DIY Business Tools When You’re Broke!

Hey there I hope all is good! I’m doing awesome in case you’re wondering ; ) What I love most about the internet and technology is there are so many free tools available to build your business. No longer is it required to spend money on an office space, phone system, accounting, business cards or hire your own marketing firm to launch a business. In today’s world anyone can launch a business or grow a business with no start up cost or budget. What is required is passion, time, effort and hard work. These are 7 free tools I use daily to grow my business on little to no budget.

1) Bufferapp

bufferapp.com

I’ve written about buffer before, but I cannot tell you how valuable buffer has been to growing my business via social media. Bufferapp is a social media scheduling application. We all get busy updating our social media posts or it’s just a bunch of random sales pitches hastily created. Buffer is an easy and simple way to schedule a few posts in advance for your social media pages. Take 15-30 minutes to create 10 social media posts. Mix the posts up with your own business content along with interesting, informational or entertaining content your audience will appreciate. Once you’re done schedule the posts to go out at the perfect time for your audience to see right within Buffer. Buffer App’s basic option is FREE to connect up to 4 social media profiles, schedule up to 10 posts in advance, and provides free analytics for social media posts. It’s easy to see what posts are getting link clicks and engagement.

Buffer also has an image sharing tool called Pablo along with a super cool GIF sharing tool. Create beautiful social media image posts for your profiles. ( A Future Blog Post)

2) Mailchimp

mailchimp.com

There are several database and newsletters options available I use Mailchimp because it’s free! Mailchimp’s FREE option allows an import of 2000 contacts in your “List”. List’s can be segmented into groups; prospects, previous customers or e-mail subscribers. Once you have a list create awesome newsletters, promotions or even birthday cards to e-mail to your list! When an e-mail campaign is created and sent out Mailchimp tracks your e-mail opens, link clicks, unsubscribes, and even keeps the e-mails in compliance with SPAM laws. Create your own subscribe form to add on your facebook page or an e-mail sign up on your website. These leads will import directly into your list in Mailchimp. All of this free for under 2000 contacts and if you send under 12,000 E-mails in a month.

3) Join Me Meeting

join.me

Join Me Meeting is a cool way to share your screen quickly with a sales prospect or even a co-worker. When it’s not possible to meet face to face to demonstrate a product or service and not enough time to set up a webinar, Join Me meeting is a great option. Go to http://www.join.me to start a meeting instantly. A link is created that can be instantly shared with up to 8 people to join a meeting. All they have to do is click the link sent to them via e-mail and within moments your prospect or client can easily see your screen! This is a quick easy way to demonstrate your product or service without having to download a program or schedule a webinar. This can be done right on the phone while you are talking to a prospect. Join Me meeting does have paid options to have permanent meeting link and have more people join meetings!

4) Wunderlist

wunderlist.com

Wunderlist is an online to do list on steroids. Wunderlist is an easy and old fashioned way to keep organized daily with To Do Lists. Create a list for whatever you like. A Wunderlist “bucket list” chores for the kids, grocery lists, or hot prospects to follow up with! Our business creates a list for each client. This list includes tasks to be done daily, weekly and monthly on each of their social media profiles. We keep notes within the lists keeping track of content deadlines, networking opportunities, passwords and even content files for each client. Wunderlist To Do Lists can be shared with clients and co-workers. This is a great way to keep everyone in the loop on projects or assign certain tasks to team members to complete. The best part is the notification of accomplishment that Wunderlist makes when you check of a task on your list! “Ding”

5) Headtalker

Headtalker.com or Start a HeadTalker with beNICEmedia

Do you wanna go viral? HeadTalker is a free application to help make your message go viral! HeadTalker shares 1 message with unlimited people at once for free. Create a campaign on HeadTalker and get others to support the campaign. Once supported instead of 1 social media post on your page, hundreds or even thousands are sharing your social media post across multiple platforms. This is a great application for launching a product or crowdfunding campaign. Create a HeadTalker for anything! Start one today and we will help support!

