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mobile, user, facebook updates, infinite reach agency

Facebook Update Reduces Page Like Counts

March 18, 2015/0 Comments/in Marketing, Social Media /by Kristi Church

First–your’e not going crazy. Your Page Likes were higher yesterday or even last week than they are this morning–it’s okay. You’ve done nothing wrong.

Second–earlier this year, Instagram created an update that eliminated fake accounts which resulted in a huge drop in followers for celebrities like Rapper, Akon—who lost over 56% of his Instagram audience. It was a good thing—the actual followers that were left on IG were most likely there due to organic growth—not fake spambot accounts.

New Facebook Algorithm Is Here

In the next coming weeks, if you own a business Facebook page, you’re likely to see a small dip in the amount of “likes” your page has. In case you’re wondering why–it’s not because you posted something offensive or followers all of a sudden don’t like your page any longer. Community managers and admins work very hard to engage the right audience and grown Page Likes organically, but unlike the change on Instagram, this update isn’t about fake accounts, only those that are inactive.

As I mentioned in 4 Reasons Facebook Will Remain a Powerhouse in 2015, Facebook is always moving toward optimizing the user experience and this algorithm change is no different. They are removing two types of accounts from business Page Like totals; deactivated and memorialized accounts.

“To make audience data even more meaningful for businesses, we’re updating the way Page likes are counted by removing memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from Pages’ like counts,” the company explained in a blog post. “This change ensures that data on Facebook is consistent and up-to-date.”

I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself that it might be a no-brainer that once an account was actually deactivated it would naturally be removed from your Page Likes—apparently not so.

This Facebook algorithm change is going to affect those deactivated accounts that are done so voluntarily, but that aren’t actually deleted from Facebook. Should the owner come back in and reactivate the account, the new Page Like will reappear. So, those wanting to step away from Facebook and come back later can do so undisturbed.

What to Expect

Most business Pages will only see a slight drop in Page Likes—possibly less than 2-5%. That’s not much in the grand scheme of things and this change actually keeps us all in the know and belief that those that are following our communities are there because they really want to see our content and care about the engagement we’re creating—which is GREAT!

About Us: Infinite Reach Agency specializes in advanced Facebook marketing through ad placement and daily social engagement. If you have questions on this topic or have questions on how to implement a proper Facebook ad campaign, contact us for a complimentary 30 minute consultation! We’re happy to help!

5 Ways to Increase Social Engagement on Saint Patrick’s Day!

March 16, 2015/0 Comments/in Social Media /by Kristi Church

At Infinite Reach, we happen to love Saint Patrick’s Day! For starters, we share the same love of green! With that said, Saint Patrick’s Day also presents an opportune time of year for marketers to step outside the box and do something different to drive audience engagement during a well-loved and celebrated holiday!

Here’s a few examples of how to create engagement with your followers for Saint Patrick’s Day!

1. Use Real-time Marketing

Take Guinness for example. In 2011 Guinness worked with UK marketing firm, PSONA, to create a 4 day long social media plan to engage their audience and make Saint Patrick’s Day The Friendliest Day of the Year.

The goal was to create a campaign across Europe that brought people together to share a virtual glass of Guinness until they could actually share one in person on Saint Patrick’s Day.

To do this new technology was created to make the process possible, putting Guinness and PSONA at the top of the list winning several awards for innovation and creativity.

Here’s the video case study:

Guinness Facebook Campaign – Case Study from Geronimo London on Vimeo.

We know that a campaign like this involved a team and months of planning and was well executed with a sizable budget. Just look at the results—180,000 comments and although I didn’t see this come across my social platforms, this spread to more than 20 countries. Talk about huge engagement! Their budget wasn’t spent on FB social ads—but rather on the app development. Interesting case study, indeed!

(INSERT RECORD SKIP HERE)

So you don’t have a large budget…and if you’re reading this you most likely didn’t plan ahead to use this holiday to find your pot of gold in social engagement. That’s okay, it’s not too late!

You can still use real-time marketing to do a photo contest on Instagram or Facebook asking your followers to post a photo of them celebrating the holiday with a chance to win a prize. Make it easy for them and if you have a fun prize worth winning your audience will engage!

