Using LinkedIn to Make Valuable Business Connections

If you aren’t using LinkedIn in your business right now, you are definitely missing out on huge amounts of business.  How can this be?  Everyone has heard of Facebook, Twitter and some of the other social media sites.  However, LinkedIn often gets a bad rap because it is assumed to only be a place for recruiters.  This is not true!

LinkedIn is a wonderful networking site with over 135 million members at this moment.  These are business professionals who are high-level because their average earning levels are more than $100,000 per year.  In other words, these are the decision-makers in most companies.  Where else could you go to access high-level decision-makers like this?

So how can you use your connections are LinkedIn?  One of the best ways is to make connections with people who can help you improve your business.  For instance, if you are a life coach, you could make a connection with other people who could refer you more business.  An example of that would be a human resources director.  Often, they knew people who are having a hard time getting a job or fitting in at their current job.  A life coach could be a definite help in those situations.  You could also refer people back to them in many cases.

Think of all the different kinds of people who could help you improve your business through referrals.  In addition, you may decide that you want a joint venture partner with someone to create your own information product or service.  You never know who you’re going to meet on  LinkedIn!

Start thinking outside the box when it comes to using LinkedIn.  Set up your profile, get involved in some groups and start interacting with people from all over the world.  You may be surprised at who you meet.

Three Tips for Email Marketing

Online marketing is becoming a really important tactic for every business.  E-mail marketing is one of the most used strategies for online marketing. This helps build relationships with clients and also increase sales.

The first thing that you have to do is to test your e-mails.  This can be a sort of little experiment that you do to test which e-mail works best. You can create at least three different copies of your e-mail message. Send the e-mails to different groups of recipients. Track every click-through for every e-mail and compare which one is working best. This is a form of split testing.

Make sure that you send the e-mails on the best days. When you send it at the wrong time, it may take a while before your recipients get to read your message. Most people do not check e-mails during the weekends. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are said to be days when recipients respond to e-mails. You’ll most likely get favorable responses with these days.

Lastly, every marketing strategy boils down to having the best practices. Know what you want and find the best ways to achieve it. You have to be persistent. Oftentimes, goals take time to achieve so you have to frequently think of ways and methods to reach that target. Know how you will measure the success of your campaign. This can help you in improving your tactics and reach your goal.

Factors for determining whether to outsource or do it yourself

Your decision to outsource any activity or function vs. doing it your self will depend on several factors. Some of the key factors are:

1.    Required skills for doing the activity or function

2.    Cost of outsourcing or doing yourself

3.    Quality work of the activity or function to be outsourced

4.    Continuity of service

If you do not have the requisite skill or knowledge to perform the activity or the function, then it is advisable to outsource the job. In this age of specialization it would make better sense to outsource activities or functions that require professional skills such as Information Technology, Legal, Taxation, etc. so that you get proper services without the need to invest heavily in training yourself.

The cost factor is an important consideration in deciding whether to outsource or do it yourself. If you have the necessary skill and knowledge to train yourself in the required field of activity or function, it may be economical to do it yourself.

Certain jobs such as human resources, finance, etc. generally should be handled yourself as these are strategic functions and you may not want outsiders to know of your business strategies.

Quality of work is an important factor to be considered when outsourcing any activity or function. A proper agreement should be entered into with the outsourced agencies with regard to desired quality and standards of the work.

Continuity of service is a crucial factor in outsourcing any work. Your agreement with the outsourced vendor should include a clause for continuity of service as frequent break in service can upset your business schedules and expose you to business risks.

You can outsource lots of things from writing your blog posts to handing your social media posts. Call me to find out what I can offer for your business!

Selling what you know – what is information marketing?

Information marketing is the practice of selling information-based products.  The value in the product stems from the expertise of the product’s creator and their knowledge in a particular area.  It is important for you as the expert to carve out a niche in your specialty subject and establish yourself as the authority on the subject.

After you begin to prove yourself as an expert in the field, you can put together your knowledge to be distributed.  The information can be packaged in a variety of formats such as books, DVDs, online courses, podcasts and seminars.  An increasingly popular way to package the information is through websites and blogs.

The most effective delivery method of information marketing is the Internet.  Digital products are relatively inexpensive to produce and are able to quickly reach their target markets making them particularly profitable.  The most successful information marketing continually builds on itself and leads to additional information products.

–>> Have you ever thought of creating your own information product as a way of making extra income for your business? If not, call me! I can help!

Protecting your reputation on Facebook

There are several easy and quick ways you can protect your reputation on Facebook.  The most important one is to make sure you regularly change and update your Facebook password.  This might seem like no big deal and something that wouldn’t affect your reputation but if someone gets a hold of your account maliciously they can post disparaging and slanderous pictures, updates and comments.  This type of hack can be extremely damaging to your reputation as it looks like it was you who was making these offensive comments.

Another way to protect your reputation is to understand and fully implement the facebook privacy settings.  This will allow you to decide who should and who should not be able to view your comments, wall, pictures, etc.

Your reputation is something very easily lost and not something you can easily get back.  You should remember that and be cautious every time you post a comment or picture to Facebook that might potentially be embarrassing, taken the wrong way or out of context or puts you in an unfavorable position.

–>> Need help with your Facebook marketing? Give me a call for some free tips!

