Category: website

    How to Tell a Unique Story

    In order to tell your brand’s unique story it’s important to deviate from simple blog posts and regular forms of content. Your story is a compilation of all that you do and all that you are. It starts with your idea, your business card, your website, and every product that you put out there. It includes your social media and your blog. Everything taken together tells your story. Due to this, it’s important to understand how it all fits together.

    Your story separates and differentiates you from everyone else. Otherwise, you’re just one more solution for the same old problem that customers can choose from, and usually without a standout differentiator they’ll base their choice on price. Most of the time, unless you’re Walmart, you do not want customers to choose you based on price alone. You want them to choose you because you’re you.

    Telling your unique story starts with these questions:

    1) When, Why and How Did You Start?

    The best way to show authenticity is to be able to tell your audience when, why and you started doing what it is that you do. If you can tell your story in a way that your audience relates to you, and even roots for your success – even better. If you can become part of the “fabric of their lives” so to speak, you will be able to pull on their emotional heartstrings and almost become part of their family.

    2) How Do You Want Customers to View You?

    As you write your story, it’s important to convey your values and ideals in a no-nonsense way that isn’t wishy-washy. While you may be frightened of turning off some people, you really don’t need to worry about that. Those people aren’t your audience. Your audience consists of the people who can relate to your story, share your values, and want to be part of it.

    3) Where Do You See Your Business Down the Line?

    This is where you’ll try to dream big, and let your audience know where you see your business in the future. It also gives you the opportunity to refine consumer expectations toward what you offer rather than what the competition offers. For example, if you donate 10 percent of proceeds to a particular charity, people should know about it.

    How you answer these questions is important. You’re going to have many opportunities to do so via every communication you have with your audience – be it your blog, social media or even through the types of products you offer. With the answers to these questions you can start to form your story and weave it throughout everything you do.

    * Share through Story Telling – Using an honest, no-holds-barred communication style to tell your story, your customers’ stories, and the story of your products is a good start. Use case studies, interviews, and in-depth relatable blog posts to accomplish this.

    * Share through Doing Good – Another way to share (and also blog about it) is to get involved with your community to give back something that is noticeable. You don’t want to do this just to get noticed, but you do want to pick something that helps people understand who you are as a business owner and what your business stands for.

    * Share through Experiences – You and your audience likely share common experiences that should be discussed. The more ways you can relate to them, the more ways they’ll see your offerings as unique and different.

    * Share with the Truth – Don’t hype, and don’t “blow smoke”. These are old advertising tricks that aren’t needed. Consumers are smart today. They want the black and white truth of the matter. If it takes 20 hours a week to do what you do, and you’re teaching them, tell them the truth. If you’ve had to stay up overnight to work around children’s schedules, say so.

    * Share Everywhere – Don’t just “tell” your story on your blog in the “about” section. Tell your story everyplace. Use infographics, memes, blog posts, guest blog posts, articles, testimonials, good deeds and every possible way to spread your story. Be your story by your actions.

    Your unique story of your brand is weaved through out everything you do. It tells your values, your past, present and future, and it makes you stand out from the rest in a compelling, relevant and useful manner. Doing so will increase your ROI exponentially.

    Categories: Run a Home Business, Storytelling Tags: Tags:

    Creating a Continuous Flow and a Positive Experience from End to End

    Today, consumers are more educated than ever. They also access information in various ways from their mobile device and their PCs. If you want to keep your customers as well as attract new customers, it’s important to think about each customer’s experience so that you can create a positive experience from end to end.

    It should not matter how your customers access your information; they should get the same experience. Naturally, it will have to be a little different on each device in order to fit the screen space, but what is offered should be the same content and the same functionality. It should have the same look and feel regardless of the device the customer is using.

    * Offer the Same Content – No matter which device your customer views the information you provide on, they should be able to access it and see the same content. Although different aspects may be highlighted, based on the device, the user should have a good experience on any device.

    * Use the Same Colors – Don’t mix up your brand with changing colors or logos for new devices. The look and feel of your website, while the layout might be different due to screen space, should be very much the same.

    * Optimize for Each Device – On one device you might optimize a different area that is easier to use via that particular device, provided that it doesn’t take away from the experience. Perhaps when reading your report on a smartphone, the images are on a single page rather than so small that you cannot even view them.

