State of Entrepreneurial Spirit!

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    WATCH THE VIDEO! INSPIRING!

    Today, I learned about this program (that I wished I had when I was young) called Startupskool at early entrepreneurs. It is a foundation whose mission is to create a revolution of social innovators.

    As mentioned on their website,

    We gave a handful of elementary classrooms each a $100 micro-loan as startup capital, and asked them to raise funds for charity. Rather than running typical fundraisers such as asking for pledges, these classes used the money to start their own small businesses such as building bird houses to sell at a local market, selling green smoothies on Fridays, and creating family friendly events. These students were using their own creativity and imagination to turn our initial $100 loan into thousands of dollars for charity. Building on the success of our original experiment, we partnered with amazing educators and entrepreneurs to launch a full curriculum behind our program. Through media-based lessons and an interactive platform we’ve been able to transform over 120 classrooms across Canada into social innovators. Their efforts have since generated over $80,000 in support of local and global charities.

    They now have a website where teachers can register and find out how to run their own program in their class to instill the entrepreneurial training into their children from kindergarten to High School (in Canada).  The internet program can be adapted (and it has been adapted) to other countries.  The children are given $100 for their team and they have to create $500 with a business and the team learns about marketing, costing, pricing and  product creation all through working together in a class.

    It is a story like this which makes you realize that anyone at any age can learn how to have the entrepreneurial spirit.  It just takes some training and knowledge about business and guidance from mentors to help you start.

    This idea that i can pass on my knowledge about business to another so they can create a business themselves is a desire for this website.  Inside The Business of At Home Business membership there is the information and step-by-step to start a business.

    Categories: Run a Home Business Tags: Tags: ,

    Twitter Engagement

    Twitter – who wants to bother? who has the time?

    The Twitter may scroll quickly through your life but it is worth participating in Twitter to get engagement and potential awareness for your brand.  Also, you can connect with others who you might want to partner with when you converse on Twitter.

    According to this Twitter study in 2014 by Stone Temple Consulting, you can get engagement!

    If you are a well-known authority in your field, it will be easier for you to get followers.

    It is true that image attached to a tweet will increase re-tweets and “favorited.”

    Increasing hashtags in a tweet doesn’t make a significant difference.

    Most interesting is that the time of day didn’t affect how much engagement was given.

    As you can see, Twitter is worth sending out your messages in and there is training in The Business of At Home Business membership. 

     

     

    Please include attribution to www.stonetemple.com with this graphic.

     

    Study

     

     

    Categories: Twitter Tags: Tags: , ,

    Testimonials, do you do them?

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    Testimonials for companies that you work with and you are happy with the customer service and the information that you learned, do you do them?

    Do you ask for testimonials from your customers when the work or service you did for them is complete?

    No.

    Then you are missing out on the best form of lead generation for your business.

    I did this testimonial for www.hangoutmarketingu.com as I was asked and I was very happy with what I learned about Hangouts On Air in the program.  When I am asked how I learned to do Hangouts On Air, you can bet I will be referring them on to Hangoutmarketing because I was pleased with everything I learned for doing the lessons.

    Is there a  better way to get free leads back to your business with happy customers telling everyone they know about your service?  No!

    In the  structural engineering business with my husband, we do absolutely no advertising other than a listing in the Yellow Pages.  Remember the Yellow Pages!  We get all our customers from referrals. Whether it is from customers who we did work for before and their neighbour wants some advice on a good engineer or it is a local contractor who wants to make his new customer happy with good service, we get ALL our leads from referrals.

    Customer referral marketing is one of the marketing strategies that is rarely talked about, especially online.

    Does your customer give you any feedback after they receive your service or product about how happy or what was missing that made them unhappy? Do you ask?

    Does your customer get a request from you for a testimonial if they were pleased with your service?   Do you follow-up and see if there is a quick way you can get them to submit something?  It could be a quick interview on video; it could be a survey to quickly fill in or a written testimonial.

    I always use Consumer Reports when I am buying an expensive item for the house like a T.V. or car.  Why wouldn’t people want to know what other people got out of your service or product before they purchase!

    Customer service is key to a successful business whether offline or online and this is what we talk about, as well as other topics, in the Business of At Home Business membership!  Check it out here.

     

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

    Facebook Marketing

    Tips On Using Facebook For Marketing

    Facebook’s popularity with Internet users has run into the millions since its acceptance of anyone with a valid email address in 2006. Most members play games, update their profiles and upload photos or videos for their friends to view. While planting crops on Farmville, drinking virtual coffee in the cafe or beating off snakes in FrontierVille is addicting, Facebook can also be a powerful marketing tool for Internet marketers.

    Marketers, including those using the Internet to market their products, know that in order to attract potential customers, they need to announce the benefits of their products to a large audience and give their readers a reason to visit their site. Simply put, no Visitors = No Sales.

    Facebook members make connections with each other, called Friends, and you are only allowed to contact or message those friends. Member profiles are only available to other Facebook members, which creates a loose pool to specifically market to. Some of Facebook’s most popular applications, those you probably use every day are specifically for Internet marketers.

    In fact, marketers who know how to market on Facebook start that huge marketing process with their Profile, adding games, puzzles or videos that are interesting to other users. Facebook’s underlying purpose is to make the site a fun place to be. An RSS feature allows users to syndicate their blogs, increasing their exposure dramatically.

    Users can use Facebook to promote products from Clickbank and Amazon as an affiliate, whether they have their own website or not.

    Here are some tips to get you started and to keep you out of trouble with this very powerful social networking site.

    Each user has a profile page and part of that page is used for The Wall;effectively a place to post messages for each user to see. If your “friends” have access to your full profile, friend marketers can post messages on your Wall. Perhaps a more effective application might be posting attachments to your Wall promoting products.

    Application developers have found a home with Facebook and are happy to design applications that rapidly become standard Facebook apps, taking advantage of the Web 2.0 graphic and audio options available to users.

    One feature that’s used by those who scan posts instead of reading them is the Status feature. This feature is a quick update on what you are doing and, used carefully, can be a powerful marketing tool. For instance, using Facebook’s format, “John Thomas just finished his new software.” A convenient link to that sales page for that software would get a lot of traffic just from curious members.

    A Facebook Event is used for keeping friends aware of upcoming events. Here is where a marketer can advertise seminars, podcasts and ecourses, to name a few. Facebook’s rules about announcing an event should be carefully read in order to avoid being branded a spammer.

    Videos are everywhere and have rapidly become the most popular method to use to market many Internet products. Videos can be added to Facebook with a Facebook Mobile application, which has a webcam feature. The videos cannot be shared outside of Facebook, but with the huge membership ranging in the 60 to 70 million users and growing daily, that shouldn’t be too much of a setback to a smart marketer.

    Facebook is the perfect versatile application for creative marketers to increase their traffic and, therefore, their customer base. Simple processes can be powerful marketing tools and Facebook is no exception.

    Categories: Facebook

    Article Engagement

    Key Tips For Getting Lots of Article Click Thrus

    It’s a no-brainer that in order to get people to your site, they need to click on your link at the bottom of your article first.

    But before that, they need to read your article.

    So let’s back up here and look at the 3 most important things your article needs to have in order to get lots of click thrus.

    • A great headline.
    • An interesting opening paragraph.
    • A compelling call to action.

    To put it another way, you want a great headline that will interest a person enough to want to read your article. Then you need a good first paragraph that entices the reader to really read the article. Lastly, you need to flow into a compelling bio call to action that makes the reader want to click your link.

    A great headline

    Certainly you should include your keywords in the title to help search engine traffic find your article, but your headline, or your title, should be more than that. The title’s other important job is to get people interested in reading the article.

    Think about making the title eye-catching, humorous, emotionally appealing, curiosity-arousing, attention-getting, a bit outrageous, and certainly NOT boring. And use trigger words in your headline: how to, question, tips, numbers, story, the benefit, secret, the truth, the cure for, or mistakes.

    An interesting opening paragraph

    You’ve only got a couple sentences, at most, to really get the reader’s attention before he’s lost interest and has moved on. So when writing the article you’ll probably want to spend most of your time on this.

