Business Tips

Fellow bootstrapping business professionals: Snapchat is all the rage these days. A younger generation has transitioned away from "boring" Twitter and even "old people" social media leader Facebook (now that their parents and grandparents use it daily). All of the ads on these platforms certainly haven't helped either. Snapchat on the other hand is simple, fun, less commercialized, and has far less text to get in your way. A picture is worth a thousand words after all... so a Snapchat video might be worth 10,000! And like social media platform Pinterest , it's most likely heading for a multi-billion dollar IPO this year! ( Update : It's recent IPO values the company at around a staggering $25 Billion ). That means it's here to stay so you need to stop ignoring it and get on board.  Despite the incredible business potential available on a free platform with millions of users, chances are you aren't a Snapchat marketing superstar... yet. You mos...

While the majority of business leaders and marketers are well versed by now in social media marketing , not everyone is on board yet. There are still a lot of companies, C-Suite level executives, and "old school" workers that aren't aware of what social media marketing platforms really offer. Or their knowledge and experience may be stuck 5-10 years in the past when Facebook, Twitter, YouTube , and LinkedIn were the only real players and things were much different! Most business professionals know the benefits of social media marketing, but below I've written a simplified outline on the various social media platforms that are reshaping the world of business today. You'll also find many links to more detailed and advanced articles I've written on individual platforms, strategies, and case studies. Facebook: Facebook, founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and publicly held, is the largest social network with about 2 Billion users worldwide. Over the past 5 years Fa...

Instagram influencers get paid to promote products and brands through Instagram pictures, videos, and stories. These popular profiles can make 5-7 figures just to influence the shopping preferences of their loyal followers. They range from microinfluencers with 10,000 - 20,000+ followers to full fledged celebrities with millions or tens of millions of followers. Instagram influencers usually make more money than any other online influencers, except maybe YouTube where top Creators can make a whopping 7-8 figures each year. If you can be an Instagram influencer then you should ride that wave for as long as you can.  But most of us aren't true Instagram influencers and never will be, so we need to consider hiring them instead as part of our social media marketing strategy to promote our businesses.  Why Hire Instagram Influencers? Why should your company seriously think about hiring Instagram influencers? Marketing can be challenging in our digital world , and nowadays busines...

Every year the social media landscape shifts as new trends emerge that shape and mold it in different ways. For savvy businesses these trends represent an opportunity to get ahead of the pack and make their mark while engaging a wider audience in the process.  There are already several very noticeable trends that are shaping social media marketing this year. Out of them the 3 that seem to be playing the biggest role are: Live Video  Although live-streaming is nothing new, it is only over the last few years that it has started to be introduced on social media with platforms such as Periscope leading the charge. Now that Facebook has joined in with Facebook Live, and Twitter and Instagram also have their own live video features – the game is truly afoot. Already live video has been shown to increase engagement levels and attract more viewers who stay and watch for longer. In short it is a trend that is likely to define social media marketing for some time.  Social Messag...

Instagram can be a daunting place; there's a huge amount of competition meaning it's easy to put hours of work in with minimal results. However, there are a great variety of tools that can be used to optimize your Instagram strategy , both saving time and leading to quicker growth. Here we outline our favorite 4 tools to supercharge your Instagram page. 1)  Later.com  A huge difficulty with managing an Instagram account in maintaining a regular posting schedule. Creating content is hard enough in itself, but remembering exactly when to post, as well as writing out descriptions and adding tags, can be a real drain on your productivity.  Later.com is an Instagram scheduler that allows you to overcome this problem. You can upload all of your content at a single point in time and set the exact date and time for it to be posted. This also helps with optimizing your posting times as you can see stats on when a picture was posted and how much engagement it received, allowing y...

I'm constantly asked about social media marketing, digital media, entrepreneurship, search engine optimization, retail sales, social selling, and many other topics through various outlets. These business questions come through my website, social media platforms, forums like Medium / Quora / Reddit / Ask /   Google / Inbound.org, and other outlets. When I have a lot of information to share on a particular subject I'll usually write an in-depth answer in the form of an article here... but I don't always have the time. Sometimes I just give a quick answer, or whatever initially comes to mind without prepping or brainstorming.  This series is reminiscent of  hustling entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk 's book #AskGaryVee (which I'm finishing now before posting a review), but I've actually been doing this for years with previous projects and businesses. My first  Bootstrap Business Blog Blitz  was a big hit so I'm making this a mainstay feature on my site...

Enjoy my most recent installment of Bootstrap Business Blog Blitz: answering your questions on social media marketing and more! These days how relevent is it for a blogger to have a Twitter account as opposed to an Instagram account? It’s still very important to have both in my opinion. I get 5–10x the blog and website traffic from my Twitter than I do from Instagram and it has helped my blog / website SEO tremendously. I think most bloggers that use both platforms successfully have a similar experience. Use both well to cover your bases. I like to remind people that “Twitter isn’t dead yet”. Why have I suddenly lost interest in social media pages like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter? I’d have to say that it’s probably a positive thing, unless you are using these platforms for business purposes. I’m on social media all day every day (mostly for work) and it gets old after awhile. Hopefully you are replacing the time you spent on social media with healthier and more productive activ...