Do you ever wonder why some people seem to “get” social media? You know, those savvy business people you see everyday on Facebook and Twitter who have tons of followers and friends. Plus, whenever they post something on their blogs they get lots of comments, while you have to struggle to get even one?

Don’t lose hope! I’ve got some great news for you…

You may have seen an email or tweet from me earlier this week, telling you about Ellen Britt’s fun, time-limited event, the Social Media Ice Cream Sale.

She’s lined up a dessert table full of some of the best social media marketing products on the web today (hint: one of them is mine!)

So just a heads up that now is your chance to grab all six flavors for an un-heard of price that in a few short days is going to melt away forever.

This package is going to take the mystery out of social media and put the cherry on top of the marketing sundae for you. But you don’t want to wait…get over there right now before they run out of ice cream!

Plus the price increases everyday…

Just click on this link to see what all the buzz is about!

How many times have you said “I know I could get more clients (and make more sales) if I just understood how to use social media.” Well, here’s your chance to scoop up the information you need at a sweet, sweet investment…so don’t miss out!

Post from: communicate value

Don’t Miss This “Cool” Social Media Sale!

The business game has changed! What used to work to get your business and name out there in the world isn’t working so well anymore.

That’s why I’m so excited to have you join me for a FREE teleseminar on 9/15 at 8pm EDT, where I’m going to personally share with you exactly how I built my own business with social media and online marketing (from having NO clients, customers, contacts or list…in the midst of a recession, no less) and how you can too. (Yes, really!)

All you need is a phone to join me, so don’t miss this FREE teleseminar. Whether you are a seasoned business owner looking to find out how to leverage the Internet or just starting out, you won’t want to miss this enlightening, complimentary 60 minute call all about what it REALLY takes to succeed online.

Some of what I’ll be sharing includes:

• How I’ve used the Internet—the single greatest business opportunity of our time—to build a biz I can run from home or ANYWHERE…on my OWN time
• The number one way I built an email list of prospects into the thousands—quickly and easily
• The top 2 marketing strategies I consistently use that have made all the difference in selling my products and programs
• Exciting new details about how you can work with me privately and in-person this fall—and get the in-depth, personalized AND step-by-step social media and marketing training you need to help you build your own business quickly as well

Don’t miss out. You can register here: Free social media marketing teleseminar.

I really hope you can join me!

Post from: communicate value

Free Call 9/15: How I Built My Biz in a Recession with Social Media and Online Marketing

When small business owners talk about having success with online marketing or social media, it usually has to do with getting more clients or customers on their own. While that is a wonderful result of course, there is another way the top success stories online are growing their businesses—joint ventures.

With more and more business owners jumping into social media especially, it’s good to keep in mind that all those people you’re connecting with out there are not just potential prospects, but possible strategic partners as well.

What is a Joint Venture?

Joint ventures are sometimes known as strategic alliances and generally involve two people entering into a partnership in order to leverage what both parties bring to the table.

A joint venture can be where you promote the other person’s services or products to your target market, and your partner promotes your services or products to their target market in order to share the resulting profits.

It can also be where you partner with another business owner to jointly provide a product or service that both of your target audiences have an interest in—even if those audiences initially look like two totally different groups.

Why Joint Venture?

First, you are obviously able to provide your market with a valuable product or service that enhances their life in some way. However, the best joint ventures benefit not only your target market, but also your own business. Because you are being exposed to an entirely new community, you’ll often gain more website traffic, list subscribers, friends, followers and even new clients and customers.

It’s also a great way to boost the credibility and authority of both parties. When a community sees someone they perceive as an expert recommend you by way of your partnership, you often immediately gain credibility in their eyes as well.

Similarly, when you are in effect “endorsed” by a reputable and respected joint venture partner, this raises the level of trust vested in you and your own capabilities and integrity.

Finally, it’s a simple example of “two heads are better than one.” You both bring your own strengths to the partnership—whether that’s knowledge, ability or sheer numbers of list subscribers, fans, followers and friends.

How to Joint Venture?

