Think about some of the top people — the most successful people in your industry or niche market.

Go to their website and check out their contact process.  What are your observations?

Do they let you walk right up to the boss’s door and knock?  Chances are, probably not.  You have to jump through hoops and over hurdles to get to them like an obstacle course, and it is not actually “them”; its probably their assistant.

What does this say to you about their business?

• They must be pretty important to not have their email directly available
• They must be so busy that they can’t reply to everyone themselves, thus having to coordinate with their assistant.

Don’t you want your audience to think the same thing about you as well?!?  Even if you are not there YET, let your potential, interested clients think you are!

This is what you need to do:

• Set up an info or support email address associated with your domain
• have them contact this email address to set up a consultation
• Come up with a system for when someone contacts you for a consultation and have your Virtual Assistant check this email address for you

Another idea is a contact form that allows for them to answer some questions about their needs.  You can also set this process up so that your VA receives the initial form information and can respond accordingly.  This is how mine is set up and you can check it out here.  This way works efficiently for me so that I can find out exactly what they have in mind when we do our consult.

People who truly want to work with you will go through the hoops and over the hurdles of your contact obstacle course.

Just think about it!  I encourage you to let me know your thoughts too. VA’s – how do you handle your client’s?

Sound like a post about some type of baby give-a-way contest?  Guess again.  Pink Spoon Marketing is the latest in Internet Marketing.  It’s a new approach to business whereby you build the “know/like/trust” factor to create a thriving business.

The term “pink spoon” was created by Andrea Lee and was inspired by the popular ice cream store that hands you a little pink spoon to let you sample some of the 31 available flavors.  In business, the pink spoon you offer to your clients or customers might be an article, report, tip sheet, or ebook.  Or maybe you want to give them one of each.  That is totally up to you!

While this concept of offering a freebie has been around for several years, the “pink spoon” analogy is a good one.  Giving away something free via the Internet is one of the most cost effective things you can do – yet gives you tremendous power.  Who doesn’t LOVE getting things free and being the one to offer this freebie gives you an exceptional chance of winning the business.

A “pink spoon offering” has these five characteristics:

1. It’s free.  The person wanting the pink spoon sample simply has to provide their name and email to receive it.
2. It has value that someone is willing to pay for.  However, by getting it free, you create a vital bond between you and them.
3. It is a true sample in that the size is small – like a single page tip sheet or a 4-6 page report.
4. There is a onetime cost to create the pink spoon (e.g., to write the report) and setup the distribution…but then it runs itself.
5. The relationship between the pink spoon item and your core product or service follows a natural pathway.

My pink spoon offering to my clients follows an eight-step approach for success.  It includes the following:

1. Ensuring you’re in the right niche market for you.
2. Determining the problems your target customer/client has.
3. Creating a list of solutions for the problem your customer/client faces.
4. Deciding on what product to offer and how to package that product.
5. Delivering highly qualified traffic to a web site or blog.
6. Converting that visitor traffic from a “sampler” to a “purchaser” who returns repeatedly.
7. Building your trust factor to enable your business achieve its full potential.
8. Helping you to be known for the personal integrity that you apply across all areas of your business.

Through my Pink Spoon marketing service offerings, I have found that clients who were undecided about what direction to go (or flavor to select, if you will) are now able to focus on what they truly want to offer.  Plus, knowing they have the backing of someone who understands this approach is just like putting the cherry on top of their hot fudge sundae!

In a previous post, I talked about the benefits of using WordPress for your website.  While I discussed look, programming, easy of use, etc., another important element is the SEO benefits.

WordPress makes adding SEO-friendly elements easy.

