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Laura Mitchell Selected to Present at Louisville Innovation Summit

When you think of Louisville, you probably think of horses, bourbon, and bluegrass. But you may not realize that Louisville is also a world center for aging care innovation. With 23,000 employed in the field, and $50 billion in revenue, Louisville has the nation’s largest concentration of aging care companies. And it is the home of the Louisville Innovation Summit.

In its third year, the Louisville Innovation Summit is the defining national event in the aging care industry, bringing together 500 healthcare executives, technology entrepreneurs, industry experts, and thought leaders, to provide insight, share expertise, and explore new avenues to create the future of aging care.

Laura Mitchell is proud to be a member of the advisory board for this conference, and a speaker at this year’s event.

As baby boomers retire, the nation’s population of seniors is expanding rapidly, and innovation in providing care for the aging is crucial. This summit was created to help redefine the future of aging care, to open new avenues, identify more resources, foster innovation, and encourage new approaches to aging care to help serve this growing population and the challenge it represents.

A collaborative event presented by many of the nation’s leading healthcare organizations, the program includes distinguished keynote speakers, panel discussions with prominent guests, Innovation Spotlights from health tech startups from around the world, and an Innovation Competition.

The Summit also hosts a Startup Pitch Event. Each year, entrepreneurs in the senior care or digital health industries are invited to pitch to the summit’s attendees, which include large contingents of angel investors, and C-level executives at major healthcare/senior care companies.

The presenters who are selected to pitch receive publicity for their budding companies among decision makers and industry leaders. Two winners will be selected, one national and one from Kentucky, to receive cash prizes, and the chance to work with a major corporate sponsor for guidance and product pilots. The deadline to apply is Friday, July 29th at 11:59pm CST.

The Louisville Innovation Summit will be held October 9-11, 2016 at the Louisville Marriott Downtown, in Louisville, KY. For more info: www.lisummit.com.

LMC Donates Marketing Expertise: Now Meet Our Winner

The Envelope Please…

We like to give back to our community, so when we had the chance to donate something to a local charity auction, we decided to donate our time and our small business/strategic growth and marketing expertise. We were excited to help out a small, local company here in West Bend by offering a consultation. It was intriguing to us to see if they had done growth hacking and some of the guerrilla marketing techniques that we love.

Here’s the thing. You might think that we have a lot of preconceived notions when it comes to our clients. But we generally don’t. When you come to LMC, we don’t take anything for granted. We want to know who you are, what you’re selling and where you see your company going. We don’t decide that for you. We talk. We listen to what you have to say. Because in order to take you where you want to go, we have to meet you where you are and roadmap the journey together.

But we confess. We did carry some preconceived notions when we donated to this charity auction. We had no idea if we would be starting from scratch with the local business owner. We guessed that it might be a brand new seed start up that needed everything. We wondered if the company would have any marketing expertise, or a marketing budget, and what kind of education in strategic growth that the small organization would have. Frankly, we’d expected to provide the most basic support and infrastructure for starting up.

Boy were we wrong.

The winner was Dr. Krysti Wick, owner of River Shores Chiropractic. And the first thing we learned about Krysti is that she is not a stranger to marketing. Not at all. She has a detailed website. She’s active on Facebook, and she does sponsored posts. She strategically picks her targets.

And that’s interesting. When you pick your targets on Facebook, it means you already know who your target market is. And Krysti certainly does. When we asked her who she is trying to reach with her business, she knew. She knows what types of jobs they have, what they like to do in their spare time, and where they spend their money.

She also knows who her competitors are. And, she knows how she’s differentiating herself. She knows how she is targeting the market for chiropractic services differently, because she knows who she is, and who her audience is.

For example, she knows that her focus is on wellness and preventative health. Like her competitors she does pain management, but one of the things that makes her a little different is this wellness focus. And it’s reflected in her customers. While her customer base is diverse, on average they’re people who care about, and invest money in, good health. They’re folks who buy organic produce and local foods. They breastfeed their babies and use cloth diapers.

Because Krysti is already thinking about these things, it means that when we sit down for our marketing consultation, we can start much further down the marketing path. When we sit down with her this week to ask her where she wants to go with her business, she’ll get a lot from the meeting, because she already knows where she is. And she did it without a huge marketing budget.

Laura Mitchell Consulting is a strike team of marketing and growth strategy experts. If you’re ready to grow, contact us at info@lmcllc.us. We’d love to help.

 

The Battle Continues: Hootsuite vs. Buffer

What is a social media scheduling platform?

Screen Shot 2016-06-29 at 1.33.12 PMA scheduling platform provides marketers the opportunity to schedule posts ahead of time for most major social media sites. Photos, videos, links, and text posts can all be scheduled in advance for a number of popular social networking sites. Scheduling nearly eliminates the need to constantly post to and monitor social media sites. Just-in-time marketing is difficult, so scheduling platforms provide a way for business owners to keep organizational profiles from going dark when other priorities require attention.

Do I need a scheduling platform?

In an age where trending topics and news topics are constantly changing and authenticity is a goal, scheduling social media may feel wrong. However, with careful planning and strategic posting, scheduling platforms can be lifesaving for busy business owners and marketing teams.

