WorkSmart Database Masters, LLC
Eliminating software inefficiencies
On June 8, 2017, Andy Tabisz gave a $500 donation to the Hudsonville Public Schools at the Hudsonville School Board meeting. The donation was on behalf of WorkSmart Database Masters in Grand Rapids, Michigan and made possible by the Microsoft MVP Concierge program through DonorsChoose.org.
The $500 will go towards the high school’s programming class, in which students are learning how to program Arduino boards. Several of the programming students were present to show off what they had created.
Let’s face it, we are a need it now society. From personal life to business, we often try to obtain the big picture far too fast, or even outside of our available means.
We search and we search for a magic bullet that will get us exactly to where we want in success, right now. The problem is, there usually is no magic bullet, and if we spend all our time searching for one rather than putting in the work necessary, we may never find that success.
Don’t let the size of your goal overwhelm you. You should have lofty goals! What you should not have, are “hacks” or ways to leap the canyon to success without ever arriving at the canyon to begin with.
So how do we handle the daunting gap to success? How do we reach our goals, and maintain our sanity at the same time?
By doing only 1% each day.
The number one problem most entrepreneurs, business professionals, and every other human on planet earth has, is we try to take on far too much. This leads to crashing, burning out, and often failure to ever reach our goals. Secondly, we fail to define success, in the terms that apply to us. Success is intentional, so 1% of improvement daily, is success.
This principle has been around since the end of WWII, and is commonly known as the Kaizen principle, which mean continuous improvement among the Japanese. The Japanese and American automakers have instilled this principle in their organizations, to significant effect. The idea is to focus on improving yourself, and your business, with small incremental steps. Just 1% each day, rather than radical knee jerk actions that leave you feeling like you sky dive morning, noon and night.
These small incremental changes each day, will gradually lead to the big picture, the change you want. It might seem like so little, but 1% changes will eventually start compounding, and you’ll notice your success compound along with it.
Spend some time reflecting on these thoughts, and comment below. What is one area you could improve on professionally by 1% each day to drive your business growth?
Ever have those dumbfounded moments, where you do everything right and the results don’t show, and you’re left scratching the top of your head wondering why?
While these moments can be incredibly frustrating in the business world, where results often equal money, they are also an opportunity to learn and improve.
I personally have a great deal of these dumbfounded moments on a weekly basis, but I can say with pride that I am constantly learning new subject matter every day, which is important in an ever-changing field like marketing.
Regarding digital marketing, specifically social media marketing, I had an important discovery this week during one of my numerous bouts of bewilderment. I was married on June 2nd, and no I am not bewildered on that, yet. A couple days later my love and I set out on a two-week adventure of Ireland, of which I took hundreds of photos and hours of GoPro footage, so my wife and I could relive our honeymoon forever, and share with family and friends.
In the process of sharing this media on Facebook, I found that dozens upon dozens of family and friends were liking, commenting on, and sharing photos from our adventure. What perplexed me, was why only 7 people had liked our very professionally edited video shared from YouTube, showing all our adventures in live action. Then the thought crossed my mind, maybe it’s because the video is hosted on YouTube and shared on Facebook, while the photos are directly hosted on Facebook.
So, I created a test, to see if this was the case. I uploaded the video on Facebook directly and shared as a status, and let it sit for a 24-hour period, same as the previously shared YouTube Video. Within 24 hours I had 36 likes, several shares, and numerous comments. This got me thinking about the social media platforms we use for marketing, and how we share our media. Is it possible that these social platforms distribute content differently and more effectively to its users, if the media is hosted through the social platform, rather than just shared from an external source?
This got me wondering about other platforms like LinkedIn. After some digging and trying to determine if a secret formula existed for getting the most exposure, I learned LinkedIn also has a reward system for hosting your media on their site. With LinkedIn however, its tied specially to articles, or blogging, and is through LinkedIn’s publisher tool.
LinkedIn has two options when sharing media, “Post to start a conversation” which is connected only to the LinkedIn connections that you have, and then “Write an Article” which is shared to the Pulse. The Pulse is a central blogging hub that uses LinkedIn’s internal algorithms and matches the right content with the right professional. Whoa! This means my previous blog postings shared from external sources were only being exposed to a few hundred people potentially, as opposed to thousands. The difference is important to understand, so you can reach the audience you are aiming for.