• Title.  During the installation process, you’re typically asked for this information.  However, it can be changed after the fact.  How you do this is not as important as what you do with it.  Your blog title needs to include your keywords.  Plus, the second tag line needs to further emphasize the words you’re targeting for search ability.
• Ping Services.  There’s a service option that allows you to “notify” web sites that follow blogs that you blog has made an update.  (The alternative is that you would have to manually run around all over the internet trying to do this yourself.)  By allowing your site to be “pinged” (as it’s called), your site is seen by the search engines as more social plus, you’ll get additional traffic.  Then when people surf around on web sites such as Technorati and Sphere, there’s a better chance they’ll find you.
• Meta Tags.  These are quite important and, just like with a regular web site, there is no way for these to “magically” appear.  Instead, you need to come up with them and have them placed into your blog. The good news is that there’s a plugin that helps with this.  The bad news is that writing them can be tough if you don’t know what you’re doing.
• Page Names.  When working in a traditional web site, you had to name every page and make sure you were entering the right keywords, etc.  In WordPress, all you have to do is enable a permalink option, and the title of your post is automatically formatted as the page name.
• Sitemap.  A Google sitemap is a file that contains the file information about your web site.  There are plenty of sitemap programs out there that will create the sitemap for you.  Yet, again, there’s no need to leave the comfort of the WordPress Admin panel as there’s a plugin for this as well.
• Social Media Bookmarks.  You’ve seen a blog with all the little icons for Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, etc.  Those allow your blog to get “bookmarked” on the social media web sites.  Again, on a traditional web site, this would have been a highly customized feature.  However, with the right plugin selected and installed (and you need an experienced blog developer for this one) these icons can appear almost anywhere you like.

Sure: the traditional web site will still serve a purpose.  However, for the solopreneur or business owner who wants to have a lot more functionality as well as a greater chance of having an awesome online presence, a WordPress website is the way to go.

If you have an online presence, you probably have a web site or blog for telling the world about your products and/or services.  Yet, you can expand your reach in so many ways by also having a Facebook Page along with Custom Facebook pages.

A Facebook allows for a customizable coding that allows for you to customize tabs on your Facebook Business Pages.   It helps businesses, celebrities, and non-profit organizations (to name a few) increase awareness about who they are and what they do.  Custom Facebook Pages allow you to have an “official” online presence with great benefits.

So, what are the major benefits of having a Facebook Page with Customized Pages?

• SEO.  They are automatically indexed by the search engines (i.e., you don’t have to submit them and hope they are indexed), you increase your visibility and improve your chances of being found during a Google search.
• Management.  If you have multiple people that need to interact with what you’re doing (and this is quite common now for anyone working with one or more virtual assistants), your landing page can quickly and easily be setup to allow for multiple administrators.  This means a lot less work for you.
• Traffic.  Your success (or failure) on the Internet is affected by traffic: the more you have, the more likely you are to sell your product or service.  Facebook Landing Pages capture data about your visitors, allowing you to analyze the traffic you’re getting.
• Unlimited Friends.  Unlike an individual Facebook page where you can only have a certain number of friends (5000), a Facebook Page allows to have an unlimited number of friends- referred to as “fans” or “likers”.  This gives you greater exposure , while also allowing people to subscribe your eZine, Pink Spoon, or to an RSS feed on your blog.
• Communication.  With this type of page, you can communicate with all your fans via a single message or update. There’s no need to have a list in an autoresponder that you must manage and requires you to working with a complex template.  Facebook handles everything.  In addition, your fans can easily forward your message to their friends/fans or even put the information on their wall.

With all that said, you probably have some concerns about how much control you’ll have over your landing page.  Not to worry because there are more great features you can take advantage of such as the following:

• There’s a built in application that allows you to add video to your pages.
• Facebook now has its own programming language (called FBML) so the look and feel of your page can be customized to ensure your fans have the best experience.
• FBML enables you to create an email web form so that you can capture subscriber data (just as you would on a traditional web page).
• You can create your own tabs – each with its own URL.
• The Notes application, you can import your RSS feed to drive more traffic back to your blog.

Please let me know if you have any questions about FBML, Custom Facebook Landing Pages, or just getting started with your basic Facebook Business Page.

I was recently chatting with some local Virtual Assistant buddies and I mentioned my new favorite website after one asked if I knew of a financial software that had a budget feature.  I instantly had their interest when I started to tell them about Mint.com and the uber cool features it offered…  and for FREE!  I wanted to take a couple minutes and share it with you as well.