Is PPC the Right Way To Go?

You may have heard the term PPC, which means pay per click.  This is where you would pay for a certain number of clicks on your ads that usually run at the top and sides of the Google search page.  You’ve probably seen these ads that surround the search results when you put in keywords to search.

The companies that run these ads are paying by the click.  That doesn’t mean that the person who clicks on their ad necessarily bought their product or service, however.  They are simply going off the idea that if they get enough volume to their site, the ads will pay off.

Depending upon the niche and keyword selection, you might be paying anywhere from five cents to $25 or more per click.  Obviously, this can get very expensive if you’re in a competitive niche.  However, if your niche also pays huge dividends then the payoff might be great.  It really is something that you have to test.  Anyone who runs a PPC campaign for you needs to do split testing to see which ads work the best for you so that you can make sure you’re not unnecessarily paying for worthless traffic.

Some businesses choose not to use the PPC model simply because it cannot be predicted how many actual customers you’ll get from your efforts.  You may decide that you don’t want to put your money into PPC at first.  Instead, you might start with some free traffic methods such as article and video marketing.  If you can get your site to rank in the number one or two position on the front page of Google for your keyword terms, you will have avoided paying for PPC altogether.

As with anything, you have to weigh the pros and cons of whether PPC will work for your business.

Top Tips on How to Go Higher in Google Places

Google Places is very important for business owners as so many are using it to reach a wider market. If you are one of those who would like to rank higher in Google Places here are some tips to help you out.

1. When filling-in your business details in Google Places, make sure that you do not leave anything blank and that all your information is complete and accurate.

2. Create a Google XML map and include a location.kml or geo-sitemap.xml to the root directory of your business page and upload them using Google Webmaster Tools.

3. Get listed by building more links and getting many citations and reviews on high-trafficked sites. Mention your business on another person’s website. Make sure that the information is accurate and is a precise match to the ones you put in Google Places.

4.  Use on-page optimization. Many people overlook the fact that you still need to optimize the actual website so do not forget to optimize the title and description, tags, categories including links and citations on every page of your website.

Remember not to ignore these tips because they are valuable to help you get higher rankings in Google Places.

If these suggestions confuse you, or you need additional help, feel free to give me a call or send me an email.

How to make search engines find your site

Before understanding how the search engines find your site, it is important to understand that search engines see only words that are published on your Web site. Though you like websites that are cool with high-quality graphics, they are completely ignored by the search engines. None of the search engines can recognize images on your Web page (without appropriate ALT text). They need to be labelled with some descriptive text to catch search engine’s attention.

Following are the two ways to get your website listed in search engine results:

1. Paid listings
2. Free listings

This is how search engines work for the free listings:

You can “SUBMIT YOUR URL” to get your website indexed. Following are the links for four of the top search engines:

1. http://www.google.com/addurl.html
2. http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
3. http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp
4. http://www.excite.com/info/add_url_form/

Some key places to insert your keywords:

1. The title tag has to be between 65 and 70 characters. If not followed, it will be ignored by the search engine.
2. Header tags should be highlighted to attract more users.
3. Topic sentences pertaining to the introduction, body paragraphs, etc.

Need help with getting the search engines to find your site? Call me!

How Having A Mobile Optimized Site Can Smash Your Competitors

I want to talk to you today about how having a mobile optimized site can smash your competitors.

The first thing you need to understand is the future of the Internet is mobile devices. Very soon, many more people will access the Web using their phones than by their computers.

You can either adapt to this trend and smash your competitors, or you can do nothing and let your competitors smash you.  It really is that simple.

–>> If you have a phone that accesses the Internet, try going to your website and see how much you enjoy the experience. Notice how nothing fits and you have to use scroll bars to try to make sense of it, and even then you can’t access parts of it.

It’s frustrating. Isn’t it? Do you think your mobile visitors are going to stay long?

Now imagine that they go to your site and they automatically get sent to a mobile optimized version of your site. Everything is tailored to fit. It’s a breeze to navigate through. You can easily find and enjoy what you are looking for.

If you have a site like that and your competitors only have a regular website optimized for computers, who do you think is going to come out on top?

How Article Marketing Can Drive Traffic To Your Site

Today, I want to talk a little bit about article marketing. You might have heard this term before, but you didn’t really know how it applied to your own business. The truth is, I have seen some businesses go from zero to huge success just because of article marketing.

–>> What is article marketing?

It is the act of writing articles about particular topics and then distributing those articles to a certain kind of site as a way of getting both links and traffic back to your own site.

For instance, let’s say you are in the real estate business. You might decide to write an article titled, “Ten Things You Must Do Before Your Put Your Home Up For Sale”. The article might be 400-500 words long, and you would include a link back to your site at the end. This area is normally called the “resource box”.

In your resource box, you would use anchor text (keyword text). You might say something like, “For ten more crucial tips that you need to know before selling your home, come visit my site….” You get the idea.

This helps you do two things. First, it helps you get more back links to your site because you will be posting these articles on article distribution sites. Secondly, it helps you get more traffic as readers will click through to get more information.

Article marketing can be a great way to start marketing your website online, and it works for any niche or industry! It also has a great snowball effect because you just continue to add more and more content to the web that will lead people back to your site.