Social Media Marketing Made Easy | Facebook & Twitter for Business

How to Make Money Online Without Selling Your Soul

Guest post by Beth Hayden

We’ve all seen them – those 20-page online sales letters full of yellow highlighting. They have attention-grabbing headlines about how you can make a million dollars a week while you sit on the beach in Maui.

Truth-telling time – I once tried publishing one of these sales letters for my business. It made me really uncomfortable. I hated every line of that letter, from the smarmy headline to the last post-post-post script at the bottom. The whole thing made me feel slimy. And when I did manage to swallow my pride and publish it, that letter didn’t make me a single dollar.

As a blogging consultant, I want all of my clients to be able to sleep soundly at night. I want them to feel good about what they do online, to be proud of what they’re putting out in the world. I always tell them they don’t have to make a deal with the devil in order to make money – serious money – online.

Want to know all the things you DON’T need to do to make money in an online business? You don’t need to:

• Create a hundred tiny niche websites about topics you hate or are bored with
• Run ads on your sites for products you dislike and don’t actively support
• Write slimy 12-page sales letters full of yellow highlighter that start with totally misleading, used-car-salesman headlines
• Try to trick the search engines by practicing unscrupulous SEO techniques that make you fear the wrath of Google if you’re caught
• Write five blog posts a day to get your website started, then get a divorce and/or check into a hospital for exhaustion after six months

So what CAN you do to try to get started with making money online?

Step One – Create (and grow) an authority website about a topic you know well and really love. Use self-hosted WordPress to start your site, so your online presence can grow with you.  Include an email opt-in on your website, so you can start building your email list.

Step Two – Build the content on the site by posting 2-3 top-quality, well-written articles every week. Write the best stuff you can, and put together a publishing schedule that won’t burn you out. Remember that building your content is a critical part of your business.

Step Three – Start growing your audience by seeking out guest posting opportunities on other blogs that reach your target audience. Approach other bloggers (both in your niche and outside it) with great guest post ideas.

Step Four – As you grow your audience, start researching products that your audience needs and wants. What problems do they have? What questions do you get asked over and over?

You’re doing this research so you can eventually create your own products – and the quickest way to create a product that doesn’t sell is to create it because YOU like it and think people will want it. It’s not about you. Check in with that blog audience you’ve been engaging with. Ask them what they need, using surveys or open-ended blog post questions.

Step Five – Seek out affiliate opportunities that fit your values, your ethics and your business models (affiliate relationships allow you to sell other people’s products and make a referral fee for each sale.) Take that list of things your audience needs and start looking around for other people’s products and services that fill those needs. Then become an affiliate for those folks, and start reaping the benefits of making useful recommendations that you feel good about.

Step Six – As you build your audience and grow your online authority, start creating your own products. This is the absolute best way to make money online. Create information products, if you have stuff to teach – most of us do! Try coaching programs, paid teleseminars and webinars, or downloadable e-books.

Remember – before you start creating any product, do your research. Use all that client data from step four, and you’ll create products people will happily pay you for – because you’re solving their problems for them!

Yes, this process takes work. It takes dedication. You will not make a million dollars in your first month. But if you start out right by following the first step – picking a topic you love – this work won’t seem like drudgery. You’ll put in the effort, grow your audience and your authority, and opportunities to make money will start coming in from all directions.

And once you’ve got an audience that likes and trusts you, you can make them offers by writing authentic, honest sales letters for your products that don’t make you squirm when you hit “Publish.” You can hold your head high and keep that yellow highlighter in your desk drawer where it belongs.

Beth Hayden is the owner of Blogging with Beth, a blogging and social media consulting company that specializes in helping people launch online businesses using blogs and WordPress websites. She teaches bloggers and small businesses owners how to turn their blogs into businesses that make money in sustainable, ethical ways. And she sleeps like a baby every night.

Keep Track Of Your Links

How to interview fellow entrepreneurs to further grow YOUR audience, traffic and business

Guest post by Torrey McGraw

Because you’re an avid reader of Laura’s site, I’m willing to guess you’re interested in increasing traffic to your site & making more money.

