Here’s what you’ve been looking for…

Clear, accurate information on how to market YOUR business on Facebook!

Learn now and get going with results!

Those 500 million Facebook members include YOUR potential customers.  They are looking for products and services like yours.  NOW is the time to learn the effective ways to use Facebook as a marketing tool for your business.

Facebook 4 Biz: Ready, Set, Go is exactly what you need to walk you step by step through how to start and manage a powerful presence on Facebook.  Three hours of webinar instruction will demonstrate each of the important elements.  A bonus hour of questions and answers will make sure that YOU understand!

In a brief 3 week period you’ll learn:

• 5 business tools of Facebook.
• All about Profiles, Pages, Groups, News Feed, Friends, Fans, Community Pages.
• Step by step instructions for setting up a business page and customizing it.
• Ways to address privacy issues and how to separate personal and business information.
• Developing a Facebook marketing strategy to anchor your activity there.
• How to utilize the viral aspects of Facebook for maximum business exposure.
• Details of tagging, ads, search, importing your blog, events and so much more!

Here are the class details…

Dates: August 2, August 9 and bonus call on August 16^th, 2010

Times: 6:00-7:30pm ET (Bonus call 6-7pm only)

Format: Webinar

Cost: 4 hours of instruction and Q & A at summer sale price of $79

Facebook 4 Biz is for you, whether you are brand new to Facebook marketing or just haven’t had the results you need with what you have done to date.  Get rolling to success with the most powerful online marketing tool of all – Facebook.  Know for sure what works and what does not!

Don’t hesitate!  The class begins very soon so register NOW!

With over 500 million users, Facebook is a powerhouse in social networking. If you’re not on Facebook and using it for your small business, then you are missing a huge opportunity. In my upcoming webinar series “Facebook 4 Biz: Ready, Set, Go!” (this webinar series is also part of my Super Summer Sale, which means you get an additional 20% off at checkout), I’ll be delving into the world of Facebook and how to use it to build your brand.

Have you ever wondered how businesses on Facebook get the “pretty” business pages? The answer is Static FMBL (Facebook Markup Language) which is Facebook’s answer to HTML. You can create your design in a WYSIWYG editor like DreamWeaver and paste the code into Static FBML. Just copy and paste everything between the “body” tags (leaving them out) and leave out any Javascripts. If you’re not familiar with writing HTML code, there are a number of HTML tutorials available online or you can partner with a virtual assistant, like Virtual Accuracy Companies, for your HTML creation.

After you’ve created your design elements then use this quick “how-to” I made about creating a landing page for Facebook Business page.

1. Install the Static FBML application located here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4949752878

Underneath the FMBL logo, click, “Add to my Page”

2. On your Facebook Business page, click on “Edit Page”, which is located underneath your picture or business logo.

3. You will now be taken to the backend of your Facebook Business page. This is the nuts and bolts of the Facebook design elements. Under “Applications”, scroll to the FBML application and click “Edit”.

4. Create a title for your landing page, in this case, I chose “Welcome”. Now paste the HTML code you created earlier into the FBML box and click “Save Changes”.

5. To make the new page your landing page, go back to your Facebook Business page and underneath the “Share” button, click on “Options”, then click on Settings and a number of different options will appear. For the option of “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else”, choose the name of your page from the drop down menu, in this case it is “Welcome”. Your information is now auto–saved.

Now anyone who visits your Facebook Business page and is not a fan, they will automatically be directed to your landing page.

How do you get more traffic to your blog? There are all kinds of strategies that work. When you know the right methods you will be amazed at how easy it is to increase your readership and profits. Here are the five most effective tips:

1. SEO

Search engine optimization is your biggest asset. No matter how many other traffic-getting methods you employ, SEO will make or break your efforts.

The best strategy, of course, is targeting keywords in each post. Obviously you don’t want to make it look unnatural, but you need to lace your posts with keywords in a natural way if you want to get ranked.

What kind of keywords should you go after?

It all depends on the size of your blog. In general, you might want to consider targeting long-tail terms, because they are easier to rank for and are also the most profitable ones. It’s always simpler to rank for ten keywords that get thirty searches a month than one that gets three hundred searches. **To learn more about long-tail keyword phrases see http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/050314-164653**

Also, the long-tail terms are generally the most profitable because they are the most targeted. For instance, if you have a fitness blog, you wouldn’t want to get ranked for the term “fitness.”

