Archive for January, 2010
My First Grandson
Posted by: | CommentsThis week was already a very busy week for me. I had the two teleseminars I was presenting yesterday, three new client consultations, and of course, my regular client projects.
But, my daughter decided that wasn’t enough, and this past weekend gave me a beautiful grandson (my first grandchild, and yes I’m way too young to be a grandma!) to keep me even busier. He is absolutely perfect and now I understand what people mean when they talk about how great it is to be a grandparent.
So originally, the recording of my teleseminar was only going to be for those people who signed up for the live version of the call. But my adorable (look at those cheeks!) grandson has put me in a great mood, so I’m going to share it with anyone who happens upon the right link to the call. So if you’re reading this post, you’ve got the link.
http://timesaversvirtualsolutions.com/simplestepsaudio
You’re getting some great stuff here – not as great as my grandson – but still really good. So if you go to the trouble of downloading it, please take some time out to listen to it.
Have a great day!
Crystal
6 Simple Steps to Social Media Success
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As I’ve gotten more and more familiar with social networking and online marketing, and as I’ve helped more of my clients use it to market their own business, I often hear over and over the same frustrations with it.
“I know I’m supposed to be online, or on Twitter or on Facebook. So I set up my profile, but I’m just not getting how it’s supposed to get me business.”
“I see people being successful marketing their business online, but I’m confused on what to do. How come I can’t make it work for me?”
People will try to copy what they see someone else doing on these sites, but they don’t see the whole picture. So they end up missing steps at the end, or in the middle, or the beginning. And then obviously they’re not going to see the results they were expecting or hoping for. So here’s 6 simple steps you can use to get started the right way with social media.
Step 1 – Understanding who your ideal client is, knowing where to find them, and figuring out what their problem is that you can solve. Then figuring out how you can peak their interest, build a relationship with them, and become known as a resource to them using online marketing/social media strategies. Finally, getting very clear on exactly what social media is all about. It’s not about selling, selling, selling. It’s about making connections, working on relationships, connecting with potential clients and eventually getting those prospects back to your hub (your blog). Which brings us to…
Step 2 – Setting up your blog. I am always pushing this issue on my clients and the people I talk to about online marketing. I view your blog as the foundation, the hub, of all of your online marketing efforts. A blog serves so many purposes. It’s a place where you can show your expertise, offer free information, peak prospect’s interest in the service or product you provide. Your blog is also where you can continue to connect with your target market, adding widgets, plugins, badges etc. to connect them to even more of your social media profiles. The whole format of a blog increases your search engine possibilities. And your blog is where you will capture your prospects’ information so you have more than one chance to sell to them.
Step 3 – Set up your social media profiles correctly. You want to fill them out completely. Use the plugins and apps available on different sites to incorporate your different sites and your blog, and to maximize your time by only having to post in one place vs. having to post to multiple sites.
Step 4 – Start connecting. Join groups that share your interests or that are of interest to your ideal client or customer. Find people to follow that you admire and can learn from. See what they’re doing that works and then try it out to see if it works for you. But don’t be afraid to think outside of the box and try something completely different. Do pay attention to the etiquette of each particular site, because you certainly don’t want to irritate anyone. Start building relationships with mentors, prospects, peers – the whole time directing them back to your website where you can continue building on the connection you started developing on the social media site. As you get out on these sites, you’ll find people trying to sell you on the newest trick or tip to get the most followers or friends. But honestly, you want to focus on developing quality connections with people, not focusing on the quantity.
And you have to remember that your ultimate goal is to get people back to your blog, get their contact information, and continue to build up the “know, like, trust” factor with them, until you convert them to a client or customer.
Step 5 – Slowly start adding other online marketing techniques. Don’t try to add everything in at once, because you’ll just get overwhelmed and give up. But once you have the top sites (I recommend Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube), you can start pulling in some other online marketing strategies to ramp up your website traffic even more. Things like article marketing, squidoo, bookmarking sites, forums, teleseminars, just to name a few. Social media isn’t the end all to making millions of dollars a year. It is a great free (money wise, but definitely not free time wise) way to get new business, if done correctly, but it’s not all you should be doing.
