Building A Successful Online Brand

Over the years, I’ve had two questions from clients who aren’t making enough money:

How do I get more people to my website?

I have lots of people coming to my site, so why am I not selling anything?

These clients are asking for the one secret to any successful internet business that is the same regardless of the niche: traffic and conversion. If you have these two elements, you will make money.

To get traffic, there are plenty of strategies. You can use search engine optimization. You can do article marketing. You can do pay per click or pay per impression. You can even advertise on specific websites.

If you have a small budget, you may want to start out with the free methods (search engine optimization and article marketing) and only start advertising once you are making money.

This is really the easy part.

Here’s the hard part.  If your site doesn’t convert your visitors to sales, even a million visitors a day isn’t going to do you any good.

How do you increase your conversions? Here are four simple strategies:

#1) Avoid image advertising

Image ads are what come to mind when most people think of “online brand building”. However, this form of advertising is often not very effective.

Why? It’s because there is no call to action. In other words, there is no reason for the prospect viewing the advertisement to buy. Almost every TV commercial is an image ad.

Generally these companies are just trying to “get their name out there” and build brand awareness. If you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend without expecting any real return on investment, not to mention years to wait, this might work.

However, assuming you have a limited amount of time and money, and want instant results, you probably should include a call to action.

#2) Tell the benefits of using your product

People aren’t interested in your business; they want to know what you can do for them. You need to have your benefits clearly outlined, preferably right at the beginning of the site to grab their attention. Obvious examples are attention-getting headlines.

#3) Have a USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

Make sure it’s clear what you can do for your prospects that no one else can. If you are just a “me too” site, you probably aren’t going to do as well as if you have a unique approach.

#4) Have a strong back end

This is one of the most important elements of any successful business. You can make money on the front end, but it’s usually much easier and more profitable to keep selling to an existing customer than to generate a new one.

Remember, the key to making money is traffic plus conversion. Hopefully this information will help you do that.

Need Traffic? Fast Track Your Marketing Solutions

The key to profits for most online business models starts with website traffic. After all, you can have the best website and product or service, but if no one shows up, you’re still dead in the water.

In short: The more traffic you have, the bigger your bottom line. Whether you’re launching a new product or just want a quick influx of cash, sometimes you need tons of traffic quickly. Here are 5 fast solutions to drive traffic to your website.

#1 Social media. Social media works quickly and if you have a large following on any of the social media sites, you can generate a ton of traffic to your website quickly. The key is to create attention grabbing posts that arouse curiosity, make people laugh or stir up a controversy. You want to generate click throughs to your website.

Make the most of your social networking tactics and use technology to get the job done. For example, one StumbleUpon post can be integrated with both Facebook and Twitter profiles so you’re making waves on all three social sites at once.

#2 Article marketing. Article marketing works well when you concentrate your efforts on quality article marketing sites with large audiences. One well written and informative article, rewritten a few times, and submitted to a handful of directories can generate the traffic you’re looking for. Be sure to include a bio box that includes a call to action and a link to your website to motivate click throughs.

#3 Blogging. Post on your own blog or be a guest blogger on a blog with a large number of subscribers. Like social networking, if you offer an informative, controversial or entertaining post, you’ll have people clicking through to your website like mad. Of course, if you also promote this wonderful blog post(s) via social media, you can double your traffic results.

#4 Video content. It’s amazing how quickly a video can go viral. Like print content, videos that entertain, stir up a bit of controversy or offer tremendous value cause a buzz. They’re forwarded to friends and downloaded on laptops and mobile devices around the globe. A good video can generate all the traffic you need. Again, integrate a bit of social media to promote your video, blog about it too, and you can multiply your traffic results.

#5 Partnerships. Partnering with a relevant or compatible business can work quite well to generate traffic fast. The key is to come up with a mutually beneficial agreement. Find people in your industry that are willing to work with you and help each other drive traffic. A partnership may include guest blogging on each other’s sites, swapping advertisements or even promoting one another in your ezine.

It’s possible to drive a ton of traffic to your website fast. The trick is to have a plan in place, know your audience and your goals, and take action.

Would you like to learn more about how to put these fast solutions into place in your business? Discover how you can create and put into action your very own marketing plan.

Advantages of Google Buzz

The last thing you needed is another social media platform, right?

Most social media sites can take up a lot of your time, especially if you don’t tightly manage your time or outsource social media to someone else. Enter Buzz.

What is Buzz?

It’s essentially Google’s answer to Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites. It started just a short time ago, and it’s quickly becoming a thriving social platform.

It’s only for Gmail users, so you need a Google email account if you want to use it. You can access it right from your account page.

What does Buzz do?