2. Open Your Doors

It’s not too late to set up an impromptu Saint Patrick’s Day mini beer and corned beef fest and invite your clients and business partners over to your office for a fun get together before they head out to their favorite pub to celebrate.

Create a FB event with a stylized header and send out the invite. Then, create an email campaign and send out the invite and drive them to the event page to join. Don’t forget to make a few calls to personally invite those that you really want to attend.

Be sure to take photos and post them real-time to drive interest. You never know, a few more people might drop in making your little soiree the talk of the town!

3. I’m Feeling Lucky Campaign

I always feel lucky… I seem to have good parking and green light Karma although I don’t ever win the lottery. I guess there are trade-offs to everything! However, this is a perfect way to engage your audience on Saint Patrick’s Day!

Create a giveaway that goes with your brand or use a fun item such as an Irish themed t-shirt or necklace. Then create a Facebook header for your business that shouts “I have the Luck-of-the-Irish!” Ask users and followers to comment on the header image on why they have the Luck-of-the-Irish. For every comment, like and share they’ll receive 2 entries in the contest. Be sure to use the holiday hashtags to reach outside your current audience! #luckoftheirish #stpattys and then of course add your own company hashtag as well!

4. Make it Personal with Company Themed Images

Take a current photo of what your business is and drop that into Photoshop. Then overlay a rainbow and use a catchy phrase like:

“Temps are rising…do you feel lucky?

Clark’s Heating and Cooling is at the end of your rainbow!

Call us today!”

Thank you to Clark Heating and Cooling for use of this image!

5. Week of Luck Campaign

Sure, this year Saint Patrick’s Day lands on a Tuesday. That doesn’t mean you can’t share themed info all week! Find fun boards, trivia, games and day after themed photos to post. Take for instance the social meme at the top of this post. It was shared hundreds of times in social media last year. Again, don’t forget to reach outside your circle and find other followers by adding in those hashtags!

These are just a few of the many ways you can use Saint Patrick’s Day to drive social engagement. Hopefully, this post will help inspire you to feel the luck-of-the-Irish and jump on board on to create something worth growing your audience! Timing is everything—strike while the iron is hot!

Need more inspiration?? Check out this infographic for ideas!

Best of Luck on whatever you choose to do socially for Saint Patrick’s Day… and many Irish Blessings to you and your business!

What other ideas do you have? Share with us!

About Infinite Reach:

To find out how we can help your business, please contact us at 602-535-2188 to schedule a no obligation consultation. Seriously, we love to meet people and learn about your business!

Or.. just click here to send us an email! Or, if you know another business or marketing manager that would benefit from this post, please share it! Then we’ll all be LUCKY! 🙂

#shamrock, #leprechaun, #Irish, #StPattys, #StPats #engagement.

online search, seo, smm, sem, Infinite Reach Agency

Strong SEO is a Start. But Wait…There’s More!

February 23, 2015/0 Comments/in SEO /by Kristi Church

First–don’t shoot me for saying this. Traditional advertising isn’t cutting it anymore. I remember back in the day when I worked as a sales rep for a local TV station in Alaska, KYES Channel 5. It was 1998 and the station owner, Jeremy Lansman, wanted me to start selling ad space on our website. I thought he was crazy. Who in their right mind was going to spend money on website advertising when I could sell them $8 rotators? Looking back I have to giggle. Kind of ironic considering now I’m an internet marketer, however, it took a lot of years before I admitted it—but he was and still is… well, brilliant.

Lansman is the kind of forward thinker that naturally sets himself apart from other people just by seeing into the future. He was the “Steve Jobs” of our station. He’s gifted and I’ve come to realize that having that kind of foresight comes with years of experience—and I am excited to say that I feel we as team are truly getting to that place.

While print, television, and radio advertising are still very relevant in some industries, online marketing has become a necessary addition to traditional marketing plans, especially for businesses to be found by their audience. Let’s face it, we’re more plugged in than ever! Thousands of people go to the web to search for goods and services rather than use a phone book (which, by the way, my mother-in-law will be the last person on earth to own one as she’s “not the techy type” –her words. True story.).

