how to – Page 7 – Michele Christensen

List-a-palooza 2014 starts tomorrow!

Tomorrow is the beginning of List-a-Palooza, a free listbuilding training that lasts all summer long. This will be my third year participating in it, and if I’m coming back again you know I have to like it!

(Already know you want in? Click here to sign up)

For starters, what is lisbuilding and why should you care? Listbuilding is the collecting and growth of a list of email addresses from people who have said they want to hear from you. It’s arguable the single most valuable activity you can do in your business. Click here for my article “The Top Ten Reasons You Need To Be Email Marketing” for a quick explanation if you are not familiar with listbuilding or email marketing.

List-a-Palooza is for growing your list. It’s a 3-month long event focused solely on the most valuable activity you can do in your business. Best of all, it’s free! Yes, there are paid offers along the way, but the event is free and there is a ton of great information given every week that you can use to keep your list growing.

Here’s what happens each week during the List-a-Palooza:

Weekly accountability check ins for tracking your results so that you accelerate your path to more subscribers
Two training calls each week with some of the world’s top listbuilding experts who share their hottest strategies and tactics with you for growing your list
A weekly “Power Hour” in which we all get online together at the same time to implement ONE specific list-building tactic.

Click here to sign up: List-a-Palooza

This is a great opportunity for you to focus on building your list. By the end of the summer, you could have a lot more subscribers and that opens up many possibilities. Join me and spend some time this summer building your list and your business.

Click here for access: List-a-Palooza

See you there!

Why this solopreneur is focusing on Pinterest this year

Up until this year, I devoted my social media time to multiple sites. For the most part, it worked pretty well. When I first started using social media to promote my business in 2009 it was much easier to stay current on all the “in” sites because there were fewer of them. There was also less to know. The medium wasn’t very mature. Facebook only started in 2004, so a few early, early adopters had been using social media for more than 5 years but the rest of us were 5 years of less.

As social media matured and more sites came into existence, it got harder and harder to stay informed and use it well. Best practices were constantly being studied and revised. There were more things to measure and interpreting your data became more complex. I’m constantly testing and tweaking my business activities, so one of the things I did was cut way back on the sites where I got very little return on my time invested. That left me with a manageable two sites to focus my efforts on – Pinterest and Twitter. In a later post, I’ll talk about why Twitter made the cut but this post is about Pinterest.

Pinterest has several great qualities that make it ideal for solopreneurs. As a one-person business you have to be super efficient with your time and Pinterest fits that criteria. Here are some of the reasons I’m focusing on Pinterest this year.

It sounds cliche, but it really is a traffic driving machine! I made just a few changes to my Pinterest activities and within a week Pinterest was in my top ten referral traffic sources. The following week, it was #4 in referral traffic and #7 overall. Given how little I did and how little I knew at the time, that’s pretty amazing. My Pinterest traffic has continued to grow as I’ve gotten better at using the site.
When you add a pin to Pinterest, it creates a permanent link which can be found forever. Technically, the same is true on other social media sites, but the big difference with Pinterest is that people use the search function more than the feed of most recent pins. This means that it doesn’t matter when you made a pin, it only matters that you use the language that someone searching is using. How often do you read or get retweeted on year-old tweets, Facebook posts or LinkedIn updates?
Pinterest boards are based, ideally, on interests. This means that when someone finds and follows a board of yours they are specifically looking for pins on that topic. You can create multiple, highly-targeted boards which will attract people interested in that topic instead of attracting people to your entire stream the way you would on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. That means you can tightly target your content to the audience of each board, and someone doesn’t have to be interested in everything you do in order to follow some of your boards.
Images are becoming increasingly important on social media, and on Pinterest the link goes with the image. When someone repins your pin, the link to your site usually goes with the new pin.
People share a lot on Pinterest! Repinning, or sharing someone else’s content, represents 80% of pinning activity. Your quality pins have a good chance of being repinned and exposed to entire new audiences.
The traffic that comes from Pinterest is high-quality! In a future post, I’ll talk more about driving traffic to your site with Pinterest but for now suffice it to say that the visitors that come from Pinterest are interested in what you have.

If you want to find out more about Pinterest and how it can benefit your business, watch this video training I did with Becky Sangha, the creator of Business Marketing wih Pinterest. It’s the system I use to get all these great results on Pinterest. Even though the site is as great as I describe, you can’t just sign up and fool around and expect to get business-building results by magic. It’s not hard, but you do have to use Pinterest in a strategic, planned way to get good results for your business.

Watch the training at the link below, and please use the social sharing buttons on the video page to tell your friends and colleagues about it!

Pinterest Marketing for Solopreneurs

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Interview with Martina Zorc of Star Brand Studio

I’ve got a new free resource to share with you! I interviewed Martina Zorc of Star Brand Studio, and she shared really useful in-depth information on branding. In the interview, she shares what branding is (and it’s more than colors or a logo), why it’s important to attract ideal clients and not just any clients, and her 12-step system for branding. Grab your free copy by clicking the link below: Martina Zorc Interview

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Product review: Tweet-a-coffee

One of the principles I use a lot in my business is appreciation. I try to say thank you and be genuinely appreciative to people who have helped me in some way. In order to express this, I may write a review or send a social media post acknowledging the person. In March, I found a novel way of publicly thanking someone called Tweet-a-coffee. It allows you to send a $5 Starbucks gift card to someone simply by sending a specially-formatted tweet including the handle @tweetacoffee.

