michelle gramberg here welcomes a positive energy and light in television for the above and i'm joined on this show by hilary maurice social media marketing consultant she's going to talk about the latest trends in marketing for small businesses valuable stuff folks so stay with us on positive energy so i'm excited to have hillary morris here on my show hilary welcome to positive energy thank you for having me so you are a digital strategists and your business is mostly about communications and marketing and public relations i'm a small business owner myself so i certainly became interested in what you do so talk a little bit about your business and why do you call yourself the new jersey digital mom what does that mean i know it's a little something about your your perl yourself personally sure well the new jersey digital mom actually refers to a group that i'm in a facebook group of all the other digital moms whether we're bloggers or if we work in the digital space we all have a unifying attribute they're all from new jersey so that we can support each other with whatever we're doing and we all can just know what's going on in the state and but you know we're all in the digital space for the most part and then professionally right now i'm doing a lot of marketing consulting i work from home and i have three little girls and so i balance a lot of my time between work and being present for them and so right now i'm mostly focusing on consulting with businesses with small business owners like your a retailer or someone in the medical profession or restaurant or or even a solo printer or who is just trying to get their own business off the ground running and trying to figure out what to do and how to do it so that's where i come in and help give them actually when i was a middle school teacher for a number of years so my education background completely plays into all of the planning i need to do for my clients and just almost giving them a lesson plan to follow and and i really i've come to know how to work with both children and adults and you know know how to guide people who aren't are new to this whole concept of social me and digital marketing and i'm able to understand that you know not not everybody understands this and so not everybody embraces it right still some resistance rain out there maybe is a generational thing to some degree but you can educate and encourage them yes to move in that direction yes and really at the end of the day social media is it's still marketing and it's just another add on to what a business should be doing in general there's all different kinds of marketing strategies and social media is just one of those so it's not it's new but it's still you still have to use traditional like old school marketing ideas and customer service and those kinds of things so it's and it's a new world we're living in but you're right marketing is marketing social media is  relatively new but business is business marketing is marketing is still is about getting yourself out there so people have sort of get past the fears or the ignorance that they that they really might have yeah and you know it's i think because it is technology and i know myself i'm with a lot of what i do i'm self taught and when i was a teacher i talk computers so i became very very comfortable learning different programs myself and then teaching others how to use it so i'm very comfortable in that space but i know plenty other people just they look at something online and it's just it's just too scary the maybe they're worried they're going to do something wrong so i think once once people get over that hurdle and realized just how amazing and how such a great connector social media and the digital marketing is and they see the results and they see how easy it is to communicate with people and they really kind of get on board and and relax a little bit and allow themselves to absorb how to how to use it and and are more eager to learn new you know new skills or new new technology new tips that kind of thing so great so people tend to see some results right away with with what you do with them where it takes a while  i mean yes and no it does take a while to to really start seeing some engagement you have to unless you are like a big well known brand than you might you'll see instantaneous results  but it is it is a gradual process so that's the one big thing that business owners need to remember that when they start social media or and when they hire somebody to work with them to build their presence it's not go an media and it could take a few months to really for things to kick in here but since something as simple as setting up an e mail newsletter that you can get instantaneous results because if you never had one before and now all of a sudden you're e mailing your customer base they're seeing something they're granting you thing from you that you're visible when you're in front of their eyes right and so you could you could get an instantaneous response from from that so i think starting something new where you're connecting with a current customer base who was already interested in you that could certainly generate instant results but for the most part if you're building a presence of it it does take time and you know you want you want quality you want to you know you don't want fake fake fake followers fake results you know for something that's there has meaning and value it just takes time so so i think there's so much value in this so let's talk about branding more for the non business person how do you define branding i mean we know in general it is a consistent image message voice that is seen thematic lee throughout everything you put in front of people's eyes but say a little bit more about what branding is and why it's so important well you really hit the nail on the head it's  consistency and it's what you stand for as a business and branding is people tend to associate logo with a brand and it's they're not the same thing so also have like guiding principles or you have a general way that you do business but also the way your staff presents themselves to face the faces the literal faces of your business  of your brain that is all and a big a big task a really important thing that business owners need to do especially once the who have even just one staff member one employer employee you need to educate your your immediate internal community about your brand and what your message is that they can communicate out and they are representatives of your brand so the brand is when you're when you're thinking about brand it's it's just the overall the feel the the presence of just who what your business is what you offer what you do and and the kind of impression that you give off to other people so do people ever make most mistakes or what's the biggest mistake when people brand or is it just not branding is that's the biggest mistake not having yet to get clear about what your brand is what you stand for and then it has to be really recognizable almost instantaneously you know what you stand for what people can expect from your business and what the promise is of your business for customers and consumers yes i think the biggest mistake is not having a clear  idea of who you are and what what you want to