Monthly Archives: September 2010

Social Media Optimization: Strategies for Maximizing Your Social Media Presence

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Social media marketing can no longer be called a passing fad. If you look at some of the big players such as Intel, Honda, Coca Cola and thousands of other brands both large and small, who are using social media to engage with their audience and increase brand awareness, you’re sure to discover that social media can help you to expand your brand, interact and engage with your target market and grow your presence online.

With social media sites such as youtube.com becoming the second most popular search engine, and Facebook growing larger than the population of some countries it’s time to stop ignoring its impact and start embracing the potential of social media to have a positive impact on your bottom line when done right.

So, what is social media optimization? It’s all about optimizing your online presence to take advantage of social media’s potential to grow your business and expand your brand. Just as SEO optimizes your website to attract organic traffic from the search engines, SMO seeks to optimize your site to receive targeted traffic from social media sites. In this article we’re going to look at some ways in which you can optimize your sites and your profiles to boost both your search engine rankings and expand your reach and influence online.

1. Your Website

If you don’t already have one, create a blog which is optimized for your primary keywords.

Provide an email list opt-in form where visitors can sign up and learn more about who you are and what you have to offer.

Make it effortless for your visitors to share your content on social media by providing sharing buttons, Twitter apps, and Fan Page ‘Like’ boxes.

Provide an RSS feed so that visitors can keep up with your new content.

Use video to educate, entertain and inform your visitors.

2. Your Social Media Profiles

Make sure that all of your profiles are 100% complete. LinkedIn profiles that are complete rank higher than those that are incomplete.

Post a good, clear photo of yourself in your profiles (people don’t create relationships with a logo).

Create compelling content that your visitors will want to share.

Focus more energy on giving and providing value than you do on advertising your wares.

Present yourself as a trusted authority, and people will be attracted to what you have to offer.

3. What is your plan of action for social media?

Clearly articulate what you specifically hope to gain by being involved in social media.

Do you want more traffic to your website?

Are you trying to engage with your audience and create relationships?

Do you want to build a community around your ideas?

Are you trying to provide customer service?

After you establish those goals you can determine how you will measure success.

Go over these items and take an assessment of where you are right now with social media optimization and take a few actions today that will move you one step closer to having an online presence that is optimized to make the most of your connections on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube.com.  Use these ideas to come up with a single goal to start with and then work towards achieving that goal as you expand your vision.

Social media marketing is an effective way to get your brand out there, get found and grow your online presence and your business. Are you making the most of this golden opportunity?

Want to get more involved with social media, but you don’t have the time, or the expertise to do it right? Ask about our social media management services. Contact me at ebb567 [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Reinvent You One Talk at a Time with Diana McCray and Patricia Rivera

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Regular readers of this blog know that I love to write about personal development. I believe that each of us is put here on this earth for a purpose and each of us has a sacred mission to accomplish in the time that we are given. Personal development for me is all about taking the gifts and talents that you have been blessed with and honing them and discovering how you can use your gifts to bless those around you.

I’ve been invited to be a guest on a fabulous personal development podcast called, ‘Reinvent U One Talk at a Time,’ with co-hosts, Diana McCray and Patricia Rivera. These two powerful women have put together an amazing show where. “. . .all women can come together as one, to educate, support and inspire one another.” They invite guests who come from a spiritual perspective, who are focused on collaboration over competiton and who understand the role of spirituality in business and in our growth as human beings.

So, whether you’re a regular reader of this blog, or a first-time visitor (I love first-time visitors! ;-) ) you are invited to listen to the show.

I’m excited to be a guest on, ‘Reinvent U One Talk at a Time,’ and I plan to talk a little bit about how I got started in my business, but I also want to use this opportunity to encourage others who may have been flirting with the idea of starting their own business, but may be nervous about taking the plunge.

Diana and Patricia have put together an amazing show, and I encourage you to download some of the past episodes and get inspired to step into your power as a woman and take the necessary steps so that you can begin to live the life of your dreams. http://bit.ly/ReInventU

How to Fearlessly Create Free Products to Give Away, Generate Leads and Build a Responsive Email List

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Photo credit: Jay Lopez

When visitors land on your website you’ve got mere seconds to grab their attention and get them to stick around to see what you’ve got to offer. Most people will not buy what you have to offer on their first visit to your site, but if they like what they see, you want to seize the opportunity to open up a dialogue with them so that they can get more comfortable with you and learn what you have to offer before they click that “Buy it Now” button.

So, your goal should be to get your visitors to sign up for your email list so that you can continue the conversation with them. In order to entice and encourage your visitors to give up their contact information, you’ve got to answer the “What’s in it for me?” question for them. What do you have of value to offer them that will give them that will whet their appetite for the products and services that you can provide?

This is basic content marketing at work. Content marketing seeks to woo prospects encouraging them to become customers who continue to come back for more because you have both demonstrated the value of what you have to offer them, and you have made the effort to develop a relationship with them.

The key to successful content marketing is to consistently deliver valuable and relevant content that meets your prospective customers needs. It is not thinly-veiled marketing materials–otherwise called spam. Rather through the content that you offer you are establishing your expertise and authority in your subject matter and industry. Through your relationship building efforts you are creating an environment of trust that could lead to higher customer loyalty.

It is easier than you think to create your own free product to give away to your website visitors, and in today’s post we are going to take a look at some creative ways you can quickly and easliy come up with a product to give away to generate leads and build a responsive email list.

Here are some ideas for giveaway products:

  • eBooks
  • A video series
  • An audio series
  • An email e-course

For each of these products you will begin with an outline. You can create a mindmap to brainstorm for ideas and then arrange them in outline order.

If you are going to create an ebook, chunk it down to a series of short articles strung together with an introduction, a table of contents, logical transitions and a conclusion that summarizes the materials and presents the next steps that you want your reader to take. A give away ebook does not need to be more than five to eight pages long. You will deliver on the promise made in the title of the book, but remind them that if they want the complete picture they should visit your website for more in-depth information.

If you don’t like to write, or if you think you’re not a good writer, you can record what you want to say in your ebook and then have it transcribed. Sign up for a free conference call service that records calls. Dial in and create your recording, and then find a transcriptionist through any of the online freelancing websites such as Odesk.com, or Elance.com. There is an online transcription service called, speechpad.com where you can call a phone number, speak your message into the phone and then the audio is transcribed and sent to you in an email.

For a video series you can use the outline that you created to write scripts or storyboards if you are making slide-show videos. Having a plan in advance makes gathering the information and shooting the videos take less time and effort.

With audios, your outline will help you to stay on topic when you are recording your messages. If you want to get fancy, add a bit of bumper music at the intro (fading in) and out-tro  (fading out). Be sure to include a short blurb at the end of your audio inviting the listener to visit your website.

An e-course can be easily put together from a series of ‘how-to’ articles. Load the messages into your email auto-responder service and then stagger delivery of the messages every few days. At the end of each message, point your readers back to your website.

Once you’ve got your product created, you can either hire a graphic designer to create an e-cover for your product, or you can make one yourself quite easily and inexpensively here: http://bit.ly/ecovermaker.

The final step is to upload your product to your website and create a link to the download page. Grab the opt-in code from your auto-responder program and if you have a WordPress blog you can add a new text widget to your blog’s side bar, and paste the opt-in code along with your e-cover image into the widget and then click ‘save’ and then ‘close.’

You should add a bit of descriptive copy above the opt-in box that tells the visitor what they will get when they subscribe to your email list. Better yet, create a short intro video that describes what they will be receiving.

Remember, this is not a marketing piece. You are offering them something of value in exchange for their subscribing to your email list. At the end you can include a call to action that directs them to your website to find more information and resources about your products and services.

If you’d really like to have a custom made lead generation product that you can upload to your website or blog to showcase your content and build your contact list, but you just don’t have the time to create one yourself, contact me and I will create one for you.

Have you created an awesome free product to give away to visitors to generate leads? Please leave a comment with a link to your site so that we can take a look.

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Review: SistaSense Circle Business Women’s Coaching Program

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sista-sense circle
Over the past few weeks I have been attending LaShanda Henry’s SistaSense Circle group coaching program. It was designed to provide focused coaching for women infopreneurs, authors, and coaches who wanted to grow their businesses. LaShanda is the founder of Black Business Women Online, which is an over 8,700 member strong online community. She has been in business for several years so she knows what she is talking about and she has achieved the level of success that I am striving for in my business.

There were ten women in this first circle and we got to know each other over the series of telephone coaching sessions and the online forum. I really enjoyed the focused attention that was made possible because the group was so small. I learned so much and I was inspired both by LaShanda and by the other amazing women in our group.

Here are a few of the little ‘nuggets’ that I learned that I  will share in order to inspire you to invest in some coaching:

The importance of sharing our stories
When we visit someone’s website and everything seems perfect and it looks like they’ve got it going on it can never reveal the depth of the struggles that they went through to achieve what they have today. Sharing the story of how you started your business, what struggles you were able to overcome, the lessons learned and the victories won makes your readers catch a glimpse of your humanity. They will find some aspect of your story that they can relate to and they might say to themselves, “If she did it then maybe I can, too.”