    * User Friendly Design – No matter which device your audience is viewing your material on, the design needs to put the user first and foremost. What you want your audience to know doesn’t matter as much as what they want to know.

    * Consider Scrolling instead of Clicking – Clicking on a smartphone can be a very different experience than on a PC. If you can instead create everything on one continuous page, so that to see the “next page” on the smartphone requires only scrolling (and on the website it can be via a click or scrolling), you can make reading more a lot easier for your audience.

    * Keep the Search Bar Consistent – Keep the search bar in the same place on each device. If it’s at the top on a PC, keep it at the top on the mobile device. This consistency keeps your audience understanding how to use the site to find the information they want.

    * Make Recommendations – Never be afraid to make recommendations to your audience for more content that they might find interesting. Famous websites like Netflix and Amazon do this very successfully, and you can too.

    * Recommend Other Devices – Not only can you recommend other content that you’ve created, you can also recommend other devices and apps that you offer to help your audience member access more information from you.

    Your users should have an excellent experience regardless of which device they access your services on. It shouldn’t make a difference to their experience and the positive feeling they get when using your services or viewing your products.

    They should also be able to switch from one device to another as seamlessly as possible. For example, your customer might be on the train looking at your products, then come home and get on their PC; due to signing in and out they should be able to access the last thing they saw or page they were on without interruption.

    Categories: Run a Home Business, website Tags: Tags:

    How to Improve Your SEO from A to Z

    You hear a lot about search engine optimization or SEO, but often what that means is a mixed bag. Many people don’t understand what SEO is, or that there are many kinds of SEO and that you don’t have to be an expert to improve your SEO. There is both on-page and off-page SEO. Let’s take a look at both types.

    The thing to remember is that SEO tactics change continuously based on the algorithms that the search engines choose to use to help their audience find what they’re looking for. The big key to remember is that the search engines are trying to deliver excellent results for their target audience. Your job is to help them.

    Off-Page SEO

    Off-page SEO consists of anything you do to improve search engine traffic and results such as inbound links, trust building, social media, blog promotion, videos, press releases, commenting and more. You can use all of these tactics to help build up your website’s traffic and thus your conversions.

    * Comment on Blogs and Forums – Even if you’re not allowed a link back to your website, your comments on blogs and forums do not go unnoticed – especially today when most use identification procedures via Gravatar or Google to find you through your profile.

    * Social Media Posts and Promotions – When you write a blog post or publish anything on your blog use social media to promote it. Not only will you get more traffic to your posts, you’ll get more links to your website via your general social media promotions.

    * Conduct Interviews – Give interviews on radio shows, on blogs, and more. The more authority you can build by being interviewed, the more links you’ll get back to your website and products, and the more people will get to know you.

    Finally, when it comes to off-page SEO, don’t underestimate the power and effectiveness of the good old-fashioned press release to get the word out about your business to the media. Press releases are still excellent ways to publish information about your products and services, especially if you can tie it to a popular human interest story and news of the day.

    On-Page SEO

    On-page SEO consists of anything you do on your website to ensure that you get more traffic to your website via the search engines without paying anything for the traffic. Creating perfectly optimized pages is as simple as adding a little extra effort.

    * Publish Targeted Content – If your content is high quality, unique, and relevant to your audience, this will help them find you. They’ll look for words that are inside that content and be sent to your pages.

    * Headings on Pages – Using keyword-rich phrases for the headings on your website, including your blog posts, will help search engines find you too. Plus the words will be something your audience will focus on as they scan your page.

    * Check Grammar and Spelling – You want people who visit your website to come away believing you have authority on the topic that’s in your niche. Therefore, it’s important to double check your grammar and spelling.

    * Code Your Site Right – Within images, headings, descriptions and more, there are ways to use metatags to give the search engine clues about the topic on your blog or website. Use them properly to describe images and the subject matter, so that your audience will find you.

    Using both on- and off-page SEO is an effective way to ensure that you set up each page on your site properly. If you use self-hosted WordPress, you can use various plugins like SEO Yoast to help guide you for on-page SEO.

