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Your client attraction device, also known as an ethical bribe or free taste, is the information that you give away on your site in exchange for a visitor's name and email address. I call it a client attraction device because it helps to build your list. Unfortunately, just like a product that you sell on your site, your client attraction device also has to be promoted.
What do you need to do to get prospects to discover and sign up for your client attraction device? Here are the 10 most...
•6 Quick Ways to Stabilize Your Business with Multiple Revenue Streams
The old adage, "Don't put all of your eggs into one basket," is especially true in today's economic climate for any business. Just as you would never let all of your income be derived from one or two clients, creating a diversified business where you have multiple streams of income is the key to success with an online service business. If one income stream tapers off for a time, you are adequately covered by the others. I have been doing this very successfully in my business for the last 8...
•Facebook Marketing: 5 Unique Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Facebook Page
Now that everyone who owns a business seems to be building Facebook Pages (also known as Fan Pages, Like Pages, and Business Pages), the next inevitable dilemma that we face is what to do with those pages once they're created and how to drive traffic there. I've seen companies popping up all over with offers of "1000 new Facebook Fans for $xx." I'm not sure that type of strategy is reliable or even works.
What I've often seen business owners do, and what they're encouraged to do, are three...
•7 Most Effective Tasks to Authentically Outsource in Your Social Media Marketing
Social networking can take up more time than you realize. You're online checking your Facebook status updates, and suddenly an hour has passed before you know it. Is there any way to authentically outsource your social networking so that this marketing activity doesn't become another drain on your already too-full schedule?
The answer is both yes and no. The nature of social networking is to connect and create bonds with others. So, it would stand to reason that it would be difficult to...
•Blog Marketing: 4 Best-Kept Secret Strategies to Double Your Blog Subscribers
It seems as though many blog readers still prefer to get blog updates via email, despite the popularity of RSS feeds, I have 21,000+ unread blog posts in my Bloglines account, so I'm definitely one of those. Since there's no real way to track numbers through an RSS reader, I have no idea of how many people read my blog through an RSS reader. Consequently,I began to do some research on how to better harness my blog subscribers and increase my subscriber base.
Here are the 4 strategies you can...
•3 Ways to Improve Customer Service with Help Desk Software
When you start your online business, you have very few customer service issues. Those that do emerge can usually be handled fairly easily via email or a phone call, and you'll probably resolve most of these yourself. However, as your business grows and you begin to develop products and programs, the number of customer service issues increases, as well. You then begin to look for a way to delegate this task, but if you don't have procedures outlined for how you have handled these issues in...
•10 Steps to Triple Your Prospect Conversions with an Email Mini-Course
For years, I've been giving away a PDF ebook as my client attraction device to entice prospects to sign up for my list. This strategy has served me well as a way to grow my list. However, what I've discovered during that time is that many people download my ebook and then never open it. So, as you might imagine, my rate of converting a customer prospect to a buyer isn't as high as I'd like.
Just like the people who join my list, I, too, often don't open a PDF ebook when I download it. What I...
•Do You Use Your Introversion as An Excuse for Not Marketing Yourself?
? I've often been complimented on my ability to be fearless. No, I've never skydived from a plane or bungee-jumped from a bridge, but I have taken chances and risks in my life that friends told me that they'd never take. Most surprising was that I'd do these things given my natural introverted personality. However, in my early years, I fought my introversion as hard as I could, feeling that those who acted in extroverted ways got more rewards. I continuously challenged myself and my...
•Step-by-Step Internet Marketing Action Plan to Keep Your Client Pipeline Full
What's the biggest issue small business owners have with marketing? Paying attention to marketing tasks when they're trying to run their business. So many times marketing falls to the wayside, only to be resurrected when the client pipeline is drying up. Frankly, then it's too late to worry about marketing, for no amount of last-minute marketing will help you pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat when you're desperate for clients.
It's only when you decide to integrate marketing into...
•5 Step Introvert Guide to Getting More Clients from Your Industry's Top 20 Influencers
When I first became familiar with the professional coaching industry in the late 1990's, I quickly became a follower of Thomas Leonard, credited with founding the coaching industry as we know it today. One of the suggestions that Thomas offered for growing a new business was to develop a Team 100 List. To complete this list, you were required to brainstorm the names of 100 business owners in various industries with whom you were acquainted who would be willing to help you promote your...
