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Guerilla Marketing for Beginners
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The term “guerrilla marketing” was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in 1984, the same year he released a book with the same title. The term refers to performing marketing and promotional activities on a low budget. The unconventional tactics are designed to provide maximum impact while using the most minimal of resources.
Guerilla marketing can take many forms. You can apply these tactics to promote your business both online and offline. This type of marketing can take the form of things you are already doing and are familiar with, as well as things you may never have thought of or are too uncomfortable to try.
With guerilla marketing, you will want to think outside the box and try new things (that don’t cost a lot of money). For instance, you can print flyers and start hanging them all over town.
Another cost-effective strategy is to create something of value and to give it away in order to attract more customers. Have you ever walked into a restaurant or store that had a box or fishbowl sitting by the register, and people could drop in a piece of paper with their name and phone number in hopes of winning a prize?
Try doing this online by approaching websites that offer a complimentary product or service to yours and asking if you can team up with them on a contest. Offer to give away one of your products or services to a lucky winner from their mailing list. The owners of the complimentary website will email their mailing list about your contest and provide a link to a page on your website that includes a form where people can enter your contest. In exchange, you can offer to give them some type of promotion on your website or through a mailing to your list.
Another topic featured in guerilla marketing is public speaking. This is something that many people do not care for. However, if you can get over that fear you can gain a lot of publicity this way. You can do this online by holding free seminars on whichever topics you have branded yourself as an expert in.
Doing this is very easy. You can search online for companies that offer free access to telephone conference lines or web conference rooms. Once you have the date, place, and time of your seminar set, you will want to start promoting it.
You can start the publicity process by emailing your list, putting a banner up on your website, and including a link to your seminar landing page in all of your signature lines. The trick is to promote the fact that you are giving the seminar. You can freely give out the information of the date and time. However, make people sign up for your list before you give out the phone number to dial into or the link to the conference room.
By using some of the guerilla marketing tactics, you will be able to grow your business without spending too much money.
Staying Focused Can Help You Stay Motivated
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Everyone has times when they lack motivation. On the other hand, you may be so motivated and full of ideas that you lose your focus because you are trying to juggle too many tasks at once. However, multi-tasking may do more harm than good. When your mind is divided by too many tasks, your productivity decreases. Here are some tips to help you stay focused and motivated on your business.
Choose a Niche.
Once you know what your niche market is, you will be able to focus on tasks that will help you with that particular market. Try to narrow your market as much as possible. For instance, if you have a coaching business and want to help people work from home, perhaps you can target a certain field, such as web designers or virtual assistants. You will gain a reputation for being an expert in that field and will be able to help people create specific plans while coaching them to success.
Set Goals, and Write Them Down.
When you set goals for your business, you are defining the direction in which you want to take your business. When you write them down, you are greatly increasing the odds that you will accomplish the goals you have set.
Create a Business Plan.
When someone wants to start a brick and mortar business, they need to create a business plan and submit it to a bank to secure a loan. A business plan is a summary of how a business will be organized and a listing of activities that the owner needs to complete. For instance, a business plan will explain when a business owner expects to make a profit, as well as the type of marketing they intend to do. Creating a business plan for your home business will increase your chances of success.
Stay Away From Distractions.
It is easy to lose track of time when reading email, blogs, and surfing the web. Set aside a block of time in the morning and evening to take care of email. Try to limit your internet during work hours for tasks specific to work, such as research. Wait until you are done with your work to read the celebrity gossip.
Prioritize Your Tasks.
When you write out your to-do list, prioritizing your tasks will keep you working on what is important. Some items may need to be accomplished as soon as possible, while other things can wait a day or two. Take a colored highlighter and highlight the things that need to be done ASAP. When you look at your to-do list, your eyes will be drawn to the items that need the most attention.
Outsource When Possible.
As you look over your to-do list, do you notice items that can be handled by someone else? By delegating tasks to others, you will have more free time to work on things that require your attention.
How to Backup Gmail to Thunderbird
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What would you do if you lost everything in your Gmail account? It’s happened to some people – some Gmail users recently suffered a data loss. Gmail was able to get everything back for them eventually. However, it woke many people up to the possibility of losing everything in their account.
If you use Gmail, chances are your life is stored in those archived messages. So how do you protect it?
A Variety of Choices
There are actually many services you can use to back up your Gmail. Backupify is a paid service that backs up Gmail, Facebook, Flickr, Google Docs, Twitter, and many additional web applications. It’s a “set it and forget it” type of backup security system. Another option is to use TrueSwitch and back up your Gmail into a Hotmail account. Gmail Backup is another free option for backups. If you prefer to have all of your backup data in your possession, rather than stored on an outside server, then consider Thunderbird.
Thunderbird is Mozilla’s free email application. If you use Firefox as your browser then you may be familiar with the application. The steps to backup with Thunderbird are easy.
Simply visit the Mozilla Thunderbird download page and click to download. Save the set-up exe file on your computer. Once it is saved, open the file and click “Run” to install.