6) Crowdfire

crowdfireapp.com

This is a great application to build a targeted Twitter and Instagram following. Sign into Crowdfire with Twitter or Instagram. Once signed in Crowdfire identifies who your Twitter and Instagram followers are. Are you following someone who has not tweeted in months? Crowdfire will find out who and if you choose you can unfollow them. Are you a local business and want to connect with Twitter users in your area? Crowdfire allows you to copy followers of other Twitter accounts. If the local news station has 50K Twitter followers it’s likely a majority of these followers live in the area. These people may buy your product or service if they knew about you. Crowdfire will show you which ones do live in your area, and go for it follow them, they might follow you back. The basic Crowdfire service is free, the app will occasionally tweet out Twitter stats via @crowdfire. Crowdfire paid options will not do this.

7) Paypal for Business
(Kinda Not Free)

paypal.com

Starting a business bank account can be tough especially when you do not have any income yet, money in the bank or even customers. Typically to open a business bank account there are minimum deposit amounts, balance minimums and let’s not forget about monthly fees regardless if the account has money in it or not! Paypal allows you to start receiving and using your funds right away. Easily create invoices with your logo and contact information to e-mail to clients. Clients can pay you via check or immediately via Paypal or credit card. Get a PayPal button on your website to receive payments. Is the client 30 days past due easily e-mail a reminder. Review your income for the month track expenses all online for free. Paypal even has a business debit MasterCard and credit line options for qualified accounts. Easily link your current checking or savings account to receive Paypal funds. Creating invoices, tracking expenses and using your money in your PayPal account is free. What is not free is receiving funds electronically via Paypal when a client pays by credit card. If a client pays you via credit card PayPal does receive a percentage of the payment you received. This varies on the amount of payment. Please review all Paypal information online for your own education. Regardless of the fees associated with receiving credit card payments the service is a good value and convenience. As your business grows there are numerous banking options but PayPal does let you start with nothing!

Are you ready to start growing your business without spending any money? Or get that at home business started? There are hundreds of free tools to increase sales and grow your business. These are some that I use. Which ones are your favorite? What tools and applications do you use? I would really love to hear from you.

If I can help you with any questions or you are interested in getting started with Social Media Marketing let’s chat! Have a wonderful week! Let’s Chat!

Mateo Garcia
President
beNICEmedia
480-386-2122

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Optimize Your Personal Facebook Page

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Content Marketing Tips

Hi there it’s me Mateo how are you doing today? Just want to give a few tips on content marketing for social media. The world of marketing and advertising is changing. It’s no longer as simple as running a TV, Radio or Newspaper ad or even paying the search engines for keywords to get leads for our business. The world of Social Media where and why consumers choose a product or service has changed. The internet has given the power to the consumer to research products and services very simply on their own. Social Media provides a direct connection between company and consumer. Unhappy with a product or service, tweet at the company or leave a Facebook Comment it will get noticed. Happy with a product or service brag about it on your Social Media profile it will get noticed. The smart phone and Social Media applications is now the key to our next customer relationship. Our customers have Social Media applications on the home screen of their smart phone, not our business website or phone number. We have to be active on these social platforms because that is where our next client is hanging out, spending time and getting information. If you are like me I comment, like or share content I find entertaining, interesting, inspiring or educational. Creating content that fits within these parameters is the key to success marketing on Social Media. Creating the right content mix will insure that when our audience is looking to make their next purchase or choose a service our business is top of mind. Here are a different content formatting tips via Hubspot we can include in our social media strategy.

Don’t get overwhelmed with having to do all of these. Choose the best content format that will most benefit the Target Audience and easiest to implement. Let’s try to put ourselves in a position of a potential client when we are on Facebook or our favorite social media platform. When creating a post for business let’s ask, Would I click on this? Would I like this? Would I share this? Is this interesting?

Social Media Marketing is not about pushing every single link or website promoting our business in front of a consumer. Social Media marketing is about creating micro content that would fit into the entertainment, interesting, informational, educational or inspire category. It’s ok to brag about accomplishments every once in a while. Some of our audience wants that, but do we really like someone who talks about themselves all the time and how great they are? Once a decision has been made on what content formatting is best do the following.

1) Identify target audience

2) Map out a clear strategy

3) Create Content

4) Optimize content for each social media platform. (A post will look different on all platforms.)

Every post is not going to be perfect, but if there is a meaning and purpose behind each social media post it will improve results. Networking and marketing on Social Media is not going away anytime soon, let’s embrace it.

I hope these tips are helpful, if I can ever help in anyway it would be my pleasure.

