Do you sometimes forget the ingredients needed to cook up great sales content? Writing quality content is the only way to convince people to buy your products. If you sell soccer boots and just write, “red soccer boots”, next to a picture, all you’ll be doing is showing bones. And that’s scary.

Give your sales copy some skin. People want details so give it to them. You also need sales so here is a simple list to help you remember how to write your copy.

1. Picture your audience: You need to have a clear mental picture of who your audience is, the problems they have and how you think your solution will help them.

2. Talk to them: Not about yourself. Your “About” page is there to say everything about your business. Your sales content is supposed to have “you” and “your”; directly referring to anybody who reads it (in this case, your target audience).

3. Emotions trigger action: People act on two basic emotional principles:

• They take action on their fears
• They take action on their pleasures

With this knowledge, you can use words that spell out your reader’s fears and couple it with the joy (pleasure) they’ll get after using your product.

4. Spill out the benefits: What benefit does your product offer? People read about products because they want to know what it does so add some detail.

5. Spark imaginations: Make your content memorable by sparking the reader’s imagination. Some people read content with half-dead minds so you need to awaken them by taking them to Wonderland. Use phrases like, “imagine you …”, “think about the benefits.” Etc.

6. Where’s the proof?: Has your product helped many people already? Has it won any awards? Are people saying anything about it? Where’s the proof? Show it. It will help you get more conversions.

7. Any offers or bonuses?: Do you have any bonuses to offer? Do you have any discounts? What are they? This is not a necessity but it helps in conversions.

8. Where’s the call to action? Your content needs an enabler and that is what a call to action is for. After reading your content, people want to know what to do next. Tell them what you want them to do: buy a product, fill out a form, etc.

9. Say your last words: Your post script (P.S.) is a great tool for summing up your content. It’s a way of reminding the reader of what they’ll be getting or why they need to act fast.

10. Go over it: Your letter is not perfect yet. Go over it and see if it sounds right. Does it convince you? You can also show it to your family or friends you trust. Does it convince them? To find out, ask them if they’ll take action if they were to be your audience.

All you have to do now is to save this list somewhere and use it when you write.

Did I leave anything out? What do you use to spice up your sales copy? Let me know.

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Do you know that communication can make or break your business? Many people think business communication is easy but it really isn’t. There is more to it than just words.

Communication is an essential tool for building your business and brand online. It actually has a direct relationship with content development and content marketing.

If you have an email list and social media community, you’ll need to know how to communicate with them.

In order to communicate effectively, there are nine questions you’ll need to ask yourself:

1. Who is the message for?
2. What relationship do you have with your target audience?
3. What is the actual message?
4. Will your message be useful to your audience?
5. Is the timing right?
6. What barriers are you likely to encounter?
7. What communication channel will you use?
8. What feedback are you likely to get?
9. How will you work with the feedback?

Basically, there are 4 characters involved in the communication process; the sender, the receiver, the message itself and channels.

Many people assume communication as a system that only has to do with words

The roles of the sender include:

• Developing the appropriate message/content for his audience: I once came across a college Twitter account with an update that said something like, “Get 1,000 followers in not time. Click here” or so. Please don’t do this. I was shocked when I saw it.

• Identifying channels for content distribution. Channels include: e-mail, social media and video sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, etc., whitepapers, ebooks, etc.

• Identifying barriers that may hinder the purpose of the message. Likely barriers include email filtering (to prevent spam), nature of your list (e.g. demographics, income levels, etc.) and language.

• Analyzing response: The kind of feedback you get will let you know how effective your message was. This is an essential part that is actively being considered by both new and old businesses.

As the sender, you have many tasks on your hand and you should make sure to follow through the above roles if you want to be effective. For example, once you identify appropriate channels for certain types of messages, you’ll not have to worry about what type of message to communicate and how to deliver it.

The receiver’s roles include:

• Consuming message
• Sharing message to other people who may be interested
• Giving Feedback
• Doing any other thing the message asks them to do.

The receiver has the magic wand when it comes to sharing and acting on your content.

Your message could be any of these types:

• Newsy
• Sales pitch
• Survey/feedback request
• Tips/tutorials

Messages can serve the following purposes:

• Inform
• Educate
• Convince

Messages can be converted to the following formats:

• Video
• Audio
• Document files; .PDF, .doc, .txt, etc.
• Graphic; .gif, .jpg, .png, etc.
• Regular text/ undocumented text
• Regular speech

Channels are paths for communication; email, social media, telephone, TV, Radio, etc..

The channels I currently use to communicate Sociatic are Q&A sites, Twitter, LinkedIn, Junta42, Social Media Today, Bizsugar, Delicious, Google Buzz, blogs (via this blog and via guest posting on other blogs) etc.

When you identify and recognize the communication process like this, you can easily convince and convert your leads into sales.