Just for the sake of online search alone–there were 2,954,252,063 Google searches already performed today–at the exact time I wrote this piece alone!

Further—most of them aren’t using a laptop or a PC. They’re on their smart phones searching in real time. For businesses today, the key to being found is no longer the Yellow Pages, but having a presence online and one that’s mobile responsive. Basically what that means is that the site is the same on web, tablet, or mobile, and when visited “responds” by changing itself appropriately for a quality end-user experience.

With this kind of importance—we take search a step further. Something that sets us apart from our competition is that at Infinite Reach Agency, we believe in the Power of the Triangle – using SEO, SEM and SMM. Partner that with fresh, relevant content in a well thought out, strategic manner will not only improve the online visibility of our clients—we help them dominate.

It’s all about your business being relevant to what your potential customers want and with the new Google Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird (and the rest of the Google zoo…) algorithm updates, relevancy is nearly at the top of the ranking list. Especially when we consider the recent partnership between Google and Twitter where a company’s tweets will now appear in online search engine results. First impressions matter–if you look like a dingle-berry on Twitter, you’ll definitely look like a dingle-berry on Google. Yep, this relevancy thing is super important. You’ll have to get this right.

Breaking it Down- SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Think of SEO as the foundation to your home. When you have the right keywords in place and all of your on-page SEO is set, all of the other efforts that you build on bring that house to life. You need that foundation all the time and on-going. You need to trust that foundation will be strong enough to hold the house in place if there’s an earthquake. Here’s an example:

At the rate that Google changes its algorithms your website needs to be constantly updated to accommodate them. Fresh content that is relevant to your audience, proper keyword usage, and knowledge of the latest Google updates are just some of the critical ingredients to SEO.

Here’s some stats to get your attention:

61% of Global Internet Users Research Products Online
Google owns 67.5%of the search engine market share, Bing 18.4% and yahoo 10.3%.
60% of all organic clicks go to the TOP 3 organic search results.
70-80%of users ignore the paid ads on the results page, focusing on the organic results.
75%of users never scroll past the first page of search results.

What does this mean for your business? You’re familiar with the riddle–“If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound?” Exactly my point. If your potential customers can’t find you through a search engine, they. are. NOT. going. to find you. A good SEO strategist is necessary so your website be visible to the people who are looking for your goods or services. They’ll concentrate on your foundation and also the framing as the rest of your house gets built. Such as off page SEO strategies by way of citations and NAP (name-address-phone listings) consistency, among others.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

You’ve read the articles and know all the stats. Social media isn’t just for kids anymore. Platforms like Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and so many more are the medium for communicating with a wide number of people.

Here’s an example of power behind social media. Singer and performance artist Beyonce ignored traditional marketing methods (television, radio, print) and instead launched her new album on Instagram to her 8 million followers. She sold over 1 MILLION copies of the 14 song/17 video package in 5 days.

Not convinced yet? How about this…I’d even go so far as to say that the power of social media has changed the world.

We were there and witnessed the downfall of Gaddafi in Libya and how the rebels used Twitter. The country was locked down from communicating outside their borders and their regime controlled the media and messaging until this happened—the rebels, not having any internet used their flip phones (gasp!) to communicate out by text to family members who took their story to the web.

Hmmm.. But is Social Media Good for Business? If done right, YES!

The average American spends 37 minutes on social media a day. If businesses are going to reach potential clients, they are going to need to have a robust social media strategy as part of their overall online marketing plan. However, the key is to unlock the engagement.

You can post to social all day long, but that’s not going to bring any traction. I witness so-called marketers do it at the expense of their clients’ marketing dollars. They go in claiming to be an authority to help small business owners by taking the social tasks off their hands while at the same time doing their clients an injustice.

The results are…well there really ARE NO results. There’s no organic growth and a serious lack of engagement which equals no traction. It takes a strategic approach to break away from mediocrity and not simply spew junk content on their client’s social channels just to have something to post. Again.. back to the dingle-berry reference above.

Enter SEM—Search Engine Marketing

Yes, we love social media but where we make a difference is when we start with the foundation of SEO and build our social around the overall marketing strategy for our clients. We have a proven strategy that works; when a social plan is combined with a strategic search engine marketing campaign, the results are astounding!