Mateo Garcia
480-386-2122
benicemedia1@gmail.com

Marketing Tips for 2015

How was your first week of 2015. Do you have some of these tips in your plan for this year?

tsu Social Media Review

Join me

Sharing from Facebook

Hi there how is everyone doing? Mateo here with some quick social media tips. Do you have more than one social media profile or platform you are sharing and posting content on? How about using automated tools to share content? Are you sharing the same exact content post on several social pages? If you answered yes to any of these questions here are some tips to keep in mind. Each social media platform is different, and the way a post is created and how often you post is going to vary for each social media platform. That perfect Facebook post with a great photo a few brilliant words about the post, and a perfect link or call to action may be great for Facebook, but sharing the same exact content post to Twitter or LinkedIN may look different on the platform. There are several automated scheduling tools that have made social media sharing easier such as bufferapp but even with these tools its important to watch how each content post comes across on your social media platforms. Facebook content can be shared on Twitter. Instagram can be shared to Twitter but how the content post is created will have to be different for each site. Twitter will be shorter wording of the post maybe even add a photo or link shortener to get the same content message across. Twitter is very fast moving with a lot of content being shared, so posting once a week on Twitter will not work. The content may not even be seen. On Instagram the post content will have to be a picture or image rather than a link and a description about the content since it’s a photo sharing platform.

It’s very important with social media to be sure content is shared properly on each platform so there is maximum impact from your social media posts. Facebook is the most common and easiest platform we are all familiar with, and it does offer a share to Twitter option when you post on your Facebook page. Have you looked at how that post is shared on Twitter? In some cases it may not give the same impact you want with the content post. One item to keep in mind as well is if your audience is on Facebook, LinkedIN, Instagram or Twitter these are different types of connections and platforms. If someone is on Twitter they want to stay on Twitter, they do not want to leave Twitter to go to Facebook to see what the actual picture or post is all about. If your audience loves Google+ then they do not want to leave Google+ to go to Facebook or Twitter to see your content post. When posting content it’s important the content posted is targeted for the specific audience on the platform. It’s okay to post the same content you want to share on several social media profiles, but the content will have to be shared differently. The length of the post the link, photos, #hashtags, frequency and time. These are several things to keep in mind when posting to different platforms, not all are the same.

Each post you make is a mini advertisement for your business, you want it to come across to have maximum impact. Creating content and finding content to share for your business takes time, you might as well make sure you get the most out of each content post. When we print our business cards or create flyers for our business, we take the time to proof read it look it over several times to be sure it looks good and gets our message across. Our Social Media platforms should be treated the same way. We all want more business from our social media pages, but they have to be treated that way. Every post or link is a representation of our business. We would not let a half complete postcard mailed out or business card missing our phone number or e-mail. Just as we treat each customer differently and the way we communicate to them, Social Media works the same way. There are clients that prefer e-mail or text messages over a phone call and we learn to adapt and communicate our message via e-mail or text. Social Media platforms give us the opportunity to communicate, network and deliver our message to previous, current, and future clients. It’s the cheapest most affordable way to network and market our business. When it’s done with the same care we treat our offline business we can easily get our business known by more potential customers. Getting leads and making connections with Social Media is not easy, but when done with the same care as other marketing and communicating it will have a larger impact on your bottom line than all other forms of marketing.

If you have some tips to share or have any questions send me a tweet or leave a comment.

Much success to you!

Mateo Garcia, President of beNICEmedia

Thanks for reading you’re coolness! benicemedia1@gmail.com

480-386-2122 @mateomedia

10 Ways to Improve your Content Marketing

by NEIL PATEL on OCTOBER 15, 2014 via Quicksprout.com

Looking for ways to improve your content marketing? Are you wondering what resources you should be reading to boost your content marketing efforts?

I’ve compiled a list of 10 articles you should read that will not only teach you how to improve your content marketing but will also show you how to generate more traffic and sales.

Here it is:

#1: How to double your traffic through infographics

Although everyone is using infographics these days, they are still powerful at producing results.

At KISSmetrics, we were able to drive over 2 million visitors to our site and generate 41,000 backlinks by creating 47 infographics. That’s not bad, considering we spent $28,200 to produce the graphics.

If you want to learn the exact strategy we used to create these infographics, all you have to do is follow the steps in this article. It will teach you what you need to do to generate 60,000 visitors a year from an infographic:

How to Determine the Elements of a Good Infographic
How to Come up with Infographic Topics that Actually Work
How to Create a Useful and Shareable Infographic
How to Get the Infographic Designed
How to Distribute Your Infographic
How to Test Different Types of Infographics

#2: The advanced guide to content marketing

Content marketing is more than just writing and promoting content. There is a whole process you need to follow if you want to be successful at it.

