Pat and Lorna's Blog

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – Breaking Through Roadblocks to Content Optimization

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:23:41 +0000

Getting started in optimizing your business content is not without its roadblocks, many of them internal blocks. Breaking through these blocks will require an honest self-evaluation of where you are right now in regards to your content.

Are you stuck in a context comfort zone?

You’re a programmer at heart, and all you know is websites. Or live teaching is a snap for you, but you freeze at the thought of putting words on paper. It’s inevitable that we would want to stick with the context that we know inside-out, but content optimization won’t happen if you don’t diversify your contexts. Albert Einstein once said doing the same thing, while expecting different results, is a definition of insanity. It’s just not going to happen.

Consider your market. If all you do is books, those who don’t like to read as their primary learning modality in your market are shut out from benefiting from the information you have to offer. If you only blog, those who aren’t primarily kinesthetic in their learning style will never get your message. For their sake (and your own), try new and different context formats.

To un-stick yourself from your comfort zone, remember that each new reworking of your content into a new context is likely to bring new insights and improvements you might not have considered before. Your content will be stronger than ever, and gain a wider market, which will bring more profit your way. It’s well worth the struggle to move beyond your comfort zone. Never invent – always improve.

Do you suffer from context confusion?

It’s so easy to become overwhelmed. Where do I start? Which context do I choose? Some decisions will have to be made. Begin asking yourself the 6 questions for content optimization:

Who in my market is this going to reach?
What context will the content be in?
Where does my market want this content?
When is my market going to consume this content?
Why is it important for my market to get this content?
How do I get my content into this context?

It’s a good way to slow down and focus on the first steps you’ll need to take to start optimizing your content.

Do you have a multiple context personality?

Maybe, instead of getting blocked, you go hog-wild with newfound enthusiasm. You start a book on Monday, then a teleseminar on Tuesday, and after that a new website on Wednesday. The only result is that your efforts are spread too thin, often spending all your time on tasks you’re not really good at or suited for, while you don’t have time to build on your strengths.

If this is the block you have to get past, then it’s time to consider outsourcing. Seek out experts and solicit their assistance. It’s not efficient to try and master all the skills that need to be mastered in context transference of your content, when others can do it for you. Focus on and build your strengths, and outsource your weaknesses to others who would play at what you would have to work at.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Pat and Lorna Shanks are "SPECTACULARIZERS" of great audio content. They teach entrepreneurs, independent professionals and small business owners how to attract more clients and make more money using Spectacular Presentations and Robotic Internet Marketing. For more "Spectacularizer Tips", go to www.PatAndLorna.com or follow us on Twitter.

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – Creating and Finding Content

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:03:33 +0000

When your business is information marketing, your product is content – lots and lots of content. Trying to slide by without lots of quality content is like trying to run your car without maintaining it – you’ll run for awhile, but eventually you’re facing disaster. How do you gather content for your business?

Here are some ideas that we recommend:

Do it yourself

If you don’t happen to be made of money, you can try writing your own content. This is a hard option for some, and one that can derail many a beginning entrepreneur with the sheer volume of the project, depending on the project.

Outsourcing to the rescue

You can hire others to write personalized content for you – namely a ghostwriter. Don’t try to do everything yourself, when it’s not your strength. Know in advance that this is a more expensive option…one that can cost you hundreds of dollars for a not-terribly-impressive amount of work. Hey, writers have to make a living too.

Take your time to find someone who you can successfully work with, and who will produce great content for you. You can have your ghostwriter create content from general topics. If you want more specific work, it helps to provide notes and research, whenever possible.

Article directories

Another way of finding content for your site is to go to article directories. There are many to choose from on the Internet, and many of them allow you to use their articles for free or for a small charge. Sites such as Ezine articles and Article Dashboard can provide content for you. The downside to promoting duplicate content on your website could be lowered page rank in the prominent search engines. Make sure to monitor your results when using content from these sites.

Private label content

Private label content is another option. You find a membership site where private label content is offered. Get what you need and apply it to your website – no writing required. That’s not to say that there’s no reading required, however. Before you purchase pre-made content, always read it first to make sure it’s the right quality level of writing that you require, as well as appropriate to the content you’re trying to market.

You may also want to do a search of the Internet to see how many other areas have the same content you’re considering. If your content isn’t unique, you’re going to have a difficult time drumming up reader interest and having them want to return.

Reconsider the written word for the spoken word

Written words are showing no signs of dying out anytime in the near future, but we have other ways of providing content as well. If you’re developing severe writer’s block when it comes to writing your own content, have you tried speaking it instead? Record yourself speaking what you want to write about, and then simply transcribe your own ideas, in your own voice, or hire someone else to do it for you. What could be more original?

Create a process that is ongoing

Information marketing thrives on newness. Whatever way you get content for your business – whether it’s created by you or by someone else – plan on a regular schedule of updates, to keep your business evergreen.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – Creating and Finding Content

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:01:05 +0000

When your business is information marketing, your product is content – lots and lots of content. Trying to slide by without lots of quality content is like trying to run your car without maintaining it – you’ll run for awhile, but eventually you’re facing disaster.

How do you gather content for your business?

Here are some ideas that we recommend:

Do it yourself

Outsourcing to the rescue

Article directories

Another way of finding content for your site is to go to article directories. There are many to choose from on the Internet, and many of them allow you to use their articles for free or for a small charge. Sites such as Ezine Articles and Article Dashboard can provide content for you. The downside to promoting duplicate content on your website could be lowered page rank in the prominent search engines. Make sure to monitor your results when using content from these sites.

Private label content

Reconsider the written word for the spoken word

Create a process that is ongoing

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – Six Easy Questions to Content Optimization

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:06:04 +0000

It’s easy enough to understand the need for content optimization, but how to do it? There are so many choices of context that it’s very easy to become overwhelmed, and either end up doing too much and spreading yourself thin, or never getting started in the first place.

There are some organization questions you can ask yourself when getting started in the process of content optimization. These questions can focus your efforts and help you make the most of your time and investment in content optimization.

Here are what we call the six easy questions to content optimization:

1) Who in my market is this going to reach?

It’s important to consider the demographics of your market and how they’re going to receive your content. If you have information published in a book, who is likely to read a book? Who might not? Books reach a certain kind of consumer, while television commercials reach yet another, and podcasts and websites reach another. Where are you most likely to achieve success with your content, considering your market?

2) What context will the content be in?

Where will your content be most effective? Not all kinds of content successfully translate to all contexts. A mime show won’t make much of an impact on the radio, but in a live seminar, it could be very effective as a visual illustration of a spoken point. Are you aware of the different kinds of contexts that are available? You may need to educate yourself on your options, so as to be able to reach as much of your market as possible.

3) Where does my market want this content?

Everything done in business has to respond to the needs and wants of the market if you want to have any hope of being effective in your efforts. Would your book work better as a series of shorter articles? Perhaps you would wish to consider such a method if you’re marketing content to a demographic of people who are known to be very busy and not likely to take time to sit and study a book. Maybe you could do a series of autoresponder messages instead, or make your information available online in a way that could be accessed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

4) When is my market going to consume this content?

Time of day can be a factor. If you’re running television or radio ads, and your market is mostly at work when those ads are being aired, they’re not going to be as effective as you may want. Would evenings be better? Lunchtime? Weekends? Should it be available in a format that could be found anytime, or would a specific, targeted time be more effective?

5) Why is it important for my market to get this content?

What are the reasons? Where is the need that you’re ready to fill for your market? Why are you interrupting their day at work or at home to share this information with them? What will be the benefit to them?

6) How do I optimize my content into this context?

Here’s where you get down to the technical details…how to move your content into the context you’ve chosen. There are techniques and tools for each kind of context, and you’ll have to understand the workings of each and get comfortable in that format in order to succeed.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – Researching Content and Knowing When to Stop

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:36:50 +0000

Research is so much easier now than it was before the Internet came along. Much of your information content research can be done on the Web. However, the Internet is so deep and wide that it’s easy to get lost in webpage after webpage, looking for the information you need.

The following are some research tips for those who are looking to create useful content:

Define your content sharply…

If your research topic is broad, your job is a lot harder than it is when you're more specific. Doing research on “apples” will take months and years, while research on “diseases that specifically affect Granny Smith apples” is much more focused, and the research is not nearly as daunting.

If your knowledge on the broad topic is sketchy at best, then checking out the broader topics will be necessary until you come across an angle you can use to cut away the information you don’t need. When Leonardo da Vinci was asked how he made his carvings, he indicated that the statue was already in the stone, he just cut away everything that wasn’t the statue. Your content is out there… it’s your job to cut away all the unnecessary information to find the content you need.

When to go deeper into your research:

Once you find the topic that needs researching, your research should start to center around questions. When you’re scanning through other content, take notice of what information isn’t there. What questions are coming to your mind when you think of that specific topic? What would be useful to your market? Getting those questions answered will peel away all other information that isn’t useful to you, and get you closer to what you need.

Remember that your market has questions; sometimes even questions they haven’t put into words yet. The more questions you can anticipate, the more knowledgeable and credible you will be to your market, and the more useful your content will be.

When to get offline when researching:

Not all valuable content is on the Internet. It’s time to go offline to do your research when you’re unable to find a credible answer in the different websites you go to. The key word here is credible. If you want your content to be taken seriously, it has to be reliable and credible.

Reliable and credible content doesn’t come from someone who throws up a website and claims they know what they’re talking about, when they have no specific expertise and no credible organization as their sponsor. Anyone can put an opinion on the Web. When you can’t find reliable sources to answer your questions, step away from the computer and pick up the phone or visit the library instead.

When to stop research:

There does come a time when research becomes procrastination. If it’s time to write, but you’re still doing research, it’s time to sit down and produce content. Researching to specific questions will go a long way towards reducing the tendency to procrastinate. It also helps to set deadlines when the content has to be ready. If you get into your topic and you’re finding lots of interesting information, make a note to yourself to continue your research…AFTER the specific content you need is produced.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – Does Your Content Result in Sales?

