Good Morning friends!

I’m very excited to share with you a new program from Schwan’s Home Service called “EAT FOR FREE”(tm). I love SCHWAN’S(r) products, quality and convenience and want to share this incredible new program with all of my friends! You probably know Schwan’s Home Service from the delicious foods they deliver right to your front door in their famous INCA GOLD trucks.

The “EAT FOR FREE”(tm) Program is a rewards and loyalty program where you refer friends and family and earn back rewards on their online purchases – and with enough referrals and their online purchases can begin to eat for free! I am excited about the opportunity to start receiving free food each month by referring friends and family… it’s so easy there’s no reason not to. Enrollment is fast, simple and free, click the link to learn more. Click Here

Rewards are simple to earn and delicious to redeem. So start referring, redeeming and eating for free today!

To give you an idea of some of the great things Schwan’s has to offer: Specials.

Enjoy

According to the WordPress.org counter, the latest version of WordPress has been downloaded 1,800,000 times. You can see the number increase moment by moment for yourself at http://wordpress.org/download/counter/. It’s proof that WordPress is fast becoming the website building tool of choice for ever growing numbers.

A year or so ago I had to tell my new clients about WordPress. Today, they’re coming to me asking about it. They’ve heard that WordPress is user friendly and easy to keep up dated and they want to know if it can work for their website needs. When a main street baker calls me up to ask if he should be using a WordPress blog, you know that word is getting out there.

In 2008 I created a membership program designed to teach others how to launch and run a blog design business to serve their local small business community. I believed then – and even more so now – that this is a niche crying out for more providers.

I named my program Blog Evangelists. The 12 month lesson plan teaches everything from market research to local branding to business management to teaching clients about using social media.

Sure, there are thousands of blog designers on the web – but small businesses love to work with their fellow local business owners. This is great news for anyone just about anywhere.

If you live in a small town, you may be the only blog designer around and have a ready market to serve. Even if there are other design providers, they probably don’t specialize in WordPress blogs and from my experience, most have very little awareness of social media – let alone try to teach their clients about it.

If you live in a large community, you can always choose to target a specific group within it. Perhaps you’ll become the go to guy for ‘old town merchants’ or you’ll specialize in serving solopreneur owned restaurants.

The idea is to position yourself so that your clientele feels certain that you are the perfect designer for them – no doubt about it. Even if there are hundreds of others who could do the job, they’ll prefer you just because.

The businesses in your neck of the woods quite literally need you to evangelize them. They need to hear the good news that having an effective web presence can be affordable and manageable. They need to learn about social media and how simple search engine optimization tactics that come easy with WordPress can help them rule local search pages.

You, with even a basic understanding of internet marketing tactics can be a huge asset to these small business owners – and with the training provided in Blog Evangelists, you’ll be armed and ready to help them achieve their web marketing goals.  Attend the FREE Webinar on January 19, 2010 and get all the information.

About the Author:

Kelly McCausey is an experienced blog designer, internet marketer and creator of Blog Evangelists. From now until midnight on January 22, 2010, you can grab access to the entire Blog Evangelists course together with Lynette Chandler’s complete Blog Theme Bootcamp for one low price. http://www.blogevangelists.com

Social media and marketing methods have become an important part business success. Business owners are finding that services like Twitter can help to get the message out about their companies, connect them to their customers and clients and bolster their bottom lines with a higher ROI.
With Twitter’s increasing popularity come hundreds of tools and applications to help manage one’s tweets. If you are using Twitter for business, there are many applications that can be used as effective marketing tools. Twitter applications allow you to track the links you share, schedule tweets, welcome new followers, organize and monitor your followers, offer coupons, the list goes on and on. We’ve sorted through the seemingly unending list of Twitter apps to bring you eighteen of our favorites.

TweetLater – Schedule tweets, track keywords, welcome new followers
TwitterContd – Gives you more than 140 characters, upload photos, shorten URLs
Tweepler – Organize your followers
Monitter – Monitor keywords on Twitter
TwitterMass – Enables you to connect and communicate with your target audience
TwitterToolbar – Giving you access to a variety of tools & resources
TwitThis – Add a TwitThis button to your website or blog so visitors can easily tweet about your company
TweetBurner – Track links you share
Trendistic – See the trending topics on Twitter
CoTweet – Platform that aids companies in reaching customers, multiple accounts and users
Twitoria – Reduce Twitter’s clutter by revealing friends that haven’t posted in a while or track down spammers
Twiggit – Updates your Twitter status with your latest Diggs
BubbleTweet – Add a video welcome to your Twitter page
Twitter Gallery – Free Twitter backgrounds and themes
TwitPic – Share photos on Twitter
twtQpon – Enhance your marketing by offering coupons to your followers
TwitterHawk – Targeted marketing that will find people tweeting about a chosen topic and location
TweetBeep – Keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, and your company

