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Announcement: Social Media Marketing Course

EzyLearn Social Media & Digital Marketing Training Course logo image only

Social Media Marketing Course for 2017

EzyLearn Social Media & Digital Marketing Training Course logo image onlyDigital marketing is one of those fine arts that sometimes takes many attempts to get right and I’m guilty of that myself. I wrote a couple blogs recently about content marketing because I spend a lot of my time creating and modifying strategies, optimising and planning the content that my team creates for EzyLearn and other websites. However, I think many people are unfamiliar with what the term “content marketing” means — my mistake! I should have used the words that most small businesses associate with online and digital marketing: “SOCIAL MEDIA”!

Social Media Course — We Include EVERYTHING

So, now that I know social media is the keyword, I’m going to explain how every course we offer ties into your Facebook advertising and Facebook Page and why all of these aspects are important to you if you are going to spend more time and money building a strong online brand.

Content Marketing

virion and 123ezy social media course and content marketing catalogue No matter who you are or what you do you will need content and you will use that content to promote you and the services you provide. I have been using all of these tools to help convert EzyLearn into an “online only” training company in 2006 but I was able to explore how to provide these services to real estate agents when I managed the social media strategy for Derek Farmer, a real estate agent in Cammeray at the time. Here are the content options we had to play with:

Photographs and Images

Images are used in Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin and on your blog (if you have one). They are used to make a blog easier to read and in industries like real estate where good photography is important to get a high price and make a successful sale they are used to showcase the product being sold. I recently spoke to an asbestos removal company and photographs of what they do and how they do it are also an important part of their “content”.

We show you how to include images in blogs and even include fundamental image editing skills using GIMP (it’s very powerful and it’s free!)

Video Marketing

property marketing, video marketing, Facebook Page, Facebook Ads, Youtube and video marketingEzyLearn has several hundred videos as part of our online training courses and sometimes we use them to give prospective students examples of our training, explanations about how our special offers work or even videos of me explaining the EzyLearn journey since the late 1990’s! Real estate agents like Derek Farmer use video to help educate property sellers about the various aspects of the property selling process and what to look out for.

We show you how to get your video up to YouTube, or more professional services like Wistia and show you the analytics you can get about your video viewers and how to make a better video next time — it’s all about drop off rates. We also show you how to get a Call-To-Action within the video itself.

Blog Marketing

Blog marketing is my personal favourite because I love writing; you can really play with the keywords that Google loves so much and you can fill a website up with content that shows you are active.

We teach you how to create a website, create web pages AND blog posts, how to optimise them for the keywords you want to be discovered for and how to measure and understand the visitor analytics.

Facebook Pages, Timeline Posts, Advertising and Remarketing

This is the one that EVERYONE is interested in and for good reason; the demographic targeting is fantastic. Facebook is becoming increasingly important for real estate agents to promote themselves — indeed, Social Estate and BuddyBid are just two companies getting in early to earn a couple of hundred dollars a month for each real estate agent they take on board.

Note: This is something that any work at home mum (or dad) can do! You just need to understand how to generate new content or “republish” other interesting content on a Facebook Timeline and how to create a Facebook Ad. We cover all of this in our Social Media Marketing Course.

Facebook Pages

Our written guide and training course videos show you how to set up a Facebook Page for a local business (ideal for tradies, service providers like accountants or bookkeeper and of course real estate agents). By using a Facebook page you can assign the administration of that page to someone who simply schedules posts — that someone can be YOU.

Most people with a Facebook Page then need to make sure their Timeline is filled with content so that they pop up regularly in local news feeds.

Feeding Your Facebook Timeline

Real Estate Agent Facebook Page, timeline posts and ads help property and brand marketingMost people think it’s important to create a Facebook post every day but that’s hard to do if you need to generate original content. Instead most people re-post other content that is relevant to the audience — this is often referred to as curated content (for instance, where you make a comment or affirm your belief in an article).

Real estate agents often simply refer to the plethora of real estate blogs available and here are some examples used by David Howe, an honest and diligent McGrath agent in Northbridge, Sydney, who asked our designer team to create a website for him:

  • http://www.smartpropertyinvestment.com.au/how-to-maximise-profit-without-it-costing-you-a-cent
  • http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/food/sydney-taste/sydney-eat-street-10-things-to-try-in-crows-nest/news-story/
  • http://www.apimagazine.com.au/2016/11/debt-retirement-worries-high/
  • https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/too-real-estate
  • http://www.homestolove.com.au/how-to-design-the-perfect-laundry-4236
  • http://blog.templeandwebster.com.au/work-the-trend-the-new-natural/
  • http://www.afr.com/real-estate/residential/dont-want-to-move-want-a-reno-architecture-awards-show-how-to-do-it-20161104-gshwue
  • http://davidhowe.com.au/david-howe-real-estate-agent-northbridge/

This method of posting other people’s content is good enough to show that your Facebook Page is active. However, from an internet marketing perspective it tends to send people away from your Page and onto other websites where your competitors might advertise — especially if you report material by ratemyagent, openagent, realestate.com.au or domain!

