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Did you know that you can do all our online courses from your phone? Even our coaching programmes!  Not may of us are sitting on beaches this summer (or ones that aren't quite as warm as we had hoped :D) but wherever you are this year, why not learn all about marketing your small business from your phone. Using the Moodle app, you can learn wherever you are, whenever you want. You can:
The process is simple: just head to the AppStore or Google play and download the Moodle app to your phone.
Once you have the app installed, add this to the site address box and then sign up or sign in: http://courses.myownmarketingcoach.com/moodle/ Here is a quick peek at what the 'Who is looking at your website - Google Analytic intro' short course looks like on the app:
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We gone on all the time about using #hashtags on every Instagram post. There isn't a lot of point in posting if you don't put hashtags on.
What happens when people use a hashtag in the wrong way in order to get their posts seen in an inappropriate way?
Instagram bans the hashtag. It open doesn't actually disappear but the recent posts vanish. If you try to use a banned hashtag, often Instagram will stop the text on your post from showing. If that happens, remove some of the hashtags and post again. Keep removing them until it works. Banned hashtags in 2020
Desk?!
The list is huge so here are some banned hashtags that you might be surprised to see:
Have you found any more funny or odd banned hashtags? Let us know!
Facebook has just launched a new element on business pages called Shops, to tie in with Shopping on Instagram. Perfect for small businesses selling products but also useful for selling services, even when you sell to other businesses. Facebook Shops are accessable from your Facebook page and from your Instagram account. Perfect, so we don't need to create them twice and maintain two areas. You can now add products and services that people can browse through and even purchase (at the moment, just in the US...) within the Facebook Shop. Read more about it below and click here for Facebook's information. If you offer services and/or sell to businesses, keep reading... The Shop area of your business page can be used to showcase anything you offer that is productised. This includes workshops, courses, reports and even fixed-price services, although there is space elsewhere for them too Here is how we have displayed two of our own online courses in the Shop on our Facebook Page.  There is also a tab for Services. If you can't see either tab, look in the settings. You may need to change the template of your Facebook page to get them. It is a very simple thing to do. Here is how we display two types of services: 1. Individual coaching appointments - one-off video calls with us 2. Coaching packages - to help business owners get their marketing on track and bringing in customers/clients.  Now you need to promote it While Facebook wants to help small businesses grow, especially at the moment, there are millions of us. Just putting items and services on the page won't get you any extra sales. Now you need to promote both the Shop and the individual items. Facebook will help you if you put the effort in. If you would like some help with this, book a coaching call with us or perhaps even sign yourself up for our six-week social media and content marketing programme (online or IRL!). We'll get you up and running!  Do you have an awesome business that you love...but face:
Get the tools and techniques you need to marketing your business and turn it into something great by taking our online courses. We get you up, running and getting customers. Fast.  Courses open now and coming up are: Run your own Instagram marketing Would you like to run your own Instagram marketing successfully? Do follower numbers matter? Not as much as you think. Are you posting great content? Great! Now you've got 20% of the job done, spend the other 80% of your time actually doing what you need to do to build sales from Instagram. Learn exactly what you should and shouldn't be doing to successfully run your own Instagram marketing in our online course. We'll work through techniques to find prospective customers/clients on Instagram and turn them into leads (giving you their contact details) so you can turn them into sales. Registration is open: 8th May 2020 until 31st July 2020. Price: USUALLY - US$49 - 480kr - £42 - €44 NOW - US$29 - 280kr - £22 - €24 Book here Who is looking at your website While you wouldn't stand in your own shop with a blindfold on, do you know who is visiting your website? Knowing who is browsing your website can tell you everything from what people like to spend time looking at to whether your business is even going to succeed. More specifically, you can decide what to spend your marketing time and effort on and ignore things that don't turn your visitors into clients. Learn exactly who is and isn't looking at your website, what they are looking at and what they never see in our foundation level online course. We'll work through Google Analytics from the start, enabling you to work out who is reading and buying what, where they've come from and what causes them to leave your site. Registration is open: 25th May 2020 until 15th July 2020. Price: US$49 - 480kr - £42 - €44 Book here Social media and content marketing six-week coaching programme Are your website and social media profiles bringing in new business for you? No? Then come and spend two-three hours per week for six weeks online with us (fleixble timing) and we'll work together to get your social media and content marketing set up, running and bringing in clients. The next available programme start is 25th June 2020 and registration is open: 5th May 2020 until 23rd June 2020. Price: USUALLY - US$599 - 5990kr - £525 - €550 JUST FOR JUNE AND JULY - US$399 - 3990kr - £325 - €360 Book here
1. Your logo! You would be surprised how many businesses forget that the blog needs the same brand as the business to work as a form of brand awareness building. A logo is great for awareness of your brand and your first key element needed. It gives your blog site a face to your readers, something that they can remember it by. Your logo is a subtle and very effective way of making your readers remember what your blog is all about and in turn, remember what your business is all about and what its products and/or services offered are.  2. Clear navigation bar The navigation bar should be easily accessed, straightforward and simple. Your readers are after the content of your blog. They do not want to have to deal with too much design. Much like your content, your navigation bar should also be user-friendly. 3. Social sharing buttons within blog posts You can increase your chances of going viral by making your content easily shareable on social media. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram buttons can be easily setup on your website to be accessed on all of your webpages.  4. Proper typography Your font style, colour and size can affect how well a reader perceives your blog posts. True, it is the content that matters but they need to read it to find that out! If the font isn’t very easy on the eyes, you will lose the readers before the end of the post. Never use font less than 12px! 5. Responsive design (mobile-friendly layout) If you really care about your visitors and how they view your blog, make it easier for them to navigate your site in any screen sizes especially for mobile users. In 2018, the present is mobile. 