•Teleseminar Marketing: 10 Secrets to Being the Guest Expert EVERYONE Wants to Interview
I interview guest experts every month as one of the benefits offered on my membership site. Most of the time, the preparation for the interview is fairly easy, as the guest expert sends all the requested information in a timely fashion. However, sometimes getting the info from the expert (or the expert's assistant) is a nightmare. The requested info comes in bits and pieces, and that's only after multiple email requests have been sent.
Then, recently, I hit the guest expert nirvana. In one...
•10 Steps to Creating a Lead-Generating Authority Web Site
One of the most effective client attraction strategies you can create for your business is to develop an authority web site. Most web sites, even in this day and age, are simple brochure sites, telling visitors who runs the business, what they do, and how to contact them. An authority web site, however, is one based on a specific topic. Better yet, search engines love these sites. Because search engines strive to provide the most relevant sites when someone is seeking information on a...
•3 Secrets to Overcoming Your Fear of Self-Promotion
You've got your online business up and running at last, and now comes the part you love to hate--promoting yourself. This is a huge stumbling block for many online business owners, especially those who are introverts or who may have been in a supportive or back-end role in a company and made the magic happen behind the scenes while the limelight fell on their supervisors or other more outgoing colleagues.
Think about the people in your company who were promoted or left for a better position....
•Automate Your Marketing: 5 Most Effective Automated Marketing Tasks for More Clients and Greater Sal
Having to market your business, whether online or offline, is the bane of existence for most business owners. Too many times you get pulled in multiple directions, trying this and trying that, with no real plan or schedule in mind. Mired down by the details, marketing is often pushed to the side when the demands become too great and your client load becomes too heavy. It's only when you need to replace income with new clients that marketing again becomes a focus for your business.
The best...
•Drive Traffic to Your Site with a 6-Step Blog Comments Blueprint
One of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your web site is by commenting on other people's blogs. However, a vast majority of people don't do this the right way. Their primary traffic strategy is to leave meaningless comments on the posts of blogs in their niche just to get a few clicks from the passing traffic. I get these comments all the time on my blog, and wonder why the commenter bothered. I just delete the posts because they add nothing to the conversation, or, worse yet,...
•Signature System: 5 Proven Steps to Creating a Signature Program That Attracts Clients Like Crazy!
If you teach what you know in some way (as a speaker, author, coach, trainer, or consultant), you'll soon discover that no one buys training, consulting or coaching. They buy a solution to their problems. So, rather than trying to sell your service (a group coaching package, for example), sell a signature program system that helps your target market achieve measurable results.
What's a signature system? It's a way of putting together a package of what you offer in a step-by-step system that...
•Video Marketing: How Introverts Can Get More Clients Online with Screencast Videos
Even though videos are one of the hottest Internet marketing strategies today, I have been very slow to jump on the video marketing bandwagon. Why? Because making a talking head video of myself is about as enticing as dipping my body in honey and watching the flies swarm over me. I've never liked being on camera nor having my picture taken (case in point the hundreds of family reunion pictures I've taken over the years as the family photographer, with nary a picture of me in sight!), and so...
•Internet Marketing for Introverts: Use Your Gifts to Attract All the Clients You Need
When I began to market my business online, I just started to do things that were pretty natural to me. I'm a great teacher, so I held teleclasses, and I'm also a great writer and researcher, so I began to write about what I knew. Holding teleclasses was definitely a strategic marketing move, but not so much with the writing. Once I found my own voice, I wrote because I enjoyed it, was good at it, and got high praise for my efforts. I never envisioned it as my primary marketing strategy....
•5 Proven Tactics to Uplevel Your Client Base
I hear from clients constantly who say that their clients can't afford to pay them, or that they're constantly besieged by requests for "pro bono services." Don't get me wrong -- helping those in need is an admirable part of any business plan and business philosophy. However, if your entire client base is filled with people who can't afford to pay you what you need to charge to stay in business, then you've got a major problem. You are working with the wrong segment of your target market....