It’s designed to allow you to write new posts, follow other people, comment on other posts and check updates on other social networking sites – all in the same platform. For instance, if you are following someone on Buzz, and they have a Twitter account, you can be alerted every time they tweet without having to visit Twitter.  What a time saver!

This way, you can also let your Buzz followers view your tweets without even having to visit your Twitter account. However, you might want to think twice about enabling this option. Why? Because if you are writing new Buzz posts and tweeting a lot, the followers might become aggravated with all the updates and opt out.

One of the best features of Buzz is that it helps you establish yourself as an expert. As other people post about things related to the topic of your business, you can provide meaningful comments for them.

How do you find the best posts to comment on? This platform highlights the most popular posts for a particular category, which are the ones you want to focus on. With other social sites you have look through every post to find the most popular ones, because they only highlight the new ones. This is a huge advantage Buzz has over the rest.

Assuming you are making interesting comments, others will become interested in what you have to say, and will likely start following you. This way, you can build up a huge number of targeted followers. Then when you post, all your followers will be automatically alerted. And you can link to your affiliate offers right from your Buzz blog. Therefore, if you have a large number of followers reading your post, this can really make you some serious money.

Another great feature is that you can use YouTube videos in your posts. Every great marketer knows the importance of video and audio.

You don’t necessarily need to create new content either, because if you have a regular blog you can just post the same writing to your Buzz platform. You can’t do this with Twitter and their 140 character limit. So essentially you can create great posts without any extra effort.

And it could become viral. Assuming you have an interesting post, you can get a lot of conversation going. This could help your Buzz post rise to the top of the list in their category, where it can be viewed by all the users of the network. This is a very distinct advantage over Twitter, because the old conversations get pushed to the background whenever someone posts a new tweet.

You can also segment your postings and make them only visible to certain people. For instance, if you have certain followers who’ve already bought products from you, you can design a post that only they can see.

This is similar to segmenting your email list and it’s just as effective. The bottom line is, Buzz offers a lot of opportunity for businesses, and you would be smart to make it part of your marketing efforts.

Aweber Tutorial: How To Add A Broadcast Message To Your Autoresponder Series

Aweber makes keeping in touch with your customers a snap. In less than 10 minutes, I’ll show you how to add a add messages to your list that you can send right now, or schedule for later.

Watch my video to see just how easy it is. Then check out Aweber’s free trial.

How Do You Deal With Customer Complaints?

We start out in business with stars in our eyes, dreaming about how wonderful our customers will think our products are, how they will love our services and how we’ll make sure no one ever has a complaint.

And then reality hits.

If you are in business, and you’re actual working with other people, there will be complaints. Even if you’re the best in your industry, you will have complaints.

That said, this doesn’t mean that you can just let customer service slide. You can learn something from each complaint and either improve your process or tighten your target market profile.

What many business owners don’t realize though, is that many customer complaints can be preventing by anticipation.

Here’s how:

1. When you’re planning your business process, find out from people in your target market what they need from you. For example, if you’re a web designer, your potential clients may need extra hand-holding and assurances during the building phase, or during the launch phase.
2. Create a FAQ on your site to answer common questions.
3. If you provide a service that requires several steps to complete over time, send each client an outline of the process.
4. Ask lots of questions upfront that will help you understand the process and goals your client is envisioning.
5. When a customer does complaint, remain professional and find out what problem the customer is experiencing. Then offer a solution.

You can read more customer service related posts on my blog:

• What Does Great Customer service Mean To You?
• How To Build A Relationship With Your Customers
• How To Create Lifetime Customers

For more information on how to provide exceptional customer service, download my report:

Download our $27 $17 Customer Service: What Exceptional Customer Service Can Do For Your Business report and make a difference in your business now!

How To Use Google Social Search to your Advantage

There’s no doubt that we trust our colleagues for business insight, advice, and of course for hot tips on the next big thing. Google Social search taps into this behavior by searching relevant publicly-accessible content from your social circle, a set of online friends and contacts.

You may have noticed content from your social circle at the bottom of your search results page:

According to Google the following are examples of the types of relevant, publicly-accessible content it searches for:

• Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends’ Google profiles
• Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from social services that your friends have listed in their Google profiles
• Images posted publicly from your social circle on Picasa Web and from websites linked from their Google profiles
• Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions

And Google says it searches the following to make and find connections:

• People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list
• People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers groups in your Google contacts
• People you’re publicly connected to through social services that you’ve listed in your Google profile, such as Twitter and FriendFeed
• People who are contacts of those in your immediate social circle

As a business owner your wheels might be spinning right now. Entrepreneurs are particularly adept at taking advantage of opportunities and as you can see there are a few ways you can use Google search to your advantage.

