A marketing schedule is crucial for long-term success and consistent results. Put your optimal schedule down on paper then stick to it. A schedule makes you accountable and ensures you are getting enough content and exposure out there. I’m currently leveraging this exact schedule to promote my company BusinessPirate.com
Here are the core activities needed in the weekly marketing schedule:
1-2 emails per week
Email is the #1 medium for ALL online marketers. Use MailChimp or Aweber. The key here is to deliver real value to your email subscribers. Give them free stuff like ebooks or actionable videos. Then give your subscribers a discount off your app or service. Only after you have given your subscribers free and discounted stuff can you ask them to pay full price for your solution.
2 YouTube videos per week
Keep these videos less than 3 minutes. Use Google Keyword Tool to find topics that have potential to rank you on the first page of Goolge. Laura Roeder and others have indicated that traffic coming from YouTube converts 10 times better than random cold traffic. Make sure to create these videos on your YouTube Channel. The more likes, views, and video responses you can get the higher this video will rank on Google. For more info on YouTube videos scope out this video from Laura Roeder here.
One Guest Post or Interview per week
Guests blog posts help with exposure, credibility, and SEO. Write a great piece of content (like this) and pitch it to sites that utilize guest posters. You need to sell yourself and the content in order to get published. Including a short action video along with your guest post will increase the chances that you get published. A video interview is just as good as a guest blog post. Sites like Mixergy.com, TheRiseToTheTop , or IdeaMensch are money video interview candidates.
One give-away per week
Reach out to relevant blogs in your space and see if they would like to do a give-away contest with your app. If you are doing a SaaS product offer to give the blogger 5 One Year subscriptions. Make sure the contest includes both comments and tweets. An example of a contest I did from AppSumo can be seen here. Just copy this format.
2 Blog Posts on your site per week
Use the Google Keyword Tool research to determine blog topics to go after and attempt to rank for. Think about re-purposing content. Write about one of the topics you spoke about in your YouTube videos then include that video in your post. This way you enhance your blog post and don’t have to re-create the wheel. Use basic SEO principles in every blog post.
Tweet and Facebook everyday
Tweet and Facebook early and often. Use Hootsuite and Timely.is to automate your social network marketing. Mention and reach out to customers, friends, and experts on Twitter/Facebook. Twitter is awesome for customer service. Tweets shot out earlier in the day will have better performance and reach. At least 3 tweets and one Facebook update per day.
This schedule will help you in every aspect of your online marketing strategy but it is not perfect. Unbounce did an EPIC Free ebook focused on a 6-month Online Marketing schedule. You get it in exchange for a tweet here.
What did I miss? Please comment below and let me know!
Matt Smith is the co-founder of BusinesPirate.com. He was previously one of the BizDev guys at AppSumo and is currently getting his MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management. His current venture, Business Pirate, helps educate sales and marketing pros through online video courses. When he is not playing on the computer, he likes to exercise and eat raw fish in sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.
Hey, I’m Laura Roeder of getthedash.com, and I want to propose an idea to you today for your small business and that is he who is the most consistent wins. I think consistency is incredibly important in building a successful small business especially over time and here is what I mean.
I see a lot of businesses that publicly kind of fall off the map. They have been blogging for a while and then you look at their blog and they haven’t updated it for two months. They’ve stopped sending out emails. You haven’t heard from them in six months.
Sometimes these businesses actually have a lot going on behind the scenes, but from the customer’s perspective, that relationship really decays. All the time that you’re not communicating with your customers, you’re losing that relationship with them, right? It’s just like a friend that you used to talk to every day and all of a sudden you haven’t heard from them for six months and you’re not as close to them as people that you stay in touch with all the time.
I think sometimes people think, “Oh, it’s just a blog. It’s just sending out emails. There’s no big deal.” But then it builds up and builds up, and then before you know it, three months have gone by and no one has heard from you.
The businesses that I see winning are businesses that make a very serious commitment to their consistency. This is something that I’ve done in my business and I think it’s a huge factor in my success.
But you don’t have to do it all at once. So what I did is I started with a newsletter. I decided to make a commitment that I would publish a newsletter every week, and if you’re on my list, you know that we publish that newsletter every week, week in and week out for the last three years. It’s a non-negotiable no matter what, the newsletter goes out. Of course we have systems that help us do that like writing the newsletter in advance. Amazing idea, right? This really can help you get it up every week instead of scrambling to do it that morning.
