Today is Mardi Gras here is Lousiana… That means it is time to party!

In the spirit of celebration, I would like to offer you a very big Mardi Gras gift!

You know that I am a huge proponent of going to live events. This Mardi Gras, I am gifting you with the opportunity to go to two events for half the price of one. If you buy a half price ticket to Take Action Get Profits New Orleans (October 5-7), you’ll get a free ticket to my May conference – Extreme Income Explosion Secrets (May 3-5) in Salt Lake City. Claim your Mardi Gras gift here.

I’m also throwing in an audio on profiting from live events AND a Q&A session after Extreme Income Explosion Summit in May.

The main advantage of this two-fer offer (other than saving $500) is that you’ll get to truly build a relationship with the people who take advantage of this offer with you because you will see them at EIES and Take Action Get Profits and have a chance to network with a Q&A call between the two conferences.

I’m very excited about both events. At Extreme Income Explosion Summityou’ll get to learn in depth from a variety of experts and speakers. At Take Action Get Profits New Orleans, you’ll have an opportunity to take what you learned at Extreme Income Explosion Secrets and take it a step further.  I will be leading most of the sessions at TAGP New Orleans — and I will help you apply what you’ve learned.

Plus,  I have a great hotel for the New Orleans event — right in the center of downtown New Orleans.  There is lots to do and to see — and we plan on having some events outside of the hotel — so you can experience some of it.

Claim your Mardi Gras gift here.

Are you in Pinterest?  You should be.  Our guest poster,  GSMMA member and Pinterest expert shows you the ropes…

If you haven’t heard of Pinterest, it’s the hottest addition to social media!  Even though it’s still in the beta stage and the only way to use it is to be invited, it is hot, Hot, HOT!  If the statistics below don’t make you get off here and sign up then we need to have a serious talk!

Here are some of the recent stats on Pinterest:
*The fastest site in history to break through the 10 million unique visitor mark
*Average user time is 83 minutes!
*11.9 million unique visitors
*80% women
*Household income of 25k-75k

If this describes your target market, don’t finish reading this article until you have sent me an email  titled “Please Invite Me to Pinterest”. Once you have done that, come back and let me share more.

Pinterest’s mission:
“connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”

Pinterest is an online pinboard that allows users the ability to create boards and pin images to each board.  The amazing part is that everything you pin can be linked back to a website. So, whether you are pinning a recipe to your “Yummy Desserts” board or a book to your “Books Worth Reading” board it is probably linked to a website where you can read the whole recipe or purchase the book.

This creates so much opportunity for businesses.  Are you brainstorming yet?  Get a notebook and pen and put it on your nightstand because if you are like me, I brainstorm in my dreams!

To get started you must setup your account through an invitation as described above. It is simple but, if you need help, email me and I’ll send you a video tutorial that I’ve sent my clients.

Once setup is complete, I recommend looking around at some of your friends’ boards and pins to start. Keep in mind you can always change the names of your boards so, don’t get overwhelmed that you have to get it perfect the first time.  If you see a pin that you like, you can “Repin”, “Like”, or “Comment”.  Repinning will allow you to pin the image to one of your boards.  Still don’t be alarmed if you don’t have your boards setup, Pinterest allows you to create a new board anytime during a repin. “Liking” a pin will add it to your likes, but will not pin to a board. When you “comment” it allows you to link to facebook friends by using the “@” symbol just like you do in Facebook.

A few of my more popular boards are “Encouragement for WAHM” and “Social Media Tips & Training”.  My new favorite board is my “Dream Farmhouse”. Have fun with it at first and then start brainstorming for your business.

I’ve been studying Pinterest for a few months and have so much information to share.  Will you consider joining me for my last teleclass “Pinterest 201: Promoting Your Business”? It’s this Wednesday, Feb. 22nd at 10:00am EST and you can sign up at www.TrishaPhilbrook.com.  I will be teaching you how to link your website, inserting prices on products, finding friends, and strategically creating and placing boards on your page.  And as always, I leave plenty of time for questions.

