Chaibia Sarhrou
(The Founder of CS Social Media, Internet Marketing Strategist, Expert in Social Media, Lead Generation and Setting Follow up and Tracking Systems for Leads and Customers)
How to get free Publicity by Writing an Articles for Different Magazines and Link it with A Landing Page to Capture Emails
From where to start in terms of Social Media Marketing for a new business, How to Use Local Directories to generate Leads
Video Interview
With English and Arabic Subtitle
Audio
Bio
I’m a Social Media and Internet Marketing Strategist at https://cssocialmedia.com. I help Businesses get more traffic, generate more leads, and make more sales by implementing various Social Media Marketing techniques and strategies. On top of that I help them set up follow-up systems to maximize their Social Media and Internet Marketing Efforts.
I also help businesses and professionals position themselves as experts in their fields by creating informative articles and videos. I then syndicate them all over the web and social media platforms. This will give them an advantage over their competitors, drive huge amounts of traffic back to their websites, and make people KNOW, LIKE and TRUST them.. which is crucial to get people to do business with them.
I have helped a lot of businesses brand themselves in different Social Media Platforms, especially Facebook by creating custom designed welcome tabs and squeeze pages for their companies inside of Facebook. Having a professional custom designed fan page helps businesses stand out and increase their credibility.
Social Media Manager, Internet Marketing Consultant. Video & Mobil Marketer.
Specialties: Social media Marketing, Social media Consulting, Online Reputation Management, Twitter stategies, Facebook strategies, Facebook Landing pages Design, Twitter and Youtube Background Design.
CS SOCIAL MEDIA is the premiere Social Media Management and online marketing consulting agency in Las Vegas, NV. CSSM has some of the best social media managing and marketing techniques, strategies and resources that the industry has to offer.
CSSM’s mission is to remove the fear and apprehension for those who are looking to develop a social media presence. Our approach makes social marketing manageable, affordable and effective for our clients.
Whether you’re looking to learn more about what social media can do for your business, to be educated on the creation of the various social media ACCOUNTS and how to use them effectively, or to have us look after all your social media needs for you, there is a package available to meet your needs.
Helping individuals and businesses get started marketing themselves online using social tools is something that CSSM is passionate about. It is our philosophy that technology is forever changing, so should our marketing strategies Increasing your company’s SEO, social media consulting in relation specifically to your business, driving traffic to your blog or website through various social media outlets, and managing your online image are only a few of the benefits available by using our services.
Websites & Social Media Links
https://www.cssocialmedia.com/
https://twitter.com/#!/CSSocialMedia
https://www.youtube.com/cssocialmedia
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cs-social-media-llc
https://plus.google.com/+Cssocialmediamarketing/posts
https://www.facebook.com/chaibia.sarhrou
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaibiasarhrou
https://www.pinterest.com/chaibia/
https://plus.google.com/+chaibiasarhrou/posts
Interview Questions
- How did you start in the internet marketing world?
- What’s your background before the digital space?
- What’s your company exactly do in terms of follow up campaigns?
- How do you market for your services offline and online?
- What worked for your services in terms of marketing and what didn’t work?
- From where to start in terms of Social Media Marketing for a new business?
- How much is your social media management campaigns cost per month for an average of 1 post per day?
- Top 3 social media marketing tools?
- What are the main differences between buffer and hootsuit?
- How do you use the local directly marketing to boost the traffic of your clients?
- What are the strategies that you use to Capturing leads and building your mailing list?
- What’s the difference between a shopping cart and payment gateway?
- You recommend Joint Ventures for Online marketers, please share with us some thoughts?
- You write for different magazines, why you do that and what did this experience added to you and your brand?
- Do you offer app development?
- Give us a general overview about how do you price the different services that you offer?
- How much you charge for 1:1 coaching?
- Share with us some of the tools or software that make you more efficient?
- What’s your daily life and work routine looks like?
- What are your other hobbies?