What I love about this service is that it is fun and novel. It’s a great, practical way to thank someone, send them a gift and acknowledge them in front of all your followers in one swoop. I’ve sent coffee gift cards via email before, but this has the added bonus of being a public acknowledgement. This service is perfect for solopreneurs because it leverages your time, i.e. you get multiple benefits out of the time it takes to send the tweet. It’s also easy to do once you have set up your Starbucks account and linked it to your Twitter account.

So, what’s not to love? I tried it twice, and in both cases the recipient thought it was some sort of virtual gift with no monetary value. I had to point out that it was a real gift card. Both of the recipients are intelligent business owners with whom I had collaborated so they weren’t the problem. I think this is just such a new idea that it’s not obvious that you could send a real gift via tweet. One of my recipients had trouble redeeming the gift card so we had to work that out.

The bottom line: Great idea, but things get a little bumpy between my sending a tweet and my recipient having a cup of coffee in hand. I’ll try it again, but I may give it some time and see if things go more smoothly next time. For more information, see the Twitter handle @tweetacoffee.

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Brand new listbuilding training for you!

You’ve probably heard all the sayings about listbuilding. People say things like:

The money (or gold) is in the list

You gotta be building your list

You need to have a list

What is meant by this is specifically an email list, that is a collection of email addresses from people who have specifically said they want to hear from you. This is not to be confused with spam, which everyone hates. Legitimate listbuilding includes sending email only to people who want to hear from you. 5 years into my business, email marketing is one the most important activities I do in my business. It seems inconceivable to me that I didn’t do any listbuilding or email marketing at first.

It’s true however. I didn’t start building my list until I had been in business for over a year because I didn’t understand how email marketing could possibly help my bottom line. As a specialist in business strategy, I make it a point to never do anything unless I understand how it will contribute to my business so until I had a coaching session where it was laid out for me, I didn’t start.

That’s why I’m so excited to share this video training with you. My colleague, Becky Sangha (The Online Video Marketer) has recorded a brand new training laying out exactly how listbuilding works. If I had seen this video in that first year, I might have started my list sooner and I’d be that much further ahead!

Click the link below to watch this free, no opt-in training video. It takes about half an hour, but it is well worth it!

Get Your List Growing Free training

Ten reasons why you need to be email marketing

One of my big strategic shifts this year has been to devote even more time to email marketing. I’ve let go a lot of what I used to do that didn’t work as well. I didn’t start building my list or doing any email marketing until I had been in business for more than a year because I needed convincing that it was a worthwhile tactic for me to use. Let me state that I am now officially convinced that email marketing is one of the most powerful ways for almost any business to market. In this article, I’ll give you 10 reasons why you need to be email marketing.

Less selling. People will want to buy your products and services with less selling by you.
Keep in touch with people who are interested but not yet ready to buy.
Have a warm audience to test new ideas on and get feedback.
Be a better event participant and JV partner. You are much more attractive to collaborators when you have an audience that you’ve already proven yourself to.
Decrease the variability in your business. You’ll be able to make offers to a receptive audience when things are slowing down.
You control when people hear from you instead of depending on them to visit your site at the right time
Earn the trust and respect of your audience over time
Non-monetary support – even people that don’t buy can bring ideas, questions, participation, shares, etc
Better return on time spent because you are talking to a self-selected audience of interested people
Make more money. It may not be the only reason you are in business but it has to be one of the reasons.

Are you convinced you need to be using email marketing? If so, I invite you to join me on this special training They say “The money is in the list…” So where’s mine? I’ll be co-presenting with Becky Sangha, The Online Video Marketer, and we’ll be sharing how you can start your email marketing campaign in just a few weeks. If you aren’t convinced yet, I’d love for you to join me as well so you can get more information on how email marketing can help your business. Click here to sign up.

Are you using email marketing in an original way? Share it in the comments. Please share this article using the Pin It and social sharing buttons below. Thanks!

Do I need a business license?

Recently, I was asked if a business license was needed for a person who writes an income producing blog from home. Without knowing where he lived or the rules in his area, I told him that in general the answer would be yes.

Your work-at-home business is in fact a business, and local municipalities generally want you to have a business license to operate within their area. There are several reasons for this. Your local governing body (city, state, town, township, county, etc) wants to know who is operating a business within the borders of their area. They want to make sure all applicable laws and rules are adhered to. They want to make sure no space is used in a way that isn’t allowed. For example, my city has limits on how many customers (if any) may come to your home for your business. Your driveway and garage must remain available for parking. They also have rules to keep you from parking over-size vehicles or having obtrusive signage.

One of the biggest reasons local governments want you to have a business license is so that you can pay tax on your revenues or profits. When I mentioned this in the conversation, several other people immediately balked at the idea of paying taxes and some present felt that it was a waste to have a license if it made you pay more in tax.