So first, we started with a newsletter and then we added on a blog. When I launched this business, I actually didn’t even have a blog for it because you have to be realistic about you and what you can achieve, right? So we started with a newsletter. We got the newsletter happen, we got it down, and then we added a blog. So we started blogging I don’t know how often it was. Let’s say we even just started blogging monthly and then we moved that weekly, and now we have a twice a week blog schedule. We blog pretty much every week, twice a week, at least once a week.
And then after that we added on webinars. Now, we usually do a webinar every two weeks, sometimes once a month. We have a regular schedule. So all those things add up, first the newsletter and then the blog and then the webinars.
But we don’t do things one off. We look at how can we make this consistent so that we’re communicating and adding value and making promotional offers to customers over and over again. And of course the more you can communicate with your customers, the more you can make offers to your customers, the more your business is going to grow, the better the relationship with your customers and the more chances you have for new people to come in the funnel. If you’re releasing a newsletter and a blog post and a webinar regularly, you’re giving people a lot of opportunities to hear about your business. So as you’re doing your planning, I would just ask you to really at not what can you do one off but how can you make a serious commitment to be consistent in your marketing activities.
What systems and consistent marketing do you do to keep your customers engaged? Share in the comments below.
Last week we shared some handy dandy small business tools to help you get your work on. Our gift guide continues this week with one of our favorite things, BOOKS!
You can never go wrong with gifting books and the books below will go far beyond the winter break. These are books that have taught Laura things that have changed her business.
Double Double By Cameron Herold
Cameron Herold has personally taught Laura the principles that allowed her to double her business from 2009 to 2010, and then again in 2011. His book, Double Double is Laura’s business bible, in fact our entire team is currently going through it chapter-by-chapter to put Cameron’s guidance in place. This past year Laura was able to chat with Cameron about his book and biz. Click here to listen.
The Art of Non Conformity by Chris Guillebeau
Watch the video below to hear…
Why this is a must read book for changing your life
Hey, I’m Laura Roeder, and today I want to do a book review for you. So this is actually not quite the book that I’m reviewing but it’s very similar.
So I’m holding up today “Beyond Book Solid” by Michael Port because I don’t own a copy of “Book Yourself Solid”. This is the follow-up book to “Book Yourself Solid”, but what I want to talk about today is the book that comes before this one, which is called “Book Yourself Solid” by Michael Port. As you can see, the follow-up is good as well because I got that one too.
“Book Yourself Solid” was an essential book to me when I was starting my business, and “Book Yourself Solid” is really a marketing plan for how to book yourself solid in the service business. Get your practice full so you can make money and be successful in your business.
I would highly recommend “Book Yourself Solid” to anyone especially when you’re first starting out because it’s the first book that really gave me a concrete understanding of how to market my business and how to get clients. Everything that I had read before was either very theoretical marketing or maybe was one specific marketing tactic, but before that book I never had the whole plan laid out in front of me, and Michael Port does a great job of giving you a very clear, very step-by-step plan for how to get clients and it works. I promise you that if you do what he lays out in the book, you will get clients.
One idea that I learned from him in “Book Yourself Solid”, which really changed how I looked at my business, was the idea of the “red velvet rope.” So Michael talks about how you really want to set up a red velvet rope for who you’re going to work with, and you’re not going to work with just anyone; you’re going to work with your ideal clients.
Now, I don’t know about you but when I was starting my business, I was so desperate to work with anyone. I would take on all sorts of projects. I would really, really try to get any sort of business that was remotely thrown my way. So this was a very new idea for me to only work with the best people who I could best serve; but I found that once I embraced that, it really helped me take off my business, it really helped me book myself solid because I was only working with people that were the highest use of my talents and where the engagements can go really, really well.
Because I’ve found that with people who weren’t red velvet rope clients, it usually didn’t work out right anyway, like I wasn’t happy with them or they weren’t happy with me. The project just didn’t go well or didn’t go as well as it could in some way. So only working with people where you really enjoy what you’re doing, it gets you the most referrals. Also, it puts out that good energy of that like you are really looking for people who you can really help instead of you are just looking for anyone that will help you.
