Surefire way to Transform your Business

Email marketing can transform your marketing efforts. Think about it… A Facebook post is hardly seen by the people who Like your business, ads are expensive, and on other networks you need to be posting multiple times per day to even make a mark.

Emails on the other hand, go straight to your client’s inbox and 20-40% of recipients open the email. You are able to provide more information and target specific promotions for each type of individual on your list.

What tools can you use to make email marketing easier to manage?

I highly recommend using ConvertKit. ConvertKit allows you to create sequences for your different email segments and has the ability to automate moving a subscriber from one list to another without you even needing to log into the account. Best of all, through their interface, you can create landing pages, forms, and customize the look and feel of your marketing collateral.

Download your Free Guide to Email Marketing here.

So what if you don’t have an email list yet?

“Early on when you’re growing your list it can be hard to know who to target and where to find
them online. You usually start by writing blog posts to no one. And it sucks. It’s really weird to
write posts for an audience of zero. I think you should start by writing to an audience of ten.
The 10 person rule is where you start by identifying 10 people you know personally who can
benefit from your writing. When I started out I was teaching about designing iPhone apps. So I
would think through my friends and co-workers and list out 10 names of people who want to
learn to design better apps. Let’s see, 3 developer co-workers who build apps on the side, a designer
friend who is great at web design, but doesn’t know anything about apps… And so on.

Don’t stop until you have ten actual names listed out.

If you can’t get to ten people you know personally who would benefit from what you may want
to teach, you may want to re-evaluate your audience choice. Or make some new friends.

Next you email each of them personally and ask them three questions:

  1. What’s your biggest frustration when learning about [topic]?
  2. What websites, blogs, or forums do you visit now to learn about [topic]?
  3. I’m starting a new site to teach [topic]. I’d love for you to be one of my beta readers. Interested?

You may have even better results if you split this into two separate emails. Questions 1 and 2
would go out in the first email to start a conversation, then if they’re interested you ask question
If you do this right you’ll finish the exercise with 10 new email subscribers, a list of exactly
where your target audience hangs out online, and material for your next 5 to 10 blog posts.”

To learn more about growing your email list, download your Free Guide to Email Marketing here.

How has email marketing transformed your business?

Surefire way to transform your business with email marketing

[This post contains affiliate links]

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Social Media Audit

When was the last time you took an audit of your social media presence? Did it include analyzing your competition? Performing a social media audit can help you to see where you are at, project where you are headed, and see how you can improve your presence. The goal of an audit to to make sure you are still working towards your larger goals and figuring out how you can tweak the daily management of your accounts to align more closely with your vision.

On your own accounts:

  • Make a list of all of your accounts
  • Check the About description and information. Is it missing anything? Has anything been changed?
  • Grab your network size numbers. Have the numbers grown in size since the last time you performed an audit?
  • Dissect the user comments and engagement. Are you getting more engagement? Is the engagement positive? Who makes up your network on each account?

In a social media audit you should ask yourself these 4 questions:

  1. Where is my audience?
  2. Where is my audience active?
  3. Where is my audience searching?
  4. What niche social media sites are right for me?

Examine your social media profiles

Locate and document all your social media profiles, official and unofficial

  • “Why are we using this social account?”
  • “Why do we want to use it?”
  • “What are our goals for this social media platform?”
  • “Are our target markets using it?”
  • If you no longer have a good reason to use the account or you find that your target market is elsewhere, don’t hesitate to cut ties and focus your effort where it is better spent
  • Check for completion of all details on these profiles and for consistency in imagery and message
  • Follow up on your goals and compare performance today to performance one and two years ago

Next, take a look at your competition:

  • How frequently are they posting?
  • What is their network size?
  • Are they growing faster or slower than you?
  • What is the level of engagement with their fans?
  • Does anything stand out that they are doing well?
  • What can you learn from each account?

Examine those who do it well…

Find 4 to 8 niche influencers and examine how they manage their brand on social media. Observe the imagery and branding on each of their profiles and then:

Measure key metrics like followers and engagement

  • Branding: How does their overall look promote the brand? Can visitors get an accurate sense of their personality or culture? How have they chosen to use images in header and avatar?
  • Popularity: How many followers/likes does the page have?
  • Frequency: How often do they post? What do they do on weekends?
  • Engagement: What is the number of people talking about the brand compared to the number of fans?
  • Types of posts: What topics do they frequently discuss? What types of posts do they use: photos, questions, videos, chats, text? What is engagement like for each of these post types?

