5 Social Media Strategies To Build Your Brand
Social media is a powerful way to build your brand. But it can be hard to know where to start and what you should say on each platform. This article will cover six strategies for using social media as a branding tool that every business owner should know about!
Use Social Media to Connect with Other People in your Field
Social media is a great place to connect with people who share your interests and passions. You can make connections, build relationships and even find clients for your business through social media sites. But, when it comes to networking in person, most of us are losing how exactly to do that! That’s why I recommend taking some time out each week or month to focus on building these types of connections online first rather than spending all your energy trying to network offline, hoping that they will lead somewhere later down the line.
This way, you can get comfortable talking with people about what matters most before meeting them face-to-face, which is always much easier said than done! To become more comfortable connecting online using social media platforms, try writing a few posts about industry-related topics and sharing them on your professional Facebook page. This will allow you to see what resonates with people in your field, which can help you create content later that they are sure to find valuable!
Create a LinkedIn Profile that Highlights your Skills and Experience
LinkedIn is not just for job hunters anymore. According to Social Media Today, the average user spends approximately 17 minutes per month using LinkedIn’s publishing platform. That means there is plenty of time available each week or month for business owners who want to build their brands through blogging on this site. To get started, all you have to do is make a profile associated with your brand name and start creating unique content relevant specifically to professionals in your particular industry.
Creating a profile that includes your business name, logo, and even an image related to the industry you are in will help build brand awareness on LinkedIn, which can lead people back to your website or blog! If you’re not sure what type of content makes sense for publishing on this platform, check out some posts similar to yours. Then try adding those ideas as new topics for yourself, so they become part of your regular blogging schedule. Once you get started, be sure to share these posts on other networks like Facebook and Twitter because more eyes there means more opportunities.
Offer Free Advice on Social Media
It can be hard to get in front of your target audience. But, when you’re trying to build a brand, one thing that helps is establishing yourself as an industry expert by sharing knowledge with others online. That starts on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook because both these platforms allow you to offer advice for free!
Twitter makes it easy through its tweet chat feature. It allows users from all over the world to join together virtually every Tuesday night to talk about topics relevant specifically to small business owners who want more exposure and engagement on this network. To participate, just sign up using TweetChat, type #SBMchat into any search bar during the designated hour, and start adding commentary related to most people in your field.
If you have a Facebook page for business, then another great way to get in front of people is by hosting a weekly Q&A session on this platform! You can use the free tool from Meet Edgar or any other similar application that allows you to schedule posts and track engagement. Once it’s set up, all you have to do is ask questions related to industry problems and post links back when users answer them correctly. It may sound simple, but answering these questions will help build brand awareness while also giving potential customers an idea about your knowledge level.
Share Posts about what you are doing at Work
This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s a very simple way to build brand awareness online. Sharing posts about what you are doing at work or even over the weekend lets people see another side of your personality that they might not be able to do in person. When users consistently follow these types of posts, they will become more familiar with who you are as a professional because sometimes that matters most when making connections! This is also an easy tactic for brands looking to share industry-related content, too, since followers often don’t want lengthy blog posts after long blog posts—they just want short bursts of information.
Write Blog Posts for your Online Portfolio
One of the best ways to build brand awareness is to show potential clients what you can do in content marketing. That’s why it makes sense for bloggers, social media managers, and marketers who want to get hired to write blog posts relevant specifically to target audiences they know well! This tactic will help them establish themselves as industry experts because when people make buying decisions, one thing that always happens first is research.
When a potential client searches for a topic you’re an expert on, your post can be one of the first results they see. Writing blog posts specifically targeted toward users in this audience will help build brand awareness which could lead to new business opportunities! If you want more information on writing for clients, check out our article about content marketing strategies here.
The five strategies we’ve discussed can be used to build your brand on social media. Using a company like Brandstyle Communications can help you with your brand. Whether you’re looking for a way to improve engagement, grow followers, or attract influencers, these tips are sure to provide some inspiration that will help you get started!
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Posted on October 23rd, 2021
How to Properly Integrate Different Digital Marketing Services
Throughout history, traditional marketing and advertising have led the way. In fact, they were the only way. Magazines, newspapers, print ads, billboards, radio spots, and – more recently – TV ads have been relied upon to do the heavy lifting. But since the mid-2000s, that’s all changed. The growth of the internet gave way to the rise of digital marketing, and the rest is history.
While digital marketing has certainly paved the way for greater reach and more cost-effective engagement – something that’s critically important for small businesses with limited budgets – there’s still one big challenge: integration. More specifically, small businesses must learn how to properly integrate different digital marketing services for a cohesive and consistent message.
What is Integrated Digital Marketing?
Integrated digital marketing is precisely what it sounds like. It’s the process of blending multiple digital marketing services into a single strategy that allows a business to intentionally deliver the right message to the right audience using the best mediums and platforms for the job.
Though every integrated digital marketing strategy looks slightly different, it typically includes elements like web development and design, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, video production, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, etc.