Let me know if I left something out.

Do you have an easy means of reminding yourself of what social media is about? There are so many posts on this subject.

I’ve decided to summarize it so you can easily remember it for your business purposes.

Social media is about L.I.F.E. with your prospects on social sites.

Now, let’s define what L.I.F.E. means in social media. I’ll show you what each letter means; of course, starting with L and ending with E.

• ‘L’ is for Listening: Your prospects are out there. Are you listening to them? You can use these any of these social media listening tools: 10 tools for listening in social media.

• ‘I’ is for Innovating: What’s your unique feature? Have you blended that into your social media strategy? Innovation sparks interest. Here is a resource article for innovation: Using social media to drive business innovation: insights from Guy Kawasaki and Target’s Michael Axelin

• ‘F’ is for Friending: Friending means building relationships. You’ve earned some prospects (fans or followers) so the next thing to do is invest in them. Chris Brogan shared some tips on this: Deepen Your Networks.

• ‘E’ is for Engaging: Start conversations about your brand. Join conversations concerning your brand. Be present wherever your brand is being talked about. Kyle Lacy wrote a great article about how to engage: 20 Ways to Engage Contacts in Social Media.

In summary, social media is about Listening, Innovating, Friending and Engaging with your prospects.

Next time you want to remember what social media is all about, think, L.I.F.E. The meaning will let you draft a better social media strategy.

All too often, businesses choose celebrities to be ambassadors and evangelists of their products. Celebrity endorsements can mean more sales for you but I think it is a short sighted way of marketing because it has some limitations.

I have two reasons why I think of celebrity endorsements as short sighted marketing.

1. People have their celebrity favorites. If you let celebrity “A” endorse your product, I may not be a fan of him and I won’t be moved to make a purchase because celebrity “A” is not my favorite celebrity and I don’t care what he has to say.

Give me celebrity “B” and I’ll buy your product, period! Can you afford to sign a contract with celebrities “A”, “B”, “C” to “Z”? I guess not.

2. Most people know that celebrities are paid to endorse products regardless if they like the products or not. Most of them do it for the money. You’ll have to use another strategy to convince them. I am this type of customer. Give me some real endorsement and I’ll follow you forever.

The best way around these two problems is to use your real customers and regular users of your products as ambassadors and endorsers of your product.

Here are 4 reasons why you owe your customers the ambassadorial right:

1. They give you their money. That’s how your business keeps growing remember?

2. They do your marketing for you by referring their friends to buy your products. Yes, you got that right; it’s called word of mouth marketing.

3. They help you improve because they give you their feedback. The awards for “quality”, “best product”, et cetera, was made possible because of them.

4. They use your product. They bought from you because they trusted you. You also owe them some trust and need to appreciate them. Fair right?

Why do you think Facebook is asking us to share our Facebook stories? Most of us have been evangelists for them and even continue to be. Sharing stories on Facebook means bringing back memories. Memories carry emotions along with them. Emotions sell. It means you’ll be promoting Facebook even more.

I read some people’s stories on Facebook and I thought to myself, “This site is really changing the world in other areas too, apart from business”. I think Facebook made their stories application public (you don’t even need to sign-in or sign-up to read people’s stories) in order to make us all see how they are changing the world and also encourage others to join. That sets our emotions in because they are not things Facebook is saying, it’s what ‘we’ (the users) are saying about what Facebook did for us.

My point with Facebook is that, they have created a category for their loyal fans (or evangelists) to share their stories. This has gotten blogs and other news media to talk about their (Facebook’s) new innovation and more people will jump on board to see what people have discovered/achieved through Facebook. It will also increase loyalty among current users.

Planning Your Company’s own stories:

So how do you choose ambassadors from your customers? Use the people who have already bought from you as your brand ambassador. Contact them and tell them you want 1, 3, or maybe 5 of them to be ambassadors of your brand. Tell them about the benefits and exactly what you want them to do to be considered. Whatever you do, don’t tell them to send an application in.

Tip: Instead of telling them to send in an application with a resume attached, you can organize a short quiz of say 10 questions and ask them to head towards there and answer the questions. Don’t forget to collect their names; email or phone numbers after the quiz so that you know who answered what.  This whole process will let you assess the strengths of your ambassadors-to-be before you choose them.

Things to be considered as useful strengths for brand ambassadors are:

1. Good communication skills; language, grammar, etc.
2. Knowledge about your products
3. A little time to spare after their day job or on weekends.
4. Feedback givers or readers of your blog

After choosing your ambassador, send a message to your other customers and prospects and let them know the criteria you used in making the decision.

Get your brand ambassador(s) a blog on your domain to share experiences with your product and interact with other customers.

Do any of these to allow customer interaction:

1. Allow comments on the blog,

2. Get a Twitter account for ambassadors only,

3. Get a number for them where other customers can reach your ambassador. If your ambassadors are extremely busy during weekdays and can’t take the phone, allow calls only on weekends.

