Mon, 19 October 2015
Marketing is all about making a connection. If you want to be successful in business, you need to create a “Genuine Handshake” between you and your prospect. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs, start by building an online platform where like-minded people can get-together, share and engage with one another.
Tracy Moore is an accomplished marketing expert and business owner with 20 years of experience developing client relationships through marketing and sales. She has experience with firms from start-up, to mid-market, to Fortune 100 firms. A business owner of seven years, Tracy understands the challenges small businesses face. She grew her franchise territory to the second highest grossing location out of 100 territories using her strong marketing, sales, and networking skills. As a Marketing Business Partner in the Hewlett Packard Strategic Sales Center, Tracy designed and implemented strategic marketing plans that helped HP win multi-million dollar pursuits with companies such as American Express, International Paper, Cardinal Health, and AlleganyEnergy. Now combining her strong marketing expertise and understanding of growing a small business, Tracy is leading Marketing Eye Dallas. She is helping small to mid-sized business owners develop solid marketing strategies and initiatives and ultimately grow their business. Tracy The Woman With A “Marketing Eye”How did Tracy start leading the “Marketing Eye Dallas” Marketing Agency, to it’s known success? Marketing Eye originally started in Australia and founded by Melissa Smith, who grew the business so large making her irresistible, that even international clients wanted to partner with her. The same time that Melissa decided to bring her business in the United States, that is the exact time also that Tracy is getting ready to sell her business which she owns for seven years. Selling her business will ultimately make her passion for marketing a living and owning a marketing firm a reality. Marketing Eye is a perfect fit for her. After many conversations with Melissa, Tracy became the first licensed franchised owner of Marketing Eye in the US.
Marketing Agency Owner Uses This One "Free Tool" To Build Her List And Boost Her Connections - And It’s Available To Almost EveryoneTracy highlighted that marketing is all about making a connection.It is a human to human interaction. If you want to be successful in this business, have a Genuine Handshake. Build an online platform where like-minded people can get together and engage with one another. Cultivate your community by being involved. Being involved offers you wonders, as it will lead to you having connections with people who you never thought were out there. Tracy continues by saying, “If you want to connect and build a great list of connections, LinkedIn is a great starting point.” Tracy’s Top 3 Essential Tips For Growing Your List That You Need To Start Using In Your Business Right NOW!
Are you involved in or part of an online social media community page/group? If you don’t have one, start one or at least get involved starting today. Social media nowadays, offers the greatest platform for you to make a connection. It’s especially valuable for finding other entrepreneurs that you can share your ideas with and talk about your situation. You may learn how other successful entrepreneurs balance things in their life, grow past their challenges or even find a secret formula they’re using to grow their business. Being part of a community or group where you can learn, share and bounce your ideas off one another will make you realize, you’re not alone and will help keep you motivated and energized.
What Is Marketing’s Biggest Problem And How To Overcome It?
In reality, sales is NOT the same thing as marketing.Tracy says, “Before sales and marketing problems can be solved, you as an entrepreneur must face this fact first.” Once you conquered this problem, only then that you can make the right decisions for your businesses. 4 Eye-Opening Marketing Challenges That You Didn't Know
Aside from the “biggest problem” in business previously mentioned, Tracy provides below, the top 4 challenges that marketers are facing right now.
How To Ace Your Marketing Strategy In Social MediaDo you want people to follow you? Do you want your business to be successful? Then follow Tracy’s Time Tested, Marketing Strategies...
Social Media Tip (Tracy highly recommends LinkedIn, which is a great way to connect with people and make alliances for networking, sales and finding new clients, etc)
How To Have The Same Marketing Eye Like TracyIf you want to have the same marketing eye as Tracy’s, start connecting and be engage with her now. What sort of services she offers? Tracy can help you mostly with everything about Marketing and PR. From branding to websites, to content development, creating blogs, checking your existing marketing strategy and improving it and a lot more. Everything that falls under the marketing umbrella, she can help you. Tracy can be contacted via her website at marketingeyedallas.com.
Tracy’s Irresistible Special Offer That You Have To Grab NowShe is offering a two hours, no obligation marketing discussion, where you can sit down with her and she will look at your marketing strategy. If you’re not in the Dallas area, get her special offer and you can discuss everything through Skype. If you’re in the Dallas area, good news, she can meet you. She will take a look at your social media, your web, branding, logo and we’ll also do a little bit of analysis on how that compares your other competitors in the industry, the people that you’re competing against and Tracy will let you know your business holes and gaps, including the areas that you can revisit and strengthen to improve your marketing.
