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4 Ways To Use Social Media To Understand Your Customers

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customers, social media

Have you ever bought something simply because someone you know recommended it? I’m sure you have. But while this behavior might seem trivial on the surface, underneath lies one of the greatest truths about social media marketing, and marketing in general.

We often rely on our friends to get product recommendations. After all, we know and trust our friends. More importantly, they know us. If you’re an avid reader, for example, your friends won’t likely recommend a good baseball glove. Rather, they’ll recommend a good book.

Having said that, one way to describe marketing is product recommendation. Even when we are trying to sell a product, we are, in essence, recommending it. Some messages are crafted better than others but, in the end, we don’t actually sell products. We recommend them. It’s the customer who takes action.

Part of making a great recommendation is to know your customers as well as you know your friends. It’s easy to recommend something to a lifelong friend. Imagine if it was just as easy to make recommendations for your potential customers. Now imagine if your potential customers responded the same way as your friends.

That’s possible, but only when you learn as much as you can about your customer. And social media can help you extract the information you need. Once you learn more about your customers through social media, you’ll get more sales and generate more revenue.

Let’s get started!

#1: See What Your Customers Share

You can learn A LOT about a person just by what they share on social media. For instance, I share blog posts about productivity, digital marketing, and blogging. Whether you believe I’m an expert on those subjects or not, you know right away that I care about those topics.

I’m interested in getting more traffic from my digital marketing efforts. I want to boost my productivity. And I want to write killer blog posts. And no matter how much I improve my skills, I’ll always want to do better.

Take a look at what your customers are sharing on social media. They share the products they like using, the articles and information they find interesting, and they often share how they feel about certain people and issues.

If a majority of my Twitter followers started sharing Pinterest-related articles, my next training course would be about Pinterest. See what I mean? When you know people already want something, offer them relevant solutions and your product recommendations will carry more weight.

#2: Read Their Bios

A bio can say a lot about a person. For instance, here’s my 160 character bio on Twitter:

customers, social media

Based on my tweets, you know that I care about social media marketing, blogging, and digital marketing (note: I don’t say that I’m passionate about them because people don’t always share what they’re passionate about, but they always share what they care about).

Looking at my bio, you also know I’m a runner, dog lover, and Red Sox fan. Do you offer a DVD workout routine that helps me cut 10 seconds off my mile within 30 days? If so, I’m all ears. And if you recommend something that will make my dog love me even more, you have my attention.

If you have some epic Red Sox memorabilia, I’m listening to you. I will not listen to anyone who offers Yankees memorabilia (unless it has something to do with Derek Jeter or Mariano Rivera). Likewise, if you’re selling a cat bowl, you will lose my attention immediately.

Doing this type of homework lets you discover what to recommend, and what not to recommend, to your customers. Depending on what you offer, and the information you provide in your bio, you can offer something that appeals to multiple interests.

If you recommend a Red Sox dog costume, you’ve won my heart. Envisioning my dog in a Red Sox outfit satisfies my love for dogs and my desire to watch the Red Sox win another World Series (and then another one. That cycle of desire will continue forever).

#3: Look At Who Your Customers Follow

Almost every social network lets you to discover who your customers are following. From a marketing perspective, we aren’t concerned about every individual a customer follows. We are more concerned with patterns.

Are your customers following accounts that post inspirational quotes? Are they following social media influencers? Understanding these common patterns will allow you to identify which recommendations will resonate strongest with your customers.

Now I’m going to share a trick to ensure your audience will become more receptive to your recommendations. Let’s say I want an audience consisting of people who follow other social media influencers.

These people were interested in social media marketing before I discovered them. Following them, and getting them to follow me back, will result in more individuals who will see my recommendations and potentially take action.

#4: See How Your Audience Engage With Your Content

If you follow an influencer’s followers, you are more likely to grow an audience. Combine that with the above-mentioned tips and you’ll grow a targeted audience.

But even when you have a targeted audience, you won’t FULLY understand what they want. If your audience is interested in social media, for instance, you may not know which social network they use most. But there are two ways to figure this out:

  • Conduct a survey and ask your audience to fill it out (keep in mind this method works better with an email list).
  • Examine how your audience engages with your social media content.

A few years ago, I noticed that my Twitter and blogging-related content received the most retweets. That’s why my first training courses were about Twitter and blogging.

Then I saw increased engagement for my productivity and social media-related blog posts (social media in general, not specific networks).

Therefore, I created more training courses about productivity and social media. The more often you share content on social media, the more data you’ll have to play with. Having more data to play with always allows you to make more accurate conclusions.

In Conclusion

Speaking of conclusions, you’ve reached the near-end of this blog post. Understanding your customers allows you to provide products and services that your customers will buy before you even say a word.