I’ve created a 30,000-word guide that covers the A to Z of content marketing. It will teach you the following elements of the content marketing process:

How to build a strong foundation
How to generate content ideas
How to plan your content creation strategy
How to write content like a pro
12 content writing secrets that you ought to be using
Content creation templates
How to overcome content roadblocks
How to optimize your content for search
How to promote your content for traffic and sales
How to monetize your content

#3: The complete guide to consumer psychology

Not knowing how your consumers think is a major obstacle to your success in content marketing. If you don’t know what makes your readers tick, you won’t be able to cater to them with your content creation and promotion efforts.

To help you understand how your customers think, I’ve created a25,000-word guide on consumer psychology.

Here’s what you’ll learn by reading it:

The mind of today’s customers
The power of emotions
The psychology of online consumption
How colors affect decisions
Small psychological tactics that deliver big results
The psychology of pricing
How to avoid friction

#4: How to create viral content

I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago that broke down the steps I took toincrease my blog traffic by 206%.

Through data and examples, I showed you the process I use to find and create content that will get shared.

So, if you want to grow your blog traffic, read the second section within that article. It discusses data points such as:

Social shares versus content length
How to generate ideas that will get shared
Quick tools you can use to help you generate ideas
How Upworthy exploded in its growth
Headline templates you can use
The number of social buttons you should place on your blog

#5: Skyscraper technique

Brian Dean wrote a great article on how he increased his search traffic by 110% in 14 days by using one simple technique… the skyscraper strategy.

In essence, it teaches you:

How to find link-worthy content
How to make it even better
How to find people to link to it

A good example of this is his article on Google’s 200 ranking factors. In the article, Brian describes in depth each element Google looks at when determining how to rank a website.

Because Brian was able to create the most extensive list, when he did his outreach to build links, it was a slam-dunk. Bloggers were more than happy to link to him because the content was that good.

#6: What analyzing 100 million articles taught us

The beautiful part about online marketing is it gives you access to a ton of data. With the data, you can quickly figure out what works for others and how to replicate it for your own business.

Buzzsumo’s team published an article detailing the findings from their analysis of 100 million articles.

For example, they learned that:

Having at least one image per post doubles the number of social shares a post gets.
Having Facebook thumbnails for articles increases Facebook shares by roughly 3x.
Having a Twitter thumbnail doubles Twitter shares.
The emotion to appeal to is “awe.”
Infographics and list posts are the two most commonly shared types of articles.

And it doesn’t stop there… Read the article to learn all of their findings.

#7: The differences between B2B and B2C content marketing

Writing content for businesses is different from writing content for consumers. I’ve created a 37-point checklist that breaks down the differences. It also teaches what you need to do in order to appeal to both audiences.

Some of the key points to keep in mind when writing for consumers are:

Don’t forget the emotional crack – consumers have a shorter attention span than business readers do. That’s why you need consumer content to be edgier and shorter.
Be trendy – if you want your content to gain a lot of traffic, look at trends. Trendier content does better than evergreen content in the consumer world.
Timing is everything – you should try to break stories. Use Google Trends and Twitter to stay on top of the latest conversations.

On the flip side, when writing for businesses:

Always use data – stats and accuracy are important in the business world. Use data to back everything up.
Give them more – offering ebooks and PDFs at the end of each post is a great way to build a loyal audience and collect emails.
Use stats within your headlines – headlines that contain data usually get shared more often.

To get a complete list of differences between B2B and B2C content marketing, read the full article.

#8: Emotions that make marketing campaigns go viral

The Harvard Business Review wrote a great article on how emotions can make campaigns go viral. Marketing is expensive. If you can make your content go viral, you’ll get more ROI from it.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this article:

How to create a viral coefficient greater than 1.
How to tie your brand to an emotional message.
How to tie your content to the public good.

If you take one thing away from the article, let it be how to create a viral coefficient greater than 1. Without that, your content won’t be going viral.

#9: How to measure your content’s performance

Everything in marketing needs to be profitable. If it isn’t, you can only do it for so long. You don’t have to have a direct profit, but as long as you know there is indirect ROI, you’re fine.

