Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

Business insights, marketing tips and thought-provoking distinctions. In Byte to Byte, marketing strategist, growth advisor, and business coach Steve Johnsen informs and inspires with a wealth of tips on digital marketing, entrepreneurship, sales, and personal growth. You can also listen on:

How to Go Viral on Facebook

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If you’re posting things on Facebook and wanting to get business from it, make sure your posts are shareable.

Hi, this is Steve Johnsen and I wanted to share a quick tip with you on how to make sure your Facebook posts are shareable. Sometimes I post to Facebook and it’s something that I just want to share with my friends, so I can use the default “share with friends” option when I’m posting.

Sometimes–actually, a lot of times–when I post things on Facebook, it’s information that I think might be useful to anybody, and I’d like it to be accessible to the public. A lot of times when I’m posting something related to business on Facebook it would be great if when people read it and like it, they would share it with their friends, and then their friends would share it with their friends?That’s the very definition of something going viral on Facebook. When I share with my friends, and then my friends share with their friends, and then the friends of friends share with their friends, it can reach a large audience very quickly.

A good friend of mine posted part of a book she was writing on Facebook yesterday. It was really well written, and I knew it would help her get clients. So, I wanted to share it with my followers on Facebook, but it wasn’t shareable.

If you’re posting stuff on Facebook that you’d like to get seen by the world, here’s a quick tip for you. When you go to make a post on Facebook, in the box where you’re writing your post, at the bottom there’s a little box that says who you’re sharing with: either “Public” or “Friends” or “Friends of Friends” or “Friends Except?” or “Only me” (private setting). What you want to do if you’ve got something you want to share with the world is make sure that you select the Public option. That way, the friends who want to will be able to share it with others.

Here are a few other tips that will also help make your content more “shareable”:

Facebook is reluctant to promote content that links to outside websites. Rather than linking to an external site, have the entire content contained in your Facebook post.
You will be competing with videos, Facebook live, and all kinds of pictures. The more engaging your content is the better! Be sure to at least include an attractive, relevant photo with your post.
(Super hint: Facebook likes to prolong the time that users stay on Facebook. Videos keep people looking much longer than other types of content, so Facebook is much more likely to promote your video than your text post.)
Facebook and Instagram are selective about what they will display in people’s news feeds. If you have some loyal fans that like and share your post, Facebook is more likely to consider your post to be relevant and engaging and share it with others. Otherwise, it’s possible that what you share will not be seen. If you have some fans you know will share, you can tag them in the post.
If you use both Instagram and Facebook, your Facebook followers can see that you have an Instagram post. But they will not be able to access it without being on Instagram themselves. So post the complete content on both Facebook and Instagram separately.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

How to Go Viral on Facebook

3 Prerequisites to Business Success

by Steve Johnsen 3 Comments

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There are some basic, fundamental fears and early childhood conditioning that we have to overcome in order to be successful in any business endeavor. You may have learned all your life not to stand out, to be nice to everyone, and to be cautious around money, and that ingrained behavior will absolutely kill any chance of business success unless we unlearn it.

Hi, this is Steve Johnsen, and I’m going to talk to you today about three prerequisites to business success. There are three things that you need to absolutely solve before you can be successful in any kind of business. There may be some fundamental principles that we learned when we were young that need to be unlearned before we can be successful in business. So getting comfortable with these three things is going to be a prerequisite to business success.

The first of these is that you need to be willing to be seen. One of the things that we typically learn by the time we’re in junior high school is how to blend in. We learn how not to stand out. Often the programming for this starts even long before that from some training by our parents. For example, when you were little your mother may have told you, “Children should be seen and not heard.” We learn not to speak up when adults are present. Your mother may have also taught you, “Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t talk to strangers.” This becomes a foundational way that we view the world. Of course, your mother is very concerned for your health and safety, and when you’re four years old it may be a good idea. By the time you’re 10 or so you’re perfectly capable of staying safe when talking to strangers, but the programming gets in when you’re little, and you have this tape running in the back of your head, “Don’t talk to strangers. Talking to strangers is dangerous.” But guess what? As soon as you go into business, what do you need to do in order to get new clients? You’ve got to talk to strangers.

Then we get into junior high school, and we have this kind of phenomenon that goes on?junior high school can be so cliquish and everybody is struggling to find their place in the new school; one of the things that you learn is to blend in, to not stand out. You want to look like everybody else. You don’t want people to notice you. Attention is bad. It’s almost like we go back to the days of the jungle where you’re walking through a jungle full of lions and tigers and you don’t want anybody to notice you. So we adopt a personality. Our personality is really just a mask. It’s an image that we learn to project and it becomes our way of relating to other people. We get comfortable with that image, with that personality, and that becomes our coping mechanism. It’s our way to blend in and not be seen and not have too much attention paid to us. Over time, we get very comfortable with the way that people perceive us.