•SEO Tips: Get More Traffic with These 10 Important Inbound LInks
Don't overlook your inbound linking strategy as you think about search engine optimization for your site. An inbound link is a hyperlink back to your site from another web site. The one constant and reliable strategy in search engine optimization is that sites with a variety of high quality backlinks rank higher in the search engine results pages.
Why are these links to your site important? They can can...
-- bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link
-- increase...
•Recurring Income Tips: 13 Examples of Continuity Income in a Service-Based Business
Tired of the day-to-day struggle of chasing one client to the next? Want a better way to run your business that enables you to better predict your monthly income? One of the best ways to stabilize your income when you're a self-employed service professional is to create a monthly recurring source of income for yourself, commonly referred to as a continuity program.
Many continuity programs focus on providing products each month (think of any number of beauty product clubs you see on...
•Article Marketing: 7 Essential Elements of an Article Resource Box That Gets Clicked
Distributing your articles to various article banks and directories online (what I refer to as article marketing) won't work for you unless you have a well-developed resource box. A resource box is the bio information about the author that appears at the end of the article. Why is a great resource box important to the success of your article marketing efforts? Because it is the key element that will drive traffic back to your site, which should be your primary purpose when you engage in...
•Article Marketing: Top 7 Out-of-the-Box Ideas to Get Your Articles Published Online
Even though I use an amazing article distribution service, not all publications or blogs serving my industry or my target market are on the distribution list for this service or for the well-known, high traffic article directories. So, to ramp up the syndication of my articles yet another notch, I also submit them to specialty or niche publications that I have discovered over the years.
It's not always easy to find these publications and sites. Here are my 7 best out-of-the-box ideas to...
•How to Get 95% of Your Clients from Internet Marketing
I've had an online business since 1999, and I started it from my rural, East Texas hometown where the reigning industries are bass fishing, forestry and timber, banking, and education, none of which are markets in which I have any interest in working. So, what's a new online biz owner to do when she lives on the backside of nowhere with nary a business networking opportunity in sight? Take advantage of the power of Internet marketing, of course.
Unfortunately, I didn't realize right away...
•Copywriting Tips: 13 Steps to Creating the Perfect Sales Letter Template
Once you have created an information product, you may think you've completed all of the hard work. Unfortunately the most challenging piece of product creation is yet to come -- the creation of the sales letter landing page where you talk about and sell your product.
Creating an effective sales letter is really all about following a formula. If you look at enough sales letters, you realize that most of them follow the same template. While there aren't necessarily any hard-and-fast rules,...
•Marketing Tips: The Internet Marketing Secret That Stops Small Business Owners in Their Tracks
All of my clients are exceptional at the service they provide for their clients. However, many of them come to me for coaching because they're having a hard time filling their practices and finding clients. Almost without fail, they tell me that this is a marketing problem. It is a marketing problem, but not the type they think it is.
When I ask them to describe their ideal client or target market, I'll get a very general and all-encompassing answer like, "Oh, I want to work with...
•What To Do If Your Facebook or Twitter Account is Hacked
Unfortunately, this scenario is a reality for all of us who use social networking -- it's not a matter of IF your Twitter or Facebook account will be hacked, but simply WHEN. I've been on the receiving end of messages from my friends whose accounts have been hacked. The message typically compliments me on some body part or requests me to click on a link to view a video of myself. Also, there are usually a number of misspellings in the message.
Be very careful when you get those kinds of...
•Marketing Results: 7 Crucial Stats You Need to Track Your Marketing Success
You may feel as though you're on a hamster wheel when it comes to measuring your marketing. You run, run, and run some more, but don't seem to be getting anywhere. That feeling is perfectly natural if you're not measuring your ROI (Return on Investment) with your marketing. For years, I've been on this hamster wheel myself, without a system that I liked to help me measure my marketing results. Numbers and statistics have never been my strong suit, and even though I got A's in most of my...
•Copywriting Tips: How to Market Benefits vs Features
One of the most difficult concepts to grasp for online business owners who are writing their own sales copy is to write about the benefits of your product/service, rather than the features. Even though this skill is critically important, I would guess that less than 10% of business owners truly understand it. Not surprisingly, it's also the primary reason that so many marketing campaigns fail.
