Holiday Shopping with Social Media

As we draw closer to Thanksgiving, ads for the upcoming shopping season can be seen everywhere: From the mall to the grocery store, it seems there's always a reminder that the holidays are sneaking up on you, and your window of opportunity nabbing the best gifts is closing. But whether you're the type who wants to go out and get all the best products on Black Friday, or you're more the kind of person who procrastinates until mid-December, you're still always looking for a great deal! After all, you don't want to spend more money than you have to, and you definitely want the whole shopping process to be as painless as possible. And that means you're probably going to do your fair share of shopping online. But in 2014, online shopping can be a lot more than just logging on to your favorite store and filling up your cart. You can also utilize the power of social media to do your holiday shopping.

By using social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, you can easily find what you're looking for in multiple places. You can quickly compare availability, prices, and more. Even better, you can read reviews and get feedback on any items before you add anything to your cart. Sure beats the old way of doing things, doesn't it?

Here are a few ways you can use social media for your holiday marketing strategy—and maybe even use some of these tips yourself when you go shopping!

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Holiday Marketing with Twitter

In a survey conducted among 500 US adults, 36% said they wanted to use Twitter for holiday gift ideas. Another 35% admitted they used the social media platform to find links to the business's online store.

Now, in case you didn't know, 284 million people are on Twitter and active every month. That's a lot of potential business.

Furthermore, 4 in 10 consumers who are active on Twitter plan on beginning their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving. That leaves about a week and half from the publishing of this article to get your store holiday-ready! You can begin by tweeting about special deals, ask your followers to "please retweet" your updates, and direct people to your store for coupons or special checkout codes. Perhaps you could offer a "new followers" coupon for your new fans. Think outside the box on this one--people who use Twitter want to get information and get it fast. If you deliver it in an attention-grabbing way, you're sure to get a few new eyes on your merchandise.

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Holiday Marketing with Facebook

With Facebook, you are provided a more “permanent” platform to advertise to your fans. Permanent is in quotes because, of course, Facebook is actually moving at a rapid pace--updates seem to come and go quickly, and the feed refreshes constantly. But fans can easily find apps or albums that you've set up on your business page to promote your holiday specials. You can make your page visually appealing and full of content to entice your audience. Plus, sharing on Facebook works a bit differently than sharing on Twitter does—people get more personally invested. Family members are likely to share with one another over Facebook, whereas Twitter tends to foster more professional connections. When was the last time you tweeted your grandparents? (or grandchildren!)

A good place to start is with two of the biggest shopping days of the year: Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to AllFacebook.com, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are growing into a quarter-long phenomenon. They urge businesses and advertisers to “capitalize on lower reach costs and high consumer engagement before and after peak days.”

Yeah, yeah, that's nice. But what does it mean for small businesses?

Basically, that you can promote your great deals before and after days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday to get the best returns. But that doesn't mean you should only focus on those days. You should also keep promoting your business's specials throughout the holiday season, because shoppers will be buying more heavily until Christmas.

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Holiday Marketing with Pinterest

If you haven't gotten into the habit of posting to a Pinterest board, you might want to start: 47.7% of holiday shoppers say that Pinterest has influenced their buying decisions. That's a lot of people!

But just how can you make the most out of your pins and get people interested in your products? It'll take a bit of creative thinking, but if you try, we bet you can come up with a variety of effective marketing strategies. For example, you could try making a themed board. You can showcase great gift ideas. You can create a storyboard where a shopper uses your product to bring happiness to friends and family. You can show how other customers choose to use your products to make their lives better. It's all in how you choose to present yourself!

We hope that these tips have been helpful for you. The holidays are a great time for helping customers get the special gifts they want for friends and family. By putting your best foot forward, you can prove to your community that you are dedicated to their needs, and that you're ready to help them make this holiday season the best one yet!

Can you think of any other ways to use Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest for holiday marketing? It's always a learning experience, and everyone gets different results. But with a little bit of practice and creativity, you can learn how to get more sales, happier customers, and better engagement during the holiday season. If you have any tips or tricks, be sure to leave them in the comments below!

Good luck!

