Archive | November 2017

Karen Jones, Personal Trainer and Author of Happy You, Happy Body

By Cheval John

November 29th, 2017

Today’s episode of What’s The Word? features Karen Jones.

Karen is a personal trainer and fitness instructor for Happy You, Happy Body bootcamp, which helps many to achieve their fitness goals and have a healthy lifestyle.

She is the author of the book, “Happy You, Happy Body.”

You will hear:

-What led her to participate in her first fitness competition in her 40s

-How her facebook group by the same name, “Happy You, Happy Body” helped her business

-How she has used live streaming to show her audience different exercise routines

-What led her to write her book “Happy You, Happy Body”

Instagram: Happy You, Happy Body

Facebook Group: Happy You, Happy Body with Karen Jones

Snippet on Vallano Media TV

Full episode here on BlogTalkRadio

Had some technical difficulties, so please bare with us.

Quotes from Karen Jones on:

USING LIVE STREAMING TO SHOW DIFFERENT TYPES OF EXCERCISE

I had a meeting with Lucy Hall and she said to me, “Karen, you need to get on Facebook Live. You need to do live streaming because that’s going to open up a bigger audience for you.

I was a little bit shy of this.

I have done a bit of live streaming, but it was quite structured.

I needed the live streaming to be more natural and be really authentic and just bring me.

I am doing what I know.

ON HAVING A GO-GETTER MINDSET

It’s about taking manageable steps.

As long as you keep moving forward and you do not stop, you will eventually get to the end of that marathon.

That’s the mindset I’ve had when I trained for seven and a half months to get my body contest ready.

That’s what I did when I wrote my book.

ON BUSINESSES EMBRACING SOCIAL MEDIA

You can reach a bigger audience.

My vision is to create a world full of healthy and fit people.

The most easiest way for me to achieve it is through social media.

Here I am in England. How is it I am talking to somebody in America and reaching an audience I want to help worldwide.

People get to see who you are.

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Forward Thinking Companies Look “Backwards”

By Cheval John

We are told to not dwell on the past.

That is very sound advice because we might be missing out on the possibilities of improving ourselves and our business.

It is the same thing with old social media advice regarding certain tactics to grow our audience.

These tactics which worked in the past will not work right now because social media changes all the time.

Sometimes, it might be good to look at the past because you can appreciate the journey to being where you are right now in your business and life.

Have you notice why users of WordPress see their blog posts archived from most recent to the oldest?

Or your podcast archive from the newest to the very first episode?

You might also see on Twitter and Facebook the posts going “backwards” too.

Mel Robbins‘ message on the Video Advice YouTube channel, gives a deeper explanation indirectly on why it is important to look backwards in order to move forward.

Hope you enjoy.

Julia McCoy, Founder and CEO of Express Writers

By Cheval John

November 22nd, 2017

Today’s episode of What’s The Word? features Julia McCoy, founder of Express Writers.

Express Writers provides content for different types of business industries around the world.

Julia is also the host of “The Write Podcast” and the popular twitter chat, #contentwritingchat.

She is a best-selling author of the book, “So You Think You Can Write? The Definitive Guide To Successful Online Writing,” and “Practical Content Strategy and Marketing” set to be released on November 30th.

In this episode, you will hear

-What led Julia to start Express Writers
-How her company achieved over four million dollars in revenue with limited advertising
-Why she started #contentwritingchat
-Her favorite social media platform
-The person (past or present) she would like to interview on her podcast

Snippet on Vallano Media TV

Full episode on BlogTalkRadio

Website: www.expresswriters.com

Twitter: @expwriters

Quotes from Julia on:

BUILDING EXPRESS WRITERS

Jumping into something I did not know how to do and then figuring it out along the way was definitely one of my methods to success.

That kind of opens the door for you to learn by failure when you really do not know what you are doing.

You jump into it and you figure it out.

BOOTSTRAPPING YOUR BUSINESS

That really depends on the circumstance.

It is really hard for me to say you should do one or you shouldn’t do the other because everything I have learned has been without funding.

I have talked to many business owners and what they tell me about funding is if you do not have a clear plan on what you are doing with, let’s say a couple million you are going to get, it really won’t do you any good because you learn how to kind of just sit back and not work really hard to be the leader in your industry.

Whereas, if you are fighting for a paycheck, which I have been all of my six years of running the company, that kind of drives you to create the best product and be the best authority in your niche.

So I feel like that drive really comes from, “I have to make money and I have to figure this out.”

CONTENT MARKETING

I think content marketing is a huge channel, especially if you do not have a lot of capital.

There are big brands testing with their ad budget directly against their content marketing.

They found that content marketing returns four times on investment versus footing a traditional paid ad.

The basis of really making that return when you set up your content marketing is you want to find the right audience and you really want to grab their attention because if you are speaking to everyone in front of you, the return is so low.

So you really have to speak to the right people and go from there when it comes to your content.

A lot of content marketers drop off too early because they do not see the return overnight.

We kind of look for that return immediately and when it does not happen, we get discouraged.

With content marketing, you have to hang in there.

I have been doing this for six years and it is still hard for me to wait around and see the return.

You have to consistently put out the right content.

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It Is Not All About The Numbers In Influencer Marketing

By Cheval John

November 17th, 2017

Couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail from someone who claimed they could increase my instagram followers by 27%.

This is the start of the e-mail

Greetings sir,

I see you’ve been posting on social media again. Your posts keep appearing on my timeline, but they never seem to have that many likes and shares.

