One Entrepreneur On Marketing: Laura Roeder
May 24 in Smart Growth 
This is part of a series called "The Entrepreneurs on Marketing," where I'm talking with entrepreneurs about their strategies for marketing and promoting their businesses. In this interview, I caught up with Laura Roeder, social media and online marketing consultant.
Regarding your approach to marketing, push or pull?
I say very much pull. I remember when I first heard that. I didn’t totally understand what it meant, because I thought you’re always kind of pushing information out there, but the way I think of pull marketing now is, and I don’t know if I use the same definition as other people do, when I am putting out an email or when I am having any kind of call-to-action on a website, I really evaluate, "Does it feel like I am inviting them into something that they want to be a part of, or does it feel like I am pushing something on them, like I am trying to make them do something?"
What do you think about branding?
That’s a big question. I’m all about personal branding. It doesn’t work for every business, but especially for service businesses. When you brand as you, you can’t go wrong. No one can ever copy that. No one can ever duplicate that, and personal branding is not necessarily as limited as people think. Sometimes people think, "I don’t want to brand with my own name, because I want to sell the company, or I want a bigger brand," but those things aren’t mutually exclusive. There are some huge brands that are under someone’s name, like Martha Stewart or Oprah or any fashion designer, so you can have a larger brand tied to a name. You can do both. You can have a company like Apple, where it’s not called Steve Jobs, but his personal brand is a huge part of how it’s perceived, so I’m all about the personal branding and sometimes combining that with a larger brand.
How does personality influence your brand?
My brand is all personality. I brand as a personal brand. My website is lauraroeder.com, it has my picture on it, and I think of your personal brand and the personality you show online as kind of the best side of yourself. Some people think about creating a personal brand and think, "That’s kind of cheesy or contrived," or it’s not really you. The way I think of it is that your personality does make up your brand, and it has to be your real personality, because people can sniff out right away if you’re faking it. You do want to show the best side of you, just like you would in any scenario. All of us have cranky, negative days, and if you are going to meet someone, you don’t want them to meet the cranky, negative you. You want them to see the happy, positive, upbeat you. It’s the same with everything you portray on the Internet. It’s not about being fake and pretending you never have any bad days, but you do want to filter yourself somewhat to put your best face forward, the way you would in any scenario. That’s different for everyone. Some people do have personal brands that part of their personal brand is being kind of cranky or curmudgeonly. They’re really tough with everybody, and that’s fine, if that’s what you want to present, if that’s what works for you, if that’s your true personality. You do still want to present to the world the very best side of you, the part that you really want people to see and interact with.
Right, and if you put out the worst version of yourself, you’re going to end up turning away some clients and customers.
Yeah, and just basic things like, I try not to be too negative. I never speak badly of anyone publicly. That’s the stuff that really makes people put their guard up and think, "What are they going to say about me?" It’s important to be aware of that.
What have been the top three ways that you promote your business so far?
For me, it’s all been about social media. I practice what I preach. I get most of my clients through social media. The number one for me is definitely Twitter. I just looked at my stats for 2009, and I had about thirty-five percent of my traffic to lauraroeder.com come directly from Twitter, which is kind of insane. I teach businesses how to do that, how to use Twitter to bring in leads and customers. Twitter’s a great way to market yourself and market your business, because once you figure it out, it’s fun. It’s one of the main things I love about Twitter. Really, all you’re doing is connecting with people, chatting with people, so if you think that sounds more fun than other types of marketing, you’re going to like Twitter, and you are going to use it more. Twitter has just an amazing snowball effect built in and an amazing sharing effect built in. You link to your content, somebody else retweets it, and somebody else retweets them. I just don’t see other channels where that is built in so powerfully, where that’s the norm for people to share your content over and over again to the degree that it is on Twitter.
Another big one for me is my newsletter. I have a newsletter called "The Dash" that I publish every Wednesday, and it has a very short, really actionable take on something you can do to promote your business online. Everything is something that can be done in under ten minutes. The newsletter just gets straight to the point, "Here’s what you do," and that’s been really popular. It’s really valuable information just out there for free. People share it with others. I have a Facebook community where people can talk about what they have done and promote their businesses a little bit, so putting out regular content that’s quality and keeping on schedule, I think, has been so key to the success of that. If you say you are going to do it every week, people really come to expect it every week. Just knowing they are going to hear from you week in and week out really establishes a strong relationship in their mind, and it establishes you as an authority. You are the one showing up every week, sharing valuable content.