Balance it out with some other techniques, be consistent, and follow up with your prospects – and you will see results. You’ll start to see more traffic to your website, which will lead to getting more emails, which will lead to more clients, which of course leads to a bigger business and more money.
Step 6 – Convert those prospects into clients. You can have the hugest list in the world, you can have thousands of emails. But if you don’t do something with those, if you don’t follow up, that won’t mean a thing. This is the final step of online marketing, and without this step, all of your efforts in the 5 steps before won’t mean a thing. Yeah, sure, you’ll get those few people who will sign up with you right away, or buy your product after tweeting with you a few times. But that’s really the exception, and not the rule. The majority of people aren’t going to purchase anything from you until they (what? you know the answer) “know, like, and trust” you. And you build this up with follow-up and interaction with your list. So you have to follow-up, you have to do what you say you will, you have to offer information and resources.
If you want to get more detail on each of these steps, and find out how you can use online marketing to increase your business and make more money – attend my free webinar on February 19th. Click here to sign up.
8 Great Reasons To Use Teleseminars In Your 2010 Marketing Strategy
Posted by: | CommentsI got this ezine today from one of the people I learn a lot from – Nicola Bird – a business coach in England. She does a lot of the same stuff I do, and this particular ezine had some great information on using teleseminars to grow your business. So rather than re-invent the wheel, so to speak, I’m going to share it with you. Especially since I know from personal experience how beneficial teleseminars can be to your business.
If you want to generate more leads and get more people onto your marketing list, teleseminars and webinars are a great way to do so. Teleseminars can also help you follow up with leads and turn them into paying clients or customers. You can use teleseminars to add extra value to your services. And you can use teleseminars to create new products you can sell.
Here’s why teleseminars are such a great tool to promote your business:
1. You can ask people to sign up for a free webinar or teleseminar as a way to grow your mailing list.
2. You can let hundreds (well probably tens to start with!) of people benefit from your expertise in the space of an hour rather than reaching just one person at a time.
3. You can offer webinars and teleseminars at a mid-range price to establish your expertise to build confidence that you are the right person to spend LOTS of money with on a 1:1 basis.
4. You can use web- based services and place a link to a product you want to promote that is seen by people before and during the call, and even during the playback of the recording.
5. You can do point 4 above but promote other people’s products with your affiliate link and make money that way too!
6. You can ask others if they would like to be interviewed, growing both their list and yours, and means you don’t have to come up with the content, just good questions.
7. You can pick people you admire and want to learn more from. And then you basically get to pick their brains for an hour for free!
8. You can offer a free tele-class for people who register (first growing your mailing list) and then put the recording for sale on your website straight after the call – another form of passive income for you.
I am making teleseminars (free and paid) a huge part of my 2010 marketing plan. In fact, join me for my first free teleseminar next week, to get some simple online marketing strategies you’ll be able to implement right away in your business.
Do you think teleseminars are something you could implement into your 2010 marketing plan? Or are you already using them? If you are, how have they worked for you?
http://timesaversvirtualsolutions.com/simple-steps-to-social-media-success/
Using Your Blog to Get More Business
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How can you use your blog to get more clients, more customers? Start building a list!
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when driving traffic to their blog, is focusing on just that – how much traffic is going to their blog. Instead you want to focus on website conversions, how many people are you getting to take some sort of action once they visit your blog. Most often, this action is signing up for something.
You want to get people on your list. You should have 3 levels you funnel your website visitors through.
- Level 1 – get on your list
- Level 2 – convert into customers
- Level 3 – repeat business
So offer some sort of free gift, to get people to give you their email address.
Now let’s focus on how to get people to your blog, so you can offer your free gift to them. Here’s some simple ways you can increase traffic to your blog.
- Write a blog post a minimum of once a week, preferably 2-3.
- Every time you write a blog post, submit it to bookmarking sites.
- Also, you can post your blog posts on groups you belong to, if the post is applicable to their subject. Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups as news articles, Yahoo groups, etc.