But now you started a business. You’re no longer an employee?you’re a business owner. You’re in the business of marketing and selling your services. And all of a sudden you have a new personality, a new image that you need to adopt. You need to be seen in a new way, and it can be very uncomfortable for you to have people get to know you in a new way and see you in a new light. Not only that, to have clients coming to you and to have your business grow, you have to be noticed. You have to be seen. You have to stand out. And that can be extremely uncomfortable because all of the habits that we’ve learned, to blend in and not stand out. So the first thing that you have to really get clear on in order to be successful in a business venture is you have to be willing to be seen. You have to be comfortable being seen in a new light, and you have to be willing to stand out and be noticed by people.

The second prerequisite to success in any business is finding your tribe, finding the group of people that really connect with you and want to work with you. When it comes down to it, ultimately people have a lot of choices when they hire a service provider. It used to be in the olden times when travel was difficult and you lived in a small village that maybe there was only one blacksmith in town. When people needed smithing work done they would come to the blacksmith?the only one in town?and that’s how you got your work.

Then as our economy grew and transportation grew, advertising became the way to go. You could advertise your way to success. You could advertise in newspapers, and later you could advertise on the radio, and then once we had our highway system you could advertise on billboards. And then you could advertise on television. Advertising still works to some extent, but today we have so many channels and people are connected practically 24/7, and advertising just doesn’t quite cut it anymore in the same way that it used to. It’s much harder to advertise your way to success. So today’s small businesses have become much more relationship-based. It no longer works to be the only game in town. And it’s no longer easy to advertise your way to success. So you need to build a tribe. This is a term that was coined by Seth Godin. Your tribe is a group of people that somewhat see the world the way you see it. And they like you, and they want to work with you. You have to discover the kind of people you want to serve?What are they like? What is their situation??and realize that these people want to find you too.

Discovering your tribe or finding your tribe is really a matter of a being clear who you want to serve and making yourself visible in connecting with them, being available to them, serving them, and being seen by them. It’s also about being clear that it’s okay to not work with people who are not in your tribe. There are always going to be people who don’t see the world the way you do, and really don’t connect with the way that you work, and just don’t “click.” Or maybe they’re in a different kind of situation from your ideal client. And it’s okay to let those go. The more you can get clear on who your tribe is and connect with them on a consistent basis, the more successful you will be in business.

The third prerequisite to business success is that you need to get into a comfortable relationship with money, or as my friend and colleague Larry Fried say, to “heal your relationship with money.” Money (at least in our society) is just a piece of paper, or maybe a little metal coin, but even more likely, it’s a construct in our minds of something in a bank. It’s ones and zeros on a computer. It’s really just a figment of our imagination, but we have so much emotional energy wrapped up in something as simple as a piece of paper or a simple record in a database. These thoughts and emotions around money invariably result in money problems.

Most of us have at least some strange ideas about money. Some people love money. And some people are afraid of money because they’re afraid of loving money.

Maybe you have conflicting emotions about money. You realize you want it?to be successful in business is to make a lot of money. But when you were little your mother told you that “We’re not the kind of people that have a lot of money” or, “Rich people are selfish, or mean.” So we have these conflicts around money. And I can tell you from personal experience it is it is well nigh unto impossible to be really successful in business without resolving these internal issues and conflicts around money.

I’m not suggesting that you have to decide to be a money lover, or to meditate every morning about “wealth flowing in,” or aspire to be super rich (whatever that means). But you’ve got to be comfortable being paid for your services. You’ve got to be comfortable with the whole construct of the exchange of value in serving other people. If you’re in a relationship, the exchange has to be two-way. If you serve people well, you have to be well-compensated for those services. Otherwise, people are not going to be able to continue to work with you. They’re going to be uncomfortable with the exchange. And you’re not going to be able to grow your business. You’re not going to be able to serve people the way that you want to unless you’re well-compensated for it.

So to be successful in business you have to resolve your conflicts around money, and get into a comfortable relationship with money, and get comfortable being well-paid for your services. You also have to be comfortable investing in your business. If you’re afraid to invest your money in your business, it’s also going to be hard to grow your business the way you want to.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

3 Prerequisites to Business Success

The Place Where the Magic Happens

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In any kind of creative endeavor, there’s a place where the magic happens. When you hit that place, your work flows effortlessly, and your business can even become sublime. That’s the magic that we’re aiming for whenever we tackle a new project.

