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May 15, 2012

Small Business Tip of the Day: Getting Clear On Risk

Hey Fellow Small Business Entrepreneur,

Today I want to follow up on a topic that paralyzes many entrepreneurs.
One that can stop your progress in its tracks. Freeze you when you need to make a decision. Ultimately lead you down a path that takes you where you never intended to go.

It’s something we all have to face. Everyone of us.
And if we don’t have a clear understanding of it, it can lead to disaster in anything you do.

I’m talking about risk.

There’s no getting around it, risk is present in everything we do.
But if you clearly understand what the payoffs of the risks you are taking are, then you have a much greater chance of overcoming those risks and achieving the exact goals you are after.

Today I want to share a few thoughts on risk and how to overcome any reluctance you may have to face it. It will not only make you a better entrepreneur, it will improve your life on every level.
So let’s get going.

To higher profits and beyond,
Rich

    Getting Clear On Risk

    By Rich Schefren

    Today I want to talk a little bit about "why?" About why you’re looking to build the business you want to build.
    You should be building a business because of what it allows you to do on a daily basis.
    If what you have to do on a daily basis, is not what you want to do, then you’re trading your life away. You sacrifice your present for some possibility in the future which, more often than not, never materializes. When you work this way, things don’t change. Only you do.
    That’s why I think that so many entrepreneurs get it all wrong in the beginning. Because they’re trying to build something that doesn’t excite them; that doesn’t get their juices flowing. And because of that, they suffer from a couple of negative effects.
    They’re slow to move into action. They don’t constantly think about their business and faster ways to get the outcome they’re after. And most important, they’re not willing to risk for that dream.

    That Idea of Risk Is An Important One

    When I’m talking about risk, I’m not talking about "risking" for an outcome. I’m talking about a risk that will allow you to live your dream on a daily basis.
    There’s always going to be risk in anything you undertake. The overwhelmingly majority of entrepreneurs who succeed the have tasted failure. They’ve had major setbacks. But they persist in their dreams, because they understand what the payoff of their risk is.
    I believe too many people try to make the entrepreneurial journey risk-free. And that’s just not possible.
    I think most, if not all of you who are reading this realize that. You realize that nobody can hand you a business on a silver platter. That a successful business is something you have to build. And ideally, it should be something that you enjoy building. And ideally, as you’re building it, you should also be richly rewarded while you provide value to the world.
    I’m bringing all of this up for anyone who is not making the progress that they’d like. If you’re not, it’s time to take a step back and look at where you might be falling down.
    Specifically, where does your fear of risk come from? Is it from a lack of clarity of your outcome? Maybe you haven’t thought through all of the shortcuts? Are you just not getting into action?
    Ultimately, once you know what it is, you have to work through what it’s going to take for it to change?

    Facing Risk On Your Own Terms

    You see, these are the kinds of things I do on a very frequent basis in my journal. My fear is that for many of you listening, you don’t take the time to really think things through to figure out where your sticking point is right now and what you need to do to change it.
    I’ve been going through a bunch of papers, kind of cleaning out my home office, and I came across an index card where I wrote down a note. It doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things, but I think it very much applies to kind of what we’re talking about here. Here’s what I wrote on the note:
    It says, "what do I want?" The next question is "how do I need to be perceived to get what a want?" And finally, "how do I create that perception?"
    Now I have no idea if I was helping someone think through their positioning or what this note was dealing with. But what I can tell you is that these would be questions that I would be considering if I was going into a new niche; if I was releasing a new product, etc.
    And they are the questions you should be asking and answering on a continual basis.
    My fear is that each of you discounts your own experience and your own ability to think in an effort to learn from others. Of course, learning from others is a great thing. But if you’re not learning from yourself through the thinking process, then ultimately you’re not growing. If you’re not growing that’s obviously problematic.

