marketing

How to Grow Your Business During Difficult Economic Times

How to Grow Your Business During Difficult Economic Times

There’s no doubt that the last few years have hit small business owners hard. Through a pandemic, inflation, high gas prices, and turmoil in the world, these have been difficult waters to navigate for all.

In this distracted world it’s harder than ever to get noticed on social media and although it can be tempting to pay for ads, consistency will get you further when you don’t have a large advertising budget.

I believe now is the best time to get back to basics, I like to take a 3 prong approach to organic marketing.

Marketing Tips for Women Who Hate Marketing

Marketing Tips for Women Who Hate Marketing

I meet and coach so many women who have something amazing to share with the world but they don’t do the work to put themselves out there. I wanted to give you some strategies to help you master your marketing, consider this your cheat sheet for those of you who hate marketing.

Marketing is not a bad word and you shouldn’t be afraid or resent social media either. Honestly, social media is not some necessary evil we must force ourselves to do…. social media is our friend! It’s how we can connect with the world, build our community, and share our work and mission with others.

Blogging to Raise Your SEO

Do you want your website to be easy to find on Google?

Do you want to stand out among the competition?

I have 3 steps that I teach my business coaching clients to get better SEO on Google searches and blogging is just one of them! Today I am sharing my tips for blogging not only to help raise your SEO but also to help you showcase your expertise to your clients.

Do you have questions about blogging or SEO? Send me a message on my Contact page!

Grow Your Business with LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of best platforms to be on to grow your business, build your community, and collaborate with other like-minded people like you!

Watch Kellie and I on the replay talking about how we connected on LinkedIn and how we’ve grown our coaching and consulting businesses because of it.

Got a question about using LinkedIn? Post it in the comments below!

For the link to get your freebie guide go here.

For more information about Kellie go here.

xo,

Kim

Hampton Roads Networking Group for Women

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Aimee Beltran of Irresistible Icing and I had the best time hosting our first community and networking group for women in Hampton Roads. We wanted to help women to feel more confident, we talked about how to build a personal brand and why it’s important and gave tips on how to finally start using video for your business.

If you’re not in our area but would still like to connect with us you can go to our Facebook pages:

Kim Porter TV and Irresistible Icing

I would like to thank Anna Aragon for her gorgeous food and for her photography skills and our sponsor Jennifer Barnes with Young Living Essential Oils for her beautiful diffuser and oils that made the room smell amazing!

xo,

Kim

Should You Use IGTV for Your Business?

Have you heard Instagram released an app for long-form videos? This app called IGTV allows you to post vertical videos to your own channel for up to 60 minutes. Whenever a new social media app like this releases everyone loses their minds and it's like the biggest, newest toy ever... but should you become an early adopter and hop on while it's still new?

The answer is HECK YES!!

IGTV is hoping to rival YouTube for your video watching attention and it's available to everyone to create videos, unlike Facebook Watch. You create your own channel by first downloading the app, record a video on your phone, upload it to IGTV, upload a thumbnail if you want, then post your title and description.

So what should you post videos about? You want to keep any content that you create either educational, entertaining, or inspiring. Some ideas of things to post are:

  • Tutorials

  • Product Reviews or Demos

  • Behind the Scenes

  • Educational Videos

What do you need to get started? Just your smart phone but it helps to have a tripod and if you're worried about lighting, a ring light will make you look amazing! Here's a screen shot of my first IGTV video!

(Image left no ring light... image right with my beloved ring light!)

(Image left no ring light... image right with my beloved ring light!)

One thing to keep in mind is that your Instagram handle (your "username") is not the first thing you see, it's your description (your "name" when you edit your profile). Also, only the first 2 sentences of your bio show up so make sure that it's clear what you do. As of right now there is no monetization which means you can't make money off your videos but also there's no ads to interrupt your viewing pleasure.

Once you post your video on IGTV, you can go to your Instagram Stories, post an image and link your IGTV video. Genius! The videos don't have to be as polished as YouTube videos but make sure you have a purpose for the video, you introduce yourself and give a call to action at the end.

