More Than A Few Words

 If I asked you where the keys to your house were, might take you a minute, if you're a little bit like me and put him down somewhere in the house, but within a minute or two, you'd know where your keys were. Why? Because it's important that you protect your home by locking your doors and having a set of keys with you. The same is true for your website, you need to know where the keys are to your website. And the keys are your domain name and your hosting passwords. And all too often I talk to business owners who can't answer that question. They're like, Well, my web designers god, my hosting, and they have my password, so I don't need them. Yes, you do. Because what happens to your business if your web designer gets hit by a bus? That's a little gruesome, but the truth is that your business success should not be tied to them. You need to own your domain. You need to be responsible for renewing it annually or every two years or or automatically to your credit card. So you own it. It's an important business as

As a business owner you are active on social media to do more than just make friends.  You are there because you ultimately hope it will lead to sales.  if you want to  that to happen you  need to do more than just hope.  You need to take an active role, using the tools in an effective social sales process.  This week, guest Patty Farmer describes social selling as a process to cultivate relationships that will lead to sales.  To be effective you need to approach social media with the customer journey in mind.   Everything you share should address customers at one stage in the journey.    About Patty Patty Farmer is an award-winning Marketing & Media Strategist, International Speaker, Podcast Host, Magazine Publisher, and Event Producer.  She works with small business owners, entrepreneurs, & speakers to attract and convert their ideal clients so they can make a big impact in the world, and bigger deposits in their bank account. Patty believes we all have a message and her mission is to help them mast

I am a fan of Walt Disney, not just his movies, but his vision and creativity as an entrepreneur.  He understood the importance of a clear company vision expressed passionately through stories and ideas, not cold facts and numbers. When Disney started construction on Disneyland he worked closely with the construction crews mapping out every detail of the park. He envisioned a magical place and wanted everyone who came to the park to feel the magic from their very first step so he insisted they build Sleeping Beauty’s castle first. The castle was located in the center of the park so it was impractical and expensive to start with the castle but Disney insisted. Why? The castle was  the center of the idea, representing all the magic of the park. He believed once it was built others would see the park the way he did and he was right. So how do you communicate your vision if you don’t have something as specific as a castle in the center of your business?

LinkedIn can be an incredibly valuable resource for your business, but it won't work if all you do is post content telling l people how awesome you are with a link to your blog or website.  If you want to actually drive results, you will need to focus on engagement.  Our guest, Sam Moss shared some tips on how to do just that.  Make sure this is where your customers and potential partners are hanging out.  Create educational content for your prospective customers Assume the audience won't click the link so be sure what you are posting has value as a stand alone post Acknowledge comments and look for ways to interact with content created by your audience.  About Sam Moss Sam Moss is the owner, 1Click Agency, a web design company in Elmira, New York. He’s also the co-host of the Small Business Made Simple podcast  

Write Your Goals Down As the new year begins, take a few minutes to think about your goals and what you want to accomplish in 2018. Dream big both personally and professionally. Maybe you want to lose weight, expand your team, launch new products, or close more sales. Be specific; do you want 5, 50, or 500 new projects. Write your goals down. There is lots of research which indicates even the simple act of writing your goals will help you stay on track to accomplish them. Visualize Success Imagine today’s date is December 31, 2018. The year is over. You have achieved all of the goals you have set out for yourself, both personally and professionally. With that picture firmly in your mind, write a letter to yourself. Pretend you are looking back at all that has happened and write about what you did, what you accomplished, and how you feel about where you are now. Make a list the new skills you learned and the changes you made in order to accomplish your goals. Think about the risks you took and how those risks

Everyone talks about finding your ideal client. But how do you do that? Today my guest Tim Fitzpatrick of Rialto Marketing explains it can be as easy as answering three questions. Who do you enjoy working with, because why would you want to be in business and work with people who make us bang our head against a wall?  Who are your most profitable clients?  Surprisingly, this may not be the people who spend the most money.  Your largest clients usually are not your most profitable because they may be taking up a lot of your time, pressuring you on price and asking for other concessions. Who do you do your best work for, getting the best results for consistently over and over again. If you can work with clients giving them great results for they're going to want to do more business with you. They are likely to stay with you longer and refer you to others.  Tim Fitzpatrick Tim is an entrepreneur/business owner with expertise in marketing and business growth. He has 20+ years of entrepreneurial experience with a