Maybe you feel like you need personal one-on-one coaching with Pinterest.  If so, I’m offering a 30 day private coaching session for the first 5 clients that sign up. This session begins on March 1st.  The cost is only $297. Go over to my website and find out what I’m including in these 30 days. Remember, because of the time I pour into these private coaching sessions I’m only able to accept 5 clients in March.  For more information or to sign up for one-on-one private coaching for 30 days go to www.TrishaPhilbrook.com.
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Trisha is a successful work at home mom that has a passion for helping women in business succeed!  With three young daughters at home, she has learned how to balance work and family time although it is a weekly challenge.

You’ll want to check out her newest blog “Devotions for WAHM” where she offers daily encouragement. To find out more about her business and read her blog you can visit www.TrishaPhilbrook.com.

Here’s a great video from Shahar Boyayan of Buzzboosters about how to actually close the sale.  Hint – your call to action is not the most important part of your sales pitch.

One of the “best kept secrets” in internet marketing is affiliate programs.  I make a good portion of my income by promoting other people’s products — they also promote their products to their audiences.  I make money both ways.  When I promote someone else’s product I get a commission when they buy — when someone buys my product because someone else referred them I pay that person a commission.

Even if you have everything else in place – it is very difficult to make a lot of money in online marketing unless you work with other people.  The affiliate marketing system makes collaboration profitable for everyone. Affiliates make money by promoting and preselling the products and services of others.  Being a good affiliate is also a great way to meet those people who are just a bit further along than you are.  If you can help them even a bit — they are in a position to help you a lot.

The key to being a great affiliate is learning how to promote other people’s offers.  Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

Reviews

Reviews are one of the most powerful ways to promote affiliate offers. Before many people make a purchase, they look for product reviews to help them make a decision. They use reviews to compare features, prices, and of course to help justify their buying decision.

You can tap into this need by writing quality reviews for the products you represent. A good review will identify the product features and benefits. It will present all the pros and cons of the product in an honest light. Presenting your review in the most unbiased manner possible will help your readers trust you and what you have to say.

When writing your review, don’t make it sound or read like a sales page. They can read the company’s sales page. The review should be designed to presell the product. And of course, be sure to include a link or two to the product sales page so you can earn a commission.

Articles

Just like reviews, people read online to learn more about a problem they have or a desire they wish to fulfill. Articles, designed to inform and help people solve their problems will be read, passed along and linked to. When you include links in these articles to your affiliate products, you make sales. It is one of the strongest ways to promote affiliate products.

Publish articles on your website, as blog posts, in your newsletter or ezine, on partner websites and blogs and on article marketing sites that allow affiliate links.

Audio and Video

Just like articles, audio and video content is also a great way to promote affiliate products. Unfortunately, it is  tough to link to products in audio and video. That being said, there are ways to link in audio and video content and you can work around it by referencing a link to the product on your website or blog.

Reports and Ebooks

At this point you might be noticing a trend – content is a great way to promote affiliate products. Reports and ebooks offer a tremendous amount of value to the reader because they take a larger look at how to solve a problem. They’re more in depth than a standard article. For example a book or report on dog housebreaking is going to be a lot more detailed and potentially helpful than an article on the same topic.

Just like in an article, you would include links to relevant affiliate products in the reports and ebooks.

If you’re looking for surefire ways to promote your affiliate products, you can’t go wrong with content. Any form of content, as long as it offers your readers value and benefit, is a great vehicle for affiliate promotion. Get busy creating your content strategy today!\

Want to learn more about affiliate marketing – I recently recorded a free affiliate marketing class with Shahar and Nash Boyayan (the Buzzboosters).  Listen to the recording and learn more about affiliate marketing.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about video marketing.  I think that it is one of the most amazing yet misunderstood tools we as business owners have in our marketing arsenal.  I was just surfing through YouTube and found this great video from my friend Lou Bortone (a video marketing genius I might add).   I thought you might find it interesting.

Also known as JVs, Joint Ventures can take your business from zero to sixty in a very short time; which makes using JVs a very popular strategy for growing your business.