Mint is the best “free” way to manage your money.  At-a-glance they automatically download and categorize your balances and transactions.  Everyday.  Making it effortless to keep track of where your money is going , create budgets and categories, and check balances.

For set up you will need to add your accounts, a couple examples are listed below:

• Banks
• Money Market Accounts
• Credit Cards
• Loans

What will Mint.com do for you?

• Track and categorize all of  your transactions
• Track Incomes and Deposits
• Allow you to set up different budgets, easily (Kiplinger’s Magazine said it is the “Best Budget Site”)
• Take your accounts and compare them to others available to ensure you are getting the best deal
• See spending trends

Worried about Security?  Don’t be!  They use the same security practices as Major Financial Institutions.  They monitor your account and will also notify you about suspicious charges on any of your accounts.

Low Balance?  The system will notify you of a low balance via text, email, or through their iPhone and Android application so you are always aware.

I think Mint.com is a brilliant program that is available to everyone and again, it is FREE.  It connects all of your accounts and has everything in one place and makes you aware of where you stand financially.

Find out more or try it out for yourself.  Click here.

Already using Mint.com?  Let me know what you love about it!

Uniqueness is now vital to the success of your brand.  With the sheer volume of people online, you have to make sure that when you’re marketing your product or service using social media that it is recognizable.  A brand is much more than just the product itself, or the visuals you create to promote it.

Branding is a complex word for most online marketers.  It’s an advertising/marketing term that’s been around for ages.  However, regardless of what you’re selling, your branding is what’s going to separate you from everyone else – especially on Twitter and Facebook.

Let’s first talk about image.  Assume that 25% of social media is all individuals who haven’t really done much with their Twitter profile or Facebook page.  They really don’t need to.  However, the other 75% are businesses – like you – that have an image, need to make sure their image is conveyed on the social networks as well.  Image is a combination of how you look and what you say.

Inconsistency is the #1 enemy when marketing.  To keep your brand alive on the social networks, you’ll want a customized Twitter background, and/or a Facebook Custom Landing Page.  It should have the same “look and feel” as all your other materials – your website, blog, any freebies, and products.  The major benefit of having your own “look” is that both Twitter and Facebook are visual mediums.  As such, what people see is all that separates you/your business from the rest of the sites out there.  Thus, your look should be enticing, yet not overpowering, and appropriate for the nature of your business.

With social media, your goal is to build a relationship with you and your followers.  For your text image, first make sure your web site address is visible within your profiles.  Next, be sure to use only anchor text (keywords that have a link back to your web site) instead of blatant, outright links to your site.  Finally, be sure your tweets and postings are genuine.  Forget that you’re selling something (and I know you may think that defeats the purpose). Instead, offer tidbits of your knowledge on a daily basis.  The more others see that you want to help, the more inclined they’ll be to come to you when they need it.

Something that many online marketers forget about when they expand their brand to social media is their web site.  Perhaps you’ve had it for years and it’s your typical HTML-based site.  If this sounds like you, you need to upgrade now and get yourself a WordPress website.  Why?  Because a WordPress website gives the average person the option to have a professional look and feel for their web site at a reasonable price that will help your website ranking, while simultaneously allowing you to be involved in your web site dynamics via blog postings and updating your content.   You can read my blog post here about benefits of WordPress.

With your web site updated, and your social media profiles in place, you’re ready to relaunch your product and service to the world with your newly branded look.

In the “old” world of advertising (and it’s really not that old, per se), data shows that someone had to see something 3-5 times before they would make a purchase.  In the online world, that number is estimated to be 5-7 times (if not higher).  If you know anything about NASCAR racing, manufacturers pay millions of dollars to have their logo on a car simply because it goes around and around, lap after lap, in front of millions of people!

Whether it’s a magazine ad, a flyer in your mailbox, a commercial on TV, or a race car, sales are made by fostering a combination of brand awareness and trust.  One of the best ways you can do this when you’re marketing online is via your Ezine.

