Archive for January, 2010
Wanna be a Professional Speaker? I Do!
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the most exciting and challenging decisions I’ve made in my business recently is the decision to add public speaking as an income stream in the business. Exciting for me and good for you – if you would like to walk alongside me as I learn how to do just that! Take advantage of my journey and learn how to be a professional speaker yourself.
In order to take this step, I enlisted a very successful and vastly experienced professional speaker to teach me the ropes. Peggy Collins has been speaking since 1993 on sales and marketing, relationships, networking, women’s issues and much more. Peggy has extensive experience as a speaker and in 2008 alone, she spoke to 48 live audiences, appeared on 4 television interviews and 67 radio shows. Peggy’s list of clients is amazingly long and is a rare collection because she has spoken to both corporations and associations/conferences. In addition, she’s a member of The National Speaker’s Association and an MPI Platinum Speaker (a designation for stellar performance by Meeting Professionals International) and the author of the book, Help is Not a Four Letter Word. Peggy really knows her stuff.
Join Peggy and me on Monday, January 25th at 7:00pm ET for the free teleseminar Find Yourself as a Speaker. On this call, we are going to cover the basics of what you MUST know in order to get started as a professional speaker. Perhaps you’ve been toying with the idea of speaking, but don’t know where to begin. You already realize that professional speaking is one of the fastest routes to increase your visibility, showcase your expertise and grow your income and your business. If so, you’ll want to be on this call.
Peggy will teach us Six Simple Steps for Hitting the Ground Running:
- Grasp the Secrets for Success from the very beginning
- Identify your unique message, your ideal audience and get started
- Learn about each of the four Speaking Tracks and dive in
- Choose your initial specialization wisely – Keynotes vs. Workshops
- Discover “How-To Tips” for crafting a powerful presentation that will get you booked over and over
- Develop your Next Steps Action Plan
Register for the free call here.
I really hope you can join me live for this event to get the most from Peggy’s wisdom. If you can’t be on the call, make sure to register anyway so that after the call we can send you the link to listen to the recording.
Again, here’s that link to register for Find Yourself as a Speaker.
7 Reasons to Use WordPress For Your Website
Posted by: | CommentsYou are ready to do it. You are ready to have your voice be heard. You are ready to start your own website or blog. Good for you – now to decide which platform to use…
Blogger, WordPress and TypePad are just a few of the more popular platforms. While there are several different applications that are low cost and/or free, most solopreneurs find themselves in the world of WordPress. There are many good reasons to choose WordPress over the competition, including open source content management and SEO ability. If you find yourself trying to decide which is right for you, here are some everyday reasons to use WordPress as your platform of choice.
1. Personality Zone – WordPress is all about you. There are hundreds of free themes available to personalize and provide an Internet presence that represents who you are as a solopreneur.
WordPress themes are flexible and can be customized to your niche audience, service and product line. Best yet, if you get tired of the theme you are using on WordPress, simply change it by uploading a new theme. With a simple click of a button WordPress moves your content to the new theme for you.
2. Plugins! Plugins! Plugins! – Get the idea? Plugins are another way to customize your space. Popular plugins include contact forms, site statistics, search engine optimization, and photo resources. WordPress currently offers many different free plugins and is adding to their plugin resources daily.
3. Pagination – Back in the early days of blogging or using a platform of this type, blogs appeared as online diaries with one post following the next and comments intermixed between. With WordPress you can actually create pages to separate your material or to provide additional information.
Maybe you have a blog that focuses on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Each of these could be placed onto their own unique page, making it easier for your readers to find the information they are looking for.
You can also create additional pages such as ‘Contact Me’, or ‘About Me’ pages. This functionality also makes WordPress the perfect platform
for businesses, not just bloggers!
4. Performance – Believe it or not, not everyone who uses WordPress is an expert at web design. Creating your own website or presence can be a daunting task for anyone. WordPress provides easy to use functionality with a built in dashboard to help manage your sight. Also, because of its popularity WordPress has many resources available to their users including online forums, help references, and support teams. Best yet, if you just want to try blogging out for a bit before you invest in your own domain name, WordPress allows you to register your blog on their site for free at www.wordpress.com.
5. Permalinks – When you create your blog and/or website, you want the world to be able to connect to that specific blog quickly. This is where permalinks come into play. For every blog you post, WordPress creates a unique permanent link to that specific post.
6. Ping Back to Me – What is auto pinging anyway? It is a tool that allows you to notify the search engines that you have posted a new entry. By default, WordPress has pingomatic.com built right into the platform, so the search engines are automatically notified that you have posted to your blog. In addition each time another website or blog owner links to one of your blog posts, you are notified on your WordPress Dashboard as well as in the post iteself in the comments section.
7. Pathways Back – Have you ever commented on another person’s blog? Many times the blog will only post your user information when you leave a comment, but if you use WordPress and you are commenting on another WordPress blog, then WordPress has the ability to automatically provide a link back to your blog for anyone to see. A great and free tool to increase your readership.
This is only a small list of reasons bloggers choose WordPress to host their blog. Ultimately, you need to choose the platform that’s right for your needs. Keep in mind, WordPress prides itself on being one of the most user friendly platforms and is constantly striving to make things better for users.
Adding Speaking As An Additional Income Stream
Posted by: | CommentsGetting speaking engagements is not all hard work. What it takes is a mind that is open and knowledgeable about your business subject. With a little bit of creativity, you can leverage what you do already by adding speaking to increase sales and product variety.