Where is my audience active & where are they searching:

Every minute, people are conducting millions of queries on Google, Twitter, and Facebook. If you are active on these social media platforms, then you have a chance at appearing in social media search results.

Any Niche sites? Just because 1 business gets leads from a site, doesn’t mean you will.

Social media audit - the number one thing you should do to measure success. When was the last time you took an audit of your social media presence? Did it include analyzing your competition? Performing a social media audit can help you to see where you are at, project where you are headed, and see how you can improve your presence. The goal of an audit to to make sure you are still working towards your larger goals and figuring out how you can tweak the daily management of your accounts to align more closely with your vision.

 

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How to go from 0 to 100,000 Website Visits

Moving from 0 to 100,000 visitors takes a lot of leg work, no matter how easy a blog post or interview makes it sound. Unless of course you are buying ads, which provides a short-term solution, you’ll need to get working!

Depending on your industry, Pinterest. Reddit, Quora, and LinkedIn can all provide avenues to increase your site traffic. I’ll take a look at each below.

In order for any of these to be successful, however, you need to make sure there is a reason to go to your website. I recommend a combination of new blog posts, freebies, and diverse media (videos, infographics, etc).

  1. Pinterest: On Pinterest there are a variety of ways you can boost your traffic. You need to start with the basics.
    • Complete your profile and confirm your website. By confirming your account, your profile tends to rank higher in search results. Also, let people know what to expect if they follow you.
    • Use Rich Pins. These add more content to your pins from your site, which can increase their impressions and clicks.
    • Optimize Descriptions: Not only do you want your pins and boards to appear in search results, you also want to entice people to click them.
    • Engage: Don’t just go through and Follow everyone you can to gain Followers, go through and Like, Comment, and Repin appropriate Pins before Following someone (yes, there are automation tools like this, such as NinjaPinner or Tailwind*).
    • Participate in Group Boards: Find group boards that fit your business and request to join them. Of course follow the rules when you pin to these boards, but they open the door to a much wider audience (BoardBooster* is great for automating your pinning).
  2. Reddit: The goal on Reddit is to get a lot of Upvotes. When a post makes it big, it can bring thousands of visitors to your site. Reddit is set up to prevent spammers, so you do need to be cautious about what type of content you are posting here.
    • Find your subreddits: These are the subcategories that you can post to. You need to find the ones that is made up of your target market. You can find these subreddits through searches on Reddit. Look for the results that are relevant and have high traffic. You can also use Metareddit to find subreddits. Just make sure that the subreddits you decide on FIT your topic and aren’t too broad.
    • Research the posts in the Subreddit: take note if you see consistencies in the posts and what the most upvoted posts tend to be. You will want to emulate what works within each specific subreddit.
    • Participate: Hold off on posting your links for just a bit more and focus your energy on commenting on other posts (new accounts can only comment once every 10 minutes or so).
    • Post your own links! But only if it fits the guidelines for the subreddit. When you are posting, don’t hesitate to test different headlines and time of day. Always be clear about what the post is about and then don’t try to upvote your own things. Redditors can smell marketing from a mile away, so don’t try to hide what you are doing. Of course sometimes, even if you get downvotes, you still may make a sale, which has happened a few times to me).
  3. Quora: We are just starting out on Quora, so there are other folks who can provide better insight here, but participate and provide great answers to questions.
    • On Quora the best way to  is to get traffic to your website is to find questions to answer have followers, but less than 10 answers. This means you have found a question people are interested in learning more about, but you can have your answer stand out compared to others.
    • Don’t be afraid to answer questions that aren’t directly related to your business, either. You have expertise in a lot of different areas, so you can more generally have your profile stand out if you start receiving up votes across the board.
    • Research how other people are answering the question. Are they writing quick responses or going into detail? This can show you how you need to be writing the replies.
  4. LinkedIn: If you are B2B, you need to be on LinkedIn. I highly recommend using Group Discussions to push out your blog posts and LinkedIn Articles to re-publish your popular blogs with a call to action back to your site.
    • Find Groups: LinkedIn has switched around their interface, but the goal is to find active groups that fit your target market.
    • Participate: Just like with Reddit and Pinterest, you need to participate. This means liking and commenting on other members’ discussions.
    • Post Discussions: Often your discussion will be flagged if you just post the link to the blog post, so you want to start by asking a question as the discussion title. In the body of the discussion, use some of your blog post and then provide the link to your site.

