10 Online Marketing #Fails Small Businesses Should Avoid

When I decided to start a business, I had no idea what I was doing. I just wanted to be my own boss. Four years and four million unpaid hours later, I still don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m starting to figure out what not to do (namely, the things I was doing for the first three and a half years). Nowadays, I’m a (relatively)new-and-(vastly)improved small business owner and online retailer. I still make plenty of mistakes, but I try not to make the same one twice.

One way I have invested in my own success as a business owner is by joining the Cleveland chapter of the Ohio Women’s Business Center. This Va-Jay-Jay friendly mecca is nestled right in the heart of downtown Cleveland, and offers everything from free printing to one-on-one mentoring. I’ve been a member since last fall, but aside from the free coffee and printing (because, free), I hadn’t really taken advantage of the resources they offer.

Determined to get my money’s worth out of my membership, I attended Think Tank Thursdays for the first time yesterday, and promptly got my ass schooled in all the ways my social media misuse was shooting my profit margin in the gonads.

Our guest lecturer was Diane Helbig, author of Lemonade Stand Selling and owner of small business development firm Seize This Day. This tiny dynamo of a woman taught me more about marketing in an hour and a half than I learned in two semesters of college courses.

I basically learned that I’ve been doing everything wrong, yet somehow she made me enjoy the process. This woman was Christian Grey to my Anastasia-- she hurt me and made me like it.

After nursing my wounded ego, I decided to compile my notes from the session into a blog post, so that all you would-be business owners could read it and weep. After you’ve read it, we can get together in the comments section and have a pity party. You bring the whine, I’ll bring the cheese (and I’m pretty sure I just did).

10 Online Marketing #Fails I Was Making Until Last Week

1. Trying to sell on Social Media.

Social Media is not for selling. It’s for sharing content, gaining exposure, and establishing yourself as an expert in your field by solving problems. When you do all of those things well, it’s called engaging. The more you engage with others online, the broader your potential customer base becomes. The broader your base is, the more likely you are to make sales. Get it?

2. Generating content instead of curating content

Marketing professionals say that to effectively market a product or service on Twitter, you should post at least three times a day. On Facebook, the recommended posting is seven times a day. Generating that much content is literally a full time job. Instead of typing your fingers to the bone, Helbig recommends small businesses focus on content curation-- in other words, find someone else’s content that you enjoyed and share it with your audience (crediting the original source, natch). Curating content not only saves time, it helps you develop relationships with other content creators that could become cross promoters down the road and links you to larger brands with bigger audiences than you have. It’s like a digital piggyback ride.

3. Failing to focus on consistency over quality

Any marketer worth their salt will tell you that consistency is key when marketing a product or service. So why do we think that online marketing is any different? Building a following is based on consistent engagement, whether online or IRL.

Look at it this way. Think about your favorite book or television series. Was every episode or chapter your absolute favorite? Did every single season or book hit it out of the park? Now imagine that you had to wait five years between season one and season two, or book one and book two? Which would you be more forgiving of, a crappy installment, or a late one?

Online, time moves in dog years. The top brands are tweeting about their product three to five times a day, Facebooking seven to twelve times a day, trend-tracking and paying per click to stay relevant. I’m not saying you can’t afford to go at your own pace. I’m just saying make sure your pace isn’t getting you #owned.

4. Failing to use a RSS reader

RSS Readers collect all the information on RSS feeds you follow and puts them on one page for you, making content curation a snap. There are tons of free readers available online, just Google ‘Free RSS Reader’ and pick one. I chose Feedly because it also includes YouTube channels.

5. Failing to use Google Alerts for myself and my company

This one is truly sad because I do use google alerts. I follow my local legislators, Bakari Kitwana, Dr. Rhonda Williams, Ta Nehisi Coates and Angela  Davis. You know, important people. The first step to being a big deal is believing you’re a big deal. So I set an alert. Because I am somebody.

6. Wasting hashtags

Hashtags are an amazing way to make your brand look relevant and convince the kiddos that you know how to navigate the internets. Yet, like many aspects of social media, appropriate and beneficial usage is as much an art as a science. In short, there is no magic formula for making your brand go viral, but using the right hashtags, at the right time (and in the right context) can drastically increase your brand’s visibility.

Instead of trying to make up your own hashtags, which may or may not catch on, why not auto-boost your brand by embedding your posts with currently trending hashtags? Free hashtag tracking tools like the six reviewed here by Talkwalker blogger Richard Sunley track trends in real time, so your posts are always on point.

7. Failing to use management tools to schedule posts

Don’t get me wrong, I pre-write about seventy percent of my promotional posts. I just didn’t know I could schedule posts for multiple platforms using a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer. Both tools offer free and pro versions, complete with analytics and post schedulers for most social media platforms.