do because that really is going to frame everything you do from then on you need to identify ok who who is our target audience how do we want to attract them  what what's our customer what's our customer service protocol it how do we are we going to engage with people during the sale after the sale it's those kinds of questions and answers that can really frame your business going forward that you really you need to know what you want to do and how you want to do it before you act because there are brands that have recovered from i don't want to say a change of brand but like a change of logo or they try to do new things and brands our businesses can recover from that but it's you have to from the start you need to know what you are  you are than having to sort of midway yes really brand yourself and get people to know you again soon so it's never too late to re brand if you you know maybe you've had to advise some of your clients that you know what you need to take a look at this and think again about your brand right and you know when even talking about thinking about what you want to do as a business even if you have an established brand and just by reputation you've you've grown and you've really well for yourself the maybe internally there's just still disorganization and versus some sort of disconnect happening there's always there's always a good time to just have some sort of internal audit of like how are we doing survey your employees and just you know ask each other is there anything we can do better especially with the marketing and p r efforts and just general general operation you know every couple months it's just it's good to desist see ok what's our plan here what's our goal for many of my clients we often every couple months we kind of establish ok what's our what are our marketing objectives for the you know for this quarter what are we focusing on here because that just it helps helps me it helps them stay focused and then that everyone's just not all over the  place it keeps message on point is just it's very helpful just to have seen sort of focus in keeping it simple to you know keeping it to like three three things like what are we going to be focusing on these three things for this quarter for our marketing efforts so so social media is certainly the way to get your brand out there and social media has exploded and taken over the world and it's exciting because there is really unlimited potential it's unprecedented the possibilities of of social media for business so what how is social media changed the way that brands and businesses engage with their customers for the better well it's it's really it's open a door for brands and customers to have a much more personal interaction much like you get in the face to online shopping and that's something that we as local small business owners it's just something that is constantly hovering over our head and that's a whole nother topic of the e commerce and in online shopping but with social media you can still get that one to one personal engagement with your customers in a virtual space if they can't be in your actual store  and so whether it's through a facebook post or instagram or twitter you can really talk to people and customers know that they can ask questions through those channels as  well and not only with the engagement of the customer service question answer brands alone are allowed or not allowed to but they can really show more about who they are and not just a logo or a slogan anymore you really get to know who is working in that business and you can see behind the scenes you can you can see more video of the owners the staff and you can really feel like warm just to be be a person and yet be more than a more than just a brand be a person and because at the end of the day you are you're doing business with the person and you want to be able to if you have a problem or if you need to return something or if you just have a question you need you want to be able to ask a person to help you and you know the more we feel like the brands we do business with that there's actual people there and you feel some sort of connection to the brand and like a personal relationship it's only going to improve the business and you know i think social media has broken down those barriers with with with my clients some of  them you know it's a little bit of a baby step of like is it ok to share that can i post this picture or should we you know should we show behind the scenes do people want that and people people love they love  seeing they love seeing people they love seeing human the human touch of a brand and it just it really strengthens us just the overall action shipbuilding yes it's for poor building and relationship building and i it works it works for me obvious we're both business owners and consumers so i'm watching people behind the scenes videos and what they're saying and what they're post they're really monitoring that and really over time you feel like i want to go give them my business i want to see them in person i want to get to know them yeah you know so it really does work so let's talk about a few of the major social media platforms let's start with snap chat because i know you're a big snap chat or as i want to call user of that how do you use snap chat and how can business owners use snap chat well what differentiates snap ch so snap chat is part of a growing marketing trend of ephemeral marketing and it's it's a really short quick to absorb content and people are busy they want to just they want to see a picture or they want to see a few words to get the to get the message or short video that's either entertaining or tells the message very quickly and that's really what is that's kind of that's that's what consumers want right now so there was a big explosion of well obviously first instagram and then vine which was twitter's it's like the next thing will and that's actually the fourth biggest brand right now social branded snap chat the majority of users are the millennial zx however fifty percent of new users are twenty five and older and the there's more parents joining snapchat because their kids are on it so they want to dress just like they did with instagram progression of the way things go for a kids then the parents jump on board then the yeah well because you know the brands are realizing that snapchat had such a captivated audience because the way snap chat works is that in order to view the content you have to tap you have to choose who you viewing your content from and you have one to ten seconds to view it on your screen and there's no swiping through news feed there's none of that so you are kind of i don't want to be stuck because that's not that's kind of like a negative word but you are captive audience over there yeah and so brands are realizing that people were watching their content and and with snap chat the the views the video views have exceeded facebook's video views so snapchat is kind of it's attracting brands who already have been have been taking advantage of the the whole transparency movement we just talked about with brands being more real more human showing a little bit more personality and snapchat has allowed that because that that's really what the platform is it's just a fun to