The first strategy you use to become known as a speaker is visibility. Others have to know that you exist and have something important to say. Through speaking and building relationships with your audience, your “sphere of influence” will begin to grow.
Wouldn’t you like to take advantage of tools that help you become an expert without breaking a sweat? We figured that you might. So, here are some ways that you can do that:
The Pitch…
Let’s say that you have been coaching individuals and get great results. The next logical step may be to create an entire program around a specific need that you serve. For example, if you write articles to increase your visibility and coach others to do the same, why not create a 4 week teleseminar series dedicated to “Increasing Your Visibility By Writing Articles.” This will help you get your feet wet speaking, will increase your visibility and increase your expert status. Not to mention the additional income stream you created for your speaking.
The Hit…
The speaking engagements that you do aren’t just for one time use, but rather carry a ton of potential. One single speaking engagement can give rise to another. Look at your topics with new eyes. You can probably see them turning into:
- Ebooks
- Special Reports
- Audio products
- Video products
- Articles
The list goes on but you get the idea. The information in just one 60 minute speaking topic can morph into each one of these. Better yet, take a series of talks, bundle them to create a special report or an ebook if there is a lot of information. Take each section of the eBook and create a course that customers can buy. Add audio and video to the course and turn your course material into a study guide to accompany them.
It’s Out of the Park…
Instead of one speaking topic, you now have leveraged that piece into a variety of product offerings all of which will add to your expert status and your bottom line.
Self Improvement Gifts 4 – Event Offers 100s of Free Personal Growth Items
Posted by: | CommentsI wanted to let you know today about a Self Improvement site that will allow you to download 100’s of self help gifts. And the best part is that it is absolutely FREE!
If you’ve had enough of plodding along year after year and you want to improve yourself to make 2010 your BEST ever year, then you need to go here.
Self Improvement 4 will be open only for a VERY LIMITED TIME from January 5th to January 19th 2010. When you go there you’ll find a multitude of products – all FREE – provided by Self Improvement and Internet Marketing experts from all over the world. Here is just a small sample of what you will find:
* Personal Development Tips
* NLP – Love Your Physical Self
* Dynamic Personality
* Transformational Fitness
* Anger Management
* Managing Stress
* How to Stay Focused
* Outrageous Health
* Secrets of the Subconscious
* Law of Attraction
* How to Reinvent Yourself at Midlife
And my special report , “Get Along Better: Relationship Reinvention Tips” !!
There are more than 500 free items in this giveaway, so go ahead and join the fun at Self Improvement Gifts 4.
You only have to walk into any book store in any country to see how popular the subjects of self improvement, self awareness and personal development are. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry churning out hundreds of new books, audios, CD’s and other paraphernalia every year. These can be very expensive but in this giveaway you can pick this information up completely FREE.
With 2010 upon us, what better time is there than right NOW to set yourself and your business up for future success? You can’t do better than to go look over what information you can get for free. The organizers of the event are Stephanie Mulac, Rodger Hyatt and Gary Simpson. Come and join Stephanie, Rodger, Gary and me and see for yourself how YOU can focus on self improvement for free in 2010.
If you want to grab the largest collection of self improvement and internet marketing products you’ll find ANYWHERE – all FREE – then go here NOW and claim your bounty!
Creating A Strong Brand for Your Business
Posted by: | CommentsCreating a business brand is one thing, but creating a strong business brand is another. Every entrepreneur needs to be aware of the fundamentals involved in creating a business brand that will enable your service or product to excel in the market. However, you must not be scared by this process, instead, try to enjoy building your brand by creating one that you can be proud of and that your customers will love.
Focus on the Business
Before thinking of a brand, think first of your business. After all, the brand is merely a representation of your business. So, you must refrain from focusing too much on developing an effective brand without giving attention to your business. Your brand must come as a result of your business, not the other way around.
You need to come up with your brand depending on the following factors:
*nature of business
*type of service
*distinction from competitors
Nature of Business
One of the main purposes of creating a brand is to communicate to the consumers what your company does. Therefore, take time to evaluate the nature of your business and the distinct attributes and images it conveys to the market. If possible, try to produce your brand according to the specific target market of your business. Is your business catering to doctors, six figure entrepreneurs or children? This will help establish the name and image for your business.
Once you increase awareness of your brand as a representation of your company’s products or services, only then can you expect to experience increased sales. Creating a firm brand that will be easily remembered and distinct will enable you to create a loyal customer base.
Type of Service
The concept surrounding a brand name such as a logo, mission statement, or color scheme are just abstract concepts. What establishes a brand as a concrete representation for your company and business is the experience that your customer has with your product or service. Therefore, you need to establish that relationship between your customer and the kind of service you bring to them.
The perceived value of your company is a vital formula that will produce a strong business brand. It is not all about images, but includes delivering of tangible results to the emotional and physical needs of your customer.
Distinction From Competition
Although examining the type of brands that are utilized by your competitors will help you establish your own brand, you need to differentiate from them while exceeding them at the same time. Distinction must not only arise from the business name or logo itself, but in terms of the quality of service that you deliver. What can you offer that your competitors do not and cannot offer? Then, incorporate that into the creation of your brand so you will easily be able to capture your customers’ attention to the possibility of doing business with you.
In a market that is flooded with several other businesses, making yourself unique and distinct from others is one way to establish the reputation of your business. Couple that with a passion for delivering top-notch customer and quality service and you are sure to establish a strong business brand that will help your company achieve its goals.
