“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Søren Kierkegaard
As this amazing year comes to a close, we took a moment to look back at what made your heart sing.
Not surprisingly, you loved posts about our hair heroes such as Vidal and Ann Bray, and our profile on the incredibly talented family of hairdressers, and our friends The Teals. Our plea to “just do it” in our post What Are You Waiting For stuck a cord with you, as did our super easy social + digital cheat sheets and stories. These were your favorite blog posts of 2012.
It has been an awesome year creating and sharing our passion with you, thank you for being here with us and taking the time to engage with our form of art. It matters. You matter.
(shared with LOVE + GRATITUDE from your passionistas Nina + Gordon)
“Follow your inner GPS, not some busted old map given to you by others.”
Rose Etheridge
In a few days we will be ringing in a New Year. Another year of life, success, learning and challenges.
I am not one for traditional New Years resolutions, in reality, there is not much I do that is traditional. But one exercise I like to do when the year comes to a close is focusing on what I want to keep, what I want to discard and what I want to add.
This allows me to get real clear on how I want to enter the new year. It really is amazing what happens when we get still for a moment, gain clarity and listen to our inner GPS. Maybe you have a practice similar to this? If so, I would love to hear what works for you.
My 2013 List
What I want to keep.
My passion.
My Utopian view of the world.
My deep desire to help others.
My work ethic.
My daily gratitude practice.
My belief that people are good.
My love of family & friends and making them a priority.
What I want to discard.
My fears. (I have a lot of them)
My anxiety. (Created from the above)
My sadness. (Losing my Dad has been devastating)
What I want to add.
More focus. (It’s been a pretty cloudy year)
More activity, both socially and physically. (I’ve been pretty lazy to be honest, and my clothes are a sore reminder and my friends are over it.)
We are not trees. We have the ability to focus on and do anything we want to. We have the freedom to follow our inner GPS. What is yours telling you?
“More contact means more sharing of information, gossiping, exchanging, engaging – in short more word of mouth.”
Gary Vaynerchuk
There is no denying the facts. In today’s world, it is so important for local businesses to be engaged on review platforms such as YELP, Google Places, Citysearch and the like. People are talking about you, people are looking for you, your job is to know what they are saying and to be discoverable on the web.
Check out this super cool infographic that shows the facts about how potential new clients use review sites. Powerful stuff, and even more powerful for your business if you pay attention and use these platforms to help generate word of mouth and attract new clients.
(infographic discovered on Google courtesy of Milo)
To learn more about how to claim your YELP page, click here to view our webinar.
If you are looking to engage more deeply in the social + digital web in 2013, we offer one-on-one mentoring to help you craft a plan and learn how to use these platforms to help you achieve your dreams. Click here for more information. We look forward to hearing from you.
(shared with LOVE from your passionistas Nina + Gordon)
We were working with a client the other day and were talking about planning and had a big AHA! We realized that many people with Facebook Business Pages do not know about the super handy feature called Scheduled Posts.
We firmly, 1000% believe that the social web is about real time engagement, two-way communication and building relationships, which means being very active on your pages. However, we see this as a great tool for when you want to take a vacation, have an exact plan of your posts for the week, or know that you will be out all night on New Years Eve and want to sleep in.
What it is NOT is a way to remove yourself from making authentic daily connections with your community such as posting shout outs to clients and team members, posting awesome pics from the day in the salon, commenting on posts from others on your page, responding to inbox messages, etc.
Here is how it woks. It’s super easy.
Step One
Create your post just like you always do.
Step Two
Click on the little clock on the left hand side of the Status Box.
Step Three
Select the Year, Month, Day and Time you want the Post to go LIVE.
Step Four
Click on Schedule. When you do, this little box will pop up to show you your Post is scheduled and where to find it if you want to edit or delete it.
Step Five
If you want to Edit or Delete the Post, you can go to Edit Page in the Admin Panel and click on Use Activity Log. You will see all of your scheduled posts and can edit them by clicking on the little arrow drop down thing on the right.
Congratulations! You have successfully scheduled your post. You are awesome. It’s time to celebrate!
(shared with LOVE from your passionistas Nina + Gordon)
“We’re living in an era where word-of-mouth is on steroids. People aren’t just talking to their neighbors and the folks they run into around town; they’re talking to the world via social media.”
Gary Vaynerchuk
I have seen so much lately on the web about small businesses being mad at YELP. Rants on Facebook and other pages, and quite frankly, many of them are just small business owners who do not understand how YELP or social review and referral platforms work.
Is YELP perfect? NO! Is any social platform perfect? NO. But these platforms can be used for good, and my suggestion is to learn more about them, and to realize they are here to stay, whether you “like” them or not.
So here is my attempt to clear up any misunderstandings and hopefully inspire you to take the energy you are using to hate on YELP and turn it towards understanding YELP and how it can empower and gorw your business.
The Facts
1. YELP has more than 15 million reviews and over 40 million visits to its site every month.
2. Five star reviews lead in terms of percentage of reviews given.
3. YELP uses a formula called an “algorithm” to catch fake reviews or pages that get several reviews in a short period of time from new YELPERS, and filters them in an attempt to keep the site as authentic as possible.
4. Most frequent YELPERS know about filtered reviews and check them out.
5. YELP is one of the number one new traffic drivers to small business, both online and offline.
6. You DO NOT need to advertise on YELP to make it work for you, just like Google or Facebook, you have the choice of PAID discovery and/or ORGANIC discovery.
Here is a graphic that shows the average number of reviews by star. My friends Pilates Studio in Los Angeles, Whole Body Method, who I have the pleasure to work with has received over 1500 visits to their website this year alone directly from YELP.
Over 60% of those visits were first time visits.
They stayed on the website over 2 minutes and viewed 2.5 pages, more than any other social or digital referral visit.
Many of those visits have turned into new clients, as in hundreds of new clients.
In fact, besides existing client referrals and traditional word of mouth, YELP is their number one referral tool.
One of the keys to this is they also offer online booking and the ability to purchase packages online.
Their business is up over 50% from last year. While there are several factors that made this happen, their choice to embrace the social + digital web is a significant part of their success.
My tattoo shop here in LA, Velvet Grip Family, attributes over 90% of new client traffic to YELP. How do they know? It’s the first question they ask when you walk in. “How did you hear about us?” Nine times out of ten the answer is YELP.
So here’s the deal. You can choose to NOT do business with YELP, whatever that means. But you must understand your business will remain on YELP, Citysearch, Google Places and all over the Internet. That is the reality of social business, and it’s not going away.
So you have a choice, bury your head in the sand, or take advantage of these powerful platforms, begin paying attention to what people are saying about your business on the web, and use them to grow. Your choice.
If you want to learn more about YELP and the other social referral platforms on the web, click here to see if our one-on-one mentoring program is right for you. You can also visit our YouTube channel PassionSquaredTV to view a webinar on YELP we did several months ago.