Your brand doesn't happen by accident.  Our guests Tonya Eberhart & Michael Carr, partners behind BrandFace have created The 3 D Process for building your brand.  Define - In the define stage, start with a look at who are your ideal customers, because you can't do business with everybody. If you try to help everybody, you'll just help yourself right out of business.  Develop - In the development phase you need to start working on  messaging and imagery to support the definition phase.  It is more than just a tagline and a logo Display -  This is where the hard works comes in to make sure your brand is displayed consistently wherever someone might run into your brand.  About Tonya and Michael Tonya and Michael are international bestselling authors, hosts of the Be Bold Branding Podcast, and partners in BrandFace,  the only comprehensive personal brand-building system across the globe. They have helped and inspired authors, podcasters, coaches, real estate agents, and business owners in 5 countries and 43 U

Why should you care about conversion optimization? When I ask business owners about their website performance, most can easily tell me how much traffic they get in a given week or month. Even if they don’t have the number top of mind, they can hop into Google Analytics, and in just a moment see exactly how many visitors viewed their website. They feel good if the number is increasing every month. While that is a nice thing to see it is not the best metric of how well your website is performing. The real measure of web success is conversion. How many people take the time to fill out a contact form, download a resource, or sign up for your newsletter? How many people are you adding to your prospect list, every day, week, or month?   This content optimization process will help you deliver the best content to your readers, and improve your results Have one call to action All too often I see pages with multiple, competing CTA’s. Sign up for this, register now, and oh by the way, be sure to download this too. This

If you own a business, you have stress. It seems to come with the job, but our guest Debra Sunderland suggests that your stress often comes from lack of clarity. She says the reason we have stress is because the small part of our brain called the amygdala, often referred to as the ego, wants to have all the answers in order to keep you safe.  When it doesn't it sets off alarms inside of our body The first step is understanding at we don't have to let the ego or amygdala run us. Fearful and stressful thoughts will pop into your head, your brain will automatically move into defense mode as you  look at what's wrong, what could be wrong, what might go wrong.  When we're in defense when the brain is going bonkers and our muscles think we're at war and someone's going to hurt us. So our body tightens up.  It gets stiff and rigid and we aren't even able to really breathe fully.  This reduces oxygen to the brain, preventing us from thinking clearly, so one way to reduce the feeling of stress is to take three deep br

I have been blogging since 2007. Back then blogging was popular among writers and geeks.  I am not sure which I was, but I enjoyed the opportunity to flex my creative muscle on a site called More than a Few Words. Yes, before it was a podcast, it was a blog. The posts were short snippets of what I was thinking about at the time.  Some of the content was funny, some of it was serious. There were thoughts about art, politics and occasionally marketing. Business blogging was in its infancy and the role of blogs was conversation not SEO.  Business blog posts built on the ideas presented by others and encouraged engagement. The best blogs were lively, interactive communities with an authentic voice. But then came social media, and the most interesting conversations moved to Twitter and Facebook. At the same time search engines started to notice and index blog content and marketers saw an opportunity to use the business blog to drive traffic. In the transition from community conversation to business tool, we saw po

If you are a small business owner, there is a good chance you feel a little bit like a gerbil on a treadmill. You're running and chasing the food, but you never quite catch it. Our guest, author Matthew Turner doesn't think it needs to be that way. In his new book Beyond the Pale, he explains that many of us think we own a business, but somehow it starts to own us. When you make a decision to work less, if forces you to think about who do you want to work with? If you have to  choose a type of client what does that client look like? If you are going to choose one personal project what will it be? And finally, what do you want to commit to over the next year, two years, three years. When Matthew made the change in his business he ended up working half the time and earning twice as much.   About Matthew Matthew Turner is a British author who lives in a small town in Yorkshire, England. Having previously published three novels and a non-fiction business book, he wrote ‘Beyond The Pale’ on the back of interviewin

We routinely tell business owners that great blog posts are an important part of their sales, marketing and SEO strategy. With so much riding on each and every post, it's tempting to push the sales element really hard. But that is exactly the opposite of what you should do. The hard sell is one sure way to turn off prospective customers. Think about the late night television commercials that scream at you at 3 am. Instead of making me want to learn more about their incredible claims to lose weight, grow more hair and attract the perfect mate (all for $19.99) those pushy loud ads actually make me roll my eyes and change the channel. The best blog posts answer questions your customers have about your product or service. They want information and once you answer their questions, they'll be ready to buy. If you jump right into sales mode, you sound just like those annoying late night commercials and your customers will look for answers somewhere else. Once they do, they may never come back.

Business owners who believe in rapport and relationship-building often think of automation as a bad word.  This perception comes from the not really understanding how good automation words.  Automation can be as simple as acknowledging a form fill, or as complex as a multi step campaign after an in person interaction.  My guest, Richard Wall says a good automation campaign starts with a clear, but not too narrow, customer persona.   The next step is to let the campaign evolve over time as you learn more about what your customers really want. Follow up messages should be more targeted in response to what someone has responded to in the past.  About Richard  Richard Wall is a marketing jack-of-all-trades, who helps B2B businesses deploy and use marketing automation to generate new leads and keep their customers engaged. He is the host of That Marketing Podcast, exploring the world of marketing with niche experts and industry veterans.  

