Growing your business successfully online involves knowing which types of consistent actions to take on a daily basis; and having the right systems in place to help you achieve your goals.

One of the most important aspects of growing your business online is converting your website visitors into customers. They need to believe in the mission of your company and connect with message. 

This is where leveraging social media sites like, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest come in. Now, the challenge I have found from growing my own consulting and coaching business as well as coaching primarily female business owners grow, is this... 

We tend to grossly underestimate the time it takes to implement our ideas. See, the ideas are easy; they come a mile a minute, the challenge is converting those ideas into profit. 

In this post "Convert Visitors Into Followers, Subscribers and Customers" I share the easiest, fastest and cheapest ways to grow your social media followers and email list! 

So, my goal with helping you grow your business faster is to take all of the busy and overwhelming tasks off your plate and putting them into a well thought-out online marketing strategy.

No need to stay overwhelmed or on the hamster wheel anymore. There are so many tasks that go into building a profitable business:

• Identifying your ideal customer (remember, I mentioned that to convert your website visitors, they need to buy into your mission and message?). ​
• Crafting a clear and concise message ​
• Online techniques to position your brand well online​
• Planned out content that helps you convert​
• Leveraging top resources and tools to nurture your clients

Plus so much more...

I put together for you a strategy that provides your business with daily, consistent actions; leveraging the right systems to grow. 

If you are interested in finding out how I help businesses grow online, schedule a session with me or find out more about my group and/or one-on-one sessions. Click here. 

What are some of the challenges you face with growing your business online? I'd love to know, please share in the comments.  

Have you heard the phrase "The riches are in the Niches"?

Well, defining a niche in the market place will make your business stand out even though in the beginnings of your business, it may seem like a good idea to shoot for a huge audience with your marketing strategy. Eventually, you will come to realize that marketing to a smaller audience may produce the biggest impact.

It is very important for you to understand that by applying focus to your message, you can more efficiently align your marketing with your audience's interests and deliver more relevant content. The power of niche marketing is that it will set you apart in the field and establish you as the go-to expert.  

​This eBook with printable worksheets will help you take all of your different interests and narrow them down into a clear & profitable brand. 

Once you've started this specialization, start paying attention to this specific group. Keep a keen ear in listening to their feedback and adjust your offers accordingly. With enough care and interest paid to your niche, you will soon have a solid foundation to grow your marketing plan to an even larger audience.

Need help identifying a niche?  Download How To Research A Niche Market To Embrace Your 6 Figure Business. 

The number one aim of every online marketers is to convert visitors into followers, subscribers and customers.  MiloTree helps you achieve those goals.

So, here is one important thing to know. You should make it extremely easy for your website visitors to stay connected with you and your business.

Remember there is a tremendous amount of noise online and your business needs to be able to stand out and cut through that noise so that you can stay top of mind with your online visitors. 

This is where MiloTree comes in. You can sign up for your 30-day risk free account to ensure that you are not leaving your visitors without a way to get more of your promotions and resources. Simply add a pop up to your offer page or your website. It is the easiest, fastest and cheapest ways to grow your social media followers and email list.  

​Adding a popup can significantly increase optin from your website.

Email is the Holy Grail of online marketing -- basically -- it is your money and so  ensure that your business is being proactive and collecting those emails to stay connected with your ideal audience.

This is why you need a pop up on your site to collect your online visitors email addresses in exchange for the opportunity to stay connected with you and the value your business offers.

Need help with your online marketing? Schedule a complimentary session here. 

Social media marketing keeps getting harder. The burning questions entrepreneurs are asking: How do I reach my target audience? How do I get interaction on my Instagram and Facebook business page? How do I stand out in the crowd? And more.
Gain access our Instagram Marketing Group here. 

Here are some tips you can integrate into your routine today to improve your reach.