Think about the products and services that you buy. Why did you purchase them? One of the reasons...
•Used In Breast Augmentation, Silicone Breast Implants Have A Natural Look And Feel
Copyright (c) 2010 OnlineBizU.com
The silicone breast implants (now approved for general use) that are used today have a somewhat thicker shell than those that were used before 1992. They are also filled with a thicker silicone gel than past implants. The breast implants come pre-filled in various sizes and they are securely sealed so that there is little to no chance of any leakage. The word silicone with an "e" at the end is referring to a group of chemical compounds that vary in thickness...
•15 Powerful Ways to Promote Your Teleclass
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
Teleclasses, also referred to as teleseminars, teleconferences, and webinars (with the added component of seeing a presentation) provide a platform for online service business owners to connect virtually with prospects around the world via a teleconference bridge line and share information with them. Many service professionals use paid or free teleseminars to grow their lists, establish their expertise, and deliver training and coaching programs. It's an...
•7 Strategies for Building Online Relationships with Industry VIPs
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
One of the most difficult aspects of being an independent service professional is being seen as credible and as a viable expert in your industry. Until recently, that process often took years and required an investment of much blood, sweat and tears. Ultimately, it wasn't until you paid your dues that anyone of influence in your industry would pay any attention to you or be interested in speaking with you. Thus, any hope you had of creating a strategic...
•How to Become Your Industry's Leading Expert in 30 Days
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
Many online solo service professionals wonder how they will ever become known in their industry, given the easy access to the abundance of information found online. Almost everyone claims to be an expert, so it stands to reason that some percentage of that group are charlatans. How do you create trust and authenticity with your target market and be seen as a real, true expert rather than as a sham?
One of the easiest and quickest ways to do this is by...
•5 Secrets to Turbocharging Your Online Business with a Telesummit, Today!
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
I've been listening to a number of list building and lead generation teleclasses lately, and many of them have been offered in the form of a telesummit. A telesummit is a virtual online conference that offers a line-up of varied speakers over a period of time, like a few days or over several weeks. The telesummit is usually organized by a theme, like outsourcing or lead generation, or for a particular target market, like the online telesummit for virtual...
•Ethical Bribes: 10 Most Effective Client Attraction Device Giveaways
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
One of the quickest ways to build your email marketing list is by creating an ethical bribe, or what I refer to as a client attraction device. This free giveaway serves to entice visitors to your site to sign up for your email list because they want to access your solution to their problem proffered in your email list opt-in box.
What are the two most important characteristics of an effective client attraction device? It must provide the solution to at...
•7 Reasons Why an Online Business is the PERFECT Business for Introverts
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
I recently realized that much of my 1970's childhood upbringing both enhanced my natural tendency toward introversion and prepared me to own a virtual online business. I grew up out in the country, about 10 miles out of town. My friends lived 10 miles from town in other directions (about 20 miles from me), and my parents, having raised my siblings and me with a Depression-era mentality, didn't believe it was necessary to chauffeur us from place-to-place...
•Top 10 Firefox Browser Plugins
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
About a year ago I fired Internet Explorer as my primary browser. Why? Because it crashed on me constantly and took forever at times to transition from one site to another. I've found the Firefox browser much more user friendly, especially given the number of plugins that have been developed for the browser.
The ability to customize Firefox with these plug-in extensions is what makes this open-source browser so special. However, there are so many...
•How to Use Your Ezine Thank You Page to Create a One Time Offer
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
Many times, when you sign up for a free giveaway or purchase an item, you are taken to an OTO (One Time Offer) page, where you'll be given the opportunity to purchase a "never to be seen again, one time offer," which is a product that has been discounted for one time only during this one particular transaction. In this transaction scenario, you have two choices: either buy the product now at the special discounted price, or continue on without buying the...
•Business Planning: 4 Steps to Creating Your Online Business Model Blueprint
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
I'm in the process of completely rethinking my business model, and that will be my primary focus as I plan this year's business retreat for myself. Your business model doesn't have to be at all complex, but should provide the guiding force for all that you do, like guiding you to the opportunities to accept (and those to decline), the joint ventures and strategic alliances to pursue, and the new ideas you should retain and develop, as well as those to let go...