Just get creative. Play with ideas (gosh, I like saying this a lot ).

Treat your ambassadors like celebrities and let them show on their special blog. Put your product ambassador’s picture on your home page and link to their blog from there. Other customers will definitely like to be treated that way. This will increase customer loyalty.

Let your brand ambassador(s) work with your marketing team. They should report to the marketing manager or whoever you deem fit.

Some brand ambassador responsibilities include:

• Gather feedback: let your ambassador(s) help you gather feedback
• Organize meetups with other customers to talk about your product or show off their versions or models of your product. Note that this works best with physical goods
• Report on product updates based on the feedback he or she delivered
• Share their own thoughts and experiences with your products
• Tell other customers what they are enjoying as ambassadors to your product.

Your brand ambassadors should be paid for all their work.

You can pay them back by:

1. Giving them the biggest discounts on your products
2. Giving them some cash benefits
3. Giving them some of your products for free
4. Letting them choose a cause they will like you to donate some of your products or cash to.

Try a combination of these payment methods or add your own.

Five benefits of using real customer(s) as brand ambassador(s) are:

Okay, let’s slow down for a bit. The four reasons I stated for why you owe your customers the ambassadorial rights are the first four benefits you will get from your customers if you make them brand ambassadors.

The only difference is that, there will be more of it; more money in your bank (sales), more referrals, more feedback and more trust. So the last benefit will be:

5. It creates new buzz for your business. People will talk about what you are doing regardless of them being customers or not. Just like what is happening with Facebook stories right now.

Even though you have all these ideas to try out, make sure your brand ambassadors approve of what is included in the contract.

Do you already have a customer strategy? What would you like to add or subtract?

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Hello everyone. I have packaged some of my best blog posts into a tidy PDF so that you could read them offline and share them if you want. Yes, it is just for you so go ahead and download your copy. It is FREE.

The PDF shares 10 posts from this blog. All articles talk about marketing; branding, social media, etc.

It is easily sharable (incase you want to show it to your friends or colleagues) so go ahead and share it as much as you like. Your audience will thank you for giving them a valuable resource.

Click on this link to start your download.

P.S., I am available for hire if you want to have something like this for your blog or business. Get in touch.

How many leads do you generate every month with social media? If you’re not getting enough leads, today is your lucky day.

After reading this article, you’ll have 10 ideas you can use to increase your website traffic and leads. You may already know some of the ideas but trust me; there will be some you don’t know. So make sure to read through all the ideas and let me know if you’re already using any.

Let’s begin.

1. Create a digital product, write guest posts and offer your product for free in your byline. The product could be an eBook, infographic, themes or any other digital product. Make sure you have your website links in the document. You can also encourage people to share it and put a link back to your site. Tip: A little bird told me that Infographics spread like wildfire .

2. Search Twitter for discussions related to your niche. If there are any questions, answer them with an @ reply and provide a link back to your blog post or any relevant page on your site. This tip doesn’t necessarily grow your traffic but it sure will give you quality leads if done right.

3. Turn your blog posts into slide presentations and upload them to slideshare and scribd. Put your website and social media profile URLs in there so people who view your slides can pay you a visit. This is a cool way of repurposing your blog posts and regaining some value back.

4. Plan a series of Videos and use Tubemogul to post them to the various video sites. Make the videos as interesting as possible. By interesting, I mean enlightening, funny, … something people will remember. At the end of each video, ask people to go to your site and sign up for your newsletter in order to receive new video alerts and other updates from you.

5. Answer relevant questions on Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers, Yedda and Answers.com. Ask people to Google “your business name or any keyword you rank #1 for” and click on the first result. You can post your website URL straight away but do that less often so you’re not seen as a spammy contributor to these sites. One more thing, answer the latest, freshest questions if you want to see any relevant increase in traffic.

6. Post short useful articles on forum sites relevant to your niche and leave a link back to your site.

7. Create an eBook. Take a sample out and make a PDF out of it. Share it on Lulu and Docstoc. At the beginning and end of the sample, provide a link to a page where people can put in their email addresses to receive the full book/report. Encourage people to share it with their friends and colleagues.

8. If you want to rank high for any keyword or phrase, make that phrase your anchor text in your guest post bylines. For example, say you want to rank high for the key phrase, “brand communication”, you use that as your anchor text and put your website link there. The higher the PR of the blog you are posting on, the better your chances of ranking higher. Do this consistently for all guest posts you write and use the same key phrase until you are on page 1 of Google’s search. I am on page 2 of Google right now for the key phrase, “brand communication” and I only used that as my anchor text in just one guest post. When I use it again on a top PR (page rank) blog, I will rank even higher. Try it for yourself. By the way, this is a neat trick I learnt from Brian Clark’s “How to Create Compelling Content That Ranks Well in Search Engines”. Download a copy on this page: SEO Copywriting Made Simple.