So far, social media is the most revolutionary marketing tool of the 21st century. While we’ve learned many methods of social media marketing, we still have much to learn. The evolving trends in social media marketing will be very exciting.

Regardless of how marketing evolves, the emphasis will always revolve around knowing your customer. By knowing your customer like you know a friend, you can make recommendations that result in happy customers and more revenue that you can use to expand your business.

What are your thoughts on using social media to learn more about your customers? Have any tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

Episode 24: Embracing The Audiobook Revolution With Richard Rieman

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Richard Rieman used his experience as an NBC broadcaster to narrate audiobooks as an Audible Approved Narrator. In this episode of Breakthrough Success, we talk about the Audiobook Revolution that’s taking over the consumer space.

Richard discusses how to narrate an audiobook and get your audiobook published in the ACX marketplace. He also shares some insights on how to rank your audiobooks higher on Amazon. 

Richard believes that the biggest challenge of any small business is finding the clients. He addresses this challenge by promoting his services online, and get this, attends one networking event every week. He says that attending and speaking at these events seals him most of the clients he gets.

This one search I conducted reveals the massive advantage audiobooks gives you. I searched “social media marketing” on the Amazon Kindle store and got a total of 6,429 books. The first few pages are filled with books with 100+ reviews.

Audiobooks presents a very different story. On Audible (Amazon’s website for audiobooks), I searched the same keyword phrase and got a total of 105 results. Very few of these books have 100+ reviews let alone 50+ reviews. Audiobook reading is also increasing, and with fewer audiobooks available than eBooks, the audiobook revolution makes sense.

To capitalize on this audiobook revolution, listen to the interview I had with Richard Rieman. I just learned about this revolution a few weeks ago. Richard has been living this audiobook revolution for quite a while now. 

If you want more episodes like this one, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher: 

marcguberti.com/itunes

marcguberti.com/stitcher

 

Key Links from the Show:

http://www.acx.com/ – Amazon’s Audiobook Creation Exchange

https://www.amazon.com/Authors-Guide-AudioBook-Creation/dp/0997100206 – Richard’s Book

www.meetup.com – Meet different people in industries

https://voatlanta.me/ – Voiceover Atlanta

www.audiobookreviewer.com – Audiobook promotion and review site

www.audiobookboom.com – Audiobook promotion and review site

www.audiobookrevolution.com – Richard’s website

richard@audiobookrevolution.com – Richard’s email

 

5 Benefits To Accepting Guest Posts

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guest posts

Guest blogging is a well-established approach to getting more visibility for your content. Each guest post is a valuable backlink and more traffic to any of your blog posts, landing pages, or social networks that you get to promote within that guest post.

While the benefits of guest blogging continue to establish a grip-hold on many bloggers’ efforts, fewer bloggers think about accepting guest posts on their blogs.

For a very long time, I was skeptical to allowing guest bloggers to contribute on my blog. Many people asked me, and I simply said that my blog wasn’t open to guest blogging. Recently, my opinion changed and I now accept guest posts.

My opinion didn’t change overnight. In fact, it was influenced by these five benefits to accepting guest posts.

#1: You Save Time

Let’s say you want to update your blog every day. That means you need to write at least seven blog posts every week. While this is an admirable goal that will keep your blog updated consistently and frequently, this effort will take up the majority of your time.

Now let’s say that, on average, you get 3 guest post contributions every week. Now you only have to write at least four blog posts each week to still publish new content on your blog each day.

If each blog post takes 30 minutes of your time, then you save 1 hour and 30 minutes since the content is already provided for you. How can you devote that time? I now use my extra time to create more YouTube videos, training courses, and eBooks.

#2: You Learn From Your Own Blog

The biggest reason I made the change and started accepting guest posts was this one. I like to learn from other people’s blogs, and other people like to learn from my blog. As I saw more people expressing their gratitude for my content, I realized that I wasn’t learning anything from my content.

How can you learn something new from a blog post that you wrote?

Opening the door to guest contributions also opened the door to new knowledge. My blog has a high standard that only opens the doors to high value guest posts that empower my audience…but also me. I like to get empowered by the guest posts too.

The more knowledge you acquire about your niche, the more likely you are to become successful in that niche. Opening the door to guest contributions is a great way to learn and save time at the same time.

You’ll Get More Traffic From Your Contributors

At the beginning of this post, I talked about the benefits of being a guest blogger. More credibility and traffic are two of the key benefits.

With that said, when you open the door to guest contributions, you’ll get more traffic and credibility too. Guest bloggers will feel enticed to share their guest posts with their audiences. The more prominent guest bloggers you attract to your blog, the more traffic YOU will get.

The end result is that both you and the guest blogger get more traffic in a win-win relationship.

