I’ve grown multiple Facebook groups into businesses with thousands of users as clients. Use a multi-channel marketing approach that targets external communities that revolve around your group topic. Post into the group with a Content strategy for building brand influence. You can do this by attributing Cialdini to each of your posts and then monitoring engagement. This serves as a self-assessment of which influence principals are leading your brand forward in your community so you can major in those principals and align your content to what appeals your community most (the Facebook insights may actually confuse you about what works and sucker you into advertising the wrong direction. You need to build an organic strategy based on the natural needs and desires of your community first. This is akin to “voice of customer” best practices.) You might also consider an inbound approach within your multi-channel marketing strategy, with all channels pointing to your Facebook group, essentially your landing page, which is associated with a relevant domain name.

Before you launch your first product: 1. Talk with 10 consumers you think might buy. Confirm your assumptions, gain insight about buying preferences you didn't know before, and document the process. This doesn't need to be a formal survey. This could be conversational interviews. 2. Talk to 10 more consumers to validate the assumptions you gathered from the first 10 people you talked to. 3. Repeat the same process for your expected vendors. Note their key needs and desires. If there's a pattern plan to align your home decor marketplace features to fit those needs. Most Viable Product 4. Launch a marketplace sample (MVP) to approach the needs and desires of the consumers and vendors. Don't confuse sell with install -- after launch, you may find that the needs play out very differently that when interviewed. Don't sink too much into your MVP. Consider the fees to build on WordPress or Shopify vs. something more templated like Etsy.com. Be financially and mentally/emotionally prepared to pivot your product or features for better alignment in your V1. 5. Pivot towards the most valuable problem/solution that the marketplace has demonstrated. At this point you will have pivoted your products, strategy, and/or model the 4th time. These pivots essentially setup your intangible "barrier to entry" and this type of socratic (hypothesis-driven) method is best practices for your future products.

Both. You need a firm strategy around goals with multiple channels and pathways to customers considered, tested, tactically operated, monitored, and improved over time in order to remain competitive. The better you do this process, the better your brand will stand out and compete against many others in the travel space. At some point, you'll want to pick out the gems that are working in both PR and Marketing, push resources into them, and thus maximize your brand strengths. Give me a call if you want to break through the noise.

I did a massive research assignment for an innovation tech company on this last year. If by quality you mean 1) able to speak english 2) diversity of code language 3) depth of code language 4) price in terms of salary 5) office cost in terms of real estate and location Katowice, Poland Riga, Latvia Monterrey, Mexico I have a contact for Katowice who often works with the government to setup offices for major companies. If you're serious and not going to waste my time on theirs, give me a call.

Tell real stories. Draft your own story for release and send it to a writer to get their interest. If your writing is good, they'll likely lower their rates if they are interested in the work, and then they'll work to one-up the quality and content of your story. But you could also just release your draft locally and then hold its hand through a virality process. That is, there are many horror stories of good people with great stories paying a publicist that gets an article "in" to some sort of a major brand or press, but it takes a bench seat or heaps into a side-brand or lodges into a connected page to the real brand, which has very little chance of anyone from the front page actually finding it. Of course, you don't want this. Get around that with a real PR strategy that starts with real local heat, builds to regional distribution, and then national fire. You can influence every step of the way if you plan the strategy ahead of time and are prepared to do the tactical work to lift it. Authentic virlaity vs. paid virality is a whole other conversation. You don't want to try to push junk content into national attention. Better to have something with real quality, fire, and then add smart sweat and oxygen to spread it around. Think: Armies of people. How many armies do you have access to? How do you get them to shoot in the same direction? What's in it for them? And how do you momentously build wars of conversations that lead to fear, peace, excitement, and the influential emotions that get people talking about the same thing. You might use emotional planning frameworks like Cialdini. Russia likes to use bots and social automation. You might target opinion leaders with "social snipe" style ads, or directly engage local communities in the conversation through pre-planned events, co-promotion, or reciprocity campaigns that build momentum. You'll learn a lot more and get a lot more if you do it yourself and get good at building your own PR strategies from a local to national level. Sometimes, foot on the pavement and relationships goes further than money, if you know what's effective.