In our social media marketing course we show you how to make a post like this and schedule them all in advance but also how to get your own unique content and how to link to content where none of your competitors are listed.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook Ad Views for individual property advertisement - Clarence TownFacebook ads are relatively simple to create so there is NO reason to get someone else to do them (particularly if they’re going to charge you the equivalent of 4 hours’ labour!). The key elements of a Facebook Ad are their structure: Campaigns, Adsets, then individual ads and once you get that right and understand how it works, creating a Facebook Ad can be done by someone in your office or who you trust (again, a work at home mum).

We show you the type of posts and ads that Derek Farmer paid to promote in his local area, why he chose to do it, how much he paid and what his viewer and reader statistics were. We’ll also show you how to advertise to your own client base in their Facebook Feeds and how to remarket to people who’ve been to your website or Facebook Page.

WordPress, Hosting, User Management etc

I believe that your own website is the best “landing page” for any marketing money spent because YOU OWN IT. The more traffic you direct to your own website and the more content you put there that is valuable to your customers and future potential customers the more valuable YOU and YOUR WEBSITE will become.

WordPress online training course and social mediaIn our Social Media Marketing Course we include every aspect of how to manage your own website using the very popular WordPress Content Management System. This includes having multiple users be able to publish content. We also teach you how to optimise your blogs and pages for important keywords using tags and categories, how to use meta tags on your pages and even on images so everything gets indexed by Google and how to make your website look fantastic with professional themes (templates).

Lead Capture and Email Marketing

Having a call to action on your website or Facebook Page is critical to truly analyse it’s effectiveness and understand it’s success — what’s working and what needs to change. A very important part of that is to capture the email address of people who visit your site and most websites do that using a giveaway, free reports, white papers etc. Once you have a potential clients email address you effectively have permission from them to send them email messages.

We use a number of different email marketing solutions including Campaign Monitor and Aweber, and these are very similar to MailChimp, GetResponse, Constant Contact and a plethora of other email marketing solutions. We’ll show you how to use these systems to capture website visitor details and send them messages automatically. 

Capturing, Analysing and Understanding visitor traffic

Video visitor Analytics - property marketing video for real estate agentsGoogle Analytics is the most popular website traffic analysing system and you can use it to measure the effectiveness of your website day-by-day, week-by-week and for specific date ranges.

We show you how to implement the code on your website, how to access the visitor traffic information on your PC and even your mobile phone and what elements to look for to understand what your website is doing. 

Conclusion about Social Media Marketing Course

We do all of this using our own website examples as well as Derek Farmers website so you can see what real businesses do to succeed online. Whether you want to do all of this yourself, hire an experienced internet marketer or find a suitably qualified work at home mum (or dad) this course will give you an abundance of knowledge and strategies to manage what you do.

See what’s included in our Social Media Marketing Course and enrol today at a huge launch discount!

[button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/courses/marketing-training-courses/digital-marketing-social-media-courses/” color=”orange”] Social Media Marketing Course Contents[/button]

 

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Facebook Advertising and Impressions for Real Estate Agents

Facebook advertising and impressions of you

David Howe uses Facebook to showcase properties that are currently available for sale in Northbridge NSWHas someone been telling you you must get onto social media? Are you a real estate agent with a Facebook page that is pushing people away? Are you spending hundreds of dollars per month and pushing your Facebook community away from what you do and to all the big companies!?

Target home owners in your suburb

This is why everyone loves social media isn’t it? The fact that you can almost perfectly target your marketing message to your ideal customer makes social media perfect, the only issue you have now is “Are they ready to buy”? Are they ready to use your services at that moment? What happens if they aren’t?

I interviewed Michael Griffiths when he ran his Internet marketing business for our business marketing course and he pointed out was that only about 3% of the people who come to your website are ready to transact, the rest of the visitors are exploring, learning and getting to know people (hopefully you are one of them) who they may use in the future. That’s why recommendations, testimonials, blogs and social media pages are important because they show prospective buyers that you are active, current and in tune and the messages you give out will almost help them define whether they like who you are.

Facebook may not work immediately

The dilemma for real estate agents is whether they should advertise using Google Adwords or with Facebook Advertising and the answer is really both, but for different reasons.

  • Google Adwords gets you in front of people who are searching for you or the services you provide
  • Facebook enables you to get in front of all of your potential market
  • Social media, blogs and newsletters help you remain front of mind

ReMarketing keeps your ad in front of prospects

Everyone is talking about remarketing and giving you to power to show your ad to your target audience no matter where your prospect goes online. The problem is that they may never need or want your services and you’re continuously paying for the ad to appear. The problem with some Facebook ads is that you pay for impressions – every time someone sees your ad – as opposed to PPC (every time someone clicks on your ad).