But the truth is that very few people really understand exactly what Joint Ventures are and how to successfully use them. Also, it’s very hard to find good, quality information regarding Joint Ventures which makes it even harder for people to get started. So I’m going to give you the scoop for being successful by using joint venture partnerships.

What are Joint Ventures?

The true secret to being successful with joint venture partnerships is to understand that a joint venture is a relationship building process. It’s very important that you understand what a real JV is, so that you know that you’re doing and understand how to really use JVs for your business.

A JV is where you come together with another person or persons to create something new. That something new could be a service, a product, or any number of things. Also, one misconception is that joint ventures are limited to online businesses. That’s simply not true and the same principles were going to discuss are just as relevant to offline business as well.

Advantages of Joint Ventures

Now let’s look at some of the advantages of doing JVs.

• Faster entry into the marketplace.

If you can do a joint venture with somebody who’s already got a presence in the marketplace, then you can actually piggyback on their established goodwill. You will be able to do it a lot faster if you team up with somebody who is already working in that particular niche market and who has already taken the time to establish a good reputation and goodwill with the people who are your target audience.

• Leverage skill sets that you don’t currently possess.

Another advantage of doing JVs is that you can leverage skill sets that you don’t currently possess. This can substantially speed up the JV process.

• Utilize your partner’s existing resources.

This gives you a huge advantage when you don’t have to start off at square one, or simply don’t have to do all the work from scratch. You partner may have websites or already trained subcontractors that can do many of the tasks needed. They may also have things like intellectual property that they’ve already created such as eBooks, videos or even webinar replays. These are just a few examples of resources that they might already have and that you possibly don’t, which can be leveraged through doing your joint venture.

• Expand your sphere of influence through association.

Joint venturing is also a great way for you to expand your sphere of influence through simple association. Your partner’s friends can now become your friends and so on.

One of the biggest reasons to do a JV is not just to get to know the person you do the JV with, but just by the fact of doing business with them, you’re doing to meet others that they do business with as well. And if you’re a good, honest, ethical business person, and present good opportunities to others, it’s pretty easy to leverage those relationships and to really get the ball rolling.

And it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the life coaching niche or whether you’re a veterinarian, the more friends you have, the more allies you have. Each time you roll out a new product, the better your chances are of having more and more people actually support you in that launch. The people who generally support you the most are the people that you have done joint ventures with in the past, people you’ve created products and services with or promoted their products and services as an affiliate.

These are the people who are the first ones to back you up. If you do this the right way, they absolutely will because people are a lot more likely to do business with people they’ve done business previously. They will be familiar with you and comfortable doing business with you.

To wrap up, Joint Ventures are an incredible tool for you to use for your business. While they are a tool in your business tool belt, remember the basis of all good joint ventures is building the relationship.

If you just take these simple action steps on a consistent basis, you’ll be well on your way with your JV endeavors. And, as with most things, the biggest thing is to really go out and start to do it. Set a long-term goal of getting five to ten JV partners in the next 12 months.

JVs can not only change your business but can be a real life changer as well because of the friends you will make and the business you will do together.

To learn more sales and marketing strategies, Sue has just written a book, “Zero Stress Selling: 5 No-Fail Strategies to Get More Clients and Fill Your Practice” and you can buy it at Amazon today. You can also download a free Special Report with more tips and techniques to fill your practice at Zero Stress Selling

Lately, I’ve been using Google a lot more in managing my business.  My main e-mail is a gmail account,  I communicate with my team using google docs, a check my website stats with Google Analytics and I post videos using You Tube.

Recently,  Google send me an e-mail that their privacy settings are changing.  Here is an outline of the changes from Google.  Essentially,  Google is streamlining their 70 different privacy policies (one for gmail, one for google docs, one for You Tube) and morphing them into one policy for all of Google.  They are also making your information available across platforms so that you can access “all things Google” with just one login.  On top of that, they made it easier to get your data from Google and transfer it to another service.

