In the mean time, stay tuned. I have a series of Facebook marketing posts coming soon.

1. Complete personal profile = 100%

First off make sure your LinkedIn profile is filled out completely. This is very important. They give you step-by-step instructions and tips. List your current and past employers. If you work for yourself or have a home based business you run along side your job, do list it! Be sure to include keywords if you are looking for new team members. For instance, if you sell Pampered Chef on the side, be sure to list it! Folks might be searching for a new consultant. Google and the other search engines do index the public profiles… so include this relevant information.

2. Use personal picture – professional looking shot please

LinkedIn is a PROFESSIONAL network. Do include a picture. Make sure the picture is as professional as can be. You don’t have to wear a suit, but you want to only include you. No pictures of you and your spouse. If someone was looking to hire you, they want to know who they are working with. They aren’t hiring you and your spouse or dog… they are hiring you. Make it count!

3. Customize your headline – keywords if possible

After your name, your headline is the next import piece of your profile. Therefore make it count! Find a few industry leaders to get examples. If you are a wahm, make it say something to that effect.

Here are a few examples:

• Urban Homesteading Consultant, Instructor, & Blogger
• Specializing in Anti-Aging Skincare Solutions and Customized Mineral Makeup; and Head-to-Toe Image Transformations
• Entrepreneur | Online Marketing | Home Based Business | Internet Marketing | Work at Home | Video Marketing | Marketing
• Farmer, laborer, jack of all trades, smiling prankster
• Storyteller, Humorist, Speaker

4. Vanity URL – ie www.linkedin.com/in/ElianEvans

Be sure to claim your url. It makes it much easier to share your LinkedIn address like this. Otherwise you get an html address that is hard to remember.

5. Connect!

There are many ways to connect with LinkedIn. The system will walk you through and help you find people you know. You can also use the search box and type someone’s name or keywords. You can import your contacts. Additionally you can search past employers (this is a great way to get some recommendations). There are also groups you can join and places where people ask questions. The ask place is a great way to share your knowledge, but also a great way to get a technical question answered. Try it out!

6. Recommend Folks

Another top LinkedIn Tips: be sure to give recommendations to folks you have worked with or done business with. If you give, folks are more willing to give back. Ongoing activity to your profile will get you found. If you want to be a leader for your industry, be sure to give recommendations and keep connecting. Spend a few minutes each week on LinkedIn and you will see results.

7. Meaningful Updates

Updates are like status updates on Facebook. However, here you want to be all about business. If you blog, be sure to share great business related tips here – either with a link to your post or just a quick tip in the status box.
If you run across great information online that will position you as a leader or someone willing to be a helper… be sure to post it to LinkedIn. Don’t always post your own content. Share authentic, good resources and your followers will thank you.

LinkedIn Tips Summary

By being active on LinkedIn you will gain followers and develop yourself as a leader and a person of influence. LinkedIn sends updates to members at least once per week. By being active the possibility of showing up in your network’s email will really boost your social standing… we call that social proof. The search engines love that too

7 LinkedIn Tips in review:

1. Complete your personal profile all the way
2. Use a professional personal picture
3. Customize your headline
4. Claim your Vanity URL
5. Connect with all kinds of folks you know
6. Recommend Folks
7. Provide Meaningful Updates

I hope you find these LinkedIn tips helpful!

My LinkedIn Profile

To view my profile, go to www.linkedin.com/in/ElianEvans

There are some basics to this “marketing thing” for small businesses and non-profits. Here is the list. Once you’ve mastered the basics. Then move onto more advanced techniques. Please note, you might have so much business after completing the basics that you won’t need to add the extra. It really just depends on your target market and your offerings.

1 – Id yourself

Identify very clearly what you do and what you offer. Don’t be generic here.

My father recently went through a business course for his farm and that is exactly what they had them do. Think of it as an “elevator speech.” If you could sum up what you do in 2-3 sentences, what would it be? Read it to yourself out loud. Does it sound right? Memorize it! Make sure you can repeat it quickly without thought. You want to sum it up so well that your raving fans can repeat what you say.

I had one organization that I used to interact with where every time you ask what they do, you get a totally different response. NOT GOOD!

2 – Id your ideal customer

Who is your target market? Who is most attracted to what you have to offer (and your personality or business culture as well)? Two people can offer the exact same service or product but relate to very different markets. You can look at your existing clients (especially repeat clients) to help here.

