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!

Planning and working ahead

One of the big shifts I’ve made in my business this year has to do with planning and working ahead. In December, I met with my mastermind and we each planned our year out in a big picture way using big desk-sized calendars. At this planning meeting, we also each honed our focus to just a few areas where we are really getting results. My 2014 has been so much smoother because of it! I usually have at least the next few days if not weeks of promotions, blog posts and emails planned and I try to always keep a little ahead.

For me, there’s nothing that kills the joy of my business more than working under pressure. The same blog post, web page, or social media post which is a fun and creative activity when done without time pressure becomes a dreaded chore when I’m trying to beat the clock. It’s a great feeling to know I’m days or weeks ahead of schedule and if something should pop up in my personal life I can take care of it without having my business sit or even look idle. Before you can start working ahead though, you have to start planning ahead. You have to have some idea of what’s coming up in your business and what you are promoting. If you can plan your year at a big picture level that’s a great place to start. If that feels like too much, try planning the next month. If that’s too much, you can start with just planning your next few blog posts and emails. Are you still flying by the seat of your pants in your business? Schedule a few coaching sessions with me to get some plans laid down. You’ll feel more sure of what you are working on and have a better sense of how the pieces fit together. Click here to schedule some time with me.

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.

How solopreneurs can use Foursquare

I admit, I’m late in jumping on the Foursquare bandwagon. As with any new undertaking, I have to have a definitive reason for getting involved with something and I have to know what I expect to get from it and have a way to measure that result. I’ve checked out Foursquare several times, but never felt like it was a good fit for my business until now. In this article, I’ll share why I decided to start using it, what I’m using it for and how I keep myself safe.

In case you don’t know, Foursquare is a social media site and smartphone app that uses your phone’s gps system to let you “check in” to physical locations. As a work-at-home solopreneur, I don’t actually have a physical location so it never seemed like something that would work for me. I was also concerned about announcing to the world where I am and that my house is empty.

The reason I finally decided to jump is to spice up my Twitter feed with some more interesting personal information. Several people I follow on Twitter have their check ins included in their Twitter feed and I found I really enjoyed it, especially when they included a picture. It’s important to share some information about yourself, your personality and life in your marketing so people have a sense of just who they are considering doing business with. As with any sharing of personal information, don’t overdo it.

So, the main reason I’m using Foursquare is to add some variety to my Twitter feed. I’m definitely accomplishing that, but there are a few added benefits I hadn’t considered. It’s actually a fun service to use. There’s elements of gaming in it such as the ability to earn badges, which often come as a surprise. I also find it tends to get me out of the house more because I don’t like to see a whole day with no check ins.

The big question is safety. When the practice of revealing your physical location became popular, there was a lot of stories about people being burglarized while they were out and of people being stalked at the places they go regularly. I protect myself from burglary by never checking in unless someone is home at my house. I also have two large, very loud dogs that show up all the time in my social media postings for any would-be burglar to see. If this isn’t an option for you, consider only checking in when you will be home shortly.

As far as discouraging stalkers, I only check in when I’m leaving a place. If someone tries to find me, I won’t be there anymore. I also never check in at any of my regular stops, i.e. places where there is a pattern to my visiting or places I go often. There’s no way to figure out where I go regularly by looking at Foursquare.

Do you see any way to use Foursquare in your solopreneur business? Tell me about it in the comments.

Solopreneurs, what’s your theme for 2013?

This is the third year for which I’ve picked a theme. It’s been a great way to push ahead on one big, bold area of my business that I want to work on. My theme for 2012 was my signature system, which is written in being finalized as we speak. I seem to get my theme project done every year but it usually takes all year. I recall finishing something relating to my 2011 theme last year on the day of New Year’s Eve!

My signature system is a comprehensive guide to setting up a home based, solopreneur business based on packaging and selling your knowledge. I’ve finished the first draft and need to polish the writing and get some feedback from my inner circle before launching a beta version sometime early next year. (If you are interested in being the first to know when it’s ready, be sure to sign up for my newsletter in the red box in the sidebar. I’ll be offering it there first.)

My theme for 2013 is speaking. I enjoy public speaking and seem to have been spared the fear of speaking that so many people suffer from, so I’ve decided that this will be the next big push in my business. This is an example of one of the most important principles I live by – use your gifts to serve others and improve the world. By luck of the draw, I have a gift of being able to speak publicly without big fears, and so my belief is that I should use this to help other people. Speaking is a great way to reach a lot of people in a short amount of time, so even small speaking gigs are really effective.

I’ll be crafting my signature talk after I finalize my signature system so I don’t have the specifics yet, but my talk will cover some of the same things in my signature system. I’m committed to the idea that people will benefit from the talk whether they go further with me or not, so you can be sure there will be loads of great information you can take action on right away.

