December 31, 2010
‘Fess up – Did your business measure up to your expectations in 2010?
Want to change all that in 2011?
This is for you if you are:
- Making much less money than you know you could be
- Hustling to find enough great clients to work with
- Wasting too much time working on low-leverage, low paying activities
- In need of a clear plan for how to spend your time each day
Check out the free webinar to learn the secrets of how I’ve used my own breed of “practical magic” to rapidly build a multiple six-figure online business in under two years.
This is how I’ve achieved huge goals like extended vacations to exotic locales, befriending my dream mentors and even traveling with Sir Richard Branson!
For the first time, I reveal the 4 simple guiding principles that you can put in place TODAY to unlock your own practical magic.
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You’re going to love this!
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“As always, Laura’s content is clear, practical, and implementable. Her Practical Magic wwebinar gave me a track to run on and ideas for implementation.”
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“Thank you for a terrific webinar. Enjoyed it immensely. Simple and easy to apply, yet advanced enough to be effective.”
William Drescher
@Lacewigdesigner on #magic webinar with @lkr through her decisive activity I will be launching a hairline within the next six months and making more connects
@brendaleguisamo @lkr Thank you so much again for sharing your value added Practical and Magical insight on the webinar today! #magic
December 30, 2010
Are facebook pages (what used to be known as fan pages) really useful for a business? Well, I would say yes and in more ways than you might think.
Take a peek into facebook’s Insights, a valuable feature I’m guessing you didn’t even know was there!
What are Facebook Insights?
Insights is a collection of data about the people who “like” your page. This includes demographics like age and location as well as info about how they interact with your page.
Insights only apply to Facebook pages, not your personal profile. To find your insights, log into facebook then click “ads and pages” on the left side. From there click “view insights” which you should see listed underneath your page title. You’ll find details about the “users” of your page but also which messages brought out the most audience interaction.
Spend a little time exploring all the different charts and graphs and see what surprises you can discover about your audience!
Here’s a peek into my Zero to Facebook training where I show you how to access your insights and what surprising data you can find!
Read the Transcript ▼
Facebook provides really, really cool data about the people viewing your page, and this is another reason you want to use a page to promote your business. They do not make this available for groups or for personal profiles.
So you can look through your insights. You can play around with this. Basically, it tells you your active users, your new likes, your total likes. It shows you a little graph of how you’ve grown over time, your interactions, meaning the people that are liking things on your wall and posting things on your wall.
What’s even cooler is it shows you demographic data about your users. So right here I have the breakdown of the gender and age of the people who like my page. So if you’ve ever wondered how old Dashers are, they’re primarily 35 through 44 is the biggest group, 25 through 54 overall. Look, a pretty good chunk 55+ too. If you’re in the 55+ you’re certainly not alone, and slightly more males than females.
I can see the cities that people are in, the countries that they’re in, the languages that they speak. This is actually a really cool demographic data and I can see the different pages that they’re looking at and the different places they are coming from.
So again, this is the reason why you don’t really need go nuts with apps. You can see that not many people are even looking at the other tabs. They are almost all looking at the wall and not so much the other pages.
You can also the video plays, the audio plays, and the photo views, lots of cool data, some data about the interactions as well, and this is something you can dig through on your own. So you go to that by going to Insights on the left-hand side of your page.
December 23, 2010
Your email signature may seem like a tiny speck of your web presence but in reality its a super-important space that too many people overlook. Every email you send could contain a subtle reminder about special promotions or press.
Why not take a moment right now to create a to-do item on your calendar at the first of every month to update your email signature.
Here are a few ideas of promotions to feature in your email signature:
- A special offer or discount code
- Direct link to a key part of your website (for example service list, portfolio, case studies)
- A great write-up or interview about your company (I had this post linked in my signature for a while.)
- A plug for your email newsletter
- Information about an event you’ll be speaking at soon
You should also consider putting your social media profile links in your signature. Or you can steal this fantastic idea from David Kadavy and include just one link with all of that information in one place to avoid a long list. (To give credit where credit is due, David told me that he stole it from Noah Kagan, and I don’t know who Noah stole it from!)
Here’s a model of what your email signature might look like:
_________
Susie Que
President, Que Consulting
http://www.queconsulting.com/welcome
Office: 555-900-0909
Cell: 555-900-0999
Skype: SusieQue
Are you getting in your own way? Learn how to delegate with our
QueDelegateIt System: http://www.queconsulting.com/delegate
Now it’s your turn, leave a comment below with your newly optimized email signature!
