This week, we’re offering the second step out of five steps to modern marketing.  Last week we covered defining your value, and this week, we’re moving on to defining your audience.

Hint: it’s not everybody.

Even if everybody would buy it, you can’t market to everyone. Trust me, you don’t have a budget big enough and there is no way to be effective at marketing to every single person on the planet. Or even every person in your community.

So start by asking who would be your best customers, the first people in the door. Or if you’ve already started, ask who your happiest customers are. You know more than you think – list out their age, education, geographic location, do they have kids, drive a car or take public transport, do most of them own houses, do most live within a radius of your store, or do most of your customers come from one industry.  List out as many common characteristics as you can. If you want to reinforce this, send out a survey to your happiest or most frequent customers.

Now you may get different groups, different audiences, what then?  Rank them by primary and secondary audiences.  Your primary audience is the group who are most likely to buy or the most likely to create a long-term relationship with you. The secondary audience will still buy your product or service, they’re just a smaller group or need more efforts to make a purchase.  Remember, you have to rank your resources to ensure you get the most for your marketing dollars – spend wisely with the audience most likely to buy.

After you get your audiences more clearly defined, take time now to create a customer map on paper – answer where does this group mainly work, play, pray, shop, socialize, and surf online? (Not sure, send a survey to your customers and ask). You’ll need this info for step 4, but it’s a good idea to map it out while you’re thinking of your customers now.

Here’s the deal: you want results for both your brand and your bottom line, but you’re stuck with where to get started. Since I work with a lot of emerging companies or new brand efforts, I get this question a lot. How do we get started?  This month, we’re going to bring you 5 easy steps to the basics of modern marketing. Each step is designed to help you bring focus, clarity, direction and action to your marketing efforts.

And while we’re in the modern world and things move at the speed of lightening, be sure to work each step. If you skip one, we’ll let’s just say we’ll be bringing our wellies and helping you get unstuck.

Let’s get started.

Define your value

Seems simple right, but few companies every get to what the value is for their product or service. Start by defining what you do and focus on benefits to your customers. Keep it positive, non-technical and most importantly, convey one single thought. Next, ask how are you unique, what distinguishes you from another company? Answer the “why” – why would people buy your product or service and answer the “what” – what do I get for my money.

If you’re not sure about this, ask your customers – what do they get from your products or services? Sometimes we find our best answers by listening to our customers.

Every company has a visual story to tell. Every. Single. One. And this year, we want you to start thinking of how to share your company, your talent, your product, your services through video.  We’re not talking ads (honestly who watches anything for the ads, except for the Super Bowl) we’re talking about you creating a compelling visual snapshot that share something different with your customers or clients.  Why? Two great reasons: 1) YouTube is the second largest destination for search on the whole web; and 2) according to Forrester Research, video indexes at a rate 50 times higher than text. 

First, grab a smart phone with a video feature or grab a Flip camera for about $120.  And since this whole series is about easy ways to get started, you’ll be happy to know that Flip cameras don’t require software or video training/editing skills. It’s all right there in the camera with it’s own easy steps. Videos for the web don’t need to be broadcast quality, they only need to be good for your web-based audience. Most videos that do well are short, say less than 2 minutes, so keep it in mind when creating your video. (By all means, if you have the cash, make it Oscar-worthy!)

Now, let’s get you started on YouTube in 5 easy steps approach:

1. Go to www.youtube.com and create an account

2. Click on the yellow “Upload” button on the right hand side, select video file.

3. On the new screen, press the button to “Upload Video File”

     a. Locate the file on your hard drive and select

     b. Now YouTube will start the upload

     c. Video cannot be longer than 10 minutes

4. While video is uploading, scroll down to add the

     a. Title – Use keywords that matter, think of how you’d search

     b. Description – Use keywords but be clear about what people will see

     c. Tags – Enter a listing of keywords related to the vide

     d. Category – Select the category which most closely matches your video

     e. Privacy – you’ll want to select Public for most videos

5. Now click on “Save Changes”

     a. You’ll see a message on the new screen that reads, “Success…”

     b. After the video is done loading, you’ll see a “Live” message and your video is now posted.

