5 Most Effective Organic Digital Marketing Strategies

[00:00:00] Jen McFarland: The Women Conquer Business show is an educational, how to, women in business podcast that features stories, marketing news and real life experiences from fun and friendly hosts, Jen McFarland and Shelley Carney. Join us as we dive into the details so you can slay marketing overwhelm, streamline processes and amplify your impact.

[00:00:23] You'll learn strategies and tactics, leadership skills, and practical advice from successful women entrepreneurs to help you grow, nurture, and sustain your business.

[00:00:44] Shelley Carney: Good morning. Good morning. Hello everybody.

[00:00:47] Jen McFarland: Welcome to Women Conquer Business. I'm Jen McFarland joined by Shelley Carney. And today we always forget the woo-hoo today. We are talking about the five essential digital marketing strategies, things that you need in order to expand your online presence. But before we get to that, how are you doing Shelley?

[00:01:08] What's up.

[00:01:09] Shelley Carney: I'm doing really well. I'm as you can see and decked out for Valentine's day. Because Valentine's is coming on Monday. And of course the super bowl is on Sunday. So lots of things happening. We had an excellent interview yesterday with Ty Belknap, who we got to talk more about SEO, which was great because I want to put up a new website and.

[00:01:32] That's one of the things I need to think about. So I'm trying to educate myself on S E O what else is going on? I know you're traveling. What's going on there.

[00:01:43] Jen McFarland: Yeah. So I am in Boise. For people who've listened to this show for a long time, the early episodes were from the Vandal Lounge, which is actually my basement, but the Vandals are the Idaho Vandals.

[00:01:54] And I come from a long line of people who went to the University of Idaho. I'm actually from Idaho and I am dog sitting, Teddy, the wonder pup, my mom's kava poo for the next couple of weeks while she's in Hawaii.

[00:02:09] Shelley Carney: I don't know what, what does that.

[00:02:14] Jen McFarland: Can Charles cavalier, poodle. But something that makes him very tiny, cause he's three pounds.

[00:02:22] So I don't know. Yeah, somehow I feel like maybe I should have gone to Hawaii instead, but that's neither here nor there I'm having a good time. I've been working on courses because we haven't talked about that a lot. I'm launching a second company the Strategic Marketing Membership and they're really short courses for business leaders.

[00:02:41] The first course we have a couple of courses up now about podcasting and we got. Killer review from somebody that was just so positive. It's if you do something and you put something out in the world and then somebody is oh my God, this is great. It, it like, it just really is like a signal from the university you're on the right track.

[00:02:59] So we got that earlier this week and that was awesome. And then yeah, just making courses and hanging out in Boise and that's all that's going on over here. I don't even know if I'll watch the super bowl. I'm not. Super excited, but I'm not super unexcited. I don't know.

[00:03:17] Shelley Carney: We just use it as an excuse to hang out with Toby. So Kevin and I come over to Toby's and we hang out with their snacks.

[00:03:22] Jen McFarland: That's the thing, it's like an excuse to have chips and watch commercials. Breaking news,

[00:03:26] Shelley Carney: Breaking news. When he got any breaking news and I

[00:03:30] Jen McFarland: don't know in Idaho. Yeah. There's not a lot of breaking news here. As far as I know I will say that there's breaking news on the LinkedIn front and I dare say on the clubhouse front. As we were talking before the show, I was telling Shelley that, I view this as another signal of a death knell for clubhouse, which has never really figured out how to do advertising and has never really gotten a lot of traction.

[00:03:52] Now, LinkedIn is in beta on their audio platform. It's open to about. Three or 500 people. The reception has been phenomenal. People really want to engage in the audio only content on LinkedIn, the responses, the engagement, the number of people who come on and who are, Interacting and wanting to attend these things.

[00:04:16] And it has been phenomenal. So I view that as a sign that a clubhouse hasn't been acquired by anybody and all of these really established platforms are adding clubhouse. Platforms without acquiring clubhouse. So I don't, I personally don't know how much longer it will be around. What are your thoughts on this, Shelley?

[00:04:35] Shelley Carney: I don't know. I haven't, you keep hearing about it, right? Oh, now Twitter has Twitter spaces. Oh, now Facebook is doing something, but I never hear beyond the announcement that they're starting that. And then it's okay, they have it. So what, the clubhouse thing was about it being exclusive, right?

[00:04:53] You had to have an invitation from somebody you knew in order to get on the platform and all that. Once that wore off, it was just like, it's wastes my time. There's no nothing there. So I don't know, maybe LinkedIn a little be a little better because it's such a business oriented platform already.

[00:05:10] Maybe it will help with networking, because we aren't able to do so much networking in person anymore for the past two years. So maybe this will be a way to, bring that networking online and have it be more effective. I don't know. I'm going to do a wait and see on that.