Instead, you want to rank for something like “how to improve your health with the Mediterranean diet.” That’s a much more specific search, and you will find it much easier to give information or sell a product for this phraseology.

2. Update constantly

Make sure to continually add new content each and every week. Search engines like fresh sites, which is why blogs are so easy to get ranked.

How often should you add new posts? Try and do so at least a couple times a week.

3. Comment on forums

Forums related to your blog topic are great places to get the word out about your site. However, don’t just go and make a few meaningless comments and move on to the next forum.

Even if you get the link, which is unlikely, you will never get long-term traffic from that site. Make sure you add meaningful and useful content, which will help people come to trust you.

By answering people’s questions, you will build yourself as an authority figure. This will in turn drive traffic to your site. This way you get SEO benefits from the one-way links you are generating, as well as getting traffic at the same time.

4. Comment on blogs

Bloggers love reciprocating. So if you are taking an active interest in other people’s blogs and make intelligent comments, they will probably come and check out your site as well.

Again, make sure you provide a meaningful comment. Try to stick with the popular blogs in your category for more traffic.

5. Article marketing

This is another effective strategy for driving traffic and getting one-way links.

In summary, the best links are generally the ones that will also bring traffic in addition to getting you “link juice.” Therefore, before getting a link, ask yourself if it will also provide visitors.

Before we get into the blog post for today, I recorded a video to accompany it since the topic seemed to beg for it.

How are you using video for your business?

You’ve heard that using video to market your business can bring incredible results. But do the benefits outweigh the effort it takes to put your video online? In a word, Yes! Shooting a video, editing and formatting it, uploading it to the internet with the right title and description takes a bit of time. But the payoff for video marketing can be tremendous. Here are seven real benefits of marketing with video:

1. Personal Connection – Especially for internet based businesses, the personal connection with your potential market is a huge selling factor. With video, your audience can truly get to know you, eye-to-eye. They get to see that you are indeed a real, live person. They start building a deeper relationship with you and feel as if they actually have met you.

2. Social proof – There’s an old proverb: “Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see.” On the internet it’s so easy to be a fake and a fraud. People are skeptical about claims they read online, and rightfully so. But video puts a face to your words and makes you more believable and trustworthy.

3. Traffic – People are watching 2 BILLION videos per day on YouTube alone! That’s a whole lot of traffic you’re missing if you’re not marketing yourself with video. It’s free and easy to add your video to a large number of the video sites available online.

4. Emotional Influence – The classic horror movie is a great example of how the audio has an emotional effect on us. The creepy music comes in, immediately cluing you in that something bad is about to happen. Now, imagine combining that audio with powerful video cues to influence the emotions of the listener and create a much more compelling message than with just text alone.

5. Portability – Maybe even more so then articles and ebooks, video is portable. iPhones, Smartphones, iPads and all kinds of other devices allow video to be seen on the go. You can also allow people to download video easily so they can view it over and over again.

6. Demonstrations – Reviews, case studies and examples are great ways to sell products and services. It’s the reason why infomercials make millions of dollars. Now there’s no need for you to be as annoying as the Sham-Wow guy to make money with video, you just need to create videos that show and tell your potential customers why your product will be helpful for them.

7. Engagement – There are many reports available online to show that video boosts response and conversion rates. When someone is watching a video, you have their full attention – eyes and ears. Unlike with the written word, they’re not likely skip ahead or gloss over important information. Most people will watch a video from beginning to end, allowing you to clearly create a message and call to action that engages your audience.

Overall, video is an effective marketing strategy that is only growing in popularity. Since video is here to stay, it’s time to check out the options and see how quick and easy video marketing can be.

10 Worst Facebook Business Mistakes:

Learn the Right Way to Grow Your Business and Brand Using Facebook

You’ve heard it – 500 million users!  You know that number of Facebook members includes lots of your potential customers and yet you aren’t getting results for your business.  Make sure you aren’t making any of the blunders on Facebook that will limit your business success.

Don’t be left behind any longer!

In a year of teaching hundreds of business owners to use Facebook successfully, Janet Slack has seen the same problems over and over.  It’s time to put an end to that and make sure you know what NOT to do.