It’s better to offer your prospects a way to be reminded of you and you do that by getting people to like your page, follow you on twitter or LinkedIn and subscribe to your blog. Every time you create new and interesting content your prospects will see you and if they are no longer interested they’ll disconnect, unsubscribe, Unlike, Unfollow you.

Facebook is best for your past clients and potential advocates

The best way I believe to use Facebook advertising is to create a custom audience of all your past clients and make sure you show up when they are using Facebook. It builds the likelihood of them recommending you to their friends and it keeps you front of mind, particularly for real estate agents where the sales funnel can take several years sometimes for someone to use your services after getting to know you.

123ezy is a digital agency that creates real estate agent websites and helps them navigate the changing world of property marketing and building an online reputation based on all the hard work they have already done. EzyLearn creates courses to help students learn how to use office productivity, accounting and marketing programs to manage their business or work. We’re assembling a Facebook Advertising for Business Course and you can register for our free Facebook Advertising Course now.

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Tracey’s Will Hallam is going to Mercury and she’s starting a business to raise funds

starting a business selling childrens books - Will Hallam and Tracey DicksonInterview with successful business owners

Between October 2015 and January 2016 I’ve been doing something a little different and something that I haven’t really done in the past. You could say it’s part of the development of new ideas and concepts for EzyLearn and I don’t know how it will work out but am very interested in your opinion and feedback.

Business StartUp Course – EzyStartUp

Over the summer break we renamed our Small Business Course to the EzyStartUp Course and we’ve more clearly targeted that it is for people who are moving from being an employee to working as an independent contractor (with a bigger more comprehensive and detailed Business Plan Package coming later in the year for bigger businesses) and as part of these changes I’ve been interviewing successful business owners about all aspects of their business.

Setup, Legal, Vision, Ideas, Structure, Forecasts

I’ve been lucky to have met a lot of business owners of the last 20 years because many of them have been willing to share intimate details of their businesses in my interviews and the information covers all aspects of the business process from setup and planning to marketing and sales to exit strategies and succession planning. One of the people I interviewed is Tracey Dickson, who bought a promotional products business, built it up and made it valuable using technology and sold it when she was ready to exit. I’ve interviewed Tracey for a number of subjects for The Australian Small Business Centre Pty Ltd and in particular I’ve delved into what she’s gone through in writing a new children’s book based on a character she created called Will Hallam. You can watch the introductory video interview below.

Ideas turn into products that are packaged for markets who buy and use them

The process of creating these videos went a little like this.

  1. I looked at each of the topics in the ASBC Small Business Management Courses
  2. I compiled a list of questions that I thought are relevant for each topic (some as a result of further research)
  3. Looked around at people I know in various different business types (importer, retail, professional services, marketing, sales trainer)
  4. Studied these business owners websites and business to compile questions that cover the course contents but also relate to their business
  5. Interviewed the business owner with input from them before and in between videos

After going through all the technical and know-how aspects about the steps you need to take it dawned on me that all of these business owners had something more than just knowledge and experience, they had all those character traits that make business owners successful. They include:

  • being inquisitive
  • always asking questions
  • learning new things
  • studying their market
  • evaluating their business
  • making changes if needed
  • sticking at it
  • trying again and again
  • working to a plan
  • working out another way to do things

There are probably many other words or phrases that can be used to describe these traits and they all add up to what makes these people and these interviews so valuable. For many people starting out in business for the first time it’s weird just keeping a time sheet and invoicing for the work they do and then following up for payment so listening to experienced business people and understanding the right attitudes will make as big a difference as the technical know how itself.

Will Hallam is for kids between 7-11 and Tracey has a global opportunity

Tracey is a meticulous person who puts in the ground work and she’s passionate enough about her new project that she’s taken the time to understand how the publishing industry works and what her readers (and their parents) are looking for. I think you’ll find her insights and thought processes very useful and please make a comment on Facebook or Linkedin to let me know your thoughts.

If you like what you’re reading so far subscribe to this blog and check out the new EzyStartUp Course.

Here’s my Introduction video interview with Tracey

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Content Marketing for Real Estate Agents

Real Estate Agents Want to Get Discovered Online By Property Vendors Ready to Sell Their Property

Good local real estate agent in Cammeray Sydneys lower north shoreIf you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ll notice the slant towards accounting, bookkeeping and the frenzied competition between the software companies that provide software for this purpose. However, we also teach students how to use WordPress so they can take advantage of the massive benefits of content marketing.

We’ve also changed the layout of this blog using a responsive theme in WordPress. This enables the blog to be read easily no matter what device you are using (computer, tablet or phone), or at what orientation (portrait or landscape). I am also involved in an exciting new project that enables real estate agents to build credibility online using the tools we use at EzyLearn.

Real Estate Agent Websites

Real estate agents can build a credible online profile by creating a website and use content marketing to help people who are interested in selling their property and it might be a good time to do that in the heated Sydney and Melbourne property markets!

