but it’s
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah but but actually uh it is helpful because there are an awful lot of people out there that i really struggle with anything structured so actually to hear there are people out there that are busy doing lots of posts a lot of content actually but but and it’s not that it’s not thought out because probably subconsciously you’ve got things going on in the back of your heads and things like that that help it but actually you’re not sitting here with a you know big old spreadsheet that’s got hundreds of rows and columns and going that’s what i’ve got to do today it’s almost like you know and i know you also um you know good quality belief in in energy and things like that so it’s it’s almost if you’re subconscious and other things that just that you believe in that are driving you to create that content in your own way
**Melanie Griffiths**:
um i draw on my own life experiences as well and how they’re relevant to what i’m doing um experiences i have with family home life students clients i just draw on it all and i think where how is this i suppose this is would be the unconscious brain how is this relevant to the people that i’m connecting with and this informs itself yeah yeah um and it’s and i think that the written posts feel more formed than the live videos at the moment that still feels a bit kind of like what like what’s going through now like i’ll put a title on the live videos when i do the streaming thing and then i’ll go on video and start talking about something
**Rob Osborne**:
completely different and i’ll think yeah but like i said you’re out there and doing it and i don’t think there’s anything wrong with um how you know you start thinking you’re going to talk about something and then it goes in a different direction you know uh you’re going to talk about something but that’s that’s natural conversation and again that’s kind of a bit more about what we’ve been
**Melanie Griffiths**:
talking about isn’t it and if you think too long about how you’re going to do it you wouldn’t do it you don’t do it yeah and i think it would be encouraging people just to kind of be more themselves out there yeah and just because i think people have loads of wisdom sitting within them that they overlook because they don’t think it’s relevant to whatever they’re
**Melanie Griffiths**:
selling yeah or
**Melanie Griffiths**:
um and so they kind of shove it aside and then try to create something that they think but actually the fact that they’re in whatever they’re doing for work there’s probably a natural
**Rob Osborne**:
connection between who they are and what they’re doing yeah yeah you know and i think you know we talked about um offline yeah about the fact that about storytelling and you’ve got a very very interesting uh story uh backstory behind you um and we can point people to the to the podcast you know steve o’neill because you cover a lot of that in in in that if you want to know more about melanie go and find that um i’ll try and put a link to it somewhere because it is a fascinating story um but also we were talking about getting into that whole habit of done is better than perfect um so you know um getting out and doing it um and linked to that actually we we again because yeah we prior to the show we were talking about um how you are exploring more and more with with video and things like that um and i said about have you thought about tiktok and you said
**Melanie Griffiths**:
not yet i said yeah i said i know i should big big word should yeah and and i see that i like you were saying i see the potential definitely see the potential and i but i was kind of i sort of made a conscious decision that i wanted to get really comfortable with using social media so i decided to kind of focus on the platforms that i was already on
**Melanie Griffiths**:
those yeah and getting and then at some point i thought i’ll migrate over or i’ll add that into the mix yeah yeah i started to do more with social media it felt like a little bit too
**Rob Osborne**:
much to add in but and i think that’s absolutely i mean i want this really good self-awareness uh but also it’s really sensible so actually you know you you’re getting into that habit of doing posts on on platforms that you’re comfortable with yeah and then once you’ve got that kind of all that working for you and and it feels comfortable usually you’re doing stream yard and other video things and things like that then you can maybe look at when you’re ready exploring uh other platforms i mean that that that’s a very very sensible thing to do because sometimes it’s you know easy to chase the next chart the next shiny object and not actually
**Melanie Griffiths**:
concentrate on one thing and i think people get overwhelmed there’s so much information out there about how to do social media and and and there’s obviously great information out there but it’s also completely overwhelming and i think if it’s not your business but you’ve got to do it for your business you want the quickest route to market so you want to do things that feel manageable for you so that you can get it going yes
**Rob Osborne**:
then then you can kind of expand that’s my sense of it all yeah no i thought and i thought i think that’s a very very very sensible approach you know that you know you you you’re doing not quite one thing because you’re you’re you are on multiple platforms you say you’re on you’re on instagram facebook and uh linkedin as well as having youtube channels so you are doing a lot of different channels but yeah as you say the other ones that you’re familiar with um and then uh yeah you’re doing the other stuff later on but yeah yeah exactly the right thing to
**Melanie Griffiths**:
do and i think it’s also i was just thinking about it because my my youtube channel’s got something like about 34 subscribers so it’s really really tiny but i think there’s a there was something i thought about it and i thought actually you’ve just got to kind of forget about all of that and just keep going out there keep talking from your heart and just whatever is important to you and don’t worry about who might be listening or watching and just and that can be quite hard because you know if you haven’t got any feedback you’re sort of going where is this landing if you get kind of dodgy feedback because there’s lots of weird and wonderful people out there and i think that’s a really important thing to do and i think that’s lovely want other people to comment about if they are properly getting out there um if we’ll want to comment then that can also you know through you yeah but just kind of going okay no i’m just going to keep going with this i’ve got something to say
**Rob Osborne**:
i’ve got something to sell and i’m just going to keep getting out there yeah and i think you are absolutely spot on and it is it is easy to get hung up on or i haven’t got many followers i haven’t got many subscribers but actually you’ve got to start somewhere right and by having content out there that people start to like and things like that slowly but surely that’s how you uh how to grow it um and youtube’s quite hard anyway it’s big whereas other social media platforms you can you know you can effectively start following somebody else and comment and then they’ll follow back a lot youtube’s not quite as easy to do that sort of thing and it’s it it feels like um sometimes it something will just happen suddenly where it’s it starts to to grow i mean i’ve you know i’ve probably got about the same number of followers subscribers as you at the