Here are a few ideas for how to structure a joint venture:

You could partner on a workshop, teleseminar or webinar on a topic that would be of interest to both of your audiences. The great thing about this is that as long as you record it, you’ve got an instant information product for each of you to sell on your respective websites.

Another popular method is to recommend each other’s newsletters or freebie offers. This is very much a “set it and forget it” strategy. For example, when a new subscriber signs up on your site, they are re-directed to a thank you page that also includes a recommended resource—your partner’s free offering or e-zine.

Lastly, you could pool your expertise and resources together and create a product. This could be created once but sold over and over—the very definition of leveraged income! You could either both sell it separately or have one of you sell it and split the profits.

Ready to get started collaborating? Begin by building relationships with others in complimentary niches or with target markets that might need what you offer, and you’ll be well on your way to a creating a win-win situation.

I myself have connected with several really great peeps via social media and created successful joint ventures with them, so I can attest to its power.  Have YOU been able to hook up with others through social media and form strategic alliances? If so, I’d love to hear about it in the comments—any questions on this topic are welcomed as well!

Post from: communicate value

Joint Venture Your Way to Success Using Social Media

Just a note about the Wise Women of the Web event which starts TODAY, August 30 in case you hadn’t heard. This is a very cool, FREE teleseminar series with an absolutely amazing line-up of some of the Internet’s most well-known women and I am really honored to be counted among them!

No matter what your area of expertise, if you are a small business owner or solo entrepreneur then you really need to tune into this series. Instead of being a re-hash of information you have heard a zillion times, you will get tons of actionable, original, creative tips to start moving your online presence forward starting TODAY.

Check out the line-up of speakers for this call:

• Donna Marie Antoniadis
• Jennifer Bourn
• Eleanore Duyndam
• Fabienne Fredrickson
• Christine Gallagher (that’s me! )
• Lori Gama
• Rosalind Gardner
• Julia Kline
• Crystal Parrett
• Susan Rice-Lincoln
• Pat Sutton
• Jessica Swanson

The best part is that all the original content contained in this innovative event is yours for free. Just sign up and then come and listen to the calls.

Here are some of the topics:

• Establishing the right mindset to achieve more success than you could imagine possible
• Leveraging radio so you can grow your list, get more clients and position yourself as an expert
• Achieving a six-figure income in four short months with FREE marketing
• Tapping into the power of the huge, ever-growing Hispanic market
• Transforming your website into a powerhouse branding and marketing machine
• Taking full advantage of your social media tools through some great creative tips and tricks
• Making your blog ROCK so you can make more money and attract lots of new clients
• Hiring a virtual assistant to free your time and set your business alight
• Taking your networking or multi-level marketing program to new heights
• Using community marketing to explode your online presence
• Transforming your lackluster Face book Fan Page into a fantastic, entertaining and profitable business tool

Oh, and by the way, just because this event contains an amazing line-up of female speakers does not mean this is a women-only event!  All you men out there are warmly welcomed to join and benefit as well.

Don’t miss out—sign up and benefit from the advice of some of the web’s coolest women.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Post from: communicate value

Come Hear Me on the Wise Women of the Web Teleseries Event—it Starts Today (Psst–it’s Free!)

If you know anything about me, you know I always recommend the WordPress platform to people looking to get their own website or blog up and running fast.  You also may know that I use and highly recommend the Thesis theme.  What’s a theme? A theme with regard to WordPress is just a way to alter and customize the design, look and presentation of your WordPress site.

Once you’ve installed WordPress, by default you will have one of WordPress’ own standard, pretty ho-hum themes out of the box.  In most cases, you’ll want to find something a bit more unique beyond just sticking with the default.

Luckily, you have tons of choices, and you can go with a free theme or pay for a premium one.  There are countless free themes available and you are likely to find one that fits the vision you have of the way your site should look.

So, why would anyone ever pay for a theme when there are so many free themes available?  A big reason is that you may find yourself wanting to customize your site down the road and it can be time-consuming and frustrating to try and “hack” your theme in order to do so.