- Who are your top 3 mentors?
- If you are just starting today in your field, from where you will start and what are you going to focus on to be more successful?
- What are the Top 3 apps that you use on your smart phone?
- What are the habits that you are trying to develop to stay efficient?
- What are your top 3 favorite books?
- What are the top 3 people that you are inspired by?
- Do you follow any routine to sleep?
- What makes you really happy?
- How people can contact you?
Transcript
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Hi everyone this is Ahmed Al Kiremli and welcome to Be Efficient Tv. The mission of this web TV show is to boost the efficiency of your business and lifestyle with tips and tricks from leading experts and today I have with me Chaibia Sarhrou, she is an Internet marketing strategist and expert in social media, lead generations and selling, follow-up and tracking systems for leads and customers. Welcome to the show Chaibia.
Chaibia Sarhrou: Thank you for having me.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: It’s my pleasure to have you. How did you start in the Internet marketing world?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I did not expect to do that like when I went to school it was a completely different industry, I went for actor, after university I went to the school for tourism and hospitality so this is a completely different industry for me but I actually came to the United States in 2008 and was working for Disney World, the Epcot Center in Orlando and after my contract ended I was doing nothing just sitting at home and I was using social media a lot because that was the only way I could cheaply and freely communicate with my family so I was on Facebook all day long and then I started, I believe it was in 2010 I started seeing those ads on Facebook talking about how you can make money being a social media manager so here I am on Facebook doing what I’m doing but making money I thought that was very intriguing to me and I looked at it and I got to my first product on social media management in 2010 and then by the end of the year I got myself a couple products and Internet marketing I was intrigued by the industry and how you can do it from the comforts of your home, helping small businesses that normally don’t have experts to work with them and make money that way so that is how I started.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: And then you made like a web development company in social media?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Yeah well I saw the need for web design because I was talking to local businesses, I’m from Las Vegas so local businesses, there is a problem in the area for design because you can hire a web designer that will design a website but it doesn’t have a way to capture leads for example so it’s not like, you hire a web designer that doesn’t have the Internet and marketing expertise or an eye for Internet marketing so you just give them a beautifully looking website that isn’t ready to capture leads or convert them, so I saw the need for that and I was like okay why don’t I bring somebody in that could do that for my clients and I started outsourcing that to one of my web designers and added that as one of the services that I offer and of course I started learning that, of course I like to learn everything in my industry so I can design websites as well but…
Ahmed Al Kiremli: You didn’t face challenges that you are just like moving to the US in a totally new environment, did you have a mentor who like to argue how to, about Internet marketing or did you buy courses, what did you do?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I bought a lot of courses in 2011, and that my mentor who is mentoring me right now and I thank them for that, his name is Rex Whiteheart, he is not known for a consultant or coach, he has been doing business for more than 40 years and he has different businesses, a lot of expertise starting and growing businesses, I met him at an Internet marketing seminar and we just clicked, I loved him and his wife so they are like family to me right now. They learned that I was by myself in the United States and asking me the same questions, how are you doing? Do you have a mentor? And I said I just read a lot and do online courses and for me, the people that I read their books and watch their videos, they are mentoring me even though it is not one-on-one but I still learn a lot from them.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: For the audience, how can you describe the difference between learning from books and learning from a mentor from your standpoint?
Chaibia Sarhrou: For me if I have a one-on-one coaching course for example with Rex, we don’t call it that I just text him if I have a question or call him or his wife she is an amazing, she teaches me a lot about sales because she is great at it so if I have a question I will call them, it’s more personable because I can speak directly to them and it’s better than just reading from books but if you don’t have any other choice or option for you cannot afford a mentor or don’t have anyone that is a good point to start reading books.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: How many employees do you have now or do you just outsource?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I have zero employees, I outsource everything with contractors and I have contractors with that I’ve been working with since 2010 when I just started and we have a good relationship and they are loyal to me, just like a family working in a business but no employees.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Which platform do you use like elance, oDesk, which platform do you use to higher outsource?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I found my outsource people on oDesk but now I don’t use it anymore, I just use PayPal to pay.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: All right, you do lots of things in terms of follow-up and selling systems for leads and then converting them into customers, how do you do that?