Tips for Flawlessly Integrating Digital Marketing
The biggest challenge of integrating digital marketing is figuring out what to focus on. With so many different moving parts (and a limited budget), it’s tricky to always know how to proceed. But at the end of the day, the goal is to keep things focused and consistent. If you can do these two things, success won’t be far away. Here are some additional tips:
1. Get Clear on Your Brand
It doesn’t matter if it’s traditional offline marketing or digital marketing; you can’t be effective with digital marketing if you don’t have a clear identity. Everything starts with this foundation. You need to get clear on your mission, values, and goals. And we’re not talking about stale corporate boilerplate information about changing the world one widget at a time. We’re talking about a tangible expression of what you want for your customers. In other words, what dream are you trying to help them achieve?
2. Create Detailed Personas
It always starts with your brand. But once you have the bedrock of your brand figured out, it’s time to quickly shift gears and start thinking about your audience, who they are, and what they want. This is best done through the creation of detailed personas.
A detailed customer persona digs into the demographics, hopes, dreams, expectations, and preferences of your audience. The average brand will have three to five different personas. And while there will be some overlap between them, each effectively operates independently. The goal of an integrated marketing plan is to utilize strategies that allow you to reach each without compromising on brand consistency.
3. Choose Your Services
With so many different digital marketing services, it’s impossible to do everything at once. The best approach is to choose a few of the services that you believe will generate the best ROI and then go from there.
If you’ve done a good job of mapping out your brand and creating detailed personas, it’s a lot easier to choose which services to integrate. For example, if your audience is 55-plus, you’re probably not very focused on TikTok as part of a social strategy. Facebook, on the other hand, will work well.
4. Measure and Optimize
You can’t take a set-it-and-forget-it approach to integrated digital marketing. It doesn’t work like that. Digital marketing is dynamic – constantly evolving and iterating as the months pass. You must be willing to do the same.
The key is to track and measure each element of your marketing strategy using robust analytics and key performance indicators. Based on the analysis of this data, you can continually optimize your approach – sticking with what’s working and ditching that which doesn’t.
Adding it All Up
Digital marketing is the way of the present and of the future. But if you’re going to excel in this arena, you have to figure out how to integrate the right services, while blocking out any noise that doesn’t help you move the proverbial needle for your brand.
Once you reach this sort of clarity, results are the natural byproduct.
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Posted on October 22nd, 2021
Why Is The Growth Of Instagram Services Increasing?
In the many social media platforms that are currently booming, Instagram is one of the social media that has very fast user growth.
Then why is the growth of Instagram users so fast?
Instagram has found new ways to share content across its platforms and make user experiences engaging.
Instagram also now has more influence over all its users who might have used snapchat in tandem with its own app, reducing the need to use both and streamlining this layer of users to its own service.
Another virtue on Instagram is also encouraging more content sharing and giving it a chat element to its app, allowing it to compete with all other direct messaging platforms. Innovations like these are the reason for Instagram’s sudden growth.
Instagram Revival
Instagram is the perfect app for sharing content through visual imagery. This makes content creative, engaging, and fast-paced. And it also has a different feel to other platforms, with a focus on visuals rather than words.
This ability to capture a younger, more creative audience is sounding alarm bells for large companies looking to advertise on social media. With high usage, there will definitely be an increase in interest to advertise in the app. However, competition will mature and businesses will have to find creative ways to compete with their competitors in the visual world of social media.
Leveraging Instagram For Marketing
Instagram is a visual platform and thus products in general it is easier to market any service on instagram. But services are not impossible to promote in the app, finding interesting ways to bring your services to life will attract the attention of Instagram users.
Instagram is mostly a mobile app, so content should be easy to read and constantly updated for mobile data-hungry demographics.
Instagram stories are an excellent way to participate personally with your audience, which last only 24 hours. The stories should be used to keep potential customers updated daily about their business and reveal the content behind the scene so that users feel as if they were part of the company.
One of the most powerful ways to increase Instagram growth to prepare your marketing efforts is to use instagram growth service.
Why should you use Instagram growth services?
Because by using the help of Instagram growth services that are made for businesses, individuals, and creators, it becomes more practical.
How Powerful Is Instagram Influencer Marketing?
The more methods and strategies to monetize the platform and the increasing number of users and consumers it has. Instagram is a place where you can share your moments with your friends and followers, and that’s why Influencer Marketing has become Instagram.
How Instagram Growth Service Works
In one of the Instagram growth services that are currently popular. There are several steps in implementing how it works.
Instagram growth service is a third party application that engages from your Instagram account on your behalf. They follow other accounts, comment and like to increase your account presence on the platform. The goal is to like-follow-comments from your account so that other people like-follow-comments on your account.
Most of these services have bots that automate engagement from your account. Basically, when you pay them and share your account details with them, you leave your Instagram account the property of several bots and algorithms that decide who you follow, unfollow, what you like, and what you comment on.
Using these Instagram growth services you can definitely get more followers, since they promise. But, followers, perhaps / perhaps, not real. They can / can not not participate with their account. As soon as you stop using the service, you will notice that your followers have stopped growing up for your new Instagram publications and your commitment is the same as before.
We tried to use one of the services to promote multiple posts and then we stopped using the growth service and made posts to check if there was an increase in engagement, and there was no big difference.
This could work for some accounts that use it consistently for months, but in short, you’ll still be dealing with fake engagements and accounts for most of the time.
Another consequence of using this service is that your posts become less discoverable on Instagram. The Instagram rules prohibit aggressive behavior on the platform.
Is It Important To Use Instagram Growth Services?
