Author: webmaster

Getting Eyeballs on Your Restaurant with Facebook Groups

webmaster Bothell, Facebook Groups, Woodinville
Woodinville Eats Facebook Group

If you are a local restaurant and you are not in the local community Facebook Groups, you are missing out on a WORLD of attention. Here in Bothell, we have a group called Bothell Eats, Woodinville has a similar one called Woodinville Eats. Get into these groups, but do not sell your product. Just listen and comment. Don’t promote your restaurant, but watch. When someone mentions your cuisine, like, comment, share. When someone mentions you specifically, like comment share.

Another great reason for joining these groups is that until you join AS YOUR RESTAURANT, no one will be able to tag you in their posts, and you want this because it makes it easier for people to click your page AND it shows that you are in the group, participating…plus you will get a notification when you are tagged/mentioned. #winwin #RestaurantMarketing

Threads is Here…Now What?

webmaster Social Media Marketing, Threads
Threads is here! Now what?

You will be hearing a lot about Threads. Long story short, it is an application by Meta that connects with your Instagram account. It is meant to be a competitor to Twitter. Will folks in the Seattle, Eastside, Tacoma and Everett area use it? Many of the Twitter folks moved over to Meta after Elon cleaned house and poof, Threads.net came into existence.

Threads is here. Ok now what?

Well, first, it is currently an app for you phone. I would suggest going to www.threads.net scan the bar code and install the app on your phone (only works on phones as of right now). Early adopters will most likely get a little bump in followers as the platform get saturated, but as of right now, it is pretty basic from what we can tell. Hard to believe that Zuck would make another product that will fail, but we do not think this thing will be very big in 5 years.

Threads is a new app that is going after Twitter

So should I integrate Threads into my current social media engine strategy?

Short answer, yes. I would suggest adding Threads to propagation, but honestly I would not spend to much time on it. Make sure that your are posting rich media, linking back to your website just like all of your other content.

How easy is Thread to use?

Pretty simple actually.

Do I have to follow all of my Instagram accounts again on Threads?

Nope, when you sign in for the first time, you will be given the option to follow all of the accounts you follow on Instagram…makes onboarding pretty simple. The Follow All Accounts is on the bottom of the screen, kind of hard to see.

Will Threads be bigger than Twitter?

We don’t think so. However, think about how many users Facebook, Instagram and What’s App has…billions. So their market is huge. If they can just convert 50% of their users over to Threads…that’s something.  Zuck and Elon are both trying to move towards the China model of 1 app to rule them all. This short form content platform type is one prong in all of their strategies. This makes us think that they will most likely keep this and perhaps move it into a “view” type or something. Only time will tell.

Twitter Tip: How to Bookmark a Tweet

webmaster Bothell, Kenmore, Northshore, Nortshore, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Woodinville
How to bookmark at tweet on Twitter.

First, why would you ever want to bookmark a tweet instead of just putting it in a list? Well, Twitter lists are public, people can see when you add people to a list. A bookmark is private and they are good for remembering old tweets or threads that you might wan to come back to, plus they are private on Twitter. No one can see your bookmark. I use bookmarks to come back to tweets when I have time to read them.

.To bookmark a tweet do do the following:

  1. Click the SHARE button on a tweet. Make sure you are in the tweet details. (just click the words in the tweet to get there from your feed)

2. Click the BOOKMARK icon to bookmark the tweet

Marketing your Business Northshore WA: Where to Start?

webmaster Bothell, Eastside, Kenmore, Northshore, Small business marketing, Woodinville
Small business marketing on the eastside - Bothell, Kenmore and Woodinville

You have a great business in Northshore (Bothell, Kenmore and Woodinville). You have a great product or service. You have great customers. Now what?

First things first, you need to get a great idea of who your ideal customer. We call this your business Avatar. Here are some questions you need to answer to start marketing your Northshore business.

 

Brewery, Cidery, Winery marketing help Bothell, Kenmore and Woodinville

First things first, close your eyes and imagine your best customer. Think hard and think about how they purchase your service or product. Now:

    1. How old are they?
    2. Are they men or women?
    3. Where do they live?
    4. How much money do they spend?
    5. Will they spend again?

Once you have these questions answered, you should have a pretty good idea of who that ideal customer really is.

Now that we have this avatar it is time to ask the million dollar question:

Where is your avatar spending their time online?

Are they on Facebook? Are they on TikTok? Instagram? News sites? Local blogs? Are they on email? Do they use text?

Now that we know who you want as a customer and where they are spending their time online, it’s time to start targeting them.

My next blog post will talk about how to to first get your house in order, then more about targeting.