If you’re ever received a printed newsletter from someone, you know that about 75% is new content.  The remaining 25%, however, is usually ads.  Your electronic newsletter emailed to your list subscribers should be no different.  The majority of the content should be new, while that remaining 25% can be focused on your products, services, or affiliate offerings.

The primary goal of your Ezine is to provide information that educates the reader, giving him/her the desire to take action.  A great way to get the readers attention is to pose a question.  For example, if you provide services for setting up a shopping cart, you might pose a question about rates – i.e., does your reader know how much he/she is being charged per transaction and on the total purchase price.  Explain that there are different rates and how it’s possible to get a lower rate by simply selling a certain amount more per month (which, for some folks could be as little as $25).  Too often people take for granted that what they have is what they’re stuck with!

If you have a package for Entrepreneurs to help them send out weekly Ezines…you might write an article on the benefits of “How a Weekly Ezine Can Grow Your Business”.  (Clear throat – Click here to see my package. )

The action the reader takes as a result of receiving this information will be one of three things:

• Take your advice and investigate for themselves.
• Ignore the information as it’s not relevant for what they’re doing (which would be unlikely).
• Come directly to you for help, as they have no clue (and having them come to you is the goal).

It’s always helpful to have a section for Recommends in your Ezine as long as you stick to something relative to your niche or topic.  For example, I am not going to put an affiliate link for a hunting website in an Ezine about weight loss for women.

Remember that your Ezine is your most direct route to prospective buyers.  They are on your list for a reason, they either signed up via your web form where you offered a Pink Spoon or they requested to be added to your list or maybe they already purchased something from you.  Bottom line, they OPTED IN, they want you to send them helpful information, and they want your knowledge, so give it to them!

Earn the buyer’s trust by offering beneficial information coupled with a genuine desire for them to succeed.

Position yourself as the expert that you are!

Grow your list and increase your profits with a simple weekly task!

If you’ve been around the block on the Internet for a while with a web site, then you probably can remember not too long ago the battles you faced with creating a web site, making sure it viewed Ok in each browser, and other fiddly things.

While I could write on and on for days about the benefits of using WordPress for your web site, let me share some of the key benefits – all of which are main reasons why I create WordPress Websites as one of my services and why MY website is WP.

1. You can have whatever look you like. There are thousands of Free WordPress theme templates out there to choose from.  However, the best are the paid themes.  Some favs are by DIY Themes, StudioPress, and Woo Themes.  You can choose a theme design that they offer and have it customized to have a website look and feel by incorporating your existing logo and color scheme (a service that I offer), or you can have one created from scratch.
2. You can include whatever bonus programming. No longer is there rocket science involved when it comes to put a newsletter signup form on your page, adding a payment button for your buyers, or updating your copy.  With WordPress, these functions are now easy peasy to add since they allow even the basic HTML users to customize their websites themselves, some features that were previously out of reach for them.
3. You can change your web site whenever. The world changes minute-by-minute and there’s no reason your web site shouldn’t change as well.  In fact, having revolving content on your web site is something the search engines love to see (and this is a big plus for search engine optimization).   With your old site, you probably had to write the content, send it to someone, pay a huge programming fee, and hope it would show up in a day or two.  Not any longer.   Once your site is setup, you can access it whenever you like and, with a few clicks, update the words on your home page or post to your blog yourself!  (Don’t be surprised if you become addicted to updating your blog daily!  Click here to start the addiction process (I promise this addiction will not harm your health, but rather help your presence) and get started on setting up your WordPress website!)
4. You can tie together everything you do. Your website, your blog, and social media happenings – like Twitter and Facebook – can be integrated right into your blog with a big Shiny Red Bow on it.  Each time you make a post, you can automatically send a notice to your followers on Twitter and Facebook letting them know.   Plus we can add in some plugins so that as others read your blog, then can click an icon and send out a link to that post to their followers.  Opening another means of traffic to your website.  It truly is remarkable.