In a study by Marin Software, they found that marketers who combine search engine campaigns with social media campaigns had nearly twice as many conversions and DOUBLED their revenue vs. using only social or search campaigns. According to the study, people who clicked on social AND search ads spent nearly twice as much as people who only clicked on social ads.

What does all of this mean for you and your business?

Implementing a strategic marketing plan that uses both SEM and SMM with a solid foundation of SEO is the much needed approach for being relevant in all aspects of your online presence. We’re here to help!

Our team at Infinite Reach Agency uses what we call the Power of the Triangle, to elevate our clients’ presence on the internet. We are committed to bringing you the traffic you need to be found, be successful and grow.

To find out how we can help your business, please contact us at 602-535-2188 to schedule a no obligation consultation. Seriously, we love to meet people and learn about your business!

Or.. just click here to send us an email!

Facebook's New Call to Action Button is Kryptonite to Marketers

New Facebook Feature Is Kryptonite Against Change

February 3, 2015/0 Comments/in Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized /by Kristi Church

Facebook. One of my favorite subjects. It’s not my end all marketing tool, but it is a part of a larger strategy that I use within my plan. Like most marketers and people I know, Facebook and I have a love-hate relationship. Some days I absolutely love it…other days I want to bang my head on my keyboard hoping to knock some sense into my brain. The chase is on to find the golden key to unlock the right engagement for best results and just when we think we’ve got it, Facebook ups their game to have us all scrambling again.

There is one thing I absolutely love about Facebook. They are constantly working to strike a balance between keeping their users happy (both social and professional) while increasing their bottom line. Every time they come up with something that might affect marketers in a less than desirable way…(poof!)…they pop out a new feature that gets us all excited again!

For instance…organic reach. In what seems like a strategic 2 year plan on their part, Facebook primed us for the days ahead starting in 2012 when they first announced the paid reach concept. Chatter struck up in forums of how evil Facebook was for starting to charge—and we read conversations for and against it on both sides of the fence—at the end of the day, people were upset that they might have to pay in order to use what they want as a free service.

I get it. I want free too. But truly, nothing in this world is really free. Eventually we’re going to have to pay for what we want and frankly, I’m thankful that Facebook hasn’t adopted other means for making us pay such as going to a monthly subscription rate. While the negative effects for them would have been drastic and huge, they surely could have done that. Rather, they took cues from Google (okay, maybe not…which was first the chicken or the egg?) and developed changes through their algorithms that keep us hopping.

Similar to that of search engine optimization; starting your business, getting your website up and running and clicking on your neon open sign certainly doesn’t mean you’ll get found on the internet. You need SEO to be found. That may also include SEM (search engine marketing), or Pay per Click ads for a little boost. Over the past five years we’ve come to understand that marketing has changed, especially if we want to gain top-of-the-mind awareness.

**One thing is certain, Facebook is always changing…..**

I’ll touch on some old news for a moment. They have created algorithms that, with their announcement last November, are quickly moving away from organic reach to encourage more paid advertising, which makes it more difficult for us to reach our audience. We knew it was coming so it wasn’t really a surprise. In fact, I really started noticing the effects of this change in mid-January. Again, just because we have followers and are active at posting great content…in most cases you’ll need to be on the pay to play bandwagon to have your posts seen by those that like your page and want to support your business. Early adopters are embracing the change, others aren’t there yet. The key is to develop a boosting strategy for posts that you want to have covered. It should become part of your Facebook marketing plan.

Facebook saves the day!

Here’s a positive development to off-set that announcement. Facebook has given us a new way to engage those that follow us with the new Call-to-Action (CTA) button! Yes, I am enamored with how Facebook is going to allow us to drive traffic to a landing page so that we can convert more potential clients and creatively use this platform to grow our own bottom line as well! Could the new Call-to-Action button become the kryptonite in our tool box that helps us gain more qualified engagement? The answer is YES! Especially when used as part of a strategic ad campaign!