No. Buy Instagram followers, get a false commitment and increase rapid growth is always a no-no. If you really want to reap the benefits of an thousands of followers, then create one. Only when you get real followers and real interactions can reap the benefits of it.
If you do not want to be deceived by false numbers Followers on Instagram or growth services that have true followers, then check the hypeauditor and detect true followers of false followers. The HiPeuditor will help you get an in-depth audit of anyone who has a account account and helps you make the right decision.
Benefits of Instagram Growth Service
Instagram growth services appoint a dedicated team of Instagram Marketers experiencial to help grow their account exponentially. Since attracting more Instagram followers to increase commitment, Instagram growth services are beneficial for social enterprises.
Get more Instagram followers
Instagram growth services regularly follow or like pages of potential or influential customers. This increases your chances of getting more followers. These tools help track relevant accounts of Instagram and liabilities for liabilities. It helps filter your account daily and get real and active Instagram followers that are interested in your brand.
Increase the commitment of the audience
Instagram bots are automated tools offered by Instagram growth services that can involve your audience, direct traffic to your website and increase sales for your business. Most companies and brands use Instagram bots to save their time and effort. In addition, Instagram’s growth service optimizes its hashtags, and publish subtitles to impart Instagram users. It also helps generate high quality potential customers by adding a call to action on your profile profile.
Instagram followers love receptive and conversational brands. Instagram growth service help keep the conversation to build a reliable relationship with your audience. In addition, it responds to comments that increase the commitment of the audience.
Design your page
Instagram is a visual platform and if you do not like graphic design, the design of your Instagram visuals can be challenging. Here, Instagram growth services can help create striking visuals. This service offers a variety of topics, formats, illustrations and photos that you can use to design your Instagram page. You can configure color topics for your publications, choose between a variety of visual and video signals so that its content is involved and get involved.
Track your current status and progress
Never lose track of profile metrics using Instagram growth services. With this analytical tool, it can trace the rate of growth, the commitment of the audience, the traffic of websites, tastes, comments and the general scope on Instagram. All these metrics provide useful information on how your profile is being performed. Using the IGS tracking service, you can change your social marketing strategy at each stage for more Instagram followers, increasing brand awareness and generating income for your business.
Instagram automation
One significant benefit of Instagram growth services is that it is fully automatic, which helps save a lot of time from valuable time. Using automated services, you can grow your account when you find some of the best sites to buy Instagram tastes and get the best results from them.
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Posted on October 21st, 2021
Taking Online Marketing To The Next Level
Attempting to print attention to your product in a digital market can be challenging, especially when the traditional demand for some products has been hands-on for many years. With shopping moving to a digital platform, advertising and marketing your products over the competitor is more keyword and audience targeting strategy. Below are four important ways that you can improve your overall marketing online and generate your desired audience.
Focus on Social Media
It is free to make an account, and you can advertise on multiple platforms. No matter what kind of product you have, there is an audience to reach on one or more of the numerous platforms available. Whether it is Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or Tiktok, you can create content, statuses and make posts that show up in your audience’s news feed so that they interact. Staying updated with these posts and generating content regularly lets your audience know that you are active. A quiet social media page does not get a lot of interaction. It is suggested that you seek help from a social media agency in Manchester to provide you with your best needs.
Paid Advertising
You can move to a minimal amount of small advertising on these social media networks that generate your product ads. Based upon other relevant searches or similar product pages that viewers interact with, the algorithm will determine which of these customers fit your potential audience and generate an ad for your product to show up on their news feed. These ads are not free, but they come at different time offerings, so you can pay a minimal amount to interact with customers who may not otherwise have engaged in your post.
Keywords and SEO
It takes just a few seconds for customers to go to their web browser and search a few keywords when looking for a product. They will choose their location, the type of product, and maybe a few different characteristics regarding the product. For example, if someone were looking for a diamond gem alternative that still carried the quality of the diamond, they would be met with the Moissanite Co. about their gem options that replicate a diamond. They can get these gems cut in the most popular diamond cuts, have them repaired, and even be offered a warranty and insurance on the pieces.
Add A Blog
One of the most remarkable ways to grasp your customers and keep them is to offer an online conversational piece blog format. You can offer tips and advice regarding your product or even launch conversations regarding new products on the horizon. Many successful blogs use this as a way to reconnect their mission with their customers. You can get your customers passionate about your product and see you as one of the leading experts in your particular industry.
While these four tips are meant to assist with your online marketing, they all take time and effort to succeed. You will need to interact on your website and your social media platforms to maintain these strategies regularly to maintain your clientele and reach your maximum audience potential.
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Posted on October 20th, 2021
Is Facebook Still a Useful Play for Small Businesses
Is Facebook Still a Useful Play for Small Businesses written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing
You may very well be asking the question posed in the title of this post because you’ve been following the recent damning Facebook whistleblower testimony, or maybe you’ve just had this sinking feeling for several years.
While I don’t think being on Facebook is at this point detrimental to a small business brand the way it might be for a publicly traded company the question is – Does it still make sense for a small business from the standpoint of meeting business and marketing objectives to invest time and money in Facebook?
In certain instances, maybe but with several big caveats.
Do you already have a decent following, and do you already have substantial engagement?