Step #2 Change Your Gmail Settings
In the meantime, log into your Gmail and change the settings to enable POP for all mail, and set Gmail to keep its copy.
Step #3 Finish Installation
Follow the procedures to finish the installation and set-up for Thunderbird. You can import your Outlook or Outlook Express settings if you use that software.
Step #4 Back In Gmail
On that same settings page “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” in Gmail, you’ll see a link at the bottom of the page. It says, “Configure your email client (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird, iPhone) Configuration instructions.” Go ahead and click the link. Follow the instructions for Thunderbird and you’ll be good to go. Your information will now be backed up on Thunderbird and you’ll have a second tier of protection.
If you like to have a third tier of protection, consider backing up everything to an online service. This way, if you’re ever hacked and they gain access to everything, you haven’t lost anything.
Facebook and Going Viral
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There are almost 800 million members on Facebook today. With this vast web of interconnectivity, Facebook is fast becoming the leading way for ideas and content to spread on the internet. If you want to go viral, Facebook is one of the main platforms to pay attention to.
Two powerful tools to master on Facebook are Facebook pages and Facebook apps. Both of these are integrated in Facebook’s ecosystem and have access a wide array of tools.
Here’s how to use Facebook’s pages and apps to go viral.
An Idea with a Call to Action
Your idea for a page or for an app needs to have a call to action built into it.
Many of the protests in the Arab Uprising, from Egypt to Libya, were organized on Facebook and/or Twitter. Newly created pages literally got tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of followers in as little as a week or two.
They grew so quickly because there was a call to action. Share the page and let the world know what was going on. Even people in non-Arabic countries got involved, because of this strong call to action.
For a more light-hearted example, take a look at FarmVille, one of the most successful Facebook games in history. One of the reasons it was so successful was because there was a constant call to action. People were always being asked to share the game with their friends.
Your idea needs to not only be great, but have a call to action for sharing built into it.
Reporting
Facebook has one very unique reporting feature: it tells you about the viral aspect of your posts and of your app, as a statistic.
The statistic measures how often people share your content. If you primarily have three different kinds of content, say polls, videos and text, you could measure each post individually and see which one(s) people tend to share.
If you find that people share videos released on your page four times more often than text released on your page, you’ll know exactly where to focus.
While it’s possible to derive this statistic on other media platforms, generally they don’t give it to you in this clear-cut form. Facebook makes tracking and optimizing for virality easy.
Making It Go Viral
Going viral on Facebook is all about having a great core idea, then testing and testing until you reach the maximum viral velocity you can reach.
It means testing different messages, different kinds of outreach and different call to actions. If you find it extremely hard to get traction, it’s likely that your idea just isn’t striking a cord. On the other hand, if your idea is spreading, then your job is to accelerate the pace and make the idea go truly viral.
Use Magnetic Goals to Earn More and Work Less
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Cathy Demers
Is your small business massively successful despite everything – the economy and even your own doubts?
Are you working less and earning more?
Is your life filled with joyful prosperity?
Do you know how to set MAGNETIC goals AND achieve them?
There is hardly anyone who can say yes to all those questions! If you didn’t, then this message is for you…
Magnetic Goals That Literally Draw You Toward the Financial Success You Know You Deserve!
You may have heard that the Small Business Administration estimates that fully 56% of small businesses will fail within four years and even more will fail after that. You don’t have to be a statistic! You CAN have the thriving business you dream about!
Join Award Winning Entrepreneur and Small Business Advisor, Cathy Demers, as she reveals how to set and achieve Magnetic Goals and unleash the potential in your small business. Now is the time to have financial freedom and security while you make a difference in the lives of others.
The no cost Webinar takes place on May 4, 2012 at 12:00 pm ET(9 am PT) and if you can’t attend, register anyway and you’ll receive the replay.
Click Here for all the Details and To Register.
Magnetic Goals
Goal-setting is one of the most critical processes in any small business but few know how to set goals that have true-magnetism and literally pull your thoughts, your energy, and your resources towards success. Magnetic goals define the path you will take, and create the opportunities you need, for full achievement of your vision for your small business and your life.
Cathy is going to share with you what Magnetic Goals are, and how you can use them to draw business success to you while you do what you love.
As an added bonus, Cathy will teach you why it’s important to “measure what you treasure” and give you great ideas on how to “get what you count” in innovative and fun ways. This is a sure-fire and simple strategy to combat the number one killer of focus and motivation – lack of clear and demonstrated progress.
You will be amazed at how easy and effective all this is!
If you want to:
• Secure your business success and your personal prosperity while you serve others, regardless of the economy or other circumstances
• Truly enjoy the process of building your small business each and every day
• Unleash the potential of your business and build fantastic momentum
• Reduce your stress and workload while you make more money
• Learn How To Use Magnetic Goals and Draw Financial Success & Security To You
Sign up for this FREE, LIVE webinar, just by clicking this link.
*** This call will fill up fast – so please register early! ***
