marketing tips Tag

06 January

Prep Your Brand For 2017 With These 5 Seriously Smart Actions

Erika Madden | Business Tips, Classy Marketing, Customer Service | 4 Comments

Prepare your brand for 2017 by taking these smart steps to improve your social media profiles, audit your website, deliver better customer service, and more!

No matter what kind of business we run or blog we have, there is one universal truth among all of us: we all want more people to swoon over our brand.

Whether that means more social media followers or just more sales (though it's likely both!), we can spend a crazy number of hours searching for "the latest and greatest" way to market ourselves and make ourselves attractive to people. I've definitely done it, and I'm willing to hazard a guess that you have, too.

The problem is, "the latest and greatest" isn't always the best. And sometimes the info we get can be awfully flashy, skeazy, or downright ineffective.

Today I'd like to share with you 5 solid tips from my own experience in online business that will immediately have a positive impact on your brand for the upcoming year. These tips are simple, and yet will help you look more professional and be more likeable -- so that you can achieve more of your brand goals in 2017.

(For you maybe that means making more money, reducing customer churn, obtaining more speaking opportunities, winning more recognition, making more relationships, or _________. Whatever it is, doing all of the following can seriously, and perhaps surprisingly, impact what you achieve this year.)

I invite you to try them out!
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02 March

How To Book Clients With Your First Live Event

Erika Madden | Business Tips, Classy Marketing | 24 Comments

So you've been wanting to host your first live workshop or event, but you're not even sure where to start -- or how to convert it into actual paying clients and customers? These proven tips from a pro event planner are gold!

Guest post by Lauren Caselli, savvy event planner + gutsy boss lady

Remember that goal that you set for yourself to “finally start speaking” in 2016?

Or the time that you told yourself you’d host a live workshop FOR REAL this year?

Or how you’ve always toyed with the idea of possibly teaching to a roomful of your dream clients, buuuutttt you weren’t actually sure how you’re going to pull it off?

And now it’s almost the end of the first quarter and you’ve made no progress toward that goal?

Yea, girl. I feel you.

Back in January of 2015, I was frustrated and really overwhelmed with the whole “building a business” thing. I had a few copywriting clients (which is what I did before I moved over the planning events for digital entrepreneurs and tech companies), I had booked my very first live event client (a women’s retreat in Asheville), but the daily grind of focusing on blogging and social media and marketing -- it started to wear me out.

I was posting -- but no one was reading.

I was delivering SERIOUS content -- but no one was subscribing.

And all the while, I saw people totally blowing up in front of me. Snatching clients out of thin air. Marketing themselves so effortlessly in Facebook groups.

And I got so frustrated.

So, I decided I needed to do something different. I needed to create a community who had my back. Not necessarily for any sort of monetary gain, but because I needed the support of business people who “got it."
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16 February

101+ Popular Blog Title Templates That Work (Just Fill In The Blanks!)

Erika Madden | Blogging Tips | 63 Comments

Finding great blog title ideas (and then writing one that is attention-grabbing and actually works in getting people to click) is hard! Instead of stressing, use these 101+ free blog title templates -- just fill in the blanks and voila: catchy headlines! (This post also comes with a printable booklet for free download!)

Tell me: how many times do you go to write a magnetic title for your blog post and instead come up with something so insufferably dull that it gives you honest-to-goodness nightmares?

(You get 'em, right? Those dreams where all you do all night is think about writing -- and re-writing -- the best gosh darn headline in the entire history of headlines?)

Well, whether or not writing blog titles keeps you tossing + turning all night like an scary-obsessive blogger (I wouldn't know anything about that, by the way), I think that, actually, it should.

Until you read this post and swipe all the foolproof, fill-in-the-blank headline formulas I listed for you, of course!

BUT until you do that, yes. Headline writing should preoccupy you, my friends.

Here's why:

8 out of 10 people will read your headline copy.

But on average, only 2 out of those 8 people will be interested enough to go on and read your post.

Your content could be mighty, remarkable, heroic -- more heroic than any other blog post for ~~miles~~ clicks around -- but if your blog title can't lure them in?

It just sits there.

Unread. Unappreciated. Unloved.

All that hard work, wasted.

As a blogger + someone who depends on blogging to help me make a living for my little kids and I, that depresses me. I'm sure it depresses you, too.

That's why, above everything else you do for a blog post, it's your job to make your headlines as click-worthy as possible.

But hey, I'd prefer this task didn't give you nightmares. Like other people I know. Ahem. That's why I did the work of surveying smart, popular blogs like Hubspot, Copyblogger, Inc., etc., and created over 100 fillable blog title templates based off their most effective, compelling headlines.

The blog title formulas are easy to customize no matter what...

