I realize that not every business owner can afford to hire a full-time marketing person or spend a lot of time marketing themselves so I’ve created this guide that shows you how to spend the next two weeks taking small, bite-size steps towards marketing your business online.
Day 0: Sign up for Instagram and fill out your profile with a short description and add your URL and picture. Post your first picture with relevant keywords as hashtags. Click on each of the hashtags you just added to your image and begin liking and commenting.
Day 1: Take photos of your product or service. Take some as standalone images (just the product/service with a cutaway background) and in context (show it being used in some form or against a relevant background).
Day 2: Post one the images you took on day 1 to Instagram. Add some hashtags. Click on the hashtags and like/comment on other people’s posts.
Day 3: Create a blog post about how to do something with your product or how it solves a need or problem your potential customer might have.
Day 4: Create an ad campaign on Bing Ads or Google Adwords to point back to the blog post, which points back to the product/service on your website.
Day 5: Post more of the pictures from Day 1 on Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook. You are now out of pictures and need to take more.
Day 6: Take more pictures of your product or service being used. Be sure to include people’s faces, not just objects. People love to see people.
Day 7: Go shopping for some props to use in the future when you’re taking more pictures or arrange someone to be in your pictures as a model.
Day 8: Begin posting pictures from Day 6 and 7.
Day 9: Research 10 relevant people to contact and store in a spreadsheet.
Day 10: For each contact on your list, sign up for their email list, follow them on social media, comment on their blog or reply on social.
Day 11: Choose one contact from the list to contact. Mention how you’re subscribed to their list and follow them on social. Ask them if they’d be interested in covering your product or service on their blog.
Day 12: Review the success or failure from Day 11 and make adjustments. Choose another contact to reach out to.
Day 13: Repeat Day 12 until all 10 people from Day 9’s spreadsheet have been contacted.