Chaibia Sarhrou: For my business or for my clients?
Ahmed Al Kiremli: For both.
Chaibia Sarhrou: It depends, for me I capture leads online and off-line, for example I have… I also drive traffic from off-line to online so if I’m writing an article for a magazine for example I always, each article I have something at the end of it where okay if you want to learn more here is a checklist or something that elaborates what I’ve already talked about in that article and I have a landing page designed specifically for that article to capture those readers so that would capture the lead and I use AWebber as an auto responding system so it will capture the lead, I put in a list and then they automatically get my auto responding sequence and then after that they get involved in my newsletter. And then in my newsletter I am sending articles and that’s the way I do it…
Ahmed Al Kiremli: So let’s start from the beginning like you write for magazines, they pay you for that or do you just volunteered to have publicity in those magazines and they invite you because you are an expert in Internet marketing to write in these magazines?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I’ve never gotten paid for any article that I wrote, I write it for free but for me it’s not free for me it’s gaining exposure.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: How much traffic are you getting from each one likely to?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I haven’t…
Ahmed Al Kiremli: When you write an article for a magazine like how much…
Chaibia Sarhrou: When I write an article the thing is, the magazines or physical magazines so when you write the article you don’t know like a few months later yeah someone opted in them the next day someone else did but it depends when people read the magazine.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: And the opt in is usually like a window on the sidebar of your website or do you specifically for each article…
Chaibia Sarhrou: For each article I have a landing page.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: All right by itself?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Yes, on itself, and for that article for example I wrote about LinkedIn, how to use LinkedIn and I use LinkedIn myself to network and get business and it’s a great tool to get leads from and I explained about that and then I have a checklist so if you want to learn more about that you go to my social media and then back to the landing page and then you put in your information and get the cheat sheet and the checklist and then you are enrolled in my newsletter.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: But you use a landing page for each article because it works more to motivate the people to subscribe, why don’t you just send them to your website and you already have an opt in there?
Chaibia Sarhrou: It’s because like what intrigued them to go to my landing page to opt in was that article, that specific subject about LinkedIn so it’s a way to convert or get more people to opt in, better conversion than just sending them to my website where I have a different gift that doesn’t speak specifically to what they have in that single moment when they are reading that article.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: You didn’t try like on your website to use an opt in which is forcing them to often without like allowing them to close it or it do you think that will not work it is better to use a landing page? And when you use a landing page which system do you use?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I just design them because my website is on HTML so I just design each landing page myself and that way I know exactly what I wanted to be.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: What worked the most for you in terms of Internet marketing to get leads and what didn’t work for you?
Chaibia Sarhrou: As far as marketing, I love networking myself and people that work with me on LinkedIn, I’m always active, every time someone sends the invitation I will reply back with a message that starts the conversation about how we can help each other, I also have a couple groups on Facebook, I have a couple groups, I have one group of local professionals on LinkedIn and other groups about local professionals as well on Facebook and those groups allow me to network and generate some leads that way, what did not work for me, I’m talking back about what works, articles I think are a great way to position yourself as an expert and generate leads that way as well.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Where do you post these articles?
Chaibia Sarhrou: The ones that I post for the magazines and the ones that I post on my own on my own blog and I also post on LinkedIn, publish there. He gets a lot of exposure that way. What did not work for me was one thing that I’m not going to be doing again was are you familiar with Groupon?
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Yes.
Chaibia Sarhrou: They did something similar but it’s B2B.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Okay.