    Link to SEO Yoast – https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/

    Categories: SEO Tags: Tags:

    Providing Customers Value via Your Website

    Your website should provide information to your ideal audience in order to attract them to your offerings. But, it should also, without anyone ever having to make a purchase, offer some kind of value to the visitors. The great thing about focusing on value for your website is that you’ll end up with a better, more attractive website.

    Make an Excellent Contact Page

    Many people overlook the contact page as a way to provide value and make an impact. Due to that, the better you can make your contact page, the more people will trust you and want to do business with you. You can turn your contact page into a very important part of your conversion funnel by mentioning your value, giving a guaranteed response time, and then following through.

    Be More Creative with Submit Buttons

    The truth is having a button that says “submit” doesn’t actually convert that well. Having a button that says what the customers get when they click it will. Tell them what the benefits are right on the button. This means that in some ways you have real copy on the button. You may want to get help with writing it to ensure that it truly captures your audience’s attention and provides value.

    Make Your Free Offers Awesome

    Many people put together free offers to their audience without much thought to the value of what they’re offering. You must offer something of real value to them so that they think to themselves, “if this is free and this awesome, imagine how terrific their paid offerings are”. This is something that you can work on to ensure that everything you offer is up to par for your audience.

    Low Prices Doesn’t Mean Value

    When you set up your pricing, it can be tempting to offer your products and services at a low price because you want them to feel like they are getting their money’s worth. But, this can often backfire. People will perceive the value as lower when the price is lower. So instead, offer value-based pricing that prices any offering based on the benefits of the offering, not on the services you have to perform.

    Increase Engagement

    When you increase engagement on your website, the perceived value will automatically go up. Not only that, the more engagement on your website, the more likely people are to become repeat visitors. Those repeat visitors will help you promote your website and offerings due to their participation.

    Understand What Your Visitors Want

    Make an avatar or persona of your ideal website visitor or customer. Then, write all content, create all graphics, make all offerings appeal to that ideal customer. The more you write to, create for, and consider your ideal customer, the more valuable your offerings will become to them.

    Keep the Information Flowing

    People like going to websites where the information is in a continuous flow. The more blog posts and the more information you can provide that are relevant, the better. You do want to avoid updating for the sake of updating. But you want to update as often as possible with smart, relevant, creative and appropriate information.

    Ask yourself before adding anything to your website, “How does this add value to my customer’s life?” If you can’t answer that, don’t include it.

    Categories: website Tags: Tags:

    Promoting Memberships with Small Reports

    If you want to promote your own membership or someone else’s membership that you’re an affiliate of, you can do it in a lot of ways. You can write blog posts, reviews, eBooks, and share on social media, and so forth. But, you can also promote memberships using small reports. There are a lot of different ways to create small reports that are good to use in this way.

    * Use PLR – Small reports are wonderful uses for PLR. PLR means private label rights. These are articles or other content that you can rewrite and reuse as if it’s your own. You can purchase PLR from a reputable company like AllPrivateLabelContent.com. You change them a bit, add your affiliate links, and you’re done.

    * Combine New and PLR – Combine several types of PLR plus something new and relevant to your audience to create a report in which you place an affiliate link to the membership you’re trying to promote.

    * Write Something New – Take one problem that people who may join the membership have, and either define it or solve it with the small report. Offer up the group as additional support to help them maintain their solution or solve more problems that they may have.

    * Make Brandable Reports – Create a report that is designed for your affiliates to edit, make their own and brand with their affiliate links. Affiliates like promoting products that are easy to promote, and nothing makes it simpler than providing them with the raw materials to create their own report.

    * Use Pictures, Facts and Stats – A good use for pictures, facts and statistics is to compile them into a small report that has pictures, graphics, and images. The more you can spell out the benefits of a solution, the more likely someone is to want to join a group. What better way than a small report with pie charts?

    * Hire a Writer – If you don’t want to write the reports yourself, you can hire a contractor to write the reports for you. A short report is usually about 4000 to 4500 words long. You can usually hire someone from 12 dollars per page and up. So budget about 120 to 200 dollars for your short reports.

    * Give Them Away – Use the report to give away for free. You don’t even have to collect an email address, since the report has links for the membership. More people are likely to download the report if they don’t have to give any information.

