Maria Florio – Page 2

April 20, 2017 By Maria Florio

A helpful checklist to avoid online marketing overload

When it comes to online marketing there are so many considerations for you to make and so much information around that it makes it especially hard to avoid feeling overwhelmed, and unfocused on your next steps.

With this in mind (and as a side note to the recent online marketing blogs on automation), I wanted to share a couple tips on what you can do to stay focused. A checklist, if you will, to avoid feeling overwhelmed with your online marketing while being able to stay on track with the goals you set.

Use helpful online marketing sources relevant to your priority goals

Patience is a virtue, as the saying goes, and it’s applicable to every marketer and business owner out there. When it comes to information that can help you with your online marketing, there’s an abundance.

If you try reading every interesting article that ends up in your inbox or that you see on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll end up reading all day. You’ll also end up finding another article that will lead you to another article and then another, and so on.

If you’re going to get anywhere with your online marketing efforts, you need to focus on reading articles that talk about your most important implementation actions first.

So, for example, if you have decided that you want to grow your subscriber list to implement a new email marketing campaign, there’s no need for you to read about social media marketing ads just yet.

As a way to help you stay on track, here’s a five item checklist that I’ve found most useful for myself (professionally), and for clients that I’ve consulted with for their online marketing needs.

Checklist items

Read articles that give you answers and steps to what you are looking to do tomorrow or next week or in the first quarter of a new year.
If you don’t have a list of online marketing goals by priority, make one. Even if it’s just bullet points, make your list as soon as possible. Organize them by priority based on what goals you want to achieve first with your online marketing.
If you can set a timeframe for each activity based on how long you think it will take you to set all the pieces in motion; this can really help you stay focused because you have a deadline. However, there are some people that don’t do well with deadlines. If it has to deter you from reaching your goals, don’t set any times; just action steps that you know you need to take in order for you to have that specific online marketing activity going.
When you find an online marketing article that talks about something you’re interested in doing in the future with your online marketing efforts, save the article/link in a bookmark or excel sheet; somewhere that you know you’ll easily locate when you’re ready to move to this item.
If you catch yourself feeling a bit down because it feels like it’s taking forever to get one of your online marketing strategy components going, remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day (as the expression goes). You have to give yourself the time to understand what you’re doing completely so that you can implement it effectively.

Hopefully these pointers (which are guidelines that you should adapt over time to fit you, as only you can know exactly how you focus best on things) can bring you to limit your reading to those online marketing articles that you need sooner than later. Not only will this avoid information overload, but it will also allow you to grasp an in-depth understanding of what you’re doing. This process and gained knowledge will prepare you for your next online marketing focus activity.

What types of challenges are you facing with online marketing overload and prioritization that I can help with?

April 11, 2017 By Maria Florio

Don’t turn your back on these online marketing automation mistakes

When it comes to online marketing automation, there’s at least one reason why everyone looks to do it; and this reason is time. Our most precious gift is time and it is one that business owners or even someone passionately pursuing their dream, never have enough of, like ever! Sound familiar? So, a choice has to be made and that’s where online marketing automation comes into play.

Before we get to the mistakes with online marketing automation, first a brief intro to the online marketing areas automation helps businesses with:

Online marketing content, so posting and scheduling your content to send without you having to post live (I use Hootsuite for example).
Network and engagement responses like those Twitter follow thank you tweets or DMs or Facebook messenger chatbots.
Email marketing campaigns and lead generation.

*Note: we will talk about these separately, but for now let’s get back to the mistakes you want to avoid.

The first mistake that comes from automation was mentioned in last week’s overview of online marketing automation and that is the personalized aspect. The need to free up time isn’t something any of us control, but if your community is important to you this means you will set something up so that you can follow up with them on a personal note.

From the lack of personalization we have mistake number two: not having eyes on your social media accounts, in your emails, on your website, and your overall online community interaction. If you’re not paying attention to what is going on online, how will you know who you’re talking to and what they’ve been talking about, as well as what their needs are? You won’t and that will make the person feel somewhat unimportant to you or even if they don’t feel unimportant, they won’t notice you either. Think about it, how many Twitter DMs or emails do you tune out, maybe you save them, but you don’t open them.

The only way you will stand out as business or person who cares about the people you’re trying to help is if you always have personal touch and truly caring in mind. This means, yes, setting up your online marketing automation so that you may run your business or pursue your projects; but including in your automation a way that you will have eyes online and you will add something personal when your community reaches out.

A perfect example is the response or lack of response that I got from reaching out to two public figures (authors, researchers, and a bunch more titles): Gregg Braden (brings science and spirituality together) and Daniel Goleman (known for Emotional Intelligence).

I don’t want to bore you with the details, but a little background of my connection with them is needed first. With Daniel Goleman I am connected on LinkedIn (we are 1^st connections, it’s like being friends with someone on Facebook). This means he or his social media manager accepted a connection request that I sent. Gregg Braden I am not connected to in any other way than me following his page, buying some of his books and getting his newsletters.

So, the story is that I wrote both for research I am conducting on my own book, and because I truly admire what they are doing and sharing with the world. While Daniel Goleman never got back to me, Gregg Branden’s assistant did. Now, you might say, how does an assistant’s response show Gregg Braden cares. It shows he cares because he has someone replying to his fans. Even if that message may be a template response, the person who sent it to me was very real and they addressed my query. On the other hand, me getting excited that Daniel Goleman accepted to connect on LinkedIn, but then totally ignored my message makes me much less of a fan. I know busy, but even a response a year from the time I wrote or some acknowledgment would have been showing he cared.

At the end of the day, it all depends on what matters to you most and what you prioritize. If your community is important to you, you will always find ways to include those personal touches and have eyes on those you’re helping; while also taking advantage of online marketing automation solutions so that you can free up your time.

April 5, 2017 By Maria Florio

An initial overview of online marketing automation

If you’re just starting your search on online marketing automation, you’ve probably come across a couple or more articles that tell you what marketing automation is and how you can use it for your business or online marketing activities. Some of those articles may include “What is marketing automation?” on HubSpot or Marketo (both companies have software that allows marketing automation for certain aspects of online marketing).

The purpose of this article is to share with you another angle of marketing automation; one that aims to make sure you remember that although you can automate your online marketing activities, and leverage software to gather data that can help you improve your lead generating activities and content distribution, that you don’t forget the human component.

One of the reasons you’re looking into marketing automation is probably the fact that you have a limited amount of time. When you automate your social media posts for example, or your email marketing campaigns, this allows you to have a consistent presence while freeing up your time to do other things. What you don’t want to do though, is place everything on autopilot and forget to interact with your community as a real person.

I say this because I see it time and time again that businesses who go the autopilot route forget to actually pay attention and also include that personalized touch, which shows the person following them or visiting their site that there’s an actual person there. For example, the automated Twitter thank you for following messages. I don’t know about you, but every time I get one of those I cringe. I don’t even bother replying because you can tell that it’s something generated by a machine, especially when you reply back and get no response.

Due to the array of areas that online marketing involves and that can be automated, there will be additional posts on the topic to take a look at each segment in a bit more depth. For now, this was to help get the conversation started.

If any questions have come about already, shoot them over; and in the meantime, thanks for stopping by! Have a lovely day 🙂