Chaibia Sarhrou: I’m not going to say the name of the company but 2 companies that I tried, they give kind of coupons to other businesses to entice them to buy the services, that did not work for me, I got some customers but it did not convert, it did not transition into a long-term client which I was hoping for and it was just…
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Is it maybe because it sends to a web development and Internet marketing and it’s not a restaurant or something that’s what didn’t work?
Chaibia Sarhrou: No, it’s B2B, it’s not business to consumer so the audience in that platform are companies so they need my services and I did get finds that way our customers that way but it did not stay because what entice them to buy my service was the price and back then I didn’t think of that so I got them because I gave them a cheap price but…
Ahmed Al Kiremli: What else didn’t work, only that?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I believe only that.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: All right.
Chaibia Sarhrou: I’m sure there are other things that did not work but that’s the only one I can think of.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: And now your main strategy is just to write an article and it’s something about Internet marketing and then you lead them into a leading page and you take the emails and you have different mailing lists or you email on the autoresponder based on that is a different emails?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Exactly and because also there is different audiences like people who read my magazine…
Ahmed Al Kiremli: How often do you send email marketing campaigns because like usually the email marketers have ruined the reputation of email marketing and people like just opt out from the emails, how often do you send that and like let’s say on the autoresponder of that mailing list you send let’s say 4 emails, then you are selling a product or you are just directing them to a general web development service that you provide?
Chaibia Sarhrou: So when they just opt in, they get whatever they opted in for and then a couple of days later they receive another autoresponder and another email and then after that then they would just receive periodic broadcasts or emails from me about new articles or something, I don’t send them every single day.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: So like on a weekly basis you send?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Weekly and sometimes if there is something going on and then I will send them more often.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Do you manage email marketing campaigns for other companies?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Yes.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: All right, how much does it cost like on average if you must like a rough estimation? Email per month or how do you structure it?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I don’t offer that as a standalone service so it is part of other services that I offer.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Like what?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Like social media management and marketing for example. Local directories, set up and management.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Just explained to the audience what is local directories?
Chaibia Sarhrou: For local businesses, businesses with a local location, we put them on different directories like Google my business right now is a new one, then there is another local directory like yelp, etc. There are a lot of local directories that local businesses need to have citations in in order to have their business cited so that people can find them.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: But like if somebody wants only email marketing which is not related maybe to social media you don’t do that and how much does all this package cost that you do?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I just haven’t found someone who came to me just wanting email marketing it’s mostly local businesses who need to do it, most local businesses don’t see the importance of it for some reason, most of them that I have experience talking to don’t see the importance of having a social media marketing campaign or having local directories or SEO, stuff like that but then I introduced the importance of having an email list and following up with them, that’s how it’s been for me so it’s always added something that we wanted.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: So you provide email marketing, social media marketing and local directories listing, what else? And for how much?
Chaibia Sarhrou: It depends again on what’s, I don’t have a set price like if you go to my website you don’t see packages because every business is different, for example I’m doing social media marketing on a monthly basis for this company but they are going to give me the content and I’m not going to have to create it myself so that’s going to make the price differently than someone that I have to do research and create content and do the blogs and based on that… Some companies just want me to do the strategy planning with them and others want to do it themselves, it’s different because anywhere from $600-$2500 if you want to price range.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: You are an Internet like you are a social media expert, social media marketing expert, for the small businesses from where should they start in terms of social media?
Chaibia Sarhrou: First of all knowing who they are going to be talking to, who is their audience, most small businesses don’t know that, if I want to be on social media, who are you going to talk to so we need to talk about that first, we have our consultant section to where we find the target audience and then from there we know who we are talking to right now, now let’s see where we can find them, are they hanging on Facebook or Pinterest or twitter and then based on that we come up with okay so now we know who we are talking to, we know where they are so what is the plan, do we want them to buy the product or opt in, so based on that goal we create a strategic strategy and create a plan and go from there.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: What are your top three social media management tools?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I love Root Suites and that’s the only one that I use.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: What’s the name of it?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Root Suites. I tried a lot of them but the one that I’ve been using for a long time and I love it and I recommend it to all of my clients who are going to do the management themselves is Root Suites.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Did you try…
Ahmed Al Kiremli: And they have a free I’m sorry they have a free version if you have five or less social media platforms to manage and if you have more for a company like mine they have a paid version.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: How much does it cost?
