Social Media Marketing Tips for Yacht Brokers and Captains
July 20, 2012 | 
Author Word of mouth advertising goes a long way towards boosting your reputation in the yachting community and sending business your way. If you want a continuous flow of customers, though, you need to reach out to potential clients on as many marketing channels as you can. This includes using social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest to highlight your business and get customers saying “Ahoy there!”
Twitter Marketing Tips
At first glance, Twitter may not seem like a bucket of lobsters, but use it correctly and it can generate a steady stream of sales leads.
- Find an angle: Most people use Twitter to connect with friends and family, keep up with what’s going on with their favorite celebrities, or get the latest information about their hobbies. Where do you fit in? Are you offering tips on maintaining a yacht, posting sailing information, or helping followers find a good deal on yachts? Find an angle that appeal to your customers.
- Update regularly: You don’t have to tweet obsessively, but you should update on a regular basis. Even just a few tweets per day will keep you in your potential customers’ mind.
- Form partnerships: Connect with other people in the industry and cross promote each other. For example, yacht brokers can develop relationships with yacht captains and vice versa.
Facebook Marketing Tips
Despite some recent financial troubles and the rise of new challengers, Facebook still dominates the Internet. Take full advantage of the site’s new timeline to create an interactive place for current and future yacht clients to hang out.
- Use images: Use a great cover photo on your timeline that represents your brand, and use images to draw attention to your tabs.
- Pin important content: You now have the ability to pin posts at the top of your Facebook page. Use it to post important or useful information such as the latest yacht deals or weather advisories.
- Encourage participation: Encourage visitors to participate in the conversation by keeping comments open, posting open-ended questions, linking to interesting content, and calling for use-generated content (e.g. themed boating videos and pictures). This is an excellent way to get to know your Facebook fans and foster a sense of community.
Pinterest Marketing Tips
Launched in March 2010, Pinterest is the new kid on the block and has quickly dominated the schoolyard. Looking for female customers? Then Pinterest is the place to be. At last count, approximately 80% of Pinterest’s users were women.
- Images, images, everywhere: Pinterest is an image pin board. Be certain to post images in your blog articles so you can post links to them to your pin boards.
- Focus on lifestyle: Focus on lifestyle boards rather than products. For example, create boards dedicated to sailing around the Caribbean that include beautiful pictures of the sunset on the water.
- Categorize: Place your boards in the appropriate category and use keywords in your description to tap into the search traffic.
Like the Internet, social media is here to stay. Judicious use of these marketing channels can go a long way towards helping you build your customer base.
Posted in Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter | 
Tags: Online Advertising, online marketing | 
1 Comment »
Twitter Tip: Why Build Twitter Lists?
One of my favorite social media channels is Twitter. In a little over a year I have built a Twitter following of over 7,600 people and never used any special Twitter tool to gain followers. One of the most important tips that I can give anyone as they grow their Twitter following is to build Twitter lists.
When first starting out it seems reasonable that you can keep track of everyone and you are actually able to keep up with their Twitter streams, but as your followers grow, I highly recommend building Twitter Lists.
Why Build Twitter Lists?
The most important point of building Twitter Lists is that you can keep track of targeted people easily. If you have a prospect that you want to attract, you need to keep them on your radar. It is very easy for someone to get lost in your main Twitter stream. When you put them into organized Twitter Lists you can go right to their Twitter stream so that you can comment or retweet from their Twitter stream. When you do that you instantly get on their radar. Everyone notices when you Retweet their content.
Twitter Lists become your Groups
Many people group together like-minded Tweeps into Twitter Lists that are groups i.e. social people people. I also use insurance lists and people to watch. People to watch are active tweeters that have good and interesting content that I value and retweet. I also have a Twitter list of retweeters – people that frequently retweet me that I would like to return the favor.
Some interesting observations on Twitter Lists
If you sent out multiple messages to your email list every day, people would unsubscribe in droves. Yet on Twitter, you can communicate with your followers and their followers as many times a day as you want with social messages and with marketing messages.
Twitter Lists are an underutilized tool , especially when you have potentially thousands of people to keep track of – people that you follow and that follow you. Build Twitter lists around certain people who have proven to be good referral sources for you so you can easily retweet their best tweets and they can hopefully do the same for you. Those retweets from the group can help get some extra mileage out of your next tweet. There is a strategy around Twitter, if you have not noticed.