#4: Your Blog Gets Updated More Frequently

Let’s go back to the example of writing seven blog posts per week. If you get three guest contributions each week, but you decide that you still want to write and publish seven of your blog posts each week, your blog now gets updated with 10 new blog posts every week.

This increased frequency of content updates will present your audience with more options and give you more Google love. Not only will you get more traffic from your contributor’s social media efforts, but you’ll start getting more search engine traffic.

#5: You Make More Connections

Lewis Howes is crushing it right now. He’s hosting events, has massive product launches, and is a role model for many people. Ever wonder how people like him achieved their level of success.

While different approaches exist, Lewis took on a very interesting approach. He decided to meaningfully connect with one new person every day with LinkedIn. By meaningfully connecting with more people, Lewis was exposed to numerous opportunities that helped him achieve his current level of success.

When you open the door to guest contributions, you will come in contact with more people in your niche. These people will promote their guest posts and lead their audience to your blog. Some of these new visitors will become subscribers. Some of the guest bloggers will repeatedly promote their pieces which would result in recurring traffic from that guest blogger’s efforts.

In Conclusion

Writing guest posts is a great way to gain exposure, but accepting guest posts on your blog is also a great way to get more exposure. Not only will you get more traffic from the guest posts, but that additional traffic will give your existing blog posts an edge on search engines.

You also get to learn new things from your blog which I personally find to be very cool.

What are your thoughts on accepting guest posts on your blog? Do you know someone who does this? Sound off in the comments section below.

How You Can Start Working Smarter

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working smarter

 

Productivity isn’t just a matter of working harder. It’s a matter of working smarter. This means accomplishing more of your priorities in a shorter period of time. We are always surrounded by a sea of distractions that can derail our efforts. Working smarter allows us to get through the distractions because by working smarter, we focus on our priorities.

In the infographic, there are a few things you should pay attention to:

  • Blocking off distractions such as texts and emails when doing important work.
  • Timing yourself for optimal productivity.
  • Working out so you can work smarter later or reading something challenging. Use your breaks productively.
  • Keep track of your progress. It’s a great practice to keep track of your goals. You can also keep track of your entire day from start to finish to determine how you use your time. You can discover how you waste time and then make proper adjustments to achieve better results.
  • Remind yourself of your accomplishments. Sometimes we tend to forget about our accomplishments and focus on our shortcomings. This makes us feel of little value even when everyone else seems to applaud our efforts. Don’t be afraid to applaud yourself for good work.
  • Working smarter involves gradual evolution. Each little step gets you closer to accomplishing a big goal. You need these steps to get towards your goal. Without them, you’ll be like a driver going from New York to California without a GPS.

Working smarter is a continuous exercise. You can never maximize your ability to work smarter because limits don’t exist. No matter how smartly you currently work, you can work even smarter.

Start by looking at how you work and commit to three changes that will allow you to work smarter. Once you have mastered those three changes, master three new changes. With this plan, working smarter will become a habit, and you’ll be amazed by the goals that you achieve.

From Visually.

Episode 23: How To Create Authority Content With David Jenyns

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David Jenyns is the founder of Melbourne SEO services and systemHUB.com. He’s also the author of Authority Content. David helps business owners get their marketing messages heard. 

I first came across David’s work during my Christmas shopping bonanza (I ended up with 20 books). His book’s description grabbed me from the start, I did some more research, and I knew that I needed to have David on the show. 

Key Links from the Show:

davidjenyns.com — David’s website

authoritycontent.com — David’s book

http://www.melbourneseoservices.com — David’s SEO services company

semrush.com — A powerful SEO tool David mentions in this episode

cognitiveseo.com — Another powerful SEO tool David shares with us

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en – Google SEO Guidelines

Learn:

—How to write content that grabs people’s attention and leads to more traffic

—The elements of authority content

—How you can increase your revenue with the help of authority content

—What people get wrong with creating authority content

—How to master any skill

3 Steps To Hosting A Great Podcast Interview

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podcast

When I first thought of starting my own podcast, I thought the host just compiled a bunch of questions and the guests did most of the work.

Boy was I wrong.

By this point, I’ve conducted dozens of interviews. And each one requires preparation and thoughtful discussion. There’s far more to conducting a podcast interview than writing a bunch of questions and reading them off the screen.

Even so, it’s not that difficult to become a ‘natural’ at podcasting. It just takes practice and preparation. And the more prepared you are, the easier and more fun the interviews will be.

The following tips will help you conduct great interviews with your podcast guests and improve the quality of your show:

#1: Preparation 

Preparation will make or break your podcast. It’s easy for listeners to tell if something was well-planned or completely spontaneous. To prepare a podcast episode, start with the introductory script.

In other words, how you will introduce your podcast’s episode and guests.

