Simplicity

Use Testimonials on Your Website

ssantacroce — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

On this blog we’ve talked about the most important pages on your website before. The “Contact Us” page or the “Press Room“. Another important page is the “Testimonials” page.

Why is it important to use testimonials on your website ?

Because people nowadays shop online before they buy and because people read and trust other people’s opinions ! Let me ask you this: how do you book your summer vacation ? Do you go to your local travel agency or do you book it online ? Probably online, right ? And do you also read the Tripadvisor reviews for your chosen hotel ? (and wonder if these people have nothing else to do than submit 2000 character reviews of their last holiday But, it the hotel has a really bad review, you probably stay away from it, correct ? So if you read these testimonials (or in this case we call them reviews) then other people do to. And the same goes for your potential clients. If they consider buying from you, I bet you any money that they will read your testimonials before contacting you.

So what makes a good testimonial?

Testimonials should be specific “Sarah is great” won’t work! Only display testimonials which address specific benefits or results of your product or service. They are much more meaningful and powerful than your generic compliment.

Testimonials should be personal Use the full name and website of the person who has written the testimonial (always ask permission first). This comes over as more real, than anonymous reviews. If the person feels comfortable in adding a photo, that’s even better.

Testimonials should be short and to the point Any more than 5 lines of text, and I guarantee that your testimonials won’t be read!

Where should you display the testimonials on your site?

You can create a “Testimonial Page” where you display as many testimonials as you like. But, you can also use your testimonials on other places of your site, like the side bar. For example on your “Services” page, use one that praises your services. On the “Events” page, use one that talks about the great results of your last workshop.

Using testimonials as a marketing strategy comes very close to “word of mouth marketing”, which is the most powerful marketing out there. So start giving your website the credibility it deserves by displaying your testimonials !

Do you use testimonials on your website ? Have they proven to be effective ? Share your experience in the comments below.

Use Testimonials on Your Website is a post from: Simplicity, Get monthly updates and receive a FREE Gift

How Coaches Can Use Online Video

ssantacroce — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:00:42 +0000

Take a guess which is the world’s largest internet search engine? Easy, of course it’s Google. Now guess which one is the 2nd most popular one ? No, not Bing. It’s Youtube !

YouTube gets 4,000,000,000 page views a day, has 800,000,000 users (about the same as Facebook) who watch 3,000,000,000 hours of video a month.

Impressed ? You should be! And if you aren’t already, you should also be using video as part of your overall marketing strategy.

Here are a few online video ideas:

Introduction videos: business owner presents herself. Can be placed on the home page of your website

How-To videos: instead of describing a process in writing, businesses can just shoot a quick video and show their audience how to do it

FAQs: business owner discusses the most frequently asked questions about his products or services in a short video.

Product and Service videos: a short video about the benefits of a product or service

Customer Testimonials: video of a real life customer recommending your services or products

Fair enough, but…

How Can Coaches Use Online Video?

I see three main avenues for video use in the coaching industry:

Your blog
Youtube
And Video coaching

Youtube and Your Blog

Let’s start with your blog and Youtube. This is where you would use video to get more traffic to your website, build your tribe and essentially get more coaching clients. People could see you in action, put a name to your face… Wouldn’t you agree that it makes the interaction immediately more personal ?

You would shoot the video, then upload it to Youtube and embedd it in your blog. This process creates two ways for people to find you: either on your blog or directly on Youtube.

Video Coaching

The other avenue to use video for your coaching business is the actual video coaching. Imagine a course that you have given live over and over again. Usually how does it work ? You have to book a location, lunch, coffee breaks. Promote the course, then people sign up and you show up and teach the course. Sometimes there is travel involved, sometimes there isn’t. Quite a lot of work…

Well, wouldn’t it be nice if people could sign up to this course and just study the content from their home, through video sessions ?

Yes, the initial time investment for a video based course would probably be a bit more than your traditional course, because you would have to learn some new things (video recording for one). But after, you could be making money while you sleep. People would watch your videos while you are busy working on other lucrative projects.

Do you use video in your coaching business ? If so, are there any other avenues that I missed in this post ? Please share in the comments below.

Would you like to explore using video & other Online Marketing techniques in your Coaching business ? I’m producing a video based 6-week self-study course for coaches, which will be launched sometime this spring. Find out more about the “Grow Your Coaching Business with Online Marketing” Course here!