So it was a game-changing book for me. If you’re just starting out, you have to read it. Even if you’re not just starting out, well one, maybe you want to readthis follow-up book, Beyond Book Solid. Or even if you’re a little farther in your business, I think it’s just a great reminder of what those basics are for getting yourself booked solid.
So again, this is “Beyond Book Solid” by Michael Port. I highly, highly recommend this book and “Book Yourself Solid”.
Hey, I’m Laura Roeder, and in early 2011, I was lucky enough to go on a trip to South Africa with Sir Richard Branson with Virgin Unite. Virgin Unite is the Virgin Group’s nonprofit arm. It’s personally funded by Richard and they have a strong focus on entrepreneurship as a way of social change.
When I was in South Africa, I actually got to visit the Branson Center for Entrepreneurship in Johannesburg. I got to meet a ton of innovative entrepreneurs in South Africa that have built their business through the help of the Branson Center. And then that’s why I’m so excited to tell you about Richard Branson’s newest book. It’s called Screw Business as Usual, and Screw Business as Usual is all about what he calls “Capitalism 24902″ and Capitalism 24902 refers to the circumference of the earth and it’s the idea that capitalism should not just involve money but involve the earth itself and all the people in the earth in making your decisions in what you do to grow your business. That’s what Virgin has done and that’s what this book is all about.
This tells the story of Virgin Unite. It tells the story of tons of different nonprofit and forprofit business, how they have made change, how they have collaborated. I loved that he talks about small businesses, small as in a tiny village in Africa, one woman running a business, all the way up to huge corporations like Shell, how they can work together, what they can do to change the planet. It’s a very, very inspiring book and very practical and very useful as well.
The book challenges us to talk about how we as small businesses are screwing business as usual. So this is something that I’m really excited about. It’s some of the ways that I’m screwing business as usual. One of the biggest ways is that I have an online business in many different senses. So I actually don’t have an office. I’m recording this video here for my house, here from my home office; and everyone who works for me all over the country and all over the globe, they work from their own homes as well. So we save a lot of natural resources, a lot of commuting time by not having an office.
Another way that we screw business as usual is that everybody has a flexible schedule. There’s a lot of people that work for my company that have small children that they want to spend a lot of time with, and a normal job that requires you to go into an office from 9 to 5 or 9 to 8 doesn’t allow you to spend time with your kids. I think people should spend time with their kids so we’ve set up a workplace that allows people to do that or whatever it is that they like to do or that they feel passionate about.
Another way that we screw business as usual is by delivering all of our programs online. We could ship out physical DVDs but we save a lot of carbon, a lot of natural resources by having everything delivered online, and it’s really cool because people can access our materials from all over the world. We also provide a lot of free training materials that allow entrepreneurs that are just starting out, entrepreneurs all over the globe to do whatever their version is of screwing business as usual to grow their small business as well using our free training and free tools, and I think that that’s really cool.
So if this is stuff that excites you as much as it excites me, or if it doesn’t, I hope that you read the book anyway so that maybe you can be converted. So definitely check this out. Please buy a copy because the proceeds directly benefit Virgin Unite.
Stay tuned, we’ve got another fun gift guide coming next week with LKR’s fave office supplies to help you rock your 2012.
Two weeks ago I headed to the White House to be honored as one of the Top 100 Entrepreneurs under the age of 30 as listed on the Empact 100 list. The visit to Washington DC was jammed packed but full of really great news for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
While at the US Capitol I heard from those that are pushing congress to support entrepreneurs. There were many promising ideas, from knocking down student loans for those starting a business of their own, to allowing “starting a business” to be equal to “searching for work” for those on unemployment.
While at the White House, I along with 12 others, pledged to do our part in supporting others as they follow the path to owning their own business. As you know, that is what I do every day here at LKR. My team and myself are driven by helping people take that leap to owning their own business and helping the economy one entrepreneur at a time.
Want to hear my pledge? Check out this video from my time at the White House last week.
Here’s a link to the organization I mention in my pledge, http://www.cofed.org. They are a wonderful organization “committed to empowering students to create ethically-sourced, cooperatively-run food enterprises on college campuses.” Check them out and show them your support!