Chaibia Sarhrou: 5 dollars, six dollars per month.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Did you try buffer before or not?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I haven’t.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: All right so we cannot ask you about the differences between that, tell us more about the local directories that you start listing, it works only for the existing off-line businesses or we can use it for an online business if I have a client which is an online business also does it work to list in some local directories or is it only for off-line businesses?
Chaibia Sarhrou: You do have the option if you don’t have the location, you have the option to show your location to consumers but for me I think it’s more important to look online to a hair salon… Because they are called local directories.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: What is the difference between shopping cart and payment gateway?
Chaibia Sarhrou: The shopping cart is a piece of software that you place on your website and what it does is it allows the consumer to update or add products to their cart and also keeps up with inventory, the payment gateway is kind of, it acts as the medium between the shopping cart and the merchant account, it shows the credit card information and transfers it to the merchant account. So a lot of people have a misunderstanding, what is the difference between this and that and why do I need both?
Ahmed Al Kiremli: You recommend joint ventures for online marketers, can you share with us some thoughts about this subject?
Chaibia Sarhrou: If you want to jump start your business instead of going to look for one customer, one by one, find in that same amount of time try to find a joint venture partner who is going to give you exposure to a lot more customers it just multiplies your time and efforts. I use them a lot and I’m always looking for JV partners, I’ll give you an example one of my JV partners is a magazine here, a local magazine and what you do is they have my perfect kind they have local businesses, they had restaurants, not the kind I want to talk to… So I reach out to the owner and offered to manage their social media or their magazine because I saw that they need that and he said shirt so we started working together, I’m managing his social media account and he is very happy with my work so one day I got, it’s very important before you ask someone to give you access make sure that they are sure of the quality of your service or product because nobody wants to jeopardize a relationship if they are not 100% sure you are going to be delivering a good service so after he sampled my work I told him that I saw a lot of his customers did not have an active social media presence and he was like yeah that’s true so I was like well how about together since I offer these services, together we find some package where we can deliver to your existing, your existing clients without you having to do work and bring in new clients that I have to go and pay otherwise to acquire them. So we were working on that right now and I’ve done this before as well so it was a great way to get new clients.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: So you do webinars and you sell a product at the end, how do you use the joint ventures?
Chaibia Sarhrou: No, I’ve done webinars before but this is not involving webinars this is a local magazine, this example is a local magazine with a list of clients and we have their email list and we go to their local networking events where these 2 business owners go and connect and meet each other… And we have an email list so what we do is locally right now we have media kits and we create… One of those pages will be a cobranded page between my business and theirs.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: What are the other services that you provide in your company?
Chaibia Sarhrou: We do web design, you we do social media marketing, management, reputation management, it’s very important to local businesses. We do local directories as well.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: No ad development?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I don’t do that.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: How much do you charge for one-on-one coaching or training, consulting?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I don’t charge per hour or a charge per project so it depends what the project is about, for example I’m starting on a social media marketing campaign… So it’s different because we are now just spending one hour, I’ll give you another example… Company that has never been on social media. It was about like let’s say four hours.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Consultation.
Chaibia Sarhrou: Consultation between everything because we have to develop everything together, we have to find the customer avatar, what are their goals to get out of that social media campaign. We had to figure out all of this with their help, do you want me to tell you how much?
Ahmed Al Kiremli: As you like.
Chaibia Sarhrou: It was about $2000. And that was about four hours of work so it’s like $500 an hour.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: When you start like social media campaigns for new companies you start with PPC to attract some likes or fans and then you start making the content that you post?