I used to be in the same boat too. So did these people.

This person then showed me instagram accounts of people who had an average of 1.77 million followers.

The message continues:

We all have something in common. We all managed to increase how many followers we have just by following an easy to use system.

I developed this system when I did not seem to be getting as much engagement as I thought my posts deserved and now I want to share it with you.

Using my system, you can increase your followers to over 4,300 almost overnight.

After reading this e-mail, I had to laugh.

The question is why would someone send out e-mails claiming to increase instagram followers overnight.

The answers are revealed in these statistics:

59% of micro-influencers think Instagram is the most effective social media platform to engage their target audience-Veloce Network

57% of companies in the fashion and beauty industry use influencer marketing in their marketing strategy-Veloce Network

92% of consumers trust recommendations from peers on social media above all other forms of advertising-Veloce Network

84% of companies plan on working with a social media star in the next year-Influencer Marketing Hub

67% of marketers will increase influencer marketing budget over the next year-Marketing Profs

Infuencer Marketing In Instagram Alone Is A One Billion Dollar Industry-MediaKix

With all of that money on the table, many are trying to become an instagram influencer.

Some are willing to cheat their way to success either by buying followers, joining pods or using bots.

Sarah Moore, founder of Eleven Lights Media, explains in this video about instagram pods and why she totally hates it.

The only way I can see pods as a good thing is if people are using them to collaborate and share their ideas within the community.

Other than that, I am not a fan of instagram pods

Bots are a totally different beast.

Third party companies created these bots particularly for people to buy for their instagram accounts.

They would set up these bots to comment or like a post for a certain amount of time to make it look like they are getting engagement on their instagram accounts.

When people see the supposed engagement from the bots, they will think this person or brand is an influencer.

Those who used these bots to build their account will be able to pitch to these companies on why they should work with them.

My guess is they will use these same bots to grow their clients account.

The problem is they are not growing their audience organically and it goes against instagram’s terms of use.

This is why instagram is on the offensive of shutting down third party services that provide bots.

A person or brand will never beat instagram with bots or pods because they are changing their algorithms constantly

Just because you do not have a 100,000-1,000,000 followers does not mean you are not an influencer.

If you have the right people following you, then you are an influencer because they know you bring value to them.

So continue to listen to what your audience are chatting about and interact with them.

They will give you ideas of what type of content you need to provide.

When you provide the content that solves their pain points, they will naturally share it and over the long haul, you will grow your following organically.

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Dr. Karen Freberg, Associate Professor at University of Louisville

By Cheval John

November 15th, 2017

Today’s episode features Dr. Karen Freberg, associate professor at the University of Louisville.

She is one of the most innovative professors in higher education due to being a pioneer in the teaching of social media.

Dr. Freberg has spoken at conferences around the world.

She has build her online presence via social media which gave her insights into preparing her students for the real world.

Her #freberg17 class created and implemented a social media marketing plan for the Louisville Bats.

This episode was recorded on Facebook Live via Blue Jeans Network.

Snippet on Vallano Media TV

Full episode on BlogTalkRadio

Website: www.karenfreberg.com

Twitter: @kfreberg

Quotes from Dr. Karen Freberg on:

Being Active On Social Media

I feel like social media is a passion of mine and I absolutely love it.

I also feel like for college students, if I am asking them to do certain strategies on social media, I have to do them as well just to kind of show them like, “okay, here’s kind of the strategies that I have been able to learn through the process.

I feel like instead of being like a top-down model for my classes, I am more of a participant too.

So there is definitely strategies I can definitely articulate, share and teach my students.

I am constantly learning each and everyday new things, new trends, new ways of approaching certain softwares for social media.

ON CREATING THE SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITY PROFESSORS FACEBOOK GROUP

I would say it actually came from a research project I was working on this past year.

I was talking to one professor who was teaching social media at a university in Utah.

He was talking about how he really wish there was a place where professors who were teaching social media could come together and share some ideas.

He said, “I go to these other conferences, but they are really just advertising conferences or public relations conferences.”

“There was really no central place where we could all share our thoughts on certain trends in social or what are things that we are facing in terms of expectations from employers about our students skills and books we were using to teach social media.”

So I got the idea of creating a group where we just came together and share our ideas.

The group started last year in October and we have over 360 members (my update: the group is now over 450 members) from around the world.

We are all struggling with some of the same questions and same concepts.

We talked earlier before the show about this perception of professors who teach social media.

We get criticized all the time with “We don’t know what we are talking about, higher education is a waste of time. We are not ahead of the trends or we don’t know what we are doing.”

So it is nice to come together as a group and say, “Okay, here’s what we are doing. Here’s how we are going to show future employers our students are getting the necessary skills and education.”

It is a very great community and I have been really happy to see everyone sharing their ideas.

I also wanted to create a place I wish I had when I started out as a professor.

ON COVERING THE BEHIND THE SCENES OF COLLEGE GAMEDAY IN LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

I got approached from Front Office Sports about taking over their instagram account for college gameday.

I’m like, “Great, this is so exciting”

I realized, “Oh, I have to do what I have been preaching to my students and making sure I was basically following the same guidelines and best practices.

It was a lot of fun.

It was a different mindset where you have to think about what would the audience for front office sports want to see.

I had a lot of people that were really excited to see the clemson social media team.

So I made sure I got some coverage there and then the behind the scenes of college gameday.

Always make sure you have extra battery backs for your phone.

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