Back to Basics #24: How to Find Your Writing Voice

If you've ever posted an update on a blog (or even thought of starting a blog!), then you've probably thought about how you would like to address your audience. Unless you're writing your own personal diary, it's absolutely necessary to figure out your writing voice—because how you appeal to your readers will have a direct effect on who chooses to come back to your blog, and who decides that it's not for them and navigates elsewhere. Whether you want to inform visitors about how to build and care for pools, or you'd like to provide tips on how to dress professionally for work, a blog can be a great place to start out. In this article, we'll go over some of the basic things you'll need to know to find your writing voice—and be well on your way to blogging success!

Define Your Audience

This is probably another phrase you've heard before. But there's a good reason for it: It's the most important step to take before you begin publishing your posts. When you know who you're writing for, coming up with post ideas and defining your goals becomes much easier.

To define your audience, ask yourself:

• Am I selling a product or service to someone?
• If yes, what makes my product unique?
• If not, what am I offering my visitors instead?

Once you know this, then you should think about:

• What are my audience's interests?
• What are their ages?
• What is their education level?

And finally, you'll want to know some important personal data:

• Where do most of my customers or visitors come from?
• Are they male or female?

So, let's say you're selling handmade soaps to your visitors. They tend to be casual shoppers who are looking for an alternative to soaps made with chemicals. They are interested in health, beauty, and natural living. Most are female, from the United States, and tend to be from wealthy metropolitan areas. They are educated, and between the ages of 35-50. So with this audience, you wouldn't want to write in an ultra-casual manner like you would with, say, a vaping or e-cig store. That much should be obvious!

That's a lot of information you've gathered! But now, after all that hard work, you also have an incredibly well-defined audience. Knowing these statistics will help you come up with effective advertisements and well-informed posts that your audience will love to share. Plus, you'll easily be able to find topics popular with your audience and build your posts around those ideas. But first...

What is the Focus of Your Blog?

Now that you know who you're writing for, you need to know what you want to write about. In our example, you'll be writing about health and beauty topics, particularly those linked to skin care—so you can really let your soaps be the star of the show. But even within this in mind, there are still a number of routes you could take. For example:

• A how-to blog: How to make your own soaps, how to use natural soaps, etc.
• A sales blog: Tips for better sales with natural products, or you can purchase a soap starter kit and be a part of the soap-selling team.
• Better living blog: A guide on how to live frugally or lower your carbon footprint.
• Beauty blog: A blog covering all kinds of new products, with the focus on your soaps and how they'll fit into a beauty routine.

As you can see, it can be a tough decision to make. But once you've chosen a theme for your blog, you'll want to stick with it. It can be confusing to readers to have a blog offering skincare advice in one post, and then how to make your own soaps in another. Chances are, these are two different audiences. (Although of course there could always be some overlap!)

What Purpose Does Your Blog Serve?

Now, this might sound obvious, but you'll have to remember why you're writing a blog in the first place.

For many people, they want to start a blog to make an income. Others, however, want to add a blog feed to their existing website for a little extra information. Still others want to have a blog simply for search engine optimization purposes.

We're not here to tell you why you should have a blog—but you should know why before you begin this project! If you're aiming to make sales through your blog, you're going to have a different approach than you would if you were just using it to post occasional how-to articles and company updates.

So before you get posting, be sure to figure out exactly how your blog fits into your business and marketing plan.

How Much Time Do You Have?

If you don't have a lot of time to update your blog, you're going to want to keep your posts simple and short. On the other hand, if you have a lot of time to devote to crafting articles, then you may want to write in-depth pieces. You may even want to add beautiful photographs that your viewers will want to share! It all depends on your schedule.

The short, to-the-point articles work great for company updates, brief how-to's, or making a “listicle” that is helpful to your visitors (For example, 3 ways to get snow off your roof without falling and hurting yourself!)

The longer articles work well for those who want to get really in-depth—like photos of those handmade soaps accompanying an in-depth article about the different uses of natural cleaners.

You might choose to mix and match, and that's fine, too. But make sure to realistically look at your schedule before you begin posting. You'll want to stick to the schedule you make, so if you think you're pushing yourself too hard, err on the side of safety and cut back on your posts.

So Now What?

So now that we've talked your ear off about how you can get everything ready for your blog, you can finally take a look at everything you have figured out and decide how you want to write. Your writing voice will probably come naturally once you know who your audience is. Most of us already know what our customers like, and if we don't, we can always ask for feedback to make sure we're doing everything right. Your job now is to make sure that you deliver your own, original, fresh content to your readers when you say you will. Stick to your schedule. Don't mix personal rants with your business updates. If you want to focus on how-to videos, don't throw in an article about why one brand of snow-blower is better than another.

