Janet Fouts is Founder and CEO of Tatu Digital Media, a San Jose Digital Marketing Agency. Founded in 1996. She is also a social media coach and spoken on various social media and marketing events. Janet also written various books that will give you brief information about social networks and how to get success.
11 Ways to Make Your Content Appealing to International Audiences http://t.co/hnT9CwGeOz
— Janet Fouts (@jfouts) April 14, 2015
As part of ModernLifeTimes Interview series, It is an honor to have Janet Fouts, speaker & social media coach or more well known as @jfouts on Twitter. I am extremely happy to interview with her and share her great insights. Let’s begin the conversation :
Q1: Tell me more about yourself, and why you started your career in media/marketing?
I started working as a website developer in 1993. I loved the web but only created code part time while working as a restaurant chef. In 1995 I started building an online community/ magazine for the restaurant industry called ONTHERAIL. That is really where my passion for online community took hold.
Q2: How your journey started and what difficulties you faced?
We got venture funding for the company and like most San Francisco startups of the day got an office, hired staff and a management team and created some amazing content. We won quite a few awards for our unique style and voice and things were good. We were a bit ahead of the curve though and online community was a tough sell. eventually the company pivoted to web design and development. In 2000 we sold off the assets, closed the office and went virtual building websites and e-learning programs. Then in around 2006 when community became popular we began to pivot again back to my passion, community and what we now call “social media”.
Q3: Which social media channels do you recommend for our business?
Every business is different, but you’ve got a good start on Facebook and Twitter. These seem like the best channels for you. Twitter to drive traffic and SEO and both platforms to engage your user base.
Q4: What strategies would you implement for helping generating leads (or conversions)?
In order to use social marketing effectively you must get people engaged and wanting to share your content. Asking questions, running contests or giveaways help get people interested. Once they are you need to provide compelling content and a sense of community to get them to share and share again. Your leads come from being seen as a valued resource. That builds your traffic and creates value for advertisers interested in your community.
Q5: Tell more about Tatu Digital Media and what services you offer for your client?
We are a social media management and training company. Our teams manage social media platforms for a number of businesses from startups to multi-national corporations. My role as CEO is to create marketing strategies and oversee their implementation. I also conduct corporate training around the world and speak about social marketing at conferences and seminars.
Q6: How do you stay current on all of the latest shifts and innovations in social media?
I read all day every day. I also listen to a lot of audio books, especially when I’m on the road. Marketing is moving too fast these days to stop learning for a moment. And that’s the fun of it!
Q7).In your opinion which social media tools are best for small businesses?
As I said it’s different for every business. It depends on a lot of factors. How does the business communicate? Do they want to write long blog posts or just share small bites of information in a tweet? Do they have the time and interest in Video or podcasting? Where is their market?
Q8: How to develop social media marketing strategies for businesses?
There is a LOT to creating a workable strategy and every business is quite unique in their resources and marketing needs. Each company has to go through a social audit to understand where they are, what their goals are, where their competition is and find good use cases to study before deciding on a strategy.
Q9: For our business, would Twitter, Facebook or Google+ be more effective?
I think you need to read that last question and do a lot more homework before making such a big decision.
Q10: What are 5 things you would recommend to us to do immediately in the social space for success?
- Look at what others are doing (competitive analysis)
- Clearly define your goals and your measurements for success
- Identify your resources and assets
- Look carefully at each platform before deciding if it is good for what your goals are
- Listen, listen, listen. To your readers, your competition, your peers, so you can learn what is really needed for success.
Thanks Janet for your wonderful insights and doing interview. Hope you all enjoyed this interview, you can connect with Janet Fouts by visiting her website.