9. Answer Questions on LinkedIn. Connect with other professionals. Ask your past customers for recommendations. Jason Falls wrote an article on how to make LinkedIn answers part of your routine so head towards his blog to read about it.

10. Run a survey on your blog, Twitter and Facebook and share the results with other people. Explain the methodology and findings of your survey and publish the results in PDF format and share it on your site and other sites. Send a message @ everybody who participated in the survey on Twitter with a link to the results. You can also contact bloggers in your niche and ask them to share your findings. Tamar Weinberg shows you how to pitch superstar bloggers here: How to Get an Influencer’s Attention.

Phew! That was a short ride . Okay, seriously, you should apply these tips. You don’t have to implement all at once. Bookmark this page, start with 2 or 3 strategies and come back later to try out the other ones. Some may work for you and some may not.

Remember, social media is a lead generation tool and newsletters are your lead collection and sales tools so have your newsletter signup boxes ready to collect email addresses. Prepare some bait for the stubborn ones .

What strategy do you use to build more leads, links and traffic?

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As marketers, we are constantly faced with the challenge of getting leads and converting those leads into customers. Because of the challenging nature of our trade, some of us tend to get frustrated and thus, ignore the basic ingredients needed for getting sales.

We are going to look at some common mistakes marketers make and how to avoid them. If you are making any of these mistakes, get rid of them immediately.

1. Over-promising: When you over-promise, you almost always deliver products that are at or below par with your promises. It’s better to under-promise. Leave some of the good stuff (services or bonuses) and give it to people who take action later as a reward. This will mean, you will be over-delivering on your initial promise. This has worked for me and most other good marketers and it will work for you too.

2. Arguing With Your Customers: Don’t argue with your customers. An argument is bad for business. If a prospect or customer challenges you, don’t tell them they are wrong because they may be right. Telling them they’re wrong will lead to an argument and this will do your business no good.

I remember buying something online and after 2 hours, my account was deactivated without any notice. I didn’t receive an email or a call giving me reasons why my account was deactivated.  I sent an email to support and they told me my account was active. I sent another one and then a third one before I got a message that said something like, “Oh, I just checked your account. It wasn’t active. I have activated it now.”

Then I checked my account again, and it was active. I had to send 3 emails. What they were telling me indirectly when I sent the first 2 was that I was not telling them the truth. Meanwhile, they were the ones not telling the truth about the status of my account. That is bad customer service. I haven’t bought anything again from them ever since.

3. Not studying your better competitors: You can learn and use the techniques that your better competitors are using to rake in sales for their products. Study and emulate their winning selling strategies, product launch strategies and their customer feedback.

The internet has made it possible to learn more about your customers. There are tools like SEMRush that help you know what keywords your customer is using. Again, you can use Twitter search, Facebook and Youtube to study your competitor’s customer feedback. You will know their winning strategies if they use it over and over again. If they use one strategy and stop using it after a little while, it means it went bad. Copy the better strategies but make yours stand out by adding extra value.

4. Lying in sales presentations: Nothing can ever make you suck as a marketer as much as lying in your sales presentation. If your product can’t perform a particular stuff, don’t say it can. If you haven’t sold 1,000’s of products in 24hrs don’t say you have. When just one of your customers find out that you are lying, it spreads out like wildfire and your reputation goes down the drain. You lose your customers to your competitors and it will be hard to get them back. Avoid lies, speak the truth, and you’ll win.

5. Not following-up: After your presentation, some people will buy your product straight away. Others will have to be courted. They may need a better offer or they may need a reassurance. Follow up on your leads and reassure them of your product and offer. Also, invite them to send you any questions they may have about your product via email, Twitter or on phone. They may need some things cleared up before they buy. Find out what it is.

6. Not Using Compliments: Compliments sell products. It is one of the most powerful marketing weapons that will help you sell more and also help start customer relationships. Psychologically, people are happy when you compliment them on their actions. It makes them start to like you.

Examples and Ideas: If you sell shirts, you can say something like, “Excuse me, I am Alfred, I like your suit and I know just what shirt will match it perfectly. Here is my card, call me or visit my website if you want to see some of my shirts”. This is a much friendly approach and you can see there is a compliment in that statement. If you say something like that, you will have the guy thinking, “What? Doesn’t this shirt match my suit?” and he will probably check you out. Be sure not to put the prospect in an embarrassing situation..

Membership site owners and newsletter publishers often use something like, “Bravo on your decision to join us” or “Congratulations on wanting to fulfill your desire” or “You made a right choice to visit us”.

Let’s say you are selling video game CDs, you can say something like, “You bought a wonderful console but there’s no fun in it until you have a game to play on it. Check out all the latest games from our store. We carry the best titles. It’s time to make your friends jealous.”