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Yes, I start with the Facebook ads to get them some likes because I definitely want those likes to be highly targeted, then a lot of businesses that go and buy likes and fans…
Ahmed Al Kiremli: From Fiver or some site?
Chaibia Sarhrou: The worst thing you can do to your business is attract fake fans because they are going to hurt you more than they’re going to help you so the best way to do it is to start a Facebook campaign, ad campaign to attract likes for example if you are local in Las Vegas you want local business unless you are someone who attracts tourists, that’s different but if you are a salon you want Las Vegas ladies, so basically really hardly target the people you want.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: How did you get access to the magazines like you call them you tell them that you want to read an article for them how do you do it?
Chaibia Sarhrou: That’s the beauty of social media, I never ever have done any cold calling in my life. First of all I don’t know how to do it, I’m not a good salesperson, that’s something when I just started…
Ahmed Al Kiremli: You are a good salesperson on social media.
Chaibia Sarhrou: That’s because it’s so natural, but I’m not a season salesperson. I’ve never done any cold calling, I reach out to people on LinkedIn a lot so that’s why I love LinkedIn.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: How do you do that? Like you send them a message or how do you do it?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I do have a LinkedIn group so that’s going all the time, in my group I can message anyone or I can add them as a connection, I don’t need their email, that’s the great thing about starting a group or joining a group. So my book is targeted to local professionals, entrepreneurs. So when someone tries to join the group I make sure they are local professionals and then I update them automatically and they will receive an email from me as a group owner and I welcome them to the group and give them a link to my website, that’s a small way to give them some traffic to your website and then if they are someone that would want to work with eventually then I send a different message to that person.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Share with us some of the software that you use to make you more efficient?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I use my iPad or paper, even though I work in technology, I do social media so people think I have all kinds of gadgets and stuff but I tried to be more efficient by the old way of having a paper and pen I write down exactly what I want to do, what I’m going to do first and I put the timeline that I want that to be done by and I think that works for me better because I tried different software, I try software that shows you how long you been on Facebook, how long you’ve been on each website and I found that it did not help me as much, it showed me where I was but it wasn’t making that big of a difference and I find myself always going to my pen and paper.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: How is your daily life and work routine look like? Take us from like when you wake up in the morning until you sleep what do you do?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I wake up the first thing I do is I drink a lot of water and eat, I take care of myself first when I wake up I believe that we can’t have a successful business if we are not taking care of ourselves, if you are not healthy, if you’re not physically and mentally ready. So I drink a lot of water, hydrate myself and eat breakfast and then I have a puppy seven months old, but even before I had him I would go for either a walk or run or I meditate and then I start my work, my business, I work from home I have a home office so I have to be very disciplined with what I do so the night before and make sure that I have a list of what I’m going to do. And I used to have this huge list but now I have only three main things that I’m doing and that’s if I did nothing I will finish those three things, before I used to fill out my to do list with a lot of things that are easy or comfortable to do and I found myself doing is naturally anyways so I don’t need to put them down on the to do list, so I finished those three things first thing in the morning and then they start going to manage my social media for my clients and do most of that myself and then I talked to my outsourced people and see where the projects are and talk to clients and then take phone calls or call back… And after everything that’s very important to be done.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: You manage the campaigns in 2 languages, English and Arabic?
Chaibia Sarhrou: No. Only English. I worked with a couple Arabic people from Dubai and from Saudi Arabia but they did their campaigns in English, their social media in English so I didn’t have to do it in Arabic.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: What is the most challenges that you face when you opened your web development company?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Lack of knowledge is my first business so I didn’t know, I thought it was a cool thing to do but I didn’t know that there was a lot more to that than just knowing social media, it doesn’t matter if you’re an expert in something if you don’t know, of course it’s very important but if you don’t know the ins and outs of business, you don’t know about creating a business then you end up having a stressful job. So learning the business was the most challenging and of course I made a lot of mistakes that I wouldn’t make now and it is an ongoing thing I’m not saying I want it all.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Back to social media, how many posts do you recommend on say twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, Google plus per day?
