This week, Salma Jafri joins me to answer your questions about marketing authentically on a zero budget. Watch the video, and check the notes below for links and a summary of each question. Thank you to Nimrah, Samantha, Kelly, Lisa and Lorna for your fantastic questions!
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What do you mean when you say “zero budget”?
You don’t need to spend money to make money. A website is absolutely essential as a hub, for credibility, but you don’t need to start with that. Ways you can make money and build credibility for free:
Host online course on Udemy or Thinkific, use Powerpoint, Keynote or Google Slides.
Build email list – free MailChimp account and add option box on Facebook or Twitter.
Write an ebook on Word, convert to a pdf and sell it on eJunkie.
Not a lack of resources, but a lack of resourcefulness.
Not a lack of resources, but a lack of resourcefulness.
Is content aggregation a white hat SEO technique or black hat? how can we efficiently use it ?
Content aggregation is machine generated content, so it depends who’s programming it whether it’ll be good or bad. Content curation is more useful. It’s manual – a list of useful, relevant content into it.
What are the current trends of marketing? I ask specifically for content..what sort of content are people more interested to read or share?
2016 is the year of live streaming! Periscope, Facebook live, Blab, Snapchat. There are more coming up! People want to interface with another person. Business is getting more personal.
Business is getting more personal
What’s the best way to grow social media followings quickly while still remaining organic (not running contests or paying for sponsored posts?)
– Stay native to the platform. Ie. native video content on Facebook rather than linking to it from YouTube. These videos show up more frequently in the newsfeed. Make content that will work on that platform.
– Post when your audience is online – use your analytics to find this out.
– Experiment with different types of content and different frequencies.
– Share personal stories that relate to your business in some way. Things that make you feel uncomfortable and share your wins. Comments and likes extend their reach. Share something that is emotional.
Share something emotional to grow your social media following
How do you come up with ideas?
Keep your ideas organised!
Ideas are everywhere. Be really really observant and have a way to take notes with you at all times. Ie. notebook, evernote etc..
Example: Everything I learnt about marketing I learned from my kids.
Read online all the time. Do a gap analysis – read something and then present your ideas to that. Add your perspective to that content.
Tips for getting people to sign up to your email list.
– Have an amazingly epic offer. An opt in offer that you know your audience is going to love.
– Tell everyone about it. Everywhere. Pin it to Twitter, sticky post on Facebook.
Example: Buffer conducted an experiment to increase their signups. They added 8 more touch points to their website to get signups (Hello bar, homepage, side bar, pop up, postscript sign up, Twitter lead gen, Facebook option) They went from 2000 – 5000 sign ups per month.
Having only just started actively using twitter and about to try and be more present on Linkedin, I’d like to understand when I should be assessing what works, what doesn’t – is it after 1 month, 3 months? Also does she have any tips on success criterias for this? Theres obviously all the interaction and reach numbers for each tweet/post (but I feel that is quite micro) and at the other end of spectrum whether I get any business from it (which is ultimately obviously what I would like! But am not sure that I expect to see that within 3 months…) As you can see – still getting to grips with this whole area…..
Use a three month yardstick. Salma has a course coming out – Content Marketing the First 90 days. The first three months are pretty crucial.
What do you measure? What’s important to you. Example. email subscribers. If you’re not meeting those numbers, don’t get scared, tweak what you’re doing.
The metrics which matter:
Consumption: are people reading, watching or listening?
Conversion: lead generation – how many are doing what you’re asking them to do? (subscribe, download, converting)
Sales: use Google Analytics to set up a goal to see how many people complete checkout.
You need to know what your marketing funnel looks like – when are they coming in, what are they doing, when do they drop off.
Example. A client wanted to focus on Facebook, but when he looked at his stats, LinkedIn was where his market was. Make sense of the numbers.
Overwhelm of content creation.
There’s creating content and then there’s marketing. Promotion, distribution and marketing. Focus 20% of time creating epic stuff and 80% of your time promoting that epic stuff. Not overwhelming and gives your content creation some breathing room.
Salmas free ebook – 25 free and feel good ways to authentically promote your content.
Thank you Salma!
Salma Jafri is a Content Marketing Strategist, Speaker and Trainer. She is the Host of the video blog Content Marketing Tips which helps entrepreneurs authentically promote their business using content marketing. She is also a Channel Partner and Contributor at Entrepreneur.com. Download her free guide: 25 Free and Feel-good Ways to Authentically Promote your Content