If you're writing for mothers, don't use abrasive language. If you're writing for potential college students, appeal to their hopeful attitudes while assuaging fears of failure. If you're writing for people who test the strength of rebar, don't focus on the difficulties of the job—provide solid statistics and ways to interpret test results.

Finding your writing voice doesn't have to be difficult. It just takes a bit of time and research. And you know what? Once you've been blogging for a while, you will find that you naturally fall into that mindset as you write. Plus, you'll hear from your readers through blog comments, social media updates, or even emails, and they'll give you helpful advice to follow.

The Long and Short of It

To summarize:

• Learn who your audience is and what they like.
• Decide which topics will be the most important to your readers.
• Determine whether your blog will be used to drive sales, supplement your marketing strategy, or simply provide regular company updates to readers.
• Create a realistic schedule for updates—and stick to it!Use language appropriate to your audience.

Do you have any other tips? Let us know in the comments below!

Back to Basics #22: Small Business Marketing for Local Storefronts

Here at Internet Local Listings, we focus on helping our small business clients with all of their online marketing needs—social media, websites, and managing local listings for a variety of business directories. This is an important part of your small business marketing plan, because being seen online is integral to your success as a business in the modern marketplace. And, as you know, it can be a bit confusing and time-consuming to handle all this on your own. Having help is a great asset in this case.

However, what we aren't able to help with is the management of your storefront. That might sound obvious, but an important aspect of small business marketing that many people overlook is the effect that a storefront's appearance can have on a customer. You already know that first impressions matter when you're on a job interview or first date, and the same can be said of a customer's first visit to your business—a store's appearance can have tremendous influence over whether a person chooses to return or not. In this article, we'll talk a bit about how appearance can affect a customer's decision to purchase or leave, as well as how keeping your store beautiful can help create more online interactions and engagement.

A Storefront's Appearance Matters.

According to a study done at Retail Customer Experience, more than two-thirds of the surveyed group had avoided a store simply because the storefront was unattractive, outdated, or dirty. Although it might be a bit difficult to make a building look newer than it is (particularly if you share the building with other offices and have no control over renovations), it's always possible to keep the inside of your store looking neat and tidy.

Image from I Loved New York.com

Keep the Place Smelling Fresh.

Aside from keeping your store's appearance tidy and clean, you're going to want to make sure it smells okay. This might seem as obvious as keeping it clean, but if you're, say, a car mechanic and you're used to the smell of oil, you might not realize how off-putting it can be to some people. While you obviously can't control the smell of the vehicles you're working on in your shop, you can control the smells in the lobby. Brew some fresh coffee. Set up snacks. Keep everything wiped down and clean; keep the doors to the shop closed to prevent extra noise and smells sneaking in. Finally, you may want to use this as an opportunity to promote some great-smelling air fresheners!

This goes for any industry, however. Even if you run a bookstore (and many people love the smell of books), make sure that everything is clean without overdoing it on the “chemical” smell.

The “First Ten Feet” Rule.

According to Rick Segel, author of Retail Business Kit for Dummies, you must offer a price-sensitive incentive for customers to continue shopping within the first 10 feet of the door. For example, this could be a special offer you're running, a promotion for your store's top-selling product, or even a poster board offering information on local community events. Whether you're in the business of selling auto parts or you offer home cleaning services, you can always find some related community events or classes that would appeal to your clientele. Don't be afraid to get creative—have some of your customers asked questions about the availability of a specific product? Have they asked where you could learn more about your business? Maybe they just simply get lost on the way to the bathroom! Do whatever you can to help them feel welcome and at home in your store, and they'll be likely to remain long enough to explore. Plus, you may just earn yourself a repeat customer!

Maintain Your Store's Fixtures.

Sometimes your store is clean, your employees are welcoming, and the place is set up to draw the customers in—but people just aren't staying. You're confused and you're wondering what could be going wrong.

• Take a step back from your store. Walk into it again as if it were the first time you'd ever set foot in it. Now, you're probably so used to it that this will be difficult for you, but try really hard to place yourself in your customers' shoes. Here are some key things to look for:
• Are your displays are neatly arranged? Do they look up-to-date? An old, faded poster or a messy stack of “clearance” products might make your store look disorganized.
• Do the lights seem too dim or too bright? If they're too dim, it might make your store look unwelcoming or shady—which is, naturally, off-putting to customers. If your lights are too bright, it can make customers feel uncomfortable, too, because who wants to feel like they need to wear sunglasses inside of a store?

