One place to really make this happen is with your diet. It might seem odd…can diet improve my business? The answer is a definitive yes. For most, work is where we eat poorly, because we’re always on the run and in a hurry. We just simply don’t have time to make a good meal happen. After considering the next few paragraphs, you may start to treat your diet like you would a client.

Firstly, there are many different foods which can improve not only your energy, but also your ability to think and make decisions. No, this isn’t coffee. It’s extra supplements such as vitamin E and fish oil. These nutrients, found naturally in many foods, have been demonstrated to increase thinking ability. You can easily find these foods around as many restaurants allow you to substitute beef or pork for fish in many their dishes.

On that point, avoid any fatty foods. Even if you are in the best shape of your life, a fatty meal will slow you down because your body has to process it. This mean you work slower, you think slower, and you are simply less motivated. You may still feel into your work, but you’ll be working at a decreased rate compared to how you might work had you had a lighter meal.

The same goes for the beverages you drink. Many drinks give you a short burst of energy, but they’ll make you crash later. Sodas and similar drinks provide you with sugar for energy, but many of these sugars are hard for your body to work with, so you’ll end up spending more energy in order to digest them. Instead drink water or other natural fruit juices. Tea is a great alternative to coffee that can still wake you up in the morning, but isn’t as harmful; especially compared to espresso drinks.

Generally speaking, your body is an investment as well. Just like you would invest in worker safety and appropriate training, take the time to do so with your diet. Just like your business in general, what you put in is what you get out. Your body in this sense is a tool to make your business run at its optimum rate. With a poor diet, you may be able to work, but you’ll be doing a worse job comparatively.

And hey, you may end up looking and feeling better in life in general as well.

• How to Write a Business Proposal
• Better your business with customer feedback
• 10 Ways to Improve Workflow
• Submission Doesn’t Always Mean Obedience
• Marketing Campaigns for Under $100

1. Think mise en place, or everything in its place. This idea is popular among professional chefs. Basically put, make sure your work space is organized with everything in easy reach and nothing in the way.
2. Your computer desktop is still a desktop. Clean your computer’s desktop of needless links and files. Put relevant files together in folders and create quick links for all regularly used applications and websites.
3. Grabbing something? Grab something else. Every time you get up to get something, stop and ask yourself if you need anything else while you’re up.
4. No more games. We all need a little release with games and other distractions at times, but if you eliminate these products from your computer, you’ll be surprised how little you miss them.
5. Turn off chat. Many offices and Web applications have Web chat. Unless this is essential to your business, turn it off, or put your account on “busy.”
6. Keep separate business and personal emails. Doing this will keep you from being distracted by personal activities that can probably wait till after work.
7. Swallow the biggest frog first. When you organize your day, do the hardest and most painful task first. This will make everything else easier and prevent you from procrastinating.
8. Keep work at work. Don’t allow yourself to carry work over into your personal time. Often, this is an excuse to be lazy at work to limit your work time. This will help you focus while at work and improve your personal life as well.
9. How do you work when your boss is watching? Always work as if your boss is over your shoulder—especially if you are your own boss! With this mindset you’ll see greater productivity.
10. Time to lean, time to clean. While you might not have anything to clean when you work, keep in mind that there is never down time. Many workers allow this little bit of wiggle room with their time, however it only pushes work off that needs to be done anyways.

In a general sense, your workflow will greatly improve when you make your work area as streamlined as possible for completing a task and creating attitudes that focus work time on work. Thinking in terms of tasks to be done instead of hours to work will also greatly improve your productivity. It may take time to completely adapt these ideas into your work area and attitude, but the extra effort required to do so will pay off large dividends.

• What the Hell is Social Networking?
• Late Payments Can Be a Good thing in a Slow Economy
• Submission Doesn’t Always Mean Obedience
• Marketing Campaigns for Under $100
• Build Visibility for your Start-up through Word of Mouth Marketing

Stating that the Web has forever changed business is a massive understatement. The amount of customers available to a business like yours has exploded with people from all over the world able to access your products any time of day. However, every business is taking advantage of this new market and crowding has become a significant problem for businesses trying to stand out in search engine listings and against other competitors selling similar products.