With each of these tactics, you need to be CONSISTENT and focus on sharing high-quality content. If you want to learn more about how to grow your traffic, please join my free email course on digital marketing.

*Affiliate Link

The Definitive Guide on How to Grow Your Website Traffic from 0 to 100,000: Moving from 0 to 100,000 visitors takes a lot of leg work, no matter how easy a blog post or interview makes it sound. Unless of course you are buying ads, which provides a short-term solution, you’ll need to get working!

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Top Mistakes You Can Make as a New Business

Working with businesses owners we see a lot of mistakes and successes. Especially for the new business or freelancer, the mistakes below can completely destroy your business before it has the chance to succeed.

Mistake #1: Striving for Perfection

“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.”

– Salvador Dali

As a type A perfectionist, I struggled with this. It also is the number one thing I see people starting a business struggle with, as well. Your business is your baby and you are pouring your heart and sole into making it a success, but being too wrapped up in the little things can keep your from actually going out and finding clients. If you find yourself:

  • Stressing over your logo
  • Tweaking every aspect of your website
  • Rereading your introduction email over and over to make it just right (but still not hitting send)
  • Working on perfecting your elevator speech before you attend your first networking group

then you may be focusing too much on being a perfectionist. Trust me, though thoughtful branding can help you land more clients, if you are receiving personal referrals, it isn’t going to stop you from getting paying clients. People choose who they are going to work with based on your personal connection not because of what your logo looks like. Then there is your website… Perfection for every site is a moving target. Your products and services will change. You will notice contacts respond more to one aspect of your business rather than another. As for the next two points, you are procrastinating! It is okay to want to define your messaging, but just getting out there and putting yourself out to prospects is far more important. Sure you want to make sure your messaging is just right when you reach out to that dream prospect or mentor, but these shouldn’t be your first contact. The best part about putting yourself out there before you think you are ready is that you get to understand what the market actually wants and needs! When I first started Boundless Marketing, I had my dream service offerings in mind. Turned out that nobody even understood what I was talking about! There wasn’t a market. I drastically shifted my messaging and began signing contracts almost immediately.

Mistake #2: Thinking you can get clients just by posting things online.

“The richest people in the world look for and build networks, everyone else looks for work. Marinate on that for a minute.”

– Robert T. Kiyosaki

The internet and social media has shifted many of our mindsets about how you can get clients. Even through online channels you need to create a personal relationship with your network. Just posting your blog posts online isn’t going to cut it. I recently signed up for a program to Gain 100 Followers in 3 Days, just to see how other professionals where growing and starting their email lists. Guess what, these influential bloggers and business owners all start int the same place – asking friends, colleagues, clients, and prospects individually if they wanted to join their email list! If you find yourself:

  • Wondering why your networks haven’t converted into paying clients
  • Haven’t asked your mom, sibling, aunt, and grandparent if they want to join your list
  • Are frustrated seeing all these other people succeed

Then you may just be making this mistake. Start going to networking groups and collecting business cards. Take the email address you collect and shoot out a quick note following the template below :

“Hi NAME, I recently met you at EVENT NAME and loved learning about your business. I am in the process of starting an email list focusing on 3 TOPICS YOU WILL BE WRITING ABOUT, and was wondering if you would be interested in receiving the emails. My goal with list is to LIST BENEFITS. Are you interested in learning more?”

Not everyone will say they are interested, but the ones who do will help you grow your contacts quickly! We work with a lot of businesses who see varying amount of success through their social media marketing. The ones who see a return quickly are the clients who are complementing our marketing management services with their own outreach and networking. To see the best results from your marketing, you need to treat social media as you do in person networking. Create personal relationships and treat handles and usernames as individual people not just another account.

Mistake #3: Not Understanding Your Own Values

“When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.”