Hey there. I’m Laura Roeder and today, I want to show you how to use the Flowplayer plugin to get videos to show up on your WordPress website. This is a topic request that I got from a Dash reader, and I’m happy to make a video for you about it today.
So let’s start by explaining what Flowplayer is. Flowplayer is something that you use to put a video player on your website. So you would use Flowplayer if maybe you have a video that you don’t want to be on a public site like YouTube for whatever reason. Maybe because it’s private, maybe because it’s password-protected, maybe it’s too long for YouTube and you need to host it somewhere else, that’s what you would you use something like Flowplayer for.
Now, what you have to understand about Flowplayer is they don’t host your video. It’s simply a way to play a video on a website. So you’re going to need another service. In this example, I’m going to show you how to do it with Amazon S3 which is a really popular service for hosting a video. I recommend S3. I love it because it’s a really lowcost way to host files like videos for your website. So let’s get started.
So the first step is to install the WordPress plugin. The one I recommend is called FV WordPress Flowplayer. Again, that’s the letters FV WordPress Flowplayer. So you’re going to go into your WordPress website; you’re going to go in the plugins section and search for this plugin. And here it is. I already have it installed on my site so it’s showing up as installed, but you’ll see right here FV WordPress Flowplayer and then you’ll click “Install Now” as you see in this example to install it.
Okay. So you’ve got it installed; you’ve got it activated. The next step is to find the video or to upload your video. So you can see here I’m logged in to my interface for Amazon S3. They finally got a web interface where you can see all your different video files. So you can go to their web interface. You can upload it here. It’s really important to make the video public. So let’s see. Which was the one I was using as the example? Yeah, Early Bird.
You’re going to right-click on it and click on “Make Public.” So whenever you want to embed a video on your website, you have to make that a public video. Otherwise, it won’t work. So this is a really common place for people to get error messages. So again, in this S3 you’re going to right-click it and click on “Make Public.” It will ask you if you’re sure and you’re going to hit OK.
Okay. So we’ve got our video uploaded to S3. We’ve got our plugin installed. Now let’s make a post to show the video.
So if you go over to FV WordPress Flowplayer in your settings, so that’s over here, you’ll probably have it on the bottom left side of your WordPress interface that lists all your plugins. So you click on it down there and it will show you this page where you get to choose how to play the video. I have an example right here.
So you can choose if you want AutoPlay, if you want a popup box, if you want to enable full screen mode. They’ll let you choose your default video size, different colors, all different options there so you can look through that.
Also on this page they have the short code for embedding your video. So you can do it really simple with just the filename or you can add the width and the height and they have some other and they explain it all here a lot of different options for customizing your video. It’s really cool because this is free. Flowplayer is free and it’s totally customizable.
So let’s just go with the most simple example. So I’m just going to copy and paste these little short codes so I can remember it, but basically, it just says Flowplayer src= and then you put in your filename. Now, a lot of people think that these have to be Flash videos, FLV, but they actually don’t. In the example today, I’m going to show you an MOV file. So any type of video file will work with Flowplayer.
So again, I copy and pasted this little short code. Now I’m going to go to add a new post and I’ll just paste in my short code right here. Now I need to grab my filename where it says example.flv. That’s where I put in the video file.
So, now that I’ve made my video public in S3, I’m going to go on to properties and now I have the link to link to this video. So I’m just going to copy and paste this link, copy the link, go back to my post. So where it says example.flv, I’m going to post in my video URL; and then of course, if you want to put “Here’s My Video” or any other text above or below the video, you can do that using your normal WordPress interface.
So now I hit preview to make sure that it worked, and so I’m just going to test the play button. Of course, it didn’t work because I’m doing a training video and God forbid something works.
So I’ll show you how I would troubleshoot this. So the first thing I would do is I want to make sure that I made my video public, and then the next step I want to do is to make sure that I got the URL correct. So I’m going to go here, I’m going to copy this URL again. I have this zoomed in so it’s showing a little funky.
So okay, I think I know why this didn’t work. I think it didn’t work because this is showing up as a link. So I need to not make that a link I think for the code to work properly. I’m actually glad it didn’t work because now you can see the troubleshooting process which is an important part of making your website work.