    I’ll Leave You With One Last Thought

    There’s a lot of talking about living in the moment; about being present. You could also say that another way of saying that is living consciously – the ability to be aware of your environment, yourself, your thoughts, your feelings, etc. And as a marketer and as an entrepreneur, the more that you can live in the moment, the more that you can be conscious, the more that you can focus your attention on others, then focus internally, then on others, then internally – the greater your ability is to affect change not only in yourself but in others around you as well.
    Ultimately you have to embrace the risk of reality. You have to embrace responsibility and you have to embrace living consciously if you’re going to be a successful entrepreneur.

    Questions or Comments on this issue?
    Click here to send them to Rich!

    ————————————————————————-

    In today’s World of Technology, Small business absolutely has to have a web presence! Without it, you lose more than half the business you could have.

    But, just having a website doesn’t mean that the customers are going to be able to find you when they look for businesses of your kind on the net. Unless they know your name and domain address already, you need to be on the first couple of pages in the search engines (First page is best) and business listings.

    So, if you want to learn how to get your business found, call or eMail me now.

    I have just a few openings for new trainee’s.

    Let me show you how to be the one they find and the one they come to for local expertise in your field.

    Wes

    www.SpidersMarketingWeb.com

    (877) 751-6368 (Toll Free US)

    March 1, 2012

    Home Business Tip of the Day: There’s Always A ‘What’s Next?’

    There’s Always A ‘What’s Next?’ For The Information-Marketing Client
    By Dan Kennedy

    Let me tell you about a long-time client of mine. Because he is a multi-faceted information marketer, it’s not easy to accurately describe his business. It’ll take a few minutes.

    He publishes a book and a home-study course about earning finder’s fees in the real estate investment world – the finder’s fee idea of my invention. These information products are sold via direct-mail letters, magalogs, booklets, and postcards, as well as websites and tele-seminars and through affiliates.

    To get that far, he required copywriting for a collection of sales letters, magalogs, booklets, postcards, and websites, then, as soon as that was working, a series of ‘back-end’ letters to stop refunds and help retention; to get the buyers to attend follow-up training conference calls and tele-seminars where other courses are sold; and a letter to recruit affiliates to let him promote his products to their lists.

    Next, all these course buyers needed to be sold into coaching programs – requiring another wave of sales letters, booklets, audio CD scripts, websites, email campaigns. Now that all that’s working, campaigns are needed for three different boot camps and an annual conference.

    Next, we’re in discussion to have me (a) re-create all that for a different personality with a different kind of opportunity likely to appeal to these same customers and to the much larger number of unconverted leads, and (b) re-create the original system to be aimed at a higher level, more affluent, more sophisticated target audience.

    Each successful step in the evolutionary growth and expansion of his business provides the next copywriting project I’m needed for. It should be noted he is also using other freelance copywriters and content writers for less critical and difficult project work.

    This guy runs his business with his wife, two employees, works part-time, generates over $5-million a year with high net profits, and pays me well for my contributions – and better yet, is zero hassle. We speak once a month during a pre-scheduled phone call, otherwise communicate by fax. As soon as I finish one thing, we contract for the next.

    He is not at all unusual.

    As a matter of fact, there are thousands just like him, in hundreds of different product and business categories but all marketing "how-to" information, published offline and online, delivered in training programs, in coaching programs, by one-to-one coaches, and on and on.

    Many have ascension processes for their customers, so that, with coaching as an example, the same information marketer may have programs priced at $3,000, $15,000, and $30,000 a year. They have insatiable need for new and better "front-end" marketing to bring in new buyers plus even more insatiable need for "back-end" marketing to ascend their buyers, bring buyers to conferences, and otherwise monetize buyers. They also have need for content, for everything delivered to buyers that gets created "fresh" week to week, month to month.

    This is but one very good kind of information-marketer client, who I’ll call "Steady Eddie."

    Another is the client who only periodically, even sporadically comes out of the woodwork to create and run a big but short-term promotion, for a product or event. I have clients like this I do a project for once a year and never hear from them until the next year.