be just to be yourself just to it's just a fun platform where it's not going to replace facebook twitter whatever social platforms are really driving engagement for you and everybody is different depending on what your business is so focus on the ones that are doing well for you but snap chat is just providing a little bit of extra fun and the but the other thing too because i did mention that it's a very heavy millennial audience  even though that is the case it's important for for business owners to learn the technology of how to use snap chat because just like what we say have we seen with facebook's rise and with in those two social networks started out popular for teens and then all the brands and their parents joined and families joined it's a good idea to learn the technology now so that when it blooms for everybody you're ahead of the game you don't get left behind right or have to play catch up exactly because there's going to be something else that comes out that rivals snap chat and that the teens call move over to quick things are moving i know i know it's a little bit about  linked in which is still being used which has been around for a long time and twitter which feels like twitter's been around forever as well but yet they're still at the top those two so how can business owners were some tips the business owners can how they can capitalize on those two platforms so linked in is it's really the professional social network i find that it's one of those spaces that people who are hesitant to set up shop on facebook or twitter one not feel comfortable in linked in rightly so and it's a space where people don't get into personal things it's strictly business so if you are if you are a heavy marketer or not are on network or if you're great at connecting with people if you are a b to b business business to business linked in is going to be that's a big space for you and what's great about linked in now that it has it's had its own source of updates are not just a virtual resume for anyone who's not familiar with linked in it's not just you don't just set up your account plug in your information and then leave it is very social albeit a business for business connecting but it's a place for a professional to really establish himself as a thought leader in their industry because you can write blog posts within linked and you can share updates similar to what you would in facebook or twitter but in linked in you share content that's business related and again that shows what you know what you do and then get like again like i said it present yourself like an expert and linked in also has groups that you can join or even start a group to have really insightful discussions and i mean it's just it's a very it's a very populated space but it's great for that business to business and i know plenty professionals who actually use linked in to connect other people they may have built up their connections and they use linked in so much and they have found value from linked in that they connect others they look for people who are looking for connect connections so it's a really strong it's a great it's a great networking place for connecting yeah i mean that's how i use it my meet someone one of the first things i do after i meet them later on is to connect with them on linked in right away and that way you know you have forever you're connected forever there's a way to each other there's a way to see each other so it's great and has lots of potential you know about way well so that's really cool so are there any other  so yes like i said social media is just a piece of the overall marketing plan any business or professional who is relying just on social media is not going to touch everybody so in addition to whatever social networks you find are are they have been the most successful for you and they don't have to be all of them i don't recommend businesses to be everywhere if it doesn't make sense if your audience is not there if you don't have the time to put into it you to war or even snap chat you know all those social networks don't do it until you are ready to to put the time and effort in so but in addition to those you absolutely need an e mail marketing plan e mail is still one of the top if not the top way to connect with customers or leads that kind of thing have a regular email plan person marketing e mail or event marketing is is huge and i have to say that i strongly believe that social media has has led to more events you've built community of followers fans whatever you call them on your social networks in your email marketing so if you have an event there's you have you're more likely to have the interests there and to be able to communicate to people hey i'm having this event come join us it's much easier to promote it to all your channels but it's just it's a great if great way to get people in the door to show people about a new product or just if you want to you know have a cooking class or something different you know your event doesn't have to be directly related to your business you can get creative you can bring a speaker in or you can collaborate with another business and the local business because collaboration if you could think about that if you're bringing into your doubling your efforts aaa your efforts right and you know if you both promote marketing co create of experience it's make sense and it's pretty much if you think about it it cuts it cuts your own budget in half way because you're both utilizing your own contacts and your own audience so if you can partner with somebody else in if you have some sort of similarities or even if you don't like i said you can be two different businesses that you come together with a really interesting concept you bring new people to learn about your brand so and the more you partner with especially local local businesses a professionals word will spread and it will just you know it'll grow that word of mouth marketing buzz and there's i mean there's certainly nothing there's nothing bad about any kind of collaboration or partnership that's for sure i think that's what you're all that you're saying gives us lots to think about and that's why people need you consulting and your ideas so just give a little plug for your business and tell folks how they can reach you as we begin to wrap up well they can go to my website if for if to start it's h and m hyphen go to my website you can learn about all the services mike my consulting services and i also have the local and local networking group coffee talk which i also do and that's been so wonderful the just the local support including yourself at all of our meetings and and all the information about the group is on my website there but i'm also i'm kind of everywhere on social media as well and i would hope so yes although hope that people will reach out to you and i just want to thank you for the work that you're doing in the world thank you and let's keep going as small businesses and support one another that's a great way yes to sort of remind people and with that oh absolutely i i have found i've had a lot of success from people who have believed in me and have supported me and and i just there's so much value in just in supporting each other so thank you very much hilary positive energy