**Melanie Griffiths**:
moment um but again you just got to put content out there yeah i got a new one last week and i
**Rob Osborne**:
was like oh which is nice isn’t it at least you can show yeah you can sort of so when it’s small you can celebrate each individual one you know in its own way um and like i said it’s it’s you know i find youtube of an odd one to grow some people just seems to hit the right spot instantly um and others it’s but it goes it goes back being constant uh consistent and uh that sort of thing so uh and i know you share all your all your your uh streaming videos on there as well i can see that so again you you’re you’re you’re creating content and that’s that’s that’s the first first thing um yeah there’s lots more to it make sure you’ve got the right tags and all that kind of stuff on it but it’s it’s all you’ve got to have the stuff there to start with that’s
**Melanie Griffiths**:
and i think i think the things that people is that whole gotta get it right gotta know what i’m doing and and i think actually no just do it you’re gonna get it wrong you’re gonna fall over i remember learning to walk that didn’t happen in a straight line did it no exactly yeah but every time you fell over as a toddler you just got back up and started moving again and it’s the same thing i always think that with anything we’re learning it’s just you just have to keep getting back up um and and i’ve got to keep going through using social media going going through these sort of periods of growth with it or oh i feel drained by it oh i don’t want to do another post oh nobody’s listening or watching all of the emotions yeah and i go now you’ve had your little tantrum get back up just put another
**Rob Osborne**:
post out keep going yeah yeah that’s right and as you were saying earlier you know and suddenly that one will get loads of traction and suddenly you feel yeah yeah it’s very strange isn’t it
**Melanie Griffiths**:
it is a very it is a bizarre world it is a bizarre world yeah i will say even though you know it’s a it’s a massive part of our lives now and our business lives as well i still i still say to
**Rob Osborne**:
people it’s not real life you do need to remember that it’s like yeah yeah and and there’s there’s lots of other ways of marketing as well so yeah you’ve got to remember it’s all part of actually trying to help grow your business yeah and are you feeling that uh generally speaking yeah you
**Melanie Griffiths**:
see an activity and that sort of thing is having a positive impact i have definitely had more inquiries and bookings i’ve had more one-to-one um clairvoyant healing um bookings since i started doing it and i’ve had more inquiries about classes and things so it’s it is definitely
**Rob Osborne**:
having more of a reach yeah brilliant that’s and that’s great because because that again sometimes it’s not easy it goes back to looking at numbers and stuff like that but but you can have a positive impact of what you’re doing even though sometimes you don’t see that positive
**Melanie Griffiths**:
impact in in interactions on your posts yeah yeah exactly and i also think it can take a while as
**Rob Osborne**:
well yeah their statistics i don’t know them about how many times someone has to see yeah yeah yeah and i can’t remember i’m sure at one point the number was seven and i’ve heard the numbers 28
**Melanie Griffiths**:
or something you know so you you’ve got to have a lot of things going out there um keep talking haven’t you about what you know because i think oh this is what goes through my head oh god everybody already knows i do this why do i need to talk about again and then i’ll get a message saying from someone i didn’t know you did dance holidays and talking about or yeah them for four or five
**Rob Osborne**:
years yeah yeah but as you say these are either new new followers who haven’t seen some of those posts in the past or they may have been sort of following new phrases but the algorithm just
**Melanie Griffiths**:
hasn’t put in front of them yeah yeah yeah and i think you just have to you know and i’ve done posts i did i knew something recently about you know if you don’t like what i’m talking about just scroll on by yeah and i thought oh i could do a a reel
**Rob Osborne**:
with a dion warwick song oh i love that idea i love it yeah well let me know when you’re going to do it because i have to go and see it because i won’t scroll on by
**Rob Osborne**:
oh that’s brilliant um i am conscious about so um as you as i did give you a heads up beforehand uh there’s there’s two things i ask every guest um the first or two tips i ask people to give um the first tip is something that you advise somebody that’s a really good tip do this do that yeah make sure you keep you keep
**Melanie Griffiths**:
doing this uh so what is your good tip it’s the basic it’s the night it’s the nike um thing just do it just what just start using whatever platform you want to start using and start talking start talking to to people whether you’re doing in your posts your writing posts or your video posts and and keep doing it it’s the start and then be consistent with it yeah no matter what
**Rob Osborne**:
comes up just keep doing it yeah that’s really good just do it and obviously there are other trainers available not just nike but
**Rob Osborne**:
it’s a good strap line
**Rob Osborne**:
yeah and and and conversely uh is there something that you should say look just don’t do that or just don’t fall into that trap so the so the opposite not just do just don’t do it
**Melanie Griffiths**:
yeah basically it’s i think people let their emotions get in the way um they’re or they let time and fear um and and those become the excuses or well you don’t usually use the excuse of being afraid you usually find some other excuse but ultimately it’s fear or oh I haven’t got time and it’s it’s actually saying actually I’m going to do it anyway I’m just going to do it anyway so I’m going to quote someone else now the amazing Susan Jeffords feel the fear and do
**Rob Osborne**:
it anyway there’s a whole book on it yeah it’s a very good book and a good piece of advice yeah exactly yeah oh that’s brilliant well thank you so much for your time final thing if somebody wants to get in contact with you obviously we will in the show notes there’ll be all links to your things but what is the best way to get hold of you if they want to know more about you or to
**Melanie Griffiths**:
book into any of your classes or anything like that so I’m on Facebook it’s it’s me Melanie Griffiths same on LinkedIn and Instagram is movement Melanie and it’s the same picture logo so those are the best ways and
**Rob Osborne**:
just send me a message yeah just say hello I really like it when people say hello okay well I’ll make sure I encourage people to say hello to you which is which is interesting because I’m about to say goodbye to you so I just want to thank you so much for for taking the time to be on this episode of Discussing Digital really enjoyed
**Melanie Griffiths**:
having a chat oh no it’s great it’s really great and I hope I hope it inspires more people to use social media um or well whatever digital marketing they’re doing to keep connecting with their peoples