8. Failing to have dope graphics

Up until last week, I made all my labels in paint. I’m not a graphic designer, and simpler seems to work better for me. Only being a business owner is not about doing what you want, it’s about consistently delivering must have solutions to your customers that will keep them coming back again and again. Unfortunately for me, this includes having attractive, professional looking labels and promotional print lit. Fortunately, websites like Canva, PicMonkey, Pablo, and Pixlr make it easy for anyone to design awesome graphics and lit. Check out this shop banner I made on Canva in under twenty minutes!

9. Failing to realize LinkedIn actually matters

I came of age in the Facebook era. To me, LinkedIn is forever associated with MySpace, Y-Chat, and other second rate social media platforms that old people get on in a desperate attempt to recapture a slice of their younger years. Turns out, that is exactly how my little brother feels about Facebook.

The point is, your thirties are not your twenties, and everyone expects you to be full time adulting by now. So yeah, LinkedIn matters. Upload a professional head shot (not a selfie against a white wall) and your most recent resume, and devote a decent amount of time to filling in your profile. Because in the real world, business people use LinkedIn.

10. Failing to think outside the blog

If MYStory is a Blog Outside the Box, it is such in name only. Diane reminded us not to get trapped by convention when planning an online promotional strategy. Anything can be a blog post-- short videos, audio rants, mini reviews of an interesting article, even a political cartoon. You can also re-use content to get twice the mileage out of it. With a world of potential posts in front of me, suddenly my two post per week goal seems that much more attainable.

So, how did you do? Which marketing #fails were you guilty of? Let me know in the comments below ;-)

Choosing Change Part III: Thank God I’m Black in America

The title of this week's post may come as a surprise to my regular readers (all five of you). That’s because, typically, I use this space to rant about life’s injustices, racial disparity, false faith, and generally all the way that it sucks to be black in America.

But racism, like all types of suffering, is relative.

Last year I promised to choose change, to try and be a better person, and to look for the good in the world.

I’m not always up to it, but today as I was working on my business plan, setting goals for my future, it suddenly occurred to me how profoundly blessed I am to be black in a country where owning a business can be more than a pipe dream, where people who look like me have adequate buying power to be considered a market segment, and where people who don’t look like me enthusiastically purchase and promote my brand.

When you think about it, being black in America, as bad as it is, is significantly better than being black most anywhere else in the world (except maybe Canada. Canada rocks!)

Don’t believe me?

Let’s look at the facts.

We already know that 62 people make more than half of the world combined. Now let’s look at where the poor people live:

Urban population living in slums:

Slums. Not ghettos...

Slums.

Now look at where people live on less than $2 per day:

Now look at where people are starving:

Now look at where people don’t live very long:

Seeing a pattern yet?

But Ajah, you might ask, what about those countries that are always in the Blue or Grey? Surely it can’t suck to be black everywhere!

Hmm, ok.

Let’s take Italy for example. They have a concept of Esterofilia, or a love of all things foreign. Yet it didn’t stop them from creating this awesome(ly racist) cartoon:

[Hint...teach your children racism from the cradle. It sticks better that way!]

Esterofilia is also some small comfort to Cecile Keyenge, Italy’s first black government minister. Fellow members of government threatened her with violence and likened her to an orangutan. Citizens threw bananas at her on her way to work on building a better Italy.

This article profiles a Bolivian writer and filmmaker in Australia and the racism she experienced while living there. If a hot, smart Bolivian wasn’t feeling the love, I doubt ‘chocolate me’ would fare much better.

I won’t even discuss blacks living in Asia, where pale skin and waiflike physiques are the standard of beauty.

Even in Brazil, where blacks are the majority of the population, discrimination is rampant, and hate crimes against black trans women are everyday occurrences.

Chew on this: Brazil is 51% black. Yet they have ONE prime time TV show with black leads.

We have Scandal, Blackish, the Carmichael show, Empire, Rosewood, The Daily Show, The Nightly Show, Little Big Shots, Truth Be Told, CHicago Med, Chicago Fire, Orange is the New Black, How to Get Away With Murder, Underground, and many, many more.

They have: Mister Brau, which is basically an evening soap about Brazil’s Jay-Z and Beyonce.

Sisters living in the UK routinely pay up to $20 for a single pack of kanekalon braiding hair.

Outside of Canada, no (developed) country seems to love and accept black beauty as much as the United States.

Don’t get me wrong, we have our problems-- the black community still doesn’t have much significant power in the States, but we do have influence, both locally and globally.

When America is at his worst and I wonder if it’s worth it to keep fighting (versus immigrating to Canada), I remember this:

Black and Brown people across the diaspora look to me and other Americans of African descent to forge a path, shoot for the stars and fail like lightning; dream; defy; demand; debate; to be beautifully, loudly, unapologetically black.

To be free.

Cheerful Giving: How Faith Changed My Business Model

Today/ yesterday I went to a Baptist revival. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to one of those (if you’re white and live in the north, chances are you haven’t), but they are basically a weekend long festival of faith, complete with singing, praise dancing, and sermons.