Another great one for me, and one that’s free, I actually get a good amount of exposure in doing interviews, just like this one. Being interviewed for a podcast, being a guest expert on a tele-seminar, or being interviewed or featured in a blog, those are great opportunities. All they take from you is your time. They are really not that hard to come by, especially if you ask for them. A lot of people think that you have to be approached, no. You can go to your favorite podcast, to your favorite blog, and tell them that you have some great information to share with their audience. A lot of people are looking for content. It’s really valuable. It introduces you to a whole new audience, which is really cool, and it stays on the Internet. It’s not like you pay for an advertisement, and it will flash on TV and or flash on Adwords for as long as you are paying for it. When you do these interviews, blog posts, or whatever it is, they live on for people to find over and over again. That’s been a really valuable tool for me.
What do you think have been your keys to success when it comes to growing your audience online?
I think that there are a few factors that are important. One is sharing quality content. A lot of people get themselves on a really strict schedule of how often they have to do their newsletter or how often they have to blog, and they get more obsessed with keeping on schedule than making sure it’s all really quality. I would much rather see someone send out a newsletter once a month that’s really good than a newsletter every week that’s just kind of generic.
Another mistake people make is that they think it has to be very long, that it has to be very involved. Like I said, my newsletters are very short. They are not even really written as an article with a beginning, middle, end. I just tell you what to do and how to do it. There is no long preamble. There is no long conclusion. It’s just, "Here is exactly how you do this," and what’s funny is, people love that. We all feel like the article isn’t long enough or the blog post isn’t long enough, but as people consuming information, we are like, "Get to the point." We want it to be shorter, so putting out quality information is so important for expanding your audience, because people are only going to share what’s really good. People don’t share mediocre content. When you take the time to put out good stuff, people will share it, and it’s like you have a free marketing team sharing your content via social media over and over again.
Another important element to that, as far as expanding your audience, is asking people to share things, having a "Tweet This" button on your blog post. My newsletter, "The Dash," at the end of every one I say, "Go over to the Facebook page and share what you did this week," which it gets people connecting with each other. It gets people posting on Facebook, then the people that are their friends might see that in their feed. It’s not enough to hope that people will share. Actually ask them, "Forward this email, tweet this, post this to Facebook, retweet this on Twitter." Don’t be afraid to ask. Be proactive in asking people to share your content, if you really want to build your audience.
Any final thoughts on marketing a business?
I am always telling people, "Don’t over think it. Just get out there and do it." People spend so much time planning and hemming and hawing. Some planning is important, but you never really know what’s going to stick until you put it out there. That’s what’s great about the Web. That’s what’s great about social media. If an article is great, [people] will let you know it. You can’t really tell what people are going to respond to until you start writing, until you start creating content. A lot of people spend so much time stressing about getting it right, when it would be better just to put it out there and see what people respond to, so don’t over think it. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Just start creating content and see what sticks. See what works, and then just get out there and start talking to people online. That’s really what most of it is.
Reader Comments (3)
Thank you Laura and Amber--
I appreciate the brevity of the Dash, and can say that it's one that doesn't get deleted when I skim n' decide to read or not.
Also, I appreciate the push (pull?!) for quality content. Readers are inundated, and will decide w/in seconds to stick around.
Great tips!
Laura, you do a great job at helping people with their marketing. I really don't know what your career is, but I enjoy following you on twitter and your fresh, youthful approach to making your business grow. As a new insurance agent that focuses on making a connection with every customer, your little tidbits I see everyday help me to be a little better, thank you.
Laura,
You know I've been a big fan of yours for a long time and loved reading this interview.
I love your advice about sharing quality content in a newsletter, even if said newsletter isn't epic in length.
But my favorite part is "just get out there and do it". I once received a fortune that read "Many a false step is made by standing still" and it's absolutely true. Just take even ONE small baby step each day and those will add up to something BIG.
Thanks for sharing!
Heather