Does it matter when you send out an email newsletter? People are going to read it whenever it lands in their inbox, right? Well, maybe not. There's a lot of research that suggests there actually is a best time of day and a best day of the week. According to studies by a number of different organizations, the middle of the week is actually the best time to send your email. The middle of the week is actually the best time to send emails with Tuesday, number one, Thursday, number two, and Wednesday in the middle. Th best time of day is 10am.  You reach people early, but not so early, that you're fighting with the first emails of the day. Surprisingly, 8pm is the second best time.  It seems that right before people go to bed or end their day, they will check their email one more time. Now these are general rules and they may or may not apply to you. My suggestion is certainly to test different times and see what your readers prefer 

You have probably heard multiple times you need to start your sales process by defining your niche because when you do, you can create more relevant content.   But our guest Leon Streete, says just defining the "who" is not enough.  The demographics only gives you half of the picture. The second part, which is usually the most important part, is to think about what is going on psychologically with your audience. Why is this important?  When people make a buying decision, they make it first with emotion. So if your message has no emotion, you're not going to get people to the end result. Your sales pitch will be missing the very thing that's going to get them engaged and interested.   Once you understand those elements you can begin to outline a list of things which frustrate them.  Make the list as long as possible, because every customer will be a little different.  Having multiple pain points will give you multiple messages potential customers may connect with.    About Leon Streete Leon Streete is the “Lea

Everyone is not your customer. And while some people might become customers sometime in the future, there are some people who never will. Make the best use of your marketing efforts by narrowing down to a niche. Then, even after you have narrowed your market and created a well defined target audience, your customers are not all the same. Some are casual buyers and others are rabid fans. There are some only care about your sales and promotions, while others will be frequent buyers, regardless of the price. As you start thinking about your customers as individuals, it's much easier to understand what appeals to one and may not interest the other. When you plan your next email newsletter campaigns don't treat your entire list as if there were all the same. If you do, some customers are going to get too much information, while others may not get enough, or get information at absolutely the wrong time. Create better marketing by dividing and dividing and dividing your email list into smaller and smaller groups. Ye

Many "would be writers" think they should start with a title and let the story unfold.  Our guest, Tina Bakehouse suggests starting in the middle.  Begin by fleshing out the content in the middle.  Once you are clear on the body of what you're writing it will inspire the title and the flow from beginning to end. While a good title will grab the reader's attention, the best part of any story is the conflict or twist in the middle portion, which carries the reader along on the ride with with the storyteller.

If your blog titles don't grab reader's attention, they're not going to read your blog posts.  While it might seem that people want to see something positive in these challenging times, surprisingly negative titles work better. Look at the newsfeed on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn. Posts with negative titles stand out and are more likely to be read, create engagement and be shared. So, I want you to commit to not boring readers with weak language in your subject line. If you start your blog post with words like improve common mistakes tips for success, your titles look like all the other articles on the same subject. We all want to improve, so you'd think these safe titles would work, but they don't. These nice helpful blog titles are like a serving of broccoli. We know it's good for us, but the Devil's Food Cake is so much more enticing. One of the most successful series of posts, white papers and seminars I created were built around the theme of why people hate your website. The series was and still is ef

Ultimately, social media is a human platform. If we can read a story and we can relate to it, we're more likely to engage with that, we're more likely to comment on it, like it and share it. Our guest, Victoria Lee suggests in every single post you create, you want to relate that back to your own experience.  She believes those personal posts are the top type of posts when it comes to creating content that gets the best levels of engagement. Even larger firms can be personal. The trick is to engage others beyond you as the owner.  Bring in team members and tell their stories.  And don't forget your customers. They have stories and experiences with you as well. Their stories may come in the form of testimonials talking about working with your and the results they have achieved. As you are trying t bring a personal touch to your marketing, consider video.  Your social media video don't have to be slick and over-produced.  A simple smart phone video, will bring a personal touch to your story and highlight the hu

As you plan your next email marketing campaign don't overwhelm customers with multiple offers. They won't spend the time reading all that text. As a matter of fact, there's a lot of research which proves the more choices you give someone, the less likely they are to make any decision at all. So if you want to create an effective email, make one compelling offer.  Why?  Think about kids on Christmas morning. When they see all the presents under the tree  they freak out and don't know where to start. So you hand them gifts to open one by one. Treat your customers the same way. Give them one email promotion at a time that will jump off the page. It won't be right for everyone, but that's okay. Your next offer might be just what they are looking for. Remember the kiss method. Keep it simple, and you will succeed