What makes great video? Share your expertise, answer a question, show a customer event, demonstrate a product, showcase your new offices and more. It’s about showing your customers something more than what they’d get from reading text. For example, if you’re a tire shop, share a short video on how to check the pressure in your tires. It’s a lot easier to see how to do it than how to read it in the car manual.

There is heaps more to spreading your videos around, but for now, create the visual and get started. Send us a link!

(Oh and the irony, we should have made this post a video. So noted.)

It’s already mid-January and on your to-do list was to get started with Twitter. It’s not too late – that’s the nice thing with social media – it’s rarely, if ever to late.  Twitter is a short-messaging platform with great reach to audiences, in fact, according to the research more than 51% of Twitter users will follow a brand or company. Twitter works on multiple levels and has far-reaching benefits. But let’s save the sales pitch and just help you get started. Here’s your step-by-step approach to setting up and to starting to tweet:

1. Go to www.twitter.com

2. Register as a new user

     a. You’ll need a Twitter user name (and yes you can change it later) so keep it simple and avoid punctuation or complicated spellings if possible

     b. You need a 100×10 image (also called an avatar)

     c. You need a bio – 140 characters; key words matter (searchability), if as you’re representing your company, state it (transparency) and finally, caution: this is public

NOTE ON MOBILE:  You can check Twitter and send Tweets from your mobile phone. In fact, many people use Twitter exclusively from mobile phones. On the home page of Twitter are options for downloads at the bottom of the page.  E.g. For the iPhone, HootSuite or Tweetdeck are free options and both are very easy to use; simply download and install from the Apps Store.

What Do I Say?

Now that is the real question isn’t it? The best way to think of what to post is: What has your attention right now?  While Twitter asks you, “what’s happening?” that’s not necessarily the right question to consider.  Describing, sharing, or posting what has your attention is a bit more specific, and quite honestly, interesting.

Tweets tend to fall into three categories: personal, conversational, and promotional.  Almost all successful people on Twitter blend these three categories.

How Do I Tweet?

1. To post a “tweet” simply enter in your 140 characters and hit update

2. If you need to include a URL, use http://bit.ly to save space

3. If you “re-tweet” someone else’s post, start it with RT @theirname

4. If you want to direct message (DM) someone simply exchange the “@” for a “d”

5. If you reply to someone, simply go to the right of their post and you’ll see an arrow icon, click on it. 

     a. this leads you to an update box that has @theirname in the box

     b. this is considered an “open conversation”

     c. take it to DM if you go to more than 3 back-and-forths, otherwise we’re all just eavesdropping

A few notes on etiquette:

• Understand this is social media and not broadcast media (or think of it as no one likes someone who only talks about themselves)
• Do not send off 20 tweets in a row or send tbd tweets – you can lose followers
• If you post someone else’s tweet, include the RT and credit in your post
• If you and another person have more than 3 replies on the same topic, take it offline or to email
• Some text-speak is common, such as “IMHO” (in my humble opinion)
• All of this is in a public domain – heed proper caution

Now there is a lot more to Twitter, but this will get you set up and get you started. There is lots of help out there to help explain how to follow people, the etiquette and the lingo to Twitter. But for now, just get started. And be sure to follow us at www.twitter.com/cloudspark.

In the New Year, you wanted to start a blog for your business or for fun, but you can’t seem to decide on WordPress and you just want to get started. Welcome to the land of so-simple-it’s-like-email and it’s called Posterous.

I like Posterous because of its simplicity, but also because it takes away the technical queasiness when you want to share a video or a photo album. It’s like having your tech-savvy friend take your email and make it a cool post.  It really is that simple, so let’s get started. Here are your step-by-step instructions on how to get started with Posterous:

1. Go to www.posterous.com and create an account.

     a. You’ll get a confirmation email from Posterous asking you to confirm your account.

2. After you sign in, you’ll be taken to the page below and asked to email your first post to the email address post@posterous.com

3. It’s perfectly normal to send a simple first-post such as an introduction

     E.g. This is James with MyBusiness. I’ll be sharing more about X, X, and X.  If you have questions, comments, or ideas for posting, feel free to email me at james(at)mycompany(dot)com. You can also include a photo of your business or other image or video.