Business Guide: Surviving the Virus Outbreak

webmaster Marketing, Northshore, Woodinville
Vashon Island Businesses business Guide for Virus 2020

I bet we are all thinking about this coming year and how this virus will impact our businesses. During these sorts of events, I think it is important to keep calm and focus on driving our businesses forward. My guess is that the businesses that focus on not just tactical but strategic-collaborative marketing efforts will weather this storm, the businesses that don’t evolve will be left behind. I feel we need to start preparing for lower than usual traffic to our businesses.

What we can mention to our customers

  1. Our shops are disinfected (and tell them how) every night. Show the products use and staff cleaning in posts.
  2. We ask people who appear to be sick to immediately leave, offering some sort of remote service (bringing goods/services to the car, etc)
  3. Mention that we (the shop owner) would appreciate their support through this tough time. Make it personal “My FAMILY appreciates your support…” etc
  4. We publicly suggest that older folks stay home and ask others to shop for them

Here are some things we can suggest customers/clients to do to support us

  1. Purchase gift cards for use later in the year
  2. Have one of Vashon’s couple of food/delivery services bring product to their home (we have 2 of them on the island)
  3. When customers come in, mention you have hand sanitizer (if you have it), encourage them to wash their hands before and after they shop/eat.
  4. Offer some sort of discount
  5. Suggest they call in and order take out

Benefits for shopping at local businesses now

  1. Smaller crowds
  2. Take advantage of new discounts offered due to the virus
  3. Shops are never cleaner than they are now (mentioning that the shops are disinfected nightly, which is a good idea)
  4. First and foremost, they will be supporting our local businesses.

Vashon Island Real estate: How to sell during a virus outbreak?

Upside of free time. Things we can do while business is slow

  1. Update, create or add content to website
  2. Stay away from creating events, focus on your product or service
  3. Build an email list (you got this email from me because I built a list… It takes time, but its worth it) and send out updates to your current fanbase.
  4. Create, Update or add to your social media platforms
  5. Perform OUTREACH on social media. If you don’t know how to do this, just ask.
  6. Find collaboration opportunities. For instance, come to my brewery to fill up a growler to go, and pick up a pizza to go on the way home. Cross promote with other Vashon businesses and leverage their audience in marketing.
  7. Connect with island bloggers and tourism sites (like mine, Explore Vashon) to help encourage off island visitor to visit YOUR location. Again, building that consumer confidence that we are doing our best in disinfecting our establishments and making a SAFE shopping environment is very important.

Support. IMHO, we need to leverage each others strengths to ensure we all weather this storm. I have set up a Facebook group where you can ask any sort of Vashon Island business/marketing question. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1735402070079231/. Also, feel free to reach out to me directly if you wish, I am here to help.

Keep safe, keep strong and collaborate folks.

Knowing Your Target: First Steps of Marketing Online

webmaster Marketing on Vashon Island, Vashon Island Marketing ,
Vashon Island Marketing. 98070 Media

On Vashon, we have some unique challenges when marketing our product or service. Vashon Island marketing is made MUCH more difficult because of a little body of water called the Puget Sound which separates us from potential customers, thus dividing our customer base into two distinct groups.

First group of people to market too is Vashonites, our regulars.The first group we probably already know, it’s Vashonites. Folks who live on the island, play on the island and spend on the island, without these fine people, our businesses would never make it through the winter. These are our “regulars”, our “bread and butter” our base. These folks have habits that we can count on. We see them up and IGA every Tuesday. They’re filling up at Mom’s in the morning. We are creatures of habit and that’s VERY evident with islanders. We do certain things over and over again.

The second group, which is much harder to reach and understand are the folks from town or abroad. These are visitors or tourists to the island. These people are hard to find because we don’t really know when they are coming if they are coming and why they are coming to the island. Fortunately, we have some people working to identify and reach out to this crowd, folks like Explore Vashon, The Lodges on Vason and The Vashon Island Chamber, which assist with island tourism.

Now that we understand those two groups, now let’s look at your business. Let’s ask yourself, “Who is my ideal customer?”. I said IDEAL. I want you to think about the perfect customer you would want for your business. We need to identify who those folks are, in detail. We need to profile them before we can target them with our marketing. So, to end this first post on marketing on Vashon Island, do me a favor, fill out the questions below and profile your ideal customer.

  1. Sex
  2. Age
  3. Race
  4. Financial status
  5. Marital status
  6. Lifestyle activity (are they active)
  7. What do they like to do in their free time?
  8. Dependent status. Do they have pets? Do they have children?

In the next blog post, I will show you how to USE the data you have collected in this marketing profile exercise.

#supportlocalbusinesses #vashonislandmarketing