Here’s a really simple plan you can easily complete in about 20 minutes a day. By following this plan consistently, you can brand yourself as The Expert in your field, your niche, your topic. It incorporates 5 sites (one of which is your own/your blog), because the more places you’re seen on, the faster you’re expert reputation will grow.

Now, just a quick note, as mentioned this is a simple plan. There’s so much more you can do – but if it’s a choice between doing something on a smaller scale or doing nothing – then it’s better to do the simple/smaller plan than to do nothing at all.

You don’t even need to follow this plan daily. Pick 2 or 3 days a week you’re going to commit to following the plan, and those days you’ll just follow the process. Easy peasy! So let’s get started:

Site 1: YouTube

1. Create a video.
2. Upload video to Youtube.
3. View & comment on applicable videos for your topic/market.
4. Post video to other video feed platforms.
5. Embed video on blog/Facebook/Twitter, etc.

Site 2: Your Blog

1. Create blog post (1-3 times/wk).
2. Respond to comments on your posts.
3. Comment on other people’s blogs.
4. Pull blog post onto other social media sites (this can be automated).

Site 3: Twitter

1. Post tweets (setup through Hootsuite or a similar app).
2. Re-tweet other applicable Tweets.
3. Thank those who have re-tweeted your posts or mentioned you.
4. Send personal thank you to new followers.
5. Follow new followers, if appropriate.
6. Respond to any relevant direct messages.

Site 4: Facebook

1. Search for new friends & invite (quality over quantity!).
2. Accept new friend requests.
3. Post thank you for connecting on new friends’ walls.
4. Review and respond to any messages.
5. Respond to those who’ve commented on wall/tagged you (relevant comments and tags only).
6. Review & comment on friends’ statuses, updates, birthday’s, etc.
7. Check business page for comments/posts and reply back.

Site 5: LinkedIn

1. Search for new connections and invite to connect.
2. Accept any new invitations.
3. Review and respond to any new messages.
4. Search and join new groups.
5. Review groups, comment, and/or start new discussions as appropriate.
6. Review Answers and respond where appropriate.

So that’s your plan. Now schedule in your calendar the days you can commit to spending about 20 minutes, and just get started. Let me know how it works out for you. I’d love to hear about it!

Before you even begin to dive into the world of online marketing and social media, it’s so important to get very clear on what your goals are. What do you expect to happen as a result of your online marketing efforts? Is it to get more clients? Is it to become known as an expert? Is it to promote a new book you’re releasing? Is it just to provide even better customer service and connect with the customers you already have? What is the reason you want to get involved online?

This is such an important process to go through, because it’s going to lay the entire foundation for how you run your online marketing campaign. Along with knowing who your ideal client is, your overall goal is going to be the driving force behind where and how you market yourself and your company.

I equate it to deciding you want to go for a drive today. But you have no idea where you’re going or how to get there. So of course, you’re just going to drive around aimlessly, and you might end up somewhere fun or you could end up somewhere you really don’t want to be.

Now, what if you knew exactly where you wanted to end up, maybe you heard about this great restaurant, but you don’t have directions. OK, better than your last drive, at least you have an end target, but you’re still probably not going to end up at your intended target because you don’t know how to get there.

So, of course, your best scenario is you know you want to get to this restaurant, and you googled it, you have your map, and you get there and have a great meal. You knew where you wanted to end up, you had clear directions on how to get there, and you took action on those directions to get what you wanted.

So you can see where I’m going with this, right? If you don’t know where you want to end up AND you don’t have an overall map laid out of how you’re going to get there, how are you going to know where you’re going or if you’ve even arrived?  Start by asking yourself some basic questions:

1.       What are your goals regarding social networking?

2.       What results are you hoping to achieve?

3.       Who are you looking to connect with?

Let’s take a look at each of these questions. You want to get very clear on the answers before you start your online campaign.

Question #1 – What goals have you set for your online marketing? How will you know when you’ve reached those goals?

Many times when I ask someone what their goal is, they’ll tell me “To get more clients, of course.” Your ultimate goal might be to get new clients, but you won’t have much success if you’re trying to convert people into clients the first time you make contact with them, especially when you’re marketing through online methods. Usually before someone invests their time and/or money with you, you’re going to have to build a relationship with that connection before they trust you and believe you enough to become your client or customer.