Chaibia Sarhrou: It depends on the audience, that’s what I recommend my clients to do, do one a day, that’s the bare minimum for me and then if you have more interaction then at the top you start doing 2 of them because you don’t want to bore people, some people just post all day long every hour they have a new post but nobody’s interacting with that post so that means that people don’t want to hear from you but if they are interacting more than means they want to hear more so test your audience, test your market.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: What are your other hobbies?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Cooking, I love to cook and bake, I went to school, I’m a trained chef so, I never worked as a chef but I do love to cook and bake at my home for my friends, I love to hike and do exciting things like jumping out of the stratosphere or jumping out of a plane or something exciting, just going to a roller coaster and finding the most difficult roller coasters.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Have you worked with some clients based on commission per lead or per customer?
Chaibia Sarhrou: No, I haven’t.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Who are your top three mentors?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Dan Kennedy, I love him have you heard of him? He’s a marketer, he’s a genius marketer, his name is Dan Kennedy, look them up, he has a lot of books. No BS books.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Yes I’ve heard of him.
Chaibia Sarhrou: I have most of his books and a lot of his products, I’ve never met him in person but I was told to buy his bestseller… Coaching group and another person, he became a client of mine and we have a good relationship right now on Facebook… I of course, Rex Whiteheart is my friend and mentor and the first person I met in the United States.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: If you’re just starting today, starting over again what would you change?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Big mistake I made was that I did not mind just started I did not focus on taking clients that would pay on a monthly basis, it was always on projects to clients. I created a website and that’s it, with my proposal for the website, I did not think, now I look back and I’m like how did you not think about it? I guess that’s how we learn though. Monthly management updates to the websites, I charge 250 a month for that, for each client for the basic package, I was losing all this money, I have done tons of websites but I never charge for those monthly posting things so that was a big mistake, another one is I worked with a niche just because it was my first client in that niche, okay I love this client so I probably should just go in this niche, that was a decision that was not really, I did not study my decision before I made it. However I did not think that there is no more growth with that niche, all they need are these couple of products or services and that’s it so then I get stuck and did not have a monthly income from these clients.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Top three apps that use the new smartphone?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I love Root Suite, I have pages, Internet pages because I use that to manage, one thing I don’t do in Root Suite is I don’t schedule the messages that go to Facebook, I schedule everything except for Facebook because they have their own scheduling tool and they don’t favor the content from the third-party programs.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: So what does that mean when they don’t favor?
Chaibia Sarhrou: As far as the reach, when you post something on Facebook page it is like what you call the edge rank and it is their way of calculating how many people, how much exposure so I really don’t like that so to just make sure that I’m in a safe place I go and I use Facebook, everything for Facebook I schedule and Facebook. The other tool I have is podcasts I love to listen to podcasts on him driving or something.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: What are the habits you’re trying to develop to stay efficient?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Something that most entrepreneurs, some people won’t think it has to do with efficiency but it does, big-time and that’s meditation. I’m very new to meditation in general so I’m on and off, I’m not doing it every single day but I’m trying to make that a daily habit just like exercising. So that’s taking care of myself, the meditation I would like that to be habit for me once a day. What else?
Ahmed Al Kiremli: You do it in the morning or in the evening when you meditate?
Chaibia Sarhrou: In the morning.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Okay.
Chaibia Sarhrou: Top three books, favorite books?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Think and grow Rich, working on myself first, I love Dan Kennedy’s books, I have most of them I reread them again because every time I do I learn something else, there is another book called the 10 time rule, that’s a very very good book recommended by Rex my mentor. I thank them for giving that to me, I love reading so there are a lot of other books that I read again, there’s another book for personal development and that’s called the Master Key system.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Master Key system.
Chaibia Sarhrou: Yes that’s an amazing book if you want to read and develop yourself.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Top three people that you’re inspired by?