How Coaches Can Use Online Video is a post from: Simplicity, Get monthly updates and receive a FREE Gift

Add a Contact Form on your Facebook Page

ssantacroce — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

It’s common knowledge that if people spend time on Facebook, they want to stay on Facebook and not be redirected to other websites. So let’s say someone has a question or a request, that he/she wants to ask you, but doesn’t want everybody else to see it on the page wall. Ideally they would be able to fill out a quick form that gets sent directly to your e-mail, right ? Well, there’s an easy solution to this problem:

Add a Contact Form to your Facebook Page

You can create a simple, personalized contact form that will then be displayed with the other apps on the left side of your page. Every time someone fills in the form you receive an e-mail. Pretty neat, isn’t it ?

Watch this short screen cast to learn how to add this to your page !

Easy, right ?
If you are new to Facebook Marketing, you might be interested in my “Facebook Marketing Basics” e-book which you can download for FREE.

Just fill in your name and e-mail below:

Add a Contact Form on your Facebook Page is a post from: Simplicity, Get monthly updates and receive a FREE Gift

LinkedIn Invitation Limit

ssantacroce — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Did you know that there is a limit to the number of invitations you can send out on LinkedIn ?

I just learned that a while ago when a friend of mine told me that she can no longer send out connection requests with the default “Friend” selection. Each time she wanted to do that, LinkedIn required that she also added the e-mail address of this person.

Since I didn’t know why this was happening either (yes, that’s why I don’t call myself LinkedIn Guru), I researched theLinkedIn Answers platform about this.

And this is what I found out:

LinkedIn has an Invitation Limit

In a life time you get 3000 invitations to use.

Why such a limit ?

To prevent abuse from people who think quantity trumps quality and just send out random invitations. LinkedIn encourages all users to connect to their trusted professional contacts, and to others who welcome connections with new contacts. If you stick to these two groups, or even better use private messages to ask users if they would like to be connected, then your acceptance rates will be high.

What can you do if you have reached the limit anyway ?

Once you have used all your invitations, it is possible to request more and LinkedIn will release them in bundles of 100 if they feel that you have been using your invitations wisely and got high acceptance rates.

So what’s the moral of this story ?

In order to increase your acceptance rate, ALWAYS include a personal note in your invitation. Tell the person how you found out about him/her, and why you would like to connect.

I guarantee that your responses will be 90% positive.

Has anyone reached their invitation limit ? What happened ? How did LinkedIn respond? Please share with us in the comments below.

Are you using LinkedIn to get new leads for your business? If you would like to learn how to optimize o your profile and then use LinkedIn in your overall marketing strategy, you might be interested in my LinkedIn for B2B e-book.

LinkedIn Invitation Limit is a post from: Simplicity, Get monthly updates and receive a FREE Gift

3 Ways to use Google Alerts for your Business

ssantacroce — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

There is no reason to hide that I’m a big fan of Google products. At the end of last year I switched my e-mail from Outlook to Gmail and I’m loving it. In this post I want to share with you how I use another tool offered by Google: Google Alerts.

What is Google Alerts ?

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries. You can enter up to 1000 alerts !

How do I set it up ?

It’s very easy. You go to http://www.google.com/alerts and start entering your search queries. You can enter just single keywords, or whole sentences. Here are some tips for your queries:

Use quotes around a group of words or sentences if you are looking for them together. For exampe: ”Mike Smith”
Put quotes around a single word to match that word precisely as you typed it, excluding synonyms and spelling variations. For example: Michael “Jacson” (to stop Google including results for Michael Jackson)
Use a minus sign (-) in front of words that you want to exclude. For example: apple -fruit

Once you have entered your queries you will have to decide whether you want to have them delivered to your e-mail or to an RSS feed. If you are using an RSS feed congregation tool such as Google Reader, I highly recommend having your alerts delivered there. This way you won’t clutter your inbox. If you are new to RSS feed content curation with Google Reader, you might want to read this post to find out more.

Sounds interesting, but how can I use this for my business ?

Here are 3 Ways to Use Google Alerts for your business:

Brand monitoring

By adding some new alerts on Google with your brand & your own name you can easily monitor your brand on the net. Every time your brand is mentioned on the web, in a blog post, article, press release etc. you will immediately be informed through Google Alerts.