My Favourite LinkedIn Functions

My Favourite LinkedIn Functions

Introduction

Although I’ve been promoting digital marketing services for a number of years, it’s only recently that I’ve started really promoting these on LinkedIn. This is because I was only doing digital marketing on a  part-time basis whilst I did interim work and I was using LinkedIn to connect with recruiters and interim client contacts.

I’m now using LinkedIn to promote my digital marketing services and thought I’d share the functions that I have found most useful. I am only using the free version of LinkedIn, so there may be richer functionality and even better functions in the paid version, but I’m not able to comment on them at the moment.

LinkedIn Analytics

LinkedIn Analytics

I’ve always been a fan of tracking your numbers, so being able to look at analytics on LinkedIn really appeals to me. As you can see from the picture, analytics are available from the home screen on the desktop version of LinkedIn. They are also available on the mobile app.

Analytics are mainly focused on profile views and post impressions. Profile views is quite limited in the free version but there is a lot available to look at and play with in the post impressions area. Well worth looking at on a regular basis.

Conversations Happening Now

LinkedIn Conversations Happening Now

I have included this function as it existed at the time I ran the workshop that this post is based on, but this function has since disappeared from my profile.

This is a section in the Post Impressions section of the analytics and shows you three posts from others that are currently performing well and are relevant to your business, encouraging you to wither interact with them or repost them with comments. This is a good way to boost your engagement and create a post if you’re struggling for an idea.

You need creator mode turned on for this. There is something similar in this section if you don’t have creator mode turned on too.