Join this free webinar, The 10 Worst Business Mistakes on Facebook, and you’ll learn how to:

-          Avoid being too aggressive

-          Navigate Facebook privacy issues

-          Make Facebook viral

-          Learn what, when and to whom to post

-          Know if your efforts are working or not

-          and so much more…

Webinar details:

Date: Monday, July 26, 2010

Time: 6:00 – 7:00 pm ET (New York, USA)

Cost: None

Recording: Available to all registrants.

Don’t miss this opportunity to find out how Facebook can help you grow and nurture your online business.  Mark your calendar and register now.

Registration: http://solopreneur.biz/teleseminar

Successful press releases can really benefit your business. That’s a known fact. However, a lot of business owners don’t think about the long-term impact they can have.

If you get an instant influx of customers, many of them will remain customers for life. So press releases are not just about the immediate business they can give you. Instead, their main benefit is what they can do long term.

Unfortunately, not all press releases are created equal. A bad press release may not even get published.

Here are five ways to write a good release:

Make it interesting

It’s often been said that the worst thing you can be in business is to be boring. The same goes true for press releases. Make sure the subject of your press release is interesting. It has to have something that differentiates it from the rest of the press releases out there.

Editors get a lot of press releases. So if there is nothing about yours that makes it stand out, your chances of getting it accepted are zero.

Have an exciting headline

If you have a bad headline, the editors won’t give it the time of day. Make sure the most compelling part of your story is listed in the headline.

You want to start with your best foot forward. If your headline doesn’t grab the reader’s attention, the rest of your release won’t get read no matter how good it is.

Keep it short

Ideally, the release should be five hundred words or less. In other words, it should not be more than one page. Editors have a lot of stories to get though, and anything that is too long is likely to get thrown in the trash.

Keep your sentences brief as well. This breaks up the text and makes it more readable.

Avoid advertising

Remember, the editors don’t care about your business. They want a story that their readers are going to find interesting. If you just write a long ad for your business, your release isn’t going to get read.

Write about newsworthy events

You obviously can’t write about just anything. For instance, having a sale on paintbrushes might be important to your company, but it’s not going to be interesting enough to get readers.

Instead, write about things you know customers would care about. For instance, if you just took a poll of your clients on something, write about that.

Also, consider doing some sort of fundraising community event. It doesn’t even have to raise money. Anything that gets the community involved will be interesting to the press.

The bottom line is, press releases are one of the most underutilized strategies by businesses for getting customers. When you do them the right way, you will reap the benefits for a long time.

Promotion is one of the four parts of the “marketing mix” along with product, price and distribution. It is the communication between buyer and seller. You may think first of advertisement when you think of promotion, but promotion really is so much more than just running an ad. Try thinking of promotion as the “fun” part of marketing as it allows you to use your creativity. You will also want to polish your communication skills for any promotional activity.

The purpose of promotion is to stimulate potential purchasers towards the buying decision. The specific purpose of any promotional activity or campaign may be to influence, to build awareness, to provide information, to increase demand for a product, to reinforce the brand or to differentiate a product in the marketplace. Make sure you know your purpose before you make your promotion plans.

In general, thinking about promotion for your business should get you looking into each of these five categories: personal selling, advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, and publicity or public relations. Personal selling means being very comfortable in a sales conversation about your business. Advertising these days can be very inexpensive or as costly as you are willing to spend and should not be ignored. Direct marketing now can be anything from a postcard campaign to personal Facebook messages. The area of sales promotion often opens up creative channels such as coupons, contests, free samples, exhibitions and many more. Publicity or public relations is getting others to help spread your message whether this is done for free or for a fee. A great marketing plan for your business will have addressed each of these promotional areas in some way.

If you’re trying to build an opt-in list, and of course most internet marketing experts recommend that you do, then you’ll want to create a squeeze page. These single web pages are designed to work as landing pages whose sole task is to collect opt-in list subscribers. Squeeze pages are landing pages created to solicit opt-in email addresses from prospective subscribers. Let’s take a look at how to build one:

Step #1 Get your website ducks in a row. Do you have a domain name, hosting company and a method for creating a web page? A squeeze page is a web page so your first step is to find or open whatever programming software or system you’re using. If you already have a website then you’ll just add a page to that site. If you’re starting from scratch then your hosting company will likely have templates you can use or you can hire someone to create a web page for you. You can also create a web page with software like DreamWeaver or a WordPress template.