Find out where these folks gather. If they are online, GREAT. If not, then my tips won’t help you very much (because I focus on online marketing). If they aren’t online, should you possibly tweak your target market so you are connecting with those who might be interested in what you have to offer. Just an FYI, those online usually have more disposable income and more education. You are looking develop brand loyal raving fans that you can communicate easily with.

When I say easily communicate, I really mean that. In my personal life, I have a few dear friends that I love that aren’t on Facebook. It is extremely hard for me to include them in our activities since the majority of my family and friends are. When I have an event I do it through Facebook’s events. Yes, I try to email them to include them, but it’s hard. This is a challenge in the business world when folks aren’t online (aka using email). You need to be able to easily communicate!

3 – Polish and update

Take a look at your website. It needs to look professional, but reflect you and your business. Go look at websites that you like and tweak your look and feel to match or be similar. (If you don’t know where to look start searching in your industry.) Break large paragraphs into quick, easy to read bullets or smaller paragraphs. Add pictures. Add a “stay updated” sign up box so fans can get emails. I recommend MailChimp for this. It is super easy to set up.

Does your email address match your domain name? It should. This is a sign of professionalism.

Your social media profiles should coordinate with your website. This is part of branding. Use similar colors, logos and images. With Facebook’s new layout, take a great photo and add to your header. Pick one that set’s the stage for what you are about. Get some new photos if needed.

Don’t forget to look at your business cards and other promotional material. They should coordinate with your site and profiles as well. I always use VistaPrint for business cards.

4 – Activity sells

I’ve mentioned before, the search engines WANT… no they demand ACTIVITY on your website. The easiest way to do that is have a blog. Post to the blog at the BARE minimum of once per month. But ideally once per week. You can write 3-6 months worth of posts at a time and schedule them. It really is that easy. Post can be about anything relevant to your business that your fans would like.

5 – Automate

Use RSS Grafitti to auto post your blog to your Facebook page. Then if you use MailChimp, set up the RSS campaign to automatically send your blog posts to your list.

Intermediate Marketing Tasks

Once you have all of the above set up, then you can start working on other online marketing tactics. The above list WILL work for any business or non-profit… especially if your target market is online.

I recorded this week’s small business marketing accountability task. Please watch and comment.

So where can you get free images. Here are a few ideas:

• Wikipedia
• MorgueFiles
• Stock.xchng
• Open ClipArt
• Flickr – not all images though
• Photo Dropper Plugin for WordPress
• You can also shoot something yourself and transfer it to your computer.
• Infographics are made to be shared. These are graphic images with lots of text. They will usually have the creator’s website as part of the text. You may use these. Just google “infographic” and your keyword.

Here is an example of an infographic

Created by Customer Magnetism, an award winning Internet marketing agency.

If you need something specific and want a higher quality picture, I like to use Fotolia. These are not free images, but there is a lot of variety and they are inexpensive.

Some quick tips about photos

• For using on the internet, your photo’s resolution only needs to be 72 dpi
• Image size: the largest they probably need to be is and 600 pixel width. Usually in my blog posts I upload them at that size and then display them around 300 pixels.
• Crop out distractions and junk
• jpg or png files are recommended
• Try to use standard size photos or squares, avoid very wide pictures. The exception is if you are creating/using an infographic.

Easy photo editing:

The best site I’ve found online for editing pictures is http://pixlr.com. You can crop, resize and add text. It is free to use.

Most computers these days have some simple photo software on them. You can try that out. But you might want to use pixlr.com.

If you want a high piece of software that is free, try Gimp. It is open source and very similar to Photoshop.

Some notes from a previous post…

Creating Photos to Engage

With Facebook’s new design changes, the pictures on your profile page are more important than ever. The day I made the switch I realized that I didn’t have any pictures other than my profile. Yikes!

Be sure to have a nice cover image. This is the one across the top of your page. Limit the text.

Photo ideas:

• Products you sell
• Favorite customers, clients, vendors
• Create an ad (be wary of small type)
• Screen shots (PC function button + print screen)

Your challenge for the week:

Check out some of these resources and share pictures in your blog posts and/or Facebook pages. Look at what other businesses in your niche are doing. What kind of text are they using? What are they saying? How are they merging text and pictures so things are more effectively getting traffic from Pinterest, Facebook and LinkedIn to their websites? Make notes. I’d love to get your feedback/insight on our Facebook page.