The alternative is to purchase a premium theme, which is usually priced in the $30-100 range for a single-use license.   Premium themes often include lots of options making it easy to customize, plus available support and documentation if you end up with questions or issues.

When I first started using WordPress I created a few sites using free themes but decided to go premium when I launched my current site for the very reasons I listed above.  The theme I chose is the Thesis theme for its clean, professional look, strong, built-in SEO and active and helpful support forum. (Full disclosure: yes, that is an affiliate link.)

The cost for the one-site personal option is $87.  I have been extremely happy with Thesis and countless other business owners have been as well—it has an absolutely stellar reputation.

Of course this is just a tiny sampling, but some examples of other popular and well-regarded premium themes include:

The Station
WordPress Remix
Essence
Over Easy

It will really come down to what type of business you have, what image you are trying to project and how much you are willing to spend—however, there is definitely no shortage of choices.

Even if you have found a free or premium theme that you love, there may still be some customized details you would like to have added. If graphic design isn’t your strong suit, there are plenty of talented people out there who can create exactly what it is you need to enhance the look of your blog—and make your vision a reality.  I went this route myself, having a header and some buttons designed to “dress up” my theme.

Ready to pick yours? WordPress has their own free theme directory and it’s a great place to start.  If none of those strike your fancy you can browse a list of premium themes here.  Be prepared to spend some time going through the myriad choices…or, you can just make it easy on yourself and start rocking Thesis and be on your way (hint, hint). 

Post from: communicate value

How to Choose a WordPress Theme (and Why I Still Heart Thesis)

Just a heads up—my 30% off SUMMER SALE has officially started!

For 6 days only, I’m holding a special Summer Sale on all of my best-selling social media products.  Why a sale?  Because I’m saying a big THANKS to all of YOU for being loyal blog readers and e-zine subscribers!

This special sale is available only until Tuesday, August 24.

To receive your discount, just use the special coupon code SUMMER at checkout to receive 30% off all my products!

Which products do YOU want to grab to grow your own business at 30% off?

Get the details and and pick your fave products at this special rate now while you can HERE….and THANK YOU for being a part of my community!

Post from: communicate value

My Summer Sale Has Begun!

One of the great things about the work I do is that I have a birds eye view of what’s working and what’s not when it comes to social media. Every so often I like to give sort of a “state of the union” on Facebook and Twitter best practices, because as I am sure you know, social media is constantly growing, changing and evolving.

As you’ll see, some of the strategies I am recommending are tried and true—they have been working since day one and will probably continue to for the considerable future. However, there may be a few here that you’ve never considered—or may even be surprised by. But they are what I see as being the biggest keys to success and results for business owners on the two hottest social networks on the planet: Facebook and Twitter.

1. Find your peeps.

What this means is that you want to become part of the community you are looking to serve. The first step of course is to be clear on whom it is you want to serve and what problem you are solving for them. Once you know that, the goal is to go where they are hanging out.

There are specific tools you can use to easily find and interact with your target market. Two of my favorites for Twitter are wefollow.com and search.twitter.com.

2. Concentrate on conversing and building relationships, instead of broadcasting and selling.

One of the most common yet biggest mistakes that people make when they are first introduced to social media is to focus on pushing their product or service in a spammy way. That approach fails miserably in social media because most people are there to build relationships and interact.

There’s nothing wrong with letting others know what’s going on with you or your business sometimes—just be sure to intersperse your tweets or Facebook updates with some two-way conversation.

3. Use a Facebook personal profile AND a Facebook business page TOGETHER.

This might be a little “controversial”—and don’t get me wrong, your business SHOULD have a Page—but when you have a personal profile, you are able to interact with other people much more easily. As a business Page, a Page can’t go comment on another person’s Wall or profile or in their Group or on THEIR Page AS that Page. You are really contained inside the space of your own Page. This might be something to consider because a lot of the magic of Facebook and the relationship-building and rapport-building comes from that ability to interact.