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:20:23 +0000

You’ve got your content presented, ready for people to benefit from it, and you’re marketing diligently. So… how do you know your content is being effective? That is the golden question, and one that’s very difficult to answer, simply because information marketing hits so many different places. Unless you ask your customers directly (which isn’t always practical), it’s hard to know how many times they were exposed to your content and from what directions. Your customers may not even know themselves.

So how can you tell if any one kind of content you’re presenting is as effective as it could be?
The following tips may help:

Make a simple marketing chart

Your information content is meant to steer the market to buy what you’re providing. If you’ve communicated effectively, then purchases will happen. A simple chart with three columns can give you the general idea of whether or not you’re going in the right direction.

Create a three-columned chart. In the first column, list the month and year of your business activities. In the second column, list any and all marketing activities you did. In the third column, list your sales figures.

It’s best to begin with specific content in place, and track results for at least six months before you draw any conclusions and make any changes. This is business research. If you were working on a science experiment, you know that changing the control part of the experiment will keep you from understanding the results. Too many changes will muddy your marketing results. If the sales figures increase or decrease as a result of changes, you won’t know why they happened if too many factors changed too quickly.

While seasonal changes and other economic factors are too complicated to achieve really specific results, this process can help you to get a ballpark idea of the impact of your content in the marketplace.

Feedback from customers

Other factors to consider are your bounce rate (“bounce” meaning how many people click on your site and then immediately click away, instead of interacting with your content). A high bounce rate could indicate that either the content of your site needs improving, or the layout needs to be manipulated to optimize the impact of your existing content. A low bounce rate could mean a higher customer interaction with your content, and could potentially lead to greater sales figures.

The great thing about doing business online is that feedback can be set up to be immediate. If your customers don’t like something, the anonymity that the computer provides will provide you with lots and lots of recent, raw feedback.

If you want to know where content can be improved, looking for patterns in the feedback your content receives can be very eye-opening and, if acted upon, can lead to greater customer satisfaction, which leads to greater sales. It can also create new, specific ideas that can lead to the creation of great new content, which is what your market is hungry for.

Ultimately, remember that the main feedback you’re looking for is the monetary kind. Who’s buying? When? Why? Would they buy again? How could you entice them to buy again?

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – Helping You Decide How to Optimize

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:55:41 +0000

Making the decision to optimize your business content involves other decisions as well. The one major decision to make involves how specifically to make that change. How that is done partially depends on what form your content currently takes.

We have simplified content optimization into four distinct types. Here are what we call the four R’s of Content Optimization:

Re-use – using the same content in different places

Just because content is already in one context doesn’t mean it can’t move to another. Let’s suppose for this illustration that we’re dealing with a person who’s written an article on weight loss, and wants to optimize their content. The easiest change to make might be to simply take the same information and put it in different places. The information from the article could be updated slightly and moved over (or re-purposed) into a blog, or an ezine article. If the article was posted online, the same article could be posted to different directories, which would then get referenced on different blog posts.

Re-purpose – moving the same content to a different context

Suppose that this same author wanted to expand on the weight loss article that had been written, and transfer this information to a completely different context. A teleseminar on weight loss might be considered, which would incorporate more audio, bringing in a completely different audience. An interactive video could incorporate the written word and audio recordings, and perhaps also a fill-in-the-blank worksheet, which would incorporate visual, audio and kinesthetic stimulation for a more well-rounded learning experience for the market.

Re-package – revising the same content for a different market

The same weight loss article could appeal to a wider audience if the content were refashioned towards a different angle or demographic group. Perhaps the article on weight loss could be pointed towards beginners or those who had already lost weight and were trying to keep it off. Maybe the article could be slanted towards weight loss professionals, on how to be more effective with their clients.

Remember that content is only as valuable as the relationship it has to the market. In the final analysis of your content’s effectiveness, the market is the key. The most important thing is that the market “gets it”. Coming to the market is your responsibility, not the other way around.

Re-cycle – using the same content on a regular cycle

This same weight loss article might be set on some sort of cycle. It could be repurposed into a series of emails, setting a year’s worth of weight loss tips on a 52-week autoresponder system. The material could be conceived into a course (online or offline) that repeats itself every few months. Making regular blog posts on weight loss at regular periods of time would also be a way of recycling your content at regular intervals.

Bonus way to use content – Re-peat all of the above

Everything old is new again. Content can be repurposed and repeated for maximum impact. Make it better, and bring it out again. Lather, rinse and repeat. Continue to expose your content to the market again and again, finding new customers on each exposure. The only limit to repurposing your content for maximum optimization is your own imagination.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – Avoiding Duplication

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:04:36 +0000

Duplicate content abounds online and offline and presents a challenge to the information marketer. If the same perspective and even the same words are being presented over and over again when someone in your market does a search for information, then what distinguishes you from the hundreds of others websites saying the same thing? Why should they return to you for more information?

The following questions can help you in avoiding too much duplicate content:

Can I add something different to the conversation?
You always have your own expertise and perspective to add that is unique. What questions have you noticed that aren’t being addressed about your topic? What questions aren’t being sufficiently answered?

Does my content answer questions or provide information my market needs?
The way to success in any business is still the same, whether on or off the computer… see a need, and fill that need. When your business is information marketing, what information does the market require to fill a need? Do you have that information, and can you provide it in a way the market can understand and assimilate it?

Can you make connections between old and new information?
The basic mode of learning in any field is to take new information and connect it to older information. This provides a basis of understanding that builds on the past and prepares for the future. Does your content provide that for your customers? Is your content presented in a way that its importance is comprehended by the potential market?

Can you present a viable alternative to the way something’s been done in the past?
Improvements in systems fill a great need for better ways of doing things. Differentiation of your online pages will help you to be found more easily when those in your market use the different search engines. Make your presence as uniquely yours as possible, so that you will be remembered and more easily distinguished from other information marketing businesses similar to yours.

Can you present reasons why this content is important?
Sometimes you may have to present the reasons why your market needs your information, since they may know of the problem but have not properly defined it yet. Provide that definition for them and they’ll rush to find your answers.

Have you balanced information with persuasion?
In the information marketing business, content marketing is often more effective than interruption marketing (i.e. commercials). That doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t tell your customers about what you have to offer them, and guide them gently to the “Buy” button. Remember what, where, when, how, and why when you’re providing your content. Give them the reasons to go there. Provide answers to questions they may have, so any possible objections can be overcome. Don’t make what you have to offer a mystery, or make it difficult in any way to be obtained.

Sales and the bottom line are your barometers to determine whether or not your content is truly effective within your market. Avoiding too much duplication will increase your effectiveness with customers.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – How to Create Fresh Content

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:00:38 +0000

Content creation is an unending job. It can be difficult to create fresh content on the internet, which has become a barrage of websites and articles. With so much information out there, it can become difficult to find a unique approach that will enlighten and intrigue your audience.

What Will Hook Your Audience?

If you can find that rare perspective that hasn’t been explored beyond the boundaries of usefulness, you will be able to captivate your audience and accomplish the goals you are working toward. This can be a daunting and unnerving task. It requires one to look for information outside of the box.

Where Is Outside the Box?

• Blogs - Along with putting blogs on your website, you can also research for content on other people’s blogs. By visiting a number of blogs related to the topic you are writing about, you can find people’s opinions, references to other sites containing information that may interest you, as well as many interesting facts. You may be able to post to a blog and ask for opinions about a particular subject and obtain your own survey results from that.

• Social Sites – Another unexpected place that you may find excellent content are sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, and the like. Use caution in this area. Although you can find fresh information, you must verify its validity before you end up providing incorrect data to your reader.

• Off-Internet Documents– Because the internet is so easy to use and convenient, most people limit their research to internet options only. Therefore, if you leave the web to find your content, there’s a good chance that you may have a fresher view. Don’t be afraid to use newspapers, magazines, reference books, pamphlets and brochures that you may pick up anywhere out in the public domain. Depending upon the topic you are researching, government offices and supporting offices may have useful material that they are willing to give you.

• In Person – There is still no substitute for human contact. If you have the opportunity to discuss your topic with an expert either via telephone or in person, don’t pass it up. Taking information from a personal interview with a guru is always fresh. Since no one else will have the exact conversation that you will, you have an edge.

There are roads less traveled on the content creation journey. If you take the extra effort and seek them out, you will find opportunities to produce top quality, reusable content that will enthrall your reader and draw them back time and time again. When you produce return visitors on a regular basis, you know you’ve created content that is among the best.

Are you up for the challenge? Do you have enough desire for top notch content to go the extra mile to search it out? The results can be very fulfilling and benefit you in multiple ways. Dig in and create some content that you can be proud of!

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – The Human Touch or a Digital Creation?

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:22:25 +0000

Creating content is a necessity in the Internet world. The cost of the tools may have dropped considerably, but the value of your time continually increases. Creating content can be as easy as editing text with the help of modern text editors; however that depends upon your standard of quality.

There are programs out there that claim to create high quality articles out of thin air for you. However, it doesn’t take much article reading to find that there are plenty of articles out there that have poor grammar and don’t really seem to make sense. Much of this comes from software that doesn’t have the human ability to blend the information that has been accumulated into a logical, flowing, and interesting series of words, sentences, and paragraphs.

Creating content is easy, and can be done by a computer program. Creating intelligent, reusable and quality content is not quite so easy and requires human participation. Creating content can be the fun part of designing your website. This is where you get to add everything you want to share with the world on your site.

Suggestions on how to gather your content information…

• Researching newspapers, magazines, books, and other forms of hard copy.
• Interviewing or questioning those that are in the know regarding the topic that you wish to write on.
• There are many facets of online research to choose from, which include search engines, article sites, blogs, social sites, and statistical sites maintained by governmental and other such bodies of authority.

What to do with the research?

Once your research has been completed, you then integrate the information from all of your sources, along with any that you retained from personal experience, organize it into categories and present it in a logical and appealing manner. Your presentation must flow fluidly from paragraph to paragraph and it all must relate to your main topic.