Notification Button

LinkedIn Notification Button

If you look at somebody’s profile on LinkedIn, you will see a little bell icon. If you turn this on, LinkedIn will notify you that when they have posted something. There are a couple of levels to this, you can either select being notified for all posts or just their top posts.

There are a number of uses for this.

If you want to learn from somebody who is already an expert in their field, then being notified of their posts is a sign you can learn something new.

If you want to support a friend, colleague or client, you can turn this on and then support their posts by adding comments and engaging with it (LinkedIn’s analytical term for likes, etc).

Recommendations

LinkedIn Recommendations

Another powerful function available from the profile page is the “request a recommendation” function, which allows you to request a recommendation from somebody. The main people you should be targeting are people who you have done work for where you know you’ve delivered a good service to them. The really good thing about this is that you get to review what they’ve written before you post it to your profile, so if you don’t like it you don’t have to share it.

You can also be proactive and give somebody a recommendation. It’s on the same drop down menu from the more button on their profile.

The LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI)

LinkedIn Social Selling Index

The 5th function to share here isn’t available from within LinkedIn, as it’s part of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, but it is free.

The SSI is LinkedIn’s gamification of your activity and is a score out of 100. The score is based on 4 main sections and you get a score out of 25 on each section.

The 4 sections are:

  • Establish your professional brand;
  • Find the right people;
  • Engage with insights; and
  • Build relationships.

As you can see from the picture, I need to build on my “Find the right people” score.

It does give some high level comparisons with others in your industry and in your network and as you can see I’m not doing too badly in comparison with them.

LinkedIn Profile QR Code

LinkedIn Profile QR Code

The final function I’m sharing here is only available on the mobile app and that is the profile QR code. This is a great way to get people to connect with you when you meet them face-to-face at business events, expo’s and networking meetings.

To get to the QR code for your profile open the LinkedIn mobile app, click into the search bar at the top of the screen. Then s little symbol will appear in the right hand side of the search bar on the next screen. Click on this and a QR code will appear. IF anybody then scans that with their mobile phone they will be taken to your profile and will be able to follow you and ask you to connect.

Final Thoughts

I’ve found using these functions has really improved my usability and visibility on LinkedIn and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the functions available. I hope you have found this useful and you go away and try them all out.

Discussing Digital with Nikie Forster

Discussing Digital with Nikie Forster

In this edition of Discussing Digital, I speak to Nikie Forster of Curious Lighthouse Learning Consultancy. We discuss how Nikie is making great use of LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube, as well as some of the many different ways she creates content.
Nikie also shares her One Good and One Bad tips, which is something we ask everyone who takes part on an episode of Discussing Digital to share with us.

 

Transcript

Welcome

Hello, today on discussing digital I’m with Nikie Forster from the Curious Lighthouse Learning Consultancy and we’re here to discuss digital marketing and particularly how Nikie uses digital marketing in her business. So Nikie would you like to kind of introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about your business.

Yeah, absolutely, well first of all thanks for inviting me on Rob, very kind of you. So my profession is a learning and development consultant and the way that I usually describe my business is if it’s anything to do with learning I usually get involved in it, but my my two main areas that I focus on are helping managers to manage their people better and helping trainers to train others better. So those two ends of the scale of what I do, I work with large and small corporates, independents, pretty much anybody that wants help with learning I do and I do that face-to-face and virtually as well.

Brilliant, okay now obviously we’re here to discuss how digital marketing fits into the promotion and growth of your business,

Yeah.

Now obviously you and i are friends and well connected so I’ve seen that you you are very active on digital marketing so it’d be really good if you could kind of give an overview of the different elements of digital marketing that you do and and also as part of that if you can kind of go into a bit more detail about which which ones seem to work best for you.

Approach to Digital Marketing

Sure I would say my approach to digital marketing is a little bit scatter gun approach to be honest, although I am getting better at it so I really like it when something’s very relevant to what’s going on, which is probably why I struggle a little bit with the forward planning of stuff but I tend to use LinkedIn as my main digital platform because with the stuff that I do and talking to corporates and other trainers that’s predominantly where my audience is, but with some of the other bits and pieces that I do as well I find that YouTube is a good place for me to post stuff as is Facebook and I’m just starting to get into Instagram. Instagram’s one of those things that kind of I know I should be doing more on but it it’s just it doesn’t feel comfortable yet, whereas Linkedin feels very comfortable for me to be on, so I try and post on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Sometimes that is very much just a quick post and other times it’s a little bit more in depth, but I always like to include images and stuff like that, I tend to find they get the the most engagement.