4. Cross-post and cross promote.

Once you’ve decided to make social media a part of your marketing strategy, you don’t want to keep it to yourself. There are lots of ways to spread the word, for example: you’ll want to advertise your social presence on your blog, add links to your email signature and use one social media platform to post to another.

5. Use a social media dashboard like Hootsuite and other productivity tools to accomplish more in less time.

Hootsuite.com is my hands-down favorite, free social media tool, and the reason why is because it does so many different things. For example, you can use it to update many social networks at once, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn; you can use it to pre-schedule tweets and status updates and more.

6. Get them on the list.

In most cases, people aren’t going to buy from you right off of sites like Facebook and Twitter. You need to shift your thinking from “how can I get this person to buy from me or hire me now?” to “how can I bring this person into my community and strengthen the relationship with them on an ongoing basis?”

One of the best ways to do this is to offer people a way to provide their email address via your blog or website so that you have permission to keep in touch and build an ongoing relationship with them.

7. Measure and track your social media results.

Measuring the ROI of social media isn’t exactly cut and dry. I am often asked how you can tell whether the time you’ve spent on social media activities is really making a difference.

Some of the best metrics? Blog comments, blog subscribers, newsletter subscribers, social media profile engagement, number of friends and followers and website traffic to name a few.

No matter who your target market is, you can be sure that at least some segment of them is using social media. The important thing is to understand that social media is a great way to get in front of that target audience.

And remember, you may not be able to equate your interactions to dollars now, but what you are doing is planting seeds which can have big payoffs later on.

Most of the strategies I’ve mentioned here aren’t really “strategies” unless you keep applying them over time—so stick with it to reap those results you’ve been searching for.

Post from: communicate value

The Top 7 Facebook and Twitter Strategies That Are Working RIGHT Now

This is a guest post by my own coach, Alicia Forest.

Have things slowed down for your business now that the warmer months are upon us and people are on vacation or otherwise taking a break from their usual routines? Use this downtime to focus on getting your business ready to rock for the fall by implementing some of the 8 ideas below:

1. Evaluate your staffing needs

If you haven’t hired an assistant yet, whether that’s a virtual assistant, an in-person assistant, or a combination of the two, now is a great time to do so. Begin by creating your ideal profile of what you want your assistant to look like, and then start putting out feelers to your networks about exactly what you’re looking for in an assistant.

Once you’ve found the right person for you, the summer months are a great time to train someone so they are up to speed come the busier fall months.

If you already have help, take some time to evaluate their performance. This includes taking a look not just at your current assistant(s) but also any outside vendors you work with, like your web designer, your shopping cart system, your list service, or your copywriter.

If you’re finding their work to not be meeting your needs and expectations, follow the same process as you did for hiring an assistant. Start with creating the ideal profile of who you’re looking for and then put that information out to your networks for recommendations.

2. Increase your learning to increase your earning

The summer is a great time to educate yourself on whatever it is you need to know to take your business to the next level. Choose a business-building project, like building your list or increasing your search engine rankings, and invest some of your education budget into a program or product that will help you learn what you need to know. Then plan the time to actually learn and implement the material, and you will reap the benefits come the fall.

3. Makeover or create your ezine

Take an objective look at your ezine, and ask a few colleagues if they’d be willing to offer you some feedback on it as well. Make any changes you think might help it be more effective as marketing and sales tool.

If you haven’t started your ezine yet, the summer is a great time to put one together and start sending it to your list regularly.

4. Clean out and organize your email

Is your inbox an energy drain?

Mine was! So I committed to having an empty inbox before leaving for vacation this summer, and I can’t tell you what a sense of freedom and lightness comes with an empty inbox.

How did I do it? Delete, file, delegate, respond. DONE.

As I’ve been chipping away at this, I could feel the energy drain slipping away. Take some time each day to delete emails or unsubscribed from unwanted lists, delegate what you don’t need to answer personally (which is more than you think), reply to ones that only require a quick response, and set the ‘rules’ feature to automatically sort future incoming mail into appropriate folders.