    There are other types of clients, too. The information-marketing industry is huge and diverse and blossoming thanks to proliferation of new media yet very much reliant on old media as well, and most importantly, in constant need for more copywriters and writers willing to learn how they operate, why their customers buy, what they sell, and then serve their needs.

    Any such client’s successful campaign for something automatically births an endless series of Next’s, creating an endless series of assignments for the capable copywriter.

    This is very important to understand. Like most businesses, a typical information-marketing business has, as its floor, one or several on-going, chug-chug-chug means of getting customers and making sales that get little or no tinkering for months or even years on end.

    The client I spoke about at the start of this article is heavily reliant on a single direct-mail campaign I wrote 26 months ago, that has not needed change since.

    But, good news about these information-marketing businesses: they are a bit like movie studios, in that they are very much about their next "release" and the marketing to make it a hit, and their next "release" and the marketing to make it a hit.

    To their own lists of customers and unconverted leads, in their own media like websites and newsletters, they are rolling out one entirely new, built-from-scratch promotion after another after another all year long; as one is happening, the next is being readied, and the next to follow it is being conceptualized. A few months ago, when we saw the marketing of The Green Lantern movie, with fast food company, toy, comic book and magazine, video game, and online promotion. What we don’t see is all the work in progress for the marketing for the new Superman, the Flash, Wonder Woman, and Justice League of America films to follow, each in varying degrees of planning and development, for 2012, 2013, and 2014.

    These information marketers work in much the same way, so there is also more than one to many new products, events, coaching programs, and services being readied for launch, and advertising, marketing, and promotion campaigns as well as content being written, on cycles of months to six months to even further out.

    Few other industries or types of clients function like this. That’s why learning to write for information marketers can be so beneficial to the freelancer. Here, not only is there an abundance of available clients and opportunities and assignments, there is a way to eliminate the roller-coaster effect of getting an assignment and making money, but then being unemployed and having no income when you finish that assignment, then hunting for another gig. Here, there is a way to lock in steady work and income through a series of Next’s.


    Dan Kennedy Will Personally Help You Succeed

    In his Writing for Info-Marketers Training and Certification Program, Dan Kennedy gives a comprehensive guide to how the information-marketing industry works and how to break into this niche as a copywriter.

    As a Carefree Entrepreneur, you can benefit from this knowledge in two ways. First, you’ll get to know the industry – which is ideal for Carefree Businesses – inside and out. Second, by learning to write copy, you’ll master a skill vital to your own business success. Even better, you’ll make extra money… maybe even discover you like it enough to make it a career.

    For a limited time, Dan’s program is available at $500 off the regular price. But, this is a strictly limited time offer.

    Go here for more details.


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    > Internet Marketing,Training — Wes @ 12:07 pm

    December 16, 2011

    Home Business Tip of the Day: 3 Criticial Online Marketing Concepts

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    If you search for a way to earn a good living online, you’ll probably found thousands of confusing
    choices, all claiming to be “the best”.

    Many of these are “pitched” to you like a carnival barker looking for his next unwary victim to
    step up to play his secretly “unwinnable” game.

    Well here’s why you shouldn’t look at online business as an “unwinnable” game, even though some
    people think it is, after trying time and time again to make a living online… unsuccessfully.

    When really, it’s very possible to create a profitable online business. If you just understand these
    3 CRITICAL concepts:

    1) Be STRATEGIC when deciding on what kind of business you want
    (starting with your desired end result in mind)…

    2) Set yourself up to “play” with an ADVANTAGE (by positioning your
    business to WIN)…

    3) Play the RIGHT game (the one you are MOST likely to win)…

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    mean I don’t know how to make money online.

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    > Internet Marketing,Training — Wes @ 12:13 pm

    December 2, 2011

    Home Business Tip of the Day: What Are You Talking About?