[content_toggle style="1" label="Click%20Here%20To%20Read%20The%20Entire%20Transcript%20Of%20The%20Show" hide_label="Hide"] Tracy: Hi. This is Tracy Moore with Marketing eye Dallas. This is social media hour with Nile and Jordan and we’re going to be talking about growing your business through social media today. Woman: In business and know the way forward most include social media. Perhaps you find it a bit confusing. Even frustrating. Well, you have no idea how to make it work for your business. Fear not. We interview some of the best social media experts in business who will share their experiences, ideas and knowledge. Plus offer tips and tricks to make using social media a breeze. Leverage the power of social media and grow your business now. Welcome to social media business hour with your host Nile Nickel. Jordan: Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did. Nile: Jordan, I always enjoy our different news, different views segments. I still haven’t got used to the label that my wife has given it and I know we officially renamed it but -- Jordan: Yeah. What’s wrong -- what do you not like about weird ass news? Nile: I just have trouble with that ass part in it even though I’ve got an ass hat. Don’t know. I’ll work on it. Okay? Jordan: You’ve got to get over that. Nile: I know. I know. I so much do. Well, we have a great guest tonight. You heard from the tease at the beginning. We’ve got Tracy Moore with us and Tracy is a marketing expert and business owner extraordinaire. She’s got over 20 years of experience developing client relationships through marketing and sales. I have to say something Jordan. I hear this all the time and Tracy knows that I like to make fun of bios. Jordan: Okay. Nile: People can make fun of mine all over the place. But I hear this developing client relationships. You know what I think of? I think of that big piece of apparatus that they used to have in the -- like pharmacy CVS, Walgreens, whatever that developed photographs. We dump our clients in and they come out all developed. Don’t you wish it was that easy Tracy? Tracy: Oh, I do. I wish it was that easy. Yeah. Not all of them develop so well. Nile: Exactly. Well, she has experience with firms from startups to mid market to fortune 100 firms. That’s a lot of ground to cover. And as a business owner of seven years Tracy understands the challenges that small businesses like so many of our listeners face every day. She grew her franchise territory to the second highest grossing location out of 100 territories using her strong marketing skills, sales and networking skills. We like to talk about networking skills because we like to talk about Linked In and I know when we were talking before we started the interview today you talked a little bit about Linked In Tracy so I know that we’ll be talking about that today. Tracy: Good. I love Linked In. Nile: So as a marketing business partner in the Hewlett and Packard strategic sales center -- I know. It’ll get better before the end of the show. Tracy: Tongue twister. Nile: That’s right. Tracy designed and implemented strategic marketing plans that helped HP win multimillion dollar pursuits with companies such as American Express, International paper, Cardinal health and Allegheny energy. So now combining her strong marketing expertise and the understanding of growing a small business Tracy is leading Marketing eye Dallas. Okay Tracy, so Marketing eye Dallas. Where did that name come from? Tracy: So it’s not mine. Though I think it’s actually a good name. Marketing eye actually started in Australia so it’s basically targeted small and medium size businesses. The founder Melisa Smith started the business about eight to nine years ago. She grew it very large in Australia. She had some international clients. Came -- she had a couple of clients in New York and decided to start and bring the business here to the US and Atlanta about two and a half years ago. I knew that I was getting ready to sell the business that I had been running for seven years and that I always wanted to go ahead and start my own marketing firm. I started doing some research to see exactly -- I sort of knew what format I was wanting to do and what type of marketing firm but I just wanted to see -- do my research, figure out what’s out there, what models I liked. I came across Marketing eye. I really liked it. I thought it was a good fit for where my experience was, where my knowledge was and the kind of clients I like to work with and there is a little piece on the Marketing eye site that said they were looking for licensees so after many Skype conversations across the pond Melisa and I talked and I am licensee number one in the United States. Nile: Oh, that’s pretty cool. Tracy: Yeah. so that’s how I got started and I had been a franchisee for years with a company that has lots of franchisees and I said this will be good because I kind of know a little bit about how the structure will go and she has a great model so that’s how we started working together. Nile: Sounds great. well, I know right now you’re helping a number of small to medium size business owners develop solid marketing strategies and initiatives to help them grow their business and I think that’s a great thing especially with the experience you have. But when I look at your experience, you’re the mother of two, you’ve got a 13 year old and you’ve got a 10 year old. Tracy: Yes. Nile: So you’re a mother, a wife and a small business owner. What? Are you crazy? I mean, do you still have hair left? Tracy: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. It’s really crazy and then going into the teenage