I recommend to my clients that they concentrate their online marketing efforts towards building up their list, offering a free opt-in which will allow them to gather website visitors’ contact information.  Then you can keep in touch with those prospects, offering them information and resources, and building up your “know, like, trust” factor until they see the benefit of working with you.

Question #2 – What results are you looking for?

Your answer to this question will probably be different from somebody else’s answer, because it’s going to depend on what you’re trying to accomplish with your online marketing. You might start out with expecting increased traffic to your website, or maybe you want to get more people to subscribe to your newsletter.  It might be that you want people to sign up for a group class you’re offering, or a free teleseminar you’re conducting. Maybe the results you want are to get 5 new clients in the next 4 months. Take some time and just like your goals, get very clear on what they are. Don’t forget to set up a tracking system, so you’ll know when you’ve reached those results.

Question #3 – Who do you want to connect with?

Well number one is probably your ideal client, your niche, your target market – or however you want to refer to those people you really want to do business with. (Not sure what I’m talking about here? Then take a look at this post about defining your target market.)

But let’s talk about some other people you might want to reach out to.

You may also want to connect with and build relationships with your peers. Other business owners who target the same group you do, or provide the same service but they have a different niche. Think of ways you can build a mutually beneficial relationship with other professionals in your field, or a field that’s complimentary to yours. This can also be a great opportunity for future joint ventures.

Another group of people you might want to build relationships with are your mentors. People who you can learn from, who maybe have more experience or have been in business longer. Follow their tweets, join their fan pages. Learn from them, ask them questions, connect with them. It’s a great way to expand your knowledge, be constantly evolving and to add new skills and ideas to your business.

By having a clearly defined goal, you can then set up a strategy based on that goal and the results you want to achieve. And then you can set up a tracking system to measure your path towards that goal. But it all starts with the goal.

Any questions? Feel free to ask or add any comments below.

Have a great day!

I’m sure you’ve heard it before. Get a niche. Who’s your ideal client? Who’s your target market? Why is this so important and why do so many people spend so much time on it? Why do you need to figure out who your specific target market is before you start marketing online?

The whole point of online marketing, whether it’s tweeting or promoting your latest blog post, is to attract people to your home base – your website and/or blog. So if you’re spending all this time and energy trying to get people back to your website, don’t you want to make sure you’re pulling the right people to it?

So who is the right “person?” That’s going to depend on your product or service that you offer. Your target market are those people who have a problem, a pain, a struggle that your service or product will address. Your product will help them fix their problem. And of course, you want to connect with the people who not only need or want your product, but who also can pay for it.

You need to be able to easily identify them and also to be able to make contact with them. You’re not going to make any sales if you can find them, but then you can’t actually make them aware of you and your services.

Be specific when trying to determine your ideal client. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. You’re not going to be able to create one message that’s going to be broad enough to speak to everyone in a way that’s going to attract them to your website.  By narrowing down your market, you’re going to be able to figure out what their particular issues are, why they have those particular problems, and how your product or service can solve those problems.

One quick way to identify your ideal client is by looking at your current clients or customers. Start thinking about your favorite ones.  Or your favorite past customers. Why were they your favorite? Think about the qualities they possessed that made them such great clients. Maybe it’s their age, their personality, the type of company they owned, the service they provided. Exactly what is it about them that made it enjoyable to work with them?

Once you’ve figured out who your ideal client is, start thinking about what they struggle with, their problem – whatever it is that your product or service is going to take care of for them. Take some time and research your target market.

Maybe you have prior expertise in a field, and you already know what someone in that field struggles with or wants fixed. For example, if you’re working as a virtual assistant, and you’ve worked with lots of coaches, you’ll have a good idea of why they’re using your service.

You really want to find answers to these questions that your ideal client has. Think about the questions in relation to how your service/product could be a solution to your ideal client’s answers.

1. What is their biggest struggle during their daily interactions?

2. What is the biggest obstacle they face?

3. What is one goal that might seem unobtainable?

4. What improvements would they make to their life/their business?

5. What is the one problem that they would pay anything or do anything for?

Now that you’ve figured out who your ideal client is, what their problem is, and how you can fix it – you need to make sure that you can easily “reach” them as a group. Again, ask yourself:  Can you find them without too much trouble? Is there a “list” somewhere you can gain access to? Is there enough of this type of client to make your business successful? Can they pay you what your product or service is worth? Are they willing to pay you that amount in order to fix their problem?