    Hey fellow Entrepreneurs,

    We wrapped up a pretty lengthy discussion about clarity last week.

    So now let’s put all that critical new wisdom to use.

    Let’s apply it to an area of your business that, I think for most entrepreneurs, is vastly unclear.

    Getting clarity in this area can probably do the more to
    boost your business faster than anything else you can do.

    I’m talking about getting clarity on your communication.

    I’m talking about understanding exactly what you’re trying to accomplish in all your marketing and client communication. About what you’re trying to achieve at every level, with every word you write or record.

    You need to know this.

    If you don’t you’re wasting precious opportunities to convince and convert prospects in a marketplace where they are literally overwhelmed with marketing messages.

    You’re really only making it harder on yourself to succeed.

    This is really an important topic and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. So let’s get started…

    To higher profits and beyond,

    Rich

    ————————————————————————-
     
     
    What Are You Talking About?
    By Rich Schefren

    We spent the last few issues talking about a very important concept to your business – getting clarity. I mention that because it provides a nice segue into what I want to talk about for the next couple issues.

    It’s an area you definitely need clarity on in your business. One where you need to be as clear as you possibly can about what your objective is; what you’re trying to do; what success will look like, etc.

    The area I’m talking about is getting clear about your communication with your prospects and your customers or clients.

    And when I say communication, it could be anything. It could be emails. It could be a report. It could be videos. It could be blog posts. I mean, you name it. It doesn’t matter. I’m talking about communication in any format.

    The Most Important Reason For
    Being Clear About Your Communication

    So first let’s ask, why do you communicate with your prospective market? Well there’s the obvious answer – to make more sales. You want them to buy your stuff.

    But that’s not really clarity. There needs to be a deeper reason. And you need clarity on that.

    I don’t know how many of you will remember, but in the past I’ve talked about my retail clothing store. And how our goal when a customer came in was not to just sell them clothes, but to sell them on the store as well.

    Doing that gave us the opportunity to sell them again and again and again. Had we just focused on selling them the thing they came in for, we would have probably sold it to them anyway, but we wouldn’t have created a new, frequent customer. We would have only created a sale.

    So if your answer to why you communicate with your prospects, clients and customers is to make sales, then what you’re doing is narrowing down the potential of what you can get. You’re losing all ability to leverage each and every sale.

    What are some of those other clarity goals you might have as you communicate with your prospects, your marketplace, your clients and your customers?

    Communication Clarity 101

    The first thing I’d say is that you want to give quite a bit of thought to who. Who is it you want to attract with your communication? Who are you trying to appeal to?

    You need to think about this because not all prospects in any given marketplace are the same. When you target one prospect, you’re likely going to turn off another. And in fact, the better you target one segment, the more likely it is you’re going to turn off a different group of the same marketplace.

    So you must know who it is you’re trying to attract. Who are the prospects that spend the most money? Who would be your best customers? Who are the people in it for the long haul who will give you a higher lifetime value? Who is that?

    The next goal of your communication should be connection.

    Do they feel like they know you? Do they feel a connection to you? Obviously, that is another goal that you should be striving for in all of your communications. You want to build that connection.

    Another goal is you want them to accept your positions, your perspective on things.

    You’re not just trying to make a sale. You’re trying to get your prospects to buy in to your philosophy; your position; your perspective about whatever it is that they’re trying to accomplish (or trying to get rid of) which puts them in your marketplace.

    You want to establish loyalty.

    Not just loyalty in terms of making purchases, but loyalty so that if someone attacks you in a forum or attacks you on a blog, they’ll argue in your defense. That’s loyalty.

    Retention is something else you should be looking for in your communication.

    If you’re talking to clients you obviously want to keep them. If you have any continuity programs then you want to keep them a month longer, five months longer, a year longer, whatever it is. Retention should always be a goal of your communications.

    And if you are using an ascension model – smaller purchases leading to bigger purchases – then ascension would be another goal when you’re writing to clients.