Finally, make sure your staff is friendly and welcoming.

Make sure there's always a manager or knowledgeable person available to answer your customer's questions. And of course, ensure everyone looks his or her best to keep with the professional appearance you've worked so hard to instill in your store.

The wonderful part of keeping your storefront clean and inviting is that it will cross over into the online realm. People will be happy to leave you positive reviews. They'll want to follow you on Facebook or Twitter to see what your new specials are. They'll refer friends and family. Remember that this is all part of the bigger picture--getting the word out about your fantastic business!

Small business marketing is complex. It's a mixture of online finesse as well as a little bit of good, old-fashioned business skills. While the marketing experts at Internet Local Listings can help you with the internet marketing part of the equation, we can only offer tips for the local aspect of it! We hope you've found these helpful!

If you have any tips or suggestions, leave them in the comments below! And be sure to subscribe for regular updates from our small business marketing blog.

Back to Basics #21: Thinking Outside the Social Media Box

While there are tried-and-true methods to growing your social media following and keeping your customers connected through social media, sometimes your efforts seem to stagnate. Maybe you hit a stride of nice growth, but then discovered that it plateaued. Or maybe you've been on a steady climb, and still see growth happening, but really want to push your social media presence to the next level. Whatever it is, you're ready to try something a bit bolder, a bit louder, and a bit more... well, scary. It's out of your comfort zone, but that doesn't mean that you have to avoid it. Let's talk a bit about what you can do to start thinking outside the social media box and really getting into your stride as a business owner and marketer!

Find A Few Friends.

No, we don't mean find a few friends like the ones you're already following back, or the ones who are related to you. (Even if your mom is always going to be your #1 fan... sorry, mom.)

What we mean is, find the big names in your industry and connect with them.

Take the time to do a little research around your type of company—who is active on social media? Is there a particularly interesting website or blog that you could start following? Whose name frequently gets brought up in the news? Once you've found these people, start paying attention to what they're doing. They're obviously a credible resource for a reason, and that's more than likely because they interact with fans, provide valuable content, and frequently update their blog and/or social media sites. You're probably trying to do all this already, but when you have a role model to emulate, things get that much easier.

Here are some more helpful tips to try once you've found a few new friends:

Do:

• Retweet/share/pin their articles.
• Leave a friendly compliment or start a helpful discussion on their blog posts.
• Ask them for their opinion on something in your niche.

Don't:

• Engage with controversial topics with them.
• Subtweet (that is, tweeting about someone else without actually tagging them) snarky comments or get upset if they don't respond to you.
• Blast anyone publicly if they don't agree with you.

Advertise less.

We know what you're thinking: “Isn't the point of social media to help me with marketing and advertising? Why would I want to advertise less?”

Well, because without even being aware of it, you might actually be driving away people with constant self-promotion.

Basically, social media has its own set of etiquette and rules—in fact, each platform tends to have different etiquette standards and rules for connecting with fans. For instance, on Twitter, it's acceptable to post many times in a day—it's fast paced and the information is kept brief, as well as generally unobtrusive. Facebook, on the other hand, tends to show big posts with pictures and videos, and to see a stream of media from the same person or company is aggravating to many users. But if there's one thing all platforms have in common, it's this:

It's a big no-no to constantly advertise your own services.

To keep people from getting irked with your updates, you should always follow the 80/20 rule: Post 80% other content—like industry news, other followers' posts, etc.--and 20% your own content.

Here are some helpful ways you can implement this idea:

• Don't make your advertising posts hard pitches; i.e., “Click here to buy dog food now!” Instead, keep it light and craft an interesting title to entice click-throughs: “The #1 best thing you can feed your dog: It's cheaper than you think.”
• Link back to older blog articles. If you have a content marketing schedule, go ahead and tie that in with Twitter, Facebook, and whichever other sites you use. You worked hard on your old posts—so be sure to link them again! This doesn't make it seem like you're “selling” anything, but you're still directing traffic back to your site.

Show off your reviews.

We've talked before about how important reviews are for ranking. But reviews aren't only important for this reason—they're also a leading influence on how customers perceive your business, as well as how customers choose which business to support. According to a 2013 survey from Bright Local, 73% of consumers say positive customer reviews make them trust a business more. [Edit: Here is the updated 2014 survey!] That's no small number—so it makes sense that you should promote the ones you have!

