Biz Tips Blog: Internet Marketing Tips

Social Networking: What Is It and Why Should You Care?

On Wednesday we're hosting a teleseminar on how to use Web 2.0 tools and social networking sites to drive more traffic to your sites and as a result, build your business. If you're doing business online, this is essential knowledge to have now.

We asked one of our guests to share some info about social networking to give you a taste of the type of content we'll be covering on Wednesday. The following article is reprinted with permission from the author.

Social Networking - What Is It And Why Your Business Needs It
by Michele PW

Social networking. Social marketing. Web 2.0.

You may have heard these terms bandied about and wondered what exactly they are and (more importantly) what they mean for your business.

So let's dig right in and get some answers. First, some definitions.

Dr. Joe Capista: Blog Tour for What Can a Dentist Teach You About Business, Life and Success?

We've been hearing for months about Dr. Joe Capista, a dentist from Philadelphia who is a client of our good friend Kathleen Gage. What we've been hearing is about his amazing success and about the book he's just published about how he built a multi-million dollar business: What Can a Dentist Teach You about Business, Life and Success? Discover Secrets to Achieving Total Success!

When Kathleen mentioned she was working with Dr. Capista on the promotion of his book and that they were having a blog tour to spread the word, well, we had to be involved. After all, we're huge proponents of blogs to marketing your business. Kathleen generously shared a copy of Dr. Capista's book and since my interest is in business and marketing, here's a brief review of how Dr. Capista addresses marketing in his book.  But first, watch this video book trailer...

Persuasive Content: How to Craft an Advertorial

For the next few days, I'm writing about how to craft an advertorial style sales page. This is important for anyone trying to do business online, no matter what product or services you are selling.

Some of these posts are more appropriately posted over on our writing blog, at www.coachezines.com.  But the points are salient to anyone wanting to do business online:

You must learn to write content that persuades.

The general outline for this follows:

1. Grab attention with a list of 3 or 5 horrible mistakes people make
2. Positioning: Why should anyone read or listen to you?
3. Explain the problem
4. Explain why most solutions fail
5. Present your solution
6. Address objections
7. Provide proof
8. Make an irresistible offer
9. Clear call to action

I'm rewriting some sales copy for The Blog Squad so you can see how this works.

Information Products: Why They Are Good for Your Business

©2007 Patsi Krakoff, Psy.D. & Denise Wakeman, The Blog Squad (tm)

Are you struggling with how to create more revenue? Providing services is great, but there are only so many hours in a day. Why not turn your expertise into information products and watch your income grow. Transform your knowledge into ebooks, a tips booklet, or other digital format. With low production and delivery costs and high profits, you can't afford not to repackage your expertise to reach more customers world-wide.

What's an Information Product?

Generally, the term refers to electronically delivered, knowledge-based products. This can include e-books, reports, transcripts, as well as audio and video files. Information products can also be produced in physical form like CDs, DVDs and combined with printed material in a binder for a home-study course.

Common electronic examples are:

• E-books
• E-zines & newsletters
• Reports & white papers
• Tutorials, courses & FAQ’s
• Transcripts from interviews, teleseminars
• Audio files (MP3, for example)
• Videos and screencasts

Why are Information Products Important?

Searching for Clients? How to Research Using Keywords

Part two in our series on how to search for clients...

Searching for Clients? How to Research Using Keywords
©2006 Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D.

In a previous article about how to be found on the Web, I told you about my experience typing in key words I thought potential clients would use when trying to solve a problem for which I had some answers. I wanted to know if they could find me by using the search engines, and I wanted to know who else they were finding as well.

To do this research, I imagined what a potential client would type into a search engine. For my newsletter service business, I guessed that a potential client might type in "ezines" or "how to do an ezine" or "ezine publishing tips." Each time I used a version of these keywords I got different results.

For example on Technorati, a search directory of blogs, "ezine publishing" brought 10,164 results; most of them article directories where there are thousands of articles written on this topic. For "how to publish an ezine," there were 7,631 results. "Newsletters" brought in 250,692 results, and many of them were themselves newsletters rather than articles or resources about newsletters and ezines. For "ezine tips" there were 33,845 results, including my own Google Adwords ad (always nice to see that this appears somewhere!).

Technorati also allows you to search for "blog directories" so you can look for blogs using your key words.

Searching for Clients? Search Like They Do...

An outgrowth from our recent How to Pitch the Best Bloggers teleclass is the following article by Patsi, part one on how to search for clients.

Searching for Clients? Search Like They Do...
©2006 Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D.

When is the last time you researched your area of expertise on the major search engines like Google or Technorati? This week I did a web search using key words and phrases people use when searching for information about ezine publishing. I was pleased that my blog CoachEzines.com came up first and second for some terms in Technorati, and in the top 10 for some terms in Google.

But I was disappointed that there were hundreds of articles on the topic of ezines in article directories, and only a few were mine. So I learned that I need to submit more articles about ezines to the article directories in order for people to find my business online.

Internet Marketing: One Woman's Experience

Confessions Of A Reluctant Online Business Woman: How I Hired (And Fired!) A Spa*mer !

By Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D.

If you want a six-figure income sitting at your computer, working the hours you choose, doing what you love, then learn to market online the smart way.

You may be like me. You've got a great service business - or a small business - and you decide you want to have "an online presence." You start with a website. Then you realize nobody is going to find you unless you do something to drive traffic.

You used to drive "in" traffic to a job, now you're "driving traffic to" your website. You are herding "unique visitors" to web pages, hoping they'll stay long enough to read what you have to say and become interested in your services.

Just about anybody who has put up a website has realized it is not enough to "build it and they will come." Many people realize this after spending big bucks on website design. One woman spent $50,000 to put up an elaborate website; it looked gorgeous, only it didn't sell anything. It didn't even capture email addresses from visitors to follow up with them.

Most independent professionals don't have a big budget to hire someone for marketing their business online. So most of us start by reading the tons of information online to learn what we need to know to make marketing online work.

Read the entire article here.

Inbox Overload

I discovered a new blog today through the LinkedIn Bloggers Network:  Email Overload. What a great name and what a huge problem for many people.  As I was scanning the posts, one caught my eye on how to manage the various inboxes we all have: How Many Inboxes Do You Have?

Here's a list of inboxes the author, Itzy Sabo has:

• Email inbox
• Voicemail
• Freehand notes taken via my Palm
• In-tray on desk
• Notebook (old fashioned pen and paper)
• RSS and newsgroup reader

Except for "notes taken via my Palm", I have them all too, along with piles of papers on my desk (where's my organizer when I need him?!).  I think I need to develop some new systems to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.  I think my brain is an inbox too.

How many inboxes do you have and how do you manage them all?  All tips welcome!

Tech Tags: email RSS

The Dirty Little Secrets of Published Authors - Part II

In Part I of this article, the common excuses would-be authors have about why they cannot get their book written were identified. Procrastination is the common denominator. So how can an author overcome procrastination?

Being curious by nature, we have studied the small percentage of authors we have worked with who are successful in making progress, writing on their blogs, organizing their book content, and who are getting published.

The Dirty Little Secrets of Published Authors - Part I

Why is it that some authors just seem to crank out the books like writing machines? Not only do they publish their first book, but after that they publish a second, third and more.

I've been studying non-fiction authors and their habits for a while now. Ever since my partner Denise Wakeman and I started our Blog to Book Project, we've been learning about the challenges of consultants, speakers, and other professionals who want to publish non-fiction books to build their businesses.