Tools for your Twitter Lists
You can use the basic Twitter website to build your Twitter Lists. There are other free tools out there that help your organize your Twitter account and manage it easily. Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are two tools that many avid Twitter users use regularly.
Personally, I use Pluggio – they have a free version. It includes managing Twitter lists and now it shows me when someone has added me to their Twitter List. I check this regularly and will go to their Twitter stream and retweet a recent tweet to acknowledge their support of me. Social Media and Twitter, in particular, is all about connecting and engaging. These Twitter Lists can help you achieve your goal because their timeline is never your timeline. I have key people that I enjoy tweeting everyday and my Twitter Lists help me locate their Twitter stream quickly.
Another key feature of Pluggio that I use is their RSS feed feature. I can list key blogs of my key people and targeted websites that have regular good content for me to share with my followers. I can locate those articles in a matter of minutes, review and read them and then share. Otherwise, I would have to go to each site and read their recent posts. The RSS feature keeps the articles all in one screen and that helps with my organization.
Social Media needs organization to be efficient and productive. Twitter Lists of your key people that you are following will allow you to review the most relevant information for your social media management. We are going to see Twitter become a growing marketing tool – organization can be the key to your success!
Please feel free to check around my site for additional tips and tools for your social media marketing plan.
I hope that you have found this Twitter Tip useful. How have you been using Twitter lists?
Which Do I Use – Facebook Marketing or Twitter Marketing?
Facebook Marketing vs. Twitter Marketing
Social media marketing is not a one size fits all approach and businesses need to recognize that they need to create a strategy for Facebook Marketing and a different one for Twitter Marketing. Even businesses and people that have been using social media for a time have failed to pick up on the nuances between the two and, therefore, have seen limited success.
I always advise people that are starting out to just pick two social media channels to begin with and get them down for several months. I am a strong advocate of starting with a blog because it becomes your “home base” where people learn more about you and your services. For more, information you can read my article on “Get in My Business! Using a Blog to Attract Customers. The blog provides a place to generate content for either your Facebook Marketing or your Twitter Marketing.
Facebook Marketing = Business to Consumer
One of the big distinctions that I see is that Facebook Marketing works best Business to Consumer. Facebook is much more personalized and therefore, the way you approach your Facebook Marketing should be more personal, too. If you are a consultant, real estate agent, insurance agent, then creating a Facebook Fan Page with your blog would certainly be the way that would generate more leads for your business.
The key is that you must connect and engage with them and generate new “fans” all of the time. Posting interesting articles in your area of expertise that relates to their problems will encourage interaction.
Posting photos, communicating events in your community, asking for opinions are all good ideas to keep your fans interested. If you partner with other businesses you can also offer special promotions for your fans and encourage them to do the same.
Facebook marketing is all about getting shared and recommended by your friends to their friends. Posting can be done several times during the day, but 1 – 3 times a day is a normal amount. Anymore and your fans and friends will become annoyed. Posting should always be from the perspective of not selling, but sharing information.
Twitter Marketing = Business to Business
Twitter is so much different than Facebook and beginners often fail to understand that the Twitter community is much savvier than the Facebook community. You almost need to “earn your right to be noticed and retweeted”. It is all about giving first and engaging with others on Twitter. It is not about advertising your business because it will be rejected immediately.
Personally, I prefer Twitter, but it does take more of my time because people are online at all different times. They have a Twitter feed that is usually only read when it is current. Meaning, your tweet from 9:00 a.m. will not be seen by most people when they login at 3:00 p.m. Beginners feel a need to go back and re-read twitter streams, but it is impossible to catch up. An average amount of tweets per day might be 5-15. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Facebook, Twitter | Tags: Facebook Marketing, My Branding System, Twitter marketing | 1 Comment »
Twitter Tool Tip – Try Pluggio
Check this out if you would like to simplify your Twitter life. Most people are using formats like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to manage Twitter . This is easy and comes with short tutorials on all of their components to show you how to use them.
Are You Rubber Stamping Your Retweets?
TY (Thank You) for the RT (Retweet)!