Derek Farmer is a successful real estate agent in Cammeray (in Sydney’s Lower North Shore) and he has created a series of educational videos that demystify the process of selling a property. His video topics include:

  • Tips for Buyers on Auction Day
  • Tips for Sellers on Auction Day
  • Nothing is Happening After Months on the Market
  • How to Handle an Offer
  • How to Handle Feedback
  • Commission – How Much Should You Pay
  • Preparation – How Much Should You Do
  • Marketing – How Much Should You Pay

What I love about this project is Derek is part of a new breed of real estate agent who is open and transparent with information and he has gone to the trouble of creating these videos because it also give him an opportunity to reveal himself to potential sellers. He’s effectively pitching himself to thousands of potential property sellers with information they’re looking for and he’s taking the opportunity to enable them to get to know him – electronically.

Content marketing involves video, images and text

Real Estate Agents Commission - How much should you payContent marketing involves the use of relevant content that people find useful and if you do a good job at it potential customers will connect with you to learn more and stay connected until they are ready to use your services. If you’d like to learn more about the importance of having a website and keeping it updated regularly watch the video interview I had with Michael Griffiths, the referral marketing guru.

Good content marketing keeps people at your website longer and even takes them to other parts of your website and all of this visitor information is tracked by search engines like Google, who then improve your rankings in organic search results. It means that when you spend time and money on good content marketing you gradually build a credible online brand with a reputation that lasts a long time. It’s a long term strategy taken by committed people who want to be in business for the long term.

[button link=”http://derekfarmer.com.au/property-training-tips/derek-farmer-newsletter/training-video-gallery/” newwindow=”yes”] Take a Look at the Videos Now[/button]

Receive “Content Marketing for Real Estate Agents” Information Pack

Content Marketing for good local real estate agentsIf you want to learn more about our 123ezy service or share it with a real estate agent you know visit our Real Estate Agent Website page and learn more about the Automated Response Marketing System. There’s also an opportunity to work with us as a writer which you can learn about at the StartUp Academy.

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Break through the ceiling with a killer elevator pitch

Business Networking Strategies – the Elevator Pitch

marketing your small business in an elevator 2For a lot of people, when they start a new business, they take a training course. It might be in an area relevant to their industry or profession, it might be a general training course, like our small business StartUp course, or it might be training in particular software, like our MYOB or Xero training courses. The best way to practice an elevator pitch is to practice all the time.

Training is incredibly important, but it’s no substitute for real-life interaction with other business owners, with whom you can gain valuable insights and perspectives on owning and operating a new business in the real world. This is what makes attending regular networking groups and events an important undertaking for any small business owner – old or new.

I recently wrote a blog post on what you should do at a networking event, but there was one point that we didn’t cover in great detail because I felt that it required a blog post of its own, as it’s crucial to your success as a networker: the elevator pitch.

Honing your elevator pitch

Perhaps you’ve heard of the term elevator pitch before. It’s most often used to describe a business or organisation’s mission statement; the name reflects the idea that you should be able to explain what your business does in the time it takes to ride an elevator. When you write a business plan, in it you need to include an executive summary, which explains what your business does or will do; it’s also your elevator pitch.

But your elevator pitch needs to do more than just explain what your business does. It also needs to encourage people to want to do business with you – or at least, continue listening to what you have to say. If you’ve completed our small business marketing course, then you’d have already practiced writing and honing an elevator pitch for your business when you wrote the executive summary of your business plan.

Be interesting, but above all, be compelling

Remember the goal of a business plan is to entice someone to invest in your business or idea, but the plan itself can run for many pages, detailing strategies and tactics for ensuring your business’s overall success. Most banks and financiers don’t have time to read every single business plan that lands on their desk, so they turn to the executive summary to see if the venture seems like a good fit for them.

It goes without saying, then, that your executive summary needs to be compelling, as does your elevator pitch. If you’ve written a business plan for your business, this is a good place to start when developing the elevator pitch you plan to use at a networking group or event. Be personable, though, and keep it conversational. Remember that the person on the receiving end of your elevator pitch is unlikely to be reading it; they’re listening to you deliver it instead, so you need to be comfortable giving your elevator pitch, while also seeming authentic.

Key elements of an elevator pitch

In crafting your elevator pitch, it’s crucial to include the following key elements:

  • Hook people with a good opening line that makes them want to hear more
  • Tell people what you do, not what you are
  • Repeat key information, such as your business name or main product or service
  • Be interesting and authentic
  • Use plain language when you’re describing a problem your product or service solves
  • Think about your end goal and ensure your elevator pitch services to achieve it
  • Finish your pitch by asking the other person what they do.

You should know have a good understanding of what to do at a networking event or group; now it’s just time to find a group to try out your new skills. Try meet-up.com or your local chamber of commerce to find groups near you. Make sure to RSVP if you are going to attend, and then stick to it. If something comes up, let the organiser know, so they don’t hold the meeting up waiting for you.

For more information on how to use networking groups to your advantage, including information on referral marketing, continue reading our blog.

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What to do at a networking event

Networking Event Tasks: Step 1 – Let people like you

networking2
Once you start networking it becomes easier and more natural.

