Branding YOU Better! – Susan Newman Lerer

The big message I heard over and over yesterday was this: Be authentic, share your passion and others will get excited too.

Yesterday I attended Market NY EXPO (#MKTNY) at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. The floor was covered with marketers promoting printing, online management tools and apps, and of course how to drive traffic and clients to your brick and mortar store or online business.

More importantly, I went to three sessions to learn more about these specific topics:

 3 Ways to Attract Customers, Turn Prospects into Sales and Create Customer Evangelists with speaker, Darin Adams from Infusionsoft.

Darin Adams (passionately) talked to us about why email marketing is our secret weapon. The basic issue most businesses have is emailing the wrong information to the wrong people.

For example: Some creatives may join my email list for blogs and tips that can help their own businesses, while social media bloggers or corporate brands may be looking for examples of what I’ve been doing for other businesses and perhaps then want to implement that into their own.

You need to break down your email list into sub categories so you are targeting the right people with the right information. Don’t just email everybody the same (unless of course it’s your monthly general newsletter, that’s okay.)

Think very hard about why someone buys from YOU and not someone else.

Darin said: What are you going to do to make a client say “WOW?” If someone visits your website, it’s because Google (or another search engine) told them you were the solution to their problem. So, be sure you create your website in such a way as you don’t disappoint those visitors.

Darin also told us to step out of our comfort zone and do something scary. I remember the first time I stepped out from behind this computer to create a video. It was very hard! But I soon realized content really is king and most were interested in what I was saying, not what outfit I had on, or if a hair was out of place. Now? I have over 200 videos on the SNDI channel!

Harness the Power of Local Marketing: Using Social Media to Grow Your Business with speaker David Lane, of LocalVox

David Lane taught us some basic principles as well as posting the research statistics. Showing us the age brackets per social platform plus the best hours to post. What types of content gets the best results and the proper ways to use each social channel.

Morning is best for LinkedIn and Google+; Mid-day is best for Facebook and Twitter; and early evening is best for Instagram.

The most important detail which many businesses forget to do every day. POST! …and check for messages via your page.

and lastly…

Inbound Marketing Panel: How to produce content that gets results, more leads, and way more customers

Moderator: Devon Petersmeyer Johnson, HourlyNerd; Panelists: Sheetal Rajpal, Ellis Reid and Bruce Judson

Did you know that LinkedIn is the fastest growing network today? Could it be because they started the Pulse blog area a while back and the content is exploding there?

Much of what was covered was about content and context. How and what to write and where, when and with whom to share it. One thing I’ve done which they talked about was actually singling out a few people who you think would like a particular post and sharing it with them. If that person likes it, they will share it with their followers.

One woman asked about sharing content within a LinkedIn group and how to get that post seen when so many are posting photos and not very informative content.

Also we discussed how #hashtags aren’t relevant (yet) on LinkedIn, but should we use them hoping that it will kick in later?

One overall tip I agree with, which is very important in marketing and seo: When we search on Google, the results shown are localized. You can Tweet and post about businesses that do what you do and use hashtags because you’ll be helping each other get more notice online and not be in competition on Google, because you are both are in different regions. “Brand Visibility!”

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