Step #2 Lay out your page. Your squeeze page will not want to have a multitude of graphics or flashy features. Everything on this page should be focused on getting your visitor to subscribe to your list, that’s it. You will have some formatting in the form of a headline, bullets, a call to action and a form. You may also want a color scheme, logo or image that helps brand your page to your business. However, before you publish this page, make sure everything on the page supports the task of motivating opt-ins.

Step #3 Write your headline. Your headline, like a book title, has to capture the attention of your visitor in a matter of seconds and motivate them to read further. Make a promise, offer them something valuable, always make sure you’re keeping your visitor’s needs in mind when creating your headline.

Step #4 List the benefits subscribing or signing up for your email list offers. Bullet points are the easiest to read and you can highlight keywords in bold print to draw the reader’s eye through the copy. Remember, benefits are not features. Benefits are about what signing up for your email list will do for your prospect. How will it benefit them?

Step #5 Write your call to action. Your call to action is essentially a statement that tells your visitors what you want them to do – sign up now!

Step #6 Create your subscription form. You can use a number of services to create this form, or if you know how to write code, you can do it yourself. You need to collect an email address and a name if you want to address future communications to this person directly. “Dear Amy” sounds much better and more personal than “Dear Reader.” Paste the code onto your squeeze page and you’re ready to publish.

Step #7 Follow-up. You may want to follow up with a confirmation to make sure the person intended to subscribe and a thank you for subscribing.

Once your squeeze page is up and running you have two remaining tasks: test and track it for success. You may find that a little change in the wording of your call to action for example may motivate more opt ins, or maybe your headline could use a little tweaking.

You’ll also want to market your squeeze page through various marketing methods like listservs, forums, general online marketing, PPC advertising and finally you’ll want to provide your subscribers with all of the wonderful content you promised them. Once you have the ball rolling and have built a notable opt-in list, you can then focus on using that list to boost profits.

There’s a general cycle to internet business, a series of phases. The first phase is generally to drive traffic, increase awareness and build your subscriber or opt-in list. The second phase is to motivate subscribers to become customers. This is generally accomplished by offering entry level products like low cost reports and ebooks. However, once you have customers, how do you continue to increase sales and motivate purchases? What’s the next step?

Motivating customers into action involves a few different strategies working cohesively together. The first is to continue to offer quality information. You want to continue to give them a reason to come back to your website. And you want them to think of you often, particularly when they have a need for your information, products or services. This is accomplished by continuing to reach them through your autoresponder, social networking, blog posts and other marketing strategies.

Continue building your community. The more people feel like they belong and they can relate to your brand and personality, the more they are likely to become repeat customers. And they’re more likely to recommend you to others. Social networking, blogging and social networking badges and buttons on your website are excellent ways to accomplish this.

Reward your customers for their loyalty. Loyalty programs help accomplish a few things. They make customers feel appreciated. They motivate purchases because loyalty programs and rewards often come with privileged promotions, special pricing and exclusive information. And they help build your community.

Build a marketing funnel. It makes sense to have a tiered level of products or services in your catalog. If your first entry point cost $5 you don’t want your next product to cost $500. There has to be a mid range too. And like wise, some people may be ready, after buying your first entry level product, to buy the whole cow as they say. So make sure you have larger priced items available too. Provide choices and a tiered level of products or services.

Tap into those all important buying triggers. Your customers will respond to:

* Emotion
* Scarcity
* Urgency
* Authority
* Credibility
* Liking

Embrace these buying triggers and use them in your communications and promotions.

Finally, make sure it’s easy to buy. Sometimes we don’t realize that there are artificial blocks to making a purchase. Maybe we ask for too much information during the checkout process, maybe the call to action isn’t clear. Eliminate any obstacles to making a purchase and make it extremely easy to buy from you.

Turning customers into repeat customers and motivating sales is an ongoing process. However, once you create good systems and procedures here, it can essentially be an automatic and repeatable process.

I can’t wait for August because August means NAMS in Atlanta. If you have never attended the Niche Affiliate Marketing System Conference, then you need to! I’ll be there and I want to meet you. NAMS provides the best training I have ever seen for marketing your business online.

NAMS was sold out, but there have been a few cancellations, so their loss is your gain! There are only 20 slots open, so head on over right now and use coupon code “LASTCHANCE” (without the quotes) and you will receive $300 off of your conference registration.

bit.ly//avG1DT

Again, the coupon code is “LASTCHANCE” (without the quotes) and as of this writing there are only 20 seats left, so act now!

I look forward to seeing you there!