119 - The One Free Tool To Build Your List And Boost Your Connections Quickly!

Social Media Business Hour with Nile Nickel

Marketing is all about making a connection. If you want to be successful in business, you need to create a “Genuine Handshake” between you and your prospect.

Some of the most successful entrepreneurs, start by building an online platform where like-minded people can get-together, share and engage with one another. Check Out This Jam-Packed Podcast And Learn: - Which FREE Tool Tracy recommends that helped her build her list and boost her connections - 3 Essential Tips For Growing Your List Right NOW! - Marketing's Biggest Problem And How To Overcome It - Top 4 “Eye-Opening” Marketing Mistakes That You’ve Probably Already Made - How To “Ace” Marketing Using Social Media

Tracy Moore is an accomplished marketing expert and business owner with 20 years of experience developing client relationships through marketing and sales. She has experience with firms from start-up, to mid-market, to Fortune 100 firms. A business owner of seven years, Tracy understands the challenges small businesses face. She grew her franchise territory to the second highest grossing location out of 100 territories using her strong marketing, sales, and networking skills.

As a Marketing Business Partner in the Hewlett Packard Strategic Sales Center, Tracy designed and implemented strategic marketing plans that helped HP win multi-million dollar pursuits with companies such as American Express, International Paper, Cardinal Health, and AlleganyEnergy.

Now combining her strong marketing expertise and understanding of growing a small business, Tracy is leading Marketing Eye Dallas. She is helping small to mid-sized business owners develop solid marketing strategies and initiatives and ultimately grow their business.

Tracy The Woman With A “Marketing Eye”

How did Tracy start leading the “Marketing Eye Dallas” Marketing Agency, to it’s known success? Marketing Eye originally started in Australia and founded by Melissa Smith, who grew the business so large making her irresistible, that even international clients wanted to partner with her. The same time that Melissa decided to bring her business in the United States, that is the exact time also that Tracy is getting ready to sell her business which she owns for seven years. Selling her business will ultimately make her passion for marketing a living and owning a marketing firm a reality. Marketing Eye is a perfect fit for her. After many conversations with Melissa, Tracy became the first licensed franchised owner of Marketing Eye in the US.

Marketing Agency Owner Uses This One "Free Tool" To Build Her List And Boost Her Connections - And It’s Available To Almost Everyone Tracy highlighted that marketing is all about making a connection.

It is a human to human interaction. If you want to be successful in this business, have a Genuine Handshake. Build an online platform where like-minded people can get together and engage with one another. Cultivate your community by being involved. Being involved offers you wonders, as it will lead to you having connections with people who you never thought were out there. Tracy continues by saying, “If you want to connect and build a great list of connections, LinkedIn is a great starting point.”

Tracy’s Top 3 Essential Tips For Growing Your List That You Need To Start Using In Your Business Right NOW!

• Make a Genuine Connection.

  Spend time in finding people who may be good alliance partners for you, people who have the a business that’s complementary to yours. Create a solid connection with them in a way where leads can be shared. Just imagine having a TON of qualified leads and how they can help you grow your business.

• Do not isolate yourself.

  Are you one of the many entrepreneurs who isolate themselves while running their business? You need to stop isolating yourself right now. Again, marketing is all about making a connection. You need to learn how to Interact with a wide variety of people. Consider changing the way you interact even with your employees-- you may be surprised that they can provide you with great and valuable ideas that will positively affect your business growth and help overcome huge challenges.

• Maximize the use of social media

  Do you have your own social or community group, like LinkedIn or Facebook groups/pages?

Are you involved in or part of an online social media community page/group? If you don’t have one, start one or at least get involved starting today. Social media nowadays, offers the greatest platform for you to make a connection. It’s especially valuable for finding other entrepreneurs that you can share your ideas with and talk about your situation. You may learn how other successful entrepreneurs balance things in their life, grow past their challenges or even find a secret formula they’re using to grow their business.

Being part of a community or group where you can learn, share and bounce your ideas off one another will make you realize, you’re not alone and will help keep you motivated and energized.

What Is Marketing’s Biggest Problem And How To Overcome It?