[00:05:29] Jen McFarland: Yeah. I, the thing with clubhouse is I think that it's similar to Facebook groups, not all Facebook groups, but many where you get a lot of people who come in and they're really looking for.

[00:05:42] One of two things. What's the free stuff they can get out of it. Or how can I sell my free stuff or my other stuff to other people and clubhouse. There's some really talented people on there actually really like clubhouse. If you want to go on there and listen to some music, it's great for musicians, but what happened in like the podcasting space and.

[00:06:02] The business space. It's just these speakers and it just goes on and on. And I was like, no, I got too much stuff to do. Yeah, I can't sit here and listen to this stuff. I'm also somebody who can't listen to words and work effectively. It just doesn't work for me.

[00:06:17] Shelley Carney: It doesn't it doesn't multitask.

[00:06:19] Plus for instance, with live streaming that we're doing today, we get to go to a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 platforms. We're on eight platforms all at once, and then it lives there and you can go up and watch it if you missed it. So it's effective, right. Whereas with clubhouse you're using up your time to sit there.

[00:06:43] And listen to other people and maybe it's helpful, but probably a waste of your time. So I think that when people left it behind, it was not, you weren't able to multitask and to really leverage your time. Yeah.

[00:06:56] Jen McFarland: I kept trying to figure out, I know you can do it. I think with a Roadmaster pro or something, there are some ways that you can.

[00:07:02] The stream, your podcast from clubhouse, but then you really have to make sure you have everybody's permission. It's not clear that you're doing it. It's just, it was so complicated that I just abandoned it

[00:07:13] Shelley Carney: We did do streaming a couple of times and it was just like, yeah, we've done that. So it didn't really do anything for us.

[00:07:20] Jen McFarland: Yeah. Everybody has their thing, I know another breaking news that we haven't shared yet. You wrote a fantastic blog. That's. Women conquer business. I did about live streaming and all the benefits and all, all of the hot tips, it's already getting shared a lot, by the way, because I add my blog posts to missing letter curate and Q promote just to get it out there and cycling among people we don't know.

[00:07:45] And I'm already starting to see it. So that's really exciting. So be sure you go there. Women cooker, biz.com/. Live streaming. That's a place to share that super quickly so people can see it.

[00:07:59] So it's very exciting. What I love about it is really what I love about it is it's a really good breakdown. If you don't, if you're not really exposed to it, if you haven't really seen it before, it really does help you go step-by-step through the process, understand all the different ways that you can.

[00:08:19] Take one piece of content and use it multiple ways, which is, philosophically what you teach to people all the time.

[00:08:25] Shelley Carney: That's right. And it's a beautiful blog. And I love it. I'm so excited about it. It's telling me to do more, because it's yeah. I had so much fun doing it and it was simple because I just wrote the text and then Jen.

[00:08:37] Did all the beautiful format putting in really cool it up. Yeah.

[00:08:42] Jen McFarland: That's what I call it a little schuging

[00:08:44] Shelley Carney: The best team ever. I say

[00:08:48] Jen McFarland: It's super fun. So yeah. Make sure you go and read that. We'll put that in the show notes. It's pretty exciting. And it's neat to have new blog posts lately. I've had a lot of people ask if they want to do a guest blog.

[00:09:00] And I think it's just a great way to have more. On that website and get more people involved so we can talk about more topics. It's very exciting. Speaking of topics, yes. Should we talk about our topic?

[00:09:12] Shelley Carney: Our topic for today is the top five digital marketing strategies to expand your online presence.

[00:09:19] Woohoo!

[00:09:21] Jen McFarland: So this is something that I talk about a lot when I teach to groups. And I think Shelly also talks about it a lot when she's working with clients and speaking to groups do you want to get us started?

[00:09:32] Shelley Carney: Oh, yeah. So first think about why you need a strong online presence. Now I've been talking to a lot of marketing professionals in the past a couple of months, really in depth.

[00:09:42] And I keep hearing that in the last two years, people have really had to focus on their online presence, especially if they had a, a brick and mortar business that wasn't really online, didn't have much of a presence, but. A lot of people have also left their positions or have been let go because companies closed or there's been a lot of change, a lot of turmoil and people are starting their online business and they're like, how do I do this?

[00:10:12] And how do I become big online? How do people find me? Why do I need a strong online presence? And that's what we're talking about today. You want to get your brand and business discovered online so that people can start doing business with you and and knowing who you are and what you do and who you have.

[00:10:33] Jen McFarland: Yeah. I think that the key here is it really does help you be seen as a legitimate business if you have a presence online. And now I know that a lot of people say you don't have to have a website. We can talk about that. Some people don't have a website and they're really successful. And they're also.

[00:10:50] Were, they have to worry a little bit about social media algorithms and things like that. Because if you don't have a platform that you own, it's a little more complicated, but, and that's the way you show up in search as well. Although having a Google business profile helps a lot so you can go in there, describe your business, even add products to it, and it will help you show up in search, but I can't even stress enough.