So to recap – you want to be sure you’ve gotten very clear on who you’re trying to reach, what their common problem is that your service can solve for them, and that it is a viable, reachable target.

Now, take some time and figure out who that perfect client or customer is for you, and then take some more time to research where the best places would be to find that perfect client. You’ll now know where to focus your marketing efforts, because what’s the point of spending all this time getting your message out there if it doesn’t get seen by the right person. A person who wants and can pay for your services – your ideal client.

I know some people struggle with defining their target market, so please feel free to comment below with any questions or comments you might have about this topic.

I ran across this article at dumblittleman.com last week with some great tips about how to plan out your day and hit the ground running. As an entrepreneur myself, I know it’s easy to get behind or off plan very soon after getting started. So here’s some good ideas about how you can really get your day going the right way. Enjoy!

Some days are just golden right from the start. You get up bright and early, you have a good breakfast, your coffee is perfect, and you get through your most important work first. By lunchtime, you’re feeling great: you’ve covered significant ground and you want to push yourself to get even more done during the afternoon.

Other days don’t go quite like that. In fact, for many people, these days are the more typical ones: You hit snooze repeatedly and get up late. You rush breakfast (or worse, skip it altogether), and you spend the first hour of your workday trying to find that really important file, or answering emails. By lunchtime, you feel as though you’ve not accomplished anything – and you can’t see the afternoon getting any better.

If your morning goes well, the rest of the day is probably going to be a success too: once you begin to build momentum, it’s easy to keep going. So here’s how to start your morning as you mean to go on:

1. Get Up On Time
   I won’t say “get up early” – because we’re not all morning people. Getting up on time means setting your alarm early enough that you don’t feel rushed right at the start of your day. Often, just getting out of bed ten or fifteen minutes earlier transforms a stressed, harried morning into a much more relaxed one.

   The best way I’ve found to get up on time is to go to bed on time. Yes, it’s obvious – but it’s surprising how often we seem to forget it! Many people need more sleep: are you one of them?

2. Eat a Healthy Breakfast
   We all know that it’s important to eat breakfast, though many of us don’t – or if we do, we eat all the wrong things. If you’re trying to lose weight (and a staggering two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese), then eating breakfast will help you do so.

   Even if your weight isn’t a concern, you still need to give your brain some fuel first thing in the morning … so eat a healthy breakfast that’ll give you the energy you need for your work. Good options are wholegrain cereals with skim milk, wholewheat toast with eggs, or oatmeal.

3. Plan Your Day
   When you arrive in the office (or, if you work from home, when you sit down at your desk) – resist the temptation to check your emails. Unless you work in tech support, it’s very unlikely that anyone needs a reply at 8.30am.

   Instead, spend just five minutes planning out your day. What major projects do you want to make progress on? This is what you should work on for at least the first hour of the day. What small but urgent tasks need to be done today? Batch these together and knock them out in a bunch – or get them done during those “gaps” in the day, like when you’re waiting for someone to phone you back.

4. Minimize Interruptions
   When you’re working on something that’s mission-critical – like that mail-out to new customers – do you really want to keep stopping to deal with trivia? Let your calls go to voice-mail, leave your email program closed, and shut your office door.

   It takes several minutes to refocus on what you’re doing after an interruption, so you’re wasting a lot of time if you’re constantly stopping to deal with people’s queries.

5. Stay On Track
   Productivity can become a positive spiral if you stay focused: the more work you get through, the more energized you’ll feel. You’ll be encouraged to keep achieving and to keep doing meaningful work (rather than busy work or low-value tasks).

   To stay on track, learn to recognize and control your impulses. Don’t give in to distractions like Twitter, Facebook and other socializing websites – save these for your lunch break or for after work. If you find yourself losing focus on a task, take a five minute break from your computer – then get straight back to it. In many cases, mono-tasking is more effective than multi-tasking.

Do you find that your day goes better if your morning starts well? How do you make sure you get your day off to a great start?

