How to Discover Your Target Audience

Hello there. You’re here because you have a dream. Whether that dream is freelancing full time and leaving your 9-to-5, or creating the business that has been designed in your mind for years, you deserve what your heart is craving. With a little hard work and some patience and belief, you’ll get there.

A few months ago, well maybe a little more than just a few, I was working as a virtual assistant for clients I didn’t like working for. I was creating processes and setting up their dream ventures, when what I really wanted was to be doing that for myself. My biggest struggle? I had no idea who I wanted to work with or even how I was going to reach them or talk to them. Knowing who your target market is and what they are searching for is vital to building your dream business.

After spinning my wheels for quite some time, I grabbed Carrie Green’s book She Means Business from the bookstore and decided to let the universe lead the way. Do you know what happened next? The things I learned from Carrie’s immense knowledge lead me straight to MY DREAM CLIENT!

Weird, right?

Wrong.

I focused on what I wanted to achieve, fixated on the type of client I wanted, found where they wwere and went to them instead of trying to get them to come to me. I saw a Facebook post of someone who has become my absolute greatest client. This client helped to fully form who my ideal client is and the sort of people I need to search for so that I can do work I love. She is an incredible mom who launched a soap brand, that helps fight the palm oil industry, with her daughter. They even donate a portion of the profits to regenerating the rainforest. How cool is that? Check them out here: TellSomeoneWhoCares.org

After finding my first wonderful client, I realigned my business to focus on helping socially responsible entrepreneurs, which has brought in so many more ideal clients, all of which I cannot wait to fully begin working with. As a social greatness strategist, I help them achieve their visibility goals for their business in order to bring in more money for them and to help them make a bigger impact on the world.

Since this realignment, I have reached many milestones.
Instagram followers up to 5.5K
– Email subscribers reached 1.1K and continues to grow (Sign Up for 27 FREE CONTENT IDEAS)
– Created and published my first SIX podcast episodes on iTunes
– Grew a Facebook group for socially responsible entrepreneurs to connect up to 250 with daily
new members!
– Helped 25 female entrepreneurs develop their 2018 strategies
– Fully booked my first 90 days of 2018

I promise everything will work out in the right way, at the right time for you. The biggest key to getting there is knowing who you want to work with, finding where it is they are on the internet and reaching them. Stop making them search for you. Once you get your mindset ready to accept what the universe has in store for you, big things will happen!

In the words of Carrie Green, “I can and I will. Watch me.” I’m ready to watch you blossom in 2018!

Building Engagement and Followers with InstaStories

Creating Instagram stories for business is a challenging and ongoing learning process. Just like all the other social platforms, Instagram constantly changes its algorithm. It can be difficult to keep up with the most current best practices. Below are some tips you can use to make sure you are creating great Instagram stories for your business that move your audience through the purchase funnel with clear engagement goals.

1 | ADD TEXT TO YOUR VIDEOS

While Instagram is a platform for photos and videos, text is a vital part of your stories for building engagement. Without text, your audience will be lost as to the purpose of why you’ve added something to your story.

It’s important that your story is a curation of helpful content intended specifically for your audience. If the story is only self-serving for your brand, viewers are sure to swipe away. Adding test to your images and videos will surely add clarity, helping your audience members know exactly why you’ve shared specific visual content with them.

Madewell does this exceptionally well. Every image they share has some sort of text on it, whether it’s something that is typed in the actual story or part of the image itself. Either way, they’ve curated and explained helpful content to make sure that their viewers swipe up.

2 | ASK QUESTIONS AND THEN FOLLOW UP

With Insta’s new poll feature, it’s easy to ask questions and see what your users think. However, it’s very important that you avoid controversial questions and make sure that there’s a follow up to these questions.

Canna-Pet has done this in an engaging way via a contest. They’ve encouraged users to tag their pet pictures with @cannapet and then utilized those pictures in a poll of which dog was cutest. Users then vote for the dog of their choice, and the owner of the most popular dog gets a $25 gift card. This encouraged engagement through tags, shares, and votes, all of which helped grow their follower base and got their stories incredible engagement.

There are many ways in which to use the poll feature. However, the two answer option can feel very limiting. Sometimes it can be beneficial to ask an open-ended question. This gives your brand the opportunity to open up the conversation with your clientele. Make sure, however, that you reply to a majority of the responses! If you don’t, your audience will surely feel as though their response went into the abyss and will let others know. Never underestimate the power of digital word-of-mouth.