The compliment here is “You bought a wonderful console”. The last statement, “Time to make your friends jealous” sends the prospect or customer imagining what his or her friends will think about his new game. Let’s face it, we all like to impress.

Complimenting people after they have purchased something from you makes it easy to sell more products to them. You know why? When you compliment them, their brains translate it as “You made a smart decision”. So in order to keep that smartness, they will take the same action they took before.

Imagine a hot guy or girl complimenting your perfume or cologne. What will you think? Will you throw away that cologne or keep on using it? Will you buy a different one when the one that got the compliment is finished? I guess not.

That is how the human brain works. We like to feel smart and when someone tells us that we are smart, we always want to show them we still are smart so we do what they want us to do.

When you use compliments, avoid desperation. The whole idea is to make the customer feel like it is their idea when they buy what you are suggesting.

Don’t let it seem like you are trying to sell them another thing. Make it sound like you like their first action but you will suggest they should do this and that to get the complete solution to their needs. Do you get the idea?

7. Not Showing Interest In Your Customer’s Problem: Offer to solve your buyers problems with your products or services and then they will naturally be interested in you and keep coming back.

If you listen to what your market wants and let them know your product can solve their problems, you will most likely make the sale.

You can gather info through surveys or requesting feedback about your products or services through email, suggestion boxes in your office, telephone, etc. This is how you can find out your market’s problems.

People are interested in themselves more than anybody else. This principle also applies to when they are buying something so you have to make sure they get what they want; not what you want them to buy from you. Persuade your prospects with a good offer, excellent communication and a great product.

Be a good listener and encourage your prospects to tell you about what they need. Also, encourage them to give you their complaints about your products and their ideas of how to improve it. Get them involved and you all will see positive results.

8. Not Showing Appreciation: Show appreciation to your prospects after each action they take. Send them cards during occasions like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc. Write a short message to them and make sure you refer to them by their individual names. This makes the card more personal.

You can finish the message by leaving a discount code by saying something like: “Use this code during this festive season to get a 20% discount on our items” or you can also say something like, “Bring this card to any of our shops for a special gift when you order items costing $100 and above”. Don’t sell any particular item. Just give them a discount code.

You can also send a “thank you” note even if it’s not Christmas or even if your customer has not ordered anything in a while. Make sure it is branded to fit your business; with your logo, contact details and USP.

Again, don’t try to sell them anything in your thank you note. Just keep it simple like “(your customer’s name), Thank you for buying from us. We value you as our customer and we hope to be at your service again soon. We promise another special buying experience or a better one since we constantly keep improving.”

You will increase sales and will get a customer who will stay with you for long if you show them how valuable you think they are by appreciating them like this. If you love your customers, they will love you back. Period!

9. Making Market Assumptions: You can’t assume that your customer will buy your products if you haven’t done any research on what they want and how they want it. You can use the internet to research buyer conversations on the products you’re selling or about to sell. Use Twitter search, your competitor’s Facebook fan page and blogs and find out what their customers complain about in the comments area. When you find a couple of holes, write down which ones you can fill and add it to your production selling process. Using feedback and testimonials from your existing customers also helps you understand them better.

10.Providing inadequate product information: If you are selling a book on marketing, can you please tell us the contents? Some sellers don’t provide enough information about their products but they expect us to buy them. I won’t buy a book that only has “The Sociatic Marketing Book: A book for 21^st century marketers. Price: $27” as its description. Even if it is selling at $1, I will find it difficult to buy because I don’t know what it is actually about. What if it’s like all the other marketing books I have bought and read? I won’t take any chances and I bet your prospects will also feel the same way.  Note: This is not a counter-argument against my first point of under promising. Under-promising involves waiting for customers to heap praises on your products; how it helped them and what they think about each feature. Over-promising is when you praise your products and tell your customers that it is 100% efficient. Instead of praising yourself, let your customers do it for you and use their praises as testimonials in your sales material.

Conclusion:

If you are making any of the mistakes above, make sure you take them out from your marketing. Some of the mistakes will damage your reputation and will sink your sales fast. Change is possible. It only takes some effort and some patience.

If you want to receive more tips like this one, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Further reading:

Customer Loyalty Comes from Conversation: ConversationAgent

What Does Your Audience Need: Chris Brogan

Customers follow or ‘unfollow’ brands because of their experience with them. They follow brands because of their faith in that brand. Because they know what they will always be getting from that brand. Because that brand has a unique spot that serves the industry in which they find themselves.

Apple is followed because of their revolutionary and innovative products. Mercedes is followed because customers are assured of luxury and quality engineering. CNN is followed because they are first in news. The list of unique, remarkable brands goes on and on.

