Two terms that are thrown around a lot these days are Personal Branding and Social Selling. So what the heck do those terms mean?
Personal branding - how you can use your unique combination of knowledge, skills, experience and accomplishments to benefit others. Social selling - targeted online content marketing that builds real human relationships and converts to sales (remember people still buy from people even online -- I like to call this humane marketing). Bottom line is Whether you're online or off, communication is the vehicle to shared understanding with another person, which provides a platform for trust and relationship building. In others words, network, connect with others, get to know people and see how you can help them, then offer value (your solution) in exchange for value (money/a sale). Applications of... Personal branding Your LinkedIn profile is a good understandable example of applied personal branding. You're showcasing who you uniquely are, providing credibility for why you have value to offer and promoting how that value can benefit others to get a job, to attract clients or simply build personal relationships with others who have interest in you. Social selling Social selling examples can be found all over the Internet from people and businesses using content marketing in their promotional, relationship-building efforts, but a less obvious example might be a musician performing live at a coffee shop. In this scenario the musician is engaged in social selling. The musician is providing information, or in this case a sampling of their talent -- their music, which is information provided to the audience that either resonates or doesn't. If the musician has promoted their performance well the listeners in attendance are likely a part of their target audience. Thus, the musician is connecting with their audience to build a further relationship with them throughout the duration of the performance, which can impact an audience member's propensity to buy the musician's album or other merchandise. Posted by: Nick Venturella Business planning by the numbers
Monetizing any business can be difficult especially when you don't feel like you know how to get there. A decent way to figure things out is to start with numbers. How much do you want to make from your business in a single calendar year? In the planning stage it matters less what the actually goal number is but more importantly that you have one to serve as a starting point -- this can always be adjusted based on actual performance. Simply having a desired annual revenue goal will offer an aim for your business efforts. If you know the amount you want to make, figuring out how your business can actually get you there is made a bit easier. To come up with a desired annual income, you might just take your living expenses and add a bit extra for starters. Reaching smaller milestones over time = larger goals met Once you have a desired annual income goal, think about the nature of what you do and how you make money. In other words, where does income for your business actually come from, and on average how much do you charge clients when you sell something? Having a larger annual income dollar amount in mind may seem overwhelming when you think about how you might actually reach it. You'll want to chunk things down into smaller milestones that you can more reasonably reach throughout the year. I'm in a good spot personally because I have a mainstay full-time marketing gig that covers most of my major expenses, so as I do this exercise I keep in mind that I can start slow because I'm not fully relying on my own business' income to live off of. You may not have that luxury. But don't get discouraged. That just means this exercise is even more important to help keep you focus on what you need to achieve. My own business as an example For example in my business I'm trying to gain subscribers to my blog and websites, provide them useful information that they want and eventually have my subscribers purchase products and services from me. So as I start chunking down how I might reach a particular income goal I might use some -- at least initially -- guesstimated data (I'll have to track my progress to see if my theories panned out over time and refine my approach). My thought is that one quarter of my subscribers are likely to purchase something from me for an average of $10 within a calendar year. As I've only recently begun my consolidated blogging effort on NickVenturella.com I'm starting somewhat fresh with my revenue goals. Here are the milestones I'm aiming at: Number of subscribers and sales...
With the above numbers, if I want to make $250,000 in one year I'll need to have about 100,000 subscribers. Realistically, I think I can potentially end this year between 3000 and 5000 subscribers, which based on the above numbers would yield between $7,500 and $12,500. Play with the numbers and find the ones that fit you This is just one example. You can play with the numbers to build scenarios of what this might look like for your specific situation. However, the idea is to break down what may seem like an impossible goal into smaller more attainable ones. Be reasonable and realistic about the goals you think you can reach, but balance it with the right amount of aggressive drive to push yourself slightly beyond what you think you can reach. Posted by: Nick Venturella If you're using LinkedIn's longer-form publishing platform you can get a nice sense of how your posts are being received by the LinkedIn community.