‘Marketing moments’ & business blogging
I learned that I have been giving far too much away on my blog and then not tying the content back into sharing about what I do. She taught us about a certain approach to business blogging that balances content marketing with lead generation, and I’ll tell you the very first time I put her advice into practice I got a new client.

Social media conversion
As someone who uses social media daily to market my business, and as a social media manager for my private clients, what I learned from LaShanda about how to bring more of my social media audience to my blog and convert them to clients paid off because right away becuase I signed a new client that first found me on Facebook.

So, if you’re feeling a bit stuck you might consider a group coaching program like the SistaSense Circle where you can learn and grow and stretch yourself as you gain the skills and support to grow your business or coaching practice in a safe, encouraging environment.

If you are just starting out in online business and you could use some guidance, I recommend LaShanda’s, The Beginner’s Guide to Building Your Money Making Business Online, which is a bundle of ebooks, a 7-day course and 15 ‘how-to’ videos.

While the SistaSense Circle has officially ended, I plan to keep in touch with the members of the class so that we can
continue to inspire one another and learn from each other.

Do you work with a stellar coach who has helped you to break through some barriers and achieve new levels of success? Brag about them here in the comments.

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The Importance of Coaching–Learn from and Model Successful People

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coaching

Life as a professional blogger/freelance content producer moves very fast these days. Last week I was up to my eyeballs in client projects, but I made the time to participate in a coaching group that would help me to improve and grow my business, while also helping me to refine my mindset. Being in that group and participating with the other participants who were business women at various stages of our businesses from those who were working on brining a business idea to fruition to those of us who already had successful businesses was inspiring.

In this blog post I want to share a bit about the importance of being coachable, and how working with a coach can help you to leap-frog over obstacles and reach your goals quicker than you otherwise would.

How coaching can help you grow
For a long time I ascribed to the “Lone Wolf” theory of entrepreneurship. I was going to tough it out alone, learn what I
could through trial and error and bootstrap my way to success. After floundering around for awhile trying different things and not getting the results I was after, I realized that it probably made sense to accept the guidance and advice of someone who has achieved the goals that I was seeking to achieve in my business.

The Christian Bible is full of verses about seeking counsel, but this is one of my favorites, “The way of a fool is right in
his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel.” –Proverbs 12:15. This verse reminds us to take the time to listen to others who have learned valuable lessons and be grateful that they are willing to share them to make your path a bit easier than theirs was.

Heeding these wise words, I began to seek out the advice and guidance of coaches. I will tell you from the vantage point of having tried to go it alone, and now working with a coach, it is so much better to have someone in your corner to advise, support and encourage you as you go along.

Another benefit of working with a coach is that you save time. Trial and error takes time–and it requires that you make mistakes, learn from them and then course correct. But having a coach can help you to avoid many of those costly mistakes in the first place. When you are working with a coach who has already achieved the goals that you are aspiring to, they can show you exactly how to avoid many of the pitfalls that can side-track you, and which steps you should take to achieve success.

Commit to investing in your growth and development
Of course, working with a coach is not free. They need to be compensated for their time and expertise, but if you choose the right coach this is considered an investment that will bring an exponential return. You can never get back time that you have lost heading down the wrong path or climbing a ladder that is leaning up against the wrong wall.

You’ve got to be willing to commit to investing in your growth and development. You have got to be willing to invest in
yourself before others will invest in you.

Choosing the right coach
When you are looking for a coach who will support you in moving your business to the next level take the time to vet several candidates. Get recommendations from trusted friends and colleagues for coaches that they have worked with or who they have heard positive reports about. Visit their websites, watch their videos, and read about their accomplishments and their approach to coaching. If they offer a complimentary introductory session, take them up on it and have a lst of questions ready when you speak to them. Listen with an open mind and decide if you think that you have been able to establish a rapport with this person and if you think you will be able to learn from them.

I have worked with spiritual coaches, business coaches and most recently a blogging coach. I have found that the time and money spent was well worth it because in return I received increased focus, a ton of knowledge and the support and encouragement that you can’t get working alone. I highly recommend working with a coach if you want to move forward quickly while feeling supported and guided.

Finally, I would advise you to check out their cancellation policies in advance in case things go south and you decide to no longer work with them.

Working with a coach can be just what you need in order to catapult you to the next level of growth personally and for your business.

What have your experiences been with coaches? Have you found good results from working with a coach for personal or business goals? You are welcome to share your story in the comments.

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