SUCCESS STORY. Connect and Share Smartly: Laura Roeder on the Power of Social Media

Transcription

1 SUCCESS STORY Connect and Share Smartly: Laura Roeder on the Power of Social Media

2 Over the past few years, social media has become essential to everyone who is connected to it through smartphones, tablets and computers. Not everyone knows though how to effectively use Twitter and Facebook to grow their businesses and connect to an audience. Let s face it, most people hardly have a strategy, let alone know a thing or two about social netiquette. They seem to miss the point that the way they share updates says a lot about them, and can damage their reputation if they don t have a sound strategy in place. Foundr spoke with Laura Roeder, founder and CEO of LKR Social Media, discussing the key aspects of how to make the most of your social media presence, grow your following organically and get the web and social love your business deserves. Hailing from Austin, Texas, Roeder bootstrapped her business from scratch to a million dollar company that now employs remotely six people full-time. For the past seven years she s been teaching small businesses how to become well-known and claim their brand online. She was honored twice as a Top 100 Entrepreneur Under 30. After her university graduation, Roeder landed a junior designer job in a small ad agency in Chicago. As a designer, her work was limited. What she loved instead was being involved in strategies, meeting with clients, and everything that had to do with marketing and advertising. She realized her limitations in her job were too big, and decided to quit and start working for herself.

3 She had no prospects and no financial cushion to land on, yet she enjoyed the freedom that came along with building her business. I m really passionate about bootstrapping, says the young entrepreneur. It can be a difficult way to go, but a fantastic way to build a business too. You own 100 percent of your business, and you have total freedom that way. You re not accountable to any investors and bank loans. She had to pay herself from the get go, enough to live on, because she had no other resources. And a bootstrapped business like hers had to be profitable right from the beginning. Hiring looks different in a bootstrapped business. It had to be done gradually. Especially when you get started, you only have to have that next payment. You only have to have next month s salary. Or you may hire someone hourly or part time. It s unusual to bring someone full-time onboard right away, explains Roeder. There are a few ways to do that. Services are the easiest way to be profitable from day one, states Roeder. A designer has no excuse; as soon as you have a client, you have a profitable business. You just need your first client, and it grows from there. Someone who builds a complex piece of software that needs six months to complete, would need to build up some more savings. A software developer should be freelancing and bring in the money that way through services while building up their own thing. Just like the model of Rosetta Stone (the world s most trusted language-learning software), Roeder created online classes about social media and online marketing. The company doesn t provide any one-onone services; also they can t be hired to do social media on behalf of clients. We really want you to understand how to do social media for yourself. It s not something that works out very well if you totally outsource it and not pay any attention, points out Roeder. That s what makes it a scalable business model because it doesn t involve someone s time on an ongoing basis. They create the courses, keep them updated and people buy them. Roeder only teaches things that she knows firsthand they work. LKR s flagship course, Creating Fame, is all about how to become business famous in your industry and how to leverage social media marketing. It revolves around personal branding, making a connection with your audience and seeking out opportunities. Like this interview, says Roeder. This is a fantastic opportunity for me to increase my business fame.

4 Going deeper into how Roeder uses social media platforms for her business, she referred to the massive changes Facebook was going through at the time of this interview. Even though for the past year it sent them the most traffic, recently FB dropped off a cliff as far as the number of people who like LKR page, and see their posts. This is part of the game on social media, and online marketing in general, admits Roeder. It still is a place where LKR has a community. Since many other businesses and entrepreneurs took the same hit, Roeder recommends keeping your cool and having a long term social media strategy in place. She always advises people to build up one community at a time, and then move to another. While Facebook and Twitter remain the big drivers for her business, LKR also has a presence on Pinterest, where it s a little easier to get traction as a product or fashion industry business. LKR never bought likes and followers. Instead, they use Facebook ads to send traffic to their landing pages. Facebook has a complex advertising platform just like AdWords, but because they have these little shortcuts to promote one post right from your page, a lot of people don t explore the platform s complexity. You should never ever use that little thing that comes up on your page that says pay 10 dollars to promote your post, because you re not targeting your advertising, emphasizes Roeder. They ve been using Facebook Power Editor to get really targeted, like who they re showing it to, what pages they like, age, location etc. We build our likes organically, adds Roeder. We do a lot of advertising to our landing pages via Facebook. The way it works, we also get more likes that way because people will like your page when the page is showing the ads, which is something that happens naturally as the result of advertising. In terms of growing your social media presence, the first place to start with is content. If you re using Twitter and you re not blogging, you re not giving people any reason to link to you on Twitter and share your stuff, and it s going to be difficult, remarks Roeder. It s always best to start with a strong blog strategy. That s also covered in another marketing strategy program produced by LKR, called Social Brilliant. Roeder highlights: We mean it to be a timeless program, so we don t go into details like how to get retweets on Twitter. With a solid plan in place, you can go into details at a later stage. An example of good marketing is driving people with Facebook ads to a landing page. This way you collect their address, you can follow up with them and you can market to them further. Sharing content on social networks depends on a person s bandwidth and time. Also depending on business, audience and what you sell, one can get more traction on Pinterest or Instagram. It can be much less overwhelming to start on one or two sites, and feel that you find your rhythm there to see how it works, and then grow from there, suggests Roeder. Roeder takes pride in her business laser focus. Unlike other entrepreneurs who complain about their lack of focus, that was never an issue for her. Besides that, she s consistent: For me, consistency is one of my killer factors. I ve built a weekly newsletter every Wednesday for five years. Never missed a week. I love putting a process in place, being consistent, that s contributed to huge growth in the business.

5 Roeder adds, It s about focusing on your strengths and grow your way and see where you re weak and need help too.

6 She s not a big fan of the idea of having to sacrifice something to achieve success in business. Recalling a not so distant past, the now-living-in- London entrepreneur looks at what her life would have been like had she not taken the leap of faith: Having a day job, living in one place for that job, having a $30,000 a year salary that was never going to grow. Did she have to make choices? Of course. In life we have to make a lot of them. Roeder continues: I have great friends, a great marriage, I get to travel and I don t want to further this idea that you really have to kill yourself to be a successful entrepreneur. It doesn t have to be that way. You can choose how you want to build it, you have to be deliberate on that. If you want more time off, you re going to have to hire people. There s always tradeoffs. You can t have tons of time off and not have a team to manage. You have to make choices, but you don t have to make your life miserable. Roeder encourages people to start businesses. Keep focus on yourself. I love watching TED talks, interviews with entrepreneurs, reading books for inspiration, but you have to keep focus on that inspiration. Everyone gets to do it their way, and when you stay true to what you think it s going to be really amazing, that s when you have the most successful type of business, concludes Roeder. If you want to connect with your target audience on social media and establish a strong personal brand, here are some actionable steps: Implement a solid content strategy. Content marketing and social media marketing go together. Start a blog and share you posts on social media. People would rather share those rather than link to your About page or Contact page. Don t waste too much time on social media. Plan and automate the way you share content by using tools like Hootsuite and Buffer. These help you with sharing updates smartly on multiple channels at optimal times. Become an influencer in your niche. Create your own opportunities. The main part of Creating Fame is that no one else is going to make you famous other than yourself. Make yourself heard, known and sought-after. Anca Dumitru is a freelance writer and content strategist. She helps businesses to get better results from their blogs and websites through content marketing, blogging and copywriting. You can find her at