    * Exchange Them for Email Addresses – Another way to do it is to give away the report for an email address. They’ll get the marketing inside the report, plus they’ll be signed up for your email list that is targeted to the people who downloaded the report.

    * Encourage Sharing – When you are using a report to promote something like a membership, you want the people who download it to feel free to share it with everyone they know. If you make it interesting enough, and able to stand on its own enough, they will share it.

    Promoting memberships with small reports is a very effective way to get people to come to your membership. You can give them a discount based on which report they are coming from, for example, whether from an affiliate or from you directly.

    Categories: membership, website Tags: Tags:

    Promote Memberships with Kindle Books

    The way to really catch your membership on fire is to make it one that is mentioned a lot by others, and to make it popular through a published book. Kindle makes it easy to publish books. Anyone can write a book and publish it and have it live within a few days. Plus, your book doesn’t even have to be that long to promote it and publish it via Kindle.

    * Teach Something to Your Audience – If you have a membership program, then that means you also have knowledge about something that other people want to know. You can write a book; it doesn’t have to be long. 30 or 40 pages is enough. Teach them something tangible that is related to your membership.

    * Write a Book of Case Studies – If you have had the membership for a while, you can create an anthology of stories from the members with their permission. People will clamor to include their success story in a book. Just be sure to get a signed statement of permission to print, and you’re golden.

    * Tell Them Multiple Ways to Find Solutions – In the book, don’t just include your membership as a solution. Include a variety of them, but mention your membership too. You don’t want the book to appear overtly promotional.

    * Give Clear Examples of Success  – Using your members as a source, include clear examples of people who have experienced success using the methods explained in the book. Even if they used these methods outside of the group environment, the important thing is that they used the methods.

    * Let Your Book Stand on Its Own – Your book should not be a 40-page sales letter; it should be able to stand on its own as an interesting and informative book. The message should be clear in the book and they should not have to join the membership to get the whole story.

    * Give Away Something Free – In order to get them interested in the membership, give away a free month of membership for purchasing the book. That will help keep an influx of new members so that your membership is active. Plus, if your membership is good, they’ll stick around longer.

    * Start an Affiliate Program – If you want other people to promote your group in a book, it’s important to start an affiliate program. Your members will come up with book ideas all on their own, to promote your membership.

    * Encourage Others to Promote in Their Books – Give the idea to your affiliates to write a book to promote the group. Encourage this by actively promoting authors who include your affiliate link and group mention in their book to your group.

    Promoting memberships with books doesn’t have to be just your own memberships. If you are part of any group that has an affiliate program, you can write a book that includes the information about the membership, as long as it’s relevant to the topic of the book.

    Categories: Membership, website Tags: Tags:

    Planning Your Email Marketing

    Your best chance of success with email marketing is to create a plan based on the products that you want to promote. It all starts with your product funnel, which leads to your content marketing plan, which leads to your email marketing calendar. All email marketing should be focused toward promoting your products and/or services and that requires planning. The following steps will help you increase the results of your email marketing.

    Craft a Working Product Funnel – You probably already have various products and services, but you may not have designed a product funnel yet that helps you understand how everything is interconnected and works together. Understanding this can help you keep your different lists and promotions in order.

    Design Sales Pages for Each Product – Each page should tell your audience the benefits of purchasing the product. Remember a sales pages focus is on the audience, not on you. Benefits over features, always – pretend you are the client and answer all the questions and concerns they might have right on the sales page.

    Start Appropriate Email Lists for Each Product– Using your autoresponder, create the lists for each product or service that you will promote. At the minimum you will want a general email list for people who visit the front page of your blog and then two lists for each product you sell. Create one list for people who purchased the product and one list for people who just want more info about the particular product. Name them appropriately so that you know where to put the messages based from where the audience joins your list.

    Develop a New Product Launch Calendar – Knowing when each product is being launched for new upcoming products and or services will help you identify which lists you can include the announcements and information on. Plus, it will remind you to create new sales pages, lists, blog posts and email marketing messages for each new product.

    Create a Blog Post Publication Calendar – Based on the product launch calendar, write blog posts and set deadlines for them to be scheduled. Ensure that some blog posts promote the various sales pages, and other blog posts are designed for those who purchased already. For each message, consider who will see it and where they come from.