Those are just a FEW of the benefits for using WordPress as the backbone of your web site.  By making the switch, you’re opening up a completely new world of possibilities – and they are endless!  I didn’t even touch on the SEO benefits of having a WordPress Website.  That will be in another post later.  To Be Continued…

Interested in starting your move to WordPress?  Let’s get you started!  Contact me today.

You’ve seen the commercials on TV.  Mozy has the bizarre ads where a stove on fire drops from the sky and lands on a man’s laptop.  Carbonite’s ads are nothing to write home about, offering folks talking about their situation.

Both applications give you the same thing: the ability to backup your content in the event that the hard drive on your computer (whether it be desktop, laptop, PC or MAC) fails.  On paper, they are similar in many ways:

• Both provide unlimited, online backup with no maximum limits.
• The applications are easy to use and require that only a small application file be installed on your PC or Mac.
• There is automatic backup scheduling that includes an auto detect feature that launches the backup when it notices your computer is idle.  (No worrying about the backup launching when you’re in the middle of working on something!)
• They have similar security and encryption (128-bit SSL), which is the same technology that banks and credit card processors are using for their financial transactions.
• File restoration can be handled using any PC or MAC having a web browser and internet connection.
• Files and folders are selected using the standard folder tree functionality.
• After the initial backup, only new or updated files are backed up.

Pricing Options

• Carbonite offers a 15-day trial and 1-, 2- or 3-year subscriptions.  $54.95 a year!
• Mozy allows you to backup 2GB of data free, and offers a month-to-month plans as well as 1 or 2 year plans.  If you pay annually Mozy is $.50 cheaper than Carbonite.

Technical and Customer Support

• Carbonite offers email, live chat, and telephone support.  For an additional yearly rate, you can also get priority phone support.
• Mozy offers only email and live chat with the Home edition.  You have to purchase the Pro edition to get 24/7 technical support.

Reviews indicate that both have “average” customer support with the usual good/bad, high/low ratings that every company receives.

Here are some other factors that you might want to consider:

• Mozy backups your Outlook email.
• Carbonite only runs a backup on the computer where the application is installed.

About the only difference I could find – and it’s a small one – relates to performance.  Some folks have found that Carbonite seems to be slightly faster when scanning files, while Mozy requires some tweaking of the settings at the onset to achieve this same performance.

Briefly, if you have less than 2GB of files requiring storage, go with Mozy.  If you have more than 2GB, it’s really going to depend on which works best for you.  You can try them both free as well as find specials.  For me – I went with Carbonite and really like it.  I tried to upload my data with Mozy and it was locking my iMac up and taking entirely too long.

I have had such a huge response to my product, Custom Facebook Landing Pages, that I thought I would offer a Special Price for a limited time.   From now until June 19th at midnight, I will be offering a Basic Page for $97 and the Deluxe Page for $197.  That is a savings of $50!

If you have been through any recent coaching programs or listened in on Free Teleseminars, than you already know how important it is to keep your Branding consistent in the Social Media World. And that shouldn’t stop on Facebook.

Check out Victoria’s Secret‘s, Red Bull‘s, or even Ashton Kutcher‘s Custom Pages. <—Please note that I did not create any of their pages. If you have already joined their “Like” Lot, you will land on their news feed instead of the Custom page, click on the Tab to the right of the Info Tab to view their custom page. They have more than 1M people who have Like’d their FB Pages and they are connecting daily with their Lot.

We can learn from this by doing much of the same with our followers. Greeting Prospecting Likers with a Custom Landing Page, which includes your Opt-In Form, is a great way to capture their interest AND email! We can also include a video, this helps to give your new Liker a 3D view into your personality!

FBML pages are similar to customizing your Layout on Myspace. It is a way to personalize your Page and create a mini website on Facebook where there are currently more than 400 million active users. Talk about Networking on Steroids!

Cool Stats about FB
More than 400 million active users | 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day | Average user has 130 friends | People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook

Activity on FB
There are over 160 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups and events) | Average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events | Average user creates 70 pieces of content each month | More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

Shocking Numbers, I know! And unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Facebook is a large, very large ocean for businesses. Click Here to find out more about the Packages.