Well, last weekend I headed to Austin, TX for a conference with a company I’ve been working with since last fall. We teach and sell internet marketing products so customers can learn to sell anything. You can learn more here… 

So now that I’ve caught my breath from the trip and am getting back into my routine… I’ve decided to fine tune some things.

Action Items

Do to limited time and re-prioritizing a few things in my life I am getting REALLY focused with my business.  I am limiting my time to spend it where I can get the most return. Here are a few things I am doing:

• I’ve unsubscribed from MANY of the enewsletters and email lists that I receive (my goal is a zero inbox at all times)
• I’m limiting my new projects
• When I have ideas for new projects I’m writing them down and letting them stew
• I’m limiting my volunteer activities
• I’m setting boundaries for my business so I don’t feel I’m working all the time
• I found one mentor to follow and I’m sticking with them for at least 6 months to get me to the “next level” in my business

I found the exact purpose last weekend for my business… and it might surprise you to hear it isn’t teaching others how to get better with online marketing (what I’ve spent the last 3 years doing).

My purpose and focus is to help inspire women step into their full potential, to get rid of the noise and distractions, and despite their challenges reach their goals and dreams… particularly using this business method.

So the only clients I will take on at this time is coaching clients. I will not build websites or do design or set up work for folks at this time.

The challenge for you

So I want our accountability challenge to change a bit. I am making it weekly instead of daily. Feel free to jump in and ask questions on our Facebook group.

Your challenge for this week:

• If you aren’t crystal clear on who you serve and why you serve them… figure it out. This goes along with our discussions on target market. Read Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid for help.
• What distractions in your life are keeping you busy, but not getting you closer to your financial goals? Read Tim Ferris’ 4 Hour Work Week for ideas.

I’d love to get your feedback. Please post to our Facebook group because the spam here is getting bad. You don’t see it because I delete the comments.

To your success!

~ Elian

As I stated on Day 2… keep your goals out in front of you. Put them where you will see them. Read them 2-3 times per day. I asked you to pick one goal (short or long term) and then post it, commit to it and think about it often.

So, how close are you? If you set an annual goal let’s break that down into a monthly goal. Did you set a sales or revenue goal? Divide that by 12 months… are you on target to reach it?

If you aren’t… lets look at why?

Maybe you aren’t giving your 100% effort to the goal.

Maybe you are finding you don’t have as much time to put into that goal. Take a look at your daily to do list. Is there anything you can delegate or get someone else to do to free up some of your time? Are you spending time on activities that make you feel busy but aren’t really getting you the results you actually need to achieve your goal. Consider taking a fast from those activities. Maybe consider getting a part time assistant or outsourcing a few key tasks that you are dragging your feet with.

I’m super excited about the outsourcing part in my life. I have many home and business projects that I’ve been putting off. Well I’m lining up the assistance I need this and next week so I can finally get them off of my to do list! Sites like Fivver.com and elance.com are two great resources for quick jobs or projects someone else can do (in part or entirely).

image source: http://themoreyouhave.blogspot.com

Yesterday we looked at identifying your target market…

Today let’s take a look at where you can reach them… it might not be what you think.

I just finished reading the 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. (Just a disclaimer… it’s not about working just 4 hours a week, although you can.) He goes into good detail about starting with the end in mind with regards to marketing a product. Let me explain.

Starting with the end in mind

Instead of creating a product or service and then going out and marketing the service, you start by identifying an easy to reach target audience and figuring out what problem you can help them solve. In Tim’s book, you begin by looking at magazines (online or offline).

Most of you reading this are local service oriented businesses. I recommend you read Michael Port’s Book Yourself Started because it helps with a lot of this as well.

So in your businesses, let’s look at what resources you have in your area. What publications are available? Do you have regional magazines or papers?

In my neck of the woods we have the following:

• newspapers
• tv
• cable tv
• radio
• Upstate Parent
• Coffee News (not sure if that’s the correct name)
• Natural Awakenings (local, but it is a national chain, you might have these around you)
• Edible Upcountry (local, but also is a national chain)
• real estate guides
• college newspapers
• bulletin boards at various restaurants and stores
• yellowpages

Think about things you receive in the mail. Newsletters from hospitals, ad inserts, etc.

You have local online places as well. Statewide we have sciway.net for general stuff.