Being part of the marketing industry is difficult. In this interview, Tracy points out the biggest problem in this industry. What is that problem? Not all entrepreneurs are born marketers. Some are born “Sales People” who most of the time, perceive “Sales” as "Marketing".

In reality, sales is NOT the same thing as marketing.

Tracy says, “Before sales and marketing problems can be solved, you as an entrepreneur must face this fact first.” Once you conquered this problem, only then that you can make the right decisions for your businesses.

4 Eye-Opening Marketing Challenges That You Didn't Know

Aside from the “biggest problem” in business previously mentioned, Tracy provides below, the top 4 challenges that marketers are facing right now.

1. No Cash Generating Clients

   No one can run a business and have employees without great clients that makes cash flow possible. Choosing, attracting and keeping the right clients is an essential part of the business that every entrepreneur should not ignore.

2. Marketing Know-Hows

   While running a small to medium sized business, sometimes, managing cash flow is also the responsibility of the business owner. If an entrepreneur doesn’t have a rock solid understanding of what marketing is, especially the constant shifting of client goals, then the company will suffer.

3. Don’t want to face the reality

   Face the reality that your business needs some marketing structure and flow. Meet with marketing agencies or marketing coaches who have proven successes and let them take a look at your business. They will make sure that you are on track and working within your budget. They can also help you stay in line with what you want to do or achieve in your business.

4. Keep Yourself Positive

   Tracy considers this the biggest challenge of them all. Every entrepreneur needs to accept the fact that there will always be ups and downs. Sad to say, some failed with their business mainly because of losing their positive outlook, they just can’t keep up with the pressure.

How To Ace Your Marketing Strategy In Social Media

Do you want people to follow you? Do you want your business to be successful? Then follow Tracy’s Time Tested, Marketing Strategies...

1. Consistency and Transparency

   You need to ask yourself, How often do I post on my social media pages? If the answer is not so often, It’s time to check your social media strategy. Tracy highlighted that as an entrepreneur may want things to always be updated and always connected. Sending out consistent and transparent messages across all of your social media profiles, all the time, is very important. We have to focus on building a platform where top of the mind awareness is being practiced and people can respond genuinely, engage with you by sharing insights...and where most importantly, they can make a connection with you. Try to get your followers to not just share or like your post, but also really connect with you. It’s important for them to leave valuable comments or great insights on your posts. Consistency and building your audience might take some serious time and effort, but once people are engaged and responding to you, then it’s all worth it.

2. Love to hate Spamming

   Always have an awareness. Make sure that what you’re sending out is not spam. Tracy explains, if you’re making connections, we have to learn how to connect the right way and not just the “spam” way.

Social Media Tip (Tracy highly recommends LinkedIn, which is a great way to connect with people and make alliances for networking, sales and finding new clients, etc)

How To Have The Same Marketing Eye Like Tracy

If you want to have the same marketing eye as Tracy’s, start connecting and be engage with her now. What sort of services she offers? Tracy can help you mostly with everything about Marketing and PR. From branding to websites, to content development, creating blogs, checking your existing marketing strategy and improving it and a lot more. Everything that falls under the marketing umbrella, she can help you.

Tracy can be contacted via her website at marketingeyedallas.com.

Tracy’s Irresistible Special Offer That You Have To Grab Now

She is offering a two hours, no obligation marketing discussion, where you can sit down with her and she will look at your marketing strategy. If you’re not in the Dallas area, get her special offer and you can discuss everything through Skype. If you’re in the Dallas area, good news, she can meet you. She will take a look at your social media, your web, branding, logo and we’ll also do a little bit of analysis on how that compares your other competitors in the industry, the people that you’re competing against and Tracy will let you know your business holes and gaps, including the areas that you can revisit and strengthen to improve your marketing.

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Tracy: Hi. This is Tracy Moore with Marketing eye Dallas. This is social media hour with Nile and Jordan and we’re going to be talking about growing your business through social media today.

Woman: In business and know the way forward most include social media. Perhaps you find it a bit confusing. Even frustrating. Well, you have no idea how to make it work for your business. Fear not. We interview some of the best social media experts in business who will share their experiences, ideas and knowledge. Plus offer tips and tricks to make using social media a breeze. Leverage the power of social media and grow your business now. Welcome to social media business hour with your host Nile Nickel.