- Make sure your blog is integrated into Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. They all have applications that will automatically import your blog into these social media sites.
- Comment on other blogs. Say something meaningful that adds to the post. Not just “nice post”
- Register your blog with blog directories.
- Make sure you have an RSS feed set up on your blog, where people can subscribe to your blog posts. They don’t have to visit your blog everyday to see if you have a new post, they’ll actually get notified that a new post is on your blog.
- Optimize every post. Each blog post gets a separate web page on the blog; therefore you should treat each blog post as a separate web page and optimize it as a single web page. Insert your keywords, make sure you use your categories and tags for each post.
- Turn each blog post (or combine some with same topics) into an article and submit to article directories.
Start increasing traffic to your blog, get your visitors to give your their contact information, and then follow up with something of value to turn prospects into customers.
Using Guest Bloggers As A Way To Get More Website Traffic
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I’ve been talking a lot about blogs this month, and in one of my earlier posts I touched on using guest bloggers as a way to promote more traffic. Well, in that post I told you to look out for some more posts on guest blogging. I have to admit I completely forgot about it until this weekend, but still better late than never.
So, you’ve decided you want to use the guest blogger strategy. You want to get a different voice/opinion on your blog, you want to expose your blog to a new group of people, or maybe you just want to get a break from having to write your own post day after day. Whatever the reason, here are some ways you can find guest bloggers to help you increase your blog’s visibility.
1. Check out your comments. This is a great place to find potential guest bloggers. First of all, these people obviously know about your website. They’re interested in what you’re talking about on your blog. They’ve taken the time to interact with you through their comment. So look for those people who leave multiple comments, or have something worthwhile to say, they expanded on your post or added something new. Send them an email, all they can say is yes or no.
2. Look for newer bloggers who are blogging about something similar to your blog or something that complements your subject. Newer bloggers can benefit by increasing their blog to your readers, and also getting more practice writing blog posts.
3. Ask people in your community. They don’t even have to be online. For example, I know of one realtor who interviews local businesses in the neighborhoods she sells real estate in. It gets the businesses exposure to her readers and offers another resource to bring more visitors to her website. Get creative, and think of who you can offer the opportunity for free publicity.
4. Your online network. As you develop relationships on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, etc., be open to potential opportunities. If you like what one of your connections is saying in their status updates, tweets, blog posts they write, that might be a great guest blogger.
5. The big hitters. Don’t be afraid to ask those people who are huge in your particular field. You never know. They just might say yes. If you attend a teleseminar or take one of their classes or connect with them in some way, just ask. If you can get someone who is an expert in your niche as a guest blogger, that will also promote you as an expert and your blog as the place to go for some great information.
So now go out there and get some guest bloggers. And if you use guest bloggers on your site, what other ways do you find them?
Have a great day!
3 Natural Ways to Use Twitter to Promote Your Blog
Posted by: | CommentsTwitter is more than a trendy way to chit-chat with people from around the world; it’s a powerful promotional tool that can be very effective if you want to promote your WordPress blog easily and quickly.
There are hundreds of sites and programs that tell you how to make money with Twitter. But if you believe in being genuine, ideally posting and replying to Tweets in real time, then anything that promises to fully automate the process, bring in a huge number of followers within minutes (quantity vs quality), or resorts to sneaky tricks, should be avoided.
Is it possible to use Twitter successful as a promotional tool in a natural way? Yes, if you know how to use it properly. When used properly you can attract new customers and meet like-minded people who can help you to improve your business whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned marketer.
3 Natural Ways to Use Twitter to Make Money with WordPress Blogs
1. Research Your Blog’s Niche
By entering what you want to research in the Search feature in Twitter you can see what people are talking about in the niche you’re targeting. This can help with ideas for blog posts, articles, products or at the very least deliver interesting content to your Twitter followers if you simply retweet what you find.
If you want to conduct searches that are more comprehensive and automated than what Twitter offers out-of-the-box, you can use one of the many free or paid services that give you more options. Twitter search services analyze information on Twitter based on the keywords you specify, e-mailing you the results daily or weekly.