December 20, 2010
Guest post by Sarah Arrow
Can you imagine a cheerleader cheering on her own? A great cheerleader knows that the cheering is a team sport alongside football. Team sports, like team blogging means nobody has to be perfect but everybody has a role to play.
Blogging together means you can achieve far more than what you can on your own; it’s like guest blogging on steroids (only without the side affects).
In January 2010 we started a team blog. It became very popular very quickly due to the variety and depth of content. On a solo blog you have one voice and guest voices if you invite them. A team blog, sometimes known as group blogging or multi author blogging, means you get to share many voices on one subject, in our case women in business.
Team blogging means a bigger audience. It also creates a new audience, so you reach readers who may have never discovered your work before. You see it in Hollywood movies all the time; a big name actor hooked up and sharing billing with a younger unknown actor. Both the actors reach new audiences. The big name actor will sell more DVDs and the younger less experienced actor gains more opportunities 
What’s not to love?
Fancy giving team blogging a go?
As I mentioned above, the chances are you already know the people to contact, you will find them in forums, in blogs that you love and on lists in Twitter. Find your Tribe and make contact. Be prepared to answer their questions and remember if they are asking or objecting it’s because they need reassuring.
As a group lead the discussion as to what platform you will use – we love WordPress and if you are not sure how to use it Laura can help in her Zero to WordPress program. As a team, decide on your blogging frequency but do that after you have decided on what topics to blog on. Over at Birds on the Blog we have a rotating group of 30 ‘permanent’ bloggers, Some blog on similar topics to each other and some on posts that are completely off the wall and beyond their field of experience. Decide the rules in advance such as if you will allow topic cross-over.
As any cheerleader will tell you, it’s OK to have a slightly less than perfect voice. When working together as a team, in both cheering and blogging, any shortfall will be covered by the stronger members. The less skilled parts of the team become stronger, more confident and that eases the pressure on the top performers.
What I am saying is, it’s cool to have a mix of skills on your team blog. No one will think less of you for joining in, many can see how the group grows and improves. The chances are if you are one of the stronger ones you will learn new things and refresh old techniques that you once dismissed. And hey, it feels good to encourage new talent.
Money, let’s talk filthy lucre. A team blog is in a position to monetize more swiftly than a traditional blog. I wasn’t expecting that and it caught me off guard. Our adsense revenue pays for the education of twin girls in Uganda. Sponsorship has enabled us to upgrade the blog’s infrastructure and hosting several times. With one team blog we are looking at all affiliate link advertising with revenue splits between the main editor and the bloggers. On another we allow the bloggers to use their own affiliate links. What works best for you may well change over time, so be clear about that right from the start.
If there is an existing team blog that you like, why not ask to become a reserve? Ask to post a few guest blogs to see if the audience is right for you, and if it will give you the opportunity to become part of something much bigger. A team blog amplifies your voice and increases your reach and as you get better at it, so do your writing skills.
As I said at the beginning a cheerleader doesn’t cheer by herself and neither do bloggers have to go it alone to achieve their goals. I am lucky I have a dream time of brilliant business women bloggers.
Who would be in your blogging dream team?
Sarah Arrow is a multi- author, team blogging advocate. She has 6 team blogs of her own and blogs her thoughts at Blogmistress. She is happy to chat on twitter @SarahArrow
December 16, 2010
This blog post falls into the category of “yeah you know it, but have you actually DONE it?”
(It’s also super easy, so you have no excuses!)
It’s time. I want you to update the links on your facebook personal profile as well as any pages that you’ve created. Most people choose these links when they first create their profile and never touch them again. You should be using facebook to drive traffic to your blog or website, so it’s important to check these links regularly to make sure they’re up to date.
For your personal profile, click “edit my profile” on the left side of facebook’s home screen then click “contact information” on the left side. You can enter as many URLs as you like in the “website” section, just make sure to enter one per line. I suggest that you put in your website and blog, as well as the links to your profiles on any other social networking sites that you’re active on.
To edit the sites linked on your facebook page, go to your page, click the “info” tab on the top then click “edit information” in the right top corner. You can enter as many sites as you like (again, one per line) in the “website” field.
While you’re at it, make sure you also update your Facebook page information as well. Don’t forget to add those social media site links too.
That’s it! Small but important.
December 13, 2010
Guest post by Liz Dennery Sanders
If you’ve ever heard the saying, “People don’t care how much you know, they want to know how much you care,” then you already know the secret to a truly successful brand. In simple terms, a brand is how you make people FEEL when they interact with you.