Without both, time spent posting on FB will have little impact now and certainly in the future – far too many small biz folks jumped into Facebook and mostly posted uselessness, and FB is making them pay for that. (Literally)
For at least five years now, I’ve been preaching about the need to post fun, fascinating, and culture-based stuff for organic reach and then pay for business and sales reach.
For most small businesses today, Facebook has taken away organic reach and made paid reach so much harder, more competitive, and more expensive.
So to me, the question becomes one of priorities.
There are probably five other more practical uses of time and money for most small businesses, so make the choice and stay focused.
In general, social media platforms see us as part of the product, not as customers of the product. They have realized that they need us here clicking, scrolling, and commenting to grow the product. But unfortunately, they’ve also learned that they can amplify this activity by appealing to the worst in us in many cases. And that’s the real problem.
t doesn’t matter whether you believe the details shared by the whistleblower or which side of the political chasm you fall on – the future of social media is based on this dynamic and probably does not bode well for small business growth.
When considering platforms today, we must consider a prospect’s research intent – Facebook is set up today in ways that might work for someone selling polarization and opinion in noisy ways.
But is someone considering a plumbing project because they happened to be scrolling through the noisy newsfeed? Are they clicking on ads for the plumber because the ad is so much more compelling than the ad for skittles that they just saw?
I don’t wonder much about either of those anymore.
Facebook can have a place for small businesses, but not one that comes before creating a better customer experience, discovering how to grow and scale with existing customers, or finding ways to generate referrals.
For most of the folks we work with, social media, in general, is a lazy and misleadingly costly way to market.
It’s time to let it slide, not as a political statement but as a marketing priority.
Original source: https://ducttapemarketing.com/facebook-still-a-useful-for-small-businesses/
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Posted on October 19th, 2021
Why You Should Start Your Own Podcast Today
Why You Should Start Your Own Podcast Today written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Agency Spark Podcast with Nick Nalbach
The Agency Spark Podcast, hosted by Sara Nay, is a collection of interviews from thought leaders in the marketing consultancy and agency space. Each episode is designed to spark ideas you can put into practice for your agency today. Check out the new Spark Lab Consulting website here!
In this episode of the Agency Spark Podcast, Sara interviews Nick Nalbach. Online business owner and host of the Nine-Five Podcast, Nick Nalbach aims is to help others achieve financial freedom. He interviews successful entrepreneurs and business owners, and shares his own strategies and tactics to help aspiring entrepreneurs break free from the 9 to 5.
Questions Sara asks Nick Nalbach:
Learn more about Nick Nalbach:
Like this show? Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts here!
This episode of the Agency Spark Podcast is brought to you by Monday.com, a powerful project management platform. Monday.com helps teams easily build, run, and scale their dream workflows on one platform. I personally am a user and big fan of Monday.com – I start my workday pulling up the platform and spend my day working within it for everything from task management to running client engagements. Learn more about Monday.com at ducttape.me/monday.
Original source: https://ducttapemarketing.com/why-you-should-start-your-own-podcast-today/
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Posted on October 18th, 2021
Your Resume Today: 3 In Demand Skills
Are you trying to get hired? Many young professionals today, especially Millennials and older members of Gen Z, have really struggled to get a foot in the door when it comes to stable employment, despite often being overqualified for the roles they’re applying for – and, simultaneously, roles with extensive responsibilities and requirements have come to be labeled “entry level,” and come with equivalently low pay. Often, professionals need a master’s degree just to get an interview for a basic office job.
There are clearly a number of problems at play in this situation, many of which can’t be solved by individuals, but that’s not much of a comfort if you’re looking for a role you’ll actually want to stick with for more than a year or two.
So, while you’re stuck with current economic conditions, one thing you can do to boost your odds of getting hired is to develop high-value skills, and do so without going back to school and taking on tens of thousands more in student debt.
Soft Skill: Sales
While a lot of traditional, local sales jobs – think, the neighborhood insurance broker or even old-school door-to-door sales – have gone the way of the dodo, sales is still the heart of every business. If you’re not closing sales, you’re not turning a profit.
Look for opportunities to learn more about how to develop leads and close sales and includes those skills on your resume. Even though there are a lot of true entry-level jobs that can help hone this skill, many white-collar managers will weigh this kind of sales training more heavily than someone who learned to close a sale while working at Home Depot.
Identity: Find Your Niche
Older generations may mock the millennial and Gen Z impulse to create a personal brand, but realistically, this is just part of living in the social media age, and you may as well use it to your advantage.
Find a niche where you can build a more extensive skillset, start a blog, and identify yourself with a particular specialization. In the past, professionals built this kind of identity on the basis of the roles they were assigned or projects they handled, but as you can learn more about here, this kind of independent personal branding can actually help you tackle both traditional job interviews and entrepreneurship. Your personal brand is the launchpad for whatever type of life you want to build.
Hard Skills: Tech Expertise
Among the most in-demand hard skills in businesses today are those under the tech heading, and we don’t just mean being better at using GSuite and Slack than older coworkers. No, companies are desperately in need of professionals who know their way around mobile app development, audio and video production, and artificial intelligence. Cybersecurity has also been struggling with a sizable skills gap, and professionals with these competencies can essentially write their own ticket.
Mindset: Flexibility And Freedom
While you may not be able to put these on your resume, if you’re going to thrive, or at least survive, the current job market, you’re going to need to stay flexible and be okay with being your own boss, even when you don’t want to.