Revivals are not usually my thing. But my spirit has been feeling so parched, so weakened and drained, that I jumped at the opportunity to go.

Some things to note:

1. Revivals usually last until Monday at the latest, so the chances of a revival happening right when I needed it, on a Tuesday? SlimCity.
2. My Aunt texted me and told me where she was going before she left the office. This literally never happens.
3. I generally dread revivals, but something(someone?) motivated me to leave the house on a rainy night (with fresh hair, no less) to be with other people of faith.

Three words: Three. Part. Miracle.

From the moment I stepped in the door, I went to a deeply emotional place. My ears were open and my spirit was ready to be fed. Every word spoken, sung, wailed, and whispered felt as if it was specifically for me. They spoke about the prodigal son.

I’ve heard lots of prodigal son sermons, and they are all pretty much the same, focused on the son returning/sinner repenting theme. This sermon was different.

Firstly, I, Miss pro-black-anti-white-privilege-give-folks-a-chance, discovered what a hypocrite even I am because I seriously misjudged these pastors. I assumed these were ‘called’ men. And in my liberal, cappuccino brown Presbyterian world, I equated that with a lack of formal education.

Wrong. The pastor began his sermon by referencing a Bartolome Murillo painting that he saw on a recent trip to Spain. He went on to focus his sermon not on the prodigal son, but on the other brother, the hater. The pastor said that the other brothers sins of jealousy and pettiness were no less than the sis his brother committed in the eyes of God. Then he went on to say that those in the church are often guilty of the same sins, sins less visible to others like judgmental attitudes, envy, and pride.

Shots fired! The next sermon was about Grace- you know the kind with a capital G. The pastor spoke on Jeffrey Dahmer, and how he repented before he was killed in prison. That agitated me, deeply. I don’t really believe his repentance is sincere, but that’s when I realized what I think doesn’t matter- it’s between him and God.

And that’s the whole of Christianity in a nutshell-- love everybody, don’t be petty, and have faith that in every situation, God will work it out.

It’s a pretty lofty set of ideals for us mere mortals, but can you imagine what the world would be like if people of faith actually held themselves to their own religious standards?

I’m usually the one raising hell (pun intended) at church, agitating and challenging our congregational body to do more to dismantle white privilege. I’ve always felt like they were in a position to do so much more than I ever could.

But tonight, in a cramped storefront church in East Cleveland, a fire was lit in me, something that moved me to do exactly as the final sermon suggested: stop making excuses and start having expectations. Everyone is in a position to help, even me, especially me, I’M A BUSINESS OWNER!

But I’ve been running my company in that typical ‘Christian’ way- “yeah, I want to help others, eventually, but right now I have to worry about me”, talking all the talk but not walking the walk.

I’m over it. I’m capable of so much more than what I’m doing. I’m smart. I can figure out a way to help people now, and help myself in the process.

As you get to know me, you’ll see that most of my worldview is shaped around ‘fixing’ America, which to me means dismantling white privilege without bloody revolution. Being the genius that I am, I have already come up with a solution that if I published in full would be redacted and the Men in Suits would disappear me somewhere or pull me over for no reason and murder me in jail (#whathappenedtoSandraBland) bad for all parties.

Suffice to say, we need to start at the bottom. According to a study done by Brooking Institute, Forty Two percent of children born in the bottom quintile stay there. They have children there, and forty two percent of their children stay there. For the uninitiated, the bottom quintile means people living on less than $29,000 a year for a family of four. That is perpetual poverty, with a 60/40 shot of ever getting out.

I want to change that. I believe as an American, that for our country to thrive, we need to change that. I believe as a Christian, that radical temple crashing Jesus would want us to change it. And I believe as a business owner, that changing it means changing the way I do business.

I’m going to do something crazy. I’m putting my money where my mouth is (but not in my mouth, money is nasty.) I’m going to throw my business plan out the window and step out on faith. I want to use a portion of my proceeds to give mini-grants ($25- $500) to small business owners just like me. Not the people who already have employees and high credit scores, the people at the bottom, the ones who might not know their credit scores at all, the ones who are just trying to make it.

I am moved to do this because despite the fact that I am far from successful, I know there are people out there that would kill to be where I’m at, just because I have an online store and a safe place to live.

If that feels right to you, it’s between you and God.

I don’t know how this is going to work. I’m not sure what the qualifications should be for getting money. I’m thinking money to pay for a vendor’s license, a grant for business equipment you can’t afford, or maybe funding to go to a trade show, etc. I’m still working out the kinks, and I want to hear your ideas too. For now I’m going to start by setting aside twenty percent of whatever I sell in an ‘everyday angel’ investing account. Email me at GoldenGoddessCosmetics@gmail.com subject line everyday angel with ideas on how I should spend it.

-Ajah