    Create a Social Media Content Publication Calendar – Develop social media messages in a series based on your blog posts that will attract your readers to click through to your sales pages and purchase or sign up for your email lists.

    Create an Email Publication Calendar – Based on how everything works together above, create a series of emails that you can edit appropriately for each separate list that you may want to promote the new product to. Load them into the right auto responders, ensuring they link to the right sales pages depending on the audience they are sent out to.

    Craft Follow-Up Messages – Don’t forget to craft all your follow-up messages too for each product that you sell. Once sold, you will want to keep in contact with the customer who bought it so that you can market future products and services to them.

    By creating a plan of action to follow, you can make sure every single time you launch a new product that you can cross-promote other products and services without bombarding your list too much with messages they don’t need, thus increasing your conversion rates exponentially. If all the content you create goes together like a puzzle to promote all of your products and services in a seamless way, it’ll be that much easier each time to set up for each new product.

    Categories: Email Subscribers Tags: Tags:

    Nine Ways to Promote Your Membership Program

    You’ve built an awesome membership program and now you need to get members. Members will bring in regular income on a monthly basis that you can count on. But, first you have to get the attention of your target audience. You do that by promoting your membership program in a variety of ways.

    1. Social Media – Not only should you post information in your updates about your membership, but you should also put information about your membership program in your profile. On LinkedIn, for example, you can even put videos and other information for viewers to see so that they can get more information.

    2. Blog Posts – Create a lot of blog posts leading up to the launch of your membership program. Discuss problems, solutions, and how your group fits in. You can put the posts in different formats like videos to get even more reach.

    3. PPC Ads – Social media like Facebook is a good place to run pay-per-click advertisements about your membership, because you can laser target your audience using the tools provided.

    4. Affiliate Marketers – Let other people market your group by setting up an affiliate program. Offer your affiliates all the tools, graphics, emails, posts and more to help them promote your membership.

    5. Webinars – A popular and effective way to promote your new membership program is to have a webinar that offers some solutions for the problems of the target audience. At the end of and throughout the webinar, promote the membership program as an extra form of help.

    6. Email Marketing – Using these other venues, get people onto your email list. Then send them a series of emails educating them about their problems and how the membership is the solution.

    7. A Great Sales Page – Your sales page for your membership is very important. There are a lot of tools you can use to ensure that you create a good sales page, like LeadPages.net or InstaBuilder.com.

    8. Magazines – You can put advertisements in specific magazines that have to do with your niche. Trade magazines often have cheaper advertising costs than popular general magazines, so look for the right niche magazine.

    9. Personal Networking – Whether in person or online, networking is an important component of helping spread the word about your membership program. Tell everyone you know that you have it when the opportunity comes up.

    Promoting your membership program is imperative if you want to get enough members. You can’t build it and expect them to automatically find you. You have to be proud of what you’ve created, and get your membership program to more people who are in your target audience by promoting it.

    Categories: Membership Tags: Tags:

    Membership Software That Works

    When you are deciding on technology for your membership site, it’s important to consider not only technology that works, but also technology that works for you in the way that you want it to work. What features do you want the membership software to have? What is your skill level with troubleshooting technology? Who will you hire if you don’t have the skills? There is a lot to think about when choosing membership software.

    1. NewRainmaker – This software is software as service (SAS), meaning it’s running from the cloud. You don’t do anything but set it up, kind of like you would WordPress. All the plugins and functionality that works best with membership sites are included, such as affiliate management, drip technology, and forums. This software includes a monthly fee for hosting, tech support and use of the software.

    Link – http://newrainmaker.com/

    2. aMember – This is an add-on to your current website. If you use WordPress it works very well with it. It also works with other types of website builders. It includes affiliate management, drip technology and more. You will need to purchase separate software to have a forum. They will install it for you for a fee and provide great support. It’s a one-time fee and upgrade fees yearly. You’ll have to pay extra for tech support if things go wrong.

    Link – http://www.amember.com/

    3. iGrOOps – This is another hosted solution where you pay a monthly fee for using the system. They provide all the upgrades, updates, and hosting. You simply use their template system to create your membership site. It has all the bells and whistles but it cannot be made to look like your current site.