years kind of makes it even a little bit more scary. So yeah. That’s a lot to handle. It always seems really good on paper but then when you live it sometimes some days are more challenging than others. Nile: Well, I have a nine year old daughter and she was talking to me this weekend and she looked into my eyes very seriously -- in fact Jordan, I haven’t told you this story yet. She looked at me and she said dad, you know what? And her -- we call her Liberty. I said no. what Liberty? And she goes you know, puberty really sucks. So with a 13 year old and a 10 year old guess what I -- I understand where you’re at and I agree with her. Puberty sucks. Jordan: From the mouths of babes. Tracy: Yes, yes. Nile: I figured that was her bit of wisdom that comes into the podcast this week. But let me ask you a question just before we really get started and we get heavy into things. What’s the one thing do you think that most people don’t know about you but that’s sort of fascinating and interesting at least to you? That’s a hard question, isn't it? Tracy: Yeah. It is a very hard question. I’m trying to think what would be most interesting. Obviously I was going to say I get bored easily because I keep starting businesses and I don’t generally jump to new companies a lot but I do start new ideas which is kind of why it’s fun to work with other businesses because I can just pretend I’m their marketing person and I get a lot of them and it keeps me very active. I mean, I just -- I guess I never really intended for this to be my journey I guess. I always thought that I was going to end up to be a college professor and it just -- that’s not the -- I -- that was my intent all along was to be a professor and now I’m a business owner so kind of a different trail that I went down but I kind of like it. Nile: Well, we could call you a professor of practical business applications now. Tracy: Yeah. I’ll take that. Nile: There we go. I haven’t answered that question for most people Jordan but I’ve been thinking about it. Jordan: Okay. Nile: Because I talked to you about it a little bit today but the thing that I think most people would find surprising about me because I think in today’s world it’s unusual and that is that I always have two silver dollars in my pocket. Jordan: Yes. Yes, you do. Nile: How many people carry silver dollars anymore? Jordan: Just weird ones. Nile: Just weird -- well, I have one that’s a money clip but i have one that’s the same year as my oldest son’s birth. Jordan: Okay. Nile: And so I just find that fascinating. It’s just sort of a neat thing. So we talk about some weird things that people would find interesting and they’d never know but I’ve never asked you Jordan. Jordan: Why I carry silver dollars around? Nile: We’ll leave you alone for now. We’ll get to the interesting part. Tracy’s far more interesting than you. Jordan: And cuter. Nile: Much cuter. Jordan: Yes. Nile: Much cuter. Jordan: Yeah. Nile: I can look at her picture and smile. I’ll leave that alone with you. So you use social media a lot in your businesses and we talked about that just a bit. What do you use and why? Tracy: So I had an art business. I still actually have it but -- going into the hand off stages. But with that business I used Facebook and anytime that you’re doing a B to C it’s a really great way to communicate to people and I used it as a communication tool. Letting people know when we were going to have art classes, what children were drawing, things that they may be interested in from a family standpoint so if there was an art festival that was going on I’d add in a little bit of information if I knew about something and I thought it was a really great thing that they might be interested in doing because they had children and I had children. And I think it was -- and I’ll come back to this several times. It’s always about making a connection with people. They want to see a human side, they want to -- they don’t want to look at something that seems static or is boring. That isn't a way to engage people, it’s not a way for people to want to share anything that you have and it’s also not a way for them to respond back. When people did respond back so that they love the pitcher that a child drew or grandma wrote oh, good job Johnny. We would chime in and a lot of times we would really encourage the teacher because I don’t -- I run the business but not teach the classes. The teacher to say we had so much fun in that class. It’s just a nice way to connect. Working now in a marketing business where we do so much from a B to B standpoint Linked In is terrific because once again you make those connections, you can talk back and forth, you can comment on people’s posts, they can comment on yours. And once again you are basically making a handshake to people, having a conversation with them and engaging them. when people just post really boring stuff or they just keep reposting other people’s stuff but they don’t make any comments that’s really boring and not very engaging and no one will want to engage with them so really what you’re doing is -- like we’re doing here is you want to have a conversation. Twitter works both from a B to B and a B to C standpoint so those are the three primary ones. I should probably get myself a little more on Instagram. My kids go at me all the time because they love Instagram but -- which -- but if you have a visual business Instagram is terrific for that. Jordan: Well, let’s talk about those. But first let’s go back -- I want to talk about the art classes that you were talking about earlier. What kind of art was it by the way? Tracy: It was drawing so visual drawing skills for children three and a half to 12. Jordan: Oh, that’s cool. Okay. And did you build a website for that? Tracy: So the website -- it’s a franchise organization. There is a franchise or -- and then you have what they call mini sites and that’s a great way for you to be able to optimize your site so when people were looking for locations in the North Dallas area they could find me. So I manipulated it a little bit but I didn’t necessarily create it. Jordan: Okay. Good, good. So I guess the point that I was driving to is that you didn’t spend a whole bunch of time trying to cultivate your list? I mean, that’s really what we’re talking about is getting a list of people who are likeminded, who have similar interests. You went to social media to really cultivate that list. I mean, it sounds like you had a micro site but it was really kind of just to use it because it was there and why not, right. But you didn’t spend thousands of dollars building up a site to build your community and your list. You went to social media and you cultivated it there first. Tracy: Exactly. And then on every communication I would send out I would have the Facebook link and then you want to go ahead and when you get people in -- and once you get involve you want them to share it with other people and that’s kind of how you can cultivate that. Jordan: Yeah. I absolutely love it. and by the way Nile, I mean, how many entrepreneurs do we run into where it never occurs to them that all they really have to do is build a Facebook page or a Facebook group or maybe a Linked In group and then just go and get those hot prospects or those people who are part of their community and just get them to engage with them there instead of spending all the money getting a website built and business cards and whatever else. You could start a lot easier. Nile: You absolutely can and I so much like what Tracy said here because what she’s talked about is engagement and we know how critical it is to engage with people. It’s just -- it’s one of the most overlooked things that happen today so when we look at the engagement we know it’s critical but she talked about building her list through it, she talked about communication so I know all of those things absolutely were critical and part of what Tracy was doing to build her business. And so I can't wait to hear how she built her business and what her challenges were in our very next segment. Jordan: Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did. Nile: Hey Jordan. Jordan: Nile. Nile: Our first segment was so great I can't wait to hear more from Tracy and what she’s done to build her business but Tracy one of the things that I’m really curious about is I know that every time that somebody starts off and you’d mentioned in the first segment for that matter; you’d mentioned how you really always thought you’d be a college professor. Obviously there were a number of things that happened along the way that changed your path. You’ve had some challenge. What have been the most difficult lessons you’ve learned in this process and challenges in building the business you’ve been building? Tracy: Well, I mean, with any business I think there’s a lot of challenges. I went to a school that was all about entrepreneurship and undergrad and I remember the one thing that they told us which always will come back to me and it’s so true is cash flow is king. I mean, you must have cash flow client. You can't run a business and have employees without some clients and cash flow coming in. so that was -- that’s always been a big issue with every business that I’d had. I’d try to make sure that I’ve always kind of padded the amount that I need because I worked in the corporate environment for years so I would go to work, they would pay me, that’s how it worked out. Now, working for myself I work really, really hard. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer to get paid than other times. And then there’s always also trying to always find that balance so you -- work starts coming in, you’re like great, this is terrific, I’ve got lots of work coming in, I have to hire someone new but you don’t want to hire someone that’s really great but maybe the work goes away because you have to make sure that there’s always that balance. So I think with any business owner that’s always one of the biggest challenges and I think the other big challenge is just staying really positive because the business has ups and downs. Sometimes you take it a little bit personal but it’s always business and so I kind of try to come back to -- okay. What would I do if I was running someone else’s business? How would I respond to the things that go on? But at the end of the day I pretty much put my heart and soul into the businesses that I run. Nile: Well, no. I could also see how cash flow is so critical in that process too. But you mentioned something in that explanation balance and clearly you have a lot to balance. You’re a business owner, you’re a mother, you’re a husband -- you’re a husband. You’re a wife. You’ve got a lot to balance there. Do you really think that there’s such a thing as balance in being a business owner or for that matter in life today? Tracy: I think as soon as you achieve it it kind of slips and everything changes. Kind of like raising children, right. So as soon as you get used to pre puberty, clean years, then they go into your teen years. Same thing about -- as soon as you get them to sleep at night then they start walking all day. So it’s -- I mean, I think the same thing with business. I mean, as soon as you get everything balanced then you’re like