This is where the content creating software falls short. It doesn’t have the ability to take the information and group it into categories and flow effortlessly from one paragraph to the other. Often times, the sentences are choppy and broken with grammatical errors. A paragraph or sentence will sometimes seem as if it doesn’t really fit the theme of the whole article.

Five Steps to Creating Quality Content:

1. Decide on your topic and keywords.
2. Research your topic using any or all of the sources mentioned above.
3. Decide on one or a handful of points that you wish to expand on in the article.
4. Categorize and organize the information that you’ve collected.
5. Present your information in an appealing, logical, and flowing manner.

Creating content can be time consuming and may seem futile in the beginning. However, you will find that if you commit to steadily producing quality content, you will reap the rewards of your efforts. A software program can produce the appearance of paragraphs and may sometimes even have one or two pieces of valuable information, but there is no substitute for the human brain when it comes to creating QUALITY content.

SMART Goals

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:01:25 +0000

(Click on above Image for larger size)

At the start of each new year we sit down to write our yearly goals.

There are many, many ways to write goals… and many opinions on what works best. We have found one way to write goals that in our opinion makes a whole lot of good sense. We write our goals as SMART goals.

What are SMART Goals? As outlined in the mindmap above and in the descriptions below, SMART Goals are…

S	=	Specific
M	=	Measurable
A	=	Attainable
R	=	Realistic
T	=	Tangible

Specific: There is a greater chance of achieving a specific goal than a general goal. For a goal to be specific, answer the six "W" questions:

Who: Who is involved?
What: What do I want to accomplish?
Where: Identify a location.
When: Establish a time frame.
Why: Specific reasons or benefits of accomplishing the goal.

Measurable: Determine a concrete way to measure your progress towards the attainment of each goal. To determine if your goal is measurable, ask questions such as: How much? How many? How will I know if I achieve this goal?

Attainable: If the goals you set are important to you, you will start to figure out ways to make them come true. You will develop the attitude, abilities, skills and financial capacity to reach them.

Any goal is achievable if you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you the space to carry out those steps. Goals that seemed out of reach become attainable because you grow to match them.

Realistic: For a goal to be realistic it has to represent something that you are both willing and able to work towards. A goal can be high and realistic… it all depends on you. Make sure that each goal leads to substantial progress. If a goal is set too low, there may be little motivation to reach it. A goal is realistic if you truly believe it can be achieved.

Tangible: A goal is tangible if you can experience it with one of the senses… taste, touch, smell, sight or hearing. If a goal is tangible it is easier to make it specific, measurable and attainable.

To make it easier for you to reference SMART goals and the criteria behind them, we have provided the following for your convenience:

SMART Goals as a PDF document

SMART Goals as an Interactive Flash File

ENJOY!

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Happy New Year!

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:00:55 +0000

It's a New Year, and as always it is associated with new beginnings and new possibilities. What a great feeling that is! It's like starting with a clean slate or a level playing field with endless opportunities.

And of course it is the time for resolutions, plans and the setting of goals. Not only do people set personal goals, they set business goals as well. Great! It is much easier to direct a business when there's a plan or "road map" to follow.

Along with all the "usual" plans for a business…

What products are we going to produce and offer?

What pricing are we going to set on these products?

What's our marketing plan?

… an essential question to ask is "What is the focus of our business?"

Believe it or not, there is one answer to that question that can apply to any and all businesses.

That answer is… "To provide value to our customers."

Business success would be much more prevalent if this simple motto was followed.

This motto has been and will continue to be the focus of our business at TheCoolestCouple.com.

So to all we wish a Happy and Prosperous New Year! May 2010 be all that you hope for and much, much more.

We would also like to thank all of our friends, clients and customers for the blessing of having you touch our lives. You are all very much appreciated.

To a Spectacular 2010!

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – Researching Information Online

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:23:36 +0000

Creating quality content requires a human touch and can be a costly expense. It’s hard to financially justify spending your time and energy on writing every-day content as profit-gain from content is only measurable over time. However, it is a worthwhile endeavor that will pay off in the long-run.

It is best if you create your own content in establishing yourself as an expert in your niche. It is important to consistently compose current and accurate content that will draw in today's online consumer. As well… to be successful you must build an atmosphere of enjoyment.

One way to get the basis for your content is to research other online sources.

One method of gathering information for your content is to research sites online. It is easy to find a handful of sites where you can research facts, figures and information that relate to your topic, and then collect, organize and expand on it to create an informative and pleasing conglomeration of all of the collected information.

Steps to Creating Content using Online Sources:

1. Choose a topic and keywords -

2. Choose the sites to research - The next step is to visit a handful of sites that focus on the keywords you have chosen. The most popular sites can easily be found through any of the major search engines. After reviewing some of the sites matching your criteria, select three to six sites that have information that is appealing to you as a reader. If the information is appealing to you, it will most likely be appealing to others.

3. Take notes - Take brief notes from each of the sites you’ve chosen, calling attention to the points of interest that you wish to expand upon.

4. Organize – Put your notes into categories and group facts that apply to the same point of interest. This will help you to make paragraphs that flow fluidly and help your readers to understand the point.

5. Prepare Your Content For Presentation – Now that you have all of your information collected and categorized, it is time to present it. Be sure to integrate your keywords into any subtitles and throughout your text in a natural conversational manner. Do not over-use the keywords or phrases as this will put off your reader.

Creating content should be your job. However, researching for content information can be delegated or outsourced to others. If you actually enjoy the research and going through the steps to create the final product, then go for it! If you're enthusiastic about going through the whole process of content creation, you will produce an informative and entertaining final product that will attract and retain your reader. After all, this is the ultimate goal of your masterpiece isn’t it? Have fun.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – Setting High Standards for Quality Content

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:00:58 +0000

In the past several years, article writing for website promotion has become a plague. There are so many more articles out there today than even two years ago that it is becoming common place to read low quality articles that were not ever proof-read before being published. Many have grammatical errors, spelling errors, or broken English. Some have obviously been written by software programs because they have strange symbols in mid-sentence.

Articles have become an onslaught of keywords and key phrases with little attention paid to the content value. People are just looking to increase their website rankings by having more links to their site. This tends to leave readers frustrated and annoyed – not good for traffic creation.

Raising the bar on content standards…

Don’t flow with that crowd. Make your articles count. Help raise the bar regarding content standards. It is necessary to provide your readers with information they didn’t have previously or a new perspective on the topic. It is hard to find new resources for information because the internet is flooded – some good, some not so good.

Where can you capture high quality content?

One place that you may be able to get a new perspective on your topic of interest is from video conferences and video lessons that are offered on the internet. It has become increasingly popular to produce video lessons and conferences or interviews online. Many are through opt-in lists or free memberships. If you are willing to subscribe, you may have a new content resource that will raise the standard of your articles.

Make sure you’re within your rights.

This gives you a perfect opportunity, but always be sure to inform your reader that the information is taken from a particular lesson or conference and be certain that you are not violating any copyright laws. In some cases, it may be necessary to obtain permission from the producer of the conferences or lessons before creating your article.

Depending upon your subject, you may be able to get some very good information from television too. With all the channels now offered, you can usually find information on just about any topic at some time throughout the day.

Once you are certain that you are within your rights and not violating anyone else’s rights, sit down, listen up, and start taking notes. Just like in school, take good notes and be sure that you get your information correct. If you specifically quote someone, be sure that you give the appropriate reference and credit. One of the benefits of the recorded lessons is that you can rewind and be sure that you get your facts straight.

As we mentioned before, the quality of content has greatly diminished over the past couple years. It is now more important than ever to be sure that your facts are correct, your grammar is better than average, and you offer some information of value. Those that actually have high quality articles will shine above the rest and create more traffic to their sites.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Connections and Relationships… And Other Things We Are Thankful For

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:13:23 +0000

As we sat here in the comfort of our home office, we thought about how thankful we are to have a house to live in. Others are not so fortunate… they do not have a place to call home.

So then we asked ourselves… what else do we have to be thankful for? A LOT!

We've outlined a few of the things we're thankful for in this mindmap:

So who said Thanksgiving comes around only once a year? We can be thankful (grateful) for what we have all year round. Think about and write down what you are thankful for, it's a very uplifting experience.

For us, our connections and relationships are especially important. On a daily basis we connect with so many people… in person as well as through all the wonderful social sites and technologies. Without even really being conscious about it, we are continually connecting with others.

These people teach us, support us, enable our success, bring us more joy… and basically complete us as human beings.

That is why on our blog we invite you to "Be Social With Us"! It is also the reason we organize and manage our relationships inside our knowledge maps. It is important for us to develop new relationships and to keep our established relationships alive.

It's all about relationships… how do you stay connected?

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Creation Tips – Your Business Website

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:21:17 +0000

Websites are usually built to resemble company brochures. Websites are a core ingredient to nearly any type of business. They are easily the number one resource people use to learn about you, your products and services. They allow people to do research and review products before they make a decision. Websites that are popular and profitable are useful.

New and unique content…

You really have to find and magnify the unique value that your company provides and do something innovative. The quality of a page and the uniqueness and value of its content is the sole responsibility of each Webmaster.

Often sites are designed with idea that the ideal content can be created and maintained past initial launch without making any major changes. This is rare. For your website to not only attract initial traffic, but to also retain its visitors, the content of its pages as well as outside articles that direct traffic to it must be kept current. This is a tremendous and continuous task.

What type of content should I provide?

When you build a website, you want to create content that will help your reader in some way, shape or form. However, you have to be cautious that you are not so helpful that you turn an otherwise would-be client into a do-it-yourselfer. It is up to you to decide when your content provides too much information and much of that will depend upon the type of business that you are in.

For example, if you run a roofing company and have a website that is designed to secure clientele, you would choose your content accordingly. You may want to create articles that will help your potential customers decide on the best type of roofing material for their particular roof. The business owner may even decide that it would be acceptable to provide articles that give step by step instructions for doing a certain type of minor repair, knowing that if you help a would-be client to save money by doing their own repair, they may well turn to you when it’s time to replace the entire roof.