Entrepreneurs are always looking for creative ways to accomplish this and I’d like to suggest something that may be a great addition to what you’re currently doing: video interview experts/influencers in your niche.

Why video interviews? Check out the following statistics about online video consumption:

Comscore’s March 2011 Online Video Rankings showed that the total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5.7 billion online video content viewing sessions in March 2011.

HubSpot released a poll indicating that in 2011 the average American watches 3 hours and 26 minutes worth of online videos a week, up from 2 hours and 20 minutes in 2008.

Emarketer reported that 77 percent of mobile users are watching more online mobile videos than they had been a year ago.

Video interviewing influencers/experts in your niche will without question send oodles of traffic to your site. The great thing is if your content is great, there’s a great chance that some of the visitors will stick around. It’s a great change of pace from typical text posts. Here’s how to do it:

1. Look for popular & interesting people in your niche

Seek out those with a thriving audience to interview. Ask yourself, “Do they have an active community?”. You know by checking out their Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and their blog commenters and/or subscribers. By having an active community, you can assume that their fans will check out a lot of stuff related to the person you’d like to interview. Thus, sending people to your  lovely site.  It will send droves of people to your site because they are always curious to hear what the entrepreneur has to say.

2. Request a video interview

Email the person and request an video interview. Keep the email brief. Just answer the who, what , when, where and why and you’ll be fine. Remember, they’re probably busy so they don’t have a lot of time to read long emails.  K.I.S.S. And press ‘send’.

3. Don’t overthink equipment or technology

Don’t rush out and spend thousands on top notch stuff. In person interviews can be done with a digital camera that has video mode or a digital camcorder like the Kodak Zi8. If you’d like to conduct the interview from your computer, like I do, you’ll need:
Webcam
Microphone
Skype
Skype call recorder add-on (Ecamm Call Recorder for Mac or Vodburner for PC)

4. Conduct the interview

If you’re not used to interviewing, it’s understandable to be a bit nervous. Do some research on the person you’re interviewing and ask them questions you and your audience would be interested in.

5. Post the interview on YouTube or other Online video sites

Take the video and upload it to YouTube and embed the video in a post on your site. Keep in mind that although this is a video, be mindful about search engine optimization (SEO). Optimize the video title, description and tags. If you want bonus SEO love, get the video transcribed and post the text on your site. The search engines will have additional text from your interview to crawl.

6. Send the interviewee a follow up email

Thank them for the interview. Also tell them you’ll be promoting the site and you would appreciate if they did the same. Most likely, since it’s something featuring them, they will.

7. Publicize the interview

Once you’ve posted the interview, spread the word via your social media accounts and email list (if applicable). Be sure to notify the interviewee. I do this by including the person’s Twitter name in tweets and tagging the person in a Facebook post.

There’s a great chance the interviewee will tell their followers about the interview thus sending lots of people to your site. That’s where the magic happen. You’ve effectively increased your reach by having an additional person sending people to your website.

What makes this extra groovy is if your site content is great, you’ll probably get people to be repeat visitors or new prospects/customers.

So do me a favor, give it a shot and let me know what you think about adding interviews to your website. Got any comments or questions about conducting online video interviews? Feel free to share them in the comment section.

Torrey McGraw is the creator of Grind & Thrive, a website featuring video interviews with successful entrepreneurs sharing business advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.

 

Add YouTube To Your Facebook Page

Ever noticed the nifty YouTube tab on The Dash Facebook page?

Now it’s time to get your very own! Pretty cool huh?

It’s important to give people a reason to visit your Facebook page, I know you don’t have a ton of spare time to create additional content just for your Facebook buddies. That’s why it’s important to automate your content streams into your page to continuously give fans something fresh to check out. Integrating your Facebook and YouTube accounts just requires one simple app – Involver’s YouTube Channel app which you can find on this page. Start by clicking the “install” button on this page under the YouTube Channel app. From there you will need to enter your YouTube username and choose your settings, I’ve created a quick video containing how to do that and other Facebook app modifications that you can watch right here:

Read the Transcript ▼

Why your clients don’t want to know you care….