So, I’ve shared my theme for 2013, and now I have a big, burning question for you.

What’s your theme for 2013?

What’s the single most important thing you could focus on in 2013 so you end the year with a grander business that moves your mission in the world further along? Share it in the comments.

If you’re not sure, let’s schedule a time to talk and figure it out together. Click here.

If you’d like to read last year’s post where I share my theme for 2012, click here.

Strategy and growing your business

I talk a lot about strategy, and that’s because it’s truly one of the most important foundations to your success. What is strategy and why is it so important? How can it help you?

Strategy is having an idea of how something will help your business before you start doing it. This applies both to big, sweeping changes like adding a new marketing technique and it also applies to one-time things like attending an expo. Having a strategy makes it so much more likely you will succeed, and even if you don’t you’ll know it sooner and not get sidetracked for as long as you would without strategy.

New business owners often have a fire to get started, and as a result they start off running hard and just doing as many things as they can to build their business. The idea of actually asking if something is a good idea to be doing in the first place seems pointless. It’s easy to get into such a frenzy of doing that it’s hard to even find a few minutes to ask if you should be doing something.

Strategy helps you decide what to do and set some goals around what you expect to accomplish. Most business activities have increasing sales as their ultimate goal but there are many intermediate steps. One strategy might be to increase traffic to your website using social media. This would ultimately increase sales (all other things being equal), but it’s an intermediate step. If your strategy is to increase sales by increasing traffic using social media then you know what your social media activity is supposed to accomplish before you even start doing it. Using some traffic measurements, you can tell how well it is working by measuring how much traffic you sent to your site before and after you started using social media.

One of the best things strategy can do is to steer you when you are off course. What if you social media strategy, as you’ve defined it, isn’t paying off? That’s not as good as it working great, but it’s much better that you know and can change course. If your efforts aren’t working, you need to change what you are doing or find something new to do.

Strategy doesn’t have to be a big deal. It doesn’t have to be formal or complex. Just make sure you know why you are doing any business activity and what you hope to get from it. Have a way to measure if your efforts are working, and know when to change course or pull the plug.

How do you use simple strategy in your business? Tell me about it in the comments.

Step 1, Set a Deadline

I’ve recently made a significant change in the way I manage projects and it has helped my productivity greatly! In this article, I’ll share the change with you and how it’s helping me.

First, some background…

I used to decide on a project to complete for my business, figure out the scope of it, outline the steps to complete it and then set a target completion date. I based the estimated completion date on how long I thought the project would take and how much time I could put in daily or weekly. This worked pretty well, but I found that it didn’t always lead to spending the right amount of time on a project. How much time you spend on something should be proportional to the importance of it, and not necessarily proportional to how long it could take if done perfectly. Deciding what to do and how to do and THEN setting a time target meant that I could easily decide to spend weeks making a small website tweak that didn’t increase sales, profit or customer satisfaction. I didn’t really put this together at the time I was doing it. In the years I was a corporate project manager, this is more or less how we did it and it worked great.

The impetus for change…

I’ve had a big project I’ve wanted to complete since last fall. When I say big, I mean big both in terms of scope and in terms of how it will change my business. (Stay tuned, details coming soon!) It just dragged on and on, and in the meantime it isn’t available for people to buy so nobody is benefiting from it. It kept growing in scope as I worked on it (sound familiar? : ) ). I kept finding more and more to include in it. Finally, the exasperation got too great and I took a hard look at the project and decided to make some changes and get it done.

What I changed…

I picked a day on which to complete it and then downsized the scope so that I could meet that deadline. I realized that this project was something that could grow without any natural limit, so I had to place a limit on it myself. Once I picked the day it would be done, I worked backward to put some milestones in place. I’m just a few days away from that first milestone, and it looks like I’ll make it but only barely.

The Result…

The results of this one very small change (picking a deadline and adjusting the project to meet it) have been amazing. I feel so much more energized on this project because I know it will be out in the world soon rather than at some distant date in the future. It’s easier to get to work on it knowing my time on it is finite. Somehow, just knowing I’ll get the satisfaction of having it done in a short time makes it so much more enjoyable to work on.

Conclusion…

Even though I had years of experience as a project manager, this was a big shift for me. If you aren’t managing your projects at all, I invite you to try setting deadlines and milestones to help you get some big things done.

What do you have lagging that you need a boost to complete? Share it in the comments and tell me if setting a deadline helped you get it done.

Deciding what to work on and how much time to spend on it is one of my favorite things to coach on! Click here to set up some time for us to sort through everything that’s on your plate.