Where can I obtain content?

While you may be able to find information on the internet to create content, you want the content to line up with your business’s advice to your clients.

To determine what content to use for your site, start by asking yourself lots of questions. Each time you see content of interest; ask yourself if that topic or idea could apply well to your own business. Take notes for each and every article that you want to include in your site. Put the information into a useable and educational form that will benefit the reader and create trust in the company.

Content creation is your responsibility.

The responsibility for the content of your site and any outside sources that you create to direct traffic to your site is yours. Do your best to be certain that the information provided is current, accurate, helpful, and interesting to the readers. When that is accomplished, your website will begin to fulfill its purpose.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Alex Mandossian On His Secret For Overcoming The "Fear Of Success"

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:32:19 +0000

In this guest post we have Alex Mandossian sharing his secret for overcoming the "fear of success" and the self sabotage that accompanies it.

To learn more about Global Teleseminar Week, and Alex's strategies for turning your annual income into a monthly income, click www.ToTeleseminarSecrets.com

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Teleseminar Secrets Tip #35

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:00:44 +0000

FAQ: "How can Teleseminars be used with Affiliate Marketing campaigns?"

Answer: Please see video below.

Please click the image below to start the presentation.
(Duration: 7 min, 28 secs)

We are proud to support Alex Mandossian's Teleseminar Secrets course and his internet marketing strategies, as we had a hand in putting together the middle part of the above video using our www.SpectacularPresentations.com format.

We would like to support others who take Teleseminar Secrets as we have learned so much from taking Alex's course. We have special bonuses that we would like to offer you if you order through our affiliate link at www.ToTeleseminarSecrets.com.

Here's How To Claim Your Special Bonuses

Read the rest of this entry>>

– Pat & Lorna

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

What To Know How "The Big Call" Can Change Your Life…

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:00:56 +0000

"December 1st marks the first day of Global Teleseminar Week which also begins 'Teleseminar Marketing Season' in winter and spring," says our friend, Alex Mandossian.

On the first Thursday of December (for the past five years), Alex hosts "The BIG Call" which we have decided to co-sponsor this year, so we hope you participate

This year, the first Thursday of December falls on the 3rd, so clear your calendar for that evening. If you do register for The BIG Call make sure you use this VIP Discount Code: AM3964. (That VIP Code shaves-off $79 from the $99 tuition everybody will pay without it).

WHY Participate? Because you'll get private access to over 2 1/2 hours of densely-rich content that will significantly do two things for you:

1) More Money: You'll dramatically increase the possibility of transforming your annual income into a monthly income within 3 years

2) More Time: You'll dramatically increase the possibility of maintaining your current income (if happy with it) and triple your time-off

WHAT Is The BIG Call? It is a LIVE and unique Teleseminar training on how to grow (or start) a business by adding the power Teleseminars to your marketing mix. You will get a 21-page Action Guide that you'll fill-in during the call as you listen and follow along with Alex guiding you along the way.

HOW Do I Participate? Just grab your mouse and click here. If you're reading this in time to become one of the first 200 who register, you'll even get an important bonus gift for taking immediate action. Click here and take a look!

WHAT IF I Do Participate? You'll get access to the same Teleseminar training that many thought leaders such as Jack Canfield, Ivan Misner, Les Brown, Harv Eker, Dan Sullivan, Bob Proctor and Brian Tracy now utilize in their business. Take a look at "Page 15" of the Action Guide you'll get after you register.

Alex has an unprecedented 365-day money back guarantee, if you have a sliver of doubt that this Teleseminar Training will exceed your expectations.

So you really have no excuse not to grab your mouse right now, click here and get registered. And because you've read this far, we know you're more than just curious about how The BIG Call may change your personal and professional life.

We took a chance and listened to this call 4 years ago and cannot tell you how much it changed our lives. This $20 call could be the best $20 dollars you've ever spent, it sure was for us!!! – Pat & Lorna

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Teleseminar Secrets Tip #20

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:00:58 +0000

FAQ: "How do I convince leaders in market niches to let me conduct teleseminars with them if I don't have a proven track record?"

Answer: Please see video below.

Please click the image below to start the presentation.
(Duration: 3 min, 59 secs)

Here's How To Claim Your Special Bonuses

Read the rest of this entry>>

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Teleseminar Secrets Tip #17

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:00:51 +0000

FAQ: "How do I get rid of my fear of doing public Teleseminars?"

Answer: Please see video below.

Please click the image below to start the presentation.
(Duration: 5 min, 55 secs)

Here's How To Claim Your Special Bonuses

Read the rest of this entry >>

– Pat & Lorna

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Teleseminar Secrets Tip #3

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:00:31 +0000

FAQ: "In a Preview Call, what's critical to include and exclude to maintain value but not give away too much?"

Answer: Please see video below.

Please click the image below to start the video.
(Duration: 7 min, 09 secs)

Here's How To Claim Your Special Bonuses

Read the rest of this entry >>

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Teleseminar Secrets – Insiders' Views

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:00:06 +0000

Teleseminar Secrets is, hands down, the best marketing training we've ever been on. It has made us more money and grew our list faster than any other tool, and has taught us rapid content creation in ways we never could have expected.

Yes, the class is very expensive, but what is your business worth? We both agree that it is well worth it plus a lot more – and comes with a gorgeous money-back guarantee.

Teleseminar Secrets only opens up once a year. The Teleseminar Secrets Preview Call is on December 3, 2009. The Teleseminar Secrets classes start on December 7, 2009.

The course is taught by our good friend, partner and mentor Alex Mandossian . Again, we would highly, highly recommend this course to anybody wanting to know more about Robotic Interenet Marketing , and yes you are also going to learn alot about Telesemianr Secrets too!

Alex Mandossian has also been a mentor to us in moving our Robotic Interenet Marketing business along, so we definitely recommend Teleseminar Secrets .

We will bring you more insider tips of this year's Teleseminar Secrets course and Teleseminar Secrets Preview Call as more details are released.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

A Sneak Peek into Teleseminar Secrets

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:15:09 +0000

Teleseminar Secrets season is fast approaching, and our good friend and mentor Alex Mandossian (who teaches the course) has put together some insightful preview training.

We say insightful, because in this preview training he actually takes excerpts from his Teleseminar Secrets course and divulges some interesting and relevant information that you can actually use.

Alex is a marketing wizard who has built an extremely successful business around teleseminars.

So watch and listen as Alex gives you a sneak peek into Teleseminar Secrets:

At the end of the video you will see the following opt-in, we suggest that you opt-in to get additional content from Alex.

TSS Opt-In

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

A Cool Look at Life – Even if You Ain't Never Been on a Horse

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:37:59 +0000

It's quite amazing… a country girl and a city boy (that's us), both getting a whole lot of insight from the content of this post.

The words below may be simple… but oh so true. It rolls right into our favorite saying, "Life is simple, people complicate it".

It's amazing how a simple way of looking at things can bring such deep insight to life.

So please enjoy… we definitely did!

Cowboy's Guide To Life
by Bob Hardison

Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gonna happen anyway.
Life ain't about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.
Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled.
Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.
Don't sell your mule to buy a plow.
If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there with ya.
Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you. You cannot unsay a cruel word.
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
Don't interfere with somethin' that ain't botherin' you none.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
The easiest way to eat crow is while it's still warm. The colder it gets, the harder it is to swaller.
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with looks at you in the mirror every mornin'.
Don't worry about bitin' off more 'n you can chew; your mouth is probably a whole lot bigger'n you think.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
Remember: Don't squat with your spurs on.
Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.
The best sermons are lived, not preached.
Keep skunks and politicians and lawyers at a distance.
It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
If it don't seem like it's worth the effort, it probably ain't.
It's better to be a has-been than a never-was.
Meanness don't jest happen overnight.
When you wallow with pigs, expect to git dirty.

And our additions to the list

If you step in a cowpie (shit), make sure it's well aged.
Don't say "giddyap" before you have your boots in the stirrups and your hands on the reins.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

The Social Media Revolution Marketing Blueprint – Q & A

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:33:15 +0000

We got this letter from Maritza and Jeff…

Hi Pat & Lorna,

With all the buzz about the launch of The Social Marketing Blueprint, you probably have some questions. So in this email we would like to take the time to address as many questions as we can.

We've poured through about a week’s worth of questions from the blog, email and Instant TeleSeminar and found the most commonly asked questions.

Here they are with our answers…

1. How & when can I get a copy of The Social Marketing Blueprint?

The 7 Module Video Training Course will be released on Tuesday October 27th at 12 Noon Eastern Time (that’s 9 am Pacific and 5pm UK) at this website: http://www.ToSocialMarketing.com

Memberships will be awarded on a first come, first serve basis. It’s important that I tell you that now, because I don’t want to put any pressure on you, it’s just that we are only taking on 212 people in the Training Course, and I’d really like you to have a copy. Now, as you may have guessed, we have a lot more than 212 people on the mailing list, plus some big players like Alex Mandossian, Mike Stewart, Pat & Lorna Shanks (Hey that's us ) , Travis Greenlee, David Perdew and Lynn Terry will be mailing their lists on launch day too. Plus we have sent out over 10,000 direct mail pieces to small businesses.

When you add all this up well over 1 million people will have access to this launch.

So we're just trying to provide as much information now, on the front end, so you can go ahead and make your decision to buy it. And if you decide it is for you, then that’s great. Just please be ready on Tuesday October 27th at 12 Noon Eastern. http://www.ToSocialMarketing.com

2. Why are you limiting it to 212 people? Is this for real or just another marketing gimmick?

Good question. Well, first of all, we don’t do marketing gimmicks. If we say there is a limit, there is a limit. And 2 of those 212 will have already gone to our two scholarship winners by launch time. The main reason we are limiting it to 212 is because of the Bonus 2 Tickets to the Social Marketing Blueprint Workshop at Maritza’s Hacienda in San Antonio – we can only hold so many people there.