oh, gosh. What’s -- and now I need more clients and then that’s more clients come in and everything gets a little bit more hectic and you’re like oh. And then you get that all under control. So no. I mean, I think it’s an ongoing struggle. there’s a couple of things though that I do that just sort of help me and one of those things is I kind of structure my business so that there’s certain times that I spend with my family and those are family times so it doesn’t seep in too much into all of my personal life and then also I exercise. I run, I do pilates, I do yoga. It’s not that I’m exercise clean. It’s just that it’s nice just to have a little bit of time that is mine and it’s away from the phone and it’s away from the computer and it’s away from anyone asking me a question so that’s always nice. Nile: That makes perfect, perfect sense and I think those are absolutely great tips for trying to get some of the balance that you’ve got to achieve. So let’s jump back into the business side and the social media part of the business that you do. Clearly you help a lot of businesses with their marketing so and you’re talking about what to do with social media so how about we talk about the do’s and dont’s but let’s talk about the do’s first. If you were to give a client sort of the high level advice. Maybe 10000 foot advice on what they should be doing with social media as a sales tool what would your advice be? Tracy: Well, you want to have some consistency, you want things to link together, you want to have a consistent message, you want to have consistency in how often you put information out on social media so something people tell me they use social media and then I ask how many blogs they’ve written and then they’re like one. Six months ago. And how many times have you tweeted or how many times have you posted something on Linked In? Well, I did once and no one responded or liked it. So it really has to -- there has to be a consistency because what you’re doing is you’re basically showing up. you want to build that top of mind awareness but you also want people to get to know you and people don’t get to know you if they’ve only seen you one time so definitely be consistent and then make connections and connections go two ways so if you want people to comment on the things that you post you need to be able to be engaging other people as well and the things that they’re posting. Nile: Yeah. I think that’s great advice. The consistency thing is so big. And I see so many people that say hey, I’m a blogger. And you’re right. They’ve published one blog. I guess that’s sort of like a virgin. You’re only a virgin once. I don’t know. That’s sort of my whacky mind. Maybe a way to remember. You’ve to have consistency in doing this. Just because you’ve done it once doesn't change your title. Well, that’s the do’s. What about the dont’s? Tracy: Okay. So the dont’s are -- yeah. Don’t be annoying I guess is one of the things. I mean, and when I say that I mean make sure that you don’t over tweet, over share information so Linked In is a very -- is a great place to share great business advice and it’s nice to be human, show a little personal side but you don’t want to expose yourself to everyone because no one is interested in that and even on Facebook. So Facebook is a place where a lot of times people are very exposed but if you’re handing a business _____33:48 a little bit. Also make sure that what you’re sending out is not just really spamming so if you’re making connections on Linked In which is a great way to connect with -- making alliances, networking, sales, finding new clients, sending messages. That’s a terrific way to do it but when you make those connections you need to have read their profile, looked at their website and make a personal comment to them that connects you and shows that you actually took a little bit of time and you’re not sending the same email to them that you sent to a 100 other people. Nile: Such a good piece of advice. I have a friend that will remain nameless now. I actually have more than one friend but this particular friend -- well, it goes back to that annoying part. I might press some buttons there. Who knows? But this particular friend is just getting ready to release a book and it will be out just a little bit later in the fall and I saw his post about it earlier today and I commented on it and he liked the comment and he immediately sent a comment back and then I went to look at his feed and he had probably at the time I looked at it maybe 30 comments in his feed and he had responded to every single one of them. Jordan: Oh, good for him. Good for him. Nile: That goes with the engagement. It really goes with the connection, carrying on the conversation and all of that. so I like your advice there but one of the things that everybody talks about today is being transparent and so how do we manage this transparency especially on a site like Linked In that’s sort of a stiff business professional site? And I love Linked In but Linked In is a little bit more that way. How do we manage the transparency without crossing the boundaries? Tracy: Well, I mean, I think there -- yeah. There’s always those rules of what -- politics and religion shouldn’t be there. Things that you would say when you go to a networking event -- sometimes there’s a great story that you can tell but it’s not so insanely personal. I think that there’s other places to be really personal. Oh, and I’m going to add this one thing because it just drives me nuts. But it is a very professional place so that your photo should be this -- should be professional and then on your personal Facebook