2. Network
Twitter allows you to network with people in your niche(s) from around the world.
It’s worthwhile to be friendly and chatty with fellow Tweeters, to trade tips and techniques or simply use Twitter for entertainment at times, but if you are serious about making money with your Wordpress blog and growing your business, it’s wise to use Twitter to find people who can help.
To learn more about anyone you meet on Twitter be sure to:
- read a few pages worth of their tweets
- read a good number of their retweets
- see how they interact with other Twitter users via replies. Do they reply to other Twitter users or do they just churn out pitches/tweet their own horn for the most part? Are they a real person tweeting in real time, or possibly just a bot or someone a marketer hired to tweet on their behalf?
- visit the website they list in their profile and find out more about them in the About section (hopefully they have one).
- look at who they follow. Do they seem to be doing reciprocal follows (the number of followers they have is close to the number of people they follow) or are they more selective about who they follow? (much smaller number of follows than followers). If it’s the latter, you can get a sense of what and who they value by looking at the profiles of the people they follow.
Tip: Send out personal, relevant replies to other people’s Tweets, not spammy Direct Messages, to introduce yourself. It’s also smart to occasionally retweet other people’s tweets if the information is suitable for your followers. Retweeting is an easy, fast, non-invasive way to show interest in and respect for other members of the Twitter community.
3. Promote your blog and products
I save this for last because you should do it, absolutely, but it’s one of the most misused and abused things on Twitter. If you’re in online marketing, and even if you aren’t, at some point you will get a spammy follower who direct messages (DMs) you with an offer that is neither personal nor useful and just wastes your time. Some marketers tweet offer after offer, often nothing more than an affiliate link, to try to sucker people into buying yet another get-rich- quick system, etc.
Ideally you should promote your blog in a variety of ways on Twitter, not only by posting links to products for sale. Provide value and interesting content, not just offers. Post links to articles on your blog that also promote your products and services, or your views, etc. and share your thoughts about other products and services, even free ones, that your followers might find helpful.
Yes, there are many sites and articles that are devoted to how to use Twitter to make money, but if you care about delivering value to your customers and potential customers and form solid business relationships, then using Twitter in a more natural way, in my view, is the better way to go.
Lillea Woodlyns, an active member of Australian marketer James Schramko’s private coaching forum, offers tips and reviews of the best tools and techniques to make money with WordPress blogs To sign up for her FREE series, ‘WordPress for Success’ visit: http://www.speedonlinewealth.com/blog/about-lillea/
5 Ways to Get More Visitors to Your Blog
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We’re going to continue on with the blog theme. I’m kind of liking it. If you have any questions you’d like answered or your own thoughts about blogs that you’d like to share, please leave your comments. If you have a really good question, maybe I’ll feature it in a future post.
So today we’re going to talk about some ways to drive more traffic, more visitors to your blog. If you don’t care if anyone but your mom or your dog reads your blog, well then move along, nothing to see here. But if you’re writing your blog because you actually want people to read it, you might get some use out of this post.
1) Register your blog on the blog catalogs. Go to sites like Technorati, BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog, just to name a few. You can submit your blog, pick a topic and keywords that describe your blog. Now when people go to these blog catalog sites, if they’re looking for a subject that your blog fits, up comes your blog on the list.
2) Network with other bloggers. You can do this in a few ways. Comment on other bloggers’ posts. Remember that you want to contribute something to the conversation, and become part of the community. So please, please don’t just go around putting “Nice post” or “Great idea” on a bunch of different blogs. That’s not going to do you any good, I promise you. Another big tip – don’t try to sell something in your comments!
Another way, which I talked about in an earlier post, is to use these new connections with other bloggers to find guest posters for your blog or to find guest poster opportunities for yourself on other blogs.