1. You can use Google Social Search to keep tabs on your competition. Simply friend your competition via Twitter or FriendFeed and include them in your Google profile or add them to your contacts and now all of a sudden their content is being sent to you automatically.
2. You can also use Google Social Search to stay on top of industry trends by befriending or adding industry gurus to your contacts. Staying on top of industry trends provides food for new content, discussions and even product or service ideas.
3. You can use Google Social Search to position yourself in front of your target audience. Google recommends, adding links to content you want to share and by linking content to your Google profile.

They also say that, “When you add new links to your profile, it may take a couple weeks (or longer) for your social search results to take new contacts and content into account.”

You can also choose what content is made publicly available. To see what content will be seen by your social circle, visit the Google Social Search page and click on the “social tab.”

Google Social Search has all sorts of implications for helping you not only learn and stay ahead of your competition but also to help you connect with your target audience and market your business with quality content.

How To Improve Your Website Credibility

You’re web developer will tell you that your site needs a professional design to convert visitors to buyers. Your copywriter will insist that design doesn’t matter, but content is everything. And your programmer will tell you  that pretty pictures and lots of words won’t mean a thing if the website fails to function.

They’re all a little bit right. And they’re all dancing around the main ingredient in internet marketing:

When it comes to convincing or motivating purchases you can’t go wrong with credibility. When you’re believable and trustworthy, people will trust you and be more inclined to make a purchase. Because you’re an internet entrepreneur, your website has to do much of the talking for you – your website has to demonstrate credibility.

Nine Ways To Improve Your Website Credibility

#1  Cut the hype. Make sure the claims and promises you make are backed up by evidence. Evidence can be in the form of testimonials, raw data, facts and statistics or reviews. Always back up your promises and claims and if you can’t back them up, don’t make them. Consumers are too savvy to buy into it.

#2  Testimonials, reviews, and endorsements. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an endorsement on your website from the leading personality in your industry? Imagine if you were in the crafting industry and Martha Stewart herself put her name and endorsement on your products, you’d be rolling in the dough.

So how do you get testimonials, reviews and endorsements to put on your website?  Well sometimes customers are so pleased with your products or services that they happily offer them up, however most of the time you’re going to have to ask for them. Send an email or pick up the phone and talk to customers who you know had a positive experience.

#3  Make your website look professional. Being an experienced online surfer I’m sure you can quickly recognize a website that’s just trying to grab a few bucks versus one that has time, effort and professional attention put into it. Make sure your website is easy on the eyes, easy to navigate and looks and feels professional. Need some help with this? We can provide professional designs and graphics at affordable rates for you. Head over to our web services page.

#4  Update your content frequently. Ever visit a blog and it’s been a month or more since any content has been posted?  That’s a sure sign that the business owner has dropped the ball. Even regurgitating posts is better than nothing however a stream of valuable and relevant content is a great way to improve your website credibility.

#5  Represent, promote and endorse credible products, services and companies. If you are an affiliate marketer, information marketer or have partnered with someone, make sure everyone you represent reflects the image you want to portray. One unethical business partner can pull you down.

#6  Join an association or organization or win an award. We love to see stamps of approval and online there are a number of options. Simply joining an organization in your industry and placing that organizations logo on your website with a “Member of….” will help boost your credibility.

#7  Be present. Make sure you have a presence on your website. That means an about us page, contact information, and any information or background you can list that adds to your online credibility the better. If you’ve studied with an expert, taken a course, won an award, have years of experience or have helped someone accomplish something relevant to your niche, share it. People want to know there’s a real live person behind the website.

#8  Pay attention to detail. Typos, grammar errors, spelling errors, misaligned formatting and broken links all give the appearance of sloppiness and detract from your credibility. Users are aware that mistakes happen and don’t judge too harshly however the fewer mistakes you have, the better.

#9  Don’t make your website look like a walking advertisement or a billboard at the back of a coffee shop covered with banner ads and classified ads. Advertising is expected and often appreciated on a website however it can’t be the main focus.

Credibility is earned through hard work, dedication and an attention to detail.  When you start with the right mindset and intentions, it’ll show through your website and your customers and visitors will recognize you for the outstanding expert you are. If you’d like help with increasing the credibility of your website, check out our consultations services or contact us.

How To Systemize Your Business Tasks Daily

Overwhelmed by your daily business tasks?

I completely understand. In the past, I’ve had days where I planned to check my email and helpdesk, work on a couple of projects and take the rest of the day off. Not five minutes into checking my helpdesk, I’d have 10 more things to add to to-do list. So much for taking the day off. That’s where a system comes in.

Systematizing your business tasks daily will help you find the effectiveness and efficiency you desire. This can improve your productivity and actually help you find time in your day. And when you’re ready to outsource the task, having a system in place makes that process infinitely easy. Here’s how to systemize your business tasks daily.

