Are you hosting teleclasses to market your services?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Marketing

Regularly hosting teleclasses gives you an opportunity to more closely interact with your audience. It’s a way to more quickly develop a relationship with those who follow you on social media or subscribe to your newsletter. Not only do they get to learn the great content you share, they get to know who you are as a person.

Here are three options for hosting teleclasses:

1. Conference line – This is the simplest method and least expensive. A good choice if you are just getting started with teleclasses. There are many free conference call services, such as http://freeconferencepro.com and http://www.freeconferencecalling.com. When selecting a service, just make sure it provides you with a recording of the call the is downloadable in mp3 format.

2. Livestream – I’ve seen many more business owners promoting livestream calls these days. It used to be that simple teleclasses providing a simple phone connection was the standard, but this is slowly evolving. It appears people don’t just want to hear your message, they want to see you. Livestream allows participants to see you as you host the call. Many times this can allow for higher energy calls with more interaction. You can not only share content, but listeners can engage with you and each other via a chat box.

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Do you understand how to use Twitter Hashtags (#’s)?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Social Media

Twitter uses hashtags to organize tweets, which allows Twitter users to search hashtags to find the content the seek. Not only do they find the content, but they can connect with experts in the area they are searching.

Let’s say if someone is looking for information on weight loss they have the ability to search Twitter using the weight loss hashtag. This is may be #weightloss. So, if you are tweeting about how to lose weight, you’ll want to include the hashtag #weightloss or #loseweight within that particular update to ensure it is searchable via hashtags.

There are probably thousands (dare I say millions?) of hashtags. For example, #loseweight, #weight, and #weightloss are all hashtags. You want to select the one that is used most often.

Here’s a link to information on hashtags – http://support.twitter.com/articles/49309-what-are-hashtags-symbols#

Hashtags can be searched at http://hashtags.org. It will also display a “trend” report so you can see how often a particular hashtag is used. For example, it looks like #loseweight is trending better than #weightloss at this time.

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Does Your Website have Too Many Choices?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Website

How many programs and services do you have for sale?

Does your programs or services page scroll on forever? If so, it’s likely you need to pare back your offerings.

You want to keep the options easy to navigate. What’s that saying? I think it’s “A confused mind always says no.” It’s better to keep the options few and easily understandable so a potential customer knows exactly which is right for them.

You don’t need to try and meet everyone’s needs on your website. Narrow it down to one or two package options. If someone wants a particular combination you haven’t identified, they can always contact you to inquire about alternative options.

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5 Options to Update Your Facebook Page Status

By Lisa Nelson  |  Social Media

Do you have a Facebook business page, but not sure what you should be posting?

The goal with Facebook is to be active on a regular basis so you stay in your “fans” newsfeed. This means they will see you frequently, be reminder of the services you offer and remain aware of your area of expertise.

But what do you share?

Here are 5 options you could alternate to update your Facebook page status regularly so you stay in your “fans” newsfeed:

1. Current events/information

If you read an article you like and think your target market would like, share a comment and post a link to it on Facebook.

2. Link to articles you write yourself and post on your blog

We do this for you as part of the content marketing package.

3. Post an occasional question

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How to Complete Keyword Research for Search Engine Optimize (SEO)

By Lisa Nelson  |  Website

Do you understand SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization. Google is an example of a search engine. Yahoo is another search engine. When you do SEO, you are optimizing your website so that a search engine, such as Google can easily find you (i.e. your website).

To do so you must understand keywords. When you go to google.com and type in what you are looking for in the box, what you type is considered a keyword. So, if your ideal client goes online and searches for the services you offer, what will they type in? You want to spend time researching this information so that your website comes up in the Google search results when a potential client is looking for the services you offer.

I attended SHINE this fall and James Roche taught a session on how to do effective keyword research. The video covers pay per click advertisers for particular keywords (these are the results listed on the right hand side of a google results page), the average price paid per click for a keyword (and how you can use this to determine if it’s a profitable keyword for you to use or not), search volume for a particular keyword (and the best range to stay within for better results). The general guidelines shared by James in the video are:

Pay Per Click advertisers of between 10 to 50
Cost per click between $1 to $2.50
Search volume between 15,000 to 80,000 per month

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Is Your Website Set Up to Make Sales?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Website

It takes more than having an attractive, professional web presence to convert site visitors into paying clients.