Blog commenting

You might have heard that the more in-bound links your website has, the more credit it will get from the Google search engines. So it is a good habit to comment on other people’s blog posts. “But I don’t have time researching all these blog posts in my field of expertise that come out every week” you are saying. I totally agree, and that’s where Google Alerts come in. Once you set up the keywords that you want to be “alerted” about, Google will automatically inform you about new content that is published on the internet. You will learn about new blogs that are of interest for your industry and I would encourage you to leave your comments at the bottom of the posts.

Content curation

Google Alerts can also help you discover new blogs, not only to comment on, but also to use in your content curation strategy. Once you have found some blogs that are of interest to you and your audience, you can subscribe to their RSS feed and never miss a new blog post from that blog again. Here is that link again for more info about content curation.

Is this something that you might implement ? Which other Google tools would you recommend to small business owners ? Comment below !

3 Ways to use Google Alerts for your Business is a post from: Simplicity, Get monthly updates and receive a FREE Gift

Why pictures are the most powerful Facebook content

ssantacroce — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago during the preview webinar for her new FacebookInfluence program (which I highly recommend by the way), Amy Porterfield drew attention to something which I had noticed before in my Facebook Insights, but didn’t really know how to take advantage of :

Pictures are the most powerful Facebook content

It’s true, pictures (along with videos) are the most “liked”, shared and commented on content on Facebook.

Why is that ?

pictures are interesting
pictures say a thousand words
pictures tell stories
pictures don’t require much time investment of your fans, they don’t need to read your post first to comment on

So how can you use pictures on your Facebook page ?

post pictures of you, your office, your products, your newly purchased Kindle and whatever else you can think of
post inspirational pictures
when posting a blog post, post a picture instead and add the link to the post in the comments
ask your fans to post their pictures
post random pictures with your thoughts

For some businesses who sell visual products or services, it is even easier to promote their work with pictures. For example:

photographers (portfolio pictures)
stylists (before / after pictures)
designers (portfolio pictures)
restaurant owners (food pictures )
etc. etc

Who says pictures also says royalties. Always make sure you only use pictures which you own the rights to. I buy mine at Istockphoto.com. I wrote a post about “Legal pictures for your blog” not long ago. You might want to read that too.

So next time you publish something on your Facebook page, don’t forget “A picture says a thousand words”.

To find out more about Amy Porterfield’s FacebookInfluence Program, go here !

Why pictures are the most powerful Facebook content is a post from: Simplicity, Get monthly updates and receive a FREE Gift

5 “Must Haves” On Your Coaching Website

ssantacroce — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Last week a friend of mine launched her new Coaching website and asked me for some feedback. She did a great job, the site had happy colors and the overall look was very nice. After giving her a few tips I thought this would be a good idea for a blog post, in the hope that it will benefit some other people in the coaching business. So here it goes:

5 “Must Haves” On Your Coaching Website

Grabbing Copy On Your Homepage

Your home page is probably the most important page of your website. If you don’t grab your reader’s attention on the first page, he might just click away again. Too often I see very generic information about coaching, areas of expertise etc. People want solutions to their own problems ! Questions to which your reader silently nod an affirmative “yes, that’s me” usually work well for coaches. For example if you are a life transition coach you could ask: “Are you at a turning point in your life and would like to find out who you really are and work on your options to develop a strategy?” Something like that… You will have better words to express it…

A Blog

Every coach needs a blog. Whether it is a written blog, a video blog or an audio blog. There are thousands of benefits of a blog, here are just three:

they increase your website traffic
they position you as an expert in your field
they create share-able content for Social Media integration

Of course the idea of blog posts is that they are being read by a big audience. Read my previous post “Are your blog posts share-able” to learn how you can make sure that people share your blog posts with their friends through Social Media.

A Good Contact Page

Your contact page is almost as important as your Home page. It’s the page where people go if they want to contact you (duh), find your phone number, find out where you are located etc. So make sure you provide all that information on your contact page. And make it easy for them to contact you. What do YOU do if you are required to fill out a form with 20 fields ? I get seriously annoyed and go to the next site… I wrote a blog post entitled “Which information has to be on a good “Contact” page?” You might want to read that too.