In my excitement, I told my wife what I had discovered, and was received with as much enthusiastic interest as her inviting Bill Cosby to a bar. But I hope you will find this as interesting as I have, and use this information to adjust and change your social media posting habits, and further your marketing goals by gaining maximum exposure and reaching new audiences.
Erik Schreur – BizDev
Business owners often ask a simple burning question – am I marketing my business effectively? This generally centers itself around further questions, of marketing to the correct audience, and in the most efficient way. The answers are less simple, and are largely dependent on the type of business you run.
Many small businesses centered around trades and services such as cleaning, construction, etc., are otherwise content with the success from traditional marketing sources such as newspaper and radio advertisements, in addition to the referrals gained through word of mouth. This form of marketing however, leaves a vast sea of possible clients ignored.
As business owners and marketing professionals, we must recognize the virtual age in which we live. According to a recent study by Zephoria Digital Marketing, 1.28 Billion people use Facebook daily. Is this a market we really want to ignore? You then factor in LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and various Blogs and Forums, and you have a social media gold mine just waiting to be tapped.
With our busy schedules as business professionals, how can we manage to create original content and effectively publish with so many options for social media available? Which brings us to today’s topic, of social media calendars.
As a marketing professional, I’ve come to realize how valuable my time is, and how valuable that time is to the company I work for. To effectively manage a marketing campaign through social media, I needed structure, I needed to plan.
After some research, I realized there was a world of tools available for social media management, including downloadable templates to create calendars of your own. So here are three lessons I learned from creating a social media calendar, and how it helped not only myself to market more effectively, but to gain exposure for our company as well.
1. Establish Measurable Goals
Begin by creating a set of rough one month goals, and what you as a business wish to accomplish through social media. These goals should be measurable, so try to stick with ideas such as subscriber count, number of times your content was shared, or how many conversations began with new possible clients.
Stay clear of goals such as, “I will post three business articles to LinkedIn, and share five technology articles on Twitter by Friday.” This is likely the number one mistake marketers make when using social media. The entire goal of social media marketing, is to provide useful and original content to your readers, and to the audience you want to connect with. Spamming content to your social media accounts will likely have the adverse effect of driving away potential subscribers, or possibly even losing those you already have. Consider what you would want to read, and provide that content.
2. Brainstorm and Document Ideas
This may seem self-explanatory, but you would be surprised at how inefficiently many manage their social media content. The idea is, to create a list of some 30+ topics of interest, that you can set potential dates for writing and sharing. Our team spent approximately 45 minutes, and created a list of ideas for social media content that we refer to on a weekly basis for maintaining our social media presence.
The number two mistake marketers make is instead of brainstorming a list and documenting it for future use, they sit down at their computer, and spend an hour just trying to decide the topic that should be written about that day, and for that social media platform. Remember, your time is valuable. Plan and you will be successful.
Once these topics are documented, create a rough calendar of what days they will be published by, and for what platform they are directed for sharing. This is a crucial point many forget. An article that is suited well for the business world of LinkedIn, may fall flat on Facebook. Ensure you know your audience and what platforms they use, and write your articles to reflect that choice.
3. Follow Through
Probably the most difficult part of a social media calendar, is following through and using it. Our schedules get busy, and sometimes the boss may ask you to take on responsibilities that have a higher precedence. Therefore, brainstorming and planning will save you countless hours of work, as well as stress. No matter how busy you may get, when your calendar indicates a topic is due, put aside an hour and create that content. By not taking the time to maintain the social media accounts and provide additional content, you will likely see your viewer base drop off. It is sad to say that we as humans have such short attention spans, but it’s been proven. Which is why sharing original content on a regular basis is so important to staying relevant. Work on turning the reader into a follower through conversion. We want to keep the reader engaged in order to follow us on different social media platforms.
By maintaining your social media platforms, you will see new business growth. That growth may show itself in the form of new partnerships, clients, or even just a refreshed public opinion, all of which will see your business to success. If you want to check out some easy to use templates to help you get started, see Microsoft’s free Excel calendars, which are a good starting point on which to build, and require no registration unlike many other proclaimed free templates. My hope is that this article sheds some light on the intricacies of social media content, and that you are able to effectively use a social media calendar to drive your business growth.
Erik Schreur – BizDev
erik@worksmartdb.com
Andy Tabisz attended the Microsoft MVP Connections Event on May 6th. During the event the MVP’s found out Microsoft Technology Evangelist David Washington has a crush on MVP’s. So the MVP’s answered with Hooked on a Feeling! https://lnkd.in/es9cEjf