That phrase is repeated daily all over Twitter. I love social networking because it is a great way to find and interact with people of like mind. It is also a wonderful way to promote my business and get people interested in what I’m doing. As such, I’m always honored when people on Twitter help spread my message by retweeting my Twitter updates to their audience. 
Usually, I send them a message on Twitter thanking them for retweeting me. But I started thinking the other day that there had to be a better way to thank people for promoting my content. Here are some ideas I came up with to thank people for sharing my tweets with their followers.
Alternative Retweet Replies
Retweet Them – Search through their Twitter stream and retweet their content to my followers. This one is super easy for me because most of the people I come in contact with have great stuff in their Twitter stream.
Paste Their Twitter Profile and Thank Them – Share with others who this person is all about and help their exposure to others. I like to do this one because I learn something about the person that took the time to retweet me.
Tweet About Them – If they have a business or provide a service, I’ll do a brief Tweet ad for them. For example, if they are a virtual assistant, I’ll tweet about a service they provide. Read the rest of this entry »
Twitter Unraveled for Insurance Agents
Have you been wondering about Twitter? 
I have been writing a lot on how insurance agents can use social media for prospecting for new business, mostly focusing on creating their online reputation through a blog and using Linkedin to make connections. My recommendation is that you focus on these two methods until you feel comfortable enough to move onto something else. Something else is typically a Facebook Fan Page or Twitter. I would like to give you some ways that you, as an insurance agent, might benefit from using Twitter.
Twitter happens to be one of my favorite methods to meet people and find new prospects. But, I am sure that many of you feel that this is utterly pointless and a waste of time. Fortunately, I had a friend and mentor in social media that guided me through the process. She let me know that there is something called Twitter Etiquette. Before you start, you might want to check out my article, To Tweet or Not To Tweet, Baby Boomers Undecided. This will give you some tips on the “lingo” and to properly tweet. The interesting thing about social media is that no one wants to be sold to, but they are looking for solutions. You just need to be the one with the solutions.
Twitter has over 145 million users. In a short time, I have accumulated over 3,300 followers. Now there are tools out there that will get you automatic followers, but I do not recommend this because they probably will not be in your target market. You have to figure that out of those 145 million businesses and people on Twitter there must be some customers. What is so fascinating about Twitter is that it opens up your geography and market far beyond your local area.
One of your key tasks when you log onto Twitter is to find business and people to follow. That might seem daunting to you – just where do you find people that are in your target market? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Insurance Branding, Twitter | Tags: blog, Insurance Agents, My Branding System, Social Media, Twitter | 3 Comments »
7 Reasons Why People Unfollow Your Brand
Twitter has become the hot spot for everyone seeking news, friendships and everything in between. Using Twitter as a marketing tool, therefore, is an excellent way to introduce your business to people who need your products and services.
More and more people and businesses are using Twitter and gaining followers. It is the place for everyone seeking news, friendships and business relationships. It has become a great way to introduce your business to others that need your products and services. However, many consumers and followers fall “out of love” with your brand after a short while if you are delivering the wrong message or not delivering what your followers are looking for.
Why People Unfollow on Twitter
1. Your content is boring and uninteresting. I have seen people and/or brands tweet the same tweets daily and nothing else in between. This does not engage with your audience. It tends to become spam after a while. Content needs to be fresh. That is why blogging is so important. Blogging and tweeting out your new articles gives people a reason to visit your site. Good Twitter marketing involves finding out what your target audience wants and giving it to them. They unfollow when they are bored.
2. It is all about YOU – YOU – YOU. Too much self-promotion turns people off and they will unfollow. A general rule of thumb is to only tweet your content on a 1:5 ratio. This means you should promote or retweet others or find original interesting content of others 5 times more than you tweet your own stuff. It is very easy to see people that are generous and engaging in your twitter stream. It is perfectly alright to promote yourself on Twitte, .but you must maintain balance if you want to use Twitter as a marketing tool. Twitter marketing is about striking up a conversation with your followers that eventually leads to an opportunity to sell to them. Therefore, you want to create a well rounded profile that includes relevant content and interactions with other members in addition to your sales proposals. Your followers will grow to trust you which will have them turning to you when they need the product you sell. Brands that tend to promote others fare best. Read the rest of this entry »
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