Step #1 Understand what systems are and how they can help you. Systems are a step-by-step process documented to outline each aspect of your business. They help you stay on track, they make you more efficient, they streamline your business and they help you see where you can improve and where your business is excelling. When your systems work, everything runs smoothly and that’s the ultimate goal.

Step #2 Identify your daily business tasks. Make a list of all of the daily tasks on your plate. We’re talking about anything from:

• Customer service
• Marketing
• Product creation
• Product development
• Purchasing
• Producing a newsletter
• Billing
• Invoicing
• Outsourcing

Step #3 Taking each task, one at a time, write down the steps you take to accomplish the task.

For example, for invoicing you may keep an excel spreadsheet of all new clients and projects within the last week. You may then open PayPal, and send each person an invoice. Your next step might be to document the date you sent the invoice and the invoice number. Finally, you place your spreadsheet in a dated file on your desktop and create a new spreadsheet for the upcoming week.
Document the steps you take for each daily task on a separate document or piece of paper. You’ll need the information for the next step.

If you have more than a handful of clients, you might check out a program like FreshBooks. It’s a web-based invoicing system that will make sending your invoices out and tracking your income much faster and easier.

Step #4 Review your system and make sure it makes sense and is as efficient and effective as it can be. For example, after reviewing your invoicing system you may decide it takes too much time to update your excel spreadsheet weekly and decide to use a program like Quickbooks or Freshbooks to get the job done instead.

Step #5 Organize your systems. Depending on the type of person you are, you may want to keep your systems in a file folder.  Print them out, three whole punch them and put them on a binder right on your desk. Now, when you get ready to start your day, all you have to do is open the binder and get going.

As a business owner, your systems are the processes and procedures by which everything in your business runs. When your systems work, everything runs smoothly and your day becomes much easier to manage.

Note from Michelle:

We’ll go into developing systems for your business in the 5th month of the Home Business Geeks membership. Would you like to learn more about creating business systems? Sign up for my Home Business Geeks notification list.

Are You A Small Business Owner Experiencing Depression?

I’ve chatted with two colleagues today and from the sounds of it, all three of us are a bit depressed. We love our business, we love the people we work with, we love being able to help others, so what’s the problem?

• One of us is sick
• One of us needs money to repair a broken house air conditioner
• One of us has a spouse who isn’t pulling his weight
• All three of us are experiencing a business slowdown we didn’t expect

Now that we’ve spent some time crying on each others shoulders, what should we do? And what can you do when you’re in the same place?

1. If business is slow, take some time to evaluate your business, your website, your marketing methods. This may be the time to restructure, or reaffirm that you’re on the right track.
2. Take some time to rest, pray, spend time with family. Do what you need to do to get healthy and build a positive outlook
3. Put into place systems to handle future problems. Save money when you’re earning it, build a system that doesn’t break down when you’re sick, plan time for your family and for taking care of you.
4. Talk with someone, whether it’s a business coach, a pastor or a counselor, if you’re feeling down and out, you need to get an outside perspective. Seek family counseling as well.

In eight years of experience on the internet, there is one thing I’ve learned that will help you get through the tough periods: It isn’t going to be like this forever. Just because there is no business right now, doesn’t mean you won’t be up to your ears in clients in two weeks. Just because you’re sick right now, doesn’t mean you will be tomorrow. Just because it’s 80 degrees in your house today doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to get the air conditioner installed and be freezing in your living room by next week. Just because your spouse isn’t helping, doens’t mean he won’t have an epiphany and start pulling his weight soon.

And even if things aren’t better next week, you’re not in it alone.

So how about you? Are you a small business owner who’s depressed? Or have you experienced depression recently and found a way out. Maybe your story will help someone else.

Help! I Can’t Access My Gmail Account

I recently noticed a few of my colleagues reporting that they’re being locked out of their Gmail accounts. Since I started recommending Gmail accounts to my clients three years ago to curb spam and help manage multiple accounts, I thought I’d address this issue for you.

First, I haven’t had any problems myself. However, as I stated earlier, I’ve heard of several cases where others have had issues. It seems that the main problem is a lack of verification on an account, which is resolved by a password change.

Some of the reasons include:

• Google detecting abnormal usage, such as sending of a large amount of undeliverable emails, sending email via Gmail to more than 100 recipients, usage of third party software to automatically login to the account, opening several instances (in multiple browsers on multiple computers) of Gmail, and browser issues.
• Account ownership was never verified and now this step needs to be completed.
• Your account has been compromised.
• You have setup too many accounts under one cell phone number.

If you find yourself with a locked down Gmail account, try these steps first:

• If you believe your account has been compromised, try resetting your password.
• If you believe that your account ownership needs to be verified, fill out this report.
• You can also setup a new account.

And finally, to help prevent this situation in the first place, follow the advice in this article to keep your Gmail account secure.

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