The Content Marketing Institute broke down 6 ways you can measure the performance of your content marketing. They aren’t just looking at direct ROI. They also show you how to measure indirect ROI.

These measurement techniques will teach you how to:

Track brand awareness
Find out what content pieces are driving the most referral traffic
Use social shares to gauge how much people like your content
Assess post performance on LinkedIn
Assess post performance on Twitter

By using analytics and data, you’ll be able to create content that people want to read and share versus content that doesn’t drive sales.

#10: How to get your fans to create and share content

Creating content is time-consuming and expensive. But what if I told you that you can get your fans to not only create content for you but also to promote it.

I’ve created an infographic that breaks down how to do that. Here are the four techniques I go over:

Trust – without your fans’ trust, you won’t get user-generated content.
Reach – how user-generated content can help you get more reach.
SEO – the more content you have, the more search traffic you’ll receive.
Labor savings – how getting fans to create content will save you money.

Conclusion

I know it’s a lot of reading, but if you read the 10 articles I talked about above, you’ll generate more traffic and sales.

If you only have time to read one of the articles, check out #1 as it will help you generate visitors quickly, even if you don’t have an audience. That’s how I grew the KISSmetrics blog. The strategy works for almost any industry.

So, in what other ways can you improve your content marketing?

5 Social Media Tips You Can Do Today

5 Social Media Tips You Can Do Today!

Hi. How are you doing today? Social Media can get overwhelming at times, but does not have to be. We all know it’s important to be on social media, but how can you make it work for our business. Here are 5 quick tips that you can implement today that will increase your presence on your social media pages.

1) Schedule your posts. It is hard to stay up to date with posting content on your social media pages. Facebook has a schedule post option right on your business page. This is a great way to have a few relevant posts on your social media pages consistently, so you don’t go days or weeks without an update. There are also some great applications that you can use to schedule and post updates across several social media pages. Such as HootSuite or Buffer App which I use. These tools are simple and typically free to use.

2) Check in on Facebook. If your business is listed as a place or local business on Facebook, you can check in at your business. This check in shows up on your personal Facebook page. What a great way to show your social media audience what you do for a living without marketing to them or pushing your services in their newsfeed. Encourage your employees and co-workers to do the same. It does not have to be every day, but its a quick simple way to advertise your business without advertising. You can even ask your customers to do this as well. Offer them something of small value to check in at your business. When they check in, their friends and family will see the check in on their newsfeed and who knows ask about your business. This is a subtle way of letting others market your business for you.

3) Like and comment. If you are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter make a point to like a few posts, and make a comment each day. You will be surprised just by doing this you will start seeing some increased engagement on your social pages. If you are on Facebook go ahead and like or make a comment on a post of interest or someone you are wanting to connect with. If you are on LinkedIn and you see a great article post or someone changed jobs, say congrats or like the post. This will show others on social media that you are active and interested in what they are doing. Most people will notice and return the favor and take a look at your post next time. The more engagement on your post the more likely someone else will find it interesting and know about your business.

4) Create an e-mail sign up tab on your Facebook page. On Facebook there are many e-mail applications that you can use. You can build a list using these applications. If you have important information or specials you want to share create a join our list tab on your Facebook Page. I use mail chimp but there are others such as constant contact. Just search e-mail applications on Facebook. Once you have an e-mail tab you will be able to capture the e-mail address and upload into your contacts. This is a simple way to stay in touch with customers who have already showed an interest in your business.

5) Share images/pictures on your social media pages rather than just a link or text. Typically when we share a link on our social media pages the image associated with the link comes up on your social media page. You can make this image bigger by saving the image related to the link then uploading the image as a post then just add the link above the image to share. You can also upload your own custom image to associate with the link rather than use the image in the content of the link you are sharing. Posts with images get more likes, comments and shares. Next time you are about to share on your social media pages see if there is an image you can upload along with the post.

I hope you found these 5 quick tips helpful. If you have a tip to share, or have any questions I would love to hear them. Make it a great day and remember to #beNICE to each other. Send me a Tweet.

Scheduling Posts on Social Media

Don’t go days without a post. Schedule your posts!

Content for Social Media

We all struggle with what content to post. Remember to post content that others may find interesting. We all love our business, but we need to give others a reason to love our business also. #engage #create #content #like #follow #comment.