    Link – http://www.igroops.com/

    4. EasyMemberPRO – They promise anyone can set up a membership site, and connect it with your current software quickly and easily. It also has a lot of what you need with a profitable membership site, including affiliate management. There’s a one-time fee with one year of free upgrades.

    Link – http://www.easymemberpro.com/

    5. WishList Member – This is a plugin that works with self-hosted WordPress websites, turning your current site into a membership site with all the bells and whistles except that if you want a forum you have to purchase software for the forum.

    Link – http://member.wishlistproducts.com/

    6. MemberGate – Another hosted solution with a monthly fee but one that offers every bell and whistle you can imagine from forums, to video hosting, to drip technology and more. The look is slightly dated for the choices of templates, but you can use your own coder working with them to change that if you want to spend the time and money.

    Link – http://www.membergate.com/

    7. ONTRAPORT – This is a very high-end solution (with a high-end price). But, if you plan to run a six-figure business, this is a great solution that offers managed membership without having to ever worry about technology. It will also work with your current WordPress website.

    Link – https://ontraport.com/features/

    8. SiteManPro – This is a great solution if you want to sell digital items and run a membership solution. You can use this to automate the entire thing. It can work with your current WordPress site. You will need to get separate forum software if you feel you need one. It integrates easily and works as it states.

    Link – http://www.sitemanpro.com/

    9. Smember

    Remember to write down the features you want your membership site to offer, as well as to take into consideration your level of technological skill as you pick a membership software solution. It might cost a few dollars, but you can’t make any money if you don’t make a choice and get started.

    Categories: Membership Tags: Tags:

    Making the Most of Your ECourse

    Creating an eCourse is a great way to get subscribers to your list. An eCourse is also a great way to give information to your subscribers that they need, as well as a way to market other information to them. It’s important to build trust with your subscribers and you can do that with a well written and planned out eCourse.

    But, there are some best practices for your eCourse that you should be aware of when using an eCourse as subscription bait, either free or paid.

    1. Craft Well Written Opt-In Messages – Tell your subscribers what to expect in the opt-in information. That way they will know that they’re going to get more than just the eCourse. Letting them know this will do two things. One, it will prepare your subscriber to get more than just the course; and two, it will give them the opportunity to say no or yes. The best subscribers know what they’re getting into when they opt in.

    2. Make the Most of Your Thank You Message – Once they opt in, send them a thank you message. This is a great place to include extra information about what they’re going to receive, again, and other opportunities that you have for them. If every single message you send out is packed with information, you’ll be more likely to get a positive response.

    3. Craft Your Course Series Carefully – If you’ve promised your subscribers a ten-day email course, each day of the course should be very well defined and stand on its own but also make them excited for the next course delivery. Remember a ten-day course doesn’t have to be delivered one each day; it can be one each week with other information in between.

    4. Create Offers within Course Messages – Each course message is a great time to include offers to the subscribers for other products and services or information that you promote. You can send them to affiliate products and services that coincide with what you’re teaching them in the course.

    5. Add Extras within the Course Series – A ten-day eCourse can turn into a month of emails with extra days and courses. You can even ask for homework from your course subscribers, sending them to a private Facebook group or forum where they can turn in their assignments to give them extra -all within the same “10 day” course.

    6. Give Bonus Course Information – If you want to, you can offer your subscribers the opportunity to sign up for another eCourse series within the current course that you’re providing. Many people are happy to find out about more advanced information about a particular subtopic within the original eCourse.

    7. Offer Opportunities to Join Other Lists – If you have more than one email list that might be of interest, the eCourse is an excellent way to let your subscribers know about them. Keeping your subscribers moving through your product funnel by making new offers is a great way to make the most of your eCourse.

    8. Periodically Update the Course Information – Even when the course is over, if updates happen, or changes in technology occur, it’s a good time to contact your course members to give them the scoop on the update.

    Making the most of an eCourse is essential to making the course worth your time and effort. Thankfully most, if not all, of the email course can be automated using your autoresponder service – whether it’s a free eCourse or a paid course.

    Categories: Email Subscribers Tags: Tags: