your online presence developing · •your social media presence •your email marketing strategy...

Developingyour

Online Presence

Thomas Deneuville

@tdnvl

https://thomasdeneuville.com

Who I am

Born in France, grew up in Tahiti, lived in Italy, UAE, and USA.

Dual background: Engineering and Music (theory/composition).

What I doFounder/Editor-in-Chief of I CARE IF YOU LISTEN.

Owner of Sustainist Media.

Digital Content Manager at Cornell University.

2Cover photo: Radek Grzybowski / CC0 Illustration: Bucky Cox

Today• Your goals, your offers

• Your website

• Your social media presence

• Your email marketing strategy

• Q&A

These slides and the resources I’ll share with you today will be posted on my website.

Visit: https://thomasdeneuville.com/cma3

The bigpicture

STRANGERS VISITORS CUSTOMERS FANSREGULARS

Attract Close

Convert

Social mediaSearch (= Content)ReferralAdvertising

FormsFollow buttons

(Landing pages)

EmailSocial mediaBlog

DelightRecognition

Exclusive contentExclusive events 5

Your goals

“What keeps me going is goals.”—Muhammad Ali

Read SMART Goals for SMART Music Entrepreneurs: Step One to Making Your Dreams Happen, by Astrid Baumgardner on I CARE IF

YOU LISTEN.

SMART stands for:

• Specific: Don't be vague!

• Measurable: Can you put a number on this goal?

• Achievable: Is this goal within reach?

• Realistic: Is this the right goal at the right time for you? Think strong first

step vs. overnight huge success.

• Time-related: When can these results be achieved?

Are your goals SMART?as introduced by George T. Doran

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Your offers8

What are your offers?

• Music, videos, scores, etc.

• Tips/Advice

• Your experience

• Their experience

• Curation

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Your website

The center of your digital presence

• Where your content lives

• Where you can best track activity

• Where you control your brand the most

• What people (should) find first

• A gateway to your email list/social media profiles

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Your domain: Buy it. Park it.

Get an email address, too.

http://janedoe.com> jane@janedoe.com or hello@janedoe.com

Bonus: Get an SSL certificate.

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Start with your content

• Make an inventory (text, images, videos,

audio)

• Should it all be on the site?

• How often will you refresh/add content?

• How can it be grouped?13

Your navigation

• Don’t be creative

• Limit to 7 (+/- 2) items

• “X and Y” ? Warning!

• Don’t mix types: Discover, Bio, Listen, Videos

• Avoid vagueness: Media?

• Place it where it’s expected

• How will it expand?

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Gutenberg Diagram

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Why a blog?

• Could best match one of your offers (tips,

experience, etc.)

• To give a “historical” perspective your bio can’t

give

• To keep on generating fresh content on your site

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What constitutes your brand?

• Your image: Press shots, videos

• Your style sheet: Typeface, color, logo

• Voice/tone

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Your image: Press shots

• Great investment (reuse on social and email)

• Orientation: Portrait and landscape

• Easy to find on your website

• Offer high res (print) and low res (web)

• Add photo credit in the filename

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Your style sheet: Typefaces

• Pick two

– One for headings (has personality)

– One for your main text (neutral, easy to read)

• Serif = sans-serif

• Pick a web font (Google, Typekit, etc.)

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• Up to two bold colors. They should:

– Contrast

– Complement each other

• Shades of grey are “free”

• Light background

Your style sheet: Colors

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Which technology?

Static

– faster

– cheaper to host

– could end up being expensive to develop

– good for small websites without a blog

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Which technology?

CMS (Content Management System)

– more expensive to host

– maintenance can be complex

– lots of open source and commercial solutions

– easy to blog

– Examples: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, etc.

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How do you measure your success?

Install Google Analytics on your site and

enable Advertising Features (under

Audience > Demographics.)

Google Analytics is free.

Focus on ratios rather than number that will always increase.

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Your social presence

Who is your audience?

• Does your audience fall in a specific

demographic?

• Is your audience found in specific locations?

• What does that mean in terms of networks?

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Who are your influencers?

• People you learn from

• People who share the same interests

• People who could reshare your content

• People whose followers you’re interested in

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Some Channels

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Start small

• Being on social is a commitment

• Take the time to make it fit in your routine

• Schedule!

• Pick your channel(s) wisely

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How many times should I post?

• Observe: What makes you comfortable?

Uncomfortable?

• It’s probably more than you think

• Follow a ratio

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Your ratio

● 4 pieces of original content from others

● 1 repost

● 1 self-serving post

4-1-1

Conversations are excluded30

When should I post?

• Don’t listen to what “experts” say.

• Looks at your audience’s engagement or

use a tool like to help you determine

best times to share.

• Be consistent and experiment.

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Schedule!

For free

• RSS aggregator

• Throught Tweetdeck, Facebook, Later, etc.

My favorite

• Buffer’s awesome plan is $9 a month, but they offer

a free plan, too.

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How do you measure?

Facebook and Twitter offer some solid, free stats.

For Instagram, look into Iconosquare.

SumAll is a nice platform to bring all these stats

together, but is pricey ($99 a month). Look at

Dasheroo for an alternative.

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Your emailmarketing

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The only audience you “own”: Your email list

• Email is a truly private space

• 3x more email accounts than Facebook & Twitter accounts combined

• The best traffic comes from email

• Segmenting

• Automation

• Better control over your brand

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Think about segmenting early

• How are your offers reflected in your emails?

• Can people opt-in for specific offers?

• Is geography important?

• Anything else you need to know about a subscriber?

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How to build your list

• Forms (on your site, your Facebook page)

• Twitter Lead Gen Cards

• In-person (use an App)

The key is multiple sources:

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Show offers on your form

● First name = personalization

● ZIP code = geographic segmenting

● Self-identified interests = more effective

segmenting

But don’t ask for everything upfront!

You’ll have other touch points to gather

this data.

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Come up with—and stick to—a schedule

• How often will you have something to offer/to say?

• You don’t have to email everybody all the time (that’

s what segmenting is for)

• Less than once a month? People forget...

• What makes sense for you?

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The reading happens on your site

Not in the email!

– Offer previews/excerpts and link to the content

– Reading on mobile is getting better but it’s not

ideal

– Clicks help measure engagement and tastes

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Inverted pyramid

Stuff they shouldn’t miss

Stuff of interest

Stuff they can miss

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Another wayto look at it

When creating your email,

imagine that:

● scrolling is free

● but readers have a click

budget of 2 or 3 clicks.

What would you change, now?

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Ideally:One email,

one call to action

● No distraction

● One decision to make

Thanks!

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What about newsletters?

Newsletters are fine.

Focus on curation and quality of content.

Don’t send a “website.”

Remember the inverted pyramid...

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Two important metrics

And what they mean:

• Open rate ≈ Your subject line (+ preheader)

• Click through rate ≈ Your content

Establish your own baseline and improve!

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Physical address in the footer?

• It’s the law: CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

• P.O. Boxes are OK

• Link to unsubscribe (+ update) should be

there, too

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If you’re going to “sell”

• Do it in an email!

• People are used to receiving offers/buying

from email.

• Higher conversion rates than social media.

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Thanks for listening!

Questions? Need help?

thomas@thomasdeneuville.com

Let’s connect on Twitter or LinkedIn:

@tdnvl

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasdeneuville

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