Now let’s shift focus to you. What makes your brand unique? Before people will follow your brand, you need to show them something they can have faith in. Something that is difficult to find in your competitor’s products. Something that will stand for your brand; be your brand’s definition.

There are a few ways you can achieve this. One way is to be unique in a remarkable way. Creating a remarkably unique brand image helps you dodge most of the competition. Facebook understood this when they started. They didn’t want to be just another social network, they wanted to be more and they succeeded.

There are millions of businesses trying to copy each other. The sad thing is, most of them die fast. Most become bankrupt because they spend lots of money to advertise their ‘common’ products; products just like the others. This is no way to win. Something has to be different about you.

Building a remarkable brand takes lots of creativity and innovation. Counterfeiters know this, that’s why they spend money producing product look-alikes instead of investing that same money into their own product ideas.

If you want to run a ‘monopoly’ in today’s marketplace, build a unique brand. If you can get your customers to have faith in your brand’s attributes, you have a ‘monopoly’. Apple is running a ‘monopoly’ in their marketplace because they are remarkably unique in everything they do. What can you do to make your business a ‘monopoly’?

The second way you can build a faithful customer base is to treat all customers equally. Treat the $1 item buyers the same way as $1,000 item buyers. When you do this, people become more attached to you and your business will grow. A $1 item buyer could bring you a $1,000 item buyer through word of mouth so why don’t you treat them equally eh?

The third way you can bring in faithful customers is to be consistent at what you are best known for.  If you are remarkable, stay remarkable. Start with innovation and continue with innovation. Complacency is not accepted in business because your customers and competitors are watching you. In fact, your customers are watching you and your competitors at the same time. Once they notice you have stopped evolving, they will move on to the other company that has evolved.

Consistency builds faith.

How do you know if you have faithful customers?

Your customers have the best answer to this question. They don’t have to tell you in words. Their actions are there to assess yourself.

5 ways you can tell if you have faithful customers are:

• They refer other customers to you
• They give you feedback about your products
• They buy from you for the second time…third and fourth times …again and again.
• They defend your brand when people spread negative rumors about it.
• They give you a second chance when you flop. Please Note: Second chances are mostly given to brands that have been consistent at something for a long time and then all of a sudden, slack a bit.

If your customers do this for you, then you earned their trust.

It doesn’t matter if you agree with me or not but your customers are your most valuable assets. Like all your other assets, you need to get them to work for you. You need to understand them in order to leverage them. Don’t focus all your efforts on advertising. Focus a big chunk of your efforts on your building customer relationships too. If you’re in business for the money, you lose focus on the customer but if you decide to be in business for the customer, you build a better business.

Differentiating your brand from other brands can be a daunting activity these days. This is because of the many other brands that are also out there competing for attention from the same audience you need.

In this article, we will not be looking at the very basics of brand recognition: logo and brand colors. What I’ll be sharing with you are tips that will give your brand a unique image and the unique voice it needs to speak to its audience. I am using the word “unique” because every brand has a voice so if I use just “voice” it will sound too regular. You don’t want a regular brand. That sucks.

When your brand has a unique voice, every message it sends out is heard by its audience; the right audience. Your audience will then send out your message to other people who may already be involved in your brand’s conversations or may be total strangers to your brand.

All-in-all, it is essential to give your brand a voice that can be differentiated from the masses.

Let’s look at the ideas you can use to boost your brand.

1. Use a Powerful USP: I am not going to assume you already know what a USP is, so I’m going to define it. A USP is the abbreviation for Unique Selling Proposition, which is a feature of a product or brand that makes it different from other products or brands it competes with. To form a strong brand, you will need a powerful USP that people will want to put to test. For example, a pizza delivery service may have, “we deliver in 30 minutes” as their USP. If you have a pizza delivery service and you think you can deliver in 20 minutes within a certain radius, use “we deliver in 20 minutes within ‘x’ miles” as your USP. Use USPs that sound better than your competitors’ USPs and you will be one step toward winning.

Caution: Be sure you can guarantee that you can deliver on your USPs promise before you put it out in public. If you don’t do this and you keep on breaking your promises, you will fail fast.

2.Use a Mascot: Mascots are great brand building assets. The Santa Clause we know today was a mascot for a Coca-cola X’mas campaign. The campaign was so successful that the image of the mascot spread across borders and the jolly mascot in the red and white suit is what so many people around the world refer to as Santa Clause or Father Christmas in some countries. It’s a shame so many people don’t know about where the new Santa Clause image (as we know it today) came from. You can also create a mascot that will spread your brand’s voice across borders.

3. Create a Tradition: Start a brand tradition. Some businesses have a freebie day as their tradition. They give out free stuffs only on those days. This gets people to spread the word out to their friends. You can choose to do certain things on certain days; on your brand’s birthday, or on Christmas day or Independence day. It could be a once in a month, once a week or once in a year tradition. It could also be a full day or half day event. Choose a day and do something remarkable on that day. Some ideas: give your biggest discounts on those days, host customer meetups on those days only.