 

Larger organizations with entire social media departments may use these platforms to manage multiple products and pages, assign tasks to team members, respond to mentions/complaints on the various social media sites, and measure analytics (how well their posts are doing and how audiences are responding).

 

Smaller organizations use these platforms to sort of “set it and forget it.” That is, they may schedule facebook, Linkedin and Twitter posts far in advance, do auto posting for blogs and web content, and primarily focus energy on running their business and driving sales.

 

Which sites should I post to?

Screen Shot 2016-06-29 at 1.33.23 PMIt really depends on your customer and where they are. How old are they? Are they female or male? Are you selling directly to the consumer or B2B?  LMC always recommends a blog with relevant, interesting and engaging topics that involve your ideal customers and product offering categories.

Direct to Consumer: Facebook Page, Twitter (for customer service), each employee should have a LinkedIn profile for networking. Instagram is a younger demographic, Snapchat even younger. Pinterest is typically 40+ women.

Business to Business: Facebook Page (mandatory for even B2B), LinkedIn profiles for each employee (networking) and a LinkedIn business page. Twitter can be great for networking at conferences and providing customer support. Twitter can be especially effective for conference chatting using the official conference hashtag (see #DigitalHealthCES for an example).

Use a scheduling platform like Hootsuite or Buffer to create a stream of content that will auto-publish to Facebook. However, Facebook doesn’t love third-party apps and have made that clear when you compare the reach from scheduling sites vs. native posting. Posts see better organic reach when they are natively created and scheduled on Facebook itself. Stay away from using anything external (whether that be Hootsuite or Buffer) to post to Facebook. Most other social media sites aren’t as picky, however. YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, for example, treat all content equally for the most part.

 

Hootsuite vs. Buffer: Similarities and Differences

Similarities: Both Hootsuite and Buffer offer relatively similar scheduling and publishing options, with mobile apps and browser plugins for easy sharing. Interestingly, both Buffer and Hootsuite offer RSS integration, which means it can auto post to other social networks sites and/or your website. So, whenever a new post is published from a source, that post could be pushed to all relevant social networking sites with one button.

Screen Shot 2016-06-29 at 1.33.32 PMHootsuite Benefits: Hootsuite is a more complete content management solution than Buffer. Whereas Buffer is strictly for capturing and scheduling content, Hootsuite is a complete social media management tool. Organizations can have teams, assign tasks to specific users, and publish content to a wider variety of sites (YouTube, Instagram, etc.). You can actually interact with all of your social media streams in one place, an option that Buffer doesn’t offer. This means that you can see who is commenting on your facebook, who retweeted your comment, like someone’s facebook post and see what’s happening on Linkedin, all in one place. Hootsuite offers analytics for social media platforms themselves, which are incredibly useful to see what’s working and what’s not. Reports can also be automatically generated for each social media site.

 

Buffer Benefits: Buffer has a close relationship with IFTTT (IF This Then That), which can be used to automate almost anything. Schedule posts more quickly, set reminders for your team, catalog your emails, create recurring tasks, sync items through the cloud, or track and time your digital habits. For example, you can use IFTTT to create a new row in a Google Sheets document each time one of your business profiles posts a tweet or status update. This is a useful way to keep a record of everything your organization posts, and it takes exactly zero effort.

 

In addition, Buffer appears to be much more Apple friendly. The Hootsuite app on iOS is often glitchy and ineffective. Buffer only offers analytics for the posts you schedule on the platform, not for the social media platforms themselves. This is an important distinction. Want to know what kind of impact your posts are having on your profile as a whole, even if you didn’t schedule them on Buffer? You’re out of luck.

 

Which tool is right for your organization? Need more help? Let Laura Mitchell Consulting help. Contact us at info@lmcllc.us or visit us at www.lmcllc.us. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google+!

 

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I’ve Got the Conch

No one has never accused me of being shy. It’s true, I love to talk and socialize. I love networking, having conversations with smart people and, most of all, I love to speak in front of people about topics that I know well. (I’m even willing to speak on topics I know nothing about, but I wouldn’t advise engaging me on those.)  

I like helping people understand things like Disruptive Technologies and the Aging Tsunami, Guerrilla & Growth Marketing in the Digital World, Remote Patient Monitoring, Connected Health and a variety of other industry-related topics. But it’s not just about speaking in front of crowds that motivates me. It’s what happens after. These events become the start of a conversation, and often the start of a relationship. The same goes for participating on panel discussions.

I’m opening up the door to engagement and I want to talk with you. I have shared what I know, but I want you to share what you know, too. What happens next is up to you. I love taking questions afterward. And after that, things get even better when I have a chance to mingle with attendees one-on-one. Best of all? The people who are not shy about telling me I’ve missed something important. They don’t just keep me on my toes, they make me better.

If your organization is interested in having me start a conversation at your event, let me know. “Yes, I’d love to come and speak at your event” is one of my favorite things to say. And unless I’m otherwise engaged, I’d love to say yes to you. To see me in action at my various speaking gigs, check out the LMC YouTube channel. If you like what you see, drop me a line at info@lmcllc.us, or find me on Facebook and LinkedIn. #LMCMktg @laurahmitchell

Follow Laura Mitchell Consulting on LinkedIn.