Whether you’re starting a new business or hoping to expand your existing one, networking can be your life support. Successful networking helps you to find and connect with like-minded individuals, with whom you can share your experiences as a new (or established) business owner, and gain valuable insights on the ways you can grow and develop your own business.

I’ve written about networking before, because I think it’s something every business owner should engage in regularly to complement their current marketing strategies. Networking with other business owners not only gives you access to a great brains trust to provide you with tips and advice, but it’s also a great opportunity to use referral marketing to grow your business.

What is networking exactly?

Many people think networking events and groups are places people go to sell their products or services to other attendees, but that’s not actually what a networking group or event are about at all.

[quote]The true definition of networking is ‘the process of interacting with others to exchange information and develop professional or social contacts’.[/quote]

That being said, as a business owner, you should always look for new or potential business opportunities in everything you do. This is how you can help to grow and expand your business. But, where discussing your business might not always be appropriate in typical social settings, at a networking group it’s more than welcome; it’s encouraged.

Networking is a balancing act of meeting people and being social, while also looking for opportunities that will help take your business to the next level. To achieve this balance and make meaningful connections with other business owners that will prove beneficial to your business requires planning beforehand.

How can networking help your business?

If you run a home-based business, it’s not uncommon to find that you can go entire days and weeks without interacting with another person on a professional level. This lack of interaction is not only isolating, but it can prove detrimental to your productivity and the continued growth of your business.

Your business needs new, fresh ideas and perspectives to thrive, and networking groups and events can help to connect you with people who can provide you with those ideas. They also give you the opportunity to do the same for other business owners, which is what makes the arrangement so mutually beneficial.

Take the following real-life example, for instance:

A home-based bookkeeper was looking for advice about her website and how she could increase her search engine rankings and traffic to her website. She’d previously enlisted the help of SEO experts and web developers and funnelled a lot of money into her website, but she felt it still wasn’t performing well – it wasn’t mobile, for instance, and she felt the copy could read better. The bookkeeper decided to go to a networking group of small business owners who were meeting to discuss online marketing, in the hope that someone might have some advice for her or could refer someone who could help. There she met another small business owner, who operated a content marketing agency and who advised her on how to increase her web presence by blogging, creating shareable content, and optimising her Google My Business page; the agency also had an in-house web designer and developer. The bookkeeper was so impressed with the content marketing advice she received, particularly the tips on Google My Business, that she hired the content marketing agency to manage all of her content marketing, including updating her website so it was mobile; they, in turn, referred a number of fairly big clients to the bookkeeper.

Five ways to succeed at networking

The key takeaway from the above example was that the bookkeeper went to a particular networking group with a goal in mind: to solve her online marketing issues. She was seeking qualified advice from other business owners who could empathise with her situation and perhaps recommend a course of action or someone qualified to help. She received both. At the networking group, she met a person who was willing to give her advice that she could implement at herself. Because she’d received useful advice before that worked, she felt safe in her decision to trust the agency to manage all of her content marketing.

So what are the five main things you can do to ensure the next networking group or event you attend is successful? Well, it starts with goal setting.

  1. Network with a purpose:

Like our bookkeeper in the example above, you need to determine what your needs are and why you’re going to a networking group or event, in the first place. If it’s to find advice on how to improve your web presence, select networking groups with a focus on operating a business in the online world; if it’s merely to share the experience of operating a small business with other business owners in your local community, choose one in your area with that focus.

  1. Research:

Now that you’ve established your networking goals, it’s time to find the networking group or event that will deliver them. Check out the attendees and members of some networking events or groups to see which ones are most suited to your business and your networking goals. Once you’ve identified some people you think are worth pursuing at a glance, research them online. Check our their LinkedIn profile, website and other social media. This’ll not only help you to further refine your list of people to connect with at each networking group, but it’ll also help you to find some common interests to discuss with them when you do meet.

  1. Brainstorm some questions:

Before you attend any networking event, think of some questions that you’d like to ask the group or any individual member. It may seem like a waste of time, but it will help to ensure that, even if the other attendees are unprepared, at least you’re going to come away one step closer to reach the goals you set out for your business in the first place. Having targeted questions also helps to show the other attendees that you’re interested and engaged, rather than just there to kill time.

  1. Establish your presence:

Show the group that you’re somebody worth knowing and that your contribution to the group is as valuable as everyone else’s. It’s worthwhile remembering that some groups only allow one member from one profession only, to ensure there’s meaningful business opportunities for everyone attending, so you need to show that you’re worthwhile keeping around on a regular basis. Listen, be attentive, show you’re there to help other’s problem-solve just as you are there to problem-solve for yourself. Always be willing to share and contribute ideas, but know when to back off so as not to be the guy who hogs the conversation and makes the group all about him.