•Twitter Marketing: How to be Follow-Worthy on Twitter
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
I often get asked the question, "How do I get more followers on Twitter?" Many of my clients want to pay a sum of money for the latest scheme to get them 10,000 new followers in 24 hours or some such nonsense as that. As in all marketing strategies, it's not the number that counts. Rather, it's the quality in the numbers that really matters. So, 10,000 followers who are not members of your target market are fairly useless to you. Of much greater value...
•Top 8 Signs of ECommerce Fraud: How to Detect Fraudulent Credit Card Transactions
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
When you have an online component of your business, experiencing ecommerce fraud is becoming the rule rather than the exception. No longer is it a matter of "if" this will happen to you but "when" it will happen to you. I did some quick research and was astounded at the extent of fraudulent transactions, especially given the poor state of the current U.S. economy.
My first major case of ecommerce fraud happened this past week. I was running a special...
•Twitter Marketing: 6 Steps to Creating a Viral Marketing Campaign with Twitter Hashtags
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
Twitter, as a popular social networking platform, is a viral marketing strategy all on its own, especially if your followers like your tweets and retweet them to their followers. However, I've recently noticed another trend in Twitter usage that increases its viral marketing capabilities through the use of hashtags.
What's a hashtag, anyway? Also called the pound sign, the hashtag (#) is added to a tweet as a way of creating trackable categories, groups, or...
•Amazon.com Marketing: How to Get Your Blog Published on Amazon's Kindle
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
Amazon's Kindle is a electronic book-reading device that allows people to purchase and download electronic versions of books, newspapers, and magazines. Now, you can have your blog available to Kindle readers, as well. Best of all, you can get paid for this strategy. However, you don't get to pick the price Kindle owners pay to subscribe to your blog. Amazon chooses the price, based on what it believes is fair. This means $0.99 or $1.99 per month for most...
•Ezine Marketing: How to Triple Your Ezine Opt-ins With a Squeeze Page
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
For years I've resisted the urge to create a squeeze page for my email newsletter. A squeeze page is a one-page site, or a landing page on a site, that has one call to action: convince the visitor to enter her name and email address to join your list and/or receive your giveaway. On a traditional squeeze page, the visitor has only one option -- to part with her name and email address to opt into your list. This is how the squeeze page term was coined, as...
•10 Most Effective Questions for Take-Action Testimonials
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
Client testimonials can make or break a web site. They are a vital factor in establishing a relationship of trust with new visitors to your site. Visitors want to see that others just like them have hired you or purchased your products and have successfully overcome some hurdle or some issue. Better yet, when the testimonials specifically note how the client's life or business has been enhanced by buying your product or service, the visitor then begins to...
•5 Best Strategies to Develop a Responsive Email List
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
I see the well-known Internet marketing gurus do this all the time -- they begin to try and sell to me when I first opt into their list. This has worked quite well for them over the years, but I think the tide is turning and people are generally becoming more marketing-savvy. Your list members don't mind being sold to, provided that they have a relationship with you and have completed the like, know and trust journey (or are at least on the path of this...
•5 Secrets to Creating a Powerful Google Profile
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
I often want to find out more about someone before I decide to do business with that person. To get the information that I need, I Google the person's name and see how well-known they are online and what they have to say. What I discovered in my search is that their social media profiles, like those found on Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook, show up high in the search results. Google, however, has started giving these well-known social networking sites a...
•Internet Marketing: The #1 Marketing Mistake Made By 75% of Online Business Owners
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
Every day, my inbox is filled with emails promoting yet another new marketing strategy or promising results that will cure all of my marketing ills. Most of the strategies are flash-in-the-pan -- here today and gone tomorrow because the next new strategy has been discovered. A few newer strategies have proven to have staying power over time, like social networking, which took a long time to grow on me. I've learned the hard way not to be an early adopter of...
•7 Strategies to Finding Your Target Market on Twitter
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
Social networking using Twitter seems to be the most popular way to connect today, from celebrity Ashton Kutcher's challenge to Oprah to reach one million friends first (Ashton won) to a U.S. State Department official contacting the co-founder of Twitter to delay upgrading the Twitter system so as not to interrupt election dialogue in Iran. More and more news agencies are using Twitter to keep their audience up-to-date, and local businesses are also jumping...