What I'm finding is that LinkedIn's publishing platform is becoming a nice testing ground for various types of posts I'm experimenting with publishing. In other words, I'm publishing posts to LinkedIn and I'm able to compare and contrast between my posts to see which ones are being viewed more than others. This gives me the confidence that certain types of content that I'm producing is better received than others. That information allows me to replicate the kind of content that is well-read and shed the kind of content that is not resonating with my target audience, much of which happens to be on LinkedIn. How I might use this information is to identify the best performing articles and the kind of content they provide, then produce similar additional posts or even spin-off content from those LinkedIn posts and put my best content forward on my [NickVenturella.com] blog By doing this I'm only putting out content on my own blog that I know my target audience is looking to consume. (see image below) It's sort of an A/B split test for content production. How are you determining what content performs best for your audience? Posted by: Nick Venturella For those of you who have a subscription-based website but no mobile app (or at least not yet), you can instruct your subscribers to bookmark your website or login page and build a shortcut launching icon on your subscriber's home screen of their mobile device. This works to allow a subscriber to launch a brower and open your bookmarked web page where they can log into their account. It works similar to a shortcut icon on your PC desktop to launch an application. The idea is to offer a slightly quicker route to opening your site and logging in. It also offers a similar feel to having a true mobile app, even if you don't really have one. See the image below. Posted by: Nick Venturella There are no mentors for my unique business
Untrue. There is nothing new under the sun. There are simply new variations of achieving your desired end result. If you're starting a business, or you're currently in one that you're having trouble finding mentors you can learn from who have already paved a path, then look beyond your industry. The secret weapon One of my greatest secret weapons in anything I've done as an employee or entrepreneur has been my ability to draw on industries beyond the industry I'm currently in. For example, my mainstay gig right now is as a sales & marketing supervisor for a HR software division of Insperity -- a multi-billion dollar publicly traded corporation. This work teaches me so much about scaled up marketing for big businesses that I often draw from to think of how some of those ideas can be simplified to work for smaller organizations, like those clients of mine in my GrowLoop coaching and marketing business. The opposite is also true. As a marketing coach, and even as a professional musician, I interact with others from a variety of industries who constantly inspire new ideas that I can think about how to scale up for Insperity. Extrapolate hidden lessons The point is, always keep your eyes open and extrapolate the lessons that are hidden in other industries. Posted by: Nick Venturella Not long ago, I wrote a post on LinkedIn's publisher platform about how marketing is changing in the "age of the customer."
The Age of the Customer This is a phrase coined by author/speaker Jim Blasingame. You may want to pick up his book, The Age of the Customer. It's a Buyer's Market The idea is that customers, and more so, potential customers are more in control of the buying/sales process than ever before. This is thanks to the plethora of information available on the Internet. Those looking to buy can conduct their own due diligence on a product and company well before they ever engage with a sales person from that organization. What You Can Do This means the best tool available to those marketing their wares is to produce useful content and post it to the Internet -- where potential buyers are researching your type of products anyway. In this scenario the best you can do is influence their research, and if you're good at content marketing, build a human relationship with your potential buyers via online content. What I mean by that is, be sincere, know who your buyers are, what they care about and what kinds of information will be helpful to them. Offer free tips, how-to's and the like. Give to get. Influence your target audience with your content to let them know you care about them. I guarantee you they'll be more likely to connect with you when they're ready to talk to a sales person or better yet, when they're hot to buy. Posted by: Nick Venturella Yes, Really Forming a mission statement for your life is an exercise in articulating your personal and professional direction.
Fast Company put out an article about this: why your life needs a mission statement What to consider Here are some things to consider when trying to formulate an overarching statement that helps keep you focused on your purpose and eventual end-game victory (or victories, as it were). The following bullet points can help put you in the mind-set to develop your personal mission statement for your life (the idea is to have an aim that you can continuously set your compass to):
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