|
The first thing I want to say is that I am a small business owner that enjoys doing his own marketing. I do NOT work for or own a marketing company, ad agency, social media company, etc. I wanted to clarify that because what I'm going to tell you are things that I do for my own business (Duplication Media) and they are tactics that some of you might think are crazy, stupid, ineffective, etc. But maybe some other entrepreneur could use these and get results just as good or better than I have.
I started Duplication Media in 2003 because I saw a need...a need to help customers preserve their precious family memories. I had been in the video production / duplication industry for more than eight years and I always wanted to own my own business. One day in April of 2003, I had a day at work that made me realize that if I was to ever open my own business...now was the time to do it. I spent the next few months getting it ready by ordering equipment, ordering supplies, finding a retail location, finding a domain name, designing a website, and more.
It was September 2003 when I put the OPEN sign in the window at Duplication Media in Urbandale, Iowa for the very 1st time. Two weeks after I opened, I received a phoe call from Florida. They wanted a price to duplicate 10,000 VHS videotapes. I didn't get that project but it made me realize the power of the website and search engine optimization (SEO).
I had taught myself basic web design and SEO so the only expense I had in it was the cost of the domain and web hosting which total less than $75 per year. The website has always been our #1 marketing tool and to generate that much business for something I'm able to myself makes me appreciate it even more. With social media coming onto the scene a few years ago, it gave me another tool to do my own marketing...inexpensively and usually for free.
I use various social media platforms and usually post the same thing to each one. Twitter is the one that I devote the most time. I started Duplication Media's Twitter account in August 2009 and it reached 10,000 unique followers in June 2017.
Over the years, I've purchased more than 25 domain names. Some were ones that previous owners let expire so I bought them to have their traffic now come to Duplication Media. Others are names with keywords that my type of customer would search for in the search engines. And the rest are ones that I wanted to purchase before my competitors (current and future) could. Some domains re-direct to duplicationmedia.com's home page while others go to internal pages like cdduplicationprices.com gets re-directed to Duplication Media's CD Duplication page.
In May of 2015, I started a Twitter account for each of those domains. So there are Twitter accounts for audiovideoduplication.com (@AudioVideoDups), iowaduplication.com (@IowaDuplication), vhsvideotransfer.com (@VHSVideoTrans), and others. I use these accounts to help with searches within Twitter and to expose Duplication Media's tweets more. I can select one or all of those Twitter accounts to tweet a special Duplication Media is running or I can tweet from just one of them that is specific to that domain.
The tool that I use to accomplish this is TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com). As of July 2017, I currently have 27 Twitter accounts all linked to one. I can create a new tweet and select which account(s) I want to tweet it from. I can find a tweet from any of my Twitter accounts and retweet it from whichever account(s) I want to have retweet it.
When creating a new tweet...
*I might tweet something about scanning photographs for customers and tweet it from Duplication Media, Scan Your Photos, and Scan Box Photos.
*I might tweet something about transferring videotapes to DVD for customers and tweet it from Duplication Media, DVD Your Videos, TransferMyVideo, and more.
*I might tweet something about duplication CDs and DVDs for customers and tweet it from Duplication Media, Fast CD Duplications, Short Run Dups, and more.
When retweeting...
*I might find a tweet from Duplication Media about a large Video to DVD Transfer order we're working on and retweet it from Audio Video Transfer.
*I might find a tweet from Duplication Media about a special we have for Film Transfers and retweet it from Transfer My Movies.
*I might find a tweet from Duplication Media about connecting with us on various social media platforms and retweet it from Iowa Marketing or Ultimate Web Designing.
I don't spend a ton of time doing these tweets and retweets but I do spend some time. Duplication Media recently reached 10,000 followers, Iowa Marketing is getting close to 5,000, and all the other ones have less than 1,000. If I really devoted some time each day to doing this, then each of the accounts would have more followers which in turn will help Duplication Media's exposure even more.
I hope this provides you with some ideas and information. Please let me know if you try it or if you would like some help.
Thank you,
Jason Olson
http://www.twitter.com/dupsmedia
http://www.twitter.com/iowa_marketing_
http://www.duplicationmedia.com
info@duplicationmedia.com
|