    Think About Every Piece Of Communication You Send

    Now not every communication has to accomplish all those goals at once. But these are the things you should be thinking about in every communication you send.

    For example, if I’m writing an email or creating a video to my Founders Club members, I could just create the video, communicate the thing and be done.

    But if I want to try to promote ascension, getting Founder Club members to ascend into the Business Growth System, then I would be smart to think of any stories that I can tell about somebody that was in Founders and made the leap into BGS and the magical things happened. And of course I’d relate that back into what I’m trying to communicate.

    Take a look at your communication goals and then think through how those things could that be achieved.

    To build connection with your market, you might share certain things about yourself with marketplace, your prospects or clients. What is it and can you tell a story about it?

    Ideally, you want people in your marketplace, your prospects, your customers, your clients to feel that you care about them; that they get value from your relationship with you; that they share common values with you; and ideally, and this is a higher level.

    It’s not easy to accomplish, but ideally you want them to be fascinated by you. In other words, you want them to always be interested in what you’re doing because that gets you the attention that you need to sell more, grow your business more, etc.

    How do you know when you’re doing it right? How do you know if right now you’re not doing it right? Well I’ll give you a few ways that you can tell in your next issue.

    Questions or Comments on this issue?
    Click here to send them to Rich!

     

    ————————————————————————-

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    > Internet Marketing,Training — Wes @ 10:30 am

    November 16, 2011

    Home Business Tip of the Day: Get Ready…

    Get Ready
    By Jason Holland

    Several weeks ago, I told you about a nearly risk-free way to start your Carefree Business.

    It’s a strategy that will allow you to nail down the niche for your Carefree Business, test your business ideas, figure out what type of products you should sell, and refine your advertising and marketing strategy… without spending much money (a few hundred bucks at most). And you’ll experience success – and your first profits – much faster.

    This start-up strategy is called Ready, Fire, Aim. And I’d like to tackle the next step today.

    First, I have to mention that today is the very last chance to join the Internet Money Club online business building program. The next session is starting next week. And although the official deadline to sign up was yesterday, I’ve arranged for Carefree Entrepreneurs to have one last chance to get in.

    With IMC, you’ll start from scratch … and at the end, have a fully functioning online business. With a mentor showing you the way, you’ll go step by step through determining your niche, honing your marketing, building your website, and everything else you need to have your own profitable "mom and pop" Internet business.

    Several past members have gone on to create five- and six-figure Carefree Businesses working just part time. Read their stories – and find out all the details on the Internet Money Club program – here.

    Back to Ready, Fire, Aim.

    In a nutshell, RFA is all about taking action, speed, keeping things simple – especially at first, and not spending time or money on unprofitable ideas.

    You don’t go through what are considered the conventional first steps to a business: logo, fancy website, office equipment, or product stock. Because you are starting an information business online, you don’t need any of that anyway. All you really need are your home computer and your ideas.

    You test those ideas in the market first by trying to sell them. You let your customers determine what your business looks like. You start with the prospect, not the product.

    As Michael Masterson says in his book Ready, Fire, Aim:

    "Wise business owners know they cannot determine the goodness of an idea until they try to sell it. So they will try to sell it as soon as they can – before they have spent a lot of time and money making it perfect."

    In my first essay on RFA, we covered the initial steps in the first phase: Ready. When getting Ready, you narrow down your business’s niche, determine the target market, figure out what products you’re going to sell, and put together the initial marketing plan.

    This is all done quickly and easily with the online tools I’ll be telling you about. And we’ll be taking things one step at a time here in the Carefree Entrepreneur.

    Last time, I asked you to come up with an idea for your Carefree Business. I heard from several readers.

    Thomas wants to sell information on disaster preparedness. Sally is a wedding planner in Italy looking to take her business online. And Charles wants to help people on a budget with interior decorating.

    If you haven’t picked your niche yet, take a moment to do so now.