Ever notice how the hosts of great podcasts can always introduce their guests without stumbling on a word? Probably not; you simply expect it. But good introductions don’t happen without preparation.

It’s easy to take this for granted until you become a host yourself and discover a whole new world. Here’s the script I use for my intros:

“Hello and welcome. I am your host, Marc Guberti, and this is the podcast for marketers and small business owners who are looking for the breakthrough for their businesses. I am very excited about this show. We are going to discuss [Topic] with our guest [Name of guest]. [A few facts about the guest]. It is my pleasure to welcome [name of guest] to the show.”

The next time you listen to one of my podcast episodes, look at my rubric as you hear me deliver the intro. While each introduction may be slightly different, I use this rubric for nearly all of them.

The second part of preparation is writing down your questions. Question writing becomes easier with practice because you can use the good ones more than once.  For instance, I always ask my guests for an inspirational quote.

That’s one question down. But how many are left to go?

I usually jot down 10-15 questions, but I recommend always writing more than you need. Some guests like to elaborate while others will give short answers to almost every question.

During the episode, ask the important questions first, but leave room for bonus questions in case you want or need to make the episode longer (of course, if this means sacrificing value, then don’t bother sacrificing value for episode length).

Preparation will also make you better at attracting guests to your podcast.

#2: Conducting The Interview

The interview consists of more than just reading the intro and questions one by one. While you technically could conduct an interview in this manner, it’s no fun for anyone—you, your guest, or your listeners.

A podcast interview is a conversation, not a job interview. In a job interview, questions get fired out, and responses get fired back, with a bit more on-the-fly tactical planning. The interviewer is doing everything he/she can to assess whether a person is a good fit for a particular job.

A podcast interview, however, is more casual and you may even develop a bond with your guests. You already know your guests are extraordinary in their own ways, or you wouldn’t have invited them.

When you ask a question, listen carefully to what the other person says, and acknowledge it, before adding your own points and/or proceeding to the next question. Remember that your listeners are interested in what your guests have to say, so try to keep yourself out of the spotlight as much as possible.

The key element of a podcast interview is conversation. Like most conversations, it’s difficult to jot down notes, but unlike most conversations, this one is being (legally) recorded.

You can focus on the conversation itself, then go back to listen to the entire episode later, or you can hire someone to take notes for you. Trying to take notes while leading a podcast and guests is overwhelming.

That’s why I prefer to listening to the recordings or asking someone else to do it for me. This lets me stay focused on truly listening to my guests and coming up with a nice transition into the next question. Transitions are important because they help  conversations appear more natural.

Imagine someone asking you questions all day. As soon as you’ve answered one, they ask you another, and so it goes. That’s not a conversation. That’s more like a job interview.

During your interview, spend some time listening and some time thinking about how you will transition into your next question (but not at the expense of missing out on interesting follow-up questions). If you listen only, it will be awkward moving from question to question.

The moment I hear a guest make a excellent point that I can use as a transition, I hold it in my mind. If I forget it, it’s much harder to make the transition. Making mental notes of important points helps guests feel more comfortable and the interview going smoothly.

#3: Follow-Up After The Interview

Your podcast episode doesn’t end when you’ve thanked your guests for showing up and sharing their knowledge. Sure, that can happen, but there’s usually follow-up conversation that takes place after the interview (that doesn’t make it into the episode).

Those conversations help you develop stronger relationships with your guests. At the end of some of these conversations, I often find myself talking about potential partnerships or collaborations.

Why end the conversation along with your episode when there’s so much more to talk about?

Some people use it as an opportunity to encourage guests to share the episode. They strategize on how to sprinkle the conversation with a call to action. My advice is to keep that in the background.

I always tell my guests that I’ll send them a link when the episode is live, but I don’t push them to share it on their social networks. Every guest and episode provides me with a massive amount of knowledge, and that alone is enough. Of course, shares are an added bonus!

In Conclusion

Conducting successful podcast interviews becomes easier with practice. But having the right approach will give you a big advantage when it comes time for your next interview.

Interviewing people is fun and it fills you with new knowledge. There were several instances in which I thought I knew exactly what tip a certain guest would provide only to be thrown a curveball full of new and novel insight.

One of Jim Rohn’s many powerful quotes reads like this: “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

This quote resonates with me since I’m both a college student and entrepreneur. Reading it motivates me to continue as an entrepreneur, even when the going gets tough.

Conducting great podcast interviews is the easiest way to produce new content for your brand and learn new things at the same time.

I truly believe that everyone should have a podcast even though it can take time to gain traction. The important thing is that you’ll continue to grow, and improve your show, with each new guest you invite and interview.

What are your thoughts on conducting podcast interviews? Do you have a podcast? Sound off in the comments section below.

image credit: Pixabay.com