1. Double check graphic sizes before creating any graphics for your ads as they are always changing. If you use a program such as Canva, their templates are usually current with size requirements.
2. Incorporate graphics of people as these often convert better than graphics of things. Think about what you relate to most. Is it interesting people or objects? Now how does that apply to your target audience?
3. Ask meaningful questions and reply to your followers. Social media marketing is about the conversations you can start or join that advance engagement. 
4. If you choose to boost a post or use paid ads, narrow your target. For example, instead of Men and Women in the U.S. between 18 and 65, target Women in the Northeast. between the ages of 30 and 50. This should reflect your target market. You’ll get more engagement, get more results, and reduce costs.
5. Instagram and Facebook are red hot platforms; however, try boosting blog posts on Twitter instead. Twitter has a lower cost per click. If you’re successful, then do it on Facebook & Instagram too.
6. On Twitter and Instagram, create actionable hashtags like #betterforit that Nike Women used in one of their campaigns. You’ll get more attention.
7. Leverage life events in your social campaigns to make a huge impact on your audience. For example, share pictures from a dinner out with clients or your 40th birthday and share how these relate to your follower’s interests and needs.
8. Try bypassing the landing page by using “call now” buttons so you can talk directly to potential customers or sell directly without a landing page.
9. Social needs to be hyper-visual. Create a beautiful visual experience for your followers on social media. Be sure to stay on brand with colors, fonts and messaging.
10. Focus on building communities on social with #hashtags on Twitter and Instagram, also with groups on Facebook.
11. Use live events to increase engagement. You can use Facebook Live, Twitter Live, or Instagram to go Live.
12. It’s important to monitor your social media marketing activities whether paid or free to ensure that the time and money you spend is getting the results you expect. Use this information to constantly tweak your marketing tactics.

Are you overwhelmed with social media? Unfortunately, or fortunately, it is necessary to market your business. The good news is, you don’t have to go it alone. Contact me to see how I can help.

Instagram might actually be fixing the feed! They announced major changes for your feed this morning. Instagram isn’t quite bringing back the chronological feed, but it will show more new posts and stop suddenly bumping you to the top of the feed while you’re scrolling.

To quote Instagram: “With these changes, your feed will feel more fresh, and you won’t miss the moments you care about”. It should be more coherent to browse the app now that you won’t lose your place because your feed randomly refreshes, and there shouldn’t be as many disparate time stamps to juggle. Instead, you’ll be able to manually push a “New Posts” button when you want to refresh the feed.

In June, 2016, Instagram announced that it would move away from a feed in chronological order, instead, showing pictures it thinks you’ll be more interested in near the top. That is whether they’re old or not. Today, Instagram says this is changing, meaning we could be seeing a chronological feed again!

This change is such major news! Instagram further wrote: "Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing more about improvements we’re making to feed. Our goal is to be the best place to share and connect with the people and interests that matter most to you."
This might be the best Instagram feed fixes ever!
Prepare yourself, Instagram fans and business women these changes are rolling out now.

Tell me, are you excited about this new "Instagram New Posts" Button? Share in the comments. 

Instagram Stories can essentially be summed up as Instagram’s take over of SnapChat. Complete Domination! IG Stories are photos, videos and text that Instagrammers can take and share with their users but which will ‘disappear’ after 24 hours if they are not saved to the highlights.


Why Instagram Stories Matter

Instagram Stories essentially give you a new way to communicate with your audience that is a lot more direct and immediate, which will almost immediately help you to increase engagement with your audience. For Business owners, this is major!

This is because it makes your audience feel as though you are talking to them directly. Most Instagram Stories give a peak of what is happening during your day, some special offer or inspiration. This makes your audience feel almost as though they are being ‘brought along for the ride’ and almost as though they are there with you.

What’s more, is that the temporary nature of the content will make it so much more compelling and more exciting because it will be time-limited. This happen in live action when recording "Cover The Bases With Instagram Stories for Your Business." That means that if your viewers don’t check it out quickly, then they will risk missing it entirely! That alone, makes viewers want to view your stories. 

Another thing to consider about Instagram Stories, is that they will appear right at the top of your viewer’s feed – thereby ensuring that they will be much more likely to see it.

​

How to Make Your Instagram Stories Successful

So, the question is: how do you go about making your Instagram Stories successful? What is the secret to doing this well? I cover the bases in this step-by-step training. 

Perhaps the biggest challenge for many business women will be in knowing when to use Instagram Stories and how to navigate all its features.