So that’s not some Big Glamorous Reason, just a real reason.

3. What if I am a beginner? Do you have a “mind map” or set of step-by-step instructions that even a beginner can follow?

Good news! That is exactly why we are calling this The Social Marketing BLUEPRINT!

When you come on board, you will get immediate access to a pdf version of the actual Blueprint, as well as have an 11 x 17 color copy sent to your address that you can hang right next to your computer and use everyday.

Plus you will get access to the step-by-step instructions for each part of the Blueprint, so you will know exactly what steps to take and when. Each module will guide you through from beginning to end, from setting up your Social Marketing accounts, optimizing them, to making offers and profits, and everything in between.

4. How is the course laid out? Is it all in Video? And how do I get started? Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, what?

The course is grounded in Video Training. Each of the 7 Modules will be Video Training, plus the following:

Down loadable mp3s of the Videos so you can take the Audio with you
Transcripts of the Video Training
Other down loadable pdfs
Down loadable version of the Diamond Deadlines Online Success Journal and the Reverse Engineer Your Income Journal
A hard copy workbook binder of the Diamond Deadlines Online Success Journal and the Reverse Engineer Your Income Journal
Follow up LIVE Q & A TeleSeminars for each Module

Here’s how the system will be laid out:

When you come on board you will receive immediate access to the Mindset Module – this is first Module because we have found you have to begin here for the optimal success. Get your Mindset and your Social Marketing Mindset working for you first and you will be well positioned to maximize the many tools coming your way.

You will also receive right away the first part of the Blogging Module, with new parts coming each day in your first week. Here are the Modules and the release schedule for each:

Module 1 – Mindset – Entire Module right away

Module 2 – Blogging – First part of the Module right away and then additional parts each day for the first week.

Module 3 – Article Marketing/Ezine Articles – Tuesday November 3rd

Module 4 – Twitter – Tuesday November 10th

Module 5 – Facebook – Tuesday November 17th

Module 6 – YouTube – Tuesday November 24th

Module 7 – MeetUps – Tuesday December 1st

We have laid it out this way for a very important reason.

You are MUCH MORE likely to succeed if you digest this one Module at a time. Both of us have taken many, many courses, and coupled with our extensive surveys and research with our students, we have found that gradually releasing the Modules step-by-step dramatically increases your success rate.

There are many reasons why this is so, a huge one being that many, many courses that come “all at once” end up being nothing more than “shelf-help” – sitting on a shelf somewhere collecting dust.

And though we couldn’t prove this, our hunch is that many big time gurus know this and even count on it so they can sell you more “hype & hope”…)

5. Is this gonna be all theory or will it be how to?

We don’t do just theory. That’s the “hype and hope” method mentioned above and used by many big time gurus.

We only do “how to.” Step-by-step from setting up your account to monetizing Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, EzineArticles, Blogging and MeetUps.

And integrating and automating them into a repeatable system. You are going to learn how to do what we do everyday.

6. With so many choices out there, how did you decide on these 6 particular Social Marketing Tools?

The criteria we used included

- ease of use and the learning curve of each,
- the reach and web presence possible,
- our success and the success of our students and others, and
- the traffic rack of each.

Alexa.com ranks websites based on the traffic coming to a website – a ranking of 1 means a website gets the most traffic in the world…the lower the number the better. Being in the top 1,000 means the website gets an incredible amount of traffic.

Here’s what Alexa says about our 6 Social Media Tools at the time of this writing:

Facebook – #2

YouTube – #4

Twitter – #13

EzineArticles – #149

MeetUp – #834

Blogging – Depends on your individual blog – and we show you how to get more traffic with the Social Marketing Tools and Blog Profit Strategies

What this means for you: You will learn step-by-step exactly how to leverage, integrate and automate these well trafficked sites to send highly qualified traffic to your site!

7. How much will The Social Marketing Blueprint cost?

A lot.

We have not decided on the exact price yet, but it won’t be cheap. We’ve been told we should not release it for less than $1997 because of everything you get in the course.

And the reality is just the Bonus of the 2 tickets to the Social Marketing Blueprint Workshop would be worth more than $1997.

Plus the 7 Video Training Modules complete with mp3s and transcripts, the LIVE Q & A TeleSeminars, the hard copy workbook binder of the Diamond Deadlines Online Success Journal and the Reverse Engineer Your Income Journal, plus all the Bonuses…

All together it’s worth the $1997 and more.

If you are wondering if this stuff works, go back and watch the videos and listen the teleseminar http://www.ToSocialMarketing.com

We’re not going to try to sell you on why this is worth it. Frankly, if you need us to “sell you on it” then this isn’t for you.

If you want to get your Membership you’ll be ordering online, so just be ready at your computer at exactly 12 noon on Tuesday October 27th…

So while the final price is still up in the air, we can tell you for sure that it wont be$1997…or anywhere near that.

Also – you’ll be able to pay in installments if you need to. This way EVERYONE gets a chance…

We’ll be back tomorrow with some more cool info and stuff we’re adding to the Blueprint (like the “Lifeline Pass”), this email has gotten long enough as it is…I just really wanted to answer your questions so you can be prepared on Tuesday October 27th at 12 Noon Eastern…

Until tomorrow…

Maritza & Jeff

==========

Pat & Lorna here now, but we made this offer to our list:

For those that sign up for this program through our affiliate link, we will give you a dynamic mind map of the full course (once it s completed).

You can see an example here => http://2yourpage.net/go/smb5

We hope to hear you on the calls and that you become part of the Social Marketing Revolution!

–Pat & Lorna

P.S. These two are the real deal and one of the nicest couples you'll meet in Internet marketing. We trust them and are already doing some of this ourselves, and its working great!

P.S.S. If you don t believe us go to Google and search for Pat and Lorna and see how many social sites that we appear on. We can t imagine how much we ll grow once we implement everything Maritza and Jeff teach us, and we can t wait!

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Social Marketing Blueprint In Action

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:37:07 +0000

Our colleagues Alex Mandossian, Jeff Herring and Maritza Parra held a teleseminar to discuss Jeff and Maritza's upcoming Social Marketing Blueprint course and free videos.

To learn more about the Social Marketing Blueprint and to get the free videos now, go to ToSocialMarketing.com

On the call they discussed 6 main social media sites: Twitter.com, Facebook.com, YouTube.com, EzineArticles.com, MeetUp.com, and of course your own blog.

We want to demonstrate that they know what they are talking about, so we created a dynamic mind map showing a portion of their Social Marketing Blueprint; some of the Social Networks that Alex, Jeff and Maritza use. As a bonus, we have also included a glossary of terms.

Go ahead and discover (it's interactive) the blueprint below:

For a larger version of the Blueprint: Click Here
(You'll need to go to the larger version to display the web page and to see the glossary of terms)

Again to learn more about the Social Marketing Blueprint go to ToSocialMarketing.com

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Social Media Revolution Video

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:24:07 +0000

So is Social Media just a fad?

Are Twitter, Facebook and all the other social networks site going to stay?

Watch the video below to find out why and tell us your thoughts in the comments

(Running time 4 Mins 22 Secs)

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Marketing Tips – The Learning Modalities of Your Market

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:56:34 +0000

You may believe that once you’ve created great content and presented it once that you’re done. The problem is you’re leaving a huge presence and a lot of potential profit behind.
Not everyone is going to connect with your content in the way you’ve presented it, and those that don’t will not consume it or perhaps even purchase it.

People learn and take in information in different ways, and the more of those you reach, the more of a market reach you’ll have.

Basically, people operate in a variety of learning modalities. Let’s take a look at the types of learning modalities:

Visual Learners – Visual learners actually learn and better retain information by seeing and reading. This accounts for about 55 to 75 percent of people according to scientific studies. This is obviously a large portion of the people and therefore visual presentation is one of the most effective modes to communicate information.
Auditory Learners – As suggested by the name, auditory learners tend to learn most competently by hearing or speaking. This includes about 20 to 30 percent of people.
Kinesthetic Learners – Kinesthetic learners absorb information best through doing and touching. This would include tasks such as filling in the blanks, key strokes, and mouse clicks. Approximately 5 to 15 percent of people fall into this category according to scientific studies.
Smell and Taste – These two categories are self-explanatory. We won’t spend much time here as they have very little application to the types of contexts that we are dealing with.
Digital Auditory – Digital auditory is an internal learning modality that we will refer to as self talk. These thoughts in your mind that we’ll refer to as voices ultimately are what guide your decisions. Everyone makes use of digital auditory and you need to be aware as to what your content is getting your audience to think and feel.

Make use of the various learning modalities in how you present your content and you will reach a much larger percentage of your potential market. As well, you will have much more impact on their lives as they will be more likely to understand and put to practice what you have presented.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Marketing Tips – What is Content Optimization?

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:39:37 +0000

Content creation is of utmost importance to your business, whether it’s online or offline. And yes, content creation takes time. If you create content on a use once basis, it can consume a large amount of the time you spend on your business; not to mention the pressure of continually coming up with new content.

That is why optimizing content is a brilliant way to make the most out of the content you already have. Not only that, it enables you to reach more people within your market. How does that work? Let us explain…

In order to define content optimization, let’s start out by defining exactly what content is. Content is information and experiences created for an audience that is presented in a way that entertains, educates, and informs to derive emotions. Optimizing is to improve or make better. Therefore, content optimization would be to convert information and experiences from its original form into a format or product that will better convey its purpose to its audience.

In other words, taking the original content from a teleconference for example and converting it into another format such as a study guide that will improve the comprehension of the audience. Because people have different learning styles, it becomes necessary to present information in multiple contexts. Some people understand more readily through their sense of vision, others by hearing, and still some by touch or doing. If the information is received through multiple senses, it is much more likely to be understood and retained. This is summed up in a Chinese Proverb – “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me I will understand.”

Why is Content Optimization Important to Business Growth?