As a social media strategy consultant for companies like Uber to Pizza Franchises to Non-Profits and everyone in between, I could write a book about this but many books have already been written, to limited success in keeping up with the habits and trends of users. This answer box isn't big enough for a book, so I'll leave you with these 5 heuristics to keep in mind when you develop your strategy: 1. Goals/Outcomes. What are you actually trying to accomplish? Sales? How many sales? Over what period of time? What KPI's will you use to know that you are on track to reach goals? How often will you measure them? You should emerge with a "I want to make this much, in this amount of time, I think it will come from these types of customers, and I'm not sure what that will cost me, but it better be less than my goal." Most people can get this part done immediately. 2. Data-based Strategies. Which platforms are you active in. Which of these platforms have been working for you. How do you know they have been working. What other channels are you active in. How do you know if they are bringing people into your social platforms or not. What do you know about the people who are on your social platform related to their desire to buy. What types of things are they engaging with. What types of things are they clicking on. What types of services are they buying. How are those services being promoted. How are those promotions leading to sales. Are they leading to lower sales or higher sales than you'd expect. Where else are trying those sales. Why. Where else are you not trying those sales. Why. Where can you add measurement? 3. New Strategy. Based on your cleanest forms of measurement, how will you deploy new forms of measurement into new platforms, which platforms, and why. What is your hypothesis (use the socratic method for short-term testing). How long will you measure before you form your new strategy. 4. Tactics. Once your new strategy is in place, with multiple channels and platforms tested, considered, and selected based on actual results related to your key service offerings, how will you execute new content campaigns, and why? One framework I use is Cialdini, which allows you to test various forms of influence to help shape the perception of your brand on a specific channel/platform and then repeat those influence principles in other similar platforms for similar (or different) effects. You can refine you mix of influence-driven posts based on how each principle performs related to your actual sales improvements, and learn which aspects of your brands are the strengths and weaknesses for continued testing and improvement on different platforms. I usually use an automated content repository to allow for planned content and communication that can be easily monitored and tweaked with less human hours. Using this approach means that you have to be a content ninja upfront and be able to plan ahead for where you want your river of content to go, while "splashing" it in realtime. 5. Monitoring and Optimizing. At this point, if you complete the above, you'll have a solid GOST framework complete that revolves around different channels and platforms that are "live" and "testing" and solid processes in place for future content and live content. You'll also have the ability to zoom in on any part of your strategy, in any channel or platform, analyze, learn, tweak, and A/B test it to other areas of your strategy so you can constantly building the stronger brand, deeper engagement, more valuable customer community, better use of your hours or whoever you hire to push the buttons. Hope this helps!

If the non-profit pays for their expenses, these can be no tax expenses. What you could do is, create a "volunteer fund" and encourage a sponsor to match the donations into the fund, made by the volunteers and supporters of the organization. Provide all donors (volunteers included) with a letter of acknowledgement for their donations (tax deductible). Then, use these funds to pay for their expenses, tax free.

Sounds like you have a non-profit organization pursuing funding resources that typically revolve around grants, private donors, equity-based investment, product review, membership/subscription revenue, or events sales through the community you are building. A multiple revenue stream approach is a good strategy for a new business that's still trying to determine it's primary funding source. But you need to focus your resources and do what's going to benefit you most to get past the early challenges of your launch. You need an assessment of your opportunity and clear strategy with tactics you can execute. Let's chat.

You need someone with digital marketing experience, entrepreneurial experiences, a strong command of Wordpress and digital asset management systems, and a keen mind for creativity when approaching the market. You won't find this easily from job postings. Let's be real -- most people are looking to be hired and trained for the job. You need someone who already knows what they are doing out the gate because they've done it before. These people are rare because they already have their products and know how to make money with them. Why would they spend time working on your product? Maybe because they believe in Clarity.Fm and like the challenge of helping someone else succeed... Let's chat.

I created a process I coin as "psuedo branding" that involves an automated process for gathering emails and testing them around specific products, industries, and value offerings. This process stems from a book called "Ask" and it's been an effective way to whittle down email lists into targeted, valuable potential client segments that doesn't destroy a product brand. Not spam. Smart automation can reel in customer preferences and match them with relevant offerings that actually convert. Let's chat.