page you can have a picture of yourself at a party and that’s totally fine because everybody will say oh, yeah. I was there too. But that shouldn’t be your Linked In photo. That’s also being a little bit overly open. But I do think it’s a gray line and I’ve talked to a lot of bloggers who write blogs and there’s this gray line that you kind of need to walk because nobody wants to read a blog that reads like something a professor would’ve -- going back to the being a professor. That sounds like something that you would read in a classroom. You want it to be engaging, you want it to be fun, you want there to be a story and you want someone to seem kind of human but you also don’t want to know all the skeletons that are in the closet. Nile: No. That makes perfect sense and I think I could go with that. one of the things that I found that’s interesting -- I’m a real analytical guy and I like to look at the analytics on social media and clearly politics just don’t play in social media at all. They have a very strong negative taint that they bring to your post as analytics show. But the one thing that surprised me is because sometimes you could put religious post up there and I know I look at them and I may not highly of them one way or another but the religious posts as far as the analytics go don’t seem to affect the way people interact or view you. Tracy: Yeah. That might be true. Nile: Yeah. So politics, bad spelling, bad grammar -- I’m dead already. And cursing. Those are the things that really tend to pull somebody’s social media post down. So I find that interesting and your comments are great on that. I want to ask you a quick question. We’ve only got a couple of minutes left in this segment but -- and we may have to carry from this segment to the next segment with the answer and that’s okay but you talk about growing your business through networking on social media. What’s sort of the big tip that you could give our listeners as a takeaway from that? Tracy: Well, I think it’s just good to go find other people who may be a good alliance for you so who do a business that’s complementary to yours, one where you can share leads. Also as an entrepreneur a lot of times you feel a little isolated so you’re running a business, you may have employees but you don’t have anyone who you can share ideas on growth or challenges so I’ve also used social media to find other entrepreneurs that I can talk to and say well, how do you handle this situation or how do you balance these things and it’s just as nice because then you feel like you have some -- a group that you can learn from, bounce ideas off of and not feel so alone on the entrepreneurial journey. Nile: This segment Jordan has been power packed. We’ve talked about cash flow, balance, consistency, one of the do’s that you want to do, making connections and connections are sort of a two way street. Man, just so many things and it’s always neat when we get that heavy into something like that and it’s just so power packed. So this is definitely a segment that people want to go back to and listen to over and over again. Hey listen, we’ll be right back. Join us on our next segment. Jordan: Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did. Nile: Wow Jordan, we’re already into segment three of our interview on the social media business hour with Tracy. Jordan: Time flies while you’re having fun. Nile: Tracy you are such an awesome guest. You’ve given such great information. I’m blown away quite personally so thank you. Tracy: Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. Nile: Well, it’s great to be here. but I think you’ve got so much more to share and one of the things that we want to know -- I know you’ve got a special offer for some of our listeners as well so we’ll talk about that when we get to the end of the segment here but we talked about how you could grow your business through networking on social media. You gave us some great tips in the last segment. One of the things I loved was you talked about finding complementary businesses that you could share leads with or anything. I’m curious. Can you expand that just a bit and maybe give us some examples that you’ve used? Tracy: Yeah. So I’m always looking for people that i can help solve of issue that they may have, right. A gap in their business, something that they’re needing. So there’s a couple I’ve reached out and been working with some venture capitalists so what they do a lot of times is they decide whether or not they’re going to invest in a company and they’re usually great financial and ops people so they go in and they can run all the numbers and look at where a business should be but one of the areas that they generally aren’t as strong in is in the marketing and the market analysis. So I’ll go in and be able to do an analysis of where the market sits, where the market’s going, growing, where that particular businesses in comparison to others in the industry. We break it down with all the different marketing elements and then we can relay that information back. Another thing that we do for venture capitalists is when they do decide that they’re going to invest in a company most generally they need an infusion of marketing so they need either rebranding. A lot of them need new websites because their websites are old. They need to be optimized, social media, all of those things. What we’ve found is a lot of these businesses are actually -- have -- were very strong, did very well for years, the owners are older as they transfer to more millenials or a younger generation. Some of those things that you need now. Social media, really great website for