If you do it once, you benefit from it forever. By creating the content one time, you are able to convert it into as many different contexts as possible.
Content applies to learning methods. By understanding how your audience takes in information, you will be able to more effectively deliver it.
Maximum content productivity is achieved with minimum effort. It is much easier to convert content into a new context than to create new content. This saves you time and energy. It also allows you to relate with a broader audience because, as mentioned before, each person absorbs information differently. Therefore, a single context will not reach every available audience.

How do I determine how to optimize my content?

By answering the following six questions you will be on your way to content optimization. This will help you understand your market and how they think and receive information most effectively. When you understand their thinking processes, you will be more readily capable of reaching them where they are.

The six questions are:

Who – Who in my market is this going to reach?
What – What format will the content be in?
Where – Where does my target market want this information?
When – When is the audience going to take this in?
Why – Why is it important for my market to get this information?
How – How do I get my current content into this format or context?

By focusing on content optimization instead of content creation, you will benefit in a multitude of ways. Not only will it take less time and effort on your part, but your audience will be able to more completely comprehend and understand the message that you are trying to convey to them. They will have the ability to consume the same information through multiple sources, and repetition is key to comprehension.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Marketing Tips – Learning Styles Influence Content

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:07:42 +0000

Not only do people have a favorite physical sense or learning modality when it comes to consuming information, they also have different learning styles. Again, there are different ways to present your content to reach people in all the different learning styles. Is this difficult? No… you don’t have to have a whole lot of content specifically for each learning style, but it is a great idea to reach each one.

Let us explain…

Learning modalities or the physical senses used to consume information are only half the picture when it comes to figuring out how people consume the content that you provide. People also operate in different learning styles; and there are ways to present your content so that it reaches people in all four of the learning styles.

These learning styles, which are outlined below, are based on David Kolb’s research.

Why – Why people are categorized as salespeople and promoters. They are about 33 percent of the people. They want to know why the information is important and why it applies to them.
What – What people are the scholar and teacher types and account for 22 percent of the population. These people want the facts without the fluff. They want to see documentation and they want to know the bottom line.
How – Technicians and roll-up-your-sleeve people are around 18 percent of people. These people want to see what they learn in conjunction with how it works. The want to compare the new information that they are taking in to the information they already know.
What If – The marketers and big picture people make up about 27 percent of the population. These people want to know all the alternatives. They want to know if there is a better way. What If people need all of the boundaries defined.

Using the learning modalities and learning styles will dramatically affect your content optimization techniques. When you take into consideration what is going on inside the minds of the audience, it becomes much easier to meet them where they’re at and tailor your content to their needs. When your market doesn’t have to adapt to your content, but your content caters to the needs of your market, you will have successfully optimized your content.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Did You Know…? Video

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:16:45 +0000

So how fast is everything moving at you today?

Did you ever wonder why some days you feel so overwhelmed?

Guess what, it's not you! Watch the video below to find out why.

(Running time 4 Mins 55 Secs)

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Marketing Tips – The Many Forms of Context

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:29:56 +0000

Everyone has their favorite way of consuming information. Do you know what that is for each of your customers or clients? Obviously not, that would be impossible. So how do you ensure your content is purchased, consumed and put into action by as many people as possible? The fastest and easiest way is to have your content available in multiple formats or contexts.

Let’s look at the many forms of context:

There are an infinite number of contexts that the content can be formatted into. We’ll name the thirty-two most commonly thought of:

Spectacular Presentation
Blog Post or Page
Podcast
Article
Telesemina
PDF
Book
E-book
Binder
Booklet
Inner-Circle Call
Coaching
Consulting
Audio
MP3
Media Player
CD
DVD
Course
E-Course
Assessment
Certification
Ezine Series
Online Video
Email
Fax
Guide
Newsletter
Thumb Drive
Live Seminar/Workshop
Membership Site
Bonus Gift

What happens when all this is applied?

Wow! That’s a lot of formats. Originally created content can be converted into all those formats, and that’s just the beginning. There are more that you can probably think of on your own. There is no limit to the creativity that can be injected into the context arena. The only limit is your own imagination, so go crazy.

When you apply the four R’s (reuse, repurpose, repackage and recycle), actually all five R’s (add repeat to the previous four), to the original content thirty-two times, you could use that same content to produce each and every form of context listed above. Can you imagine how many people you can reach through that many different formats?

In addition, some of those in your market will not only consume one, but several formats of the same information. That means that their ability to comprehend the information and their likelihood of putting it into practice greatly increase. The power of words is tremendous and when it is increased exponentially through multiple forms of context it is out of this world.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Marketing Tips – The Four R's of Content Optimization

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:02:40 +0000

Creating content for your website and marketing threads is of utmost importance to the survival of your business. A lot of time and effort goes into creating that content, so it seems a shame to use it only once. That’s why it’s very important to optimize your content.

What is Content Optimization?

Content optimization is simply using or converting content for use in another format or product, also known as context. Context is the surroundings, circumstances, environment, background or settings that clarify or specify the content. It is different from content creation and much simpler. There are four basic principles of content optimization that we will take a look at.

Reuse – The first principle of content optimization is reusing the same content in different places. For example, you can serve the exact same content up in the form of an article, and ezine article, blog posts, directories, emails, and so on.
Repurpose – In this instance, you use the same content in different contexts or formats. The same content that is presented in a teleseminar could then be formatted to a spectacular presentation, multiple articles, or multiple blog posts.
Repackage – The same content basis can be revised and polished for different markets. An example of this would be using the same content from a course on teleseminars being revised into a course on book tours or internet optimization.
Recycle – The same content can be cycled through again. This would be illustrated in a 52 week autoresponder. It could be repeated at the end of the year.

If there were a fifth R to these principles it would be to Repeat. The first four steps can be done over and over and over again. Once you have quality content to work with, your optimization can be endless.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Why Dogs Are Spirtual Creatures And Spectacular Friends

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:00:53 +0000

This is for our friend Maritza Parra, who's dog Menudo's has to have a leg removed because of cancer.

We just love her comments and her positive energy on Twitter.

Menudo becomes super-resiliant, brave & happy 3 legged pooch!

Enjoy the video below why dogs are spiritual creatures & great friends.

Lesson: Dogs keep coming back, they stay at it no matter what.
Dogs never ever, ever, give up

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Maybe You Can Look Back Now And Laugh… And Maybe NOT

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:44:45 +0000

Have you ever had to cancel any service? Hope you enjoy this as much as we did.

For anyone who has ever canceled a service we think you will find this skit outrageously funny. It hits so close to home it’s hard not to. Since so many people can relate to this video we thought I would share it with our readers to enjoy.

Tells us in the comments below, has this ever happened to you? We would love to hear about it.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

The One Software Tool We Use Every Day – PersonalBrain™

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:15:30 +0000

There is one software tool that we use every day and it is called PersonalBrain™, but we just call it "The Brain".

PersonalBrain™, organizes the way you think. You can organize all your ideas and information the way you think. See new relationships. Discover connections. Go from the big picture to specific details in seconds.

Watch the video below to give you a high level overview of what The Brain can do for you.

PersonalBrain: Accelerate Your Mind

See and do more with PersonalBrain’s award-winning user interface and advanced linking software. Organize ideas, projects, files, and Web pages associatively to capture your unique thinking and perspective.

Use PersonalBrain for business projects or as an “everything in your life manager" so you can get the big picture and find the right detail within seconds.

Benefits

See key relationships and ideas at a glance
Map out your thinking and complex business processes
Visualize folder structures, business relationships, contacts and ideas
Navigate across all key topics and information within your Brain's thought network and connections

Key features include:

Must see animated visual interface
Expanded Information Views
Easy Drag and Drop of files, folders and Web pages
Advanced search and editing features

We use PersonalBrain to keep track of almost every aspect of the information that crosses our desk everyday. It helps us to organize our information into "The Digital Home for Our Mind".

(Look for the FREE Download Button)

Versions:

Personal Brain – Free
Personal Brain – Core $149.95
Personal Brain – Pro $249.95

Download Personal Brain – Free Edition:

Windows
PersonalBrain Installer

Max OS X
PersonaBrain Installer

Linux/Unix
PersonalBrain Installer

Purchase PersonalBrain Now

We hope you like TheBrain as much as we do, it's the one tool that we have open all the time. And if you took our Brain away, we know for sure that we would be lost without it. Download the Free version above to get started using TheBrain today, it will be well worth your time and engery.

Stay tuned, we will be providing more in-depth reviews of PersonalBrain and WebBrain.

And let us know how The Brain works for you.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Article Marketing for Beginners and The Red Dress

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:53:48 +0000

What do Articles and a Red Dress have in common? They make you stand out in a crowd, especially if you’re a man. But what has that got to do with Article Marketing?

Well as Jeff Herring (aka The Internet Article Guy) says, Article Marketing = Internet Marketing. That means getting your site, product or service to stand out in a crowd and get noticed.

Click on the video below and see what Jeff has to say about getting started in Article Marketing…

Get it now: Article Marketing For Beginners

We met Jeff about 2 years ago at an Alex Mandossian TeleSeminar Secrets Reunion where we created a friendship and working relationship with him. Jeff is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet within the Internet Marketing space. He’s down to earth, super nice, and a great sport (he’s even been known to wear a Red Dress to stand out in the crowd), but don’t let Jeff hear that (Pat and Jeff have something going on about some sort of Red Dress).

Jeff is one of the best teachers on the topic of article development and we have taken a few of his courses over the years. If you want to check out some of our articles you can visit them at www.PatAndLorna.com/ArticlesLorna or www.PatAndLorna.com/ArticlesPat

Alex Mandossian

Another good friend, Alex Mandossian, who is another great Internet Marketer, says this about Article Marketing:

“Article Marketing is the absolute best resource for generating unlimited amounts of free traffic. And the traffic is evergreen – it keeps coming year after year” ~ Alex Mandossian

Jeff just launched a brand new 12 week course on Article Marketing called “Article Marketing for Beginners”. The course is specifically for beginners, but we decided to review it anyways. Here is the proof that we actually purchased the course. Most people tell you to purchase some course without actually buying it themselves, never mind using it.

