Katie Freiling
Social media marketing is not easy to do well. Katie Freiling seems to have an intuitive grasp of what it takes and I follow her blog closely at www.katiefreiling.com.
She has recently hosted a webinar in which she sets out her six pillars for building a social media marketing empire.
She has used these principles to build a six figure income within 12 months and her blog has a page rank of 5 on Google.
That’s pretty impressive stuff!
At the start of the webinar she sets out a compelling case for using social media marketing to promote a business with stats like:
- 500 million active users on Facebook (including me!)
- 10 billion tweets on Twitter since 2006
- 2 billion videos streamed on YouTube daily
She then sets out the biggest social media marketing mistakes, including:
- pitching your product or service without first sharing value
- not having a blog as a central hub for traffic
- not consistently sharing value-based content
- not growing a targeted following
- wasting time on ineffective strategies
She then sets out an overview of a social media marketing success formula. Basically this was a diagram of her blog sitting within a supporting web of social media sites that drive traffic back to her blog. The most important of these social media marketing sites are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
If you go to her blog you will see that she uses video extensively and effectively.
She then went on to set out the 6 pillars for building a social media empire:
Pillar #1 – Your Personal Brand
Katie makes the crucial observation that your brand is an asset that will pay you for life. So it is important to decide what brand you want for yourself by asking questions like:
- What do I want to give, do or share?
- What do I want to be known for?
- What am I passionate about?
- What do I love to learn about?
- What am I good at?
Once you have discovered your niche, it is then important to ensure that there is a market by doing keyword research. Also, whether there are affiliate products i.e. showing that there are people willing to pay for information.
She also makes the point that we need to remove any limiting beliefs like ‘I have nothing of value to offer’. She says that we all have an inherent store of value to draw on initially to provide momentum and then the more we grow, the more our business will grow.
Pillar #2 – Your Blog
Your blog is the home and central hub of your brand and online presence. You need to choose a domain name that is www.YourName.com or www.YourBrand.com.
She recommends a self-hosted WordPress blog at www.Wordpress.org – just like mine!
The purpose of your blog is to build an email list – a true lifelong asset provided you nurture a caring relationship with the list.
She makes the point that you need to be authentic and express yourself – see my article entitled ‘Business Authenticity – Go Suck Your Big Toes In The Bath‘.
She suggests creating 1-3 pieces of value-based content per week.
Once you have a list, she suggests that you email your list to notify them of the new content when you post it – an effective way of generating traffic.
Blog design and keyword targeted posts are important to success and high search engine rankings.
To build your list, it is important to have a compelling opt-in offer that has wide appeal to your target audience. To craft your offer, ask yourself ‘What’s my targeted audience’s biggest need? What are they looking for?’ Without ‘giving the farm away’, you then need to craft an offer that provides an overall ‘how to’ related to their biggest need.
One of the keys to success with your blog, is to create magnetic content (and it helps if you have good copywriting skills).
Pillar #3 – Your Social Media Following
Katie makes the point that social media marketing is not about selling but attracting fans to your content. In fact she lays down a ‘rule of thumb’ that she called ‘the 90/10 Rule’ i.e. that only 10% of your content or thereabouts should be self-promotional, otherwise you will switch off your fans.
Interestingly, given her mastery of social media, she says that once your social network is set-up, it should only take 20 minutes a day to reach out and meet new people and she automates the process of distributing her content.
Specifically she mainly uses the following sites;
Grow a targeted following by adding friends on pages, profiles and groups within your niche. You will need a personal Facebook profile and a Facebook Fan page and you will need to share updates daily.
To grow a ‘targeted’ following you need to follow targeted people first. These can be found using http://search.twitter.com, www.twellow.com and www.wefollow.com.
Katie uses Twitter tools such as TweetDeck and SocialOomph to organise and control communications with her thousands of followers.
YouTube
As previously mentioned, Katie’s blog is basically a video blog. She creates videos that are hosted on YouTube and then embedded in her blog.
She emphasises that it is important to put targeted keywords in the title description and tags for each video. Also it is important to have a call to action in each video. She recommends that you put some energy into your YouTube profile and ask people to subscribe to your channel.
For distribution of content she recommends www.trafficgeyser.com (paid) or www.tubemogul.com (free).
Pillar #4 – Content Syndication
Social media marketing has the power to grow via word of mouth and when other people ‘recommend’ or share your content, the traffic generated is warm and produces better leads. She says that content syndication is the easiest way to get automated, targeted traffic to your blog.
Katie therefore recommends that you ask blog visitors to share your content on Facebook and Twitter – this is automated by using WordPress plugins that make it easy for readers to share.
I know that Katie set up a paid membership that works together as a team to syndicate each others content – she calls it the Unified Tribe. She makes the point that reciprocity is a powerful energy when you help others.
Pillar #5 – Your Email List
Katie recommends using Get Response or Aweber (-the one I use) as an autoresponder to build your list. You need to email your list with great content consistently in order to build a relationship with your list. No relationship = no conversions.
Once a month or, once every other month, you can do a product launch – not more often if you don’t want to burn-out your list.
Pillar #6 – Multiple Streams of Income
There are unlimited possibilities on how to monetise your blog, for example:
- Katie promotes her direct sales network marketing opportunity
- affiliate marketing i.e. selling other peoples products for a commission
- launching your own products
- membership site
- speaker, author, online radio and TV shows
Whilst front-end income can be made through selling on your blog pages or social media pages, Katie says that the majority of income is made from back-end sales by launching products to your list. This is crucial to understand from a marketing and business success perspective. As they always say ‘the money is in the relationship’.
So that summarises Katie’s social media marketing strategy that has brought her massive success in a relatively short period of time. You could do worse than follow her strategy but I suspect that great execution is important. You can only hone your skills in social media marketing by taking consistent action.
Of course, it probably helps if you are a stunning redhead too!
P.S. There is an interesting juxtaposition between this article and my article entitled ‘Sales Persuasion from The Wolf of Wall Street‘ in terms of the business integrity and ethics of Katie Freiling and the now reformed Jordan Belfort.
P.P.S. For more great business building tips, subscribe to my newsletter below.
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