This should fall under the same guidelines of self-promotion, however. Constantly linking your reviews comes off as spammy and self-absorbed. When you're on social media, you want to present an honest picture of who you are and what your business is about. Occasionally linking a new review and thanking the customer for their time is a good practice to get into—and it's not going to make you look bad.

Try these helpful tips the next time you link your reviews:

• Try tools to help send out links to reviews. Forbes has some great suggestions for you to consider here. If a customer leaves feedback, make sure to thank them if you can. It's polite and encourages others to leave reviews as well.

• Place a few testimonials on your site. If you can, take them directly from the source and link back. Testimonials without links seem fake to many visitors—so take that worry off their minds by citing your sources (just like you did in those pesky term papers!).

• Publicly respond to any bad reviews you receive (unless they are abusive; then it's best to just report or ignore them). By doing this, you show that you care about your customers' experiences and are willing to listen to their complaints and concerns.

And finally...

Whether you own a small home-based business or run a local chain of businesses, it's in your best interest to keep a positive attitude. It can get discouraging to to run your own social media sites, and we get that. In fact, we wrote an article about how to handle these feelings of discouragement! But when everything stacks against you and it seems like nothing you're doing is working, remind yourself that this all takes time. Brainstorm ways you can get your voice heard. Talk to friends, family, customers, and other business owners to see what they recommend. Be willing to learn from mistakes and go that extra mile. In the end, you will make progress if you keep trying, and keep an open mind while at it.

Got any other suggestions? Leave them in the comments!

Coming Up with Blog Post Ideas

If you've been keeping up with our blog posts, you know that we strongly advocate starting a blog of your own. The fact is, if you want to see your website ranking higher in search engines, then you need to be contributing regular, fresh, high-quality content to your site to stay in Google's good graces. But it doesn't just help with ranking, of course. Blogging can help you stay caught up in your industry's trends, as well as help you network with other professionals in your field.

But the inevitable problem with writing regular blog posts is that you'll eventually feel like you've talked about everything there is to talk about! After you've hit this roadblock, how do you overcome it? Do you take a break? Hire someone else to write for you?

No! Don't give up just yet!

Coming up with blog post ideas doesn't have to be difficult. With practice, you'll get better at finding topics from almost any resource. But if you need some ideas now, we're here to help. And the best part of all of these ideas is that they're completely free! What more could you ask for?

Think of a question you've had lately.

This might sound obvious, but it can be one of the simplest answers to your topic dilemma! Chances are that you've had a question about something in your industry—even if you're an expert—and you did some research to come up with an answer.

Well, the general rule of thumb is that if you have a question, someone else will too. And the best way to really learn something is to teach it to someone else. What better way to do that online than come up with an informative blog post?

Let's try an example. If you're a fencing contractor, maybe you're wondering about the best way to deal with an early frost. (I'm not a fence expert, so if this is really obvious, please forgive me—I'm just trying to illustrate a point!) After doing some research, you come up with an answer. Now why don't you write a blog post about your new-found knowledge and tell your customers how they can prepare for frost, deal with frost, or make sure their fences stay safe throughout the winter? There are a lot of topics you can come up with just by thinking about this one question.

Have your customers asked you for help with anything?

This is somewhat related to the above point, but it's from a customer's point of view. There's something called the “curse of knowledge” when you're writing your own content. It works like this:

You are the expert on the subject you're writing about. This means that you have an advantage over your audience, especially if you're writing how-tos or informational posts about your area of expertise. This can blind you to your audience's level of understanding. You could be skipping over information you deem obvious, when it isn't obvious at all to your readers. Or you could be using terminology they're not familiar with because you don't even think twice about your verbiage, but they are not industry insiders, and therefore don't know the lingo.

So if your customers have come to you with questions that you think are too simple or dull to warrant a blog post, think again. You might have a great opportunity to really go the extra mile for some of your customers by simply writing a short blog post!

Seasonal events are an easy go-to.

Especially for contractors and retail stores. Are you running a seasonal promotion? Write about it. Do you have ideas why your products and services would make great gifts? Sell yourself in a blog post. Are there spcial weather-related or season-related events that could impact your business? Let your customers know.

Our fencing contractor could write about how to protect different kinds of fences from sleet and snowdrifts. A clothing boutique could talk about how their clothes make great holiday gifts. Even a pool contractor—someone who works primarily during the summer months—could post helpful articles about how to care for a pool in cold weather, or pitch spas and hot tubs instead!