LinkedIn

Yeah, it’s really interesting you saying that about one that you have identified that Linkedin is a good platform for you because of your kind of most clients that you’re looking for are there, but also your comment around the fact that you kind of feel you should be on Instagram but you you struggle with it because it doesn’t come naturally to you. I think that’s really important for people to understand that that is the case I think it’s you know for me quite a few it’s actually if focus on the one that works best for you and don’t always worry about you feel like you’re under pressure to be on the others yeah.

Instagram

Yeah, I think that one of the reasons why I struggled to kind of let go of Instagram is because although I’ve said you know in terms of the corporate side for management development definitely, but in terms of the trainer stuff that I do, they could be corporate trainers but they could also be entrepreneurs who want to train others in their specialty so they could create their own online courses, and that’s a very different ballgame so Instagram feels as though that would work better for that group,

Yeah

So yeah it always feels a little bit like a juggling thing whereas at the moment what I’d want to do is you want to create one post and just plaster it everywhere which I need.

Yeah, and again there’s nothing wrong with that but as you say there are there are kind of different nuances across the channels so obviously Instagram in particular uses things like hashtags a lot more differently to say Linkedin, although hashtags are appearing a lot more on Linkedin at the moment and is going down that route so yeah. You also mentioned mentioned YouTube earlier so how are you finding YouTube and how are you finding what’s the best way you found to grow your subscriber list? because it was it always feels like a challenge on on YouTube

YouTube

Yeah, so when I say I use YouTube, what I really should clarify is probably a couple of years ago I started using it and set up my own channel on there and I was posting quite regularly and I used to post it. Originally I had a topic particularly around management development and I would split it into four and make four shorter videos and then upload them one a week for a month. Ii thought that that would work well, but what i realized was that people don’t particularly like parts – part one, part two, part three on YouTube, they just want something that’s condensed down into two or three minutes and then they can go off and do something else, and then the pandemic hit and then I had to share my office with my husband and all the nice equipment’s in the office, so it kind of went by the wayside. So doing videos for me has kind of been put on the back burner a bit, but when I pick it up again, what I really use it for isn’t so much to grow the channel on YouTube, it’s more a case of uploading it there so that (a) I can create subtitles, because for me that’s the easiest place to create them and then (b) upload it to my website, because again it’s the easiest way of doing it or posting on social media, so I almost use it like a software tool, rather than a digital marketing tool if that makes sense.

It does, it makes perfect sense actually and your comment there about using youtube for for subtitlings and creating captions, I use it exactly the same way at the moment, because as you say it’s got a very good transcription engine and so it it then takes minimal effort to kind of make the subtitles more readable, whereas I certainly found things like Facebook where they’ve got transcription services you have to do a lot more editing. Talking about visuals and things like that I know one of the things that you’ve kind of been focusing on in your learning development marketing is around the use of Lego, which is a great visual product, I mean how have you found that has helped?

Lego

Oh it gets so much more engagement. I should explain that when I am training people I don’t like taking photographs of people while I’m training them, I think it’s off-putting and I think so people feel as though they then have to almost like put on a show of what they’re doing. So sometimes I will take pictures of if they’re doing an activity so so that people can see the props that I’m using and Lego is is one of those props, so it really helps me to show people the kind of stuff that I’m doing and everybody loves Lego and it’s so bright and colorful and I use it within my management development but also within training and I also have it for other trainers to be able to use this activity, so it kind of covers quite a wide range of my business which is why people probably see it quite a bit, but yeah the visuals of that, I think it just kind of takes people back to their childhood or if their parents playing with their own kids so it’s universal. You cannot sit at a table with Lego in front of you and not pick it up and start building stuff with it, it’s almost impossible to do. So yes I do find that I do use a lot of Lego imagery in my social media posts, but like I say it does get really good engagement.

Yeah, and do you actually obviously sort of like as you say you’re using it during courses whether that’s online because I know sometimes you actually send out the Lego packs to the person you’re training things like that so do you actually kind of take some images while you’re doing the training so effectively you’re almost getting creating content whilst you’re doing something else rather than having to make a special effort to create content?

Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve just finished doing a one-to-one management development program virtually so the whole program was virtual, so I sent all that stuff out to them and rather than trying to take screenshots of them holding things up I was showing my setup here in the office where I actually got the Lego off to one side so that people can see that’s the props that we’re going to be using today. So yes, I do think that the stuff that gets a lot of the engagement is the behind the scenes and the in the moment stuff, rather than the setup of everybody holding their certificates or all that kind of thing. I think people like to know what’s going on. How did that come to be? What’s that person actually doing? How are they making a success of something? and I think people enjoy the the journey rather than the end result, otherwise it would just be me banging on all the time about come buy my services, my courses, things like that and those direct sales pitches don’t get any engagement at all, except from your cheerleaders who really like the stuff that you do.

Yeah

So yeah, you’re absolutely right I do take a lot of the in the moment and the behind the scenes images.

E-Mail Marketing

Do you do any other stuff, like email marketing, to try and keep people informed about what you’re going on and stuff like that?

I’ve tried, I’ve tried. I have a couple of freebies in terms of online courses and I’m just doing some more ebooks, which is short kind of you know 12 ways to do … type of stuff and I do have something set up that can acquire people’s emails for that but I really struggle with the whole newsletter style thing. I don’t like newsletters. I don’t read other people’s newsletters. I’ve got no desire to create my own newsletter. So there’s a bit of a barrier there for me for that. Should I be doing it? Probably, but in a way that works for me and I haven’t worked out what that way is yet. It’s certainly not a bulk standard monthly newsletter. I need to think a bit more about what that is.

Yeah, again I think it’s important you know, that if you’ve got a mental block for want of a better word or this is something that doesn’t work for me, I don’t think you should beat yourself up about the fact that that doesn’t work for me, but actually I’m happy doing this stuff, so I’ll do lots of that, because sometimes people kind of you know, you hear gurus saying you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that and then you beat yourself up and don’t do anything, whereas if you go I can do this bit, I like doing that, a bit like, you know, what you were saying earlier about Linkedin is something I like, I’m happy with, so I can do lots of that, whereas this other stuff, it’s hard work. Life’s hard enough anyway, let’s not try to do something hard, that you can do relatively easy and I know you do loads of stuff anyway so, it’s really good you know, what you do is good anyway. So just touching back again on some of the stuff you’re doing repurposing. Obviously, because you do training courses anyway, you mentioned you had a couple of freebies that you do, so have you got any training platforms where you put courses that you you’ve created to hopefully get you some some additional income that way as well?Rather than just being a just a marketing tool for digital marketing?

Yeah, absolutely, so for example the Lego that we talked about earlier, as I said, I use that across several different areas, both in terms of using it to help managers to open up and discuss things and things like that, but then I take those activities that I’ve created and put them into a course so that other trainers can come and have a look at those and then use them for their own learners. So I’ve got several online courses specifically around that and I’ve got them on several different platforms for different reasons so I use a course creation platform called Thinkific to create online courses and I love them. I think it’s really easy, really easy? very straightforward to use. Very intuitive to use. You do a lot on it but there’s no marketing from their point of view involved in that you have to do all the marketing yourself. So if I’m ever marketing my Lego courses, that’s predominantly where I’m sending them to. The other place that I do have them is on Udemy, but, I think Udemy is fantastic at what it does in terms of getting out to a global audience, but they take so much of the profit from it so, it’s all about quantity with Udemy rather than building relationships with people and doing it that way. So yes, I’ve got those, I’ve got a couple of other ones about creating online courses. The management development stuff tends to be more specifically face-to-face or I do programs rather than one-off events so that that tends to be more invoice-led rather than a course that’s bought online.

Cool. okay, so as we discussed this beforehand I was going to ask you a couple things, so can you share with everyone one good thing that you’re doing in digital marketing that you kind of think ah, this really works for me and i’m just doing loads of it.

One Good Thing

The one thing if I had to really nail it down would be the behind the scenes stuff. Tell people what you’re doing so it’s not selling but it’s about what you’re doing, so like I said before my virtual management development program that I’ve just been running, I’ve been posting the behind the scenes stuff on that and just talking about what’s working, the fact that I found a new piece of software to be able to use to do it. So I’m sharing my own journey and story but people are still hearing what it is that I’m doing so if they need that in the future they know that that’s something that I’m experienced in. So that is what I would say rather than trying to sell on social media, is share your story in your journey and become the person that people think about when when they need that.