4. Customer Participation: Host online and offline meetups for your customers. Get them involved in competitions. Choose brand evangelists from them. They own your brand on the internet now so give them a chance to be part of it. When you do great things for your customers, they will do greater things for you. Reciprocity, remember?

Below is a video of a Mini Cooper meetup. Mini Cooper owners met to showcase their cars and engage in Mini conversations. Can you imagine the benefits? Watch the video and see what I mean.

5. Staff Participation: You and your staff need to participate in customer meetups, your business’ online communities and industry events. Wear T-shirts with your brand’s identity to events that don’t have a dress code attached to the invitation. If you have a mascot, you can even take it along.

6. Practice Barter: There might be an area in your business that itches constantly. Get another business to scratch that itch so that you scratch theirs. Every business has an itch. If you are great at accounting and awful at marketing, marketing is your itch. There are businesses that also have accounting as their itches but that are great at marketing. If there is a situation like this, you can exchange your “itch scratching” services instead of paying for them. You can then ask the other business to list you as their partner on their website or other places both of you deem suitable.

7. Leverage influence: Do you know of a place where your target market is constantly gathered? Blogs are great examples of where you can find your target audience. Reach out to influential bloggers to publish reviews of your products to their readers for a fee or service exchange (remember barter?). When you reach out to influencers, be succinct and straight to the point; don’t go on and on with your idea in the first message. If they want to know more, they will ask you. You can also choose to write guest posts for them if you don’t want to pay with your time (at least, much of it) or money.

8. Start a cause: If you have the support, start a cause. By support, I don’t necessarily mean money. Having a large customer base is also support. Help people save the environment, help people feed orphans, help people save animals, help people do… et cetera. Put your brand forward. Be genuine; no melodrama accepted please.

9. Watch Your Footsteps: Watch your brand’s activities in order to keep your reputation clean. Your competitors will be watching your footsteps and they may be ready to bring you down. Cover where you step by first making sure it’s the right place to step. Makes sense doesn’t it ? Maybe it doesn’t. Okay, if you step in mud, it will show in your footprints and people will see it. Now it makes more sense .

10. Follow your Mission and Vision: Many businesses with mission and vision statements get side-tracked at some point in time. Some just write their missions and visions and then leave them on the desk to collect dust. They are among the 90% who fail. Want to win? Don’t let your mission and vision statements collect dust. If you don’t like it, re-strategize and change its content.

11. Create a comic: There’s nothing like a good laugh right? Consider hiring someone to create a comic about what your brand or the industry you find yourself in. Make a comic of your brand (or your mascot. That is, if you have one) kicking the ass of your biggest competitor. Make it funny, put it on your site, make it downloadable and encourage people to share it. Have your own ideas? Play with them and get that comic out.

12. Get Free Media Publicity: Getting media publicity is fairly easy. You just have to be worthy to be talked about. Perhaps, you started a cause about the environment and have made some contributions. Great! Request to share your story on the green channel or in the green magazine. Maybe a big industry player was at your event. That is great too. Interview that person and give it to the appropriate media to publish or broadcast for the price of them making reference to your business as the source. Don’t be shy to ask for the credit. If you do something remarkable, work at getting free media publicity.

13. Consider Your Website: On your website, tell people about your traditions and everything about your brand. Get them interested in you. If you communicate your brand’s story with them, they will be easily convinced to get involved with you. Integrate your social profiles on your website so that your audience can engage with you on the social side of the internet.

14. Be Consistent: There has never been an inconsistent brand that won the battle of branding. If you are not consistent with your branding efforts, you send different (very confusing) signals out to your target audience. If you want to win, be consistent with your efforts in all branding areas.

Did you get any ideas from this list? Write them down. Develop a strategy on how you are going to deploy them and take action. Don’t leave your brand’s tongue hanging out like “blahh”. Put it back into its mouth and let it start talking.

There is so much rock and roll going on involving businesses running social media campaigns. However, there are not many social media rockstars. Their guitars vary. Some rock hard and some… not so hard. Some even have broken guitar strings. We don’t notice the size of their guitars though. What we notice is the kind of music they produce.

There are certain characteristics that differentiate the effective social media campaigns from the boring ones. You need to learn these characteristics if you also want to be effective with your campaigns.

Don’t worry if your ‘strings’ are broken. You can fix it.

Here are 25 characteristics of highly effective social media campaigns (from the rockstars) and some tips to help you rock like them.

1) They spread like wildfire. Effective social media campaigns spread very fast. If your campaign is not spreading, it is not effective. Test the waters with micro campaigns. Learn to swim before attempting to ride the big waves.