Jordan: Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did.

Nile: Jordan, I always enjoy our different news, different views segments. I still haven’t got used to the label that my wife has given it and I know we officially renamed it but --

Jordan: Yeah. What’s wrong -- what do you not like about weird ass news?

Nile: I just have trouble with that ass part in it even though I’ve got an ass hat. Don’t know. I’ll work on it. Okay?

Jordan: You’ve got to get over that.

Nile: I know. I know. I so much do. Well, we have a great guest tonight. You heard from the tease at the beginning. We’ve got Tracy Moore with us and Tracy is a marketing expert and business owner extraordinaire. She’s got over 20 years of experience developing client relationships through marketing and sales. I have to say something Jordan. I hear this all the time and Tracy knows that I like to make fun of bios.

Jordan: Okay.

Nile: People can make fun of mine all over the place. But I hear this developing client relationships. You know what I think of? I think of that big piece of apparatus that they used to have in the -- like pharmacy CVS, Walgreens, whatever that developed photographs. We dump our clients in and they come out all developed. Don’t you wish it was that easy Tracy?

Tracy: Oh, I do. I wish it was that easy. Yeah. Not all of them develop so well.

Nile: Exactly. Well, she has experience with firms from startups to mid market to fortune 100 firms. That’s a lot of ground to cover. And as a business owner of seven years Tracy understands the challenges that small businesses like so many of our listeners face every day. She grew her franchise territory to the second highest grossing location out of 100 territories using her strong marketing skills, sales and networking skills. We like to talk about networking skills because we like to talk about Linked In and I know when we were talking before we started the interview today you talked a little bit about Linked In Tracy so I know that we’ll be talking about that today.

Tracy: Good. I love Linked In.

Nile: So as a marketing business partner in the Hewlett and Packard strategic sales center -- I know. It’ll get better before the end of the show.

Tracy: Tongue twister.

Nile: That’s right. Tracy designed and implemented strategic marketing plans that helped HP win multimillion dollar pursuits with companies such as American Express, International paper, Cardinal health and Allegheny energy. So now combining her strong marketing expertise and the understanding of growing a small business Tracy is leading Marketing eye Dallas. Okay Tracy, so Marketing eye Dallas. Where did that name come from?

Tracy: So it’s not mine. Though I think it’s actually a good name. Marketing eye actually started in Australia so it’s basically targeted small and medium size businesses. The founder Melisa Smith started the business about eight to nine years ago. She grew it very large in Australia. She had some international clients. Came -- she had a couple of clients in New York and decided to start and bring the business here to the US and Atlanta about two and a half years ago. I knew that I was getting ready to sell the business that I had been running for seven years and that I always wanted to go ahead and start my own marketing firm. I started doing some research to see exactly -- I sort of knew what format I was wanting to do and what type of marketing firm but I just wanted to see -- do my research, figure out what’s out there, what models I liked. I came across Marketing eye. I really liked it. I thought it was a good fit for where my experience was, where my knowledge was and the kind of clients I like to work with and there is a little piece on the Marketing eye site that said they were looking for licensees so after many Skype conversations across the pond Melisa and I talked and I am licensee number one in the United States.

Nile: Oh, that’s pretty cool.

Tracy: Yeah. so that’s how I got started and I had been a franchisee for years with a company that has lots of franchisees and I said this will be good because I kind of know a little bit about how the structure will go and she has a great model so that’s how we started working together.

Nile: Sounds great. well, I know right now you’re helping a number of small to medium size business owners develop solid marketing strategies and initiatives to help them grow their business and I think that’s a great thing especially with the experience you have. But when I look at your experience, you’re the mother of two, you’ve got a 13 year old and you’ve got a 10 year old.

Tracy: Yes.

Nile: So you’re a mother, a wife and a small business owner. What? Are you crazy? I mean, do you still have hair left?

Tracy: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. It’s really crazy and then going into the teenage years kind of makes it even a little bit more scary. So yeah. That’s a lot to handle. It always seems really good on paper but then when you live it sometimes some days are more challenging than others.