Though it may seem like spending loads of money on advertising is the only way to really get ahead and standout in search results, this isn’t true. In fact, you can stand out amongst your competitors, come up higher in search listings, and generate greater interest in your product line all at the same time. How to do this is simple—take your remaining cash budget and throw it down a wishing well! Okay, that’s obviously not what I suggest, but sometimes the frustration of new business ventures makes you feel like that’s the only why. But for a much more realistic approach, you can write and submit articles about your business subject.

This doesn’t mean write sales sites for your business—you’re already doing that and everyone else is too. The way to stand out is to take advantage of the other great utility the Web has provided consumers—information gathering. When people are interested in something, they search the Web for information. Even if they are buying a product, prospects won’t just look up sales websites, they’ll look for purely informational sites for objective opinions free of any sales pressure. For example, if they want a bed, they’ll want to know what types of beds are out there; if they want cheese, they’ll want to know health info; or if they’re interested in widgets, they’ll want to know what one is even before they think of buying.

Here’s where you and your business come in—you create this content for customers. Whether it’s setting up an entire website for information or submitting articles to a larger service, by generating content on your area of expertise, you increase the amount of traffic to your specific business area. Furthermore, you become a resource for not just products, but for information. This means more potential customers are coming to your websites, and more content means a greater chance of appearing on search result listings without extra money spent on advertising. Best of all, you position you and your business as a source of expertise on whatever you sell. Customers trust you for all the valuable information you’ve given them and they know you are competent about your products rather than just a business doing a sales pitch.

However, you can’t just put any content on the Web. Find out what customers are interested in when it comes to your products. Give them great content that isn’t only about your products specifically, but how to use them, maintain them, or enjoy them best; stated in a general way. When you write these articles, providing information about the subject should be the primary goal. Your business should be a small footnote at the end, reminding customers if they’d like to see some great products related to this subject, they can find them at your website.

Using these guidelines, customers will become excited and informed about your product realm, and they’ll remember which businesses helped them along the way. For you and your business, you’ll see greater interest, Web traffic, and better search results in a way that makes you stand out among competitors.

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In addition, I haven’t seen many comments on these articles lately. As much of an absolute marketing mastermind I am, I’m sure I bring up arguable points once in a while. And as I’ve said before, I always welcome suggestions on future articles. Please feel free to drop me a line if you think of something you’d like to learn more about or introduce for discussion. Thanks!

• 10 Ways to Improve Workflow
• Marketing Campaigns for Under $100
• What the Hell is Social Networking?
• Late Payments Can Be a Good thing in a Slow Economy
• Who Do You Know?

When money is abundant, businesses tend to make choices that aren’t as effective or pragmatic. In this way, a tight budget may be beneficial in helping you create a concise marketing plan that targets customers that will actually purchase your products or ask for your service rather than just be aware of them.  Here are a few basic ideas for marketing campaigns for under $100 to help you get started in expanding your business.

To begin with, make use of marketing materials that don’t cost anything. The best way to do this is using Internet tools that help you create word of mouth about your business without having to spend. There are many websites that people use for social networking that your business can use such as Facebook, Blogger, and Twitter. These websites allow you to post information about your business—upcoming events, new products, change of service—for free and anyone connected to your business and anyone connected to them will hear about it. Use this as a soft campaign to generate awareness of your business to a huge customer base.

Another option is to set up an informational website associated with your business. Whatever you sell—cookies, janitorial service, or stiletto heels—you can create a website that helps people learn more about your realm of service and products without directly selling to them. This may seem contradictory, but many people research on the Web before purchasing products or services. If they happen to learn what makes a great cookie on your website, they’re more likely to buy from you when they’re ready. These sites are easy to set up (you already know everything) and they don’t take much to maintain since there’s no e-commerce applications, just simple text, pictures, and maybe video.