    Brainstorm all your passions, hobbies, or interests. Then pick one that your gut tells you will sell.

    Now we’ll back up that gut feeling with some proof that this is a viable business idea.

    The Carefree Entrepreneur’s Path to a Profitable Business

    So you have an idea for your ideal business. Let’s use something having to do with yoga as an example. Insert your own business idea to follow along.

    You love yoga and so do all your friends. It seems to be everywhere.

    To confirm your feeling, do this:

    1. Look for real-world evidence. How many yoga studios are in your area? Is yoga offered at your local gym? Have you seen yoga DVDs and other products for sale in local shops? At your local bookstore, do you see yoga books and magazines for sale? Do you see ads related to yoga in magazines you read?

      Here in South Florida, I found 30+ yoga studios in a 20-mile radius of my home, with 10 within a 15-minute drive – and that was just a cursory search. And yoga gear is for sale everywhere from Whole Foods to small businesses downtown.

      If you found the same results with your topic, then…

    2. Go online. Do keyword searches related to your topic. In our example, you could Google "yoga", "yoga tips", "hatha yoga", "beginner’s yoga", etc. You are looking for sites selling products and information related to yoga. There should also be plenty of paid ads at the top and right of the search results. The more you find, the better. That means there is a big customer base and businesses are making money. You should also check eBay and the Amazon Marketplace for sellers in this niche.

      My keyword searches yielded thousands of sites selling videos (yogawithles.com/videos/), subscriptions to member sites (yogatoday.com), and physical products (gaiam.com). And there were many sellers on eBay and the Amazon Marketplace (a great place to check out trends). Plus, there were paid ads up through the 15th page of search results. If there are that many businesses paying for ad placements – that’s also a good sign.

      Now let’s make sure that all those sites in the search results are the real deal.

    3. You want a topic that generates traffic (which leads to sales). Here’s an insider tip to find out just how successful all those sites you found are. Use free tools like Alexa.com and Compete.com. Just type in the web address and you’ll get a graph of web traffic. You should also use Google’s free Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) to check out searches related to your niche.

      Again… The more the better. A few thousand searches a month is not so good. Tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of searches is where you want to be. I wouldn’t recommend going into any niche without at least 30,000 searches per month.

      "Bikram yoga," for example, yielded 823,000 monthly searches on Google. "Yoga video" has 210,000 searches. "Yoga online" brought 110,000. Those are good numbers.

    In the yoga example, going through the steps above yielded a huge offline and online presence. Thousands of businesses large and small are selling yoga products, from mats and clothing to instructional videos, ebooks, and yoga retreat travel packages. And the website traffic and keyword searches were off the charts.

    It’s a certified worldwide trend and you should jump on it. If your niche didn’t have much of a presence, repeat with some of your other passions or hobbies until you find a winner.

    You might wonder, how will you stand out from the crowd? Is there room for your business in this crowded market?

    The competition is a good thing.

    It seems counterintuitive. But you want to be surrounded by similar businesses. Other successful businesses mean there are customers out there. Customers that can be yours.

    That doesn’t mean your business won’t be unique.

    In the next essay in this series, we’ll discuss how to narrow down your niche to meet the needs of certain segments of the market. By being specific and coming up with your own unique twist on what’s "hot," you’ll position yourself as an authority and become the go-to online resource.

    In our example, yoga is too broad. And you can’t compete with the big name companies and gurus in the field. But "yoga for preschoolers" or "yoga for busy professionals" might do the trick. The keyword tool you used above will be very useful here.

    Next time, we’ll use several of the same online tools to help you pick your specific niche.

    Before then, make sure to go through the steps above. It must be done before you can narrow down your niche, not to mention find or create a product to sell, create your initial marketing, and perform other start-up steps.

    If you have any questions on market research, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at askjason@awaionline.com.

