This week, as part of courage month, I’m excited to welcome Deirdre Fentem, of Little Red Promotions. She’s here to share all about the courage of marketing yourself or your small business. We talk about her work with anti-human trafficking, which also introduced her to social media marketing (a world where matters like cheap Tiktok followers and the like often come up in conversation), and eventually to launching her own business helping others with social media. We talk about changing careers, entrepreneurship, and why it takes courage to market yourself. Plus, Deirdre is light-hearted and a joy to be around, and I’m ecstatic she’s joining me this week.
This week’s show is an interesting angle on courage; and after looking back at it, it’s really chock full of lots of courageous things. I am deeply moved by the fact that Deirdre was involved in anti-human trafficking, and that she shares what all of us can do to help stop it. Deirdre later changed careers, from nonprofit, to going into marketing, and then later starting her own business. I’ve found that it takes a lot of courage to go into business for yourself.
The thing that strikes me the most, though, is the courage it takes to market yourself and your business. I’ve done marketing and advertising for some big companies over the last 18 years, and I enjoy a good branding campaign and by that, I mean those ads you see that create a friendly, warm, aspirational message around the brand. Not the thing they sell, but the brand itself. Coca-cola does a lot of this kind of advertising, as does Chevy, and Visa. A lot of advertising agencies Colorado springs use this tactic to help build brand recognition and it helps show the face behind the brand.
The thing that shook me to my core, though, was trying to market myself. It’s vulnerable, it’s intimidating, and it can be paralyzing. I can say all sorts of awesome things about companies, but trying to distill a message and promote what I offer? That takes courage. If you are like me, I’m sure you feel the same. Marketing ourselves or our business can be difficult, especially when we already have a biased point of view about why our business is the best. However, we have to try and ignore that and create marketing that will help us to get more clients and opportunities. Social media marketing has become huge recently, so it’s important that we consider using that for marketing. One of the best platforms to market a business these days is Instagram. By advertising your products on there to your followers, they can see what you’re offering. However, gaining followers can be difficult, so it’s important to look into services offered by companies like nitreo to see if they can help you to grow your Instagram account. Hopefully, you’ll be able to attract a larger audience then, allowing you to market yourself or your business to more people. If you wanted to get some influencers involved in your product, go ahead! If you want to learn more about what’s involved in influencer marketing, click here. Deirdre will tell us more ways to grow on social media too, so hopefully, you’ll enjoy our chat.
In this episode, we talk about:
– her early joys of playing dress up, and reading and telling stories
– being an actor in New York City
– getting involved with anti-human trafficking, and reaching out to tell the stories of the youth involved through social media
– how she started her own business and became an entrepreneur
– five things to consider as you start your own business
– the courage it takes to become an entrepreneur
– imposter syndrome
– why social media often plays with our egos, and feelings of insecurity, and what to do about it
– how to find your perfect client
– the magic of hashtags
– why staying up late does no good
– her thoughts on how to jumpstart your joy
Resources
Deidre Fentem’s website: Little Red Promotions
Deidre’s services for small businesses on her site
Deidre on Instagram
Social Media Examiner, a good resource for social media info
The poem, “The Choice” by William Butler Yeats
Polaris Project for anti-human trafficking
Protect.org – protecting children from harm
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