A “Rates” Page

This is a bit of a controversial topic. Some people think that you shouldn’t display your rates because you might discourage some potential clients. Well, I think you should. If your audience knows your rates, they know if they can afford you. If they can, they will contact you. If they can’t, they won’t. So what? Did you really want to waste your time explaining your services, giving them free advice and then never hear from them again because they can’t afford you ? Didn’t think so. But that’s my opinion, what’s yours ? Share in the comments below.

A Freebie

A free giveaway (such as a free e-book, a free video or audio for example) is a great way to show your expertise in your field and if you ask for an e-mail in return, it allows you to build your e-mail marketing list ! Curious about E-Mail Marketing ? Read this post for more info.

5 “Must Haves” On Your Coaching Website is a post from: Simplicity, Get monthly updates and receive a FREE Gift

How to add Skills to your LinkedIn profile

ssantacroce — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

At the beginning of 2011 LinkedIn introduced “LinkedIn Skills“. There is much more to “LinkedIn Skills” than just displaying your main skills on your profile (which is already a great thing).

LinkedIn has created a big search engine which, if you search for a particular skill, will show you key people within that community, related jobs, related companies, and groups where you can interact with like minded professionals. Do you see the interest of this yet ? Basically your profile can now be searched by skill rather than just by title or name. I have seen a big increase of profile visits ever since I added this feature to my profile.

Convinced that you need this ? Let me show you how:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kslzCPTsMo

Now are you convinced?

How to add Skills to your LinkedIn profile is a post from: Simplicity, Get monthly updates and receive a FREE Gift

Restore Your WordPress Website With Backup Buddy

ssantacroce — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:00:34 +0000

This is the second part of the BackupBuddy plugin review. In the first part of the review I had asked Staci if she could explain the restore process to my readers and she got back to me within 2 days with a short screen cast that explains the step by step procedure. Thanks for this, Staci !

“BackupBuddy has saved my website a few times in one way or another. If you changed something within your site and broke it or you did a site design and just really don’t like it and want to go back to the way your site was before… you can easily do this within 6 steps that takes about 6-minutes tops [as long as you have a BackupBuddy "back up"].

Let me walk you through each step so you will be able to do this on your own website. Pardon the blurred areas – trying to keep my website/hosting information unwraps since this is going live to the world for all to see. Once you use BackupBuddy‘s restore process – this video can help guide you/walk you through the steps and give you the peace in mind, knowing you can restore a previous backup if you need to.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAkXtVSighg

This guest post is by: Staci, Your Online 24/7 Virtual Assistant at StaciJansma.com. Staci is an internet entrepreneur focusing on helping others by providing assistance virtually. She delivers excellent service in proofreading articles, search engine optimization, shopping carts, affiliate programs, autoresponders, and creative projects. Staci is Your Online 24/7 Virtual Assistant ready to help when you need her.

Restore Your WordPress Website With Backup Buddy is a post from: Simplicity, Get monthly updates and receive a FREE Gift

Happy Holidays 2011

ssantacroce — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:00:00 +0000

2011 is coming to an end.
It has been an interesting year for me, with ups and downs like you probably know them in your own business. I have met many interesting people and look forward to the future joint ventures that have been established or are in discussion.

December is a month of reflection and planning for the coming year. I have many ideas for 2012, but on my blog the main priority is consistency: I have made the commitment to blog once a week, every Thursday. So expect interesting articles about Social Media, Small Business Marketing, product reviews, how to screen casts and book reviews once a week ! If you like, you can sign up below and get them in a monthly newsletter, so you can stay up to date.

Since it’s also the time of the year where we make wish lists, I would like YOU to let me know in the comments below what you would like me to write about. More about Internet Marketing, How to use Facebook, How to use LinkedIn, How to build your list, anything… You just have to ask…!

If Santa allowed me a wishlist for my blog, it would be the three following things:

More comments from my readers (remember, each time you comment you create a link back to your blog)
More guest posts (contact me if you have an article you think my readers would be interested in)
More retweets, LinkedIn shares, Facebook shares etc

THANK YOU for your support in 2011 ! I couldn’t have done it without you.
Here is to wishing you a Happy Holiday season, with many cosy and quiet moments to re-energize for 2012 !

Happy Holidays 2011 is a post from: Simplicity, Get monthly updates and receive a FREE Gift