[00:11:12] That legitimate business piece. When I talk to people and they're using their Gmail account with their business, they don't realize, I think of a Shopify and GoDaddy. They've done all this research and they found that buyers customers are nine times more likely to engage with you and trust you as a business owner.

[00:11:33] If you're using. A branded email like jen@womenconquerbiz.com and it's because it has that staying power. So when we talk about legitimacy as a business, that's a really important piece to look at and to really evaluate when you're looking at your digital online presence.

[00:11:51] Shelley Carney: And it's so simple to do that people don't realize how simple it is.

[00:11:55] If you have a domain name, you can have an email box. It's very simple to set up. So definitely get some help with that. If you don't have one that's a branded email.

[00:12:06] Jen McFarland: Yeah. And then perfecting your buyer's journey what do you mean by that? When you say that?

[00:12:10] Shelley Carney: To perfect your buyer's journey is to help you under it helps you understand what your buyers are going through.

[00:12:16] First. They need to find you, then they need to know who you are, then they need to like you and trust you. And then they're going to say, do I need this? And that whole awareness to the point where it's oh gosh, I really need this and I need it now. And then let me contact Jen, because here, right here, women conquer biz.com.

[00:12:35] I'm just going to go there cause it's that easy.

[00:12:38] Jen McFarland: And you have to have so many touch points before somebody really trusts you and wants to want to buy from you. And that's why it's so important to talk to people again and again, and to have social proof is so important. It's one of the big things.

[00:12:50] People tend to overlook is how important it is to get reviews and to have people engage in and give you testimonials, because everybody's looking for that as part of, should I buy this product? Is this the right thing for me? And they say that most people. Although, this is starting to change with all the people shopping online.

[00:13:09] It's starting to change people. Aren't quite as trustworthy of reviews as they used to be, but it's still a really big part of it. Most people still look at reviews as if they're being told to them by a friend. So it's really important to get that social proof and then share it with people. If nobody knows how great people think you are, then.

[00:13:28] Then what's, you have to sprinkle that throughout your website, add that to your social media, make sure that it's on those sales pages. If you're selling something, if people love your services, make sure that you have comments at the bottom of any page that describes your services so that people know that others have.

[00:13:47] Shelley Carney: That's right. That's right. And people know that you've been around for a little while you got some things going on. They see what your, how we talked about, you've talked about this last week that you're saying the same thing on LinkedIn, as you're saying on Facebook at you're saying on YouTube and you have that brand that, that is consistent across all platforms.

[00:14:08] Jen McFarland: Yeah, how you say it may differ a little bit by the platform. I know people engage differently on LinkedIn and they do on Facebook, but the essence of what you're saying so that people know that it's the same company. You're maybe speaking in a similar tone or at least guiding people on the same journey.

[00:14:25] That's really important because now when people are. Looking for that good customer experience they need to see that consistency really does help people understand who you are and what it is that you're selling and deciding whether or not to engage with you. Yeah. That's right.

[00:14:42] Oh, the website,

[00:14:45] Shelley Carney: The website. Now you brought it up and I agree with you that some people say I'm successful without a website. I'm all referrals or I'm on all the social medias instead. So what do you say about that?

[00:14:58] Jen McFarland: So I, and I acknowledged that's really the case. That's totally true. And it depends on how you're doing it, but I will tell you that, I recently built a website. I was on a team and we were all building a website for somebody who's been in business for about 25 years maybe, and never had a real. Web presence before it was always like a little page here, a little page there, a lot was being done in social media and things like that.

[00:15:25] And I was bringing the team together. I was like, we need this designer. They know this UX person for UX is like user interface to make sure. It, the website flows and all kinds of stuff. And it was funny because one of the members of the team came to me and said, is this guy for real about the client?

[00:15:45] And I was like, oh yeah, no, he's been in business forever. Don't worry about it. He just hasn't had an online presence. And I think that is really what we're talking about. So among the people who know and trust you, it's okay to not have a website and you can run your business for a long time on referrals and word of mouth.

[00:16:02] But when you start to break in and get out of that inner circle that you have, it's really important to have a place where people can go and they can explore you on their own. And that's really the power of a website.

[00:16:14] Shelley Carney: Yeah. And we have a couple of statistics here for those people listening on the podcast 56% of consumers won't consider a business without a website is a, one of our digital marketing experts was telling me he's if somebody refers me to you, the first place I'm going to go is online to see your website.

[00:16:33] If you don't have a website or your website is Ooh, then that informs me. I maybe don't want to do business with you. Really considered how many referrals you may be missing out on. If you don't have a website and 75% of consumers have admitted to judging a company's credibility based on their website design. Is it fresh and new, does it work? Are all your links working?