  1. Establish connections and follow-up:

Don’t just hand out and collect business cards willy-nilly. Your goal should be to establish a real connection with people that you’d like to add to your professional network of contacts and, in turn, be that person to them too. Exchange business cards, email addresses or other contact information and try to make a plan to meet-up outside of the networking group. After each event or meet-up, follow-up with each person you’ve exchanged details with. It’s probably taking to too far to call, unless you’ve made an arrangement to meet already, but otherwise sending an email or connecting on social media like LinkedIn is a good place to start.

Follow these five steps each time you attend a networking group or event, and you’re unlikely to go wrong. If you’d like to read more about networking and how you can make it work for your business, continue reading our blog. Otherwise, it’s time to get out there!

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How Do Business Recruit Staff?

LinkedIn, Job recruiters and the Internet

Hiring-Time-vs-Money-comparison infographic by recruitloop-small - shows Linkedin is far cheaper than the old job ad alternativesToward the end of 2012, LinkedIn, the social media platform for professionals, reported that their stock had jumped a massive 20 percent in just one day, taking their annual revenue to $860 million. The results were impressive. Forbes magazine was speculating that the company, which was first publically just two years earlier, could soon outpace the revenues of employment website giant, Monster.com. It even looked as though LinkedIn could achieve what other employment websites hadn’t: combining job ads with the art of recruitment.

The main driver of LinkedIn’s success – and indeed the company’s main focus – is its Talent Solutions service, which allows companies to market itself and target talent directly, without the need for a middleman, like a recruiter. This, many have speculated, sounds the death knell for an already wounded recruitment industry, which has been about as secretive about the talent procuring process as Colonel Sanders was about those 11 herbs and spices.

Great For Jobseekers and Entrepreneurs

LinkedIn is a fantastic networking tool for businesses and individuals alike and an equally fantastic online resume for independent contractors and jobseekers; both are topics we’ve written about quite extensively on this very blog. But to truly determine how useful it is to jobseekers, we thought we should look at how useful it is for businesses.

The usefulness of something, particularly for a business, is usually determined in monetary terms – in other words, how much does it cost and how much time or money (though both time and money are synonymous in business) will it save us?

Fortunately, Aussie start-up, RecruitLoop, which is now based in both Sydney and San Francisco after opening offices there when they secured venture capital in 2013 for their new kind of online recruitment agency, ran the numbers for us. (they’ve subsequently grown via acquisition!)

The Old Recruitment Process

Traditionally, if you wanted to locate top-tier talent for your organisation, you had little choice but to hire a recruitment agency. They possessed the secret formula for procuring the right candidates and charged handsomely for it, usually in the vicinity of 15-30 percent of the salary on offer, per hire. RecruitLoop says you should expect to pay about 20 percent.

But first you have to find a recruiter you like. Conservatively speaking, this could take about two hours, including the time it takes to brief the recruiter on the position and candidate you’re looking for. Then it’s over to them – for now.

The recruiter may weed out the good candidates from the bad, but that’s literally it. You still need to interview each candidate, whether it’s two or three or more. After a customary 30 minute pre-interview phone call, it’s standard practice for a candidate to meet with the hiring manager at a company at least twice, sometimes three times. That’s a minimum of 7.5 hours.

RecruitLoop also pencils in time to wine and dine candidates. I don’t know about you, but I rarely hear of a junior or mid-level executive being wined and dined by an employer. This is a practice usually reserved for the top brass, so I’m going to reassign that time to checking out each candidates’ references.

Yes, this is the recruiter’s responsibility and it’s what you’re paying the big bucks for, but it’s precisely because you’re shelling out those big bucks that you should do your due diligence and check out each candidates’ references yourself. (I give you two good reasons why in this blog post.)

Altogether, you’d have spent 13.5 hours on the hiring process, in addition to the 20 percent finders fee you pay to the recruiter. Assuming the candidate’s salary is $75k, and your salary is around $90k (or $47 an hour), you’ve just spent $19k.

The New DIY Recruitment Process

In the RecruitLoop example, they listed multiple employment websites to advertise a job vacancy, but we reckon you only need to use two websites: LinkedIn, which they estimate costs around $1,500 an ad, and Gumtree, which is free.

It should take you about an hour to write your job advertisement, perhaps two if you’re a little rusty or the position is not quite straight forward, which in small business it rarely is. We’ll note down two hours for ad writing, and thirty minutes to post them both.

The average corporate job advertisement yields about 200-300 resumes from jobseekers, but as a small business you may receive less than that. Even if you receive as little as twenty resumes, you still need to cull that down to two or three candidates. That should take you about 3.5 hours.

Then comes the interview process. This shouldn’t take any longer than it would if you were using a recruitment agency, which RecruitLoop estimated would take about 7.5 hours (though they estimated 12.5 hours in their info graphic). Then tag on 4 hours to check each candidates’ references.

You’re looking at about 17.5 hours of your time, plus the cost of advertising on LinkedIn. Assuming your salary is around $90k per year (or $47 an hour), altogether the new DIY hiring process has cost you just under $2,500, though it could cost you as much as $4,900, according to RecruitLoop.