Work with companies that do targeted advertising online. Unless you’re selling a very general product, you probably do business with very interested people. In order for you to get customers who are serious buyers you need to go where they go. It’s expensive to post ads in magazines, but it is much less expensive to post ads with companies that will only charge you based on the number of times the ad is shown on a webpage that is topically related to your business. These companies greatly reduce your costs and you are only paying to advertise to people who are likely to buy.

Generally speaking, think of the modern marketing campaign this way—getting the word out to the public should be free and advertising to customers should be done directly based on their interests. The Web has revolutionized business in so many ways—there’s no reason it can’t save you money as well.

• What the Hell is Social Networking?
• More Kick A$$ Guerrilla Marketing Promotions Part 1
• 10 Ways to Improve Workflow
• Submission Doesn’t Always Mean Obedience
• Late Payments Can Be a Good thing in a Slow Economy

This phenomena is simply using the Web to connect with people, many of whom you meet exclusively through the Web by having shared interests or through others you already know. Many websites that you’ve heard of are social networking site—Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and Twitter are probably the most popular. Each does something a little different, but basically each one allows people to share ideas and media with many people at once with little effort. Twitter, for example, allows you to send messages to everyone in your friends list, but only at 140 characters at a time. It’s a great way to let everyone know what you’re up to and for others to check up on you, but without a long phone call. Other sites like Blogger allow you to blog, put up posts of text as long as you want, so that you can expand upon ideas or comment on events and let anyone who’s interested join in on the conversation.

These activities may not seem like very much on the surface, but their power comes when many people are all communicating at once. You may only get 140 characters on Twitter, but you may get thirty messages a day. This makes you aware of what many people are doing very quickly. Furthermore, sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to give and get a look out what other people are interested in and are up to any given day; very quickly. Your friends get to see what others are writing about you, and through this, new connections are made. When millions of people are doing this together, ideas and conversations spread out quickly.

The true strength of these technologies is the ability for users to pass along messages to others instantaneously. It’s like a game of telephone, expect there are thousands of people spread out all over the world and there’s no lag time between messages. These technologies are nothing to scoff at. Many recent news events have been reported first by people posting content to social networking websites and passing the word to others through these networks. Because they are so quick and don’t require much work to use, they are a great way to spread the word about anything, including historic moments.

So now you want to get on it? Great! It’s free to use any of these services. You don’t have to use them regularly, but when you do, you may find yourself connecting with distant relatives, old friends, and people you never met before, who have the same interests. Through this you can learn a lot, hopefully make a few business connections, and maybe even a few new friends as well. Tweet!

So follow me on twitter: @heckman

• 10 Ways to Improve Workflow
• Marketing Campaigns for Under $100
• Submission Doesn’t Always Mean Obedience
• Late Payments Can Be a Good thing in a Slow Economy
• Build Visibility for your Start-up through Word of Mouth Marketing

However, this isn’t the only choice businesses have. Yes, of course, bills need to be paid just for your business to stay alive, but a single paid bill isn’t as valuable as a customer that will keep returning to you again and again. Even in an economy where businesses may be hanging on from month to month, companies still need to look down the road and think about ways to maintain a strong customer base even in rough times. Moreover, as the economy will eventually begin to turn, the few customers you do have will be ready to spend more once the financial situation improves.

Does this mean not having your customers pay bills? Naturally, this will make them very happy, but it will put you out of business. No, customers still have to pay bills, but leniency should be exercised when it comes to late payments. Severely penalizing customers when they are delinquent for a couple months only trims them of extra cash they might have spent at your business. Now it may appear to be money either way, but it’s probably a definite that your customers won’t be coming back if you give them huge late fees for delinquent payments.

In a slow economy customers are always looking for the best deal. One way to still maintain your prices and offer a competitive edge is to offer a more lenient pay schedule. Doing so keeps your position exactly the same as before the down turn without doing much more than improving your customer relations. Additionally, consider that your customers are often in the same position as your business is—they have income and expenses that don’t always time up exactly. So, just because a customer can’t pay immediately, doesn’t mean they won’t have the money in the future.