[00:16:57] Jen McFarland: Well, and truly if your links aren't working on your, I am laughing because I look at so many websites and I came across one, I've been reading this book and I'm really enjoying the book. And so then I go to. Person's website and they're talking all about sales and advertising and I go to the website and I bring it up on my phone and it's little tiny text because it's not optimized for a cell phone.

[00:17:18] And I'm like, dude, you're losing me here. Even though the content of the book is so great. And it's the thing that we look at it now, there are certain industries where. I honestly think it must not matter how good your website is because there's some industries that I go to the websites and it's every dog groomer has a bad website, almost every breeder, dog breeder, as a bad website, there's some things, and there's some people who are like world-class speakers and they seem to get away with having these really terrible websites.

[00:17:48] And I don't know how they do it. But then you really have to look if you are a business owner and it doesn't have to be perfect. I work with a ton of people that say. Good enough is good enough. You have, you just have to communicate. It doesn't necessarily have to be the best design, but it does need to be responsive.

[00:18:05] Meaning if somebody is on a tablet or a cell phone, it needs to look right and it, it just needs to communicate. You just need to get started and you can always change it. And that's, what's so critical about the website. You just need a hub that you own, that you can change and update so that people can speak to you in person or online.

[00:18:25] And then they have a place they can go to go they're for real. This makes a lot of sense to me. This is the same person.

[00:18:32] Yeah. So moving on to

[00:18:35] Shelley Carney: number two S E O stands for search engine optimization.

[00:18:42] Jen McFarland: And it's funny because, when I teach these five things, I do it a little different because people get all flipped out about search engine optimization.

[00:18:50] And we've talked about it before on here, where I said, really getting found on Google really comes down to answering customer questions. Find out if you're answering the questions, using the words that they use. And then that's how you know that your answer you're getting out there on, on search engine optimization.

[00:19:04] When I teach this, I tend to say content and search engine optimization. put them both together because I'm like, it's really about how you talk about what you do. That's really important. And so foundationally, we start there, but then SEO can also be very technical and some of the. Some of what you have on here are some of the more technical things that people need to look out for their website.

[00:19:27] How fast is it? If it's terminally slow, like I'm setting my phone down, walking away, coming back and it still hasn't loaded. Not only are you. Like basically telling customers you don't care. You're also going to get penalized by Google for that. And that's why it is on the search engine optimization spectrum.

[00:19:50] It's something that's really important.

[00:19:52] Shelley Carney: Yeah. And some, and you've got to think about what is slowing it down. He said, do I'm in my trying to show a video? Am I, have too many images? What is it? That's slowing things down and how can I. I replaced that with something faster.

[00:20:05] Jen McFarland: And sometimes you need to talk to a developer about that. There are website hosts. Like I really like SiteGround, I really like flywheel. There certain podcast hosting companies that are faster and better and they constantly update. And then there are others, like GoDaddy, for example, they can be really slow. Like when you're taking a performance hit just because of where your website is living, like where it's downloaded. It doesn't even have anything to do with whether or not you have videos, but you can use a lot of plugins and different tools to speed it up and to make it deliver those videos and images quickly. Okay. The next thing is really how many errors does your website have?

[00:20:51] Are your links working or do they, are they not? And then there are technical errors on the back that a developer can tell you and give you if you're doing this on your own, I highly recommend that you install something called Google search console, and then that will actually send you messages about any errors that are on your website.

[00:21:13] That Google has detected. And you would put the little code on there, just like you do Google analytics. Those are two things that you're going to want to have. Mostly, so you can just track like how many people are even finding me. And do I have any errors that are going to make my site less likely to be crawled or searchable by Google?

[00:21:32] Shelley Carney: Okay. And then we have domain authority and blog.

[00:21:39] Jen McFarland: Yeah. So domain authority, It's important and not like for most business owners, unless you're really going to get heavily into content. You might not even worry about domain authority. So what this means, it's about the quality of your links a lot of times, and about how much content you've created.

[00:21:56] So if you don't have really a blog and you're using your website is more of like a digital business card, you might not ever have to worry about your domain authority. You're just using it as a landing place for people to go. But there are a lot of different factors that go into domain authority. It's a little bit of a black box.

[00:22:14] Not everybody knows about it. Exactly what the factors are, but when you buy your domain name, buy it for five years. So five years. So it's if I buy it in 2020 to make sure that it doesn't expire until 20, 27, like that's a signal that you're not just a fly by night website.

[00:22:32] That's one thing you can do. Another thing you can do is keep the content updated. That's also signaling to Google that you care about it and you're doing it. And then a lot of domain authority is about the quality of the links. So if you're writing blogs, doing podcasting, you want to have high quality.

[00:22:47] Send people to LinkedIn and Google and Wikipedia and places like that. Instead of to like affiliate links and all kinds of stuff like that all of these things they start to add up over time and then it builds your credibility and your domain authority in time. But for most business owners, it's just, it's not really a.