When we begin speaking in terms of marketing, invariably the question comes up, are my marketing efforts true marketing efforts or are some viewing them as spam?
Spam is about taking the choice away from someone and delivering them information about products and services without their permission. Spam comes in the way of unsolicited emails, junk mail and telemarketing. Spam leaves a bad taste in our mouths and for good reason. We have not asked to be inundated with the information that we find floods our inboxes these days.
Marketing when done responsibly can be fun and witty. Commercials that reach us emotionally are effective marketing tools. People who care about their audience take the time to consider their message and how it will reach others.
On Twitter we each have an option as to who we will follow. And one might suggest it is that choice that gives others the right to “spam”. Wrong. Spam is irresponsible and annoying. More will tune out than tune in.
Take time to consider your message and how it will connect with your followers. Are you sharing a valuable service, product or resource? Do you take the time to share on a personal level as well as sharing on a business level? Have you established a relationship with your followers? Is the information you are providing timely and appropriate?
If you can answer these questions with a yes answer then your message can effectively be considered marketing rather than spam. Your followers will welcome your post rather than turn away from it. Share your tweet with others and in turn respond in kind to their own messages and tweets. After all, marketing is all about the relationship and spam is about nothing more than the bottom line.

Many of us have taken on the social networks as marketing tools for our businesses. And in doing so, we have decided to use Twitter. Now we have accounts, at which we stare blankly.
What should we be tweeting about?
We have 140 characters to work with and while that seems easy, it can prove more difficult to provide a valuable post in 140 characters or less. We want to engage our audience, but the question then becomes how.
What should you be sharing with your followers? What is it that they want to see?

• They want great conversation. Give them a statement worth replying to. Reply in kind and open the lines of communication.
• They want to get to know the person behind the tweets. Give them the opportunity to get to know you, your personality, as well as your company and services.
• They want links to great sites, videos or information. If you find it relevant and useful, chances are someone else will appreciate the resource as well.
• They want a tweet worthy of sharing with their own followers. Whether that comes in the form of a particularly humorous quip or a great article you have read, give them something they can retweet.

While you want to engage your followers, they want to engage you as well. Don’t be afraid to jump in and get involved yourself. Join in on the conversations, thank a fellow Twitterer for sharing a resource you found helpful. Retweet their posts as well.
In any good relationship there is balance, give and take. Don’t ask anything of your audience that you are unwilling to give yourself. If you are afraid to take your social networking to the next level, don’t expect that others will find you approachable and worthy of their time and effort.

Give them what they want and what you will get in turn will be invaluable to you and your business.

Knowing who to follow on Twitter is important in your marketing efforts. You want to follow those who are of interest to you. You want to follow those who are of use to you and your business. Your hope is that they will in turn follow you back, if they aren’t already following you, thus opening up the lines of communication between your business and your audience.
There are several tools that can be used to make these efforts easier and more streamlined.

• Mr. Tweet – Show the influencers and followers you should follow and suggests you to enthusiastic users relevant to you.
• Just Tweet It – A user directory for Twitter organized by genre to allow for users to easily find other Twitter users to connect with.
• Retweet Rank – Retweetrank lets you find rank of any twitter user. With the rank, latest retweets of the user are shown and an RSS feed can also be grabbed for the same.
• Twellow – A directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you.
• TwitteRel – By using Twitterel.com you can make your life a lot more interesting, we thought of a way to connect to other twitter users who share the same interests as you do.
• Friend or Follow – Who are you following that’s not following you back? Who’s following you that you’re not following back?
• Twitoria – Twitoria is a web app that tidies up your Twitter friends list by revealing inactive friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time so you can unfollow them.
• Topify – Twitter application that improves Twitter’s email notification and allows to follow and reply to direct messages by email.
• Tweepler – A Twitter application that allows you to organize followers.
• Twimailer – Tired of shallow e-mails from Twitter when someone follows you? Want to know more about the people who are following you? Twimailer is a free service that delivers that information right to your inbox!
• TweeterTags – Get the most out of Twitter by finding the right people to share the conversation: Tweeter Tags makes it easy to declare your interests and find new, like-minded friends. Have a question you need answering? Find relevant people on Twitter to ask.