Here is my take on the new Google privacy policy.

The good: The privacy policy is now much more clear.  And, now there is only one document to read rather then 70+.  Additionally,  it is somewhat convenient to move seamlessly between Google products.  Also, google ads (and search results) will be even more tailored because google can base them off of data from all the services you use.

The bad: The “key to the kingdom” approach of having everything accessible under one umbrella makes it difficult to have different “personas” on different platforms.   I get that google wants to make it easy — but this makes having You Tube channels for different niches a bit for difficult.  It also makes it harder to delegate access to just “certain” parts of your business to your team.

The uncomfortable:  Yeah, I know that Google has all of this data about me already.  And, I mostly accept that as the cost of using their free products. (Side note: If you want to see what information google has about you – go to http://google.com/dashboard).  However, putting all the data together and having it used throughout the system makes my slightly nervous (but not   nervous enough to stop using Google).

What do you think of the new Google privacy policy?

Since I’ve been posting a lot about consistency lately, I thought I would share what the Buzzboosters,  Shahar and Nash Boyayan posted on the Global Social Media Managers Association blog about what it takes to be consistent at social media.  Let me know in the comments how often you are posting and if you agree with their guidelines… This is a question we get everyday with some variations. How often should I put a video on YouTube? How often should I blog? How often should I Tweet? How often should I update my status on Facebook? I can tell you how often you should post on social media environments when you are doing it for business. There is no rule on this topic but some tests have been done for optimum results. The world is not going to end if you cannot follow one of them. Remember social media marketing is a process and you have to set your goals to get attention from your market, not only visibility. Also take into consideration that you have to provide good content most of the time and 2% of the time have a call to action. Your audience needs to be educated on the fact that you are doing this for business and they should not expect everything for free. i know this is a touchy point but remember you are marketing a business and businesses need to have sales in order to have profits. Lead with good content but remind them of your business. Here it goes: Twitter: 8 to 18 posts a day. Twitter has a short shelf life. Facebook: No more than 3 posts. YouTube: 3 a week (for generic videos, not a Web Show) Blogs: Once a day.  

Yesterday, I wrote about my new free video series.  Thank you to everyone who has written in to give me some great comments.  I’m glad you are enjoying them and learning some new strategies for marketing your business with social media.

In today’s video, I’m going to share my two favorite social media strategies.  One strategy is for doubling your website traffic with Linked In — the other is my 3 step Facebook fan page strategy.  Individually, both of these strategies are helpful — together – they form the a solid foundation for an effective social media strategy that positions you as an expert in your niche.

The video also talks about how you can actually monetize your social media efforts and easily form relationships and collaborations to build your business.

Check the video out by signing up here.

Are you using social media effectively in your business?  According to recent surveys, the majority of small businesses have a social media presence of some sort (a Facebook page or a Linked In profile) but a very small minority are actually posting anything to social media on a consistent basis.

When asked why they don’t post more often, business owners respond that they either aren’t getting the results they want or they never had time to “learn” the right steps in the first place.
If you are like most business owners I talk to, you are either spending a lot of time with little i

Yet, if done right,  smart social media *saves* you time because it allows you to target, meet and build relationships with your prospects much more quickly than traditional networking events.

What if I were to tell you that there are some definite shortcuts to creating an efficient and effective social media strategy?

After a bit of trial and error, I’ve discovered an easy 5 step system for cashing in on your expertise using social media.  I’m making it available to you as three half hour videos this week.

To get the videos, all you need to do is click here and put your name in the sign up box so you’ll get notified as soon as each new video is posted. I’ll be posting one each day for the next three days.

Here’s what people had to say about video #1:

“Wonderful tips in a very clear and concise video! You are very gifted in your ability to share something which can be very complicated, in a very simple and easy way.

Thank you very much and I look forward to watching the next 2 videos.” – Kellie Hosaka

“Great tips Michele! Even though I do this on a daily basis I still took some great notes on everything and came away with some strategies to add to my social media marketing! Thanks! Can’t wait for the next video!” – Kate Wilber