This is one of the major pressures of contemporary work: as popular as entrepreneurship is among a subset of young professionals, there are a lot of millennials who don’t want to be their own bosses. They know what happens when your whole life is devoted to the hustle, and they don’t want it.
Accepting work as a contractor, freelancer, or even temporary entrepreneur may be the cost of building your professional brand and a resume that attracts employers. And, until then, stay focused and ignore all of the advice you’ll surely receive that fails to reflect the current job market.
It may be meant helpfully, but the times have changed, and it’s important that your professional development efforts reflect that.
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Posted on October 17th, 2021
Transformative Insights From Top Business Minds And Thought Leaders
Transformative Insights From Top Business Minds And Thought Leaders written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing
The Agency Spark Podcast, hosted by Sara Nay, is a collection of interviews from thought leaders in the marketing consultancy and agency space. Each episode is designed to spark ideas you can put into practice for your agency today. Check out the new Spark Lab Consulting website here!
About the episode:
In this episode of the Agency Spark Podcast, Sara interviews Scott Jeffrey Miller. Capping a 25-year career where he served as a chief marketing officer and executive vice president of business development, Miller currently serves as FranklinCovey’s senior advisor on thought leadership, leading the strategy and development of the firm’s speaker’s bureau, as well as the publication of podcasts, webcasts, and bestselling books.
Miller is the author of the award-winning, multivolume Mess to Success series, including Management Mess to Leadership Success: 30 Challenges to Become the Leader You Would Follow and the forthcoming Marketing Mess to Brand Success (May 2021) and Job Mess to Career Success (January 2022). He is the co-author of The Wall Street Journal bestseller, Everyone Deserves a Great Manager: The 6 Critical Practices for Leading a Team, and the author of Master Mentors: 30 Transformative Insights from Our Greatest Minds (September 2021), which features insights from his interviews with the leading thinkers of our time.
Questions Sara asks Scott Jeffrey Miller:
Show notes:
Like this show? Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts here!
This episode of the Agency Spark Podcast is brought to you by Monday.com, a powerful project management platform. Monday.com helps teams easily build, run, and scale their dream workflows on one platform. I personally am a user and big fan of Monday.com – I start my workday pulling up the platform and spend my day working within it for everything from task management to running client engagements. Learn more about Monday.com at ducttape.me/monday.
Original source: https://ducttapemarketing.com/transformative-insights-from-top-business-minds-and-thought-leaders/
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Posted on October 16th, 2021
Empowering Women To Write Their Own Story
Empowering Women To Write Their Own Story written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing Podcast with Jess Ekstrom
In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Jess Ekstrom. Jess is on a mission to help women tell and sell stories through writing and speaking. She’s also the creator of an organization called Headbands of Hope. Jess has also written a book called — Chasing the Bright Side: Embrace Optimism, Activate Your Purpose, and Write Your Own Story.
Key Takeaway:
Jess Ekstrom is on a mission to empower women from all over to share their message and their stories through writing and speaking. Jumping into entrepreneurship during college, she started a for-profit, for-cause company called Headbands of Hope that has recently reached 1 million headbands donated. In this episode, I talk with Jess Ekstrom about her journey as an entrepreneur and how she’s overcome the many challenges she faced along the way.
Questions I ask Jess Ekstrom:
More About Jess Ekstrom:
More About Certified Marketing Manager Program Powered By Duct Tape Marketing:
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John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the MarTech podcast, hosted by Benjamin Shapiro, brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Ben’s episodes are so awesome. They’re under 30 minutes. They share stories with world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success. Ben is a great host. I’ve been on his show. He’s been on my show. He always really digs down and gives you actionable stuff that you can take away and do. And he’s always bringing up new stuff. The science of advertising, how to figure out what to automate, just things that marketers are wrestling with today. Check it out. It’s the MarTech podcast. Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts.
John Jantsch (00:51): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jess Ekstrom. She’s on a mission to help women tell and sell stories through writing and speaking. She’s also the creator of an organization called headbands of hope, and she’s also written a book called chasing the bright side, embrace optimism, activate your purpose and write your own story. And let’s just throw on top of it. She’s also got some software called bright pages. So Jess, welcome to the show.
Jess Ekstrom (01:22): Thanks for having me excited to be here.
John Jantsch (01:25): A lot of ground that we can cover here in your intro stuff. I want to start with, tell me just, I love just hearing entrepreneurial journeys. So how do you, how can you package yours up in a couple minutes story since
Jess Ekstrom (01:39): I got you? So I first started when I was in college. Um, I was interning at Make-A-Wish and seeing a lot of kids that would lose their hair to chemotherapy and they’d immediately be offered awake, or they’d be given a hat. And a lot of the kids weren’t really concerned with color with covering up their heads. They just wanted something to feel good after hair loss. And so I would see a lot of them wearing headbands and I just thought it was such a cool gesture of confidence that they would, you know, just wear a headband. And so I went on to Google and I think I literally typed in like headbands for kids with cancer and nothing came up and I call it like the dumbest, smartest moment of my life, where, you know, being 19 years old, I was like, oh, I could tackle that.