5. Revamp your office

In preparation for a move to another state, this was another task I worked on recently. It felt great to purge so many old files and papers. And by doing so, I created space for more clients and more abundance to come into my business!

But revamping your office doesn’t just include cleaning out and reorganizing your stuff. If you also have tools that aren’t working the way they should, get them fixed so they do, or replace them. So, if you’re printer only works when it feels like it, get it fixed or get a new one.

6. Clean up your computer

Tired of wasting time searching for stuff on your computer? Take some time this summer to clean up your files, delete ones you don’t need anymore, reorganize what you do need into appropriate folders, and remove old software that you no longer use. Your hard drive will thank you!

7. Write down your accomplishments so far this year

It’s important to pause periodically and recognize your successes. And now that we’re halfway through the year, take some time to write down and savor your accomplishments so far. Then plan out what you’d like to achieve for the rest of the year. This will motivate and inspire you going forward.

8. Enjoy yourself!

Summer is a special time of year, where people are more laid back and life takes on a more leisurely pace. Make sure you take some time to enjoy it. After all, isn’t time freedom one of the reasons you went into business for yourself in the first place?

Alicia M Forest, MBA, 6-Figure Business Breakthrough Mentor, teaches entrepreneurs how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to breakthrough to 6 figures and beyond so you can live the life you ache for, visit http://aliciaforest.com

Post from: communicate value

8 Ways to Grow Your Business During a Summer Lull

(Written by Guest Blogger – D’vorah Lansky)

How do you make your online social networking relationships some of the best relationships you have? Follow discussions and get to know people who are writing on topics that are of interest to you. If people capture your attention, go to their profile pages and click on the link to visit their Web sites. In that way you can find out more about them and their business. This will also provide you with information in case you are inspired to start up a conversation with them.

I have established several very important business connections in this way. The beauty of these types of relationships is that the connection usually happens because people genuinely like and/or admire one another. In the online community, it is not unusual to team up on projects or create joint venture partnerships.

Get Involved in Conversations

When you login to Facebook or LinkedIn you can see the update feed for people in your network and you also get to see whom they’re interacting with and what groups they are participating in. The best way to grow relationships is to become known as a giver. Take time to answer questions in your area of expertise. That’s going to show that you’re a giving person as well as a knowledgeable person. When it comes across that you care more about people than you do about selling, people will take note.

On LinkedIn you can ask questions of the community. If you ask a question that’s clearly a sales pitch, people are going to disregard you or think poorly of you. At the same time, if you ask a thought provoking question, people will respond. I have a story about this. My company had recently expanded into Australia. I was looking for ideas on how to connect with professionals in that country and thus decided to reach out to the LinkedIn community. I carefully worded my question by sharing that, “Our company has expanded into Australia. I would really value your input as I’m looking for ideas on how I can connect with professionals in Australia.” I didn’t say, “Do you live in Australia? I can help you grow your business.” I reached out for help.

I got 35 responses in 24 hours. I was amazed and appreciative. I wrote to one person and said, “I so appreciate your suggestion. I’d like to ask you a question, though. Why did you take the time to answer me?” They had provided me with a very thorough answer and many of the other responses included personal introductions to individuals or to organizations. The response I received was, “Oh, that’s easy. I always see you on the networks answering other people’s questions. I was glad to help.” So in social networking it is key to be respectful of people and participate in conversations, questions, answers, forums, and/or interest groups.

Tips for Harnessing the Power of Social Networking To Grow Your Business

Once you have developed a presence on the social networking platforms with your name, brand, and Web site information as well as your photograph, you will begin to get noticed for your expertise, provided, of course, that you have shared information and joined along in conversations with others. Remember, the key to building relationships and community is to give of yourself with no expectation of getting anything in return. This simple concept will set you apart from the rest and ultimately get you noticed.

I welcome your thoughts and questions and encourage you to scroll down and leave a comment.  As part of the Blog Tour that Christine and I are participating in, you will earn points for each comment as well as for each of the blog tour articles that you tweet using the hashtag #blogworldtour.