There are a series of steps they must move through and it’s your job to make sure they know the steps. You don’t want someone to land on your page and guess where they need to go next.

Here are some essential pieces you need to have in place to convert website visitors into clients/customers and generate website sales.

#1 – Landing Page

This is a stand alone webpage that is used to collect the names/emails of site visitors in exchange for a “free taste”. By free taste I’m referring to a free report, free ecourse, free audio series, free video series, etc. that gives individuals a taste of the service you provide. This free taste needs to address whatever their burning question may be so they can’t pass it up.

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Are you utilizing your email signature to grow your business?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Email Marketing

You want to keep your email signature short and to the point, but you also want it to provide clear information on how to contact you and entice people to learn more about you.

Here are 7 items you may want to include in your email signature:

  1. Your Name
  2. Business Name – Don’t forget to identify yourself and your business. . .maybe your business tagline would be appropriate.
  3. Telephone Number – Pick your top preference for people to contact you, not all ways possible.
  4. Email address (as an active hyperlink)
  5. Website (as an active hyperlink)
  6. Invitation to connect on social media – Stick with your top preferences, such as links to your Facebook and/or Twitter profiles.
  7. Free Offer – Instead of just listing your website you may want to have a short sentence or question enticing them to check out your free offer where they then enter their name/email to gain further access.

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5 Tips to Ensure Email Gets Delivered

By Lisa Nelson  |  Email Marketing

Email marketing remains a valuable way to stay in touch with potential customers and clients interested in your services. However, you must be careful that your email address does not become recognized as spam.

You don’t have to be a “miracle weight loss” type sender to be flagged as spam. You may be legitimately marketing your business, but if your reader perceives your email as spam all they have to do is hit the “mark-as-spam” button and your email gets a strike against it.

Too many strikes and your email deliverability will decrease and no longer reach your readers inbox. . . including those who like your material.

Here are 5 steps you can take to ensure email gets delivered.

1. Only add people to your list who specifically give you permission to do.

I recently attended a business conference which involved a lot of business card exchanges. I was amazed the number of newsletters I started receiving the week after the conference. During all of my conversations, I never once gave permission for my email address to be added to a list. You can bet I unsubscribed from everyone. . .and it wouldn’t have been quite simple to check they box saying “yes, this is spam” during the unsubscribe process. I did not do this, but that doesn’t mean others don’t. Protect the integrity of your email and do not add people to your list unless they ask you to do so.

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Do you know which page gets the most website traffic? Are you capitalizing on it?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Website Analytics

You may think the home page of your website receives the most website visitors, but you may be surprised this is not necessarily the case.

Google Analytics

For tracking purposes, I use Google Analytics. It’s a free service that provides very detailed analytics on your website visitors, such as what pages they visit, how long they are on your website, how many visitors do you get each day/month/year, etc.

Top Website Content

Any way, let me get back on track with what I want to share in this post. Within the Google Analytics dashboard you can view your “Top Content”. These are the pages of your website that receive the most visitors.

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Event Tracking – Do you track the results of your marketing efforts?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Website Analytics

Let’s say you are hosting a teleclass and you are pulling out all the stops when it comes to marketing. You’ve outlined a complete marketing plan that includes promotion to your list, blog, social media, event listing sites, and more.

Whether the marketing requires a financial investment on your part (you pay a VA to do it for you) or you invest the time yourself to send out marketing messages it’s important to identify which marketing methods were effective and which were not.

This way the next time you host a teleclass you know what was worth your time or what you need to tweak for a better response the next time around. . . and maybe what you need to complete delete from the marketing plan in the future.

Event Tracking Tools

Tracking your marketing results in regards to an event is quite simple, it just requires a little preparation and organization on your part.

First, identify the web page where you will be sending traffic, such as http://yourwebsite.com/teleclass

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