Does your target market know how much you CARE, or are you holding them at arm’s length? Worse, are you confusing them with mixed messages and promises you can’t deliver?
To successfully connect with and hold your audience, the following four elements must be present:
Clarity:
You must be clear about who you are, what you stand for and what you offer your clients. WHY do you do what you do? You have to be able to communicate this verbally and visually in a clear, easy-to-understand manner.
Authenticity:
How congruent and aligned are you with the real YOU? In our hyped, cluttered world, people can smell a fake from miles away. They are yearning for transparency and real-ness. When your brand message is clear, authentic and aligned with your values, AND you walk your talk, you’ll attract a large following of the people you are meant to work with.
Remarkability:
What is the tone and intention of your brand? Can someone see and FEEL your brand personality within seconds of engagement? It’s okay to step out of the box – in fact, it’s your uniqueness and point of difference that will set you apart. You’ve got to be willing to separate yourself from the “safe and comfortable” herd and be a little outrageous. Fearless, really. Seth Godin calls this your “Purple Cow.” Brown and white spotted cows are a dime a dozen, but a purple cow, now that’s remarkable.
Emotional Connection:
Emotions make the brain sit up and pay attention. In order to have a truly powerful personal brand, you have to understand how you make your audience FEEL. Someone once said, “People won’t remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel.” This is the core of an influential personal brand. In order to resonate strongly with your target market, you’ve got to make an emotional connection. The most powerful question you can ask yourself is, “How do I want people to FEEL when they experience my brand?”
Today’s consumer craves more meaningful relationships. When your brand voice is clear and authentic, you have a much greater chance of making a strong emotional connection with the people you want to reach most. And when you are truly remarkable, well, let’s just say you’ll never again have to worry about the competition.
When you express how much you CARE, by effectively using these four elements as the foundation for your brand, you’ll never wonder where your next client is coming from.
Through SheBrand, Liz Dennery Sanders helps female entrepreneurs build their confidence, their brands and their bank accounts. If you’re ready to brand your brilliance, implement a powerful marketing strategy and experience wild success in your business, start by getting a FREE copy of “101 Ways To Build A Powerful Personal Brand” at www.shebrand.com. Clients are waiting. Are you ready?
December 9, 2010
Read the Transcript ▼
[0:00:00]
Hello Laura Roeder here. Today I want to talk about what is my opinion the easiest way to make yourself stand out from the competition and make your business succeed. This is something that you’ve heard before I’m not going to tell you anything new but as always, are you doing it?
So I think the best, easiest, most effective way to make yourself stand out it is quality. Having the highest quality, experience, products, service. I was just thinking about this because I just got my nails painted and the place that I go to it’s a newer nail salon. It opened up maybe a year ago now. I always chit chat with the owner when I go in and in a year, or maybe even less than a year, she has already bought out the space next door and expanded her nail salon to move into two store fronts.
That’s how successful her business is doing in this bad economy and there’s not a shortage of nail salons where I live. I live in LA there are tons of nail salons everywhere yet Hannah has doubled her business, right?
Has grown so much that she has to rent out the space next door. She’s totally renovated it. And here’s the difference between Hannah’s Nail Salon, I think that’s what it’s called, and all the other nail salons in my area. Her nail salon is better. It’s just better. It’s cleaner it’s not ugly and chunky. She has like nice design. Everything looks new everything’s clean. They follow up the standards, the sanitizing everything, they have all the latest nail polish colors.
They’re not doing anything super-innovative right? They’re not re-inventing the wheels. They have the standard services. You go in, you pick out your nail polish and they paint your nails, right? But it’s just nicer, they do everything well. The people that work there do a really good job. They’re nice they don’t have like any loud Korean soap operas blaring from the TV, right? It’s just a nice place to go they just have the best quality and because they have the best quality, they’re absolutely dominating.
There are so many little opportunities in your business to improve the quality, that maybe you don’t do because you’re trying to save money. Or maybe you don’t think that they matter but they really do add up to make a big difference.
One thing that I would love to change in information products is that I’m always shocked by the really low production value of information products. It’s almost scary to say this because oh my God, I’m holding myself to really high standard now but I do want to hold myself to a high standard. And it is something that we work hard at to make sure when you buy a product through me, that you have a good experience, that the video is good, that the audio is good.