    If you want good examples of opening paragraphs, just read the newspaper. You’ll notice each newspaper story uses a technique to entice the reader. They might make an outrageous claim, stir up some controversy, hit our hot buttons, use a scare tactic, predict the future, or use some similar technique that draws us in. That’s what you want to do with your article.

    A compelling call to action

    When you write your bio, you should always include a call to action. Don’t give them details about you and include your website. Ask them to come to your site by offering something they value for free. What do they value? What would motivate them to click thru to your site? Perhaps you can give information away for free that other marketers are selling. Make it clear, easy, and irresistible.

    Take a look at other successful article marketers’ bios to get some examples of what works. If you visit EzineArticles, check out some of the articles that interest you and examine which bios make you want to click thru.

    Last but not least, test your bio. Sometimes you need more creative wording, or sometimes a better offer, but you won’t know until you test.

    The more articles you write with purpose, the better you’ll get at it. Concentrating on these three areas; the title, opening paragraph and bio, whenever you write an article should help your article click thru rates increase.

    Categories: blogging

    Sales Pages Proof

    Are These Kinds Of Proof On Your Sales Page?

    We all know what goes into selling a new product online – an awesome product, lots of traffic, an excellent sales page, and good conversion rates. Having the awesome product is probably the easiest part, while getting good conversion rates may be the hardest. So what will help you convert visitors into buyers?

    Proof

    People want to see proof that your product is and does what you promise it will be and do. They want to know other people have used it successfully without complications. They’d also like to see, touch, and try, if possible. If they’re convinced it will solve their problem(s), they’ll head right over to the buy button and purchase the product.

    Here, then, are some types of proof that will help prove your product is the one for them:

    Testimonials

    While the US government has now put some restrictions on what testimonials can say, and need to include a disclaimer noting atypical results, they are still an effective form of proof. Testimonials can be in writing with a photo, video, or audio. What types of testimonials do you like to see? I like the ones that say how the customer put the product to work for them and increased their income by xx dollars, lost xx amount of weight, or cleared up acne in xx days. These are customers who have used the product and found success so it’s likely, or at least possible, other buyers will get good results too.

    Case studies

    These are a form of a testimonial, but more involved. A case study shows where the person was at before the purchase, how he used the product, how long the results took, and what the results were. People like the specifics, so it might also include a negative or two.

    Video tour

    Not only tell them about your product, take them inside. A video look around with maybe a demonstration of how to use the product will show potential customers exactly what they will be getting. If your product is an ebook, show them the table of contents and a page here and there; similar to what Amazon does with their Look Inside! feature. Show off and talk about any bonuses as well.

    Flash your credentials

    Are you a published author, been an expert in the field for over 10 years, been quoted in the newspaper, been interviewed by other experts in the field? Without being a show-off, weave in this kind of proof as to why you’re capable of talking and teaching on this subject.

    Free trial period

    This is more like advanced proof and goes a long way in comforting a potential buyer’s fear. Sometimes you can get the tire-kickers to buy if you get them behind the wheel for a test drive. Offer a 14 or 30 day trial and encourage them to try it out. Offer assistance during the trial period and remind them at the end of the trial to buy.
    To convert readers to buyers, you definitely need to have some proof on your sales page.

    Consider using:

    • video
    • audio,
    • written testimonials,
    • case studies,
    • a free trial period,
    • show your credentials
    • or doing a video tour of your product.

    Remember to test to see which type of proof converts the best with your audience.

    Categories: Sales

    Communication by Text

    Why Get It Transcribed?

    Audio interviews and webinars, video PowerPoints, and how-to screencast demonstrations are no longer considered “new” in Internet marketing, but they’re communication mediums that are certainly here to stay.

    Although audio and video work great for imparting information, the need for the written word is still there, especially to accompany the audios and videos. I’m talking about transcriptions; written documentation of what you’ve recorded verbally and/or visually. Why should you go the extra mile and the extra expense to have your webinar transcribed?

    Here are a few reasons:

    1. When you have your audio or video transcribed, you’ve just increased the value of your product. Perhaps your audio interview is free to your listeners, but if they want the transcribed version, they’ll have to pay for it. Or you could offer your product with the audio and transcription for one fee, and without the transcription for a “lite” fee. Another idea is to add the written document as a bonus to your product, or offer it in an upsell.