If you’ve done any reading on Twitter marketing, you probably realize that tweeting can be an effective, cost-free or low-cost solution for marketing your business. All too often, however, we may be left wondering what to tweet about our businesses. We are under the mistaken impression that we simply have nothing worthy of sharing.

A good tweet can not only inform your followers about new developments in your company, but it can also educate, inform, or entertain them. Once you achieve visibility, both your company profile and your client prospect levels will rise. The word of mouth that can come from a particularly intelligent tweet or series of tweets can result in hundreds or thousands of dollars in free advertising.

If you provide tweets that appeal to your followers, you’ll gain credibility and be on your way to forming a valuable relationship. This can be very powerful from a marketing point of view.

If you’re looking for things to tweet about in relation to your business, consider some of these ideas. This is a list of 19 reasons to tweet about your business and help you get started today in utilizing this amazing promotional strategy for your business:

1. Starting a new business
2. Celebrating a company anniversary
3. Publishing of a new article or series of articles
4. Publishing of a new blog post related to your business
5. Publishing of a book or ebook
6. Promote a book signing
7. Receiving an award
8. Announcement a partnership
9. Promote a specific product, service, event, contest or fundraiser
10. Promote a product or service that is holiday themed
11. Promote a sale or holiday sale
12. Promote a campaign using your company products that promotes a cause or creates awareness about something important
13. Announce that you’re available to speak on particular subjects of interest
14. Promote a public appearance on television, radio or in person
15. Launching of a website or blog
16. Website or blog anniversary
17. Announce free information or resources are available
18. Sponsoring a workshop, seminar, conference or teleseminar
19. Announcement of a new strategic partnership or alliance

While there are many other reasons to tweet, these ideas should help you jump start your creativity.

No matter what type of online business you are in, or how you communicate, you will find there are a number of reasons that you will need to use a telephone. You may need to soothe clients who need to hear a real human voice or you might need to find a way to communicate with your colleagues that is more immediate than that of a simple e-mail or chat session. The problem is, however, that phone use, whether it is through a landline or through a cell phone, can cause you plenty of problems, especially if you let it get out of control.

For many of us, nothing is more simple or instinctive than calling someone up to chat. While we may want to keep it professional, there is a good chance that we will spend a lot longer on the phone than we thought we would, and before we know it, the day has sped by and our efficiency is shot. The work we intended (our intentions are always good in the beginning aren’t they?) to get done is being put off until later. Have you ever experienced this? This may be a sign that you need to think about your phone use and how it is affecting the bottom line in your business.

There are many tell tale signs that your phone calls are distracting you from your real work. One way to determine just how much affect phone usage has on the productivity of your business is to time your phone calls. How long are you spending on the phone? Keep in mind that when you get on the phone, you are breaking up your work. Once you finish the call and head back to the task at hand, time is also spent refocusing on what you were doing prior to the phone call. Put together all the time that is devoted to your phone calls during the course of the day, from getting the number, to talking on the phone, to getting back to work. The time that you spend “on the phone” just might surprise you.

Next, think about how often you actually take calls. Do you feel as though the number of calls that you are taking detracts from your ability to work, or do you feel as though it contributes? You may find that other phones ringing is enough to distract you, or that if the phone stays silent for too long that you get nervous or antsy. Any of these symptoms might be a sign that you need to form a plan to get out of this productivity killing dilemma.

All hope is not lost however, even if you live with your phone what seems like attached at your ear. In order to combat the time wasting telephone and start making your phone calls and in turn your other tasks productive for your business, try putting this practice into place.

Begin by setting up a rough call time limit based on your average call time. You will need to find out just how much time you spend on the phone using the steps mentioned above beforehand.
Next, make sure that you know what topics need to be discussed before you call anyone. This is an important way to make sure that your call is not out of control and lasting longer than it should. This step alone will make planning your time better and get more done during your work time.

Although it’s not always easy to determine when someone else will call, you can implement these same strategies for calls you receive. Screening calls will also help reduce or even diminish wasted talk time. Remember that your time is valuable and your business is important, so don’t let the telephone distract you anymore than you have to.

You started your online business to have freedom. So… how’s that working out for you?

Most likely the biggest mistake that marketers make when using Twitter for their business is not grasping how it is supposed to be used for that purpose. That misunderstanding leads to a few problems that don’t get them bottom line results like they were hoping for. Don’t be fooled either, just because this article is about a specific social networking tool, doesn’t mean that it only applies to Twitter. In fact it can be applied to many forms of social networking sites.

