We all know that we SHOULD survey our current or potential customers – after all it’s a goldmine of information that we can use to shape our products and services. I recently surveyed the members of Creating Fame Classroom and was actually quite surprised by the parts of the program that they valued the most (which we now know to put more focus on). The bottom line is that surveying is a valuable tool but one that can be completely overwhelming – which is why this week I’m asking you to tackle it head on!

First write out a simple, 5-10 question survey that doesn’t take much time to answer. The survey should contain no more than 3 questions that require paragraph answers.

There are two free tools that I love for conducting surveys – SurveyMonkey and Google Docs . Google Docs is more flexible as it doesn’t have a limit on the number or type of questions, but it doesn’t have the fancy reporting abilities that Survey Monkey has. Google Docs will just store all of your data in a spreadsheet, then its up to you to analyze and display the data. (For example, if you want to see your results in a pie chart you’ll need to know how to create it yourself just like you would in excel.)

SurveyMonkey is pretty self-explanatory. Just sign up for an account and they’ll walk you through the process of creating your survey. The end result is a link that you can email out to your customers. Google Docs can be a little trickier, and you have the option of either linking to your survey or embedding it right on your own site. This great video from Erica.biz explains all the ins and outs of setting up a google doc survey.

So the basic structure is: write out your survey, put it into a survey tool, then send out the final survey link using email and/or social media. Even if you only get a few responses, you’ll uncover some juicy information about your audience!

Thanks to @WendyMaynard for her question!

Referenced in this video: Dean Jackson

Click Here To Read The Transcript

The following is a guest post by Holly Jackson, the owner of Cottage Copy

I’m Holly, a shy copywriter and marketing consultant, and today I’m here to tell you about why you should use social media. Now I’m not going to talk about all the great advertising benefits that it has, because quite frankly, Laura can do that a hell of a lot better than I can. But I am here to talk to you about how social media can be a godsend for people who are shy and scared of marketing. Like me. And probably, also like you.

The problem is that most people, when you really get down to it, are scared of selling things. Selling things requires you to not only believe that you have something great going on, but that others will agree with you. It’s the second part that scares my clients, and me most days. Many successful business people go through their lives terrified that each new stage of their business will be the one where people find out that they really aren’t all that. If you’re a naturally shy person in the first place, this means that marketing can truly seem like an insurmountable task. After all, the combination of talking about yourself and marketing your products can seem daunting, even to the most outgoing among us.

When I work with clients like this, I tell them to head over to Twitter. This doesn’t always go over well, I’m sorry to say. After all, if marketing scares you, why would you want to spend hours a day talking about people about it? Well, the thing is, that’s not really what Twitter does. Social media doesn’t involve the scary part of being social: the awkward forced conversations, the introducing yourself in front of strangers. It doesn’t involved getting judged based on your clothing, or your young face or squeaky voice. As someone who has a young face and a very squeaky voice, I’m grateful for this every day. When it comes down to it, social media is really about building relationships with people who you’d be friends with anyway. Which is why Twitter is so great: you can build relationships in real time, without all of the real life social pressure that you’d feel at a networking event or a party.

If you’re shy, Twitter is really the perfect marketing tool. There’s something magical that happens when you start using Twitter. You meet some people: usually some great people who you’d like to hang out with anyway if you lived in the same area. And then, they find out what you do. Usually, they also find out that you’re pretty good at it, no matter what you think of yourself. And then, they tell other people. Who then tell more people, who you can also become friends with in an enjoyable and stress free way. And before you know it, you’ve got a network of people who really want to market for you. And you never even had to talk yourself or your business up to anyone.

Twitter in particular gets a bad rap sometimes, mostly because there are so many people who want to abuse it and shout over everyone else. But don’t let that turn you off, please. If you start out by looking to develop friends rather than marketing targets, you won’t find those people anyway. And if you do, it’s easy enough to turn them off by refusing to follow them. All it really takes to build a business on Twitter is a kind heart and a willingness to be open to meeting new people. Two months ago, I didn’t have a business. I now have a business that not only breaks even, but flourishes. I’m incredibly honored to say that I owe most of that to random strangers who I now can’t imagine not having in my life. They retweeted my blogs, they told people that I was awesome, and they told me that even when I thought I was a failure, I’d pick myself back up again. And they were right. As a result, I now tell clients that when they get started, the first thing they should do is grab a Twitter account. If they’re really scared, I offer to introduce them around and orient them myself. It’s that important.

If you don’t know how to market, or the idea of marketing seems like an insurmountable task, go check out Twitter. Make a bio, upload and icon, and say hi to someone. I promise, you’ll be amazed at what can happen.

Holly Jackson is the owner of Cottage Copy, a copywriting and marketing company that specializes in ittybiz marketing. You can find her on Twitter as @copygeniusgirl

This week I’m all over the internet – here’s the scoop!

First of all, check out the free report I just released – Why Being an “Expert” is Making You Useless on Twitter

In this report I discuss why I disagree with most of the “common sense” advice about twitter – and what you should be doing instead. Click here to see the five well-meaning mistakes you might be making in your quest for “expert” status.

I’m the featured guest this week for Yaro Starak‘s video podcast series.

In this video interview, I tell the story of how I first became and entrepeneur and how I transitioned from one business to another (while staying profitable). Also if you’ve never seen my cat Koopa she makes quite the cameo!

Lastly, here’s a short interview about my experience switching over to infusionsoft on The Launch Coach blog. There is already quite a controversy brewing in the comments, so check that one out if you’re curious about the pros and cons of different email marketing and e-commerce systems.