2) They are not spammy. Don’t just promote your site links; share something insightful about your company or product. Don’t send out the same message to your community. It is spam…and it is very annoying to them. Even to you. Admit it.

3) They provide value. Value can come in the both physical and mental forms. Effective campaigns provide value in any or both of these regards.

4) They are well branded. Clothe your campaign from head to toe with your company’s identity. Use your logo, your USP or slogans, your colors, and any other thing that defines your business’s identity. Add your brand to every video you produce; don’t add just your website address.

5) They are measured. You need to track your social media marketing efforts. Whether you install Google Analytics on your Facebook fan page or you use Post rank to measure your effectiveness, make sure you work with the data.

6) They have excellent copy. Leave a positive impression in just a few words. Using big vocabulary is not the way to go; making sense is what matters.

7) They don’t ‘sell’. Instead of selling, you should work at generating leads with your social media campaign. Sell to those leads later on.

8 ) They build relationships. Don’t just broadcast. Interact. Building relationships  helps build even more relationships. It also increases the perception of value and builds loyalty.

9) They build trust. Be as honest in your campaign as possible. Trust is very hard to earn back once lost. Your campaign should build and maintain trust in your build.

10) They are innovative. Regular campaigns mostly go unnoticed. Innovation adds ‘flavor’ to your campaign. It is the aroma of your campaign and the one thing that will convince most people to take action.

11) They have ears. Your campaign will not be successful unless you listen for feedback. People may have something to say so listen and show appreciation or let them know you are working on it. Never delete a negative feedback.

12) They are well organized. Your campaign needs to be well planned. It should have a first step and an nth step (where n is the number of the last step). Follow through from step 1 through to step n. Don’t go from step one to step 3 to step 2. Plan your steps well so it is easy to follow through step 1 to the last step.

13) They are maintained by humans. Don’t rely on automation when it comes to marketing on the social web. It just won’t work. Besides, it destroys trust. Put a human being in front of, in-between and behind all your social media campaigns. I want to talk to a human being not a robot.

14) They are consistent. You need to be consistent with your update (or broadcast) schedules and interact with people who leave replies and comments. If you broadcast once a week and change to 5 times a day, people will begin to question your actions. Unless you give them good reason why you have changed your schedule.

15) They have bait. You need to have some sort of bait to convert visitors into leads. Try eBooks, free products, white papers, discount codes, samples, free vouchers, et cetera. Bait them to get them .

16) They use leverage. They leverage the subscriber bases of their communities and other people’s communities. They also leverage their company strengths.

17) They include a blog. I suggest you have a business blog before you start your campaign. Your blog should be the hub of your social media campaign efforts. Make you install social media sharing buttons to make it easier for others to share your blog’s content.

18) They engage other blogs. You can do this too. Apply as a guest writer for blogs in your target market. Read blogs in your niche and leave thoughtful comments (not just a “thank you”).

19) They are not everywhere. If you want your campaigns to be successful, don’t register for an account on every social media site. That will only burn you out and your campaigns will be fruitless.

20) They have humor. Adding humor to marketing is a cool way of saying “we are a friendly business”. It makes your marketing memorable. A priceless result.

21) They share company events. If your company is being bad mouthed, tell your customers about it. Tell them the truth in it and the lies. Don’t give them the chance to second guess your company. If your company is nominated for an award, tell your community about it. If your company wins the award, tell them. If you lose the award, tell them.

22) They integrate offline marketing. Print some T-Shirts, with your logo, Twitter handle, Facebook fan page URL and your slogan on it and give them out to your customers. Send out paper printed catalogs to your online leads. Add your Twitter and Facebook URLs to your contact address. Integrate offline with online.

23) They use the right networks. Even though Facebook supports videos, video campaigns will do better on Youtube than on Facebook.

24) They use photos and videos. Photos and videos leave a lasting impression on peoples’ minds. The best photo you can use is your logo. When you make a video, put your logo on it.

25) They have a call to action. What is the essence of a marketing campaign without having a call to action of some sort? I suggest you use your social marketing campaigns to generate leads before trying to sell anything. By the way, “signup below” and “call us now” are not the only call to action examples. “Click to view our portfolio” is an example of call to action. Your call to actions must follow a sequence; from your homepage to the last page.

Tanaa, tanaa, yay,yay, yay! Sorry, couldn’t help it.

Here are 3 other useful resources:

1. Is Your Social Media Clap-on, Clap-off?

2. Understanding Social Media Using Honey Bees As A Standard Model

3. How to Be in the Right 50% of Social Media Marketing Campaigns

There are lots of valuable tips in this article you could use. I suggest you print it out and use it as a reference when you are running your campaigns. I also encourage you to bookmark it online and share it with your friends and colleagues.

Let me know if you are a social media rockstar. Share any tips, questions or comments you have in the comments area.

Thumbnail photo by Silvertje.