We just completed the first lesson, and we’d easily say this is great stuff for any online marketer on practically any level. Even if you think you know article marketing inside and out, you’ll probably learn a thing or two from Jeff and his article marketing expertise. For us, having a simple task and checklist with a timeline, is super helpful for accountability and progress.

Knowing how to do something and actually taking action on that knowledge are two different things.

We like the idea of having Jeff Herring coming to our inbox every week, reminding us to have GUTS – “Go Use This Stuff!”

Here are the details of the course:
Course Name: Article Marketing For Beginners
Access Course: Article Marketing For Beginners
Length: 12-week course, weekly training (via email)
Investment: $37 per month (3 months only – Total investment $111)
Details of Course: There are weekly trainings with easy assignments, monthly bonuses, and several surprise bonuses built in – all designed to help you succeed at using articles to drive traffic, build lists and make sales. The lessons are short, very easy to follow, and come with actionable guides to walk you through every step.
Training Material: eMail, PDF’s, Videos, Assignments, Bonuses
Excerpt:
Coolness Level: 4 Stars
Red Dress Level: Very HOT Jeff

What others are saying about the course:

With all that said and done, Jeff is right – it truly is painless.

Jeff’s course comes at the best possible time. Right now is a perfect time to use Ezine Articles for backlinks, indirect top 10 Google rankings, and targeted content marketing campaigns. This last quarter has been the biggest online shopping season of the year. All that, plus you’ll be setting yourself up for an incredible year of traffic for 2010.

Be Cool and Take Action
–Pat & Lorna

P.S. Here’s the link: Article Marketing For Beginners

As Jeff Herring would say… have some G.U.T.S.! (Go Use This Stuff) Red Dress and All… and remember to Stand Out in the Crowd!

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Create Your Own Profitable Website or Blog… Yes, It Is Possible

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:27:16 +0000

We’ve invested in an incredible number of courses over the years; and one of those courses is single -handedly responsible for giving us the tools to take our blog from so-so to spectacular!

We’re talking about the “Website Creation Workshop” delivered by Christina Hills, The Shopping Cart Queen.

We know Christine… she’s all about helping others to succeed, and that definitely shows through in this course. Not only does she give you the “how to’s” of website creation, she actually gets you to take action and use what she’s taught. The follow-through is built right into the course!

This course has excelled in delivering quality instruction and great content through an extremely helpful and caring instructor.

Because of this course we were able to upgrade our blog at PatAndLorna.com. Hey, that's this site!

Actually, it wasn’t just an upgrade… it was a transformation.

A blog is THE best way to get started online… there is so much you can do with a blog and it doesn’t take a programming wizard to put together.

What can you do with a blog? Well, you can…
•   Sell products and services
•   Create and grow relationships
•   Bring more exposure (traffic) to your products and services
•   Create new products

In case it hasn’t been apparent yet… we highly recommend Christina’s Website Creation Workshop. The registration begins on September 10, and you don’t want to miss out. If you’re truly serious about your online presence and making money from it, check out this course now.

Christina has a cool story to share and some very useful free information on WordPress. So go to The Website Creation Workshop… listen, learn and register, it’ll be well worth your time and investment.

Here’s a video we did for Christine while we were travelling on how much we appreciate what she taught us in her Website Creation Workshop. Enjoy…

Or here is our audio testimonial:

So again, go to The Website Creation Workshop… listen, learn and register, it’ll be well worth your time and investment. It was for us!

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Marketing Tips: Maximizing Your Content Reach

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:10:53 +0000

Many people present their content in an audio format, some just in a written context. While these are definitely good ways to present information, they end up missing out on a large number of key factors that could increase the impact of the presentation.

If visuals are added to audio content, or if audio and graphics are added to written content, it will reach a larger percentage of the market. People learn differently… using their visual, auditory and kinesthetic senses. The more of these you reach, the more of your market you reach.

Then there is also the factor of scheduling… availability of the content. Live presentations are great… teleseminars, webinars… but they are held at a specific time. If the customer cannot be there at that time, they miss out. Yes, the recordings can be available to them afterwards, but then the content is again not reaching them in an optimal format or context.

So, what is the best way to present content?

We recommend presenting content in what we refer to as a Spectacular Presentation format. These are online presentations that include written content, graphics and audio. The user is in total control of when they view the presentation and at what speed… and can search it for specific information.

The top ten benefits of presenting content in this format are:

More effective than audio alone.
Multi-sensory content delivery.
Searchable.
Table of contents.
User playback controls
24 hour content delivery.
Easy to repurpose.
Branding.
Create once and sell many times.
Robotic internet marketing.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), playwright and critic once wrote in a personal correspondence to a colleague

“The greatest problem of communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”

That quote summarizes the responsibility of the content producer. It is up to the person that produces and presents the content to be absolutely certain that the user has every convenience and ability to comprehend the information that is being conveyed. By presenting your content in a way that involves more of the physical senses, is available to the user when they want it and gives them control of their learning, you will accomplish that goal.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Marketing Tips: Key Factors for Content Presentation

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:05:36 +0000

Content is king. People are not going to buy information that is of little or no value. Solid content is of utmost importance. However… if content is presented in such a way that it only reaches a fraction of the market it’s intended to reach, then that content falls short in its effectiveness to grow your business and spread your message.

Presentation does not compensate for lackluster content, but it can make a difference in how content is received by your market.

What makes a presentation spectacular? There are nine key features of a presentation that will make them much more spectacular for your viewer.

The nine key presentation features are:

Title/Timeline of Presentation – This tells your viewer what presentation they are watching and how long it will take them to view it. That’s about as basic as it gets.
Branding – It’s important that you have a picture of yourself included in the presentation that your market will recognize you by. Recognition is important.
Table of Contents – Having a table of contents that will allow your viewer to navigate easily through the presentation is very convenient. This gives the viewer more control and the ability to find the topic they want to review.
Remembers Where You Left Off – Viewers love it when your presentation keeps track of where they left off. They don’t always remember, so if the presentation does that for them it’s just that much more convenient.
Large Content Window – Make sure that your content is easily viewable. A large number of presentation formats only allow for a small viewing window making the content quite small and difficult to see. A large viewing window and actually being able to see the content is a huge bonus for the viewer… highly recommended.
Current Slide Info – This allows the viewer to see where they are in the current content slide or page. There’s no second guessing as to when it ends or if there is still more content to come.
Full Playback Control – Give the user the ability to back up a slide, to move forward a slide, fast forward, rewind, pause, or resume. The more control the user has, the better they like it.
Resource Links Area – A very easy to use area that has links to other resources that relate to your presentation. This could include a PDF version of your presentation, web links, or other information that is related to your content. This makes it easily accessible to your reader.
Searchable – This gives your user the ability to not only search for topics in the table of contents, but to also search the content itself for the information and terminology they are looking for.

In a nutshell, the more convenient and easy to use your presentation is, the more spectacular it will be. Users love to be able to always know where they are at in the presentation, how far they have to go, and easily find items of interest.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Marketing Tips – Benefits of Content Optimization

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 22:30:29 +0000

Content is what your information, your message, is all about. However, there is content that really engages people, gets them telling others about what they’ve learned and how they’ve successfully implemented the ideas… and the content that gets forgotten as soon as the last word has been listened to or read.

It goes without saying that if someone gets a lot out of your information they will be inclined to purchase more from you. We call converting your content into a format that will reach more of your market, “Content Optimization”.

Benefits of Content Optimization

If you started optimizing your content right now, what would the results of that be?

Massive Reach – By converting your content into multiple formats, you will be able to relate to a wider variety of people than by a single context.

System Creation – By going over the same content multiple times, you will begin to develop templates and methods. You will polish and perfect the communication of certain points of the content each time you revisit it. As you observe some techniques working better than others, you will be able to hone your skills for the most effective delivery of your information.

Know Your Market Better – By repeatedly going over the same information, you will begin to know your market better. On the flip side of that, they will also begin to know you better. The more familiar you are to them, the better your chance of obtaining their trust and loyalty.

Roadblocks of Content Optimization

There are stumbling blocks that can prevent you from optimizing your content. Just what could stop you from doing something that sounds so simple? Let’s take a look:

Breaking Your Comfort Zone – When you have spent much time working with one particular format of content, it can be intimidating to convert to another. For example, someone that writes articles all the time may be uncomfortable presenting that same content in a video presentation. This can hold some people back from exploring other contexts.

Context Confusion – Deciding which context to convert to can be difficult. There are so many choices it can be overwhelming. The most difficult part is starting out.

Multiple Context Personalities – Because there are so many contexts to convert to, people often find that they spread themselves too thin. Because there are so many great ideas running around in their head, they find themselves trying to do it all by themselves, working on one thing today and another tomorrow. Without focus, none of them will be accomplished.

Strategies to Overcome Roadblocks

Always review Kipling’s Six Servants of Content Optimization – Know who your market is, what context the content will be in, where the audience wants the content, when they’ll want it, why it’s important, and how to get it into the context desired.

Never invent the content – Always improve your content by reusing, repurposing, repackaging, or recycling. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. The same information is simply reformatted to a different context.

Outsource – Strengthen your strengths. Continually work toward improving those talents that come easily to you while you outsource your weaknesses. If one form of context is extremely difficult for you to convert into, outsource it to someone that actually enjoys doing that.

By overcoming the roadblocks and optimizing your content today you will extend your reach massively. You will develop a system for converting your content into other formats and you will know your market better and become better known by your market. It is worth the effort and will become easier as you go.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Spectacular Content Marketing Tips – Writing Content That Sells

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:13:21 +0000

The reason you put together your website was to make people aware of the products and services you offer. In other words, you have something to sell and you want to make money. Probably the hardest part of your task is coming up with the right content to make you successful at your endeavor. This article will help you create content that sells. We invite you to read on…

Working Online Equals Freedom

Going online opens a path to massive amounts of information at the click of a button or mouse. There is no end to the kinds of information you can find on any given day. Going online also gives you freedom of choice. For instance, you need to buy a birthday present, but you don’t have a car or your city is small with a limited choice of stores to shop. Online, the world literally becomes a giant shopping mall with an infinite number of stores. You choose where you want to shop and the best part of all, you don’t have leave your house to do it.

