Things are changing and they’re changing fast.
I’ve seen it and I’m sure you have, too. Two months into this new year it’s time to start looking at our goals again and see how far we’ve come; how much we’ve accomplished.
As I’m looking at my goals, I realized that there are few things I wasn’t doing that I believe will make 2015 better than last year. So here’s a list of the things I’m going to focus on heavily this year to make sure my business grows. (‘cuz we’re either growing or failing and failing is not an option).
Am I right?
I’ve been making some changes around here, as you probably noticed. My design changed slightly and I’m putting more effort on site usability. I’ll be talking about the results of these changes in a future post, but for now check out the 6 ways to grow your blog and business in 2015.
Visual Content is Winning
First of all, I don’t like using marketing terms around here without telling you what it means. Visual content marketing encompasses the use of:
- Infographics
- Images
- Slides
- Comics
- Videos
Here are some stats I found interesting:
- Tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets. (Source)
- Socialbakers.com found that posts with photos saw the most engagement—accounting for a whopping 87% of total interactions.(Source)
If you take a look at my sidebar and “Start Here” page, I’ve started adding visual representations of my content to make them more social media friendly. That’s one of the many benefits of adding a visual content strategy.
People tend to share content that can be easily consumed or identified with. A large high quality image with text on it gets a ton of share on Pinterest. I’m hoping to see a spike in Pinterest traffic over the next few months from you all sharing my posts on there.
One thing to keep is mind is that visuals aren’t magic bullets. Just because you add nice looking graphics doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get more shares or likes or retweets. You content, meaning the information you’re sharing, still needs to be top notch if you want people to care and help you spread the word. So yes, my content will always be helpful, inspiring and entertaining. The day it stops being that, you can leave and start reading… I don’t know... Cosmopolitan or something.
Personalize Your Brand
The internet is open and it will stay open. The FCC will make sure of that. It is because of this open internet that we can build websites and brands that get viewed in all parts of the world. As of February 2015, there are 3 billion people with access to the internet.
What does this mean for us?
Well, for one it’s an incredible opportunity to be able to share our thoughts, ideas and knowledge. Secondly, the internet is growing not only in numbers but in connectivity. We are more connected now than we were a few years ago. Not only can you blog about something, but your readers can follow you on Instagram, tweet you messages, listen to your voice on a podcast and see you on YouTube.
This is why building a personal brand is important, no matter what your website name is. Branding is more than just your name and website color scheme, it’s also about what you stand for, what you believe in and what you can bring to the world. This year I’m going to focus on giving more, caring more and helping more people on an individual basis.
Sure it’ll be hard, but the best things usually are.
Transparency is Key
Open up. Let us in. Tell us about yourself. What are your pet peeves? How’s your website doing? (assuming this matters to your audience).
Share your struggles. Tell us about that workout routine you started but never finished. Tell us about that embarrassing moment you had when talking to a potential client. Open up, it makes you human.
Transparency online is very rare and it’s something I’ll be working on this year as well. This relates to the last point in that we’re more connected than ever before. Everything is out there. Everything you upload, post and share is saved and recorded in time. So, might as well be transparent with your readers. Talk to them like you would a close friend. Be helpful, but more importantly be personable.
The moment people think you’re hiding something, that’s the moment you lose their trust. Keep that in mind in 2015 and in the future.
Mobile is Still Taking Over
This was one of the points I made in last year’s post (6 Smart Ways to Grow Your Business in 2014). In that post I talk about a 2013 statistic which stated that “75% of Americans admit to bringing their cellphones to the bathroom”.
Yea, admit it. I do it and I know you do, too.
Fast forward to January 2015, according to the Global Web Index, they found that 80% of internet users own a smartphone… AND use it to surf the web. (surf the web… that sounds soooo 1990’s)
Anyway. Having a mobile friendly website is still a smart idea, if not a requirement of doing business online.
The good news is that most wordpress themes (even some free ones) come mobile responsive; meaning they respond to the size of the device you’re using. But if you’re looking for stylish responsive themes with clean code that search engines love, then Studiopress is probably the best choice.
It’s what I use and I love it. Here’s a screenshot of how the Eleven40 Studiopress theme looks on a desktop compared to a smartphone.
If you want to see my theme do it, then resize your browser or visit my site on your cell phone. Make it smaller and bigger to see how to the content on the site changes to fit your device. Again, it’s a must in 2015, so grab a responsive theme today.
It’s probably one of the smartest things you can do for your online business.
Automate Your Marketing
Automation has always been the goal. Automate traffic, leads and sales. It’s everyone’s dream, right? A stream of visitors that land on your site, buy something and creates passive income for you.
This is possible. Pat Flynn has done it but it’s also important to realize that he spent years writing content, producing and giving away valuable information and is seeing the fruits of his labor. Passive income is more like delayed income. You do the hard work first and the income (hopefully) comes later.
But in order for you to get there, you need to free up sometime to do the important work. You need to leverage technology and use it to do the things that take up a lot of your time. Things like:
- Greeting new visitors
- Showing people what your business is about
- Sharing your best content
- Market research
- Social sharing and traffic generation
I won’t get into how to automate all of these in this post, but I will in a future article. The BIG IDEA is to use your autoresponder sequence to share with your new subscribers what your website can do for them.
Use specific pages, like a ‘start here’ page, to let new readers know about your best content. Use automated email surveys that asks your audience about their frustrations and desires so you can better meet their needs.
Leverage plugins like All in One SEO and services like ‘Click to Tweet’ to bring in more free traffic form the search engines and social media sites. There are a ton of different ways to automate your marketing and you’ll need to focus on this aspect of your business this year if you want to do BIG things.
Individualize Your Offers
Along with marketing automation comes individual offers. Imagine you send an email with the subject line, “10 smart weight loss tips”. 50% of the people on your email list open the email and read the article, the other 50% ignore it.
Now imagine you have a weight loss product you want to sell. Which 50% of the people on your list do you think are more interested in weight loss? The ones that opened it, or the ones that didn’t?
Pretty easy question, isn’t it? Of course the people that opened it are a better fit, just by the fact that they took action and read an article about the very same topic.
Unfortunately, this type of individualization doesn’t happen much in the marketing world. Product offers just get blasted to everyone and anyone, and that’s NOT the best way to do business. 2015 is all about behavioral marketing. Your job is to figure out which offers will resonate with your audience based on their behavior; based on how they react to your free content.
Another way of getting people to tell your what they’re interested in is to have them opt-in to another email list. Creating sub-lists when promoting and launching new products is the best way to target those who want it and avoid annoying those who don’t.
Business in 2015 Workbook (Download)
Here’s a workbook I put together for you. Save it, print it out and answer these four questions using what I talked about in this post. This should help you get started making the necessary changes to make 2015 better than last year.
Hope you find it useful and if so, please tweet it, pint it, share it. Thanks.