Nile: Well, I have a nine year old daughter and she was talking to me this weekend and she looked into my eyes very seriously -- in fact Jordan, I haven’t told you this story yet. She looked at me and she said dad, you know what? And her -- we call her Liberty. I said no. what Liberty? And she goes you know, puberty really sucks. So with a 13 year old and a 10 year old guess what I -- I understand where you’re at and I agree with her. Puberty sucks.

Jordan: From the mouths of babes.

Tracy: Yes, yes.

Nile: I figured that was her bit of wisdom that comes into the podcast this week. But let me ask you a question just before we really get started and we get heavy into things. What’s the one thing do you think that most people don’t know about you but that’s sort of fascinating and interesting at least to you? That’s a hard question, isn't it?

Tracy: Yeah. It is a very hard question. I’m trying to think what would be most interesting. Obviously I was going to say I get bored easily because I keep starting businesses and I don’t generally jump to new companies a lot but I do start new ideas which is kind of why it’s fun to work with other businesses because I can just pretend I’m their marketing person and I get a lot of them and it keeps me very active. I mean, I just -- I guess I never really intended for this to be my journey I guess. I always thought that I was going to end up to be a college professor and it just -- that’s not the -- I -- that was my intent all along was to be a professor and now I’m a business owner so kind of a different trail that I went down but I kind of like it.

Nile: Well, we could call you a professor of practical business applications now.

Tracy: Yeah. I’ll take that.

Nile: There we go. I haven’t answered that question for most people Jordan but I’ve been thinking about it.

Jordan: Okay.

Nile: Because I talked to you about it a little bit today but the thing that I think most people would find surprising about me because I think in today’s world it’s unusual and that is that I always have two silver dollars in my pocket.

Jordan: Yes. Yes, you do.

Nile: How many people carry silver dollars anymore?

Jordan: Just weird ones.

Nile: Just weird -- well, I have one that’s a money clip but i have one that’s the same year as my oldest son’s birth.

Jordan: Okay.

Nile: And so I just find that fascinating. It’s just sort of a neat thing. So we talk about some weird things that people would find interesting and they’d never know but I’ve never asked you Jordan.

Jordan: Why I carry silver dollars around?

Nile: We’ll leave you alone for now. We’ll get to the interesting part. Tracy’s far more interesting than you.

Jordan: And cuter.

Nile: Much cuter.

Jordan: Yes.

Nile: Much cuter.

Jordan: Yeah.

Nile: I can look at her picture and smile. I’ll leave that alone with you. So you use social media a lot in your businesses and we talked about that just a bit. What do you use and why?

Tracy: So I had an art business. I still actually have it but -- going into the hand off stages. But with that business I used Facebook and anytime that you’re doing a B to C it’s a really great way to communicate to people and I used it as a communication tool. Letting people know when we were going to have art classes, what children were drawing, things that they may be interested in from a family standpoint so if there was an art festival that was going on I’d add in a little bit of information if I knew about something and I thought it was a really great thing that they might be interested in doing because they had children and I had children. And I think it was -- and I’ll come back to this several times. It’s always about making a connection with people. They want to see a human side, they want to -- they don’t want to look at something that seems static or is boring. That isn't a way to engage people, it’s not a way for people to want to share anything that you have and it’s also not a way for them to respond back. When people did respond back so that they love the pitcher that a child drew or grandma wrote oh, good job Johnny. We would chime in and a lot of times we would really encourage the teacher because I don’t -- I run the business but not teach the classes. The teacher to say we had so much fun in that class. It’s just a nice way to connect. Working now in a marketing business where we do so much from a B to B standpoint Linked In is terrific because once again you make those connections, you can talk back and forth, you can comment on people’s posts, they can comment on yours. And once again you are basically making a handshake to people, having a conversation with them and engaging them. when people just post really boring stuff or they just keep reposting other people’s stuff but they don’t make any comments that’s really boring and not very engaging and no one will want to engage with them so really what you’re doing is -- like we’re doing here is you want to have a conversation. Twitter works both from a B to B and a B to C standpoint so those are the three primary ones. I should probably get myself a little more on Instagram. My kids go at me all the time because they love Instagram but -- which -- but if you have a visual business Instagram is terrific for that.

Jordan: Well, let’s talk about those. But first let’s go back -- I want to talk about the art classes that you were talking about earlier. What kind of art was it by the way?

