Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

April Pop Culture Round Up

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april 2018 pop culture round upApril has been a crazy month and because of that I feel like my pop culture consumption has been lacking. BUT I’m about to get on an airplane and fly to London so I’m hoping that will help and that May will have a LOT of new recommendations for you! I did go see Crazy Ex Girlfriend Live a few weeks ago and it was SUPER fun. Lots of singing along and hilarity ensued. If you’re a Crazy Ex fan this was the live theater experience you have been hoping for.

Here’s what I did consume this past month…

Reading

I finally read the Captain Phasma comic mini-series and I really enjoyed it. She’s still badass and it was a good arc between Episodes 7 & 8…

A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo arrived this weekend and it’s just as fantastic as I was hoping it would be! Buy it for the kids in your life and the adults in your life who need a very sweet story written by John Oliver…

I have started The Boy on the Bridge and am excited to read it on the flight. It’s written in the same universe as The Girl With All the Gifts. I’ll take a second book for the trip too but haven’t decided yet, it’ll be a surprise for next month, hopefully I get them both finished!

Listening

Legion has returned and it’s as weird as it was last season. Thankfully a friend of mine suggested LegionCast which is helping me to process what the !#$% I just watched!

I LOVE Rachel Maddow. We refer to her around the house like a member of the family “did you see Rachel?” “Hey it’s time for Rachel.” I know, we’re well aware. But when I miss an episode for one reason or another the podcast version of her show is great. And I occasionally prefer it – it forces me to listen and not to WATCH what she’s talking about on a given topic.

If you missed the James Comey interview on The Daily after his book release, it’s really great. It’s better than most of the interviews I watched and had some very thoughtful questions others weren’t asking. I love Michael Barbaro…

I’m pretty excited to start listening to the Dave Change Show from The Ringer and Bookish with Sonya Walger (Penny from LOST) has Damon Lindelof on to talk about books. This could be a new favorite podcast…

Watching

This season of The Americans is GREAT! I appreciated the time jump and am loving the story line. Elizabeth is in a really really dark place and I am curious to see how they wrap up the series in the next few episodes…

New Girl is back and worth it alone for Schmidt as a dad. And also Winston’s maternity photo shoot…wow. Some things you can’t unsee!

The Jane the Virgin season finale left me with an audible gasp. The episode took us all over the place and then landed about 15 miles from what I could have never expected. Catch up on this amazing series when it’s added to Netflix in the next week or so.

Legion is back and weirder than ever. I am a bit behind on it thanks to some travel earlier this month but I also wonder if binging it (or at least one a day instead of one a week) may be better to keep the stories straight…

We finished Wild, Wild Country and you should too. It’s fantastic. Like I mentioned last month, it’s Oregon history and includes both a cult AND small town politics, two of my favorite topics!

We’ve finally caught a few episodes of Ugly Delicious which is a great food show you should watch. We’re keeping up on Billions and good grief this season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine makes me happy!

What pop culture have you been consuming this month?

5 Marketing Tasks to Automate (to Keep You Sane)

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5 Marketing Tasks to Automate (to Keep You Sane)Automation is a pretty great tool that companies of all shapes and sizes take advantage of. Are you? It can seem overwhelming to get it setup but once you’ve made the time to automate your systems, you’ll have more time to take your pup to the dog park (or read a book, or watch TV, or get your job done…) Here’s 5 Marketing Tasks you can (and should) automate!

  1. Your Contact Form – If someone reaches out to you on your contact form, you’ll most likely get back to them within a day or two (or a week if you’re not awesome at follow up and have an inbox that stresses me out to think about.) Setup your contact form to send a quick thank you note. “Thank you for contacting Yellow Dog Consulting, we’ll get back to you within one business day.” You can (and should) also invite them to check out a couple of things on your site – a link to your services page, a free download, or a link to your most recent newsletter are great ideas…
  2. Free Downloads – Do you have a snazzy free giveaway on your website that folks give you their email and then magically a PDF appears? I thought so! Make sure this system is automated so that it can happen while you sleep. You should also include a drip campaign with this so they hear from you more than once and really get an idea of how awesome you are so they hire you faster.
  3. Bookkeeping – Sure it’s not a marketing task, but automating my bookkeeping is one thing that keeps me incredibly sane each month.
  4. Social Media – I never thought I’d say this but I finally am. Each week I have a blog post. And I don’t trust that you’re going to check out my website each week looking for it – so I share it on social media. A few times. I talk often about my system but a few simple clicks save me hours of time and increases my site traffic…
  5. Reviews – Yes, you should automate your review process. Figure out the appropriate variable to reach out to new clients and ask for a review, then set that system in place. Maybe it’s monthly when you add your new clients to your newsletter list. Or at the completion of a project. Reviews are such an important part of helping your business grow, make sure you get this system in place!

There are a lot of other marketing (and small business) tasks you can automate, these are just a few that I tend to help clients with and that have helped me stay sane. What other marketing tasks do you automate?

4 Marketing Tasks You Should Do When Starting Your Business

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A couple of weeks ago a good friend of mine asked me if I wouldn’t mind giving some advice to their partner who’s expanding their photography business. Specifically around website and branding. Since I am always happy to give my totally biased opinion to small business owners, I was happy to share my thoughts. Here’s 4 recommendations I made that may be helpful in your own business!

  1. Setup a Google My Business Page. This gets you into the Google algorithm which is the only one that counts. Fully fill out your profile – you can hide your address so it doesn’t show up in search results. (Since you live in the PNW I’d also setup Bing Places. Both are easy and FREE!)
  2. When launching a business the first thing I suggest clients do is send out an announcement email to their network. I can’t help you if I don’t know what you’re up to! It doesn’t have to be a huge email – but a couple of specific images and a little about what you’re up to these days would be awesome. I suggest MailChimp if you think you’d do occasional announcement emails – that way people can subscribe AND opt out of communication from you. If you need help setting up an email and building your list – here’s a checklist I created to help.
  3. I also created a monthly marketing calendar that will help prompt you with some ideas of what to do each week.
  4. Finally – start to get testimonials and reviews. Here’s a recent blog post I wrote about it – everyone struggles with this – but once you’re setup on Google you want people to start reviewing you so those stars show up!

There are SO many things that go into starting a new business – but if you have the basic website setup and you’re starting to get clients, these are a few tasks that I recommend to help you grow and start out on the right foot!