Hilary Baumann, Author at FascinationDesign

March 19, 2015January 17, 2017

Paid, Owned, Earned marketing approach {article worth sharing}

The Marketer’s Approach to Balancing a Paid, Owned, and Earned Social Media Strategy – via SumAll http://blog.sumall.com/journal/marketers-approach-balancing-paid-owned-earned-social-media-strategy.html

Some Key takeaways:

“…The ‘paid, owned, earned’ approach. The idea is essentially that all marketing falls into three different categories.

First there is the media that you pay for. This is traditional advertisements and promotions.

Then there is media that you own – think blog content, visuals and other offerings that you or your team will create.

And finally, there is the Holy Grail of marketing– earned media. This is the fabled word-of-mouth that everyone is always talking about.”

. . . . .

“… without doing or collecting things worth talking about, brands just end up talking about themselves. Not only does nobody listen to, or interact with shameless self-promoters, it actually turns users off to your brand.”

Hilary’s Note: This second takeaway is one I see small businesses doing all of the time. They think that marketing is standing on the soap box and just shouting that they exist and expecting people to care. And it’s even worse when they won’t acknowledge that they could at least talk about the benefits or unique qualities of their product or service.

In the case of some products or services it doesn’t even have to be words. With clothes or jewelry for example, a good photo, as they say, is worth a 1000 words (though some descriptions for SEO reasons are also important when online.)

February 26, 2015February 2, 2016

Why does facebook show my location wrong?

This is related to cell phone towers and your phone’s location services accuracy instead of facebook actually.

I’ve seen this happen around Lexington showing people as posting from “Catnip Hill.” There is in fact a cell tower located off of Catnip Hill Road in Nicholasville (city next to Lexington for those outside the area) but that tower provides that location information for people who are posting while on that cell tower’s network … even when they are in fact in Lexington. “Little Georgetown” is another mistaken location people in Lexington often get.

Basically to have a shot at getting this changed, you have to improve the accuracy of the phone’s location services in order to possibly get a more accurate location. Scroll down to “Improve GPS accuracy” on the following page and see if these instructions help (iOS 8):
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203033

This may or may not fix it. If it does end up helping now but then later you have a problem again, you may want to restart your phone. I’ve seen phones that haven’t been restarted in weeks hold onto old location information longer than they should.
If you’re posting from your computer then it has to do with location information being sent by your ISP (or your VPN) and I really don’t know any easy ways to correct it from that or the answer is going to be more specific to those services.

Good Luck!

January 30, 2015January 17, 2017

Be your best self in business
& stop trying to be something you aren’t

I want to scream anytime someone says :
• “I want to be like xyz company because they seem to be making money”
It’s very unlikely your business will really flourish with this mindset.

You can’t just say “oh that business looks like they’re making money I want some of that pie” particularly if you don’t know how they got where they are today … or don’t want to put the time or money into it. OR worse, you want to make money but think that they charge too much so you want to be like them but cheaper without sacrificing quality … and without first reviewing what business expenses might be. I have heard it SO many times in my life it’s not even funny anymore.

You need to be your best self in business:
• “I have these core values and my business provides a valuable product/service for this need/desire/problem”

But I want to make a boatload of cash!

Money isn’t magic. Money also isn’t evil. Money is certificates of appreciation for something you sell or offer that someone else values. Money is a standardization of value instead of trading goats for crops and vice versa. Whether it fills a basic need, a desire or fixes a problem, people pay because it fulfills something in their lives. Physically or emotionally.

See also: Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

What makes you you?

Trying to be someone else means that you are less unique and have less to offer the world. And therefor people are less likely to give you those certificates of appreciation we call money. This doesn’t mean your business can’t be similar to someone else’s just that it needs to focus on what makes you unique. USP or Unique Selling Proposition.

Yell it from the rooftops!

So what about marketing? No matter how awesome your service or product is, “Build it an they will come” is not a reliable business marketing plan. Whether you market traditionally (magazines, tv or radio) or via more current method (social media, website, streaming radio) you need to have a USP and some effort put into spreading the word.