– Roy E. Disney

Okay, so this one does tie into the branding of your business, but it really is getting out being your authentic self. Knowing your values helps you to better manage your time, set priorities, and work with clients you enjoy. If you find yourself:

  • Wishing there were more hours in the day
  • Being drained after meetings with prospects
  • Continually wishing you had done X, Y, or Z

Then you may be making this mistake. One of my first clients taught me this lesson the hard way. My values are Relationships (family), Creativity, Challenges, Health, Experiences, and Knowledge. Shortly after I began my business full time, I traveled to my brother’s wedding. I was ecstatic to see him tie the knot and spend time with my family. Unfortunately, a new client nearly ruined my weekend. As a people pleaser, I started bending over backwards for the client and found myself anxiously checking email during the rehearsal dinner. I wasn’t being present. Finally, I recognized I would resent my actions if I didn’t shut off all devices to be there for my family. Sure there was a nasty email from my client, but we worked through our differences once the owner understood my boundaries. If you find yourself stressed about client conversations, I urge you to lay out boundaries, guidelines, and a list of responsibilities. You may loose some clients, but they are the people who take up 80% of your time. Think of all the other things you could do to grow your business if you had 80% of your time back!

What mistakes have you made in your own business that kept you from success?

3 Mistakes that can Ruin Your Business and What to do About Them. Working with businesses owners we see a lot of mistakes and successes. Especially for the new business or freelancer, the mistakes below can completely destroy your business before it has the chance to succeed.

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Buying Fake Followers Can Ruin Your Business

Getting thousands of fans and followers on social media requires a lot of time and effort. For some, it may take several months. For others, however, a year would pass by and their follower count is still less than 500. But if someone offered to help boost your follower count by 10,000 in exchange of $20, would you grab the offer? It’s cheap! It can be tempting to buy fake followers, but please resist the urge to do so.

Having more followers can make you look popular, but it can negatively affect your business in a variety of ways. Here’s how buying fake followers can ruin your business.

It can ruin your reputation

Having more followers may help you feel good about yourself. It also makes you look popular in the eyes of potential and current customers. However, seeing your follower count jump from 100 to 10,000 in a matter of days will make people suspicious. Your credibility can be seriously compromised by buying fake followers.

It prevents you from reaching your audience

Social media provides a great opportunity for you to engage with your fans and followers and build a relationship with them. Since most of the followers you buy are bots, they won’t contribute to your engagement.

If you are using Facebook as your main social channel, then having fake followers will work against you. You see, Facebook has a fancy algorithm in which pages will only reach a certain percentage of their followers. If you have 10,000 fans and only 50 of them share, like or comment on your post, they’ll conclude that you are producing low quality content. As a result, people will be seeing your posts less frequently. Building a large number of followers who won’t be able to see your posts is a waste of time and money.

It hinders you from analyzing your true fan base

To help you create an effective social media marketing campaign, you will need to analyze the behavior of your target audience. Which type of content do they engage with the most? Which topics are they most interested in? How old are your fans? Where do they live? The answers to these questions will help you plan future content.

If majority of your followers aren’t real people, then it will prevent you from understanding your real fans and build a better marketing strategy.

 

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Setting your Social Media Goals

Social Media Marketing is increasingly important for your business. It creates an avenue through which you can directly connect with your customers. Additionally, it forms a bridge between your business and your potential clients to make building a sales pipeline an easier and more effective task than some tactics of the past (e.g. cold calling).

Social media gives your company transparency and allows potential customers to more clearly understand the differences between you and your competitors. Social media is a way to create a voice for your company and a way to listen to your consumer’s concerns. The real-time data your business can collect through social media completely revolutionizes the connection between businesses and consumers.

Social Media Marketing Goals

Reasons why Social Media should be your secret weapon: Technology has transformed how entrepreneurs connect with their clients, customers and stay on top of the industry. Generally speaking, most businesses use social media to promote their business and boost their sales. Some even use it to make a difference and allow their business to grow. Now, entrepreneurs have to understand that this social media craze is not just a fad. As a matter of fact, it can be considered as a secret weapon if you know how to implement it correctly. Here are a few reasons why you should get on board.Before you begin to post information to social media channels, your business needs to define its specific goals that it is looking to achieve by leveraging social media. To effectively manage a social media campaign for your business, you must first be able to define how you are going to measure results. A goal of “increasing website visitors who view more than 3 pages” is an excellent goal.

Your social media campaign and its goals should align with your business’s overall marketing plan (which should tie in with the goals of your business). Once these goals are established, they will be used in every part of your social media strategy. Stay at a high level with your goals right now, you can make them more specific in the next section.