    2. Even though audio and video are popular, not everyone likes this medium. Many people prefer reading over listening. It could be they’re fast readers and like to go at their own pace rather than be at the mercy of an audio that seems to be going too slow. Or maybe they are short on time and prefer to skip to the parts that are of particular interest to them. Some find themselves daydreaming or becoming distracted and can’t follow along very well.

    3. There are times when people can’t listen, no matter how informative your webinar is. The timing may not work into their schedule – people are so busy with work, kids, chores, civic duties, etc. and if you lose them, you lose your chance to impart your wisdom, take your brand up a notch, make a sale, or whatever your reason for doing the webinar. Similarly, the person might not be in a location where they can turn the volume up (like at work, in a waiting room, while on the bus) and they don’t have earphones. After all your hard work of putting on the webinar, you don’t want to lose any potential customers. Offering a transcription of your webinar will make these people happy. It shows goodwill on your part.

    Doing webinars, audio interviews, podcasts, and videos is great for business. It adds dimension to your brand, gives your sales page or website some punch and makes lots of people happy who like to listen. But take it a step further and make everyone satisfied by having your audios transcribed. It’s a good business practice that can affect your bottom line.

    Categories: Text

    Youtube

    Driving Traffic To Your Site With YouTube

    YouTube has had a dramatic effect on the Internet marketing landscape, making huge changes in how marketers promote their products and services. For years, Internet marketing was confined to text-based websites with a photo or graphic and beautiful headers.

    The new software that makes creating videos easy has generated millions of video sales pages and other graphic presentations that can go viral quickly. It seems like the browsing public, regardless of their choice of subjects cannot get enough of videos.

    Successful marketers always know they have to stay current with the latest and greatest marketing processes if they want to continue to attract buyers. The hottest marketing tool right now is YouTube.

    To take advantage of marketing with YouTube, you first need to register for a YouTube account. If your video grabs attention and is well-done, it has a chance of going viral, which means that it will move around the Internet as people upload it and send it to their lists or it gets mentioned in forums, membership sites, newsletters and blogs.

    When posting your videos on YouTube, do not upload long videos. Three to four minutes is a good length for marketing videos. Your intention is to create enough curiosity to make your viewers click on your site link at the bottom of your video. Traffic generated from your link can mean steady income for you.

    Keywords are still valuable and should be included in your video title. Do not forget the basic marketing practice of using your keywords in your first paragraph and intermittently in the rest of your presentation. What you want to do is make your videos interesting enough to have others send an email or the link to their friends and subscribers, which makes your video a viral marketing tool. The more people who click the link to your video, the better your ranking, the more Google will love you, and the more chance you have to make sales.

    What should you do videos about? Remember you’re a marketer – the only difference is the delivery media, in this case, YouTube videos. Instructional videos, PowerPoint presentations, your personal story about finding the solution to a problem, or your sales copy for your product are good examples.

    Check out your YouTube competitors to not only see what they are doing, but to find possible opportunities to add your video as a response to what they are posting. People will find your video and follow your links if they are interested in what you are saying or offering. Targeted traffic is pure gold.

    YouTube has a couple of interesting and useful tools for you to use. One is the “Statistics and Data” section, which lists the numbers of visitors sent by other websites. You are free to copy the tags popular sites use to keep their videos and websites popular. Use them in your videos to improve your listings.

    Keep in mind these facts about YouTube’s popularity and don’t dismiss the site’s power as a marketing tool without giving it a try yourself. YouTube has monthly visitors that number way over several million each month. Almost 100,000 new videos are uploaded each day and your possible customers generate hundreds of million clicks on a daily basis. Those numbers alone should get you to start your video marketing immediately.

    Categories: video

    Keep your Hat White in Internet Marketing

    What Color Is Your Hat – Black, Blue, Gray Or White?

    Many people wear hats of different shapes and colors in their lives. While most parents and business owners might just consider those hats to be a necessary part of a work outfit or a fashion statement, on the Internet, specifically with Internet marketing, they have a very different meaning.