Guest post by Lauren Sheehan

There’s a myth going around out there in the business world that I want to clear up. This myth has to do with your clients and customers. This myth says that your clients and customers want to know that you care about them. Well I’m here to tell you, this just isn’t true.

Now before you get all upset with me, hear me out:

Today’s audience can smell in-authenticity from a mile away and consumers are demanding transparency even more due to social media marketing. It’s imperative for success that you learn to be confident, powerful and authentic so that your message gets across and MOVES people to action.

If people get any hint or feeling that you are not walking your talk or being totally authentic, they simply won’t do business with you ( or be friends with you for that matter).

The truth of today’s world is that it’s not enough to simply be powerful when you interact with others and it’s not enough to just be compassionate and loving. You have to be all of these things and also stay totally authentic to you, and that looks different for each of us.

People, clients, and customers don’t want to know that you care about them.  They want to FEEL that you care about them.

People want to do business and be inspired by people who have presence; a magnetic presence that they can feel connected to. We want to buy from, learn from, and be friends with people who are at home in their bodies and light up from the inside.

Your Personal Presence:  The Most Important Communication Tool you Have

If I were to say personal presence started in a particular place in the body, I would say it begins in your belly; a place that martial arts and many eastern philosophies call Hara and it lies 2-3 inches below your belly button (on the lower side if you are woman… we have hips, what can I say?) This is a powerful center in your body and when you are there, you are “home”.

We live in a culture that is largely disconnected from our physical body most of the time. What do I mean by this? Have you ever been speaking to someone and all of the sudden their eyes glaze over and you feel as though they’ve “left the building”? You want to ask them “ is anyone in there?” This is what I mean by being not present or not home.

Some cultures place a lot of value on being home. The Japanese actually have a practice and artform called Haragei, which means the art of the belly.  It is the “unspoken way” used in Japanese society to decide immediately and silently whether or not a person is likable, trustable, and worthy of your time and business. Haragei is the act of influencing others without words; with your presence.

They even have a saying; “Hara de kangaenasai” which means “please think with your belly”; in essence, go deeper, stop being rational and think with the essence of your whole being. They also have a saying, “hara-goe” which means “belly-voice” and is the kind of voice that resonates deep from within the belly, and carries a presence of integrated connectedness. In modern day Japan, a person will be accepted by others or shunned, in business and personally, by their gut feelings towards you. This is a normal and accepted way of life.

Fortunately, most cultures aren’t this extreme, but as I said earlier, the average person’s authenticity radar continues to grow stronger and stronger daily. The truth is, that this “Belly Voice” actually has the ability to carry with it your feelings.

When you speak with presence in your belly, you allow people to connect with you authentically and they won’t have to guess if you care about them, they’ll literally feel that you do in your presence and your voice.

Practical tools for increasing your level of presence and magnetism

I want to share with you a few simple tools that will help you light up the room with your presence and create deeper, more meaningful, and authentic connections with everyone in your circle of influence. These are the steps I teach my students and clients when we begin our work cultivating personal presence:

1. Check in: Are you present in your body as you walk into a room to network, meet a client or talk on the phone?
2. Come Home: Focus your attention 2-3 inches below your belly button. Take 30-60 seconds to become very present here.
3. Ground your energy: Part of your personal presence is energetic and every energy system needs to be grounded. We trust and feel comfortable around people who are grounded vs those who are up in the air. Ground yourself by consciously imagining roots coming from your feet into the ground.
4. Move and Speak from your Belly: When you walk, lead with your belly. When you speak, imagine speaking to the person in front of you from your center. Feel the sound vibrate up your body and out your mouth, keeping your body open ( arms by your sides and shoulder tension released).

Try it and let us know what you noticed! How do you practice being “home” when you connect with others?

Lauren Sheehan is a trained dancer and performer, trailblazing inspirational speaker, and founder of the Feminine Rhythm- a tribe of passionate women who are committed to their own personal growth, claiming their feminine gifts and following their pleasure – she’s inspired many women to follow their own rhythms, cultivate a magnetically vibrant presence, and become powerfully feminine and she knows what it takes to cultivate the kind of rooted magnetism that lights up room and moves people into action.