One way to think about this is to consider the difference between content that perfectly embodies your brand, versus content that you want to share with your current fans directly.

Letting your followers feel as though they are getting to know you is a great way to increase trust and brand loyalty and especially if you have a ‘personal brand’. 

In the Instagram Stories training, I share the power of live as well as how to use Instagram stories features to engage more with your audience.

There are a variety of options that Instagram Stories give you: the option to create live videos as mentioned, or to make ‘boomerangs’ which are essentially short repeating videos much like GiFs. All of these provide you with new ways to more directly and personally reach out to your followers.

Want to build a better brand or business presence on Instagram? Do you know that accounts that publish 7+posts a week get the most follower growth and engagement? Increasing your number of posts just got a bit easier, with Planonly. 

Planoly, a visual planner and scheduler for Instagram allows you to manage, plan and schedule your Instagram posts from your computer and mobile phones. Create a cohesive Instagram feed and manage multiple accounts using this app. Now there is even bigger news! 
Instagram now allows Planoly users to auto-post directly to Instagram! 

Yes, that means, no more push-notifications from your phone! They have completely eliminated this extra step, which will free you up for doing other revenue-generating activities in your business. Sign up for your Free Planonly account here. 

To help you get straight to the details of how to turn on Planonly's auto-feature, I have shared the steps in the video, courtesy of our Instagram Marketing Group! 

Planoly has provided us with additional details on....

Who Can Use It?
In order to Auto-Post you must have an Instagram Business Account.

What Kind of Images Can You Use?
We support JPEG and PNG for the Auto-Post feature as required by Instagram. You can upload images with the maximum file size as large as 8MB.

What Are the Image Specifications?
Images have to be within a 4:5 to 1.91:1 aspect ratio range. In other words, if you take an image using the ‘Square’ option on your phone, that is the correct image ratio. The image resolution is also something to consider and is best to keep between 150×150 and 1920×1080, otherwise your image could be blurry. If it’s smaller or larger, it will be scaled up or down to size.

Minimum Resolution: 150×150
Maximum Resolution: 1920×1080 (higher resolutions will be scaled down to the maximum)

What Can You NOT Auto-Post?
Stories
Multi-Image Posts
Videos
Drafts
Locations
User Tags
Shopping Tags
Branded Content Tag
Filters

Stay connected for more social media tips via our @macswomen Instagram account. Follow along with @candicetiann as well and tag @macswomen in the comment! 

If you are already using Planoly and Loving it, share your experience with. 

If you follow MACsWomen on Instagram you saw in this social media tip I shared that Instagram made a long overdue and welcome change that marketers and social media managers have wanted for some time – it will allow businesses on Instagram to schedule their posts. 

Before, there were unofficial means to aid with this – like tools that would send out a push notification to remind you to publish a post at a given time, for example. Tools like Planoly, SproutSocial and Buffer. But no functionality was available in Instagram itself. The closest Instagram got was the added support for Drafts, which allowed social media managers and other users to prep a post and save it for later publication.

If you are as excited about this new update as we are, leave a comment below. Also, follow along with us on Instagram for more social media tips and motivation. 

The reason I created this marketing support group for women business owners is mainly because of the huge changes that are being made on giant social media sites like Facebook that could impact all of us as marketers getting our content seen. 

Social media requires strategy and planning, just as much as you plan out your traditional marketing efforts. Having a plan for your blog should definitely be included in your overall social media strategy. 

Listen, I get it, there is so much to do when it comes to marketing your business online, so the best course of action is to have a plan in place. This has lead me to put together these planning sheets to help you do just that. 

Here's another bit of help for you, don't overthink the process of incorporating your blog into your social media strategy.

Keep it simple! Here are three basic steps:

1. Pick a day to write (batching works wonders)
2. Post at least one article to your blog per week (pick a day and time)
3. Share you post to your social media channels (repurpose, repurose, repurpose!)

Now, that is pretty simple, right? 
So, do you have a blog that you use to educate and inform your audience? Feel free to share your link in the comments section of this post. 

If you are simply overwhelmed with marketing your business successfully using social media and need a winning strategy for your social media efforts, schedule a session with me here:
Planning Session with Michelle Christie.