So I’m going to go to save draft again and then I’ll hit preview again so that reloads, and I’ll play my video. Hopefully, it worked this time. We’ll give it a second to load here. I think it’s going to work.
Alright! So it worked! So there is my post. I have my video embedded.
Let me move this to trash.
Again, I am Laura Roeder. That’s how you use the Flowplayer WordPress Plugin to embed any type of video onto your WordPress blog.
Hi! I’m Laura Roeder, and today I wanted to hit you with a little book review of this wonderful book. It’s called “The Art of Non-Conformity” by Chris Guillebeau. His name is hard to say but I think I said it right. Here’s my copy from the library. Why does it say 56? I don’t know, library. I always wonder about that. I think it’s because this is the 56th greatest book in the universe.
So if you haven’t checked out Chris’s blog, The Art of Non-Conformity, it’s a great free blog he writes on a lot. This book to me is like the new Your Money or Your Life. If you haven’t read Your Money or Your Life, that’s another great book. That’s what it’s called. I don’t remember the author’s name but you can look it up. It was written in the 70s I think and that book is all about looking at money in a new way and looking at your life in a new way and examining do I really need everything that I think I need, or is there really a much lower amount of money I need every month to achieve my dreams and do what I want?
The Art of Non-Conformity is really about crafting your life in the way that you want to and about how it’s much easier than you think it can be. I recently went to South Africa somewhere that Chris has also spent a lot of time and it just emphasized to me how many ways we have to spend our life. It’s very easy to get stuck in whatever we grew up with or the options we see around us, but you can have 10 different lifetimes in your life. You can travel if you want to. You can have a bunch of different careers. You’re not stuck in one thing forever and that’s really what Chris emphasizes. You know what it says? Set your own rules, live the life you want, and change the world.
I love this book because it’s very inspiring but it’s very practical at the same time. He makes you see that this isn’t a crazy far-off dream, but crafting the life that you want, a life of nonconformity perhaps, is actually really easy to do and takes much less money than you think.
Just to hit you with one idea that I really liked from the book, he talks about looking at retirement in a new way. So our classic idea of retirement is that we say let’s say we have saved a bunch of money and at some point we retire, and then we start living off that money. But of course, the problem perhaps with that model is that you have to save literally now millions of dollars to be able to retire on, to have any semblance of the lifestyle you’ve had before, and as inflation rises, it will probably be millions of dollars just to be able to retire at all.
But most of us in this little world, most of us, if you’re watching this video, don’t have the type of life set up where we’re just like waiting till the day when we can finally stop working, till we can get rid of this awful job. So a new way to think about this is to build income streams that will continue to support you throughout your life.
The other problem with retirement is you’re not really gaining anything, right? You’re just putting in money to be able to take it back out. Yeah, you’re earning a little in investments but you’re losing just as much from inflation. So to me, it makes much more sense to build income streams that will continue to go for you instead of just basically putting aside money just to take it right back out later. You’re not really gaining anything in that scenario. You know what I mean?
So there’s lots of great practical ideas like that. As you can see, it’s a short book, and it’s really just a must-read for changing your life.
So again, I’m Laura Roeder. I have to highly, highly recommend The Art of Non-Conformity.
If you’ve been following my marketing lately you’re seeing me use a ton of video – video blogs, how-to videos, promotional videos, funny videos and even video sales letters.
Truthfully video has been killing it for me – check out how much higher my traffic converts from youtube than from other sources:
That’s the percentage of people coming from that site that sign up for my newsletter – look how much higher YouTube is than the other websites around it!
A full 10% of people clicking over from YouTube submit their email address – NOT to a squeeze page but just my normal site. Kind of insane huh?
I think you should be getting those kind of conversion rates too, and you can be – that’s why we’re doing this free webinar.
I co-hosted it with Lewis Howes (you probably remember him from my LinkedIn webinar) and his co-founder of The Video Traffic Academy, James Wedmore.
People have been asking me about video so I knew this one would fill up fast!
Sign up below to grab the online video workshop the second it’s available!
Looking for the Blueprint to Ranking in Google Places?
Trying to place highly on Google? Have a brick and mortar company? Then you know how important it is to be found. Everyone is driving the lanes of the world wide web before venturing down Main Street.
People take to the internet before they take to the interstate.