[00:23:06] A big thing. The longer your website is around the higher the domain authority. I think that the women conquer biz website, is it like, has a domain authority of 31, which is pretty good for how long it's been around. It's only been around, I don't know, a couple of years because my business was called something else before.

[00:23:26] But if you have a blog, then you can increase it. Just by having a lot of content. Yeah. The, do you want to speak to whether or not you should have a blog?

[00:23:34] Shelley Carney: I have a blog. Populate my blog every week. And it helps a lot to be able to get found by new people who are looking for those key words.

[00:23:47] I want to get some information about live streaming boom. I pop up because everything I write has something to do with live streaming. And so I if you are trying to be found online I highly recommend a weekly blog.

[00:24:03] Jen McFarland: So here's my take on a blog. If you like to blog or create content on a weekly basis, and you are able to do that and still run your business, or you have somebody helping you with that, then absolutely have a blog.

[00:24:17] A lot of the people that I help her in the first five years of their business, and they may not. They may not be ready for that yet. But know that is something that can really help you. So the more you talk about what you do, then where you position, what you do, show yourself as an expert, then over time that blog will generate interest, it will generate calls. It will really help you, but it does seem to take a little bit of time. So with blogging a lot of content marketing, it's the long game. You're not necessarily doing it. Like it's not an ad. It's not going to get quick results, but it will yield a lot of great stuff over time.

[00:24:57] Shelley Carney: You want to be mobile friendly because everybody's going to be looking at you first, most likely on their phone. Yeah, especially those, let me just touch that button and see what pops up.

[00:25:09] Jen McFarland: That's right. And then does your website have a site map? So I'm a big advocate for having two different site maps. One is the HTML version.

[00:25:19] So if you go You can get a plugin for that and it'll just generate it so people can go and find it. And then if you use tools, so if you have a Squarespace website or Shopify, they're generating a site map, an XML, one for you. And then if you're using WordPress, you can use Yoast or. Rank math.

[00:25:38] Usually your SEO tool is going to generate an XML site map for you. And that one will also help Google crawl you. So the site maps are important because they really do help you get crawled, not only by Google, but being and all the other search engines.

[00:25:57] Shelley Carney: And in this case, crawling spiders is a good thing.

[00:26:00] Jen McFarland: That's right. And not scary. Not scary.

[00:26:04] Shelley Carney: We're going to talk a little bit about email because email is something that we have some control over, and sometimes we just need to be reminded, Hey, you have this email, you have this list, you can do stuff with it. And people sometimes forget to do stuff with their email list.

[00:26:23] So 99% of email users check their email every day. Some as much as 20 times a day. I checked mine two or three times a day, but yeah, definitely. I clear out my inbox every day. Whereas you're not going to find me on social media every day. That's for sure. What do you think?

[00:26:41] Jen McFarland: Wow. I check my email a lot. I don't enjoy it and I do get behind. I wish I could say I clear my inbox out every day. That would be a good, that's a good goal for me. But yes, email marketing is essential, even when you're just getting started. You want to have a way for people to opt in and then understand that people want to hear from you and you should email them.

[00:27:04] So you have been much better about email marketing as of late than I have. So would you like to share a little bit about your process behind that?

[00:27:15] Shelley Carney: Of course you have your lead magnet, so you can get people on your list to begin with because you want to have a list that is directed at people who you want to speak to about the topics you want to speak about.

[00:27:29] You don't want to be putting people on there who have no interest in you because that's going to lower your rating. People aren't going to open your emails and that's not good. So build a good strong list with people who are interested in what you have to say, people who like you and then consistently contact them.

[00:27:45] And TOMA is top of mind awareness. You want to continue to be top of mind with these people. So you want to reach out to them once a week. That's what I do. If you can. I send out a newsletter once a week, which I include all of the links for all of the things that I'm doing. Here's my live stream. Here's my podcast, here's my blog. And here's what we talked about. Here's the people we worked with and here's what we're up to. And then, happy Valentine's day. And. 'cause, sometimes people don't have people in their lives who are going to appreciate them and tell them happy Valentine's day.

[00:28:19] So why not send a little message of love out there too? And then I include some photos of things that are going on. I include some industry news. And links to other high quality blogs that I've read myself. And I think they're good information. So I share that with people and then I can show them, oh, don't forget, if you need some equipment or blah, blah, blah.

[00:28:40] Here's our Amazon link just, it just keeps us in touch with them. And we have a pretty high open rate we're in the forties, usually a 40% open rate because people know us and like us and they just want to see what we're up to. So they'll open it up.

[00:28:58] Jen McFarland: Yeah. I need to send more and it has been a while since I've sent anything out, I will admit I have been insanely busy.

[00:29:07] And when I work with people there, I can't tell you how many people I talked to who are scared to send out email marketing. And I'm like, but this is your captive audience. These are the people who've opted in. They want to hear from you. So you need to send something. And what I say to people who are just getting started is.

