Is your business surviving or thriving?

Photo by hannah grace on Unsplash

In New Zealand we are known for our ‘number 8 wire’ mentality. We are great at survival. “She’ll be right, I can do that”.

What we tend to be is poor at thriving. Knowledge as we all know is a powerful thing. Unfortunately, a little knowledge can leave us vulnerable especially to competitors who use their smart thinking to engage people with exceptional knowledge to do tasks that are not “core business”.

The investment return of this approach is simple. Having smart people to call on in areas you are not exceptional is the entrepreneurial skill used by business owners to ensure their business thrives rather than just survives.

Yes, gain knowledge so at least you have the baseline to understand great from good.

However, invest in knowledge and skills from specialists and significantly increase your businesses chances of thriving.

Spend your time learning your craft, and learning how to manage these assets, that is how ensure you have the essential skills that builds your personal brand and respect from your customers and staff. Forget about the ‘number 8 wire’ attitude and get great at what you do. hire resources that add to your skills and practice the same approach as you i.e. they focus on being great at what they do.

By adopting this tactic anyone who really wants to thrive will.

I hope you found this helpful.

Tony C
Personal Coach / Digital Marketing Specialist
e. hello@tonycuttingdigital.co.nz
m. https://m.me/tonycuttingdigital w. tonycuttingdigital.com

Is your marketing message clear and simple?

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

As business owners we tend to want to tell the world all about our business. Every little detail. So, we create websites, advertising and marketing that explains everything we do, how we do it and maybe if they are lucky how what we do benefits our client.

Unfortunately, the result can often be a confusing mess that people have to wade through to find out whether you offer what they are looking for. The reality is many of them will not hang around for long.

So, what do we need to do instead?

Forget about confusing detail that often is too technical for people outside your industry to understand. Clarify a message directed solely at your customer. The art of great marketing is to simplify your message, so it cuts through the noise being made by your competitors.

Its about your customer not you.

If a client can see what you are offering and how it benefits them, followed by what they need to do to buy your product/s or service/s then you have a winning formula.

So, when you get a moment have a look at your website, go through your marketing material and ask the question “who is this message for?”

If you think you need some help feel free to call me on 021 911 722.

I sincerely hope you found this information helpful.

Kind regards

Tony C
Tony Cutting Digital
e. hello@tonycuttingdigital.co.nz
m. https://m.me/tonycuttingdigital

w. tonycuttingdigital.com

12 Facebook Tactics to increase engagement for your Business Page

Photo by William Iven on Unsplash

Engagement is the key ingredient for success with any Facebook page. In terms of business pages if you are not consistently thinking about how to improve your engagement then you are missing the boat in terms of what your followers are looking for.

The ultimate engagement is to have your posts shared organically. So how do you create posts that are likely to be shared?

Here are my top 12 tips to help you create more engagement and more shares.

1.      Posts about your business will quickly run out of steam and to be frank possibly will struggle to get the engagement you need to succeed. So, focus your posts on content that provides useful information for the reader - it’s about them not you.

2.      Encouraging followers/audience to ask you questions is a great way to attract engagement and responses. Be thoughtful about what you are asking and make sure you give a timeframe and explain when you will have the answers to the questions.

3.      Share a genuine offer. Personally, I think people are getting wary of the American style of ‘A FREE giveaway’ instead give a really good discount on a product or service for a short period of time (not repeated until next year) and build on this sale to capture clients who will become great testimonials and help to promote your business. Of course, this only applies if you are offering a great product or service. In my book if you are not, then maybe running a business is not for you.

4.      Share your passion for what you do. Genuine passion is super attractive to a large percentage of your audience. Do not be afraid to let people know who you are and why you are doing what you do.

5.      Share you values - This is a tactic which follows on from sharing your passion. Let people know what you and your company value. If you are genuine, and you have strong positive values then this will get results.

6.      Ask for feedback. People love to be included and feel like their opinion matters. Asking your audience for feedback or help with making specific choices in your business? This should provide you with immediate engagement.

7.      Know your audience. Running surveys and engaging with your clients and followers creates engagement. The better you know and understand the people you want to attract and interact with, the easier it is to share information they value.

8.      Sharing relevant posts with your audience. Sharing what’s happening in ‘your followers’ world is a great way to encourage responses. This lets you join in the conversations that are already happening, cementing your place as a concerned, thoughtful friend rather than just a business.

9.      Promote community causes, so you stand for more than just your business - People love people and businesses that stand for more than just making money. On your Facebook page, share updates about local community events, non-profits you support, fundraising activities etc. Whether you are involved in them or not.

10.  Share heart-warming posts. Be careful to be discerning. However, sharing posts that you know will hit the heart. Be genuine and ensure your comments paint a true picture of who you are and why this post was important for you to share.

11.  Share humorous posts. As above be careful and genuine ensure your comments paint a true picture of who you are and why this post was funny for you. Be tasteful!

12.  POST NATIVE VIDEO. It’s simple - loading native videos that contain compelling content that is not too long (1-3 minutes) will get great engagement. This tactic will get more engagement than all of the above.

Hope you found this blog helpful. Please feel free to leave a message on my Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/tonycuttingdigital/ and let me know how this worked for you. Always happy to share success stories with my audience.

CONTENT IS KING

Everyone wants to be on the first page of Google, right?

By a conservative estimate, studies suggest that the first page of the search results receives 75% of web traffic. You need to be on that first page to be visible to new customers. The only problem? Ranking isn’t easy.

Google uses a complex algorithm of 200 ranking factors – and perhaps even more that we don’t know about – to sort through everything that the internet has to offer. Some of these ranking factors are out of your control; you can’t make your domain age faster, after all. Those sorts of things can make it difficult to compete for visibility with larger, more established companies.

You can compete with the big boys, however, if you can develop better content than them. Google even lists content as the first thing for a webmaster to focus on when creating a Google-friendly site: to provide “high-quality content on your pages.”

What works best?

Audiences Want Video Content - Mobiles are dictating rankings.

In 2016, Search Engine Land reported that over 60 percent of all internet searches come from mobile devices. That number has continued to increase since. Google and other search engines are aware of this and have adjusted their algorithms accordingly.

So what exactly does this mean? It means search results are tilting to favor content that’s easily consumable on mobile devices. Do you know what outperforms all other forms of content on mobile?

Video.

If you want to rank in the search results, your content must be easily digestible on a mobile platform and fit the needs of a mobile user. If someone’s sitting at a desktop computer, they are generally more willing to read long-form articles or watch a long video. On mobile? Information needs to be quick, concise and cut to the point.

Videos are a perfect solution. And get this – videos can also increase your conversions on landing pages by up to 80%. Why not increase your sales while you’re at it?

The massive advantage.

Companies are quick to get into content marketing or SEO, but slow to create videos. And that’s precisely why creating video footage makes it easy to out-value the competition.

Tony Cutting Digital has been exploring different types of video solutions for the past three years. We can produce video directly ourselves or use a partner if the ideal solution requires something a little different to what we normally work with.

Either way once your video is ready we are the experts in New Zealand for getting your video out there.

Great Images

If video sounds too hard then make sure you include a great image. A gallery of great images will likely perform better then just one. However, remember your content needs to tell a story and the images need to add something to that story. Social media is about engagement, building relationships with your followers and converting these relationships with meaningful content that shows you are a trustworthy provider of whatever good and services you sell.

- Tony Cutting

M 021 911 722
E. hello@tonycuttingdigital.co.nz

Message Me. https://m.me/tonycuttingdigital