I mentioned in a recent blog post the “4 Reasons Facebook Will Remain a Social Powerhouse in 2015”, that Facebook is great at building trust, but they’re also great at continuing to develop what page admins want. In fact, they want “to release features that will help drive business objectives to align with a business’s goals”. The new Call-to-Action button is a perfect example of that! Woot! Woot!

Here’s how it works:

Next to the “Like” button at the top of your Facebook page sits the Create a Call-to-Action. You can see in the example below that Sign Up is one of 7 different Call-to-Action buttons that are available. This makes it possible to set up your CTA to work congruently with another campaign to help drive clicks where you want them.

Take for example this 3 week test performed by Brian Kim from the famous online retailer Dollar Shave Club. “The Sign Up Call-to-Action delivered a 2.5x higher conversion rate versus other comparable social placements aimed to drive new user acquisition.” That’s great news! Personally and professionally I’m encouraged and I can’t wait to do some testing of my own in the near future!

So.. the 7 options for your CTA are:

Sign Up
Book Now
Contact Us
Use App
Play Game
Show Now
Watch Video

All great options when combining an ad campaign to drive engagement or even as a stand-alone way to promote your business page. The new Call-to-Action button is rolling out to Pages now through the end of 2015.

So as we are all excited and wrapped up in creating our new CTA, let’s try not forget the fact that if we want more than mere 5 followers to see our posts, we still have to pay for that coverage. At least until we pay our ad bill…ouch!

About Us: In addition to our other services, Infinite Reach Agency specializes in advanced Facebook marketing through ad placement and daily social engagement. If you have questions on this topic or have questions on how to implement a proper Facebook ad campaign, contact us for a complimentary 30 minute consultation! We’re happy to help!

Feel free to use this image in your marketing or better yet, share it on Pinterest!

Social Media | Finding Clients | Infinite Reach

Techniques For Finding Clients

November 25, 2014/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Kristi Church

How are you finding clients? Do you toss up a website and hope they come? Do you make those faithful Facebook posts promoting your business every day? Do you attend networking groups to meet as many people as you possibly can?

All of these are legitimate ways to find potential clients and customers, but your efforts can’t stop there. Let’s take a look at each of these prospecting activities.

Website

It’s true that in this day and age, if you want your business to grow beyond a very small entity, you need to have a website. Google processes over 3.5 billion searches every day! With tablets, smart phones, desk tops and lap tops, people have the internet at their fingertips 24/7. When looking for products and services, they turn to Google.

If you don’t have a website, I strongly recommend you have one built for you. Make sure to use someone who is well versed in the mechanics of setting up a website, and have someone manage your SEO (search engine optimization). It’s not just enough to be on the web, you need to be FOUND on the web! 75% of people NEVER SCROLL PAST PAGE 1! If your business isn’t on page one, you aren’t showing up.

Once you have some traffic, consider a tool like a landing page. About 1% of traffic through your website will actually pick up the phone or walk in the door. A landing page helps capture email addresses you can build a database from. Using an email client like MailChimp, you can craft regular emails to your list, keeping your business top of mind. You can easily move that 1% to 5%.

Social Media

There are all sorts of platforms out there for social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, SnapChat, Instagram, Pinterest, the list goes on! The key is to find the one where your target audience lives.

There are some nifty tools out there that can help you figure out where your target market lives on social media. Social Crawlytics is a free tool that helps identify where your competitors content is being shared. You can also do a keyword search on each social media platform to see what is being said about similar products and services. When you find the conversations, you’ve found your audience.

If your target market is on Facebook, you should have a company page on Facebook. If your business is more on the professional, business to business side or you are trying to attract talent, LinkedIn is a great place to be. Conversations are going on all day and all night on Twitter. We give you some tips on Tweeting here.

You can’t just put up a profile and call it good though. You have to participate in the conversations regardless of the platform. Keep in mind the 80/20 rule and talk 80% about topics that are relevant to your target audience and 20% about your business.

Finding clients will be easier if you are consistent. You’ll find you’re becoming an authority in your field. Granted, you already are, everyone else just doesn’t know it yet! With some practice, you can be a social media rockstar!