Accessing What’s Behind the Curtain

Since hiring a recruitment agency only saves you about four hours, but costs exponentially more in agency fees, it would seem that the only reason to go with a recruiter is to access to that secret Talent Procuring Process.

But given that the majority of recruiters are now using LinkedIn to target new talent, in addition to their existing database – and who cares about one recruiter’s database when LinkedIn has the biggest in the world? – wouldn’t you rather save your money, invest the time, and go behind the curtain yourself? I would.

The key, of course, is to ensure you’re using LinkedIn correctly, in the first place. After that, the rest is up to you. Next time you’re looking to hire a new staff member – or maybe even an independent contractor – I encourage you to think about the DIY way.

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MYOB Bookkeeper Triples Income With No Extra Advertising Budget

MYOB Bookkeeper Provides Customer Service

Ever seen these headings in online ads? It’s sensational I know and I’d rather not revert to such tactics, but the truth of the matter is that the personal work you do to become a better networker and learn how to become a good referrer of business to other people will turn you into the “go to” person a lot of small businesses would like. The result is that you’ll pick up more business because people trust you.

I’ve written before about the power of combining websites like LinkedIn and good Referral Marketing techniques, but they worth mentioning again, particularly as Michael Griffiths is holding his next Referral Marketing Master Class very soon.

A recent example that Michael gave me about the benefits that one bookkeeper received because of their new-found referral marketing skills is Don Doolan from First Class Accounts. He was able to triple his lead generation just by focussing his efforts on effective networking and finding a way to help his network on contacts improve their business.

Is Referral Marketing just good Customer Service?

Customer service is an important aspect in every business. It’s so important that even the largest of Australian and US companies use it as a tool to generate more sales! We include Customer Service tips in our Small Business Management and StartUp Course from David Hall and I’m mentioning it here because both customer service and networking require a similar effort in modifying your approach to customers and listening to them.

When you listen to your customers in your regular conversations you’ll discover many opportunities to either:

  • Mention a product or service that you offer, or
  • Mention that you know someone who could provide them with exactly what they are looking for.

Just by writing this email I am referring Michael and his Referral Marketing course because I have seen the benefits from other people in our network and I know how important it is to have a good relationship with key customers.

MYOB Bookkeeper Marketing

If you are one of our MYOB Bookkeeping Course students and you are interested in taking the journey of becoming an independent consultant to provide bookkeeping services in your local area please make sure you read about our MYOB Bookkeeper Directory service.

Want help starting a bookkeeping business?

start a bookkeeping business
Business Opportunities for Ordinary People

We have now teamed up with the StartUp Academy to help our students (and anyone else) start their own home based business as a bookkeeper. You’ll be able to earn money by helping people learn how to use programs like MYOB, Quickbooks and Xero or doing the work for them. Learn more about starting a bookkeeping business.

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Want to Earn a Thousand Bucks for Giving a Referral?

referral marketing
We’ve come across a great new referral marketing website that will pay you a grand for referring a colleague.

We’ve published numerous posts about referral marketing, which is an invaluable and cost effective way of marketing your business. In particular, we talked about LinkedIn. This is something that I, Steve Slisar, CEO of EzyLearn, am a big believer in — and so is small business marketing guru, Michael Griffiths.

You can learn more about using LinkedIn for referral marketing by attending one of Michael’s Sydney workshops and here’s a company willing to pay a good commission for referrals. Continue reading Want to Earn a Thousand Bucks for Giving a Referral?

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Thanks For Loving Us

MYOB online training courses
We are thrilled that our customers appreciate our attention to good, old-fashioned customer service.

In a recent post we talked about how you can use referral marketing and LinkedIn to market your business to grow your customer base. But once you get those new customers, the most important thing is making certain you keep them.

Great customer service is the key to ensuring you always have a happy customer. Providing consistently good customer service and being courteous to people in the way you communicate with them, be they suppliers or contractors, as well as customers, is also highly beneficial to your business in other ways. Continue reading Thanks For Loving Us

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Reinvent Your Career: ‘Work At Home’ Seminar

I mentioned in my last post that I will be presenting a Work at Home Seminar at the Reinvent Your Career Expo in

Sydney on 30 and 31 August 2014. We call it the WAH Seminar and I really hope to see some of EzyLearn’s students there. We’ll have a stand there for our soon to be announced Start Up Academy!

Continue reading Reinvent Your Career: ‘Work At Home’ Seminar
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Pimp My Business: Networking How-To’s and an Apple Case Study

networking2
Once you start networking it becomes easier and more natural.

We recently wrote a post about referral marketing and how it can genuinely grow your business. We talk about different marketing strategies in our Small Business Management course, and particularly the different mediums – newspapers, online, etc – that you can use to advertise your business, but referral marketing is one marketing strategy that doesn’t cost a lot and that you can – and should! – begin today. Continue reading Pimp My Business: Networking How-To’s and an Apple Case Study

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Do You Get Other People to Talk You Up?

referral marketing
Using your clients to refer you is a great way to generate new business.