Here are just a few no-no’s that business owners all too commonly make when using Twitter. Are you committing any of them? Take the time to make sure by reading on.

One big mistake that people make when using Twitter for business reasons (or who think they are using it for business purposes) is getting caught up in the “commotion” there. It’s important to do some talking at Twitter because that is a form of networking in and of itself which is vital to business professionals. However, the talking you do should be succinct, to the point, friendly but professional.

As a marketer, your objective at Twitter is not to make new best friends or get dates; it should be to establish relationships that will lead to others desiring to do business with you. Now don’t misunderstand this. You don’t want to be manipulative. The objective is to keep the talk laid back and not beat people over the head with pleas or demands that they visit your websites.

Another big mistake that marketers make when using Twitter is posting tweets that are irrelevant or drive people away from them. You can be funny, playful, personal, or serious, but what you type in for your message has got to have meaning and substance and be one that will attract others instead of turning them away. It’s also ok to state your opinions on things, but be grown up about it and never type mean, obnoxious tweets or messages are prone to start too much controversy. For the most part, Twitter is a very friendly and open-minded community, but do realize that not everyone will agree with you on certain issues so if you find you are very opinionated on certain hot button subjects, it might be best to avoid those particular matters. As they say, you catch many more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Yet another error people make when using Twitter in business is that they include their website links in too many of their messages. Yes, in order to use social networking sites effectively for business you have to include links to your business, but don’t do it so much that it becomes annoying or seems manipulative. One or two link backs per day is plenty; any more than that will more thank likely be considered overkill.

A related big mistake that people make with Twitter is posting way too many tweets per day. Not only does this take too much time away from their business, but once again they seem heavy handed or self-centered to the community. Five to ten new Twitters per day is plenty. Once again, make sure that you really have something to Twitter about, not just some words to throw up because you want to hear or in this case, see, yourself talk.

Finally, some marketers give up on Twitter too soon because they aren’t seeing the results they’d hoped for quick enough. Remember, persistence is what pays off with networking, and networking on the Internet is no different. Twitter away for a while before you start expecting steady or big results.

You started your online business to have freedom. So… how’s that working out for you?

We all know why instant messaging is a great thing. It’s fast, it allows you to multi-task, and it lets you stay in contact with people that have otherwise dropped out of your circle. But were you aware that it can be hard on your business?

The truth of the matter is that it is easy to let instant messaging get out of control, to the point where it is actually hurting your business and your chances of success. If you are in business for yourself or even if you are just trying to get a lot of work done, you will want to make sure chatting on messenger systems such as Yahoo, MSN, Twitter, and other programs doesn’t hold you back. It can easily happen before it’s even realized and below you’ll find just a few of the reasons why.

First and foremost, instant messaging software is disruptive and distracting. You will find that instant messaging can be problematic when a situation like the following occurs. Imagine yourself working on an important project that is almost complete. You’ve been working hard on it for a few hours and only a few more minutes and it will be finished and all your hard work will soon pay off. Suddenly, a flashing square appears on top of the work you’re doing. It’s an instant message from a friend or family member. What do you think happens in those few seconds after the box pops up?

First, you are immediately distracted from your project due to the fact that something has just popped itself on top of your work. Secondly, you are a human and your curious nature kicks in. Ok, seems simple enough to just minimize the box and keep working right? Unfortunately it’s not that easy.

Even if you choose to ignore the message, you still have to minimize or completely close the window and you’ve just broken your concentration on the task you were working on prior to the interruption. Who’s to say the person sending the message won’t type another message and press that send button, creating either an annoying blink on the bottom of your computer screen or causing another box to pop up once you’ve closed the first. You now must regain focus on your work in order to continue your previous stride.

There is a good chance that you are familiar with the idea of being in the state of mind to work. You will find that you get into a certain mindset and your work will come a great deal more easily and a great deal faster, and that this state of mind is often instrumental in making sure that your work gets done on time. Receiving an instant message, particularly one from a friend or someone who is not related to your work, can spell disaster for this state of mind. Yes, there are a lucky few who can slip right back into the working frame of mind, but most of us can’t!

Even if the instant message is related to business, it might not be a great thing. It might be a colleague who needs help on something, or it might be something that you are being asked just because you are online and can provide an immediate answer.

Don’t let instant messaging ruin your productivity; understand the effect it has on your performance and make sure that you don’t let the flashing boxes control you. You will find that there is a lot to be said for occasionally being inaccessible except through means that take a little bit of effort by those trying to reach you, like the phone or through e-mail.

You started your online business to have freedom. So… how’s that working out for you?