Networking Groups

In my experience, this is a huge change from just 5 years ago. When I was looking for clients, I was cold calling and knocking on doors. Sure, we had the Chamber of Commerce and groups dedicated to specific industries, but there weren’t business networking groups.

I love networking groups. The key here is to determine if a particular group either contains your target audience or can connect you with your target audience. Don’t go in with the intention of selling something to the group. Networking is about developing relationships. Meetup.com is a great place to find networking groups, both social and business.

When you find a few groups that have the right people in them, go consistently. Make sure you have your 30 second commercial down and that it’s not too much of a pitch. Go with the thought that you want to help them, and you will find they also want to help you and you’ll surely end up finding clients!

Driving traffic isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Have a great team of people to help you, and you can take your business to the next level and beyond!

What are Hashtags? by Infinite Reach Agency

Hashtag 101: Never Fear, Hashtags Are Here!

September 18, 2014/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Kristi Church

This post may seem like it’s a little late, however, you wouldn’t believe the number of people who are too afraid to ask. I hear it all the time; “we know people are using them—what exactly are these silly phrases that start with a pound sign. Is this just another dumb trend?” So.. never fear my social media friends, hashtags are here to stay…and after you read this, you’ll know exactly what to do and how to use them!

If you use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Google+ for marketing, you’ve likely seen or heard of hashtags being used. They look like a string of words put together, and seem a little pointless at first. Why would anyone want to look at a string of jumbled letters?

Well, they are extremely useful for your marketing! And truth be told, used strategically, they can really jettison your online marketing.

What Exactly Are Hashtags?

You use the # symbol with relevent words that link to your post. The idea is that they help reach other people outside of ones friends and followers. They identify messages on a specific topic which then form on lists out in social media.

Hashtags help group a lot of posts together when people search for those them—they can find many opinions or posts about a particular topic as well as other like-minded people.

By doing this, you’re instantly boosting your market reach beyond those who are already following you.

It’s also great for you. You get to track discussions, and see what people are talking about. You can then link those popular discussions to your content and boost your reach that way.

Wouldn’t it be nice to market without too much effort?

Using Hashtags Effectively

While you can put as many hashtags in as you want, minimal appears better. Hashtag overload makes it difficult for people to see what your content is really about. It also makes it more difficult for others to share (especially on Twitter!).

From an SEO perspective, using too many hashtags can be used as keyword stuffing—which then reduces your effectiveness in the online world.

So the basic rule is no more than 3 per post.

Be sure to avoid punctuation in your hashtags. They’re not supported and will only make part of your tag linkable. Numbers and letters are perfectly fine.

Also, don’t pile them at the end of your post as you write a tweet, put your #hashtags inline or inside the post with the #awesomecontent you’re writing! It avoids duplication and saves character count for your smiley faces! 🙂

Some “Do’s When Using Hashtags:

Do keep an eye out for the trending hashtags. These are the ones that people are looking for, and could really help you boost your reach. Twitter shows them on the left-hand side to make it easy for you. Think about ways your business links to those trending tags, and then add them in.

Do use the tags for commentary or to bring out specific emotions. Have a sarcastic blog post you want to promote, add a sarcastic hashtag to make people smile.

Do boost your marketing by using hashtags! If you’re promoting your business it’s very important to keep in mind that Google is all about your brand. Don’t forget to use one of the three of your hashtags as the name of your business. This way when it’s searched, all of your relevant posts will appear in that list.

Do use hashtags strategically to get you places you want to go and remember they’re collecting your posts into search results for others. That results in a boost of the number of people seeing your tweets or status updates, without having to follow you right away. Upside is…they get to know and trust you and then follow you to do business with you!

And that’s #hashtagawesomeness!

oh and one last point. Did you know that you can also search for hashtags on Google? Just put your topic with your hashtag symbol in the search bar and several hashtag lists will appear in the results! #Goodstuff!

Enjoy a little more about hashtags by watching this video below—it’s a lot of #fun!

#marketingwithhashtags #whatarehashtags #infinitereachagency

Question for all of you. What is the most OUTGRAGEOUS hashtag you’ve come across??

Social Media Rockstar by Infinite Reach Agency

Become a Social Media Rockstar!