Hi, this is Steve Johnsen, and I want to talk to you about magic. Specifically, the magic that happens when you have a team that’s working on a project and things just start clicking. They start firing in unison, and the work just begins to flow. There’s a place where this magic happens, and it’s much more than the mechanical execution of the required steps. This kind of magic happens in music. It happens in coaching. It happens in sports. It can happen in your business. It can even happen with a good web design team.

If you were to describe a concert that you went to, you could talk about what all the people are doing individually. One person is rubbing some steel strings with a plastic pick, and another one is banging on a membrane with a stick. Another person might be making noise into a microphone. All true, but yet far from the truth. The elements involved in performing bad music are about the same as the elements in performing great music. But they’re so different! And that difference is the magic that I’m talking about.

That magic comes when everybody not only knows their job, but when there’s a kind of a connection between all the members of the team, between all the members of a band, or all the members of a sports team, or even between a coach and his client. You see, the magic is some kind of flow that begins to happen when everybody is doing a great job, and they’re doing it together.

We’ve all seen this happen in music. We’ve seen a choir or a band or orchestra come together and perform amazing, stunning music that is much more than the sum of the parts, and is much, much more than the execution of notes on the page with the instruments. You see this happen in sports. When a team comes together they can be a group of okay players, or they can be a group of great players. Or, there’s something more than a group of great players, and that is a great team. A great team functions as something that is much more than the sum of the parts.

When I was a kid I always liked watching the Globetrotters games on TV. The Harlem Globetrotters are a basketball team, and you can just see the connection that they have between them as they’re playing basketball. It’s almost like watching a dance, the way that they pass the ball around to each other and coordinate together, and each one knows where the other one’s going to be in the next move. And that is the magic that I’m talking about.

I see this in the business workplace as well. When I’m working with some of my coaching clients, that’s really what we’re going for. The coaching is not about me having some expertise that I can pass on, or some wisdom and knowledge that I can teach people, but rather it’s when my client and I get together and both of us come with an open mind and an open heart and an open inquiry, and we talk about some of their business challenges and goals and issues. And somehow in that discussion, many times it just starts clicking, and the magic comes out, and all of a sudden the ideas begin to flow, and together we come up with these amazing ideas that move the business forward and take it to a whole other level. And those ideas would never have come out of one person by themselves, but rather it’s the magic that takes place in that coaching conversation.

I see this happen in a number of small businesses that I work with. When you get the right team members in place, the right leadership, when you get the right mission and everybody’s clear and on board, and you get the right people and they’re trained, and they start clicking?my goodness! The result is so much more than the sum of the parts. And the business just seems like it flows effortlessly, and it’s even fun for people to come to work because of the team and the spirit and the camaraderie that taking place in the business.

We have the same thing happen when we approach a custom web design project. Good web design is comprised of a number of different disciplines and elements. It includes good communication verbally. It includes good strategy. It includes user interface design and really understanding the mindset of the ideal customer and how they’ll interface with the website. It involves a lot of technical knowledge of hosting and search engine optimization. It involves a lot of visual design skills and communicating things visually. And it involves coding?often in several different coding languages to make the website work right.

And those are not things that any one person is going to be good at across the board. So a really well-designed website is almost done by a team by definition. I’ve seen it happen where you pull together a good coder and a good writer and a good designer and a good SEO person and even a project manager, and somehow that team just doesn’t quite click. So there are all the elements, and each of the elements is done well. But somehow the end result is at best the sum of the parts. But I’ve also worked on many projects with a team at my company where everybody not only knows their business and is really, really good at it, but they really understand the team and how the team is going to function. And when we get into the project, and we bring the client into the team and make them part of the team, things just begin to click. And it just begins to flow, and all of a sudden the magic happens. And we see people getting excited about the website and how it communicates and how it connects with them personally and emotionally. And that’s the kind of magic that can also connect with a client.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

The Place Where the Magic Happens

Myth: Anyone with a Computer Can Design a Website

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Myth: Anyone with a computer can design a website.

Well, anyone with a computer can get a website online. But just having the right tools does not make you an expert–and there’s a lot more to web design than getting some information online.

Hi, this is Steve Johnsen, and today I want to talk about another myth that is very common related to the internet and websites, and that is that anyone with a computer can design a website.

When I started building websites, there was no such thing as web design software. We built everything by typing code into a text editor. Now, there are all kinds of sophisticated software programs to make the web designer’s job easier. And even tools for the non-designer to use to get a website online.