[00:29:23] It doesn't have to be every week. You can build up to that. Shelly is she's found what works for their company. For people who are like nervous. I'm like, can we do quarterly? Can we just plan a quarterly? And then we build up a monthly and then we just see where it goes from there. Because it really is like so many things, Shelly, you just need to get started, and you just need to get it out there.

[00:29:43] So you can be, like you said, top of mind, get that top of mind awareness.

[00:29:47] Shelley Carney: And that's something that you can delegate if it's not your thing. You, if you have somebody you can work with who can just send out that email for you and you give them here's what I want, to be in there and they can take care of it for you.

[00:30:02] That's going to save you a lot of time, but definitely stay in touch with people. Don't be afraid that they're going to unsubscribe. If they unsubscribe, then that's actually a good thing because they didn't want your emails. They weren't your target audience. I go through my email list probably every quarter and I prune out anybody who has not been opening my emails because I figure they're bringing my ratings.

[00:30:28] And I only want people who are really interested in what I send out to get my emails. You gotta keep that list healthy.

[00:30:35] Jen McFarland: That's right. That's right. So make sure that you're, you are getting those names and email addresses and set up a plan for getting out there so that people hear from you at least on a periodic basis.

[00:30:47] Yeah. Super important.

[00:30:51] Shelley Carney: Now let's talk social media marketing. Ooh. So after following a brand on social media, say you find somebody, you like them, you like what they talk about. You're interested in the products that they have or their services or whatever it is that they're talking about after you follow them, you are 91% more likely to visit their website, 89% more likely to buy from them and 85% more likely to recommend that brand. When you have started following them on social media, you're seeing their content. You're getting to know them and

[00:31:22] Jen McFarland: That's right. It's the know like, and trust factor for some people. This is the real first step for how they can engage with you.

[00:31:30] And also bear in mind that social media is increasingly it's difficult to get a lot of reach. That's why the website and email marketing. Are so critical, but it's also a channel that a lot of people use for customer service. So you want to be sure that people can reach you on there and that you're responsive.

[00:31:47] And if you're not on, I don't recommend that you're on every platform. By the way, I recommend that most small businesses are on one to two platforms. And then you send everybody else to the places where you're the most active and that's because it's really hard to be. All of the things to all the people everywhere.

[00:32:04] If you're small, unless you have a staff and you have people who are going to help you, but yes, absolutely. You want to really focus on the platforms where it's more likely that your audience and your customers are there and then, encourage them to visit your website. Talk about community, talk about other things that you're doing and it's a wonderful channel for sure.

[00:32:27] Shelley Carney: Yeah, you have to consider for me, my audience, I look at older people are more likely to be on YouTube and LinkedIn. So I focus most of my time and efforts there. But a little bit on Facebook just to catch anybody who's, especially friends because I've been on Facebook for more than 10 years.

[00:32:47] People. To keep up with what I'm doing. Just me as a person, a personal brand. But there are a lot of choices. And so you do want to narrow that down to what is where your audience is most likely to be. I know a lot of people are talking about, oh, I got to get on TikTok this year. This year is about TikTok. Cause like really? Now let's think. Is your target audience aged 18 to 20, 30 years old? Because that's, who's on, TikTok mostly. There are occasionally older people on there, but not very often. Just really focus on who are you aiming your message at and are they on that platform?

[00:33:27] Jen McFarland: And if you're not sure, guess what? You go to your email marketing and you ask people. Where they're active on social media and you set up a, you can either do that with a quick survey, or you can just ask them to reply and tell you whatever, and you can ask people where they found you when you start working with somebody and they'll tell you if it was on social media and which platform.

[00:33:49] So one of the things is you don't have to be everywhere. You just have to be where the customers are. And if you like doing short form videos, You can still get a lot of reach on Instagram. You don't have to go out on Tik TOK yet. It's very popular. I get it. And you don't have time to be everywhere.

[00:34:09] Shelley Carney: That's right. And since we're on that topic, let's move on to content content marketing. We have video that long form in the short form. I like to start off with the live stream long form, and then create short pieces out of that. And so that's what Jen does as well. That's a really good use of your time and your talent when you can do that.

[00:34:29] When you make one long video and then cut it into pieces, and sometimes you want to segment your video just so that you can do that. And we have a video which is podcasting and audio grams. So podcasts, of course, the long form audio gram, the short form, a text, blah. You can turn that text into blogs, articles, quotes, and PDFs that you can have as a free download to get people on your email list.

[00:34:50] Images could be screen grabs out of your video or. Lifestyle video photos that you take, or here I am Toby and I are setting up another small set photography set, for Valentine's and we share that and, Life things that you're doing or behind the scenes type things.

[00:35:06] Jen McFarland: Oh, behind the scenes they're so big. And I think that the thing about the content marketing cycle, like I look at that chart and where it says, listen, decide on themes, decide on topics, create, promote, measure, evaluate, and repurpose. I think that really in the beginning for people it's about just make sense.