Chaibia Sarhrou: There are a lot of them.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: 3.
Chaibia Sarhrou: Muriel Tier, I told you about her she was a coach of mine and she is a beautiful woman inside and out, she has a very successful business and I love the fact that she achieve that much success by helping others, she loves to see her products and services make a difference in people’s lives and that’s something that I really love about her. There is this young girl her name is [inaudible]. I wish her a lot of success and I love her videos, I watch her YouTube channel all the time and again she is all about helping women change their lives and fulfill their purpose in life, I really like her stuff. The third person, I love Dan Kennedy a lot so I guess he would be another person I would love to be like one day with all of his influence and knowledge and success.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Do you follow any routine to sleep?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I read.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: For how long like usually 15 minutes or 20 minutes and then you fall asleep?
Chaibia Sarhrou: More than that I refer like an hour at least.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: So mainly you read before you sleep. Okay.
Chaibia Sarhrou: But I don’t need reading to sleep, I sleep a lot and I love to sleep, like one thing about me is I believe I have to rest a lot, at least eight hours of sleep and I have no problem falling asleep, especially if I’m writing something the next day then I would read about that subject that night and then the next day I would get up and start writing about it but I think it’s a very good habit but I don’t need it.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: How do you write constantly? It’s difficult and do you write in the morning mainly, how can you keep up always with new fresh content, do you keep motivating yourself to write?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Deadlines.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Okay and how that motivating yourself as like you work from home and you don’t have a boss, you don’t struggle with that, what is the system that sometimes you do shift or like you watch that same movie in the middle of the work to change your mindset and then come back to work or take a shower or what do you do?
Chaibia Sarhrou: First of all I start with working out and eating and drinking tons of water that gives me energy in the morning so I have my burst of energy in the morning, I meditate in the morning and that you frequently, I always snack like a couple hours later I’m going to go and have another snack and that will be like 10 minutes of me away from my computer snacking and then coming back, after I have lunch I don’t do it every single day but sometimes I need to do it, I take a nap. For 30 minutes or so. Then after I wake up I start working again and then I tried to make sure that the most difficult tasks that I have to do that drain my energy and brain, I do them in the morning so by the end of the day I have easier tasks to do so it doesn’t require a lot of energy, a lot of thinking so even if I’m tired a little bit I can still do them.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Is SEO working for your site or do you not post very frequently and focus on social media to get clients?
Chaibia Sarhrou: I do focus on social media to get clients, I am however [inaudible] on my city and I do get sometimes that way as well so it’s not, I’m not going to say it’s not working but I focus more on getting relationships building my own relationships with my clients I have a big network on Facebook and LinkedIn and I believe those are my main sources.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Do you set like daily targets for how many words you want to write or do you just set deadlines?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Adjusted lines. Because I am more motivated by deadlines if I say I’m going to have the article done by this time then I’m going to have it done by this time, deadlines motivate me when it comes to that.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: What are the things that make you really happy?
Chaibia Sarhrou: Making someone else happy and making a difference in someone else’s life, and my business I love when I hear good feedback from my clients, that makes my day all the time so I strive for that they give me more energy to keep going and another thing, I feel like I’m doing something good and is just a good motivation for me in personal life I always like to make other people happy.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: How can people contact you?
Chaibia Sarhrou: My website, Csocialmedia.com and if you googled my first and last name, I don’t know if you have my first name or last name… But if you google my first and last name I’m probably the only one with that name so you can find me with Google, you’ll find my LinkedIn and Facebook and twitter and all my accounts and you can message me that way and I love connecting with people online.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: Thank you so much Chaibia for this interview I really appreciate it.
Chaibia Sarhrou: Thank you, I really appreciate you having me here think you so much.
Ahmed Al Kiremli: It’s a pleasure, thanks everyone, be efficient and stay efficient and see you soon with another leading expert.
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