On the one hand, this is a great development and has brought the cost of web design down dramatically. On the other hand, it has given birth to a myth that anyone with a computer can design a website. The truth is, there’s a lot more to web design than getting some information online.

It’s probably true that anyone with a computer now can produce a website. But that is not quite the same as designing a website. And even though anyone with a design program–with the graphic design software–might have the tools to design a website with, it does require some experience to design an effective website.

I would say this: that just having the right tools doesn’t make you an expert. For example, I might have the most sophisticated spreadsheet program in the world, but that doesn’t make me a chief financial officer. The CFO of a corporation needs to have the experience to understand corporate finance, and they need certain training to be able to do a good job of managing the corporation’s money.

In the same way, you can have the right design programs, the software, and the apps. But even though you might be able to turn out a website with it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that website is designed. I happen to have a pipe wrench and a blowtorch, and I can sweat pipe, but you probably wouldn’t want me installing your sink. You want somebody with the right training and the right experience, so you know that that system is going to work right and not leak for you.

To design a website, I need to know more than how to use my graphic design software. I need to understand the business purposes of the website. I need to understand how the graphic design communicates the message that the corporation wants to communicate. I need to understand user interface design. I need to have some technical expertise so the site can get found by search engines. And I really have to be able to put myself in the mindset of the ideal customer and how they’re going to interact with that website, so I can make the site inviting and easy to use.

You know, it’s interesting, they did a survey of people who held the job title of web designer and they asked them, “What was your previous job title before you were a web designer?” The number one previous job title for web designers across the United States was “graphic designer.” That’s not a big surprise; that’s a natural transition. The number two previous job title for web designers was “waiter.” That’s an indication of how easy it is with the right apps, the right computer software, to turn out a website.

You can buy templates and pre-designed websites and fill in the blanks, and you can have a website in ten minutes, as one corporation famously advertises on TV. That’s a great way to get a placeholder up if someone is just starting out in business and they don’t have a lot of marketing budget. But that’s not the same as web design.

Web design is the major reason why people either stay on a website when they visit it, or they leave the website. The user experience design is something that the application, the graphic design tool, cannot turn out. That’s something that requires experience to create. Not only so, but design is the main reason why people trust a brand or trust a company when they’re visiting a website; or, why they would choose not to trust that company or brand.

It’s all in the design, and those are very subtle things that a piece of software cannot do for you.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

Myth: Anyone with a Computer…

Myth: Posting on Facebook helps you rank at the top of search results

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Myth: Posting on Facebook will help you rank at the top of search results.

Not true. Although Facebook can be part of a valuable marketing strategy, you can post on Facebook a million times and still not have any impact on your website–or your business–getting found by new customers.

Here’s a question I got this week from one of the readers of my book:

“Dear Steve:

“I’ve been considering to hire a company for our website management and SEO that is basically relying on regular postings to our Facebook to improve SEO. They charge $300 initial set up and $99 every month for help with our postings. When I read your book it doesn’t seem like you post to social media. Can you please explain how you improve SEO? It seems like that there is more than one way to increase traffic to our site?.Also, how do I measure traffic to my site, and how do we measure whether we are successful or not? Please feel free to educate and enlighten me. Thank you.”

So, thank you to my reader for sending that. Those are all great questions.

First of all, a brief word of caution. If anyone tells you they’re going to improve SEO by helping you post to Facebook, I recommend you consider looking for a different vendor. Although Facebook can be a valuable part of an overall marketing strategy, Facebook posts will not do anything directly to improve your ranking on the search engines. And, while it’s possible to make an impact on SEO for $99/month, many of the packages I’ve seen at that price are smoke and mirrors, and I’d ask a lot of questions before buying. Where social media can have a small impact on SEO is when a lot of people are actually talking about you on social media. And that doesn’t happen just by posting on Facebook (or Twitter, or anywhere else).

The good news is that you do have options. And in a minute I’ll talk about what does work for SEO.

But first I want to clarify something the reader said. Actually, I do post on social media. I have some clients for whom that’s an integral part of their content marketing strategy that we helped them develop. We also do a very good job with Facebook marketing for certain types of clients.

I also have a number of SEO clients for whom I regularly post on Facebook (like the service my reader asked about), and I do not even charge them for the service. I think a lot of them may not even know that I’m posting for them, because I often fail to “toot my own horn,” so to speak, to tell people what I’m doing for them. For these SEO clients, I don’t post on Facebook because of any value it has for SEO. Rather, it’s so that their Facebook business page stays current with regular activity, and so that Facebook won’t deactivate the page due to inactivity.