So where am I going with this? Think about everything you offer now, pick a few of these publications that your target market might be consuming (online and offline) and study them. Are there other advertisers who offer similar services or products? What kind of articles do they have? Are they written by staff or contributors?

Business to business, or anything else

If you target market is other businesses or organizations what trade publications are available? Do they have places online that folks who make the buying decisions go to? For example, I used to do a lot of work in the construction industry for one company who was a manufacturer. They had a professional trade organization for their niche in the industry plus larger industry organizations like McGraw-Hill, and Thomas Register. There were also related organizations for Architects and General Contractors.

If you can’t reach your target market then you are wasting your time.

Your target market MUST be reachable. You don’t have the advertising budget of big brands like Coke or Pepsi.

Today’s assignment:

So, your homework today is to identify some of these publications/outlets/professional organizations. Make a long list and leave space to add to it in the future. If an organization, do they have a member newsletter or online presence? Today we will identify, later we will analyze. Share today any ah-ha moments or questions.

So last week Emily of Green Apple Food Therapy asked a very good question:

What are your recommendations for determining target audience? I really am not sure how to determine mine, because the service I offer is for “everyone.” That said, I know I need to narrow it down.

Here is a good article from DoSomething.org that should help.

Your brand should appeal to the people that you want to reach. Do you know who these people are? Determine the characteristics of the average viewer you want to engage.

1. Determine a demographic profile for your target audience.

• Age: What is the age range of the population who needs your service?
• Gender: Which gender would be most interested in this service?
• Income: What is the income level of my potential clients?
• Education: What level of education do they have?
• Martial Status: What is their marital or family status?

2. Determine the values and lifestyle of your target audience.

• What does your target market value most?
• Where do they get most of their decision-making information? Do they research the Internet, newspapers, books, or television?
• Are they first responders or followers? Will your target audience respond to something new, or wait for others to try it first?

3. Determine how you intend your target audience to interact with your service or product.

• How will your target audience benefit from your service or product?
• What do they like or dislike about your service or product in general?
• Is this a product or service they need (helps fill a basic need, food, shelter, etc) or a luxury item (may increase quality of life, but not essential)?

4. Create a target audience profile. Using your answers from the above questions create a prototype person from your target market.

• Give him or her a name, an age, and a job.
• Does he or she have a family?
• If so, how many children does he have?
• Where does she live?
• What are her interests?
• How much education does she have?
• What keeps her up at night?
• Write down the attributes of your prototype person.
• When advertising and marketing, keep the prototype person you created in mind.

Source: http://www.dosomething.org/u/how-to/how-to-find-your-target-audience

Some notes from one of my mentors:

Your target audience is probably going to end up being people similar to you… that makes it pretty easy to share your life, your stories etc… is your “target audience” so different from you as you understand them now?

WHO are those people? Are they women like yourself? What makes them tick, what do they want from business? from life? You aim at your target market to connect with them, for who they are… they will still have to know, like and trust YOU to believe what you’re recommending is a better option.

“Facts tell… stories sell”

When you tell a story people see your story, but they also see themselves and their problems through the story… when you find a solution in your story, they can see themselves also finding a solution (your solution)… definitely share YOUR stories.

Today’s assignment:

In your business notes, write out your target audience. If you have done this already, refine it. Think of this person as an avatar. You may even find a picture of this person, add her details and put it in a prominent location. Share here or in our private Facebook group what you’ve narrowed it down to.

Go find some content to share on your business Facebook page. Make it relevant to your target audience.

Don’t know where to go? Here are some ideas:

• if you are in the health field go to a popular website that you like such as www.mercola.com, find an article you like there ie. http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2013/01/11/proper-sitting.aspx
• if you are in the education field http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/
• direct sales or mlm - http://www.directselling411.com/

Here are the basic steps:

• in one tab open Facebook and go to your business page
• in another tab find a resource to share
• copy the full html/website address
• switch back to your Facebook tab and paste that address in the status update
• after Facebook loads the website, you can delete the address to make the post look cleaner. Add some comments if you choose.
• click post

Please note that many website have social share buttons on their site to make sharing to your page easier. It is good to know how to do it the “old fashioned” way as well as using the buttons. You still have to know how to post to your business wall instead of your personal wall.

Have a great weekend. Take some time to get caught up on this week’s assignments.  I’d love to hear your questions or comments either here or on our page.

~Elian