August 15, 2014/2 Comments/in Social Media, Uncategorized /by Kristi Church

I never win anything. It’s true. That fact has never really bothered me though, because I get paid back in other areas. Like…I have amazing parking Karma. There is always a great parking spot waiting for me wherever I go. Oh…and green light Karma too. I usually get to breeze around town from point A to point B without hitting many red lights–hardly at all! And…I always, always, always get the best customers..no matter what I’m selling or what I’m doing. Truly, I can’t complain. During my many years as a sales rep, I’ve won many contests, but that’s because I had control over my own destiny. I once won a sales contest by selling 2,453 boxes of Arm and Hammer Baking Soda to my existing client base. True story. The harder I worked, the better my odds were of winning prizes ranging from trips and cruises to cash.

Social Media Rockstar, NAWBO Phoenix, Infinite Reach Agency

Pg 24 of Poke the Box by Seth Godin

Still.. I hardly ever win just because. The last time I won something, I went out and played bingo with my friend Michael and forced him to shake my hand at the beginning of the evening and make a pact that if either of us won, we had to share each other’s winnings. As luck would have it…I won that night. He wasn’t very happy during that handshake…but I’ll tell you what, he sure was thrilled when the evening was over. Splitting that $1000 was fun!

Last month at the NAWBO Phoenix luncheon I happened to do what I always do…and that’s chit chat out in social media about what’s going on and where I am. I was excited to be at that luncheon as one of my favorite influential women of Phoenix was speaking that day, Sharon Lechter. You can bet she had some great statistics to share — which I sent out into electronic bliss knowing I could help spread the news of her fantastic talk and this wonderful luncheon I was more than happy to attend. I’ve grown very fond of Sharon, especially after sitting in on an interview that Susan Brooks conducted with her for the Thrive at 55 Commemorative Book which I also had the honor of photographing Sharon that day. She advocates for women and teaches our children financial responsibility. She’s special. So this luncheon was a treat for me.

In addition, I happen to not only love supporting my NAWBO Phoenix sisters, but I also have to admit that I love dining at the Phoenix Country Club. A great friend of mine, Robert Roth, is the Director of Catering and I know each and every lunch is going to be delicious, hearty and healthy.

Oh…and that irresistable, mouth-watering, delicious, chocolate mousse — that is the BEST chocolate mousse in town! Even though I’m training for my first triathlon and can usually forego most sweets — that chocolate mousse will always have its way with me when I eat lunch at the Phoenix Country Club — and it most certainly did this day!

So, I’m a Rockstar!

I am super proud to announce to the world that YESTERDAY.. I was a WINNER! I totally didn’t expect it and it took me by complete surprise, but somehow I won this awesome gift pack from NAWBO and InfusionSoft for being the Social Media Rockstar for July! When Dorothy Wolden, president of NAWBO Phoenix called my name, I felt like I had won on The Price Is Right! Oh yeah. You read that right. I swear that lights were flashing on and off, bells were ringing and crowds were cheering! I was so excited…I could hardly believe it! I ACTUALLY WON SOMETHING!

Start A Conversation!

So, just how hard is it to be a Social Media Rockstar? Just start a conversation! Truth be told, it only takes a few quick seconds to take a photograph and a few quotes and send them out on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. When you get in the habit of remembering to stop and take a few moments to document the story of what’s happening, sharing the social love becomes second nature.

Here’s a sneak peek at what I won:

I’ll also admit that I squealed like a school girl as soon as I opened the gift bag to see what was inside! Infusionsoft sponsored these cool techy prizes–from one Social Media Rock Star to another–THANK YOU!! The Infusionsoft gift bag was filled with a beautiful green (did I mention green is my FAVORITE color??) neoprene iPad case, a green stylus that is also a pen (YES!), a charging brick Power Pank–portable power supply for my devices (I am ALWAYS out of juice!) and a book by Seth Godin, Poke the Box! I literally hit the jackpot! 🙂

I’m extremely proud and grateful to have won the title of Social Media Rockstar for July for NAWBO Phoenix. Being good at social media is also part of my livelihood as its huge part of our business. I better be a Social Media Rockstar — our Infinite Reach clients are counting on it!