Jess Ekstrom (02:23): And so I started headbands of hope for every headband sold. We donate one to a child with an illness. And the funny part that I haven’t really shared a lot before is that the founder of Tom shoes, who’s named Blake, not Tom surprising was spoke at my school about a week prior. So after hearing him speak and hearing his story of starting his one for one model, I have that fresh on my mind and thought that maybe that could be me. And so unknowingly, I realized in that moment, the impact that storytelling and speakers can have on audiences as well. So I grew headbands of hope and then eventually realized that the story of how headbands of hope started and the scrappy beginnings going to a million headbands donated was a really impactful product in itself. So I started speaking and writing and got book deals and all these amazing things. And to realize that there was not a lot of women out there doing the same thing, I would be the token woman on a panel or not a lot of women on the shelves that I wanted to see. So that’s when I started my Trump workshop, which is my online course and community to help women tell and seller story. So there it is. That’s my, my, I don’t know if it was two minutes, but I tried
John Jantsch (03:37): No. So tell me where it just had headbands of hope stand today. Are you, is that still an active, you know, e-commerce business that then has the one for one model?
Jess Ekstrom (03:46): Yes. More, more than active. So headbands of hope is going extremely well. We just reached 1 million headbands donated, which is awesome, but it was something that was like not fire right out of the gate. I was a one woman show teaching myself everything. And so it was like just trying to use all the resources that I had. I would literally like hire college students to help me build my website and pay them in Chipotle burritos. And that was like how I got started. And then using tools like Canva, where I have no graphic design experience. I couldn’t, I didn’t have the money to hire designers, helping me create social media posts or banners for the website. It was really small beginnings that has come quite a long way.
John Jantsch (04:32): You mentioned that the, your token woman on a panel, and I certainly see that it play out in large conferences and things of that nature, but I will say that there seems to be now an entire industry of women helping women maybe take that to the next level. So what would you say is unique about your point of view? I saw Marie Forleo. Blurbed your book. She’s obviously been doing similar model of having courses and teaching women, not exclusively women, but primarily women to, to, to start and run businesses. What would you say is unique about kind of your point of view that you’re trying to bring to it?
Jess Ekstrom (05:08): Yeah. I would say that with my workshop, it’s really about helping figure out how your story can help people in their story. A lot of speaking courses out there, first of all, are not focused on women and ours is exclusively for women or people who identify as that. And they forced you to be an expert. What’s that thing that if they would, they have a library after you or something crazy, and the story that the course starts with storytelling, and then we do something called the moment to meaning where, what are the moments in your life? How can you pull the meaning at them out of them to teach to others? And I would say the other part of it too, is that speaking is one of the industries that can be highly collaborative and beneficial in that collaboration, if you let it be. And so, you know, sometimes as thought leaders or entrepreneurs, you really want to compete. But with speaking so much of my growth as a speaker has come from people referring me to gigs, other women saying, Hey, I just spoke. Jess would be a great speaker. So in my drop workshop, we have a closed community for all the students who refer gigs, um, after they’ve done them and create that referrals.
John Jantsch (06:16): Yeah, no, I’ve experienced that over the years as well. And if you think about it, if somebody has me speak at their conference, you know, probably going to be a couple of years for, they want me back. So, uh, tee it up. And I also, quite frankly, it’s that whole reciprocation
Jess Ekstrom (06:31): And what goes around, comes around is like so true and speaking.
John Jantsch (06:35): So let me push, I just want to hear a clear answer on this. I’m not debating it, but I want to push back a little bit on this idea of your workshops or for women. What’s the difference between a woman storyteller, a woman speaker, and a man speaker or a man who’s trying to go out there and tell stories.
Jess Ekstrom (06:52): Yeah, no, I think that was a great question. And I think that what we’re trying to do with my Trump workshop, making it exclusive for women is one, you know, I hate when people say safe space, but it really is. It gives women the opportunity to go out there, share feedback, you know, test their keynote in a really safe environment where they don’t feel like they might get, you know, pushed to the side or spoken over, or they just feel like everyone in here is on that same page. But the other thing that I’ve noticed too, is I I’ve done some research around it with like, why aren’t women getting the big keynote spots? Like what, what is that? And yes, there are like opportunities for war, more women to be on the selection committees. But I think the other part of it is I was at this event once and they were talking about, you know, diversifying lineups and this woman who’s like the meeting planner for a huge corporation said, look, I want to book more women speakers.
Jess Ekstrom (07:50): They’re just not applying for like, I’m not just seeing them in the application. So I think a part of my drop workshop that I want to teach is not just obviously the business side of speaking and telling your story, but how do you put your name in the hat even before you feel ready? Sometimes there are so many studies that show that women won’t apply for jobs unless they hit a hundred percent of the qualifications and men will, and it’s the same for speaking. And so there’s a confidence factor to it that we’re also tackling at the same time.
John Jantsch (08:23): Yes, men will definitely fake their way through it a lot sooner. I’ll give you that. So you don’t do any men bashing in your communities?
Jess Ekstrom (08:31): No, not at all. And it’s not like, you know, I think when you do women focused work, but some people might construe it as like anti men and that’s not the case at all. It’s just like, how can we use a community of women who aren’t getting these gigs, who haven’t been selected and come together and do that. But it’s definitely not, not anti men at any cost. I
John Jantsch (08:56): Have four daughters. I, you know, I, I joke, I joke all the time.