It is her mission to teach women to grow their glow so they can be seen and heard as beautiful, powerful and feminine women who can move an the masses into action or simply move their spouses into more intimacy and passion… and to remember put the toilet seat down after using the bathroom

Are You Appy? Where to Find Web Apps to Fuel your Business

Guest Post by Greg Miller

Apps have exploded and are transforming our lives. There seems to be an app for just about everything. From counting calories to reserving a table at your favorite restaurant. Just today I read about a new iPhone app that will generate a resignation letter for you and send it to your boss. But beyond transforming our lives these apps have the power to transform our businesses in a major way. And for small business owners that are already budget conscious, there are great apps for both the web and mobile devices that can impact your business big time.

So where do you find them?

Well I’ve got five resources that can help you find just the web apps you need to run your business the way it needs to run in the 21st century.

1. GetApp.com – GetApp is a marketplace for business applications. With over 4,300 apps to choose from they offer a way for potential buyers to not only discover but also compare web-applications for their business. A great thing about GetApp is that they break their apps down by business need. So you can compare marketing apps, customer management apps, finance & accounting apps, and more.

2. Thesmallbusinessweb.com – Imagine a network of companies that collaborate and create web apps to help you, the small business owner, be able to compete with the Goliaths of the world. That’s what you get with The Small Business Web. They bring together companies that are creating web apps by utilizing their APIs to create great solutions for the small business community. They have a vast directory of companies pooling their resources together and are always looking to bring in companies that have an open API to collaborate.

3. AppSumo.com – I’m going to sum this company up with one word. WOW! They are without a doubt the Groupon of web applications. They operate under pretty much the same premise as Groupon and other group buying websites. By partnering with companies they offer incredible deals on bundles of apps. Imagine getting hundreds of dollars worth of web apps at a fraction of the price.

4. WebAppolution.com – A new website to the game, WebAppolution is a web magazine that focuses on, you guessed it, the latest web apps and services. WebAppolution profiles the latest web and mobile apps for both business and everyday life. You’ll find an assortment of different app categories and article to browse through so that you stay up-to-date on the latest in the app world.

5. Mobile Apps – While the above four focus on web apps, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention anything about mobile apps. First of all if you’re a small business owner or aspiring entrepreneur and you’re not sporting either an iPhone or Android device then you need to get in the game and upgrade NOW! Not only will your life be easier but you’ll finally be living in the 21st century. Once you do have an iPhone or Android device, both devices have an app marketplace with great tools for your business.

Apps for your Business and Lifestyle

Some of my personal favorite apps that I use both for business and everyday life can be found on the sites mentioned above.

Evernote.com is great for both personal and business use. If you’re ready to get rid of your notebook just start using Evernote. There’s both a web app and mobile app that sync’s up and allows you to take notes, photographs, and record voice notes so you’ll have them wherever you go.

For those of you who are ready to ditch the fax machine, there’s a new web service I recently came across called HelloFax. HelloFax.com is great for those who don’t want to purchase a fax machine. It allows you to send faxes, sign documents, and fill out forms securely all from your computer.

Finally, one of my personal favorites is Wufoo. Wufoo.com takes all the complications out of creating online forms. This simple to use html form builder is great for making anything from a simple contact form to a more complex order entry form for your website.

Start getting appy. Web apps and mobile apps are great tools that are meant to help you be more productive, efficient, and hopefully profitable. The beauty of these apps is that if you come across one that isn’t working for your business, you can easily find another that will suit your needs. Technology is not meant to be a hassle but a way to make things easier.

Greg Miller runs Lil Man IT Consulting, LLC in NJ and provides remote tech support for very small businesses and helps them leverage emerging technologies to compete with the big guys. He’s been working in IT for over 7 years and loves discovering new technologies and web applications for making lives and businesses easier.

Keep up with the Lil Man on Twitter @lilmanIT and like him on Facebook.