•5 Most Effective Online Continuity Program Models
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
Continuity programs are the "new" online business model that has recently escalated in popularity. No longer is it good enough to simply sell information products for a one-time sale or sell your services online. Instead, online business owners need to seriously think about changing their business model to include the concept of recurring revenue. This passive revenue model brings in regular recurring income on a weekly or monthly basis from the same...
•7 Secrets to Successful Keyword Research
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
As people search for information online, they use a series of words, what are referred to as keywords, to find the information that they are seeking. Keywords are the core of any market research conducted by an online business owner. Just like the Yellow Pages Directory groups listings by category, like "auto body shops" in the "automobile repair" category, search engines like Google and Yahoo sort by keywords so that auto body shops are found under "auto...
•Social Networking: 10 Steps to Finding Your Target Market in Facebook
Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com
Everyone is talking about social networking, and many claim social networking to be the panacea for all of your marketing ills. Marketing on social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter can help you increase the size of your email list and help you grow your business. The key to success with this strategy is making sure that members of your target market are in your network.
Facebook is very strict and very particular about how its...
•Joint Ventures: The 4 Secret Questions You MUST Answer Before Seeking Joint Venture Partners
If I had to begin my business again from scratch, I would look at forming strategic alliances and seeking joint ventures partners much sooner in my business growth plan. Asking a more successful business owner to help you promote your site or to form an alliance where you both benefit is one of the quickest ways to turbocharge your success, provided it's done correctly.
However, therein lies the problem. Most joint venture requests are made with absolutely no planning and no forethought....
•5 Secrets to Moving the Free Line With Your Client-Capturing Device
Once upon a time, in the dark ages of Internet marketing (only about 10 years ago in Internet years), all an online business owner had to do was stick an email opt-in form on her site and request visitors to join her list. Simple, wasn't it?
Then, the legion of spammers began to grow and started to make marketing by email more difficult. So, then to encourage someone to opt into your list, you had to give something away, typically a very short assessment, checklist or special report.
As...
•10 Best Strategies to Massively Increase Your Visibility Online
Increasing online visibility is the goal of most online business owners. After all, without visibility, you have no traffic and thus no business. However, when you start to research how to increase your online visibility, you discover so many options, yet have so little time for research and implementation. Where does an online entrepreneur turn first to get the visibility (and traffic) you seek to help you promote your online venture?
New tricks and gimmicks come out every day, but...
•20 Best Blog Post Ideas for Small Business Blogging
"So, what do I blog about each time?" is a question I often get from clients. To keep your blog active and healthy, I recommend blogging at least 3 times per week. However, that notion is overwhelming for many. Even though you may be an expert in a topic, your mind may go completely blank when it comes time to blog, and then at other times when you're not blogging, your idea cup runneth over.
The primary thing to remember is that blog posts don't have to be long and complicated. You're...
•Search Engine Optimization: 11 Basic SEO Strategies for Beginners
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process getting your website ready to be found in organic webs searches. By organic searches, I'm referring to web searches that appear naturally as the result of a search for a particular keyword or phrase, rather than appearing in the sponsored links (pay-per-click advertising) section of a search page.
Frankly, for the first few years I was online, the thought of doing my own SEO made my eyes cross, and I was overwhelmed at where to start. I even...
•Is It Time to Quit, or Are You Simply Afraid?
? "You give up too easily," is what my 10-year old next door neighbor, Mike, told me in 1972 or so when I wanted to quit playing our game of chase. I couldn't seem to tag him "out" as the last player the game, despite my best efforts of 10 minutes of trying. Of course, I vigorously denied that accusation, but have been given cause to think about what he told more than once, especially recently.
In my teens and early 20s, I was the most goal-driven, type A personality of anyone that I knew....
•10 Secrets to Using Twitter to Attract More Followers and Get More Clients
I do wonder at times if some Twitter users have any time to get any work done. Several of the more prolific ones that I follow swear they spend no more than 30 minutes a day on Twitter, but I really find that hard to believe. Many times it seems they are twittering just to say something, like "Good morning Twitterverse" when they begin their day, give more details than I want to know about what they had for lunch, what their children said to them, or when they take a nap.