3) Focus on one topic. Don’t be all over the place. Get specific on one topic, and cover that topic well. That way people will know what to expect from you, and will see it’s consistent. If you’re trying to attract a certain kind of person or company, be sure the topic you pick is something that is of interest to them. And keep it relevant to your company’s products or services, if your blog is business related. If you sell dog toys, blogging about cat food isn’t going to help your traffic. (No idea why someone would blog about cat food, but you get the idea.)
Focusing on one topic also helps you with your SEO. The more relevant information you have for what someone’s searching for, the more likely your website will come up in the search.
4) Link to others. When you link to other blogs or websites, it gives your blog credibility. If you’re offering information, and not afraid to send your readers off to other websites, you will become known as a great resource for your readers. And don’t worry, if you’re writing relevant and interesting content, they’ll come back after they go check out that neat site you just told them about. Just like with a lot of online marketing, it’s about giving information. There’s so much on the internet, that if you give your readers a little help with directing them to good information they can actually use, it will only increase the number of people who come back to your site. So don’t be afraid of a little “link love.”
5) Write interesting blog posts. No matter how much you follow the first 4 ways, if you’re posts are boring or don’t help your readers in some way, they won’t be back. Be yourself, inject your personality, and be consistent. Make sure you know the audience you want to attract and what they want to read about. Then write it, and if you need to get some help, then get someone to help you write. Just make it so good that people can’t wait for your next blog post (no pressure here, huh?).
Ok, that’s 5 ways you can get more visitors and keep them coming back. Have a great day and I’ll see you soon.
5 Steps to Using Your Blog to Get Noticed Online
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By now, everyone who’s marketing online knows they need a blog, and you probably have one. But are you getting the most exposure you can out of that blog? You’re putting the time in to write your posts, of course you want to get the biggest “bang for your buck.” It’s all about getting the most use out of something you only had to write once, maximizing the impact with the least amount of time. So here’s 5 steps you can take to increase the exposure of your blog online, and get noticed by more of your target audience.
Step 1. The first step is of course that you have to have a blog. This is one of the main ways you’re going to get your personality and your expertise out there. Some people put off starting a blog, because they worry they won’t have anything to say or they don’t like to write. But remember, you don’t have to write the blog yourself . I recommend you do, of course – but you can also hire a writer. Go to Elance and you’ll find tons of writers you can hire this job out to for very minimal money. Another way you can have a blog without ever writing a thing – go to an article directory (such as ezinearticles.com) and use any of the hundreds of articles there. (Just be sure to follow the rules and leave in the writer’s contact information or whatever is required to use those articles.)
Step 2. If you’re writing your own material, put your posts up as articles on those same article directories I just mentioned. If you are writing your own work, get it out there to work FOR you. Post all of your blogs and articles onto ezinearticles.com or some of the many other directories available– you’ll get a couple of benefits from this. Other people will use your articles on their blogs/newsletters, etc., increasing your exposure to whole new audiences you would never have gotten your information in front of. Second, those articles will come up in search engines, leading people who read them back to your website, yet again increasing your exposure.
Step 3. TWEET your blogs! I’m not talking about posting you have a new blog. You should have a system in place that automatically does that for you. I’m talking about taking actual small pieces of ideas and advice from your blog and tweeting them on Twitter. And of course, be sure to put a condensed link to your blog, your website, your product on SOME of them – to wherever you’re trying to direct people to go.etc.
Step 4. Send your blog or article out to your mailing list as an ezine. Here’s a great way to get people to act on that ezine. Post only a portion of the article. Then, add a link that says, “Click here to read the rest of this article.” This is a GREAT way to drive traffic to your blog, website, etc.
Step 5. Finally, don’t just “have” a blog that nobody knows about or no one can find. FEATURE your blog! Make sure it’s featured on your Linkedin Profile and your Facebook Profile – as well as anywhere else you can think of. On Facebook, I have my blog imported through the NetworkedBlogs application. If you use this app, you can invite up to 20 contacts to follow the blog every single day. How would it feel to have 200 followers after ten days? Then you can add the widget to your blog that actually shows how many followers you have through NetworkedBlogs.
By taking the above steps with the majority of your blog posts, you’ll be maximizing your effort, your expertise, and your online branded recognition.