You can download it and download the audio file and get the transcript and like all the pieces that you need. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to — you know I was listening to a recording the other day of a product that costs thousands of dollars and the whole first ten minutes were filled with like, we’re having trouble with the phone lines, oh can you un-mute yourself okay now can you un-mute yourself? I’m like why did they not edit this out when you’re paying thousands of dollars, can you not edit out that first ten minutes of we’re having trouble with the phone line for the recording?
This is the kind of small thing that you can do that makes your experience that makes your quality way better than everyone else. So if your business could be doing better if you’re struggling how to surpass other people in your industry, look at all the little ways that you can improve your customer’s experience and that you can offer the highest quality out there.
[0:03:52]
End of Audio
December 6, 2010
Guest Post by Hector Cuevas
I think it’s safe to say that Social Media is not a fad, right? But there are still many people out there using social media for short term gain. Getting lots of followers who don’t know them, sending friend requests like crazy and posting links all over the place in an attempt to get noticed.
I know you know this isn’t the way to do it, but if you’re getting started with social media, you need to look at it as a long term strategy. Here are 5 tips for long term social media success.
Tip #1. Consistency across Platforms
Whether you’re using twitter, facebook, linked in, or youtube it’s important to stay congruent with your brand’s persona and image across all platforms. This will ensure that you’ll be recognized no matter where you are on the internet.
I know it’s a little tempting to change your Facebook picture once in a while, and it’s ok if you do; but if you do, make sure to update all the other platforms you use.
Tip #2. Establish Relationships with your friends and followers
Social media is suppose to be social; go figure. There’s no magic formula for creating relationships online. Unless you strategically plan out an attack when meeting someone in real life, there’s really not much difference when you meet them online.
As business owners, we tend to want to act professional and detached. This is exactly what our customers don’t want. Be personable, approachable and nice and you’ll do great.
Tip #3. Connect with Leaders in your niche
Social media eliminated most of the degrees of separation between you and someone you look up to. There’s no reason you can’t @reply a leader in your niche; there’s no one stopping you.
Getting interviews, JV collaborations, and full blown partnerships has never been easier. Now, it’s our job to get the confidence and tweet away.
Tip #4. Value First
No one likes being sold to, but everyone likes to buy. This is why everyone looks forward to Black Friday every year (it gives them an excuse to spend obscene amounts of money). But that doesn’t mean people will buy from just anyone.
This is where value comes in. Social Media is a great place to establish yourself as a leader by getting a group of people together and giving them the attention, information and help they need. Facebook has made this super easy with their facebook pages.
If you still don’t have one, go right now and create a page. Add it to you blog or website and start getting “fans” (even though we can’t call them fans anyone). Once you have a group of people interacting on your page, ask them how you can help – they’ll love you for it.
Tip #5. Forget What Everyone Else Is Doing
The hardest part about this online business is minding your own business. We tend to focus on, and even worry about, what other people (our competitors) are doing. The key here is to focus on the people you’re helping.
Not focusing on your friends, fans and followers will probably hurt your brand’s image, so forget about your competitors and get to work building those lasting relationships.
Please share this post with your friends and followers; I’d really appreciate it (I know Laura would, too) – and leave your feedback in the comments section below.
Hector Cuevas can be found at HectorJCuevas.com, a blog about how online entrepreneurs can grow a business and create influence through their own personal blog. He is a marketing and blogging coach who will help you position you and your business as a leader in your industry.
December 2, 2010
Have you ever heard someone say that social media is hard to track and measure? I’m calling FOUL on that one right here and now!
Social media is easy to track IF you have the right tools and bit.ly is one of the best, most powerful and completely free tools out there.
Bit.ly is a URL shortener (like tinyurl.com) that packs some serious tracking power. When you use bit.ly to shorten a link it not only counts hits to that link but shows referral sources, social media conversations, and even the country your visitors are coming from.
You can use this for your business by strategically using bit.ly to track links that you send to different places. For example, I could create one link to my blog post that I share in The Dash, and a separate link that I share on twitter. I could then easily measure which one got more social media traction such as retweets and facebook likes, as well as comparing overall traffic volume.
Another trick you can try is to see how other people’s links are performing. The next time you see a bit.ly link from one of your competitors or peers on twitter or facebook, copy the url and then add add a + (just a plus symbol) at the end of the url to get the traffic info for that link. It’s a great way to do market research and see what people click on…and what they don’t!
Take a moment right now to sign up for a free account at bit.ly and start making a habit of using it whenever you share a link.