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If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to receive a free chapter of my book at www.ConnectCommunicateProfit.com

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best,
Dvorah

D’vorah Lansky
Relationship Marketing Wizard   |   Author   |   Speaker   |   Educator
www.BlogWorldTour.com/blog

Post from: communicate value

Relationship Marketing on the Social Networks

(Written by Guest Blogger – D’vorah Lansky)

One of the easiest and most effective ways to generate relevant and pertinent content is to do an audio interview series. By doing so you will be providing valuable content to your audience while building relationships with the people you interview. I have developed a deeper relationship with each person that I have interviewed on my online radio show and my listeners are really enjoying the content.

Some of the questions that people ask in regards to developing an audio interview series are:

• Who do I interview?
• How do I record the interview?
• What questions do I ask of the person being interviewed
• What do I do with the audio recordings?

Who to Interview

As far as who to interview, that depends on who your audience is. As an example, my audience is business professionals and entrepreneurs who want to learn more about blogging and marketing their businesses online. Thus, when looking for people to interview, I look for people who are experts in this area. This provides them with exposure to a new audience while providing my listeners with relevant and pertinent content.

It could be that you already know people who speak on topics of interest to your audience. If not, you can visit LinkedIn and Facebook groups on your niche topic and take note of who is posting articles and answering questions in a way that adds value to that community. Another place to locate relevant content and connect with potential speakers is at EzineArticles.com. Do a search on the topics you’d like to interview people on and spend some time reviewing the articles and visiting the Web sites of the authors.

How to Record the Interview

There are many options available for recording your interviews. I’ll share with you a free option that is easy to use and has many wonderful features. Go to www.FreeConferenceCalling.com and set up a free account. Spend some time reading through their documentation and set up a test interview with a friend or business associate. This service allows you to create a podcast of your calls or your call series, download the MP3 of your interview and interact with your audience through a web interface.

What Questions to Ask During the Interview

To date I have conducted over 40 interviews. Fortunately, before I began my online radio show I was a guest on someone else’s show. Before the interview I was asked to provide a typed list of 8-10 prioritized questions. This has proved to be an invaluable tool for me. By asking each of my guests to provide a list of their 8-10 prioritized questions, based on a topic that we agree upon ahead of time, they are prepared and are able to speak about things that they are knowledgeable of and passionate about.

What to Do with Your Interviews

So what do you do with these interviews? It depends on if you’re selling them all at once or individually or if you are giving them away. Some people would use a series as a bonus giveaway for people joining their program. You can offer your interview recordings as an incentive for people subscribing to your list. Invite people to enter their name and email address in order to receive a weekly interview with an expert, or you can simply utilize these interviews as content for your blog.

The first thing you want to do is have your interviews transcribed. I highly recommend that you have them transcribed by a professional service that only employs native English speaking transcriptionists. When I first got started online I would outsource my audios to be transcribed by a service in the Philippines. As nice as the people were, English was not their native language and it would take me hours to clean up each transcript.

Transcription services offer a wide variety of options. The options can consist of a straightforward transcript or transcription that is already formatted as an eBook. They can also break the transcript up further so it becomes content for your eCourse, articles, or blog posts. You can also take a blog post and utilize the content for creating a couple of slides in PowerPoint. You can create a video recording of that PowerPoint presentation, with Jing Project or Camtasia Studio, and turn it into a video. Now you have a video article that can be uploaded to YouTube or to your blog.

What things have you done to repurpose your content and/or build relationships with your audience by connecting with them in a variety of ways?

We welcome your comments and questions. As part of the Blog Tour that Christine and I are participating in, you will earn points for each comment as well as for each of the blog tour articles that you tweet using the hashtag  #blogworldtour .

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If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to receive a free chapter of my book at www.ConnectCommunicateProfit.com

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best,
Dvorah

D’vorah Lansky
Relationship Marketing Wizard   |   Author   |   Speaker   |   Educator
www.RelationshipMarketingCafe.com

Post from: communicate value

Online Interviews as a Source of Rich and Vibrant Content