I realize that...
•Facebook in 15 Minutes a Day
I've often said that social networking can take up your entire day, if you allow it. You sit down at your desk in the morning, and you see several Facebook event invites and friend requests. As you log into your account, someone's Facebook status update catches your eye, and before you know it, 3 hours have passed while you're reading and responding to social networking messages. How can you possibly get any work done in your business or for your clients at this rate?
Facebook doesn't have...
•My Top 7 Essential Twitter Tools
Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you have probably heard something about the new microblogging platform, Twitter, and how Twitter has taken the online marketing world by storm. The phenomenon has even spawned a new lingo, with new your new tweeps (followers) tweeting (making posts) you and discussing the state of the Twitterverse (you get the idea here).
While Twitter is pretty easy to use, there's an overwhelming amount of tools, plug-ins and applications being developed to support...
•Leverage Your Expertise: Create a Fixed Term Membership Program
I first became acquainted with the term, "fixed term membership" from Internet marketing guru Jimmy Brown, when he created his Membernaire http://onlinebizu.getresults.hop.clickbank.net program. He defines a fixed term membership site as a membership that consists of weekly content shared via autoresponder to paid members for a specified period of time. I would have formerly called this concept a fee-based ecourse, with the distinction that in the fixed term membership, the lesson is...
•Client Attraction: 4 Deadly Mistakes to Avoid if You Want a Full Practice
If I were to be your fairy godmother today and grant your wish for 2, 5, or even 10 more clients in the next few weeks, would you be prepared to take them on? Even though many of you say that you are, your words may give one message (yes), but your actions give a completely different message (not quite ready).
Many independent service professionals insist that they want additional clients, but haven't really put the groundwork in place to accommodate them. A friend of mine serves as a legal...
•List Building: 7 Steps to Grow Your Email List with Twitter
Twitter is a microblogging platform that has taken the business world by storm, 140 characters per post. The purpose of Twitter is to post short updates (not to exceed 140 characters) about what you're doing at the moment, read the updates of others whom you're following (in a non-stalker way), and comment and reply on what they're doing.
All kinds of applications have been developed for Twitter, and I've discovered that people either love to tweet (i.e. submit a Twitter post) or the whole...
•Website Marketing: 4 Secrets to Making More Sales from Content Pages
Once you begin adding content, like your articles, to your website, an amazing thing starts to happen. Your traffic begins to increase, as visitors are finding your site based on keyword searches that they do that result in them landing on your content pages. As I've added more content pages to my site, I've discovered that about 60% of my traffic comes to my site via these kinds of searches.
When visitors arrive at your site, ideally they will look around for additional info. After all,...
•Online Marketing to Prospects: 6 Secrets to Ensure Your Prospect Well Never Runs Dry
Many service business owners, once they become busy working with current clients, no longer make the time to market their businesses. It's only when business has dropped off (and the well is starting to run dry) that they frantically begin marketing their businesses again, anxious to fill in the gaps. When they speak to prospective clients, the prospects can hear the desperation in their voice and are thus unlikely to hire them. Frustrated by rejection, the business owner is off again,...
•Recession Proof Marketing: 7 Ways to Jumpstart Your Internet Marketing That Won't Break the Bank
I'm not sure whether or not to pay attention to all the negative news reports about the state of the economy. For the most part, I've discovered that virtual businesses don't quite suffer the same economic highs and lows in the same way as the rest of the country (or the world). However, in the life span of every business, there is a "recession", or a point in which there's a downturn or a decline of income. Typically, this recession period is short and cyclical, which puts the service...
•Elevator Pitch: 7 Steps to a Killer 30-Second Commercial That Works Every Time
Even though your business may be completely Internet based, there are still numerous times when you need to give your elevator pitch (elevator speech), or your 30-second commercial that explains what you do and how you do it. It's called an elevator pitch because it's generally something you could tell someone in an elevator between floors in response to the person's inquiry about what you do. Whether you're a guest on a teleclass, hosting a teleclass, being interviewed for a radio talk show,...
•Pricing Strategies: How Much Do I Charge for My Service?