inbound marketing. They just don’t currently exist. So that’s where we can jump in. I’ve also found people who do the same thing that I do. They outsource HR services so if someone needs HR services a lot of times they’ll also need marketing services so we work with the same types of businesses and the same types of people who say hey, I don’t really want to bring in a full staff. I would really like to have you either come in and supplement the staff that I have or be my entire department. So that’s been really helpful because you can share those leads and you do a similar type of business or you fill a need that someone needs. Nile: Well, I like the idea of looking at synergistic businesses too. I heard you say that and it makes sense. If somebody’s got to outsource marketing and they’re looking at branding and new websites and all of that type stuff it’s sort of -- it makes sense that they might need to outsource some other things like HR services for example. A perfect, perfect idea. I really appreciate that illustration as well. So now we’ve got through the do’s and dont’s of social media, we’ve got through some of the ways to grow your business through networking on social media. How do you best target these specific groups that you’re talking about using social media? And I’m curious if Linked In is your golden tool or if you use other things as well. Tracy: Well, Linked In is my favorite so -- and Linked In is great because you can actually go through -- I think sometimes you have to purchase a little bit higher package but once you do you can go in and sort exactly what you’re looking for so you can find the size of business, the industry and then you can look at the different individuals. A lot of times what I’ll do is I’ll look through, I’ll go check out their website, I can read their profile so I know a little bit more about them and then I can determine whether or not I might be able to help them. So that’s a great way from an outbound standpoint that you can find people and -- so I like Linked In in that way. Twitter, you can always go -- there’s always following other followers so you can look and say there is a business that may be complementary to yours, maybe your competitors but you can always go and follow those followers and then start making connections in that regard. With Linked In it’s a little bit more direct and you can definitely kind of stick out your hand to do a handshake so that’s a little bit faster than Twitter but I know that Twitter can be very successful just for making those communications. Most generally, when I start making the communications on Twitter I jump over and also connect with those people on Linked In. Nile: I use Linked In the same way and I think it’s great for everybody to use it. It surprises me how many people don’t. So great advice there and -- Tracy: And like with any other marketing you have to connect with multiple people so a lot of times I meet with people and I ask them if they’ve used it in that manner and they say well, I did and I contacted two people and they didn’t respond back and -- like well, that’s because you only contacted two people. You have to contact -- sometimes it takes quite a few people to find people who are wanting your services or who are engaged on Linked In. so just because they’re out there doesn’t mean that they’re engaged even though it should ping over to their email. But it’s also like going to a networking event. If you went to a networking event and you talked to two people and left or a party and you only talk to two people you may not have very much fun or meet anybody very interesting so sometimes you’ve got to talk to a few more people to find the people that are interesting that you want to connect with. Nile: I hear that advice so many times and you know my weird mind Jordan. I always get different thoughts with it. But I always come back to networking being so much like personal relationships, like dating and can you imagine only asking two people out on dates in your life? Because one of the two -- you’re looking for your potential partner but you’re only going to ask two of them. Jordan: Yeah, yeah. Nile: How many people would remain single forever? Jordan: Yeah. That’s a good point. I wonder why people do that because you and I both have heard that kind of story over and over again. Do you think it’s fear? Do you think people are just generally afraid of putting themselves out there? Nile: I do. I do. I think after you’ve done it a 100 times -- at that point in time I think you’re comfortable about it and you’ve sort of just -- you go with the flow, you’re having fun with it. Jordan: How about you Tracy? Do you think there are any other emotions wrapped up in that? Tracy: I mean, I think there’s two reasons. I mean, one I think is fear. Yeah. There’s always that I was rejected by two people and then also I think people are expecting that -- well, I reached out to someone. Why didn’t they reach out to me. Now, generally the people who tell me this that they’ve reached out to two people when we start getting contacts and we start connecting with people on Linked In I’ll tell them oh, well, we’ve had five people respond to you and here’s what they say and they’re usually like oh, I’m not interested in at least four of them. Well, likewise. It’s a -- it works the same way. So it’s also like if you’re driving down the street and you’re hungry and you see all these signs for all this different food, right. You’re not going to stop at all of them hopefully. So you pick the ones that you think are going to be a good fit for you and so if a client isn't -- if I’m not a right fit for them well, they’re probably not a right fit for me so what we want to have is a really good, strong working relationship that’s successful for both of us. Nile: You looked at my profile picture on Linked In, didn’t you? I know. Because talking about those fast food restaurants and stopping at every one of them. Just saying. Jordan: You just don’t want those business owners to feel bad that you passed by them and didn’t give them any business. Nile: That’s really what it is. Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried this but have you ever done a fast food gourmet meal? That’s where you figure out who has the absolute best French fries or onion rings, whatever it may be. The best burger or a taco or whatever it may be and you end up going to five or six of these to prepare the perfect fast food gourmet -- you’ve never done that? Jordan: Only in America. Nile: Only in America. Jordan: Only in America. Nile: Well listen, after all of this fun and frivolity I know a lot of people would like to engage with you. What sort of services do you offer and how do people best engage with you? Tracy: So we’re a full service marketing firm meaning that we can do everything from branding to websites to content development, blogs, your traditional marketing collateral, PR. So basically everything that falls under that marketing umbrella we can do for them. They can contact us on our website at marketingeyedallas.com so we’re really easy to find. Nile: Now the eye is E-Y-E? Not just the letter I? Tracy: E-Y-E. Yeah. So it’s like the eye, like seeing. So basically what we are is we’re your marketing eye. We take a look at your marketing, find out where the holes are and then we keep watch to make sure that everything is consistent, running smoothly and working to the best that it can. Nile: And of course we share all these links out on social media business hour so everybody could always go to social media business hour and find all of the links that you’re talking about. Now, one of the things that you’ve done is you’ve got a special offer for our listeners. Now, I want to tell our listeners right up front. I think she’s crazy. I mean, I think she’s totally crazy. So I’m not even going to talk about the special offer. I’m going to let you talk about it because I’m not claiming any liability here. I think you’re doing something that is just tremendously powerful and valuable for any listener that would like to take you up on the offer so could you tell us a little bit about that? Tracy: Yeah. So we are offering two hours, no obligation for us to sit down and look at your marketing. So if you’re not in the Dallas area we can Skype. If you’re in the Dallas area we can meet but what we’ll do is we’ll look at your social media, your web, your branding, your logo and we’ll also do a little bit of analysis on how that compares to maybe some of the other competitors in the industry and the people that you’re competing against and let you know kind of where those holes and gaps are and what areas that you could strengthen to improve your marketing. So many times that our clients -- marketing is not the business that they’re in so they think that things are going really well and then we turn down and we say things aren’t really going as well. we have a client who gave us all of their social media the other day and we realized that some other social media’s a little negative so we want to make sure that we’re turning that around and figure out how to change that. Sometimes we found that we have clients who have multiple Twitter accounts and they had no idea so some are dying and they’re splitting their people -- splitting their followers. So we can go ahead and take a look and find out where there might be some issues and where there is definitely opportunity for improvement. Nile: Well, we will have the links for that special offer on our website at socialmediabusinesshour.com. I think that is quite generous. I know that there are so many marketing firms that -- for that type of sort of consult you could easily pay a 1000 dollars or more so I think that that is a huge offer Tracy and as the host of the show I thank you so much because I love when our listeners get great value out of the show. So thank you so much for that. Tracy: Thanks. I love helping businesses though. Nile: Well, I know that they’re going to love what you can do for them and to our listeners, I’d like to thank you for joining us on the social media business hour. Hopefully you learned a few new ideas or concepts. Maybe you were just reminded of a few things you already know but you haven’t been doing to improve or grow your business. Our desire is that you take just one of the things that you learned or were reminded of today and you apply it to your business this week. We know that a small change can make a big difference. I’m committed to bringing you at least one new idea each week that you could implement so go back and listen to either segment one, two or three. Maybe all three of them. Identify just one small change that you could make to your business this week and see what a big difference it will make for you. So until next week, this is Nile Nickel. Now, go make it happen. Woman: Social media business hour is powered by linkedinfocus.com. For show notes, updates and to pick up the latest tips and tricks head over to socialmediabusinesshour.com. Until next time. Thanks for listening. [/content_toggle] Weblinks:Website: www.marketingeyedallas.com
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Social Media Business Hour with Nile Nickel
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