I am writing my next blog to outline what a micro influencer is, and how you can activate them for the benefit of your business.

We live in a world of social media, and there are many ways to use this to our advantage, such as the plethora of ‘Insta-famous’, micro influencers.

So, what is a micro influencer you might ask? For me, I define a micro influencer as somebody who has influence over a direct network of people, say on their various social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and Facebook. Now, focusing on the amount of followers these people have can be one way at determining if they are an influencer, but paying careful attention to the actual people following them is key. Because these are the people who you want as you clients or customers. So, the aim here is to get the mico influencer to ‘seed’ or ‘plug’ your product in the hope that their audience will follow and purchase such products.

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A guide that explains how athletes can approach companies asking for sponsorship, and how businesses can leverage sponsorship to their advantage.

I am writing this blog because I had a great question come in from a professional athlete who wants to know how to use social platforms to gain sponsorship. This question came about because he wanted to know if Instagram is enough to be gaining attention from potential sponsors, or whether he should create a website with a blog and generate attention this way.

And it’s a great question because when it comes to personal brands and when it comes to leveraging that personal brand for sponsorship and understanding where and how to play is so important. I would recommend that the first thing you do is to put yourself in the eyes of the potential sponsors. So, I would like to start by touching on this from the perspective of the potential sponsor.

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The 3 common problems in business…

When I wrote my book ‘I Just Want It To Work, A Guide To Understanding Digital Marketing And Social Media For Frustrated Business Owners, Managers and Marketers’, I researched over 40 businesses ranging from around the $600,000 in revenue mark up to just over $600 million in revenue. And what I found so interesting was that regardless of the size of those businesses, whether they’re at the smaller end of the spectrum or at the larger end of the spectrum, they had three problems in common.

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Building The Right Type Of Following

I am often asked, “how do I build my following with the right type of people?”.

ENGAGMENT, ENGAGMENT, ENGAGEMENT! 

That is hands down, the best and most cost-efficient way of growing a really great following and an authentic following.

How do I do this?

By engaging with others. This means going out and reaching out to the type of people who you want to follow you, and engaging with their content. By observing their content, engaging and starting conversations with your perfect audience, that’s ultimately the best way to build your following.  Yes, it does take time. Yes, it’s hard work, but who cares when it comes to the fact that it’s free, it doesn’t cost anything to sit there and make some valuable and fair comments to the sort of people who you’d love to follow you.

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Understanding Sales and Marketing

Is sales marketing? Is marketing sales? Does sales come after marketing? Does marketing precede sales? Or, does sales precede marketing? How does it all work?

I want to really simplify it and I want to put it in the context. Here is where I believe the value is; that being how it relates to businesses and the size of the businesses, where businesses are at, and how they scale. When you’re a small business and you’re starting out, quite often you’ve got very little funds. Further, you’re self-funding and chances are you’re going to boot-strap everything you have. If that’s the case, nothing, as far as I’m concerned, beats sales.

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Is your business on LinkedIn?

In this blog I want to talk a little bit about LinkedIn and I want to preface this conversation by saying if you’re still wondering if LinkedIn is a channel for you, or another platform that you should be using, then the easiest way to answer this question is, you’re mad if you’re not using it.

I still hear of people that are fearful or concerned about putting themselves on LinkedIn. I know people who tried it in the early days and they didn’t like the fact that they’ve were befriended or ‘linked’ by people requesting to connect with them who they didn’t know. If you don’t know them, don’t connect with them. It’s that simple. People are becoming more and more savvy when it comes to the use of LinkedIn and I think that we can all appreciate the benefits LinkedIn presents as a networking platform for businesses.

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What’s the best time to advertise?

I love this question because it actually allows us to dive into our audience and dive into the data to help make better decisions about the choices we make when it comes to our marketing objectives.

Anyone that knows me and has done business with me, and my clients will all attest to the fact that when I talk, I want to use data to make decisions and recommendations. I don’t like assumptions, I don’t like opinions, everybody’s got one of them. What I like is looking at what is actually happening out there, knowing and understanding exactly how my audience behaves so that I can make better decisions and use the data and information to direct and govern what I do when it comes to my marketing, digital and social objectives.

So, when it comes to advertising, and let’s just say your objective is primarily around Facebook and Instagram advertising, the best thing you can do is firstly go into your insights, on Facebook and Instagram and you’ll actually be able to go through and see your audience. Here you are able to see not only the demographics of your audience, but you can actually see when your audience is online.

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Are #Hashtags Out of Date?

The short answer is no. But I would like to elaborate as this is a trending question that I am constantly being asked. I believe this question has been raised because of the people that seem to abuse hashtags and use 20+ on every post, with tags that aren’t even relevant to their photo, which is ruining the user experience of hashtags all together. 

Hashtags are really important for finding a theme that is trending or creating a way of following your content or allowing users who are primarily on Instagram to follow your content. Hashtags could be used obviously on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook but where we see the most prolific use of them and the best use of them is on Instagram.

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Instagram Tips for Businesses in 2018

In my latest blog I would like to give away 4 tips to enhancing your Instagram to build an authentic following of the perfect audience for your business.

1. Imagery – The Importance of Good Assets

Firstly, if you want to build a really authentic brand on Instagram, the first thing you want to do is get your imagery right!  Take your time when doing this, try different types of photos, angles, videos etc. The aim here is to capture the attention of your perfect audience while they are scrolling through their feed. By having really great imagery you stand more of a chance of stopping people while they scroll. On average, you have a 1.2 second window to grab someone’s attention while they are ‘snacking’ on content. So, keep this in mind when you are uploading posts. It is also important that your photos show the personality of the business, and represent your business.

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Christmas is upon us, and another year is coming to an end. Which means It’s that time of year again, the Melbourne Cup has come and gone, and traditionally things have now started to slow down. Businesses and people start to change focus. This also means, businesses are getting ready for the Christmas break, and looking to the new year, and although this planning creates a busy time for most, it is also a time where people want to be able to relax and unwind.

I often find that businesses struggle with their preparation for the seasonal break, therefore I find that they get their priorities wrong. Have you ever questioned how you can be better prepared for this time of year, in order for you to hit the ground running in the new year?

Firstly, let’s start with the basics. Are you service-based business or a product-based business, because they really need to be treated differently during this time of year.

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