172: Social Media for Business – Featured Interview with guest expert Linda Coles

Linda Coles, Author, Keynote Speaker, Owner of Blue Banana

Linda Coles talks with Bill Ringle on My Quest for the Best about the use of social media for business growth, emphasizing that when you connect with social media to remember that you’re connecting with other people who prefer authenticity and candor.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com  for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

Interview Insightshts

Key points that you’ll learn from this interview:

  • The truly hard part about building a website.
  • Why you should consider giving out bite sized teasers of your knowledge.
  • How to determine the size of your audience, and how to go about building it.
  • The social media tactics that people may know about, but don’t use enough.
  • Insider tips for getting more likes, shares, and comments.

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

  • 1:55 Linda tells about her goats, fig farm, and her business Blue Banana.
  • 3:45 How gluten intolerance became the impetus for Linda to build her first website, and eventually allowed her to expand her business to help build website traffic for others.
  • 4:03 “People that build websites know that that’s the easy part, getting traffic to it is the hard part.”
  • 6:12 [On Malcolm Gladwell’s search for stories] – “He doesn’t wait for them to happen, he looks for them to happen.”
  • 7:06 “I like to give freely, I like to give my information away. There’s no point in just keeping that to me.”
  • 8:36 Linda discusses the process of writing her first book and getting it published.
  • 9:43 “You don’t have to give all the tools in your toolbox away, but if you can give them some taster of the sort of information [with which] you can help them.”
  • 12:08 “The one thing you need is distribution because without a distribution channel it’s not going to go anywhere.”
  • 13:18 Why audience size matters to publishers.
  • 15:33 How one of the women Linda follows is optimizing LinkedIn for her business.
  • 16:37 Why you should do audio recordings of your work.
  • 18:22 “As an individual trying to get your name and your brand moving, think about audio.”
  • 19:10 “People listen to the person.”
  • 22:21 How to generate buzz around your podcast.
  • 23:14 “You do have to have some budget in the early days to get something moving.”
  • 24:04 “All companies need to have a [LinkedIn] company page, but growing your company page is hard work.”
  • 26:00 “Have a great image, and steer away from stock images.”
  • 26:54 “Tell the people what the article is about, for sure, but don’t try to be clever, just be clear.”
  • 28:23 “Try and write something that’s evergreen.”
  • 28:59 How Linda helped a client in the healthcare sector improve their business on Social Media. 
  • 32:52 [The importance of conversation on Social Media] – “Don’t forget that [with social media] you’re talking to other humans.”

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Expert Bio

Linda Coles has been in the digital space for many years. She moved to New Zealand 10 years ago, where she first started out on the road as a Regional Manager for an optics chain. She soon realized that freelancing was the better life for her, and gave up working for other people altogether to spend time writing and consulting. Since then, she’s worked with a number of clients, published four books on marketing, and another six books in the suspense genre.

LinkedIn made her an “Influencer” when the program was launched back in 2012, along with Branson and 148 other thought leaders at the time. Last year, she flew out to New York to be a part of Thrillerfest where I met Lee Child and shared a cab to the FBI offices with Heather Graham and Dennis.

She has presented to Transpower, Microsoft, and Fidelity Life among many others, and has worked with professionals at major New Zealand companies including Wolters Kluwer, and the University of Auckland Business School and. Her articles have been published on the Huffington Post, LinkedIn, Mashable, the NZ Herald, NZBusiness Magazine, Management Magazine, Human Resources Magazine, and Social Media Examiner. She’s also the host of the podcast Tell Us a Story, where she features entrepreneurs and creators who have interesting tales to tell.

Contact Info and Social Media for Linda Coles

Books Authored by Linda Coles

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