[00:35:24] And just start putting something out there and see what you can do. And then it grows into something else, but this is all about consistency. That's one of the biggest things about content marketing is if you're going to do that, know that it's the long game people aren't going to flock to you immediately, unless you already have an established audience.

[00:35:41] And then. You just keep at it and keep at it, and you can continue to add new things to it. Shelley has a whole system and it works really well, but you might need help with that, and so get some help with that. If you're interested in going through like the whole cycle and doing that. Because you can take one video and make it into a podcast and do a blog. And then you can generate images or audio grams from that to really bring people in. And that's really the beauty of content marketing is you can use everything for something or something for everything I guess.

[00:36:19] Shelley Carney: And the reason I put this last is because it touches all the other four items that we've talked about. So you can take content that you've created. You can put it into your emails, you can put it into a newsletter, you can put it out as social media, you can put it on your website. So content touches all of those areas.

[00:36:38] Jen McFarland: Absolutely. And the thing about content, that's so interesting that people forget. And I know that in the beginning, I did it to where I would just share a blog post once. You have to share it over and over again because not everybody's seeing it and you have to work on getting everything out there. And I think that's one of the things that is so important in the content marketing sphere is you do it. But then if you're like nobody's reading it, nobody's seeing it. And it's did you share it? Can you tell people about it? And that's why, what Shelley just said is so important. Like getting it up on social media platforms on your website, all of these different places, it really is what makes it worthwhile to do it.

[00:37:17] It's good to use it in multiple ways. Then you have to share it multiple times in multiple places.

[00:37:25] Shelley Carney: So those are our top five digital marketing strategies that are going to help you expand your online presence. And this, and this is for any level of business, you could be just starting out in just doing the the, those little steps or you could be in business for five years and need to take a look at it again.

[00:37:45] What do we need to improve? What do we need to expand on? What needs some work? And those areas are always going to be your primary areas that you need to start with and then build out from there.

[00:37:58] Jen McFarland: Absolutely. And it's so valuable to really come up with a plan. If you're like, okay, these are the five strategies I'm going to work on, and then you just do it and you do it over and over again.

[00:38:09] It really, there's no such thing as a overnight success. And I think that's one of the things that amazing and discouraging is that we all think that if, if we just do a few things it's gonna pay off and really it's about doing a handful of things for a longer period of time, and then the payoff will come.

[00:38:29] And so that's the thing, whatever it is that you're doing, stick with it and get feedback from people about it and see. If there are things that you can do to adjust and change and shift, but these are the five fundamental digital marketing steps that anybody should be taking. What is it that you're doing?

[00:38:48] If you have any questions or comments, you can be sure to add them either in the chat live, or you can email them to us or comment on our blog because we do put every single episode up as a podcast. And then also I'm on the women conquer biz slash podcast website. So please be sure to let us know what you think, because maybe you disagree with us. Maybe you have found that thing. And we haven't talked about it.

[00:39:16] Shelley Carney: We definitely want to hear from you because that helps us to hone in on the topics that you're most interested in.

[00:39:23] Jen McFarland: Absolutely. Yeah. So what I'm doing is what Shelley tells me to do. Wow.

[00:39:33] Shelley Carney: It's true.

[00:39:38] Jen McFarland: That is a good business partnership right there. That's what. That's what I'm talking about. Tweak of the week, what do we have

[00:39:45] Shelley Carney: Tweak of the week! Okay.

[00:39:47] Jen McFarland: I wanted to talk about Descript some more, but I don't know. Go ahead.

[00:39:54] Shelley Carney: What are you doing with these Descript? I love it because I've cloned my voice and when maybe, I don't say the exact right words to put into an audio gram that match up with the cap, the thing that I want from the other person has a really great answer, but my question was all wordy and weird.

[00:40:13] So what I can do is I can use the cloned voice to say the question correctly and in a short manner. So then I set up their answer so much better. So I love that cloning of the voice. And I've been doing audio grams with it. It's been a lot of fun. What are you doing with Descript?

[00:40:31] Jen McFarland: What I'm doing right now I'm in, deep in, course creation. I'm getting ready to release a course about how to find the right marketing tools for your small business. And so what I've been doing is I pull in each video segment, I used a script to clean up basically what would be a transcript if you had a podcast, I use that then for closed captioning before I, as I uploaded into teachable and then what we're going to be doing with it now is we're going to use the text from descript and create little descriptions of each of those videos that we're also going to put into teachable. So what I really like about Descript is you can do so many different things. And then I think that Caitlin will probably go in and make a few audio grams out of that, out of the lessons so that we can then post them on Instagram and other platforms to get people excited about the courses that we're offering.

[00:41:21] So I think that I just love the way that. Descript has become like the Swiss army knife of marketing tools. If you're doing anything with audio or video, that you can use it in so many different ways. And I'm just really excited about it. I'm really pleased. I was an early adopter. I came across it and their website at that time said that they were used by the Poynter Institute.