Convenience and Choice Power Online Sales

When filling a website with content, it is important to build these items into your homepage. Give your potential clients information as well as several different choices of products or services. Make your lists logical with built in links and buttons to click back, if the selection is not the correct one for this particular occasion. Keep the information short and concise and make maneuvering your site easy. Remember, reading online is slower than reading a book offline. So be kind to your clients once they’ve found you. You want them to come back.

Creating a Headline that Sells

A good headline will seduce your visitors. If crafted well, a good headline will grab their attention and convince them that your information is what they are searching for.

Here are some tips for creating a real attention-grabbing headline:

•    Use real facts within the headline, especially when the fact pertains to the whole consumer market
•    Use attention grabbing phrases like; “tips and resources”
•    Name one of your products as an example in the headline
•    Focus on the product’s uniqueness
•    Associate your product with a feeling or emotion

First Things First

Time is of the essence in surfing the net so place the most important items and information first on your website. People who land on your page will see that information and make a decision about whether to scroll down or stick around to investigate your offers. Be very specific in your content. The harder it is to decipher information the less likely you will get the sale.

Researching Your Niche

Choosing your niche is only the first obstacle. It is necessary to stay on top of changes and innovations within the niche, too. You will need to engage in ongoing research in order to keep your website at the top of everyone’s search. Periodically go back through your pages and eliminate outdated items and redundant items. Change your keywords to utilize the current buzz words in your slice of the market.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

The Easiest Product To Get Started Using Amazon S3

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:03:44 +0000

If You Use YouTube or An Audio-Video Hosting
Solution To Place Video On Your Websites and Blogs,
STOP RIGHT NOW!!
Watch & Listen to our Friend Mike Stewart and Learn Why Not!

We use Amazon S3 for all of our customer Video hosting. – P & L

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Business Systems – Keep it Simple

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:49:16 +0000

In a business, if something is done over and over again it is very wise to create a system for it. The key to this, however, is to break it down to its simplest form.

People can and do spend a lot of time and energy on business tasks and systems that could be done a lot more quickly, easily and with a lot less effort.

When you decide to create a system for something in your business, look at it this way; I start from here and I want to get to there, what are the basic steps I need to do in between? The key word in that statement is "basic". Keep it simple. Anything that is accomplished can be broken down into very simple steps.

A task that seems difficult or almost impossible to accomplish, when broken down into simple steps, can actually seem easily achievable. So not only can you create simple systems for the tasks you do on a regular basis in your business, you can also break tasks yet to be done into systems to make it easier to get started and accomplish them.

One method you can use to outline a system is to create a mind map. A mind map is a basic planning tool where you start with one thought or topic in the middle and create the associated thoughts or topics around it. Start with the desired outcome as the main central topic and then outline the basic steps in the associated topics around it.

We use this tool a lot in our business and find it invaluable.

The bottom line… keep it simple. Break down business systems into basic steps and you'll be amazed at how much you can accomplish faster, easier and with a lot less effort.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Listing Of 250+ Social Network Sites

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:03:30 +0000

A listing of over 250 social network sites. We have also listed the top 10 social networking sites. We have attached the Wikidedia.org information to each site if there was a link.

Click here for larger version

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Two Buck Themes

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:15:49 +0000

Who Else Wants Their Audio and Video Production To Be Perceived As Professional and Not Amateur? Then You Must Use Powerful Music!

Here is a great offer from our friend Mike Steward. And it's only Two Bucks! Check out the video below for this great product and deal.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Strategic Partnerships to Grow your Blog

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:53:14 +0000

You’ve created a blog. You may have created it just to communicate with others; simply using it as a social networking site. However, did you know you can use it to engage people and then send them to your main website? You can… and very effectively as well. Now you may be wondering, what do I write and where can I get my content from? It can appear as though you will be spending a whole lot of time creating and writing content for your blog, with little time left over for the other important parts of your business. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. There are many ways to find, create and write content for your blog, without having to do it all yourself.

Please read on to discover how to do that and so much more…

Creating Content to Capture Client Interest

One of the best tools to use for driving potential clients to your website is to incorporate a web log, or blog. Blogs originally came into existence so people could write about their life and share it with the world. Smart internet marketers quickly saw the potential for reaching out to the vast internet audience, and began utilizing blogs to increase sales. Carefully crafted blog content powered by SEO, or search engine optimization is a low cost way to market and to build sales.

How Do Blogs Work?

Content should be at the heart of your blog. Your goal is to connect with your readers on a friendly level, rather than a sales person-to-client level. So you should write or use content that is conversational rather than preachy or obviously sales driven. Our tendencies as human beings are to trust friends, but to dislike salespeople. When writing your blog, keep it light and caring, but informative and interesting. Cover topics that the other guys in your niche don't. Highlight what makes you different from the pack. Always be honest and sincere. It may be necessary to do some research about your chosen niche. Read other blogs and product service sites for new information that you can work into your website and blog.

Capturing Content if You Don't Write

So you still want to use a blog to market your website, however, you're not a writer. What do you do? Well, the internet is your answer, because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of content websites with millions of articles on all topics for use by people who are not necessarily the strongest or creative of copywriters. Many of these websites give away the articles for free. All you have to do is to sign up. Sometimes they offer a certain number of articles per month and if you want more, then you may have to pay a nominal fee.

Team Up

Another way to capture content for your blog is to team up with someone else and share your copy, your ideas and other resources. Many blogs are produced by teams of writers, rather than just one, who take turns posting. This takes away the burden from everyone on the team of individually having to come up with something new every single day. The quickest way to kill your blog is to let it stagnate without adding new information on a regular basis.

Utilize Search Engine Optimization

All of your content should be search engine optimized, meaning it should be sprinkled with the buzz words of your niche market throughout the copy. These buzz words are the words that people looking for your services and products load into a search engine in order to find relevant websites. The most successful SEO blogs routinely land their pages at the top of the search page, where the searchers will find it first, by keying on the buzz words and strategically placed keywords. Statistics have shown pages in the first five search engine spots usually are the ones making the most sales. Buzz words or keywords are good, however don't overload the copy. For instance, a 500 word article should have no more than 3 or 4 keywords. They should come at the top, the middle and at the end of the content. Anything more is spam or junk mail.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Alex Mandossian Discusses What Abundance Is

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:33:31 +0000

Our good friend Alex Mandossian discusses what abundance is. Watch and listen to what he has to say and then please tell us what you think abundance is.

Please click the image below to start that presentation.(Opens in a new window, duration: 4 min, 24 sec)

To get more Abundance in your like check out the Virtual Abundance Expot.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Worldwide Survey to Define "Abundance"

Pat & Lorna Shanks — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:39:17 +0000

Abundance is a concept often debated in spiritual and entrepreneurial circles.

Entrepreneurs commonly use the catch-phrase "thinking BIG," but they really mean the same thing.

Abundance is tough to define because it's one of those unique ideas that must be experienced to really be
understood … it can't just be explained.

Yet the most encouraging part of adopting an abundance mindset is how it can connect you to people with totally different set of beliefs and values.

It instantly sustains inclusivity even with people who are dramatically different.

POP QUIZ: What do Mother Theresa and Donald Trump have most in common?

The answer is their abundance mind-set.

Donald Trump says, "If you're going to think anyway, you might as well think big."

Mother Theresa said: "The more we discover the magnitude and abundance of God's gifts, the more we will find ourselves."

Again, the abundance mindset creates connections.

Bucky Fuller had this to say about the abundance mindset:

"The condition of planet earth is abundance. Our belief in either scarcity or abundance determines how our financial, legal, political and military systems are set up or exist at all.

Scarcity and abundance are foundational and contextual ideas. They each give rise to a distinct system of thought and a number
of rules, characteristics and measures which only make sense within their own system."

Above all, the abundance-mindset is a choice. In other words, you choose to look through the lens of scarcity, or through the lens of abundance. There is no in-between.

"Do … or do not. There is no try." ~ Yoda

Because there are are so many differing opinions about abundance, my colleagues and I have decided to conduct this worldwide survey get more opinions – your opinion – on this highly debated topic.

Our JV partners, Alex Mandossian and Scott Martineau are hosting the Virtual Abundance Expo next week, so I figured this a great opportunity to host a survey and attract the best single sentence that clearly defines abundance.

What to do now: Please use the comment box to write your definition of abundance. The survey ends at 5pm PDT on Monday, July 27th, right before Jack Canfield's keynote speech for the Virtual Abundance Expo.

All the definitions will be gathered and tallied the next day and five finalists will be chosen for the final vote.

If you are one of the five finalists, your definition of abundance will be personally evaluated by our Virtual Abundance Expo faculty.

The top vote-getter with the clearest and most concise definition of abundance will be personally interviewed by Scott and Alex as a honorary faculty member for Virtual Abundance Expo.

So what do you say … are you game?

If you are game, then take a peek at these 9 abundance quotes to get your heart and mind moving…

"The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention" ~ Kevin Kelly in Wired

"Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves." ~ Jane Austen (1775 – 1817)

"Abundance is, in large part, an attitude" ~ Sue Patton Thoele

"Abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise" ~ Heraclitus (540 BC – 480 BC)

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little" ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945)

"Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a super- abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares" ~ Peter Ustinov (1921 – 2004)

"Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into" ~ Wayne Dyer

"Expect your every need to be met. Expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level" ~ Eileen Caddy

"Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance" ~ Epicurus

Now it's your turn … type in what you feel abundance means to you. Go ahead … the simple act of thinking about it will instantly improve your day.

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.