Happy New Years everyone. Thanks for coming by and supporting my blog and my business. I humbly appreciate the luv!
*photo credit: thelensflare.com
Happy New Years everyone. Thanks for coming by and supporting my blog and my business. I humbly appreciate the luv!
*photo credit: thelensflare.com
The marketing pilgrim had a great post a while back that I thought was worth sharing with you buzz building fiends!
You can use these tools to monitor the buzz factor and the reputation of your business – as well as your competitor’s.
*Tip – Don’t use all of these tools. You’ll go crazy. And use the ones based on your level of expertise. Some are for advanced marketers.Â
You can find the list here: 26 Free Buzz Monitoring Tools
Want to start off the another year of your business with a bang? Then get working on the things that will make your site famous.
1. Build a blog. The best thing that I ever did for my flagship site (GirlShrink) was to build a blog (AskGirlShrink) for it. The blog funnels new and fresh traffic to the site, because of the regularly added content. While blogs were optional a few year ago – I would say they are mandatory now.
Educational resources: Problogger, Johnchow, Build a Better Blog
2. Write Articles. Buy any internet marketing guru’s product promising you a bigger list or more traffic and they will all have writing articles or creating content as one of the most important things you can do generate qualified traffic to your site.
Educational Resources: BoostIncomeArticles, Ezinearticles
3. Create a product. While many of you may be building sites and blogs in order to promote affiliate products, think about putting that same amount of energy into creating and promoting your own product where you get to keep 100% of the profits! While also establishing yourself as an expert at whatever it is you do.
Educational resources: Infoproductdashboard, Infoproductguy, DanKennedy
4. Get Networking. In it’s infancy, networking sites were for teenagers and others starting a new band! Now, entrepreneurs have tons of social networking tools and sites at their fingertips that there is no exuse for no one to have ever heard of you. You just need to hit the right sites for your niche – and you could really hit a goldmine of free traffic! Start with sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Yahoo’s Mash. And get started promoting your blog articles with tools such as technorati, digg, stumbleupon, and newsvine.
Educational Resources: FridayTrafficReport, InstigatorBlog
A friend of mine asked me recently, while we were in Starbucks:) – “Just what the heck is credibility marketing anyway?” I think if I were to describe it honestly, it would be the purposeful acts and actions you take to build the credibility of yourself and your brand. Credibility builders are things that create “trust” between the client or customer and you.
Seals
You probably don’t even pay much attention to this, but when you go to a retail website to purchase something, you are subconsciously relieved when you see trusted seals such as the UPS logo, Fedex, Mastercard or Visa, BBB (Better Business Bureau), TRUSTe, HackerSafe etc. This is because these companies (among others) have spent zillions:) of dollars building their credibility – so much so that if you add their logo to your own site, you get to piggyback off of their trust factor. Just make sure you are adding a logo that you actually use and are affiliated with, because if you fake it and someone finds you out — that defeats the point of credibility right?
Associations
If you align yourself with the “right” associations and organizations in your field, that will go a long way in helping you build your credibility as a “trusted professional”. This will work in building credibility with colleagues as well as the public. Even if your customers don’t know what the organization actually does in respects to your profession, that’s okay – because once they see that you are even affiliated with some sort of larger entity, they tend to trust you more. Whether they recognize the organization or not. Of course ones that they know are better. Google your niche’s name plus the word association (ex. marketing + association) and see what results you come up with. While there is a fee to join most organizations, it’s worth it to piggyback off of the credibility they offer and they actually may have information, workshops, and conferences that you could use!
Information
What kind of content are you putting out in the world about you and your business. Do you sound like you know what you are talking about? Do you have a pulse on what your potential customers and clients want from your industry? Have you published a LOT of articles, white papers, reports, ebooks, etc. on topics in your field? It is key when you are looking to build credibility in your field that you appear knowledgeable and professional. Don’t put out crap! Put out good content and put it out often.
I know a few of my clients who have basically stopped in their tracks when it comes to getting their infoproducts ready for sale, and it was because they put all the energy and hard work into their product and had nothing left to offer as an incentive or “bonus” to get prospects to take action.
If that sounds like where you are — I am telling you now — don’t let that stop you. Blogger Thomas Sinfield has a great post (Never Pay For An Ebook Ever Again) which contains a list he compiled of over 80 free ebooks. So take a look, find one that will serve as a great companion to your product, and add it as a giveaway. (Make sure to check that the ebook has free distribution rights, although most will.)
It’s simple article marketing 101, that when you plan your article content, business plan, marketing plan, and paid content strategies etc. for your business – that you should consider the competition. Do you know who the specialists in your niche are?
Take a little bit of time this weekend and catch up on your competitor stalking:) This is how you do it…
1. Sign up for your competitor’s newsletters and whatever other free goodies they may have. Be sure to use an alias — because there is nothing more annoying than when I see that a competitor has signed up for my info with no intentions of ever doing business with me. Blaah! You can do this easily with a free gmail account. I created one specifically for competitor newsletters.
2. Take a look at your competitor’s info in Alexa. While this isn’t necessarily an accurate look at stats (only computers with the alexa browser toolbar installed are tracked), it does give you a gage of your competition’s traffic and importance.
3. Google their name and any variations of it. Or better yet, add their name as one of your “google alerts”, and you will be able to see on a daily basis what blogs, sites, etc. have picked up their content and/or have written something about them. This gives you a great idea of just how “good” and “respected” and popular the site owner’s content is.
Also – by using this technique you can check on how popular your own content is and the best way to distribute it. I personally was able to see through adding an alert on my name which national publications were mentioning me and that ezine articles was the best distribution method for my own articles. More people were picking them up via that site.
I am on a quest – and that is to get everyone MORE than their 15 minutes of fame in their respective niches. And the key to getting your moment in the sun and running with it – is to position yourself as the go-to expert in your field.
I talk about this all the time, in fact I found this really cool list by mentor Suzanne Falter-Barnes which really hits on a lot of great points:
Remember that it’s important to get yourself out there in “BIG” way by taking these small steps everyday. Cheers!
There is a really cool trend going on in business today – and it is the birth of the conscious business owner. This is especially true for women — probably because many of us are nurturers by nature and really don’t identify with the “killer” instinct that many other business owners have. (Okay, I’ll say it – men!)
In fact, many spiritual business owners are proving that theory to be “myth”. Many business owners, online especially, are showing that the definition of a truly successful business owner is one that is creating wealth, but not at the expense of his/her conscious, values, interests, belief system, etc.
With every online shark out here on the web, there is another kinder and gentler business owner in all sorts of niches ready to do business with you and still be genuine to who they are and what they believe. Whether that be activist, philanthropist, environmentally conscious, etc.
A few that I like include the Conscious Business Coach, Christine Klosser and the Horse Whisperer for business, Kendall Summerhawk. Both are very good at what they do – but not at the expense of their integrity and creativity.
*Feel free to add to those two if you know of some more spiritually in-tune business owners on the web.