[00:41:45] And I was like that's good enough for me. And that was all I needed to see. They have over time, with the overdub, which is the cloning of the voice piece that has been a really big improvement. And it used to be when they would go in and take out the filler words, there would be, it would be choppy. And now they've fixed it so that, if you have a podcast, you can just say remove filler words and you go through and make sure that it makes sense to get rid of it and it will delete it and smooth it out now so that you can't even tell that all of those ums and yeahs and, those were even in there in the first place.

[00:42:16] So I just love it. I think it's a great tool. I think that many people use three or four tools to do what descript alone can do.

[00:42:25] Shelley Carney: Yeah. And, if you are transcribed, it's funny because I talked to my son last weekend and I said, you know what? You and your girlfriend should start a podcast. And then. I told them I can walk you through the process. It won't cost you anything. I have all the software already. I know I was really pushing him into it because I'm like, this would really be great for you. And then I talked to him about it. Then I have the Descript which you can transcribe your podcast in like a couple of minutes.

[00:42:55] And he's what? I used to transcribe it because he used to transcribe for these other people who had an hour or two hour show. And he would transcribe that. And I'm like, no, you don't need to do that anymore. He would sit there and listen to it and type it out and oh no.

[00:43:12] Jen McFarland: Oh, that's takes forever.

[00:43:14] Shelley Carney: I used to do that too, back in the eighties when that's all we had. Don't do that anymore people. If you need a transcript Descript is excellent because if you're doing it regularly and you need them a lot which we do, it really pays for itself. Now, if you're only gonna do one transcript one time, maybe you don't want to get descript, but if you're doing it every week, a couple of times a month, even it really pays for itself.

[00:43:41] Jen McFarland: And video editing is great. So for those of you who don't know, you can pull in a video and it's as simple editing, a video is as simple as going in and deleting out the text and it'll edit the video for you. It's hi, fast, fast producing video.

[00:43:58] It's really great. And it's just been a dream as I put these courses together because. I have a lot of thoughts, so it's good to clean it up a little bit. So we've, it's been a great tool. I have been really pleased with how it grows and I just really encourage people to look at it. If you need to do any sort of editing podcasting transcripts, anything like that, it's a great tool.

[00:44:23] Shelley Carney: Excellent. All right. Do you have any inspirational nuggets for us? As you're getting all the Zen there in Idaho,

[00:44:32] Jen McFarland: I am getting zen. I'm continuing to do a lot of meditation. I find that it's really been helpful for me. I listened to a lot of relaxing music. I just feel and I would just call everyone to think about what it would be like to try and be your best self by just calming down and clearing out some of the noise.

[00:44:51] And it's really been working for me. And I would just like to inspire others to think about what their life would be like, what that would be like. Yeah.

[00:45:00] Shelley Carney: I'll share what I shared in my newsletter this week is that a lot of times the things that we think we want are external things. For instance, what is it that you would want, if you could have anything right now, and I can just give it to you, what would it be?

[00:45:17] And most people will say I want money or I want a new car or something external. But if you keep asking them, but why do you want that? What's that going to give you? What feeling are you after? Until they get to an internal feeling, most of the time it's going to be, you want to feel loved. Start off with, I want a new car. Why? To feel successful. Why? To feel worthy. Why? To feel loved. If we start off with I feel loved, I have a great support system. My husband loves me. My family loves me. I have so much love in my life. I feel loved. Then everything else is just, sprinkles on the cupcake of life. It's all good stuff, so get down to that deep feeling that you're really after. When you say you want, X, Y, or Z, and it's external, what is it that you're really after? When you can identify that feeling you can have that right away. You don't have to wait to get that new car or whatever it is.

[00:46:11] Jen McFarland: Absolutely. And for me, the quickest way that I get to love is presence, like understanding that all of these other things that are distractions or that I think I want, if I just am in the moment, then I can really see all of the love that's around me and feel a lot of gratitude in that moment. And I guess that's why for me, meditation is so good because it brings me back to the here and now, instead of thinking about what happened yesterday or what I want to have happen tomorrow.

[00:46:40] Shelley Carney: Yes. Yes. The presence is a gift. That's why the present.

[00:46:46] Jen McFarland: So thank you so much for joining us. And we would love to hear from you, please subscribe. And we look forward to talking with you next week.

[00:46:56] Shelley Carney: That's right. We'll be here next week and we hope that you are too and have a great Valentine's day.

[00:47:05] Thank you for joining the Women Conquer Business podcast hosted by Shelley Carney and Jen McFarland. Please subscribe and leave a comment or question regarding your most challenging content creation or business problem. Then share this podcast with family and friends so they can find the support they need to expand their brand and share their message with the world. Check the show notes for links to valuable resources and come back again next week.