Word of mouth is very important—good customer relations spreads the word about your business and can draw other customers from other businesses. You may take a wash for a couple months, but if this turns around and puts more people at your door, it will definitely pay off just like any investment.

Simply put—putting your customers out of business puts you out of business. Remember, your customers are not ATMs, simply distributing cash as you need it. Instead, they are people with memories and will develop loyalty to a company that shows them leniency; especially in a tough time. They may miss a bill every once and a while, but if you let it slide in this tough climate, your customers will be paying your bills for years to come.

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If a good business idea, sound technology and a well thought business plan are the life and blood of a start-up, PR and Marketing are its survival kit. There is no point in creating a great state of art product if you cannot market it effectively. Reach out to your end consumers and make them believe, how great and state of art your product or service is.

Today the explosion of information over the Internet has resulted in more informed and social media savvy customers; customers who have slowly become marketers in their own right.
The concept of word of mouth marketing or WOMM is the art of reaching out to these customers and converting them into your brand’s advocates. Ensuring they lend the force of their own personality and experience when promoting your brand to a third person.

WOMM has emerged as the simplest and fastest way of promoting your brand among your target audience with the necessary recommendations. In this post, I share five tips with you on how you can build WOMM into your overall Marketing Strategy.

WOMMA defines Word of Mouth Marketing as giving people a reason to talk about your products and services, and making it easier for that conversation to take place. It is the art and science of building active, mutually beneficial consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-marketer communications.

1. Give your brand a distinct character and personality

It is important that your company and its personality give people the reason to talk. It is important that you create a distinct personality for your brand or product. It could be very similar to other existing solutions in the market yet it should have its own distinct character something that would make it different from the rest. It could be the technology, the approach or the target segment. Be very clear on how you will ensure that your end customer is able to differentiate between your brand and a 100 others. Your distinct personality will become the reason for people to talk.

2. Make your website user friendly

Your website is the display window of your brand. Make it as attractive and simple as possible. When building your website, visualize your end consumer, what information would s/he look for? How best can I convince her? What would appeal to her and make her come back for more? What would be the easiest way for her to navigate my site? How will she share any information she likes on my site with others in her circle of trust? Your website should clearly take care of these queries.

3. Grab the attention of people who can spread the word

In his book named WOMM, Andy Sernivitz states, “Everyone who walks into your site is a prospect for spreading your content. It is not necessary that this person be a subject expert, an evangelist, or even a blogger. It is simply enough, if the visitor thinks that your content is of relevance, need or entertaining for someone known to him/her.” In other words, good content, interesting visuals, and relevant information are critical to the success of your business, your website and to your WOMM strategy.

4. Make it easy for them

Now that you have a nice looking customer friendly website which has lots of relevant information which people can talk about, it is important to empower your site or blog visitor with the right tools which help him spread the word. When a user has to remember his friend (contact) or go somewhere else to find that, it reduces the chances of word of mouth happening. Helping him find contacts of friends on various channels on your website itself will make it easy. Today there are many widgets available which enable this, like AddThis, ShareThis etc. The social media sharing widget from SocialTwist, Tell-a-Friend also enables sharing of content across channels, however it also gives you measurable information on your WOMM activities like referral traffic data, how many people shared the information, the channels used for sharing etc. which can help you strategize your next move better.

5. Be everywhere your customers expect you to be

In a white paper recently released by Charlene Li (Altimeter Group) and Ben Elowitz (Wetpaint) the authors linked financial success with social media engagement. Their findings reveal, “… the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social engagement. The relationship is apparent and significant: socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful.”
To a great extent, this statement is true; today social media enables companies to know the pulse of their customers. They have a direct medium to communicate with their customers, act upon their grievances, understand and meet their needs.

