What you should post to Twitter or Facebook
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If you’re a micro-business owner (where YOU are your business) it can be a challenge to figure out what to post to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
You don’t want to be sharing what you ate for lunch or when you went to the bathroom.
On the other hand, you don’t want to be too promotional either; that turns people off. You need to find a balance.
What’s your social media brand?
No, I don’t mean your logo or your photo – although that’s part of it.
It’s how do you want people to think of you. If you’re a micro business – providing a product or service where your expertise is what sets you apart – then you probably want to be seen as an expert. You want to be the “go-to” person in your field.
How do you do this?
Be a resource
Provide useful information that your customers – and potential customers – need and want. You don’t have to create all the content yourself. Provide links to articles and blog posts that provide useful information. Using Google Reader and RSS feeds can be a great way to quickly and easily find content to share.
Someone who does a great job of this Read More→
Can you learn to love marketing?
By · CommentsMany small business owners dread marketing. It’s something that often gets put to the bottom of the “to-do” list until situation gets dire and you really, REALLY need new
clients.
Others get it done, but they kind of have to grit their teeth to do it. They know it’s something that has to be done but they really hate it.
If that sounds like you, I’d like to suggest a paradigm shift, one that can make you love marketing. No, I’m not kidding. Nor am I crazy!
If you’re a regular reader of the Baby Boomer Entrepreneur blog then you’ve probably started your business later in life not just to earn a living but also to follow your passion. You wanted more out of your career then just a j-o-b.
And I’ll bet that whatever products or services you’re selling are special. You’re proud of what you do and you know that when someone buys from you, their life will be a little bit better because what you’re selling is awesome!
Did I hit the nail on the head?
So, when you go out and promote yourself Read More→
Achieve your goals in the last half of 2011
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Depending on whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist, the year is half over or there’s half left. Either way, there is still time to achieve great things in 2011.
Step 1. Know where you are now
You can’t achieve anything until you know where you are now so pull up some stats. Print out your financial statement for the first six months of the year.
What? You haven’t done your books for this year because you just finished last year’s taxes? Then you need to take a step back and do step 0 – get your bookkeeping up-to-date! The first rule of business is manage your money!
Next, look at your RSS subscribers, your email newsletter list, daily/monthly visitors to your website or blog, your Facebook friends and likes to your page, your Twitter followers, your LinkedIn connections and what other stats are important to you. Record them on your calendar so you have a measuring stick to go by.
Step 2 Review your goals
Pull out your 2011 goals from January and see how close you are to achieving them. Are there Read More→
How to Add Google Analytics to your WordPress Blog
By · CommentsGoogle Analytics is an essential tool for marketing and promoting online. Once it’s installed on your site, it tracks who visits your site, what pages they go to, and where they come from and what page made them leave. You can use this tool to make decisions about your marketing and about your business.
For example, when I first started my business I was a copywriter and was doing traditional marketing. When I started checking my Google Analytics stats, I noticed my blog posts about Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter were getting the most traffic. Since I was already interested in exploring how these tools could help businesses with marketing, that information was just the push I needed to change the focus of my business.
If you don’t have it installed on your blog, here’s a short video from The Simple Blog Company about how to do it if you’re using WordPress.
Now that you’ve watched the video, go and install Google Analytics.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Don’t be a Blog Spammer
By Andrea J. Stenberg · Comments (6)Wrong!
Nine of those comments looked like this:
Not similar to that, EXACTLY the same. All from the same person, promoting the same website.
Guess what? I went into my comments folder and spammed them all.
I know that many internet marketers tell you that a good way to get incoming links to your website is to comment on other blogs. In fact, I tell people that too. You may have read it right here on this blog.
If done properly, blog commenting works. For a long time, Read More→