Why does someone offer this Facebook posting service and call it SEO? Well, it’s easy to do and extremely inexpensive, so they’re making a very high margin on the service. And even though it has no value for SEO and probably has no value to the business, it’s highly visible. So the business who subscribes to the service can see the activity and feel like they’re getting something for their money–even though they’re not. The real SEO work that I do is mostly invisible. The client can’t see my code changes, or server optimizations, or all the work that I do out in the “ether” in creating citations and backlinks. The clients who measure their revenue growth, and ask new customers “How did you hear about us?” know the tremendous value of what we deliver. But they can’t see any of the SEO work.

That begs the question: What does work for SEO? And what is SEO anyway?

SEO is the science and art of getting your business found by people who are searching online for your business. The strategies we use will vary depending on the type of business we’re working for. My reader who asked the question is working for an eye doctor. So their potential customers are searching online using terms like “optometrist,” “ophthalmologist,” or “eye doctor.” Here are the key factors that will make a difference for them?and this will also be true if you’re any type of service professional in a local market (dentist, chiropractor, veterinarian, eye doctor, lawyer, or any type of home improvement contractor?remodeler, home builder, electrician, plumber, landscaper, door & window company, tree surgeon, etc.):

Picking the right terms to target. This can make the difference between getting found by 5 people or 5,000. Often the best terms are not the most obvious ones.
Optimizing your website so the search engines understand what you’re all about. This includes website code, title tags, description tags, local search schema, alt tags, and quality hosting.
Building accurate and well-thought-out directory listings for your business (citations).
Building quality inbound links (backlinks). These are very hard to do right, and can hurt you if done wrong, so typically you will want to steer clear of a cheap backlink service.
Managing and improving your online reputation (reviews).

There are lots of other ways besides SEO to get people to your website and to get new customers for your business, like social media, PR, content marketing, email marketing, online advertising, direct mail, media advertising (in TV, radio, magazines, etc.), mail inserts, billboards, and more. But SEO is often the most cost effective.

The best way to measure traffic is to install some type of analytics software, like Google Analytics (but there are others) and track the website visitors. Measuring traffic is not always the best way to measure success. It is possible with a good local SEO campaign to get lots of new customers with a proportionately smaller increase in site traffic. And it’s possible to increase site traffic a lot without significantly increasing your business. Ultimately the best measure of success is business growth?more customers and more revenue?and it is very helpful to ask each new customer how they heard about you.

It’s also very important to look at how well your website converts visitors (traffic) into leads (potential new customers who are contacting you). If 1,000 potential customers come to your website but only 10 of them contact you, that’s a pretty low conversion rate. For that matter, your website itself can increase or decrease your referral business (without reference to any SEO), because people who are referred to you often check out your website first, and your website may determine whether or not they actually call.

Marketing strategies are not a one-size-fits-all solution. There are quite a wide range of options for you, not only for SEO (ranging from a light SEO campaign all the way up to a very intensive campaign), but also for your website, social media, and other ways to improve your marketing. Typically I make recommendations for my clients based on what they’re wanting to accomplish, how much they want to grow their revenue, and what the overall marketing budget is. So I ended up inviting my reader into a conversation where we can decide on a strategy together based on a reasonable budget for their specific goals.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

Myth: Posting on Facebook helps with SEO

Steve Johnsen is a marketing strategist, a business coach, and the Founder of Cloud Mountain Marketing. He is also the author of the Amazon #1 best-seller, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee.

Myth: Good Design Isn’t Needed with Good SEO

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Myth: Good design isn’t needed if you’re already at the top of search engine results.

Well, I would say that, actually, both are needed!

Hi, this is Steve Johnsen, and I want to talk about this idea that you don’t need good web design if you’re already showing up at the top of search engine results. The reality is that these are two separate things, and actually both are needed.

Using your website to get you business, to get you new customers, is actually a two-step process.

The first step is, you have to get found. When people go online to search for a service provider, you want them to find you. You want them to find your website. But once they click on that link and come to your website, then your website needs to connect with them emotionally and convince them to either pick up the phone and call you, or come into your store location, or fill out the contact form, or however it is that they get in touch with you to start doing business with you.

And that is a function of design.

Good web design makes an emotional connection with people. It causes them to trust you and to trust your brand. It makes them want to do business with you. So actually, you need both. You need to be at the top of the search engine results so that people can find you, and you need good web design to make that emotional connection with people so that once they come to your site, they’re wanting to do business with you.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

Myth: Good Design Isn’t Needed with SEO