John Jantsch (09:01): And now let’s hear a word from our sponsor. I talk a lot about tools and strategies to attract customer loyalty and satisfaction, whether it’s predicting consumer behavior or diagnosing the many Watts, hows and whys of marketing, the HubSpot CRM platform has customizable solutions to help your business go from why not to what’s next. I love all things, duct tape, as you know, except for when it comes to a CRM platform, many CRM platforms are either over-engineered or clunky and unreliable costing you more time and money than they’re worth a HubSpot CRM platform means that you have purpose built solution. That’s tailored to your business and your business alone. So whether you’re just getting started or looking for a robust system, HubSpot is flexible and customizable, meaning it scales and grows as you do with new features like business units, association labels, permission sets, and more HubSpot admins can tailor their accounts like never before and now with sandboxes admins have access to a production like account, allowing them to test iterate and experiment without risk. Learn more about how you can customize your CRM platform with Hubspot @ Hubspot.com. So what I love to ask entrepreneurs is to, what’s been your what’s been the hardest for you. What’s been your struggle.
Jess Ekstrom (10:18): I would say, I mean, during the pandemic, there was a lot of pivoting. Like a lot of businesses had to do sure. But to add another layer on it, my husband and I had recently moved into an Airstream trailer and had been traveling around the country, what started as book tour, and then we just stayed in it. And so being able to be connected with my team, who’s all over the country was a struggle. And so using things that are collaborative, different softwares, again, like Canva, when we were working on a new lookbook for fall, for all the stores are working on different social media posts have being able to have those collaborative features where we’re not in an office has been really helpful. But additionally, I would say, and I touched on this before. One of the blessings and the curse of being an entrepreneur is you really have this, uh, something in your brain that tells you it’s not enough.
Jess Ekstrom (11:16): And no matter what you do, and no matter how many podcasts downloads you have, no matter how many headbands you sell or books you sell, you always feel like there’s more in you, which can be great because that’s a field of your hustle, but it can also be really detrimental to just like your mental health and like how you feel about yourself. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I think that that’s, you know, additionally, a struggle that’s, that’s tough for me is I like having my hustle muscle on and always wanting to do better. But then it’s like, when, when is the time where you say good job, you know, that stumps me. It’s sometimes hard to do yourself. Nope,
John Jantsch (11:53): Nope, no question entrepreneurs tend to, uh, always be looking at the horizon rather than looking at back behind them and seeing how far they’ve come.
Jess Ekstrom (12:01): Exactly. Yeah. So
John Jantsch (12:03): Let me ask you an age question. How has you started at a very young age? Has that been, have you felt ever that that’s held you back or if you felt that that’s actually been a real positive sort of strength for you?
Jess Ekstrom (12:17): That’s that’s a good question. Um, I would say in the beginning I was naive to the point of a benefit. I was like, oh, no problem. I can start a headband company. I had no idea what, you know, a P and L was, I didn’t, couldn’t even spell entrepreneur. And I think not
John Jantsch (12:34): Having the data, people actually can’t spell it.
Jess Ekstrom (12:37): I still can’t really spell it. I’m not gonna lie to you, John. But, um, I would say not having like, the data was really great for my fearless leaping and just saying, yeah, like I can do it. Yeah. And then, um, also just your energy level, like, I don’t know what I was on, but I, the amount of things that I could get done in a day was, um, you know, limitless. And then now, um, you know, having the data and real, and having these life experiences that you can pull from and saying, you know, this might not work because of this, um, can be harder because you’re leaning more on strategy then than gut instinct. Um, so I definitely like, anytime I speak at schools or colleges, I’m like, you’re in the biggest do over period of your life. Like even if you start a business and it utterly fails, um, you have more information than you did before. Um, and you’re more qualified to go after a job or whatever it is you want to do next after having done that. So there’s definitely pros and cons to both, but I’m definitely pro start young just for the learning experience.
John Jantsch (13:45): That’s right. Absolutely. Uh, because, um, um, you know, I hate to say, but those books don’t contain the lessons that you learn when you start trying to do it, do they? Exactly. So it’s funny you had a, I want to highlight something that you kind of said was that if you had known how hard it was, you might not have done it. I’m
Jess Ekstrom (14:04): Pretty sure. I think
John Jantsch (14:05): That’s a real benefit. Yeah.
Jess Ekstrom (14:07): Do you, do you ever feel like that if you had known what you were in for?
John Jantsch (14:13): I never, I never really do, but that’s, I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I, I, I love it still. So I, you know, I don’t know that I don’t know that I wasn’t, I mean, I’m kinda the same with you. I never feel like I know no one and it’ll be done or I’ll be done. You know, I’m always, there’s gotta be better, more ways to do stuff, but, um, I’m having too much fun to really worry about it. That’s awesome. You’ve developed some software. Um, that’s, you know, that’s going from shipping headbands to developing software is a bit of a leap. How, uh, how, what was your process for doing that? I’m assuming you aren’t a programmer yourself and you had to go, I wish the had X and
Jess Ekstrom (14:52): Got it done. Yeah. I think if there’s one policy that I live by, it’s create what you wish existed. And I think that’s the most simple way that we can approach entrepreneurship. So during the pandemic, you know, like I said, everything was upside down and, uh, I found the thing that was really helpful for me was writing. And when I was writing, chasing the bright side and I had a manuscript deadline, I had, I had to write every day. Like I had a certain amount of words and it was probably the healthiest Headspace I’ve ever been in and also clearest on what my priorities were, what I wanted to do and realize that there’s like a lot of science behind journaling. I mean, your head can only hold seven pieces of information at a time. And so it really gives away to download and digest what’s going on and also set goals and what you want to do.
Jess Ekstrom (15:42): Um, but I found that the journals out there, whether it was online or tangible, like physical journals were very like gratitude driven and very, um, introspective, which, you know, I can appreciate, but that’s not what I need every day. I wanted a journal that helped me pursue the things that I wanted to create. And so, um, again, you know, same thing, typing headbands for kids with cancer and to Google, it’s something that I couldn’t find. And so I started bright pages, but we’re actually gonna, um, be rebranding to prompted. Um, and we’re the first and only journal to create what we call prompt pathways. So you can select a topic, um, a goal, whatever it is you’re interested in and get prompts based on that. So if some, one of your listeners wanted to start a pathway, they could take John’s pathway of how to start a podcast and get journaling questions, guiding them through that.
John Jantsch (16:35): Yeah. So do you have contributors that are contributing those, uh, those pathways, so to speak,
Jess Ekstrom (16:40): They’re all created by guides. It’s really cool. We have anyone from, we have like an NBA coach on there. We have someone who has their own like Netflix show. We have podcasters thought leaders from all over, um, creating these pathways and they’re anywhere from like seven to 21 prompts. Oh, that’s
John Jantsch (16:56): Awesome. That’s awesome. So what’s the future, hold them for you.
Jess Ekstrom (17:00): That’s a good question, John. Um, ask myself that every morning, but you know, I think I want to do things and you, you hit on this, which I love and not a lot of people talk this way, but like, I want to do things that are fun to me. You know, I think life is too short to not enjoy what you do. And I’ve definitely gotten involved in some things in the past where, you know, the, the price tag that I would get from, it looked really good and it looked good on paper, but it just wasn’t fun for me. And so I think I’m really grateful to be at a point in my career, pretty early on where I have the privilege and the luxury of choice as to what I do next. And the things that I know I love doing are writing and speaking and helping women do the same or just really unheard voices. There’s so much, so much stats out there with like women of color, not getting gigs. And so I really want to figure out how can I use what I’ve created and help change the who holds the microphone. Okay.
John Jantsch (18:01): So tell people how they can find out more about any of your various ventures. I know they can start at your namesake homepage, but to go ahead and invite people to connect with you any way you wish and tell us the name of your dog too, but
Jess Ekstrom (18:13): It’s going to say the, the, I was like, of course the mailman came by right then my dog’s name is Ali, a 70 pound standard poodle. But if my husband was on the call, he would say, oh, he’s like a man’s poodle though. I can’t just say standard poodle. Um, so yeah, I would love to hear from you. You can head to my Instagram at Jess underscore Ekstrom and, uh, same with my website, Jess ekstrom.com. If you want to learn more about Mike drop, you can go to mic drop workshop.com and brightpages.com. I think that’s it
John Jantsch (18:46): Just thanks for stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast, and hopefully we’ll run into you and your Airstream someday out there on the road.
Jess Ekstrom (18:53): I would love that. Thanks, John.
John Jantsch (18:55): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I want to thank you so much for tuning in, feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also, did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you’ve got employees, if you’ve got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it out. It’s called the certified marketing manager program from duct tape marketing. You can find it at duct tape, marketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.
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Posted on October 15th, 2021
What it Takes to Stop Ransomware Threats
The uncertainty of the world in the global pandemic is stressful enough to perform in business. That said, there is an ever present and growing concern of your organization getting hacked by those that wish you harm – or at least for profit. Let’s learn how to stop ransomware threats below.
One of the latest types of cyber threats out there is the world of ransomware. Ransomware is a particularly nefarious attack where the hacker holds your files ransom and keeps them encrypted until you pay their ransom. The ransom is often being asked for and paid in cryptocurrency, particularly in Bitcoin. There are even services offered by hackers called ransomware as a service. Within the next 5 years it is expected that 76% of businesses will be hacked, so be ready and careful.
Why Threats are Missed
We are all working at a fast pace, so it’s relatively easy for threats to make their way in unnoticed. Attacks and notifications are coming in at just too fast of a pace for people to keep up with. Consider that the average person currently receives 63.5 notifications per day. A security professional gets even more notifications sent to them on a daily basis.
The one two punch of human and technology experience is here to protect your organization. AI and machine learning can watch for threats in real time beyond the speed ability of a person. A 4 step closed loop approach provides end to end protection through identification, containment, eradication, and recovery. 24 / 7 security with 360 degree visibility can integrate with your existing infrastructure, be it your network, endpoints, cloud, and logs.
In Conclusion
Learn more about what it takes to stop ransomware threats and stay ahead of the curve tomorrow by implementing technologies governed by trained professionals in the visual deep dive below, courtesy of Pondurance:
The post What it Takes to Stop Ransomware Threats appeared first on Social Media Explorer.
Original source: https://socialmediaexplorer.com/infographic/stop-ransomware-threats/
The post What it Takes to Stop Ransomware Threats appeared first on connect social networks.
via Connect Social Networks http://connectsocialnetworks.com/what-it-takes-to-stop-ransomware-threats/
Posted on October 14th, 2021