Absolutely, I think that’s really good advice. I was going to say what you’re saying. It’s about that whole meet, like, Know, trust stuff and to get people getting to know you and your approach and things like that rather than as you say here’s a hard sell type stuff.

One Bad Thing

Equally if there’s one thing you say “oh, it just doesn’t work for me, I just don’t want to do that”

I actually think this is something I learned very early on when I went into my own business. I started up my own business end of 2015 and I think for probably at least six months the way in which I did digital marketing was how I thought I should sound and how I thought I should come across which which was still very corporate and I’m not saying I’m not professional, I am, but I’m very informal and it took me a while to realize that actually if somebody’s going to buy a service from me then they get me. So that’s what I need to put out. So everything that I post now is very much just how I would be if I was training somebody or helping somebody you know create their own online course or whatever, because then there’s no surprises. I think people buy people not products, so that helps that they know what they’re getting. So to narrow that down because I went off on a tangent there, so as always so to narrow that down I would say “Just be yourself” whenever you are doing social media, just be yourself.

Yeah, that’s great, that’s great and I think that’s really really, really good advice. So finally is there anything else that you’d like to just highlight before we wrap up?

One of the things that I try to do is to stay current and I think that’s important. So although I’ve said before I like LinkedIn, I feel comfortable there, little things tweak and change. I’m talking about algorithms or things like that but just things like being able to put feature pages on, or being able to do a voice note for things, so i think even if you’re comfortable on a platform it’s still keeping up to date with what’s going on and also just pushing yourself slightly to see what else is out there. So I am never going to be on Twitter, she says. I’ve got a Twitter handle but I don’t look at it. But like i said before Instagram is probably somewhere where I want to go, so it’s keeping up to date with things and having somebody like yourself who can help navigate that stuff as well I think is really important.

Cool, thank you for that, I do my best.

 So just before we wrap up, do you want to just kind of share out your different digital marketing platforms so that anybody that’s watching would like to go and see the wonderful work you’re doing and the wonderful marketing you’re doing, so they can actually see what we’ve been talking about?

Fantastic. Well I can’t actually remember them all off the top of my head but i think what i would probably say is that the best one to contact me on is going to be LinkedIn and you can look up my name, Nikie Forster (n-i-k-i-e) but actually i think it’s probably going to come under Curious Lighthouse, so if you look under Curious Lighthouse for anything – Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, it’s all under Curious Lighthouse so that is what I’d probably say but LinkedIn is if you’re looking for a response from me that’s probably the best place to go

Yeah that’s fine you have sent me through some urls and that so we will share them in the comments with the descriptions on the videos but they will magically appear here as well.

Wonderful. Thank you.

Okay, well in that case I do thank you for your time today and I hope everyone’s enjoyed watching this because Nikie’s just shared a load of really, really good tips. I would suggest you want to go away, watch this video a couple of times and really take take apart some of the great tips that Nikie’s shared with us today. So thank you so much Nikie and I look forward to catching up with you again in the future.

Wonderful, thank you very much indeed Rob

Happy Halloween – content marketing around special events

Happy Halloween – content marketing around special events

Planning your content marketing Strategy


During meetings I’ve had with clients over the last week or so, we’ve been looking at how we can boost our content marketing on their websites and on their social media feeds by creating content relating to a number of the upcoming events that are happening soon, such as Halloween, which later this week, bonfire night at the weekend,  Black Friday and Cyber  Monday  in November and then of course t in December it’s Christmas.

Content marketing planning on a tablet computerIt’s really important f to be thinking about how you can be writing blogs and sharing other content on social media relating to these events, particularly for your products and services that are linked to them, so you can really boost your marketing activities, focusing on the run up to them, so that your that you potential customers know about your offerings and are given the opportunity to buy from you.

Using these events are a great way to develop your content marketing strategy, so draw up a calendar of the key events in the calendar, whether they are national or international events such a Christmas, events that are local to your location, such as a local festival or carnival, or something specific to your industry and then spend some time creating content relating to those events, as far in advance as possible.

By planning in advance, you will also have plenty of time to develop any materials you want to use, be it images, flyers, posters or videos. Whatever you need to prepare, try to design them in a way that allows you to repurpose them across all your digital platforms, including Facebook,Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, as well as using them for blog posts on your wevbsite, as this will increase your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).


Rob Osborne of Red Knight SolutionsIf you need any help preparing you content marketing plan, please call Red Knight Solutions on 02392 265725 or e-mail us at enquiries@redknightsolutions.co.uk