Do a search in Google trends.

See what is going on around the web by doing a Google Trends search. Now, you may not have a particularly interesting or newsworthy profession—maybe you do demolition, for example. (Sorry, demolition experts!) Plug some terms into trends and see if people are searching for your topic. If they are, run a Google search yourself and see what recent news articles pop up. For example, let's run demolition through Google Trends:

As you can see, it's a pretty steadily searched topic. Now let's run a Google search:

That red arrow is pointing to a pretty interesting article. Maybe you can get some ideas from that topic and incorporate them into your own post! It's easy to do when you have inspiration that's already being provided by other content creators.

Check Quora.

Quora is a place where people go to ask questions, and then other Quora users will answer these questions. Just like with Google Trends, you can find things people are asking about. This doesn't mean you have to answer the questions (unless you'd like to!), but you can use these queries as a way to come up with blog posts. Oftentimes, users will be asking simple questions that you, as an expert, know the answers to. By reading through the existing questions, you'll know what people are wondering about without having to conduct a survey or tally up customer questions.

All of these ideas are completely free and easy to do. Even if you're not super blog-savvy, you can certainly improve your content creation by taking the time to learn a few of these tricks. After all, coming up with blog post ideas shouldn't be a terrible chore!

We hope these tips have been helpful for you and wish you luck with your blogging endeavors! If you have any other ways of coming up with topics, please let us know in the comments below!

Back to Basics #19: Digital Marketing for the Holidays

Ahh, you knew something like this was coming up soon. It's October, which means that autumn decorations have been on the shelves since the 4th of July clearance rack cleared out (for Americans, anyway). Soon, you'll see Thanksgiving decorations, and then come the December holidays—it's all going to be Christmas and Hanukkah themes until it's almost 2015. And let's not forget about Black Friday and Cyber Monday...

During these next few months, you're going to see a lot of expensive marketing campaigns from big name companies. You'll see sales events, promotional deals, and all sorts of bundles and shipping specials and limited-time releases that your head might feel like its spinning.

And, as a small business owner, you might feel pressured to come up with some campaigns of your own.

But you don't have millions in your budget. And you don't have a lot of time to put something together. So how can you go about digital marketing for the holidays if you own a small business?

1. Make a charitable donation. This is probably our favorite suggestion because it really helps everyone! You get to help others and draw attention to a great cause, as well as draw positive attention to your business.

Whether you choose to donate a small sum of cash or you volunteer your time at a local charity, these types of gestures speak volumes. Make sure it's something that you can get everyone involved with—your team can come up with great ways to make sure it's an event that won't soon be forgotten. But you also can't forget to let your clients and customers know that you're taking part in this special occasion. Be sure to send out a card or email and let everyone know that you're participating in a special charity event, and that your clients are welcome to participate, too!

2. Decorate your social media sites. Another cheap way to get everyone into the holiday spirit! Change your banners, headers, and color themes to reflect the holiday of your choice. You can even change your logo by adding a little Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween or a cornucopia for Thanksgiving. The best part is that you can reuse these again next year—a great return on your very small investment. And when you're finished? Simply replace the logo with your usual fare and you're good to go.

3. Send out special holiday offers via email. This is one that you'll have to be careful with—you don't want to appear as if you're spamming, after all—but sending out special coupons or offers to customers who subscribe to your newsletter can be particularly effective. Make an announcement on your site. Say something like “only subscribers will receive a special deal via email, and they can look forward to receiving it just in time for the holidays.” The incentive can be whatever you want it to be—whether it's a coupon, a special one-of-a-kind item, or a free service. Whatever you can come up with!

4. Start thinking of gift suggestions. People choose different times to do their holiday shopping. While some wait until the last minute (right now would be a good time to capitalize on the Halloween costumes or decorations!), others do so months ahead of time (these people are already keeping an eye out for Christmas deals). You will want to keep your social media sites and blog updated with all the latest deals that would appeal to these shoppers.

5. Make yourself stand out from the crowd. We mentioned at the beginning of the article that you don't have the budget or resources to compete with the big companies. But you can make up for what you lack in budget with quality services.