22 October

Winning Trust: 50 Proven Ways to Make Your Business Look Professional Online

Erika Madden | Blogging Tips, Business Tips, Classy Marketing, Customer Service | 40 Comments

Use this heroic list of 50 proven ways to make your business look professional online to boost your brand cred and be more successful. The tips here will help you be a trusted, respected authority online, meaning you get the followers you want and the clients + customers you need.

You've figured it out by now.

If you want to be successful (read: get followers + make money to pay your bills) in business online, it's not enough to simply have a website.

It's not enough to simply put up some services or products.

It's not enough to simply post on some social media accounts.

You can have ALL those things -- and still barely get noticed.

And while you no doubt get that, it's still frustrating. That's because while you know that it does take more, chances are that you're simply not sure what that "more" is.

Does it take gobs of money? Friends in high places? A whiz partner helping in the background?! Or maybe $20,000 worth of e-courses + masterminds?!?!

Let's all take a collective cleansing breath, because I'm happy to tell you that NO: it does not require a single one of the above.

(If I can be a little bit personal with you guys here, I'll tell you that I myself had none of those things that I just listed when I started Olyvia.co. The truth is, I had just left my destructive marriage, was living alone and on food stamps + Medicaid with three young children I had to care for full-time, had absolutely ZERO business connections because I had been a stay-at-home-mom for the past seven years [blogging + doing mostly free freelancing in my spare time], and could not afford to buy a single e-course or mastermind "opportunity.")

What it takes, more than anything, is to make the right impression.

In part 1 of the #heroicbrand series, I taught you all about making an impression through relationships. In part 2, you learned to build a reputation for yourself via the quality of content you put out into the world. Today, in part 3, we're going to take it a step further: You're going to learn the 50 exact...

02 October

The Extra-Heroic Guide to Writing Remarkable Blog Posts

Erika Madden | Blogging Tips, Business Tips | 50 Comments

The extra-heroic guide to writing remarkable blog posts: what makes a blog post valuable to your audience, attracts new readers, and makes your brand strong online. Comes with free worksheets and TONS of tips! Visit Olyvia.co for more.

When you think of a #HeroicBrand in your life and the blog they keep -- the blog that helps you genuinely improve your business, or your blog, or your fitness, or your cooking, or your hobbies, or anything else that's important to you -- what comes to mind?

What is it about it that makes it so darn valuable?

Why do you follow it, refer to it, and tell your friends about it -- over and above most of the other blogs out there?

There's no doubt that a good blog includes many things: a blogger who is dedicated to being responsive, kind, and helpful, an attractive + distinct "voice," eye-catching photos + graphics, clean design, and so on. Those all are sure to make your list.

But a terrific blog -- a blog that stands out from the crowd and earns an ever-growing + loyal audience -- has another unique quality all its own:

It provides specific, in-depth, remarkable content that people can use to immediately accomplish goals or fix problems in their life.

In short, it's not just a pretty place, a warm fuzzies place, or a mildly interesting place.

It's a worthwhile place. It serves people.

That's why you + a throng of others keep coming back to it, right? It's not just a narcissistic, "look at what I'm eating for dinner!" project on the part of the blogger...

23 September

Earning An Audience: How To Be Irresistible + Grow Your Brand Online

Erika Madden | Blogging Tips, Business Tips, Classy Marketing, Customer Service | 79 Comments

How to earn your audience: the actions that REALLY make you noticeable + irresistible as a small business and brand online. Get 13 beginner community-building tips + 4 advanced strategies with examples and questions to help you improve.

The best way I know how to share what I'm about to share with you about building a business on the interwebs is to start off with a little story-slash-confession. I promise, pinkie-swear, and cross my heart not to be boring.

Before I launched the Olyvia brand, I spent my time reading.

By my estimations, I read about 157 gazillion articles on business marketing strategies on a daily freaking basis in the months leading up to my website going live.

You see, even though I had experience in growing communities online -- launching + promoting around a half dozen blogs over the previous 10 years, advising non-profits on social media marketing, informally assisting my friends who owned small businesses, and other rather unremarkable things -- the truth is this:

I was certain that anything I knew would prove to be woefully, shamefully inadequate. Oh yeah: and I would fail.

In my mind there simply had to be the Holy Grail of marketing strategies out there that would guarantee my entrance into biz blogging heaven. I just needed to find it behind some internet guru's squeeze page.

(Don't even ask how many newsletters I signed up for in my quest for marketing enlightenment. #likewhoa)

But ~~sales pitch after sales pitch~~ errr, I mean webinar after webinar, all I found at the end of the rainbow were $2000 courses I couldn't afford -- and didn't trust enough to buy even if I could.

So, alas, the day came when I finally could do nothing more than push Olyvia.co into being. I hoped (and ohhh it was a desperate hope, I might add) that what I knew from my past online experiences -- in point of fact, what I had built my entire brand around -- would be enough to get me started.

What was my so-called strategy?

Only this: ...