? "I'm not sure what to charge my clients" is one of the most common refrains I hear from new online service business owners.. It's a problem that plagues even the veteran business owner as she becomes more aware of her competition and what monetary value her skills hold in the marketplace.
How do you decide how much you're going to charge? Here's the bottom line -- you have to charge enough to be able to sustain yourself in business. Make sure that you're a "true" business owner netting a...
•5 Critical Questions To Ask BEFORE You Hire a Web Designer
Whether you're building a website or a blogsite, the investment in a designer can be fairly significant. It's at this point that many service business owners decide to cut costs and have their 16-year old nephew design their site. This works out well until something breaks (with technology, it's never a question of IF it will break, only WHEN) and your nephew is out of touch because he just started his first year of college and can't be bothered. What are you going to do?
To run an online...
•Marketing Plan: How to Create an Internet Marketing Action Plan That Gets Results
Marketing Plan: How to Create an Internet Marketing Action Plan That Gets Results There's no doubt about it -- keeping up with your marketing tasks can be overwhelming, whether you choose to market via networking, print advertising, or through a strategic set of online techniques. As I have a virtual company and can work with clients from around the globe, I don't like to limit my marketing to local efforts. Having a viable presence online is more important to me and seems to work best for...
•10 New Rules to Get a Flood of Traffic from Online Publicity
I started submitting press releases in the 80s when I was a college student to help promote one of the many activities I coordinated as the vice president of service for a national service fraternity to which I belonged. Since that time, and especially since the advent of Internet marketing, the philosophy behind the strategy of submitting press releases and measuring the success of a release has completely shifted. The number of clippings from newspapers running your release used to be...
•7 Reasons Blogsites Attract More Visitors and Help You Get More Clients Online
If I were starting my business today and was evaluating my website options, I would pick a blogsite over a stand-alone blog or a traditional website. What's a blogsite? I like to think of this as a blog/website hybrid. It has all the features of a blog, yet acts as a website to help you promote your business.
More and more I see new online service business owners choosing blogsites over traditional websites. Some who have started with a traditional website have switched over to a blogsite...
•How Perfectionism Kills the Online Entrepreneur
"No, I'm not ready to release my....(fill in the blank here with ezine, ecourse, ebook, blog, website, etc.) because it's not quite ready. I need to...(fill in with your excuse here: do more work on it....have it edited....review the copywriting, etc.)"
How many times has a statement similar to that come out of your mouth? I know for me that it's happened more often than I care to recount. I am a recovering perfectionist who used to utter some variation of the above sentence with great...
•Website Marketing: Dramatically Increase Your Conversions with a Clear Call to Action
One of the things I often notice on websites is that I'm not sure where to go or what to do when I arrive. There are those websites that are simply online brochures that tell me all about the features of a product or service, but don't ask anything of me. There are other websites that give me a headache, as they try to send me in too many directions at once. When faced with too many choices, I become overwhelmed and ultimately leave the site without taking any action.
How do you get your...
•5 Secrets to Selling More Teleclasses with Transcripts
While iPods and other mp3 players have taken the world by storm, I'm still a visual girl. For me, that means I'd much rather read something than listen to it. If it's a video of a software or service demo, I might be persuaded to view that, if I have the time and if I have no other choice. For the most part, I'd rather read about it. I have tons of audio files stored on my hard drive, to most of which I've never listened. They'll probably languish away on my computer, only to be deleted...
•Create a Viral Marketing Strategy to Drive Traffic to Your Website
Viral marketing can best be described as a marketing campaign that permits you to reach a large number of people quickly online, much in the same way a human cold virus might spread throughout an office complex. The online equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing, viral marketing permits people to pass along marketing material to friends, customers, and colleagues so that the marketing campaign catches on and spreads like wildfire. Because many online distribution channels are free or low cost,...
•The Heroic Entrepreneur: Profiting from Your Brilliance
The Heroic Entrepreneur: Profiting from Your Brilliance
by: Donna Gunter
If you look up the definition of hero in Webster's, you'll find a definition something like, 'A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life: soldiers and nurses who were heroes in an unpopular war'. Some heroes in our lives have earned that badge of honor by doing something everyone feels is heroic as defined in the traditional sense, whether...
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