For example, you're probably a small, local store. You can offer personalized attention to each and every client. Can a big-name store do that? No, they can't. You can also remind people that when they support your business, they're supporting local businesses and real people who contribute to the community. There are so many people looking to switch to buying local now (and sometimes exclusively), so this is a great way to let them know that you truly appreciate their business. If you have years of experience, highlight that. If you have a positive track record for customer satisfaction, mention it. And if you have a great story about how you came to build your business in your town, people will love to hear it. It's all about aligning yourself with the “big guys” in ways that highlight your strengths—not your lack of financial resources.

By thinking a bit on the creative side, you can come up with some great ideas for digital marketing for the holidays—even if you're a small business without much revenue.

Do you have any other suggestions? Leave them in the comments below.

How to Stay Motivated When You’re Feeling Discouraged

Photo courtesy of Jessismoreblog.com

We’ve all been there: You’ve been working hard and trying to remain positive. You’ve been diligently maintaining your blog or vigilantly replying to customer reviews and encouraging engagement on social media.

But growth has been slow.

And one day, you wake up, and it hits you: You’re tired. You’re frustrated. You’re completely discouraged and don’t know what to do.

How to stay motivated when you’re feeling sad

Everyone is motivated by different things. Some people like watching happy movies. Some people look up inspirational quotes and pin them on their office walls. Still others turn to family and friends to support them during tough times. These are all great ways to stay motivated—personal connection and fostering positive feelings are some of the most basic human needs. Fulfilling these needs tends to put you back in the frame of mind to concentrate on your goals again.

But it doesn’t necessarily erase or push away those bad thoughts. And it certainly doesn’t make you feel like blogging or marketing again. Here are a few things you can consider to help you get back into the right frame of mind to take steps forward once more.

Read.

Perhaps you’ve been in the wrong frame of mind for a while. Maybe your marketing strategy isn’t panning out because there’s an element to the unique formula for your success that’s missing.

Picking up a book relating to your problem can do just the trick. An author might tell a story about when they were discouraged and how they overcame it. They more than likely have some good advice to consider. And while this is all anecdotal evidence, it’s still worth it to read and consider what others have to say. Reading allows you to reframe discouragement into a fresh new view on the problem.

Write.

So you’re not a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. That’s okay. Sitting down and making a list counts as writing, as does writing an entire blog post. Something as simple as starting with “What frustrates me right now” and just free-writing your feelings can help you sort out your thoughts. Many people find writing to be cathartic, even if they don’t bother to publish their writings, or never even show anyone! This is what the point of a diary is, after all. But it can be useful for anyone, not just pre-teen girls.

Re-visit great times in your company’s history.

Did you host a BBQ once that was a great success? Did you hold a promotional event where a lot of customers showed up to your store and left happy? Can you remember how you felt when you first cut the ribbon at your store’s grand opening? Do you still have that first dollar you earned framed on the wall?

All of these things can evoke a positive emotion in you. It helps you remember that your hard work does pay off. You’ve had successes and you’ve had failures. You’ve had ups and downs. That’s okay—everyone does. Celebrate the times you’ve felt truly proud of your business and your successes, and soon you’ll remember why you do this in the first place. It’s a labor of love!

Ask yourself what you’ve learned from your failures.

It is painful to think of the times we’ve failed: We released a product that fell flat. No one responded to our call for reviews. Worse, a customer lambasted you in a public forum despite you trying your hardest to please them, and you just can’t get them to change their mind or give you a second chance.

Well, you can’t please everyone. And there is no guaranteed formula for success when it comes to marketing.

But all successful people take their failures and turn them into a positive experience. By looking at them as learning opportunities, they can understand where they went wrong and learn to view it as a way to weed out the ideas and strategies that don’t work. Here’s a great quote from Thomas Jefferson to remember when you’re trying to learn how to value your less-than-successful endeavors:

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

Now that’s a great way to motivate yourself when you’re feeling down!

Find support forums online.

This one probably goes hand-in-hand with seeking support from family and friends, but it has the extra advantage in that it offers support in an anonymous space with unbiased people and advice.

Finding a small business support group can be immensely helpful for discouraged business owners. You can share stories with others and get advice on how to get through tough times. You won’t feel like they “have to” say these things (like you might when talking to your mother, friends, or spouse) and you’re getting advice from people who truly understand what you’re going through. This can provide a different perspective that you can use to bolster your confidence once again.

We hope you’ve found this at least the tiniest bit helpful! If you have any suggestions for how to deal with discouragement, please leave them in the comments below.