6. Related posts, most popular posts and latest posts. These three things assist in keeping your blog site as organised as possible as it can help readers get to know what’s the latest, what’s trending and other posts related to what they are reading, further increasing traffic and subtly giving readers more reasons to stay. 7. Breadcrumb trail If possible, add breadcrumbs to your blog site. It makes navigation so much easier and helps readers understand where what topics they are reading belong to. 8. Tags or categories What makes tags so important is that they not only keep your blog site organised but also allow search engines to know what ‘topics’ are covered by each post, acting like keywords. They are crucial.  9. Comment box. We can’t be clearer on this point – use every single opportunity to encourage interaction between the business and your readers. Use a ‘call-to-action’ – a line or two telling or asking your readers to do something – on every post, at least once. Once you have a large enough reader base, they will discuss the content of each post on the content box and may even provide additional insight that you can use later on. 10. About page & contact info These are simple pages that are quite self-explanatory and they are necessary because they complete the overall professional look that you will want your blog site to have if you want to attract readers and increase overall traffic. 11. Service/product pages and payment options Blogs are made for a reason and it’s not just to give valuable content. It is your way of advertising to your readers as well. Make sure that you capitalise on your reader base and further increase traffic by including a services or product page in your blog site. If possible, include payment options as well to make everything easier for your consumers.  12. Blog sign-up form (and/or newsletter sign-up form) Email marketing is extremely powerful so allow your readers to receive your blog posts and/or newsletters by email. Used in this way, the content builds brand awareness, consumer trust and loyalty. Make use of it. 13. Google analytics Google analytics are great as it gives you concrete numbers that will show you what is wrong with your blog, what is missing, how you can improve it. Look at each blog post over a period of time and learn from the results – promote those posts that do well and edit/rewrite those that don’t. 14. SEO tools SEO plays a very important role in driving traffic and putting your site on the map. Use tools to come up with proper keyword placement, frequency, etc. so that you drive traffic to your blog site and get your site ranked higher and higher in search engines. This checklist hopefully will help you see if you have all the essential elements on your site. Once set up, most of these things need very little attention. You can focus on keeping the quality of your content high so readers keep coming back. Need a little help with your blogging? Get structure, support and a great big boost to get your blogging bringing in business in our six-week coaching programme. Click here to check out the next available online programme: Pop-up messages and forms are common now. They distract the visitor from what they are looking at and the best of them cause the visitor to become a lead and to give you their contact details. While they can work extremely well, they can work very badly and distract your visitors enough for them to leave you website. Here are our pointers for using pop-ups effectively: - Ask visitors for their contact details after they have browsed your website long enough to at least find out what you do. - Get your pop-up popping up after content loads and not directly after they have arrived on the site or logged into anything. - If possible, make your cookie part of the page and not a pop-up. We have grown very tired of cookie notices - it is an actual thing called 'cookie fatigue'! - so keep them as small and unobtrusive as possible.   - Add lead magnet pop-ups three quarters of the way down a page and make sure they don't cover the content on the page. A right side pop-up works well.  - Make your pop-ups look just as good as the rest of your site does. Use your branding.  - Give your visitor something to do next - have a box that asks for their email address or a button to click to download or read something. Ask for their email address, not their shoe measurements or anything else.  - Make them work on your mobile version or hide them if they don't. - Keep the text short. - Make sure that if they can click to reject it, they don't have to click on something like 'I don't need your report' or, as below, 'I don't want to know the latest trends'. Keep it friendly.  Google has some strong feelings about pop-ups. To avoid them penalising your site, make sure you avoid:
You can create pop-ups in:
However you use pop-ups, get them fitted into your sales process. They should help you visitor become and lead and, one day, a client. For specific help with building your sales process or website, find out more here. 
This is an unusual time. The coronavirus has changed our personal lives, our work lives and the lives of almost everyone, around the world. March and April 2020 will be remembered for the next hundred years, if not longer.  Businesses are in shock. While some are obviously suffering, others are near collapse under the weight of a huge upturn in sales. What is your situation? Have you got a handle on where you are now and where the business will be in 3 and 6 months. If you are still working and have money coming in now, should your strategy be to look ahead three/six/twelve months and work out what you need to do now to make sure you have work and money coming in then? If you are in one of the industries that are thriving right now (or perhaps better put as getting lots of sales right now), is it inventory you need to focus on and for marketing, what do you need to think about to make sure you keep getting sales longer term? If your sales have dried up or you hadn't had time to build them up before the world locked down, do you need to focus your efforts on protecting the brand awareness you had and building it up so potential customers know that you exist? Every business needs its own survival strategy right now. What's yours? It is tempting to retreat at the moment, especially if you are at home, rather than in the office and if you have children at home, it is especially easy to deal with today's tasks and not think ahead. We aren't sure what 'ahead' with look like, are we? Although nothing is certain now, nothing is ever certain. What we do know is that 'out of sight, out of mind' is fairly true now and under more normal conditions, Do you want your potential customers to remember you when they need/want you? Small businesses start with zero brand awareness. No-one outside your immediately family has any idea who you are or what you do. You may be at the bottom but the only way it up, right :) What we do is start to tell our own network what we do and then spread it outwards from there. Usually, as long as you keep up the effort, the awareness of your business - your brand - will grow. Do this now. If you have been in business for years or just for weeks, treat your brand as an unknown fledgling and help it grow. "Brands that continue marketing efforts throughout a recession also do better in the recovery." Perform, 2020
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