Hey there, my fabulous listener, welcome to episode 197 of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast.

Thank you for lending me your ears today – I know you have lots of choices, so I sincerely appreciate me being one of them!

If you’re enjoying this podcast – I’d love to you take a screenshot and share it on your socials and tag me in it.  How cool would that be!

Don’t forget you can get the show notes for this podcast at www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/197

Before I get started on today’s episode – how did you go with last week’s episode? All around pitching yourself for podcast interviews or other things like someone else’s YouTube Channel or magazine etc?  I hope it helped you think outside the square with your marketing!

Anyway, on to today’s episode.  It’s probably only if you live under a rock that you haven’t noticed that it’s Award Season out there in business.

Loads of awards going on – loads to enter for sure.  Big ones like Telstra to smaller more niche ones like the local awards or podcast awards (which open soon!).

As some of you may or may not know, I have just hosted the first ever Australian Rural Business Awards with my business partner in Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business.

I flew to Sydney last week and we held them virtually.  They were an outstanding success.  So good to celebrate everything that’s rural and regional small business.

But since then, I have had a flood of emails from the winner, those who came third or second and even finalists saying “thank you for hosting the awards, but what do I do now” – asking how they can leverage they’re being a finalist or a winner to help promote their business, bring more brand awareness to their business and so forth.

So, I thought it would be a timely podcast episode to talk about just that – XX tips on how to leverage awards – whether you are the winner or a finalist or just feel like a winner!

Oh, and before I get started – if applying for awards isn’t in your marketing strategy – then make it part of your marketing strategy!  Seriously, if you want cred in your space, if you want to become the “go to person” in your industry, or if you simply want to “up” on your competitors and stand out from the crowd – then entering awards is 100% the way to go!  Not only do you get leverage, but honestly, most of what you will get from applying for awards can be found in doing the applications.

Taking time to look back at what you have achieved, where you have come from to where you are now – that’s probably going to give you the most joy.  In business we rarely take time to reflect and look back at how far we have come – so if you get nothing else from applying for awards, you will 200% get that.

But, let’s say you do win or you are a finalist – what now.  How can you leverage the crap out of it to help build your business?  Get more brand awareness, build creditability, and potentially and hopefully get more sales.

So, let’s start.

1. As a finalist, winner, runner up etc, the award host will probably send you a logo or a tile/image to use.  This is your licence to add that just about everywhere you can think of! 

• Your LinkedIn profile – in the banner, in the awards section
• On Facebook – again in the banner/cover and in the About section
• Instagram – in your bio
• Twitter – in your profile
• Pinterest – in your profile
• In your email signature or at the foot of your emails – how many of them do you send out a day!
• Add to your website – in the about section, on the front page, in the footer

2. Where can you leverage the words “Award Winning” or if you won more than one “Multi Award Winning” business? In your bios, website pages, if you have a place of business, on the front window, at reception, on your door, in your “out of office” notice – if you can swing those words in – they do it!
3. Think about the directories your business is listed in – go and change those. Use the words “Award Winning” or use the graphic/tile/image mentioned above.  You might need to google yourself or google your business name to find all the places that need to be updated!
4. If you are clever, make a bio photo in canva with the words “Award Winner” or put the name of the award you won, under your bio photo. Then you can use that photo to update all your bios across social media platforms too.  If you aren’t clever, get someone to do it for you. Put a post in a Facebook group or two asking if someone can help you and what they would charge.  Or go to Fiverr and ask there.
5. When posting about your win on social media – don’t forget to tag and congratulate the other winners, finalists and people in your category. Not only is it good to be humble, but it’s good for brand awareness to be tagging other businesses (ok, that’s not exactly humble, but it’s business and we want the most out of this win!).
6. Think about adding the win to your business cards and brochures – if they are electronic, then do it straight away, if they are printed, do it for the next round of printing.
7. If you do presentations, webinars, or your work requires you to introduce yourself, make sure you add “award winner” to that introduction. Not only just after you’ve won the award – but at least for a few years.
8. If the award hosts didn’t supply you with a press release – then write one yourself! Getting your win into the media is a fabulous idea and isn’t going to be that hard.  If you need help with a press release – sing out, happy to share what I have – jenn@jenndonovan.com.au – but most awards will supply one.  Simply sending an email to your local newspaper, local radio station or local ABC station will probably result in some media attention – written or spoken (radio).  Even if you feel nervous, do it anyway!
9. Sit down and write a blog for your website about your win. Use parts of your award winning application to construct a blog about your business, the ups the downs, the highs, the lows and share it with your community.
10. Even without a blog written, write an email to your list telling them the good news and thanking them for supporting your now award winning business!
11. Go live on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or whichever platform you perform best on or do them all! Share about your win and say thank you to your community who have helped you and your business thus far.  Spread these lives out of a few days – different platform, different day.
12. Share the win in Facebook groups.
13. Use this award winning application to apply for more awards! And use the win as a fabulous excuse to pitch yourself for podcast interviews, guest blogs and articles and so on.

All this might seem a little too much self promotion to some.  But you haven’t to honestly leave that feeling behind and make the fact that you won or were a finalist, you took the time to fill out the application and the judged loved you, something to celebrate.

Your community, your audience, followers, likers, really all they want to do is congratulate you and tell you how proud they are.

The people who think you are “full of it” or “talking about it too much” are simply either jealous or definitely not your people.

You don’t need to do all this straight away – although lots of it you should – you can milk this win/finalist thing for months and even in 12 months use it as a “remember when”. 

Awards have creditability.  Awards have a long shelf life – so your win should have a long shelf life too.

Go to www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/197 and get the show notes, turn them into a checklist and tick off the suggestions one by one to leverage your win!  And remember winning isn’t everything – even being a finalist needs to have the heck leveraged out of it!

You can do this.

Push down the imposter syndrome, get over the “what will they think” and sing loud and proud about your win and how amazing your business is.  Because it is!

Want to chat or need some encouragement?  Head into my Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group – put up a post there, tag me and I will encourage and nudge away!

You’ve got this!

Oh and again, as I said at the start if entering awards isn’t on your marketing strategy list – then it’s time it was. 

If you need to have a chat about this strategy, book a Discovery call – https://calendly.com/jenn-smm/discovery and we can work through it together.

Let’s continue the chat in my Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group – you can join on Facebook if you haven’t already. 

Oh, and talking about my Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group – I have some amazing guests coming in there to do lives with me this year.  I am super excited by this.  From finance experts to PR and marketing experts (besides me) to Law experts – they are all coming on to give you their time and do some Q&As with the group.

Another amazing reason to come and join that community!

But that’s it for another episode of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast.

See you next week on the podcast for episode 198.  Wow 200 IS SO CLOSE – I’d better think about what I am going to do to celebrate!

But in the meantime, let’s hang out on social and get social on social – you’ll find me on Instagram, Facebook and my fav LinkedIn.

But whatever you do,

……..remember small business peeps, as my opening song says, there’s no point in dreaming small!