Christmas Retail Branding!

Christmas has always been a time for brands to shine, but it seems that the 2012 festive period is somewhat different!

From last year I remember the Morissons ad with Brucie and Freddie; the John Lewis with the kid excited about giving his gift to his parents; Jamie Oliver cooking Sainburys food; Tescos had happy kids on a school stage; Iceland had Stacey Solomon driving home to her family; Argos had their aliens – and all the brands solidly had their respective promise that as a viewer we understood.

Proposition and brands are clearly identifiable; and this is important if they are going to attract lots of business from us shoppers.

Today is very different; John Lewis again went for the snowmen tearjerker and Argos have stuck with the aliens; but to be honest the rest of them have just merged into one brand/message/proposition!  Not sure what Littlesons, M&Burys and Bootalan are offering this year; I'm a very confused viewer and shopper!

Be really interesting to see who the retail winners and losers are this year!

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Improving your Klout score

If you’re fixated by your Klout score then you have no doubt tweeted like crazy and got numerous Retweets, things are looking up as your Klout score slowly increase.

BUT you’ll find that when you hit a Klout of around 40 then this strategy of tweeting and gaining Retweets doesn’t help you anymore!

So you are keen to improve your Klout further, how do you do it?

There are a couple of things you now need to do, firstly you need get your Followers/Following ratio up; this means that you need to get incrementally more people following you without you following more people.

Secondly, you need to get more people to engage with you, not just Retweeting the stuff you put out but to actually respond to your stuff!

Do these two things are you’ll find your Klout score move up to the 50’s in no time.

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What could a business learn from a beggar!

I was recently reading an article on Huffington Post about a beggar in Oklahoma that makes $60,000 (approx £37,000) a year on the streets.

Now, two things shocked me with this news item:

1. It’s the 21st Century and we still have beggars on the streets in one of the most affluent countries on the planet 
2. He earns more money (tax free) than some small businesses I know! 

This got me thinking two things really; firstly, this guy won’t be the only person that is begging and making an awful lot of cash from the process and secondly, what is this guy doing that we can learn from?

I always remember one very important tip from my early sales management days; at the time it was the most amazing thing ever heard and I knew that it was something that EVERY salesperson MUST DO to bring in the money. furthermore, I know for a fact that many of the so-called ‘experts’ in today’s sales community don’t do it!

Just ask for the sale. 

In the terms of our beggar in Oklahoma City he has one simple direct message where he asks for money (it's that simple) and people give him some, it's that easy.

How many sales people do you know who beat around the bush playing out some sort of sales ritual with their prospects in a never ending loop of 'will they/won't they buy it' (maybe you do it yourself!). The sales people that constantly contact me never fail to tell me how great their company is, or how fantastic their product is, they might mention how much cheaper or faster or simply better they or their product is than their nearest competitor, they leave the literature, direct me to the online demo, but they rarely ask for my business?

Based on experience I would suggest that far less than 10 percent of sales people actually ask for the sale, imagine the money they are leaving on the table, imagine how much extra revenue could be made if they just asked for that sale!
If our beggar in Oklahoma City can do it, I'm sure the average, educated sales person could do it too. Makes you think doesn't it!

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Tweet like a Pro

Take a leaf out of the books of big businesses who know how to keep a news story running and running.

The vast majority of the largest companies in the world have a series of press releases that are so good that every so often they like to send them back out again and for some strange reason they pick up lots of distribution for their brand again.

You can do the very same thing on Twitter.

All you need to do is discover which of your tweets got the best response from your Followers (i.e. were marketed as a favourite tweet by them and Retweeted).

This is a very simple process, all you have to do is point your browser to http://favstar.fm/ and where it says ‘Choose User’, just enter your Twitter ID.

The results page will show you the best tweets that you have EVER sent out; all you now need to do is Retweet the best ones, some of them might need a little bit of Spin (rewording a little), and you’ll end up with more twitter users seeing your tweets easily.

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Five Tips to Search Engine Success

Tip 1 – You can’t outsmart Google

It’s a fact that if you try to beat Google by trying the latest way to force your pages into the top of the rankings then you will get found out!  Site owners that were spanked by Google's most recent updates (Penguin or Panda), will testify to the fact that you have to bide your time.

A spammy approach to gaining good ranking will hurt you and your business in the long run.  There is no automated way to the top, no quick win – only and effort will get you there.