4. Next, go back to your Manage page and select Settings this is the place you can add an avatar (photo), your name and professional contact information.

5. You can also change the background theme

     a. Go to My Posterous at the top of the page

     b. It will take you to your personal page

     c. At the top, select the “Posterous” button, it will expand and from there you can select Themes.

     d. Choose a background theme that suits you.

     e. Save changes at the end

6. You can post anytime by emailing post@posterous.com

    a. Common things to post include: Answers to commonly asked questions, New information on new services or products, Examples of good work or innovations working for clients, Photos of new offerings, Photos of teams in action, Videos related to your work, products, services,  

Monitor

Posterous allows you to receive auto-notifications when people comment, link, or respond to your post.

1. Under Manage, look for the Notifications option under Settings. 

       a. It’s a good idea to set up notifications around posts, links, comments.

2. If someone responds with a question, it’s a good idea to reply right there on the post so that others can read the answer as well.

Can I Comment on Post?

Posterous offers full commenting capability with the ability to enable anonymous comments as well as require Posterous, Facebook, or Twitter authentication. See the Commenting and Posting section of Settings from your Manage page.

Spreading the Post

This is one of the best features of Posterous, it will automatically help you spread your blog posts to other social networks.

1. Under Manage, you can select AutoPost

     a. This pulls up a menu of other social sites

2. You can select your posts to be automatically shared with other sites, for example, on Twitter

     a. This saves you from having to remember to share your good thoughts with other social sites, Posterous will do this automatically for you.

3. Be sure to save changes at the end

Posterous really is this simple. So if you’ve thought about creating a blog, but have stopped short because you thought it’d take too much time, well not any more. If you can send an email, you can blog.  You can always find answers on “how-to” at http://help.posterous.com/. Now send us a link!

It’s a New Year, and we want help you know how to take the basic steps in social media. So this whole month, we’re going to post a how-to social media series: Get Started.  Most of us procrastinate until we get past the first step and learn how easy it can be.

So we’re starting here, in WordPress, one of the most popular blogging and web platforms around.  If you’re considering a new website for your business or your blog, it’s the platform we recommend.  But once you’ve got the site, how do you create a new post?  Here are 8 easy step-by-step instructions on how to post on your WordPress blog/page:

1. Go to http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com/wp-admin/edit.php

2. Enter the username and password

3. When you get to the homepage, look on the left side, click on Posts, Click on Add New

a. Now you’ll see the page where you’re going to enter your content

                i. Enter your headline (think keywords here and keep it as short as possible)

ii. Enter the body of your copy (It’s a good idea to write it in Word and spell check it)

b.  If you want to add any visual or attachment:

i. Click on the icon at the top of the place where you put in the body of content, you’ll see “Upload/Insert” and a few icons

First icon is for a photo

Second icon is for a video

Third icon is for music

Fourth icon is for “media” which could be a PDF or other file

(Okay, you’ve got the content in – great!)

4. Right hand side of the page, enter in the Post Tags

a. These are your keywords, so think search engine kind of phrases here

5. Under Tags, you’ll see Categories

a. Select as many of the categories as this post applies to, e.g. events

(You’re nearly all done)

6. At the top right is the Publish section, y ou can “Preview” the post to see how it looks

7. You can publish “Now”

a. Or you can pick a previous date, time or future date, time

8. Ready? Click “Publish”

Ta-da! That’s the easy basics, it really is that simple. Now send us your first post. Or send us feedback on a few steps you might add in the mix.

Have you ever been to a moderated panel presentation only to be let down by panelists who seem to be paralyzed?  Has that panelist ever been you?

Fear no more – we’ve created 12 tips to help you be a successful, confident and memorable panelist, rockin’ it with your very own name tent.  Look below and takeaway tips that allow you to bring value and expertise without being “sales-y,” repetitive or, quite honestly, predictable. (And if you’re the moderator, check out these great tips here and here.) Now panelist, read on:
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