Here’s a simple way you can use video to interact with people on your Facebook page. Embed a video from your fan page into your blog. To see how it works, just watch the video below. Be sure to click on the Facebook logo to visit the TVS fan page and get more tips and hints about using online marketing to get more clients for your business.

And don’t forget to take a look at our new program – Getting More Clients Online – where you’ll get a step-by-step plan on using online marketing to get more traffic, more clients, and more money for your business. Get more details and register for the program at http://gettingmoreclientsonline.com/getting-more-clients-online-program/.

The early bird price for the Getting More Clients Program ends on 12/31/10. Here’s a video showing you the membership site and features of the program. You can sign up for the program at http://gettingmoreclientsonline.com/getting-more-clients-online-program/.

2011 is almost here, and we’re winding up 2010. As small business owners, many of us are in the process of figuring out exactly where we want to take our businesses next year. Maybe you want to get more clients, develop new programs or products, or just get that business that’s been stuck in your head out into reality. Whatever your goals are for 2011, you’re going to need a way to let people know about what you’re offering. Yes, I’m talking about marketing here.

To reach your income goals, growth goals, to have people who want to buy those new services and products – you have to get people interested and willing to hand you over the money. One of the easiest and lowest-cost way to market and find new prospects, new clients is to market online. Whether it’s social media, article marketing, blogging, ezines, podcasts, videos – or a combination of multiple marketing strategies – online marketing is one of the best ways available these days to reach your target market and get more clients, make more money for your business.

I’m going to be offering a series of short training videos over the next couple of weeks – with some simple ways you can make use of online marketing to build your business and reach your goals in 2011. The first one will come out tomorrow – so stay tuned.

Also, I’m offering a program – Getting More Clients Online – that starts January 10, 2011. In this program, I will be walking you step-by-step on how to make the most use of online marketing and social media to explode your business to new levels in 2011! If you’d like more information on that, you find it HERE.

Have a great day, and stay tuned for my videos. I promise you’ll get some real value out of them, and some simple strategies to market your business for free online.

Video Marketing: What You Need to Know Before Taking the Plunge

Important components of a Youtube video that if used correctly will optimize your video for SEO results.

The number one tip is creating a quality/interesting/informational video. If your video is all promotion, isn’t well put together, doesn’t engage people, no matter how much you optimize it it’s not going to produce good results for you.

Before you start filling in your title, description, tags, etc. – you need to do some keyword research to find keywords that people are searching for on YouTube. To do so, you want to use the Youtube keyword analyzer, because when you use keyword research tools like WordTracker or Market Samurai, you’re not going to get accurate information on YouTube searches. Those tools take their information and results from meta search engines, which aren’t necessarily going to give you the results of the most popular searches as related to Youtube. In fact, in most cases they’ll give you very different results.

So, when you’re researching for Youtube, you want to go to the Google Youtube keyword tool, at https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool. When you’re researching a particular topic or keyword, this tool will show you which keywords are getting the most searches. Then you can take those keywords and include them in the title, description and tags for your video, which will help increase the visibility (views) of your video.

If you don’t know where to start your keyword research, you’re not sure which tags or phrases you could use – here’s another tip. Search for videos related to the subject of your video and see what tags are used in the top videos that come up. This will give you some good keywords and keyword phrases you can get started with.

1) The title & description. One of the most overlooked ways to getting traffic to your video on Youtube. You need to optimize the information you put in here. The title should contain a good keyword phrase (keep the YouTube limitations in mind when creating your title).

You always want to begin the “description” section with the full URL of the website/page/blog post you want to push people back to from your video. If you start the description box with the full URL (http://www.yourwebsite.com) , then it’s going to appear as a live link that people can click on right there to get back to your website. This way it’s easy to get people to click back to wherever you’re trying to drive them to. After your URL, the description should be about 2-3 sentences, and should also contain keywords and variations of keywords.

2) Tags – You should include at least 5-7 relevant keywords as tags for your video. Tags are important, because when you use the tags this will associate your video with other videos that use those same tags for their video. So when someone is watching a different video, your video will show up as one of the “related videos” on the side of the page. This is one way you can get additional views, from people who may not even have originally been searching for your video

3) Popularity / Views- The popularity of your video (the total number of views and the number of views in the past 24-48 hours) is an important factor in how well your video will rank in search results. YouTube prefers to show people popular videos, because YouTube figures the more people that are watching a video, the better quality the video is. Another thing to note, is that videos that have gotten a sudden surge of views in the past day or two, will get higher placement in search results.