    And if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up officially for Carefree Entrepreneur here. You’ll ensure you won’t miss an issue, and you’ll get a free video presentation from Michael Masterson. Created originally for attendees who paid $2,000 to attend a conference, in this presentation, Michael reveals the four stages of business growth. Go here to get access immediately.


    For questions or requests: contact us online.


    Everyone should have their own Home Business…

    Ready to get started for FREE?

    www.Referals.ws has your answers.

    > Internet Marketing,Training — Wes @ 9:13 am

    October 17, 2011

    Home Business Tip of the Day: The “Recipe” For Success In Any Industry…

    Tip of The Day:
    The “Recipe” For Success In Any Industry…

    “I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but it will get you pretty near.” — Margaret Thatcher

     

    > Internet Marketing,Training — Wes @ 11:04 am

    September 21, 2011

    Doing It Right – Social Media and Small Business

    One of my favorite mentors created a great short article on how to use Social Media… The Right Way… to grow your small business.  I’ve reposted it here for you.

    Enjoy, learn and grow.

    Social Media and Small Business

    Unless you’ve been hunkered under a rock or in the back of a cave, you’ve at least heard the term “social media.” Depending on your perspective, social media either represents the fall of western civilization or the perfect marriage of people and technology.

    The term “social media” actually refers to 4 specific types of tools.

    The first type, “social connection sites” like Facebook and Linked In, allow users to make, share, build, and interact with social contacts online.

    The second type, “social stream of consciousness” sites like Twitter, allow users to share their thoughts quickly and easily (regardless if anyone actually cares).

    The third type of tool, “social bookmarking” sites such as Digg.com and Delicious.com, let users share and rate individual sites and other media.

    The fourth type of social media tool involves sites like Kongregate.com or games such as Farmville which contain “social features” to link users together.

    In theory, users of social media link up, interact, and use the sites and tools as their creators intended. And, if your intentions are strictly about keeping up with friends or professional contacts you actually know in the real world, you can easily use social media to do just that. However, once you try to go beyond just networking with people you know (and the people they actually know), the world of social media gets murky fast. Though powerful and effective when used correctly, social media quickly becomes a never-ending rabbit hole of time, energy, and effort, especially for small business owners.

    If you want to use social media to build your small business, keep the following in mind at all times.

    Create Dialogue

    Most businesses mistakenly use social media as a one-way communication tool. In fact, this represents the core mistake anyone makes with social media. You must use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to create a real dialogue – a real exchange of communication. To do that, you can’t follow 20,000 people or have 50,000 friends. Bottom line, if the communication isn’t authentic, you’re fooling yourself that it’s actually worth doing in the first place.

    Gather Intelligence

    Members of your target audience hold the key to your success, not the other way around. Use social media communication to get direct input from people on your products and services. Get them to tell you their hopes, fears and problems and, more importantly, how you can help them. While building your following, you can use social media search tools (like twitter.com/search) to spot trends and problems you can solve.

    Watch Your Time

    Most of what you need to accomplish with Facebook and Twitter can happen in less than 15-20 minutes per day. Any more time than that is a waste of precious time. Until and unless you can track business directly to your social media activities, keep a tight rein on you time.

    Share Value & Fun

    The number one reason anyone sends their friends or comes back to you themselves is because of value. Always remember: nobody really cares about you and your business, they only care about what your business can do for them.  Share information and news others can use and you’ll build a list of meaningful contacts. Put out a stream of useless drivel or “quotes of the day” and you might as well not even sign up for a Twitter account.

    Bottom line: social media tools are just that, tools. You will not get rich overnight just because you signed up for a Twitter account, nor will you get inundated with business because you hang out a shingle on LinkedIn. You can, however, experience real results if you use these sites as originally intended: to create meaningful connections with real people.

    For more Small Business Marketing tips from the
    Real world of Digital Marketing, log on to
    Small Business Marketing Weekly” at
    => http://www.SmallBusinessMarketingWeekly.com

    > Training — Wes @ 11:40 am

    November 1, 2010