Tracy: It was drawing so visual drawing skills for children three and a half to 12.

Jordan: Oh, that’s cool. Okay. And did you build a website for that?

Tracy: So the website -- it’s a franchise organization. There is a franchise or -- and then you have what they call mini sites and that’s a great way for you to be able to optimize your site so when people were looking for locations in the North Dallas area they could find me. So I manipulated it a little bit but I didn’t necessarily create it.

Jordan: Okay. Good, good. So I guess the point that I was driving to is that you didn’t spend a whole bunch of time trying to cultivate your list? I mean, that’s really what we’re talking about is getting a list of people who are likeminded, who have similar interests. You went to social media to really cultivate that list. I mean, it sounds like you had a micro site but it was really kind of just to use it because it was there and why not, right. But you didn’t spend thousands of dollars building up a site to build your community and your list. You went to social media and you cultivated it there first.

Tracy: Exactly. And then on every communication I would send out I would have the Facebook link and then you want to go ahead and when you get people in -- and once you get involve you want them to share it with other people and that’s kind of how you can cultivate that.

Jordan: Yeah. I absolutely love it. and by the way Nile, I mean, how many entrepreneurs do we run into where it never occurs to them that all they really have to do is build a Facebook page or a Facebook group or maybe a Linked In group and then just go and get those hot prospects or those people who are part of their community and just get them to engage with them there instead of spending all the money getting a website built and business cards and whatever else. You could start a lot easier.

Nile: You absolutely can and I so much like what Tracy said here because what she’s talked about is engagement and we know how critical it is to engage with people. It’s just -- it’s one of the most overlooked things that happen today so when we look at the engagement we know it’s critical but she talked about building her list through it, she talked about communication so I know all of those things absolutely were critical and part of what Tracy was doing to build her business. And so I can't wait to hear how she built her business and what her challenges were in our very next segment.

Jordan: Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did.

Nile: Hey Jordan.

Jordan: Nile.

Nile: Our first segment was so great I can't wait to hear more from Tracy and what she’s done to build her business but Tracy one of the things that I’m really curious about is I know that every time that somebody starts off and you’d mentioned in the first segment for that matter; you’d mentioned how you really always thought you’d be a college professor. Obviously there were a number of things that happened along the way that changed your path. You’ve had some challenge. What have been the most difficult lessons you’ve learned in this process and challenges in building the business you’ve been building?

Tracy: Well, I mean, with any business I think there’s a lot of challenges. I went to a school that was all about entrepreneurship and undergrad and I remember the one thing that they told us which always will come back to me and it’s so true is cash flow is king. I mean, you must have cash flow client. You can't run a business and have employees without some clients and cash flow coming in. so that was -- that’s always been a big issue with every business that I’d had. I’d try to make sure that I’ve always kind of padded the amount that I need because I worked in the corporate environment for years so I would go to work, they would pay me, that’s how it worked out. Now, working for myself I work really, really hard. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer to get paid than other times. And then there’s always also trying to always find that balance so you -- work starts coming in, you’re like great, this is terrific, I’ve got lots of work coming in, I have to hire someone new but you don’t want to hire someone that’s really great but maybe the work goes away because you have to make sure that there’s always that balance. So I think with any business owner that’s always one of the biggest challenges and I think the other big challenge is just staying really positive because the business has ups and downs. Sometimes you take it a little bit personal but it’s always business and so I kind of try to come back to -- okay. What would I do if I was running someone else’s business? How would I respond to the things that go on? But at the end of the day I pretty much put my heart and soul into the businesses that I run.

Nile: Well, no. I could also see how cash flow is so critical in that process too. But you mentioned something in that explanation balance and clearly you have a lot to balance. You’re a business owner, you’re a mother, you’re a husband -- you’re a husband. You’re a wife. You’ve got a lot to balance there. Do you really think that there’s such a thing as balance in being a business owner or for that matter in life today?

Tracy: I think as soon as you achieve it it kind of slips and everything changes. Kind of like raising children, right. So as soon as you get used to pre puberty, clean years, then they go into your teen years. Same thing about -- as soon as you get them to sleep at night then they start walking all day. So it’s -- I mean,