What does that mean for you? Have you been thinking about adding Google Places to your marketing strategy? Sure. Because you realize that knowing how to get your website to rank in Google – is knowing how to get your business in front of your consumers.
“No matter how big the sign is on the front of your building, if you’re not effective with Google Places, then you should expect the business to go to the one who is.”
What is Google Places?
Google Places is an integral part of Google and its search engine abilities. Look up a business or service on Google, say under “plumber Orlando Fl”, and Google will present you with a list. Anyone who has done a search on Google has seen one – it’s a list of websites Google believes best answer the question you are looking for. And – and this is the “Big And” – Google will call out, with its special up-side-down teardrop shaped marker, the brick and mortar businesses that are registered in Google Places before it calls out any business not registered. That’s what makes Google Places worth your time.
What does this all mean for your business?
Google Places gets your business to the top of searches with more ease than anything that has come before it. This means more traffic online and on foot will be coming to your door.
The question is: “How to use Google Places to rank high when someone’s Googling?”
Simple. Watch the excellent video “The Blueprint to Google Places” shared here. Or if you’d rather keep reading, then you need to look at the three main elements to coming up in Google Places’ ranking:
Citations
Keywords
And of course -
Google Places
Let’s start with citations.
What’s a citation? That would be your company’s big three:
Legal name
Legal address
Legal phone number
Citations are the starting point when you want to rank in Google Places.
You’ll want to get your company’s citations listed in as many major directories as possible. That’s a basic step one. Some of those directories are free and some aren’t. Just remember that registering with a popular and well visited site lets some of their Google influence rub off on you. It’s sort of like “having the right friends” or “being ‘in’ with the right people”. So get all three pieces of info added to directories like Angie’s List, Yelp, and even the online Yellow Pages. Simple and essential.
**Warning: do not make any mistakes when entering your information and always enter the same information. For instance, if you have two office phone numbers, be sure to use the same number for every directory you use.
Step two is learning about ranking on Google with Keywords.
Although this part may sound a little like arcane magic it’s not really that mysterious. A free keyword tool from can be found on Google’s Adwords. Guess what it’s called? The Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Even without an Adwords account you can use this tool to find which words and phrases people are typing in when you are the answer to their search. You can even find out the frequency a specific phrase, like “plumber Orlando fl” is searched.
The topic of proper keyword strategy is certainly packaged with a learning curve so be sure to look for a future “how to” blog and video about this project.
Want to use Google Places to its best advantage? That’s step three:
For this step the magic number is three again. Make sure you have:
10 photos
5 videos
1 completely filled out Google Places profile.
Wondering what kind of photos and videos to use? Don’t be too stressed. With most cameras today you can capture what you need fairly easily. Why not take a look at what other businesses are posting in Google Places? It’s an easy way to get some simple ideas.
Want a little “magic sauce” to successfully use Google Places to improve your Google ranking?
Final touches: Make sure you have absolutely no spelling or entry errors within your information. Also, don’t forget to activate your listing using the pin # on the postcard you will receive from Google.
Get reviews: Time to contact your family tree (family, friends, client, etc)! You need them to add an outstanding review in your Google Places listing. In addition, why not have them visit some of the citations you created so they can give you “5 stars” there, too. More reviews equals more opportunity!
**Warning: whether you have 10 or 100 people willing to do this for you – you’ll want to ask them to do it over time.
Google Places is the “place to be” on Google
Google Places is the place to build a presence if you want people to be present in your business. Use this blog as a check sheet or simply build your foundation on Google Places by watching the video, “The Blueprint to Google Places.” It’s not just accurate – it’s fun to watch.
Madeline Gutierrez is 1 of 12 collaborators found within the Songbird Agency. She holds a Master’s in Design from Pratt and is an authority on design, content marketing and social media.
“Basically I am about helping people communicate with each other and I get excited when I see great design in anything.”
Check out www.songbirdagency.com and receive a free infographic outlining these topics with an additional list of free directories to get you started.
Want to write a rockin’ guest post about running a small business, entrepreneurship, personal branding or online marketing? Review our requirements and submit your proposed article along with your details and we’ll get back to you on whether it’s a fit!
Products and services that I mention or link to on this blog may be products that I have a financial interest in promoting or have received some other non-financial compensation for.