Day 27 - 3 Great Podcasts for Solopreneurs

You can't stop the waves but you can learn to surf.

One of the benefits of running an on-line handmade jewelry shop is that I spend a good portion of my day sitting in my studio making jewelry. Since my husband is at work during the day, it's just me and the dog at home. It's quiet and I love it. I used to listen to music or surf YouTube for random videos, but I've recently discovered podcasts, and I'm hooked! Talk about multi-tasking. I'm able to make my jewelry while learning all about running a business. I can honestly say it's been a big game changer for me.

While there are no shortage of business related podcasts out there, I'm listing my top 3 that I've found so far. I'm looking forward to discovering even more out there, so if you have any suggestions, please post them.

Michael O'Neal - The Solopreneur Hour
This is currently my favorite podcast and I've been listening to Michael O'Neal daily as I catch up on all 80+ of his episodes. He just started last year in August and broadcasts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Plus, he's located in my hometown - San Diego!

His audio podcast, Solopreneur Hour, features conversations with top-notch solopreneurs from all industries and backgrounds, including network marketing, internet marketing, art, music, fitness, actors, etc. These guests (or as Michael more aptly refers to them 'co-hosts') are true entrepeneurs who have acheived great success - not through magic, but hard work, endurance, and innovation.

As Michael states on his website - "Our mission is to take you through their journey, give you actionable steps and actions to help you with your ventures, and inspire you to take massive action.   Hopefully we’ll have a few laughs along the way. We share practical steps and tools, including books, smartphone apps, websites, training courses, strategies and stories that will support you every step of the way."

I wish I could list the best podcasts, but they are all so seriously fantastic that every single podcast is my favorite after I've listened to it. Ones that I found especially relevant to where I'm at right now in my business growth have been:

• Natasha Wescoat: Building An Art Empire With Social Media
• Everything You Wanted to Know About Branding, But Were Afraid to Ask, with David Roth
• How to get 100,000 Facebook Likes with Bret Gregory
• Cliff Ravenscraft: Turning a Hobby into a SIX FIGURE INCOME 
   

Convince And Convert - Social Pros Podcast
Social Pros specialize in social media marketing. Their tag line is Real People Doing Real Work in Social Media. Since I've decided to concentrate a lot of my efforts this year on social media, these podcasts have been right up my alley - chocked full of great information on this ever-expanding area on the internet.

Each 30-60 minute episode includes:

1. Interview with a leading social media strategist, manager, director of community, or similar working for a corporation or organization.
2. Social Media Stat of the Week, discussed and ratified or debunked by Jay and Jeff Rohrs of ExactTarget.
3. Holy Social, an amazing social media case study
4. Two Big Questions, where our weekly guest shares the answers to four questions asked by the hosts based on their experiences.

A few of their podcasts have included:

• The Avalanche of Information and Scalability of Social Media
• 75 People You Need to Know in Social Media
• How to Leverage a Community of Passionate Fans 
• 4 Experts on What It Takes to Be an Amazing Social Pro  

A lot of their content is geared towards bigger companies but can be scaled down to make it relevant to solopreneurs, such as myself.

Rick Mulready - Inside Social Media Podcast

Rick interviews people that are heads of social media from successful companies. 

From his 'About' page, he states:

"Because so many small businesses find social media overwhelming and confusing.  They dabble and thus find it ineffective in growing their business. Big brands, though, tend to know what works and what doesn’t. They have the budget, resources and brand name behind them and are at the forefront of social media strategy. We can look at the fundamental social media principles these brands are successfully using and model and adapt them for our own businesses. The idea is to break down the principles that are working and simply and easily apply them to our own businesses, with little to no budget."

I love this! This guy is totally speaking to me and I've learned so much already from the few of his podcasts I've been able to listen to.

• MTV’s Tom Fishman on Choosing the Best Social Channels for Your Business
• Neil Patel on How to Drive Massive Traffic to Your Website
• Building a Massively Successful Online Business Through Social & Online Media with World Famous Drummer Mike Johnston 

I hope this list gets you pumped up to start listening to podcasts too. I personally have found them to be so inspiring.

Day 26 - Running My First Successful Facebook Contest

Last week I decided to run my first Facebook contest. I've run contests in the past, but they've always been posted on my blog. I'll promote it on Facebook and through other channels, but the idea was to get people coming to the blog and build my Facebook Fan base, newsletter base, etc. This time, I ran the contest directly through my Facebook Page and didn't advertise it anywhere else. So, the only place you could find out about it was to be on Facebook and see my posting.

It was a great success! In fact, I was completely overwhelmed with the reaction. Since I had just under 800 fans at the time, I expected maybe 30 - 50 entries. I think I received 30 entries in the first 5 minutes!

I had 2 reasons for wanting to run a contest exclusively on Facebook

1. I wanted to do something special for Facebook fans by giving them a chance to win a piece of my jewelry without competing with other people. The blog contests I run are always popular because I advertise them on Etsy Giveaways and a lot of people view them and share the information. However, most people that go to Etsy Giveaways are specifically looking for contests and not likely to convert to future customers. This was a way to have a contest just for fans that are already engaged with me and my products. 
2. Since my Facebook posts will disappear from my fan's view if they do not interact with my posts, this was a good opportunity to get some engagement and ensure that I will show up in their future news feeds.

Facebook Contest Rules
Before running the contest, I did a pretty thorough search to make sure I wasn't breaking any rules that could get my post deleted, or worse, my page removed from Facebook. It turns out that Facebook likes to change their rules often, but the latest changes are more in our favor and after reading them, I felt confident that my contest was well within their guidelines.

Here are their promotion guidelines:
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What is considered a promotion on Facebook?

Promotions typically include:

•  Entry/registration
•  Element of chance
•  Giveaway or prize

What’s changing?

We’ve removed the requirement that promotions on Facebook only be administered through apps

Now, promotions may be administered on Page Timelines and in apps on Facebook. For example, businesses can now:

• Collect entries by having users post on the Page or comment/like a Page post
• Collect entries by having users message the Page
• Utilize likes as a voting mechanism

As before, however, businesses cannot administer promotions on personal Timelines.

Accurate tagging is required in promotions

In order to maintain the accuracy of Page content, our Pages Terms now prohibit Pages from tagging or encouraging people to tag themselves in content that they are not actually depicted in. So, for instance:

• It’s OK to ask people to submit names of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize
• It’s not OK to ask people tag themselves in pictures of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize

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My Contest
A few days before I ran the contest, I put out a little teaser letting everyone know that a contest would be posted by the end of the week. That post alone was seen by over 350 people (usually my posts are seen by 150 - 250 people). 

Thursday afternoon I posted the contest. The rules were simple - I was giving away a sterling silver birthstone bangle. To enter, you just had to comment on the post with the color birthstone you would want if you won. No other requirements. 

Contest Post 

The Results
Like I mentioned before, I thought maybe 30 - 50 people would enter. I didn't expect 344 entries! As it turns out, quite a few people seeing the post shared it on their timeline, so I received a huge boost in views - 7600+ instead of my usual 150 - 250. For a small business like mine, that was viral. :-)

Another added bonus, and one I didn't expect, were all the new people who 'liked' my page by the time the contest was completed. I started off with 798 fans - 24 hours later I had 835 fans. I also received sales from new customers who had never seen my jewelry before.

It was great to see all the interaction and comments. I loved that people shared the post and I gained new fans. For the cost of making the bracelet and shipping, I received a lot more attention than when I spent significantly more money on a Facebook ad.

Overall, it was a resounding success and I plan on running many more contests in the future.

Day 22 - Publishing My First E-Mail Newsletter

Forget all the reasons why it won't work and believe the one reason it will!

Yesterday I completed and sent out my first e-mail newsletter. I can't believe it took me so long to do this! When I first contemplated starting a newsletter, the idea was daunting. I had so many questions and was worried that I would be undertaking a new task that could quickly and easily become unmanageable. My worries included:

• How do I sign up people?
• How do I keep a list of subscribers?
• Can I keep up with subscribing and unsubscribing?
• How do I format my newsletters for computers, tablets, and mobile devices?
• What's the best way of sending an e-mail to many people?
• What content should I provide?

And those were just the top worries!

After a bit of research, I was able to put my worries to rest. Using MailChimp was a great decision! Since it's free up to 2000 subscribers, I haven't had to pay anything yet and they took care of all my concerns.

As I described in my blog post about my e-mail newsletter, Day 18 - How to Grow my E-mail Newsletter List, I had to come up with ways to ask people to join my newsletter list. However, MailChimp made it easy to embed the sign up code on my website and also provided a URL for people to directly sign up. The page is simple and easy to use:

MailChimp handles all the other technical details that I didn't want to worry about. They maintain the list of subscribers and take care of unsubscribes automatically.

One of my favorite features of Mailchimp are their predesigned templates. When you begin creating your newsletter, their website easily takes you through the entire process step-by-step. You can either select from your own templates, design a template, or select from their large collection of predesigned templates.

There are literally hundreds of predesigned templates to choose from with multiple selections for images and text. The text is completely customizable - you are not restricted to just a few fonts, sizes, colors, etc. Most important (in my opinion) is they format the templates so they display correctly on computers and mobile devices - that's a huge benefit!

The editing process was also extremely easy and I had my newsletter completed within a half hour. I selected a template that included a coupon so that I could advertise my 10% off for newsletter subscribers. I also made sure to include a URL link in each image so that anyone clicking on an image would be taken directly to my website.

After creating my newsletter, I just click 'Send' and it's on its way to all my subscribers! 

MailChimp also provides statistics, so I know how many people actually opened up my newsletter and clicked on one or more of the images. That's extremely valuable information.

Here is the completed newsletter:

In my next blog post, I'll discuss tips that I learned about and utilized myself regarding newsletter content.