Christo: Hey guys, it‘s just me in the studio today, well, until I drag one of our team members in a moment. And I‘ve got another awesome episode here for you. Things that will be covered in this episode are A tip: basically how to keep customers coming back to your business no matter what style of business you have. I‘m going to get one of our team members to come in and share some tips around LinkedIn and have LinkedIn work effectively for you and what‘s a good platform to be on. We‘ve got a customer question which was “Do I need a tagline?” so I‘m going to answer that quite in-depth, and you‘ll get a lot out of that tip whether you have a tagline or not for your business, a grand marketing lesson in that one. A little bit of news on what‘s been happening around in Basic Bananas. And also we have a Word of Wisdom today from Bob Marley, so a pretty interesting, pretty cool Word of Wisdom.

So first up, the tip is – when we sell to people, basically people come initially for a need or want, something we want to buy, like we know what we want, so we start looking for businesses, products, or services for a specific outcome, like the outcome being a specific result that we get from a service or product we‘re looking for, but we come back for the service. We also come back for the personality, we come back for the connection of the business. So just to paint a picture, imagine you‘re off in a foreign city and there are five coffee shops on the block that you‘re staying at. Maybe you‘re in New York and there are 20 coffee shops on the right block, but there are all these options. You go to one because you look at, okay, looks like it has decent coffee, looks like it has a decent machine. Or it‘s a Starbucks, because you know there‘s a certain style of coffee. But the one that you keep going back to after you‘ve been there once is the one that you feel a connection with the people, the personality. It‘s the personality that we connect with. With us humans, we‘re drawn to the story, it‘s like watching a TV series. We all loved, well if you grew up in my time, we loved Seinfeld, and with Seinfeld, it was so exciting because of the characters, it‘s like you can‘t wait to see what George does next week or what Elaine‘s doing. It‘s the characters and how they react and respond in situations that keep us coming back to watching the show. So thinking about your own business, how can you display more character, more human connection, when the customers are there. Because that‘s a part of what is going to keep them coming back, so add more “wow factor,” of course, amazing customer service, but show the personality as well, and human connection. So that‘s there on our tip right now.

All right, so now what we‘re going to do is bring Bri in, one of our team members. Let‘s go drag her in right now, and get a tip on LinkedIn.

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Christo: We have Bri here, one of the Basic Bananas‘ amazing team members. And she‘s going to share a tip around LinkedIn. So what do you have?

Bri: Well, part of my job is to keep up with the latest and greatest in what‘s going on in the social media world. And what I‘m seeing a lot of is that apparently, LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft, I think it was maybe 18 months ago. And since Microsoft acquired it, there‘s been some changes in terms of the content capabilities and they have just started a live video capability. LinkedIn is one of those platforms that is less noisy than Facebook and Instagram, so it‘s starving for content, which means that if you want to get on LinkedIn, you have more chance of getting seen and discovered. And also if you‘re using things that are, like the latest capabilities like live video, you are going to be seen even more so. Your engagements are going to be higher, your views are going to be higher, then your traffic will be higher.

Christo: Yes, a very good tip, better use the time. It‘s true, there‘s not a lot of videos that you see on LinkedIn.

Bri: No, and like people, they link towards the long-form content which does well. And always, obviously you should do that, but it‘s about being holistic, being in a good mix, and live video content is an awesome way, not just to showcase your brand, and have like some sort of genuine connection with your audience. But it‘s also an easy way and a really fast way of creating content.

Christo: Awesome.

Bri: So it‘s really good.

Christo: Very good. Thank you. Bri works with a lot of our members and looks after them, involving their head throughout our Clever Bunch in different programs, supporting our people. Good to know. And also LinkedIn, in terms of SEO, a lot of people don‘t realise that the platform is really SEO-friendly, so if you put in your title or position or what you actually do, or if you‘re an expert in something, it‘s great to put all that info in your profile, the title, and also in descriptions of things, because you might just be found by prospective customers looking for an expert like you on LinkedIn. Of course LinkedIn‘s fantastic if that‘s where your customer base is as well.

Bri: Yes, definitely. I mean I wouldn‘t go to LinkedIn if you‘re selling maybe kids clothes or something like that.

Christo: Yes. Awesome! This has been cool, thank you very much for joining us on this episode. Another awesome tip shared from the Basic Bananas team. So thank you, Bri!

Bri: Thank you!

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Christo:
So another awesome tip there from the Basic Bananas team. We have a lot of tips from the team coming in the future episodes, to share much knowledge amongst the team, so it‘s awesome to drag them onto the show, and I think they‘re pretty excited about it too. So thank you Bri!
Now we had a customer question, “Do I need a tagline?” Typically for small business, the answer is going to be, Yes. What we love to do with the tagline, and the reason you have a tagline, tagline is typically a little line that sits with your logo, so you might have Logo, Business Name and Tagline. Why is it important? Well if your business name is abstract. Let‘s just say Basic Bananas is your business name, people would have no idea what you do unless you have a tagline to tell them kind of like what it is. So you might have a business name that‘s just a word like “Active,” or “Professional ~” It’s a quirky name, you need a tagline to tell people, ideally the combination of the business name and tagline tells us what the business is, who it‘s for, and a bit of personality. So if your business name sounds pretty straightforward, like you‘re called “Sydney Accountants,” okay we get what it is, then the tagline could focus more on the personality, so could be like “Smart, efficient, effective, going above and beyond for amazing business people,” or something, so the combo of the two is how we work it and once again, it tells us what it is, in terms of what your business is, who it‘s for, and a bit of personality in terms of combination of the name and the tagline. If you could get all of those in, that is awesome. The simple answer to that one is, Yes, you should use it, because it‘s also the most seen part of your business, typically being your logo and tagline. So if people see it, you want them to know what it is, who it‘s for, so they can click the link or open the brochure or read the next line whenever they have seen your logo, because typically a logo, name, tagline, goes on everything you put out to the world.

Next up, we have some news on Basic Bananas. We‘ve had the re-launch of The Marketing Smarts, this is an online program we offer, which is epic in my opinion. Of course I am biased, but it is amazing, we have put our hearts and souls to this thing and everything we know, and poured the knowledge of the team, into this online training which is for business owners anywhere on planet earth basically, so for yourself, or your team members, we have lots of members that sign up for their team, to get upskills, they work through the program and apply the lessons to their business, it‘s around basically for business owners or marketers of small businesses, to help them grow their brand, grow their business, their positioning, packaging, bundling, processing, and then campaigns, marketing activities to attract new customers. Check it out, we‘ll put a link here somewhere. So that‘s The Marketing Smarts, fully revamped, fully rewashed, and we‘re all a little bit excited about that right now.

And a Word of Wisdom in closing today. I‘ll go to Basic Bananas notebook for this one. Bob Marley popped out of me before the show and he says, “The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively,” so a pretty cool quote there from Bob Marley. Now how do you apply that to business? Focus on providing value to customers over just trying to make as much money as possible. You‘ll be better off long term, this is how I take it, long term, it‘s always about providing and building trust with your customers, providing value, not just trying to get a quick buck, it‘s less sustainable. So focus on value, rather than money, and the money will just flow as an after effect.

So any questions, and thoughts, any insights you‘d like to share with us, post through any of our social media platforms, we look after every question that‘s ever sent through to us, or get in touch with Basic Bananas, through any of our online areas, or the office, or our team, and we‘ll be happy to look after you. And I will see you on our next episode.