In his blog, All Things WOM John Moore states, “The more a company knows about the likes, dislikes, etc. of customers, the better they can develop products and services to meet their needs to drive business success. It’s basic but true. If your customers are heavy users of Twitter, your company should be heavy users of Twitter. If your customers are heavy users of Facebook, your company should be heavy users of Facebook. If your customers are active users of Yelp, your company should actively use Yelp.
Word of mouth can only happen if a conversation happens. And the more places where conversations happen, the more opportunities for word of mouth to happen. And thus, it pays to be social.”

Whether you are a big time marketer or small business owner or simply a blogger, Word of Mouth Marketing must be on your mind. There is no better way of marketing your product or service than empowering those who believe in them. Who will market it in their own words, among those who they know would appreciate the same qualities they liked about your brand.

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Sometimes the break is needed just to gain perspective, refocus on goals and set a great path for moving into the fall. Honestly I think August should be go away and reflect month. This time of reflection does a lot more in the summer then doing it when you are drunk on eggnog and full of turkey making New Years Resolutions that you won’t remember a week later.

By doing it this time of year and you have 1/3 of the year to take action and put yourself into a great position for next year where I think the economy will start to look much better.

Scapes Creative the company I am run day to day has been focusing on the shift to video on the internet especially when you are able to take advantage of local keywords with Google. Watch this video on getting your clients to give your video testimonials and then head over to http://www.scapes.ca and sign up to get 4 ore Free Videos about the power of video paired with distribution.

All business proposals need to meet some criteria before sending them off to anybody. Firstly, be original. Copy-pasted form letters impress people as much as junk mail through the mailbox. If you want your recipient to give you the time of day, extend them the same courtesy. Write your proposal, make it individual and tailored to them and their needs, and be as frank and honest as possible. Don’t try bullshitting, as this will more often than not make you look like a complete idiot. At the same time be confident and straightforward, and don’t try pandering to their egos or filling valuable writing space with aimless platitudes. Make your point, make it clearly and concisely, and sign off with a simple “Yours Sincerely/Truly/Faithfully,”

However, this does not mean that your proposal should be dull and boring. Let your personality show through to a point—the occasional joke or anecdote is often appreciated and helps remind the recipient that you are an actual person and not some automaton paid to hammer words on to a keyboard and not say a damn thing. Don’t ever be informal, but feel free every now and again to prove that you are actually a real person.

Keep your language jargon-free and as simple as possible. Avoid acronyms if at all possible—nothing is worse than reading a business proposal that looks like something you expect to find in the top-secret drawer at the Pentagon. Read it through three or four times, run it through a spellchecker, get someone else to proof it, and then read it yourself one last time for good measure. It is impossible to stress the importance of good writing in any proposal. Clearly set out the aims, goals and needs of your proposal, in a format that makes sense. There are hundreds of business proposal templates floating around on the Internet, so don’t be afraid to research styles and layouts.

Lastly, always keep the reader in mind. Stress why they should be part of this grand plan you have envisioned, and what the advantages are to themselves or the company of going along with your madcap little scheme. At the end of the day this entire endeavor is for their benefit, so do not forget that fact while you are putting your proposal together.

• Can Diet Improve My Business?
• Well, I Would Hope So!
• Site Flipping: New business avenue or fly by night profession?
• Better your business with customer feedback
• 10 Ways to Improve Workflow

Just a quick note to say we are sorry about some of the problems we have been having on the blog over the last few days. It looks like someone may have tried to do some less then nice things to my the site that need to be cleaned up.

For those that came and found it really slow, that part is all fixed now.

The good lesson in this is backups, Backups, BACKUPS!!!  I would not know what to do without Bob Bloom at http://www.southlasalle.com/ . He is just finishing up his custom state of the art backup system for your wordpress and Joomla sites not that will take all the worry away. As a bootstrapped business we can’t afford to have our sites go down or worse then that be lost.

I have been away so I have not put new stuff up in a while but I have some new articles and Video’s coming up this week.

Cheers,

Derek