4) Inbound Links / Embeds- Inbound links (links from other websites to your website or video) are important in traditional SEO, and are also important in YouTube SEO, with the addition that an embedded video (when someone puts the YouTube video into their own website) functions like an inbound link. You can see how many links and embeds your video has by using YouTube Insights. Getting more websites to link to and embed your video will help it rank higher in search results, so promote your video to people who might embed it or link to it. And of course, be sure you embed your video on Facebook, Twitter, your website, your blog.

5) Ratings & Comments- Higher ratings and more comments are also indications of better and more interesting videos, so get as many great ratings and comments as you can on your video. The best way to do this is to make great videos. But you can also take this a step further, encouraging readers of your blog, Twitter followers, Facebook and LinkedIn connections to comment on the video and rate it.

Other Ways to Get Inbound Links

Last time, I covered the power of inbound links and some of the best ways to get them… and avoid getting them… in order to improve your site’s ranking with search engines. In addition to directories, signature use, and establishing reciprocal links, there are some other tried and true means to increase the number of inbound links to your site.

If you are the recipient of a really great product or really great customer service, send a testimonial to that company, including your own URL as part of your signature. Most companies add testimonials to their sites, and the most credible ones include the full name, company and URL of the person who provided the testimonial. If your letter is posted, there’s an inbound link.

Write a free e-book or special report, remembering, of course, that content is king and that your e-book must provide useful information. Include links in your e-book to drive traffic and to open the possibility of inbound links. You can also offer your book as a free download from other relevant sites in exchange for a blurb about you and your URL.

Blogs are another great way to generate inbound links. You can host your blog as part of your own site. Followers tend to link to it because you regularly update the content. On the other hand, you can also opt to host your blog somewhere other than on your own site and include links back to it. Finally, search for blog directories. You can list your blog on these in the same way that you list your website on directories. Many of them are free.

Creating inbound links is one of the best ways to improve your site’s ranking. Keep chipping away at it, and make a point of finding one or two new ways to create an inbound link every week.

The Power of Inbound Links

Everyone likes links… especially the search engines. In fact, search engines love links. As search engines see it, the more inbound links there are to your site, the better your site must be. You have to increase the number of inbound links to your site in order to improve your search engine ranking.

First, let’s understand the different types of links. An outbound link is one on your site that points to another site on the Web. A reciprocal link is a shared link. ABC Company has a link to XYZ Company and vice versa. Reciprocal links can help optimize your site if they make sense. For example, a store that sells luggage may feature a travel agent’s link, and the travel agent’s site includes a link to the luggage retailer. It makes sense. It’s relevant. Without that relevance, search engines typically ignore reciprocal links.

Inbound links wield the power. You want sites to include a link back to your website. Guess what’s needed in order to make that happen? Compelling content. I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: There has to be a reason for folks to link to your site, and content is king. Make certain your site offers useful information… articles, tips, tricks and resources that visitors can use.

With good content, there are a number of ways to generate inbound links. First, you can list your website in directories. Conduct a search for online directories along with a keyword that’s relevant to your site. Some directories have very liberal submission policies and may even be free. Others charge a fee or require a reciprocal link.

You can also contact other relevant sites (like the example above) and suggest exchanging links. It becomes a reciprocal link rather than a true inbound one, but it may be worthwhile.

When you participate in forums and newsgroups, also be certain to include your URL as part of your signature and tag line. Just be certain that you are contributing to the discussion chain and not simply posting to display your link. And be certain to include your URL on your social media profiles.

There are also unacceptable methods for getting inbound links. Avoid “link farms” that are free-form pages that display links without any rhyme or reason. There is no structure and no useful directory associated with these sites. The worst part: search engines are aware of them and hate them, so do not affiliate your link with these sites.

Also use caution when buying links. You may stumble on an offer to list your URL on a high ranking site other than a directory. Google and other search engines have blacklisted some of these sites, so you’ll end up wasting your money.

Organically building inbound links is the way to improve your site’s ranking. Choose quality over quantity. Start building a few and continue to add to it each week.