See a number of example goals below. These will get you started so you can write strong SMART goals.

  • Research and learning
  • Lead generation
  • Increase E-commerce sales
  • Increase store traffic
  • Increase brand or issue awareness
  • Reputation management
  • Get your Likes to talk about you (word of mouth)
  • Reach a youth audience
  • Promote an event
  • Build excitement prior to an event
  • Get people to take a particular action
  • Draw traffic to a particular online resource
  • Build your email list
  • Solicit donations for your organization
  • Get supporters to solicit donations for you
  • Recruit volunteers
  • Brand your staff as experts on a cause or issue
  • Get your constituents to talk to each other
  • Build a community around an event or topic
  • Get feedback from your constituents
  • Keep your supporters updated on events
  • Increase relevant visitor traffic and page rankings
  • Let supporters publicly support your cause
  • Disseminate information about an issue or topic
  • Recruit new members, advocates or patrons
  • Support a particular group of members, alumni, etc.
  • Tell stories about the work you do
  • Get press coverage
  • Connect with other like-minded organizations
  • Change hearts and minds on a particular topic
  • Gather photos or videos from supporters
  • Understand what people are saying about you
  • Keep up to date with a particular issue
  • Coordinate people in an action or a project

How will you Measure Success?

Now that you have identified the top three goals for your social media campaign it is important to set benchmarks so that you know if your campaign was a success. If your goal is to attract more people to your website, the success will be measured by an increase of people to the site which can be done by using Google Analytics. However, if a majority of these new people are leaving the site without taking action (i.e. placing an order or calling for more information) then it is hard to say if the campaign was a success. This is why it is very important to set specific foals (i.e. increase the number of sales by 10% annually through our website).

Instructions: Here, we will break down the goals into more specific, measurable outcomes. Below, restate the top three goals you defined above so they are:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Time-based

What are your social media goals?

Social Media Goal #1: _____________________________________________________________

Social Media Goal #2: _____________________________________________________________

Social Media Goal #3: _____________________________________________________________

Examples:

  • Realty Elite seeks to increase the number of leads from social media by 20% over the next 12 months through the use of valuable content, Facebook Ads, and client support. This will be measured monthly.
  • We want to increase our referral rate to 95% (a simple survey will measure this) by the end of this year so we will invite all former clients to our Facebook page.
  • We want to get picked up by 5 local media outlets by the end of this year so we are going to build a communications strategy and start executing in 30 days.

Setting your social media goals. Before you begin to post information to social media channels, your business needs to define its specific goals that it is looking to achieve by leveraging social media. To effectively manage a social media campaign for your business, you must first be able to define how you are going to measure results. A goal of “increasing website visitors who view more than 3 pages” is an excellent goal.

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10 Ways To Build Your Online Reputation

This post is updated from December, 2010.

Social media presents a unique opportunity for anyone to develop a personal or business reputation to build their careers, boost sales and increase relationships. The key is to leverage the tools of the Social Media to effectively build your online reputation. You need to understand what your goals and intentions are in order to be successful.

Here are 10 ways you can be successful in this journey, so you can achieve your short and long term goals rather than waste time:

1. Be aware.Continually listen to conversations happening across the Web related to your career or business and learn from the content you read, listen to, or view online. Social media success depends as much on listening as it does on publishing.

2. Be focused.Define your niche and focus the majority of your social media participation on conversations and content related to that area of focus. A focused brand is more powerful than a broad brand. Always lead with your strengths on the social media and be consistent in your content and conversations in order to successfully build your online reputation.

3. Be authentic.Your social media participation is useless if your content and conversations read like corporate rhetoric or a promotional brochure. Instead, be real and be human. Imagine you’re speaking with your audience in person rather than online and adjust your content and tone to match your target audience’s needs and expectations for you based on your brand promise. This is where videos can be a great tool for people to really know who you are.

4. Be trustworthy.Honesty is an essential part of building your online reputation using the tools of the social media. Transparency isn’t just a buzz word, it’s a strategic imperative, which should apply to your social media participation as well as all other aspects of your career or business.

5. Be meaningful.The content you publish on social media must be useful and meaningful to your target audience or there is no reason for them to read it or start a dialogue with you about it. Furthermore, if your content doesn’t add value to your audience’s lives, they won’t talk about it and share it with their own audiences.