So be sure to come follow me at Kim Porter TV and send me a message if you create your own IGTV channel so I can come follow you!

xo,

Kim

 

 

 

How to Vision & Goal Setting

 

There are some things that are just instrumental in taking yourself and your business to the next level. I want share with you how I went from from booking 6 weddings to 50 weddings in just 3 years in my makeup artistry business!

Writing you Vision, which I like to call your Ultimate Vision, is a snapshot in time of your life 10 years from now.

What are you doing?

Who are you with?

What do you see?

Use your 5 senses to write down as much detail as you can. Once you have completed your Ultimate Vision, work backwards to set clear goals, I call this Reverse Engineering Your Life.

You will have 3 section of Goals:
Personal
Career
Health

Within each section you'll have 1, 3, and 5 year Goals. It doesn't have to be hard and fast goals either, it can be a feeling like in Danielle Laporte's "The Fire Starter Sessions" where she uses your Core Desired Feelings to define your goals. If you haven't read this book, I strongly recommend it.


At the end of 2012, when I first learned about Vision & Goal Setting, I thought about my long-term vision and I wrote down my goals for the first time ever. I got really clear on what I wanted and let myself dream bigger than I've ever let myself before. I was booked for just 6 weddings that year, our youngest at the time was getting ready to go to school full-time and I knew if I was going to really build my business, it was now or never.


My List of Goals in 2012 (some were 5 - 10 year goals):

 

  • Create a makeup line

  • Book 30 weddings

  • Open a makeup studio

  • Hire a team of artists

  • Increase my income


By 2015 I had nailed ALL of them, booking 50 weddings that year and increasing my income that far surpassed what I was making working full-time in retail. I was amazed, I couldn't believe how fast everything had manifested. I knew then just how powerful it was to get clear on what you want and just go for it. 

If you do this exercise I would love to hear from you!

xo,

Kim

How to Use Video in Your Business

You've heard that video is where it's at and you know video will add value to your clients/customers, so why aren't you doing it?

Some of the reasons I've heard from women is:

"I hate the way I sound"

"I hate the way I look"

"I feel ridiculous"

Let me share with you a stat I found online...

"Online videos will account for 80% of all consumer traffic by 2020"(Cisco)

Facebook is prioritizing video, especially live video, above everything else. This means that if you want you business page to be seen, you need to be posting video. So that means you'll have to get over it and do it even though you feel ridiculous!

Here are my Top 10 Tips to Filming a Better Video (and Getting People to See It!)

1. Lighting: Get yourself some good lighting, it will make you look and feel great in your video. I suggest getting a ring light, I bought mine online at Stellar Lighting Systems.

2. Sound: Make sure you keep outside noises to a minimum and get a microphone so that you know your audience can hear you clearly, just watch it if you have long hair!

3.  Background: Try to find a wall or corner that isn't cluttered to use as your backdrop. If your audience is focused on looking at everything around you, they aren't focused on you!

4.  Appearance: I know as a woman you are hard on yourself but don't be, you do not need a hair and makeup team to feel confident on video. Some strategic makeup applications to maximize your features and minimize any (perceived) flaws is all you need! Most of the time if I'm filming at my home I'm in my yoga pants and just throw on a top because that's all you're going to see anyway.

5.  Take Notes: I have some serious A.D.D. sometimes so having at least some notes with bullet points helps to keep me on track.

6.  Share it Social Media: Share it on your social before you go live to get more eyes and share it after on all your social with a call to action.

7.  Catchy Description: Use a description that will catch people's attention, let them know what it is you will be talking about, and use emojis to be more visible.

8.  Introduction: You have about 8 to 10 seconds at the start of a video for people watching to know that they are interested in sticking around to watch or not. Save the formal intro for a minute of two and focus on the beginning on catching the attention of your audience.

9.  Be Inspiring, Informative, and/or Funny: No one wants to watch a boring video so unless you are trying to attract super low-key peeps you have to pump it up a little. Be excited and be passionate so that those watching get excited with you!

10.  Give a Call to Action: After you wrap up your top give your audience a call to action to like, follow, and share to help build your audience.

I hope this helps! If you found value in this please share it and leave a comment, I would love to hear from you.

xo,

Kim