Marketing and referrals are essential components of any successful business. We cover marketing in the Marketing Action Plan and Undertake Marketing Activities of our Small Business Management Course, where we talk about the ways you can market your business to get those first few customers.

Referral marketing is a great way to gain new customers, and involves encouraging your existing client base to promote your business and its services.

Continue reading Do You Get Other People to Talk You Up?

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Are You a Bookkeeper? Find Clients Online FOR FREE!

It can be daunting knowing where to get your first clients when you start your own business.
It can be daunting knowing where to get your first clients when you start your own business.

The hardest part about starting your own business is finding the first few clients.

At EzyLearn, we love helping our MYOB training course students start their own bookkeeping business, but we’re even more passionate about helping you make that business a success Continue reading Are You a Bookkeeper? Find Clients Online FOR FREE!

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Four Ways Web Analytics Will Generate Sales for You

Using web analytics means you don't waste time on marketing that's not yielding results.
Using web analytics means you don’t waste time on marketing that’s not yielding results.

In a recent post we talked about using web analytics to determine your website’s conversion rate, which can be used to generate sales leads. Web analytics is something we cover in our Digital Business Course, but for those still unconvinced on the usefulness of analytics, we thought we’d break it down a little further.

Jump On Board the Web Analytics Train

If you’re not on board yet, here are four reasons why you should be!

  1. Search engine optimization: like it or not, SEO is still plays a huge part in how your customers arrive at your website. Using analytics you can see exactly what keywords and key phrases your customers are searching. Know this, and you’re able to create content that makes it almost impossible not to sign up for that newsletter, download an ebook, etc.
  2. Socially active: everyone knows that social media can drive traffic and result in leads, but what platform is best? Analytics answers this question without even breaking a sweat. For some businesses Facebook is the must-have platform, but for other businesses LinkedIn is more useful, so why waste your time on the wrong one if you don’t have to?
  3. A/B split testing: by combining the new-fangled world of web metrics with old school metrics like A/B testing, the internet doesn’t combust, but does, in fact, make fine-tuning your call-to-action strategies a cinch — particularly which ones to use and which ones to ditch. We recommend using another piece of software called Optimizely, but more on that later.
  4. Personalise email marketing: ever wondered how to increase the open-rate of your newsletters and emails? Wonder no more! Say a user arrives at an ebook download and then subscribes to your newsletter — does that mean they’re interested in a certain product or service? Probably, so why bother them with irrelevant information? This is a particularly useful given the sheer number of emails most people receive today.

By now you should be asking yourself how and where you can find this analytics train so that you can board it. In our Digital Business Course we recommend using Google Analytics because it’s free and easy-to-use, which are maybe two of the most important things small business owners care about, right?

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For small businesses wondering how you can best transition online, either in part or entirely (like EzyLearn did not so long ago), our Digital Business Course has been especially created to demystify this process.

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What is the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com

Get the functionality of WordPress.COM at your very own site
Get the functionality of WordPress.COM at your very own site

Although we are best known around Australia for our Online MYOB Training Courses with lifetime access and all versions of MYOB AccountRight Plus many students enrol into our WordPress training course so that they can create and change their own website.

We received a call from a prospective student this week and he asked about whether we offer training on WordPress.com or WordPress.org so I thought we should take some time to explain the difference and why we offer the training we do.

WordPress is a system for creating and maintaining your online presence. Some people consider a Facebook page or a Linkedin profile to be an online presence and it is, but if you are a business owner you can create an online presence that you own and it’s based around your domain name. When you register a domain name you then point it to a website hosting account (they call this DNS Management) and this is where the difference between WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG comes in. When you have your own domain name and website hosting you install the WordPress.ORG software on your own website and everything you put online is at your own domain. It helps to give your domain name more value.

[quote]WordPress.COM is a service were you can create an online profile at their website and it eliminates the need to buy a domain name and organise your own hosting, but it means you forego the goodwill value of owning your own domain name.[/quote]

Having said that, WordPress.COM functionality can now be built into the WordPress.ORG software you have on your own website using a service that WordPress call Jetpack. Jetpack enables dozens of extra features, including statistics about your website visitors, and connects your own website with the WordPress.COM service.

If there is one suggestion we have for small business owners who are looking for a website, go with a WordPress driven website because:

  1. Gives you the ability to easily change the content on each page when you want
  2. There are thousands of WordPress website designers who can help you if you need it
  3. You can incorporate social media and blogging very easily
  4. Social Media and Blogging will help increase your “relevance” in Google search results
  5. WordPress websites use themes that you can buy cheaply to create a professional website

Video PlayerWe’ve chatted with Paul from BYO Web and he will have some exciting information about WordPress website owners and the ability to easily add an e-commerce shopping cart to your website. Make sure you subscribe to receive future issues of our blog, and watch out for Paul’s exciting WordPress news.

By the way, if you want to get a free training video lesson about how WordPress websites are structured please check out this free WordPress Training video.