Tip 2 – Normal business rules apply

If you owned a ‘bricks and motor’ store then I'm guessing that you wouldn't expect to attract customers for free; the internet is exactly the same, it isn't free nor easy to attract visitors to a website.

Invest time and effort and you’ll do well.

Tip 3 – ensure your site has a good infrastructure

It stands to reason that your site won’t survive for long if it had a poor design.  To get ranked well you need a fast loading site filled with pages with great content and pages that link to all the other pages within your site (needed so that search engines spiders know where all your pages are.)

If you're serious about your website, don't use the cheapest web host or designer. Slow poorly designed pages can influence the rankings of your web pages.

Tip 4 – Take Control

Stop searching for gurus or secret tricks that promise to make your site number one in Google (or any other search engine for that matter), they don’t exist.

Work with a search engine marketing professional, ideally someone who understands business and how search engines work.

With their assistance discover what your unique selling proposition is

Identify your audience and make a plan.

Create a great website with valuable content (if visitors like your site word will get out)

Advertise your site (use SEO, paid advertising, even traditional advertising to promote it)

Step 5 -  Act Now

There is always something is your business that’s more important that promoting your website (or so you think), talk to someone today (talk to me) about improving your search engine rankings.

SEO is not necessarily about getting backlinks. It's also not necessarily about getting high rankings on Google. It is about getting sales. It is about improving your business.

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The easiest way to get someones attention on Twitter

Twitter is great when you finally get noticed by an influencer or business that you want to get your brand or service in front of; but how do you get their attention?

The easiest way is to tweet about their favourite things or to retweet popular past tweets, but how do you find out that they are?

Favstar will allow you to do just that, by simply entering http://favstar.fm/users/their username into your browser you will find out what they like to tweet about and what are their most popular tweets; this then gives you a chance to engage with them on top topics or simply retweet their best tweet (which could have been from years ago!).

If you want to find out what tweets that your target have marked as a favourite then enter https://twitter.com/ their username/favorites

These are very simple tactic that I have used successfully many times.

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Tips for getting more Twitter followers that stick to you!

If you want to get some additional loyal Followers on Twitter then there are a couple of things that you need to do.

Tweet Often – If you want to maximise the benefit of your Twitter activity then you need to be an active contributor to your Followers streams; I’m not just talking about 1-2 tweets a week, but a constant drip of information, news and views throughout the day. To really make a difference you need to aim for at least 10 tweets a day, some of the most popular and influential people can get 30 tweets out easily.

Be of Value – Tweeting what you had for lunch really isn’t going to help get and keep loyal Followers, you need to be tweeting items of interest, and tweets that are based on your real experiences of those of your customers/clients are the most valuable.

Interact – All too often I see people and businesses tweeting a stream of self promotional garbage and they never interact with anyone.  You are on Twitter to build relationships and hopefully turn your Followers into customers or advocates for you, and you can only do this through interaction.  So get engaging, comment on peoples tweets and Retweet often; you will be rewarded for it.

Share – News is great because often it’s something that we all like to comment on, so as soon as you hear something interesting Tweet about it, it’s possible to get a tweet out about a news item before the major news channels manage to get their act together.

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Don’t have much time to check your social media?

Many of us don’t all have lots of hours free to sit in front of a device and check our social media as and when things happen, find new people to engage with and track down those influential people that can make or break your business, so if you can only spare 20 minutes a day what should you do?

There are lots of things you can be getting on with:

Check that Inbox - Ensure that if anyone had contacted you directly through any social media channel ensure that you get back to them within 24 hours at the very least.

Follow relevant people – the sums are easy, the more people you follow the more likely you are to get followers yourself; the more followers you have the bigger the audience is for your message.  Take a look at Klout and Kred as both of these will show you who is influential in your chosen topics and these are the people you should be following.

Do a few directory searches based on your niche and hit the follow button..

Tweet – and tweet often!  Use HootSuite and set your tweets to schedule automatically; HootSuite will then send your tweets out at the best time.  As and when you think of a tweet to send simple compose it and AutoSchedule it, HootSuite will send it out at the right time for you.  You’ll find that you won’t need too many Tweets to fill each day!

Reply – someone has copied you into a tweet or message for a reason, over time you will learn to quickly understand the value in the connections that you have built up and then quickly be able to understand whether entering into a discussion with them is both productive and useful; but like Inbox messages, don’t ignore them!

Following these small tips should take you no longer than 20 minutes a day BUT will provide you with huge benefits.

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