I realize that most people hate taxes, but I do believe your home-based business should have all applicable licenses. Having a license legitimizes your business and makes you look more like a real business. Getting the proper license eliminates the risk of getting caught without one. Penalties do vary but if you are caught doing business without a license, at the very least you can expect to have to pay back taxes.

I think it sends a powerful message to your own self as well. Your business is every bit as legitimate as any bricks and mortar business, and as a prosperous community member you are paying your share of taxes.

Getting a business license is usually not a big deal and the payoff is worth it. You’ll never have to worry about accepting a delivery, seeing a client in if they come to your house, and you’ll be free to earn all the money you want with no fear of getting caught! Any potential client can feel free to dig around about you, and they’ll find your business license is current and in good standing (and don’t think people won’t do this!).

If you don’t have a business license, try taking the first step toward getting one. Call your local government offices and see what’s required and if you need one.

I won’t ask you to share in the comments if you don’t have a business license, but if you do, tell me why you got it and how it changed your business.

Where do your customers come from?

One of the fundamental practices of running a successful business is measuring the results of your efforts. There is an almost infinite list of things you could be doing to grow your business, but not all of them produce results in the same proportion to your efforts. Depending on your business, some activities will produce big results and some will produce few or no results. Every time you choose to engage in a promotional activity, you are choosing to leave countless others undone.

Another reason why it’s important to measure the results of your activities is that it’s almost impossible to get the best combination of promotional activities right from the start. Each business owner has to take their best shot at what will work and then adjust that approach as they get feedback. If something is working and bringing in business, do more of it. If something has not worked at all, do less or none of it. If something has worked but stopped working or isn’t producing results the way it used to, make a change.

It seems quite logical – try something, see if it works, adjust and repeat. However, this is probably the single biggest place I see business owners having trouble. Before being introduced to the concept of measurement, many business owners do what they think will work and when it doesn’t they either do more of the same or add yet more activities to their schedule. This is not the way to go! It will lead to exhaustion and wasting time. Getting on a marketing treadmill that keeps going faster as you add more activities will not give you the information you need to adapt and change, nor will it help you focus on the activities with the highest payout.

How might you go about measuring your results? It depends on what you are trying to evaluate, but here are a few examples to illustrate the idea.

If you are using search engine optimization on your website, you’ll want to see if your efforts are increasing the number of visitors to your site. Start by measuring a baseline before you make any changes, then see if the number of visitors increases after you’ve done some SEO on your site. You’ll also want to compare conversion rates before and after (i.e. what percentage of those visitors made a purchase or took an action you asked them to).
If you are tweeting out a link to a special offer, see how many people clicked on the link to view the offer and how many people ended up buying. A simple way to see how many clicks you got is to make a shortened link for the offer using Bitly or another link shortener that you use only for this purpose. Bitly can tell you how many clicks your link got.
If you run a print coupon in a local publication, consider the cost to run the ad and how many people redeemed the coupon. Calculate if you came out ahead or not. Also consider if any of the new customers you got will stick around and become repeat customers.

These are just a few examples of the idea of measuring your results. If you are not measuring anything yet, I encourage you to get started today with just one thing.

What do you measure in your business? How have you improved because of your measurement?

Google-ized brains and how you communicate

I find myself saying more and more that our brains have become Google-ized. It’s not meant to pick on Google (which I love) but as a shorthand way of saying overloaded, drowning with input and managing more stuff than ever before. I’m increasingly finding that when I’m out just talking to people casually that I have to alter the way I speak because I can’t count on someone’s attention long enough to express a complex thought in 3 sentences. I’m rushing when I talk and trying to compress everything into the smallest number of words possible. While the change has been slow over the past decade, it seems to have really changed a lot in the last 3 to 5 years. One way I’ve changed is that I often shop for a short article on something I want to learn about rather than read a long one because I don’t know if I want to read a long one yet. In other words, I often won’t read a long article on something unless I know beforehand that the subject is worth it to me.

I haven’t seen this as much in business conversations but I think that makes sense. If we’re together to do business or talk about business, it doesn’t make much sense to rush and speak in simple terms. We’ve both committed time and energy to accomplish something, so we put more effort into being effective with our communication.

The important of this is that when people consume your information or content, they may be in a frame of mind where they are looking for a quick read, a fast conclusion, one simple concept or a two-minute breather. You can’t know what your reader’s current frame of mind is when they encounter your content.

As someone who wants other people to read your content, what do you do?

Where possible, consider making your content accessible by as many people as possible regardless of their frame of mind. This doesn’t mean you have to withhold your brilliance, but it does require some adapting. Keep your articles and blog posts on the short side and make them focused on just one point. People can do a quick read, get the point and move on. If you have a more complex concept to present, consider breaking it into individual pieces and linking them. That allows people to get the information a little bit at a time. Tailor your content to the situation – if it’s an article or blog post, you can’t count on much commitment. If it’s a tweet, there’s even less incentive to read it and be focused on it. If it’s a ebook your reader paid for, they probably have a higher level of commitment to the material.

In short, don’t ever dull your brilliance but when possible present it in a way that make it available to as many people as possible no matter what their frame of mind is at the time.