    Knowing the differences between the “hat” colors and the risks you take when you chose one over the other will help keep you out of Google death as you attempt to manipulate search engines. Google has a very short tolerance for unethical practices that attempt to work around their rules.

    It is commonly agreed upon that the safest techniques to follow in your marketing campaigns are the White Hat strategies. If you remember the old cowboy movies where the hero always wore the white hat and triumphed over the bad guys who wore black hats, you will see the implied differences in hat colors.

    White Hat

    A marketer using white hat techniques is not malicious in intent or actual practice. They follow business practices that are considered ethical and acceptable by the industry and do nothing that could be considered spamming others. They are not trying to find and exploit loopholes in the systems.

    Grey Hat

    Practices start veering off the benign white hat techniques when marketers start pushing the edges of legality and use somewhat shady methods to get what they want on other sites or to get around Google’s rules. Some of these techniques used might be reverse engineering of copyrighted or trademarked software, or copying small sections of articles and passing them off as their own. They may have found a loophole that will be closed once Google figures out what they are doing.

    Blue Hat

    This term is used by firms involved in computer security and refers to hackers hired to unearth bugs in a system before it is launched. When the blue hat hackers find unprotected areas of a client’s security, they quickly close the hole in the company’s software or report it to the security team.

    Black Hat

    A black hat can be a person who breaks computer security without permission to vandalize a site, steal credit card information, steal identities or pirate another marketer’s proprietary information or processes. A black hat marketer is someone who participates in illegal ways of getting better search engine rankings including keyword stuffing, spamdexing, spam linking, scraped content and article spinning of copyrighted material, hidden website links, excessive cross-linking, etc., that is for rank gain rather than for a better user experience.

    Again, it is usually better to keep your White Hat on or you’ll always be looking over your shoulder for the Google police.

    If you’re wearing a Black Hat, you may find yourself with a spike in results, but it won’t last and is not a steady income you can count on.

    Categories: internet marketing, website

    Simple ways to leverage your articles

    How to Leverage Your Articles

    You’ve gone through all the hard work of writing a great article and you’ve sent it off to an article directory. Is that it? Are you done with it? Not by a long shot. Don’t let all that sweat go to waste, use your article again and again to squeeze the most out of it them as you can. In other words, leverage your articles. If you do this you won’t have to spend so much of your precious time writing new articles.

    Assuming you have a well-written article of at least 400 words, here are some ideas for getting the most out of that article:

    * Start off submitting the article to EzineArticles. This is the biggest article directory, and it makes sense to start here. You’ll stand a better chance of getting traffic because of their traffic ranking. In fact, if you do a search of your targeted keywords, you’re more likely to find your article showing higher in the search engines on EzineArticle’s website than from your own website.

    * If the article topic is something that would interest your list, you can send it to them in an email. This works better if the article is shorter rather than longer.

    * Alternately, you can lightly rewrite it, being sure to change the title, and add it to your blog. Then instead of sending the whole article to your list, you can send them a short email and use curiosity or a call to action to send them clicking the link to read it on your blog. This strategy gets them to your blog where they might take further action; like comment on your post, click on your AdSense, or buy one of your products.

    * If you’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about the article, post it on a forum in your niche. This helps brand you as someone who is an expert as well as a helpful marketer.

    * Have your own article directory on your website. Set up a page with a list of all the articles you’ve written in this niche. Each article can have a blurb at the end that tells people they are free to publish the article on their site as long as they don’t change the article and keep the bio and link intact.

    * Rewrite your article and give it to affiliates so they can use it to promote your product. Affiliates appreciate having material they can use rather than having to come up with something from scratch.

    * Repurpose the article by shortening it and adding it to your newsletter that goes out to your list. Valuable information never goes out of style.

    * Take your article and split it into chunks to create an ecourse. You can easily add further detail to each chunk and end up with a 3-5 part ecourse.

    * You may have written several great articles on a specific subject. Bundle them together and create a report or ebook to give away, sell, enter in a giveaway, add to another product as a bonus, etc.

    These are only a handful of suggestions on how you can leverage your articles. Every time you write an article, use it as many ways as you can and you’ll find you don’t need to write quite as many new articles.

    Categories: blogging