3 | BREAK UP THE CONTENT

E! News does this best to garner clicks, which is what we all want as brands, right? They’ve taken pieces of intriguing headlines and put them together with a photo of the celebrity that the article is about in order to peak interest. This set up breaks up their stories and allows for users to click through to find the celeb they’re interested in or a headline piece that they want to know more about.

How does this work for products instead of content?

Well, your brand can use it in one of two ways. First, you can show new products and then break up the story around how that product came to be. As a socially responsible organization, this is something that would really intrigue your followers. They want a clear view into either how it’s made or how you came up with it. The Behind-the-Scenes look is very popular with all influencers and brands right now.

Also, you can link to your own content. Content is king in the digital world and as a growing brand, you already have or will need to build a blog around the industry you are breaking into. By building up this flow of content, you will be able to build up more traffic and shares by breaking up the information throughout your stories.

4 | HAVE A CALL TO ACTION

The most common Call To Action (CTA) is to encourage your viewer to go to your profile and click on a link you’ve strategically placed in your bio (i.e. “link in bio”). This will get more eyes on your profile and you will garner more traction to the most necessary pages on your site this way.

Make sure that your CTA and the action taken are clearly linked to the photo in the story. RedBull has done this really well. They show short clips of extreme sports videos while encouraging viewers to go to their site to see the full video.

This is your best way to get your viewers to your website or other action that you may want them to take. Just as you have CTAs in your other marketing efforts (i.e. emails, display ads, etc), you’ll want to make sure that the action you request of your audience is clear and beneficial for them.

 

5 | TEASE ’EM A BIT…

Get your audience pumped up about your story by saying something that makes them want to keep clicking through instead of swiping away. Travel + Leisure is one brand that has done that really well. They encouraged viewers to guess where they were based on hints in their pictures AND words with a big reveal at the end. This got their viewers excited about where they may be adventuring as well as getting them engaged in the game and finally, a new place to venture to!

This is something really great for your brand when launching a new product, project, or freebie that you want to build excitement around within your audience. When posting teasers, it’s best to use your words (as mentioned in rule 1) to explain to your viewers what they’re seeing and why it’s exciting for them. Break up the content and take them through the story as you build this excitement. You can also break up the content over days and not just one story so that your viewers are eager to check back to your story for updates.

Which of these strategies are you most excited to try out in your next story?

My Virtual Dream Job: How I Got Here and How You Can Too

My Virtual Dream Job: How I Got Here and How You Can Too

How are you progressing with your goals?

I’m sure you set some pretty big goals for the year, and I want to help you accomplish them; I think you can learn a little bit from my story of creating my virtual dream job. How did I accomplish my massive goals and create my dream job in just 12 months? Let me take you on a journey.

In December 2016, I hopped on a plane back to the US of A to spend the holidays with my family. A little discouraged and largely at a loss for my next steps, I felt a little like a dog going home with its tail between its legs. I had just been let go from my second Au Pair family . . .OK BYE.

But I needed money, and I kind of needed it quickly. What was I to do?

I knew I wanted to go back to Australia, but how could I do that and build a career?

I felt stuck. But not for long. 

I turned to UpWork. If you haven’t heard of it or used it before, it’s a platform for freelancers to find work and connect with people who need their services. UpWork’s motto is “creating a world of work without limits,” which is exactly what the company has done.

UpWork has made virtual assistantship easy to jump into, but the company takes a large portion of your income (20%). Overall, the interface is easy to use, but there are a lot of junk or spam posts that you have to filter through to find the best opportunities. I wanted more. I wanted to have my own connections and make the money myself. Why was I giving money to this corporation if I didn’t have to?

Anyway, I digress. UpWork is how I started in virtual work. I found a few data entry jobs and even some solid virtual assistant work. I was a little surprised at just how good I was at finding and taking on this work, and I ended up making $2k+ each month with only 10 to 15 hours of work per week. THE DREAM, RIGHT?

Wrong!

I needed to plan out what I wanted to be doing. Being good at filling in Excel spreadsheets is a great skill, but it wasn’t what made me light up and wake up each morning excited to get busy working.

So, what was my passion? What would make me want to work each day?

I set up an Asana account and set forth planning my adventure. I utilized the skills I had developed as a VA setting up the processes for others to achieve their business goals and dreams in order to effectively prioritize and strategize my own path to success and business alignment with my passions. I looked at my established clients to develop an idea of the kind of people I want to work with and developed a strategy around those particular people and themes. This helped me focus my marketing efforts as well as my networking.

I knew that working with organizations and companies that were socially responsible, and getting back to supporting non-profit work, was where my passions truly lie. Once I established a few strategies of my own, I was able to appropriately move away from the clients who weren’t fulfilling those desires and get back to the aforementioned client avenues.

Your greatest dreams deserve to become reality.

However, they won’t come true by sitting on your laurels. You have to be willing to put in some upfront work of strategizing and planning along with a little elbow grease in order to get there.

Are you following a detailed plan for success to make your dream job a reality? What are your biggest goals to achieve by this time next year?

If you are ready to truly start making your dreams a reality I would love to chat with you.

Feel free to sign up now for a FREE Strategy Session with me!

 

Working a 9-5 While Building a Dream

Working A 9-5 While Building a Dream

An Interview with Sally Cochrane

 

Sally Cochrane is the beautiful human behind Dream Board Digital, Dream Board Digital is a digital design + marketing studio for female online blog + biz owners, femtrepreneurs and overall girlbosses. Their goal is to turn your dream board into reality by getting your message across in a purposeful, passionate and fun way.

 

 

I hope that this episode inspires you to begin making your dreams a reality. I know how scary it can be to drop everything and begin focusing on your goals, that’s why I was so happy to chat with Sally about how she manages to continue working her 9-5 while building her brand for sustainability.

Show Notes:

Things we mentioned:

Asana

Dubsado – Use code (SnowSun1) for 20% off! 

Connect with Sally:

Hang out with her on Instagram Read the blog

Download her FREE CREATIVEPRENEUR BUSINESS PLAN

Hey Everyone! My name is Katee Blizzard and I am the owner and lead strategist behind Social Greatness. I have a passion for helping purpose-driven entrepreneurs achieve the success they deserve through strategic planning, social media management, and impact-driven outreach. I’m a firm believer in you get what you give and I know that together we will leave a great impact on this world.

Brand Authenticity and What It Does For Your Business with Lauren Gordon

Episode 04: Authenticity and What It Does For Your Brand with Lauren Gordon

An Interview with Lauren Gordon

http://https://www.buzzsprout.com/133963/594578-episode-004-authenticity-and-what-it-does-for-your-brand-with-lauren-gordon

 

On today’s show, I chat with Lauren Gordon of LGCopy.com about her story of entrepreneurship as well as her insight on brand authenticity as a powerful marketing tool. Lauren is the wordsmith behind Social Greatness Strategy’s brand story. I truly don’t know where I would be without her help to define my brand’s personality.

 

Lauren has developed a successful business through her powerful Facebook Lives that she holds multiple times a week. Her honesty and authenticity has truly transformed the way she does business and she wants to help you do the same. Lauren has become my Biz Bestie and I am so excited to share that we have an amazing workshop planned for you all about branding your business!

Take a listen to our chat to hear more about Lauren’s Story and her tips for creating your Authentic Brand Story that will be sure to draw in more ideal customers.

Show Notes:

Connect with Lauren:

Hang out with her on Facebook Become Her Friend!

Visit lgcopy.com

Hey Everyone! My name is Katee Blizzard and I am the owner and lead strategist behind Social Greatness. I have a passion for helping purpose-driven entrepreneurs achieve the success they deserve through strategic planning, social media management, and impact-driven outreach. I’m a firm believer in you get what you give and I know that together we will leave a great impact on this world.

Soul Trips Travel Business Making a Difference

Episode 03: Combining a Travel Business and Making a Difference with Celi Baker

An Interview with Celi Baker from Soul Trips

 

Celi Baker is a co-founder of Soul Trips. An amazing business that hosts incredibly impactful trips to help make a difference in the world while enjoying your vacation. On this episode, Celi shares with us the story of her entrepreneurial journey and provides insight into how she leads her business with her heart.

 

 

Celi has a heart of gold and is truly making a difference.

Take a listen to our chat to hear more about Soul Trips mission, business story and success.

Show Notes:

Connect with Celi:

Hang out with her on Instagram @mysoultrips

Upcoming Trips!

Visit MySoulTrips.com

Hey Everyone! My name is Katee Blizzard and I am the owner and lead strategist behind Social Greatness. I have a passion for helping purpose-driven entrepreneurs achieve the success they deserve through strategic planning, social media management, and impact-driven outreach. I’m a firm believer in you get what you give and I know that together we will leave a great impact on this world.