6. Be “non-self-promotional.”No one will want to read your content or interact with you on the social media if your content and conversations read like a marketing pitch. Follow the 90-10 rule of marketing and spend 90% or more of your time in social media activities that are not self-promotional and only 10% or less on activities that are self-promotional. When you do want to directly try to get more exposure to build your online reputation, you can do so without annoying other people.

7. Be accessible and responsive.An important part of building your online reputation via social media participation is understanding that it’s not all about you. Instead, you need to spend a great deal of time acknowledging other people on the social media in order to build a relationship with them. In other words, they need to understand that you care about them, too. You need to respond to questions, comments on your blog, tweets, and so on.

8. Be reciprocating.You can’t expect people to reach out to you and share your content on the social media and not return the favor. If someone engages with you on your blog, Twitter, Facebook or another social media destination, then you can’t ignore that person — just as you wouldn’t ignore someone in a face-to-face situation. For example, you also need to leave comments on other people’s blogs, share their content on Twitter and Facebook, and more. You can’t operate in a silo on the social media and expect to be successful.

9. Be uncontrolling.The thought of giving up control and letting your content, conversations and name spread across the Web can be frightening. However, without the sharing of content and interactive dialogue that happens on social media, your online reputation cannot develop. You have to be willing to give up control and let people share and talk about you and your content in order for your online reputation to grow. Don’t worry about negative buzz about you, your brand, or your business. There is always a way to react to negativity on the social media.

10. Be involved.Don’t spend all of your time in one place. While quality is more important than quantity when it comes to building an authentic reputation online, you do need to spread your wings and be social. Focus on other avenues such as a blog, YouTube, Google Buzz, Backlinks, and much more. You need to use all aspects of Internet Marketing in order to see return.

10 ways to build your online reputation: 10 ways you can be successful in this journey, so you can achieve your short and long term goals rather than waste time.

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Putting Together a Social Media Schedule

This is updated from a post on Oct 26, 2010.

One of the most important parts of being active in the social media world is taking responsibility for your Facebook, Twitter, and any other internet marketing outlets you have. When we put our posts out and we like other peoples posts that is a good start to taking responsibility. When we send out Newsletters or email marketing campaigns we want other people to read them right?

Well it is a two sided road; I mean we all have to put in our efforts to read other peoples stuff as well. My tip for that is picking your inner circle of people and people you have made a power partner and start by reading their newsletters and/or emails. The same thing goes with our social media posts. We want people reading our post, tweets, events, questions etc. also emailing us wanting to work with us or learn more about what we do. We have to do that with others. The one thing I always say about social media is it brings people, communities, and companies together all over the world.

So how do we do that? It is easy . . . we put together a weekly schedule and then we implement it into our routine just like checking emails, and making calls.

Monday- Using www.Hootsuite.com schedule your posts to go out onto your Facebook personal page, Facebook business page, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Ping.fm. Using my post before this one to help first create your strategy so you know what you need to post on your social media profiles and when. (Schedule an hour and a half to start)

Tuesday- Login to Facebook and add 10 people into your business list, research these people. Find people that have common interest or maybe looking for your services and put them into the business list you created. Then get onto Twitter or Twellow and search for your Keywords or location. You can search for people using keywords or type in keywords people would use to find YOU and add 50 people. (Schedule about 45 min to start, once you get the hang of it you can probably get it done in 30 min)

Wednesday– Spend some time on LinkedIn checking emails and finding people you may know and ask them to connect with you. (Schedule 45 min)

Thursday- Login to Facebook and add 10 people into your business list, research these people. Find people that have common interest or maybe looking for your services and put them into the business list you created. Then get onto Twitter or Twellow and search for your Keywords or location. You can search for people using keywords or type in keywords people would use to find YOU and add 50 people. (Schedule about 45 min to start, once you get the hang of it you can probably get it done in 30 min)

Friday – Repeat what you have done Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We are going to add another step into today, Once you are done adding people on Facebook and Twitter you want to go back to Facebook and go to your page, under your logo you will find a tab that says “Suggest to Friends” Click on that and then click the drop down tab to your list you made once that list pulls up on the top right hand side it will say “Select All” hit that and then send invitations. What this is doing is asking all the people you have been adding as friends to become a fan of your page!

Now this is what I do and share with people you are more than welcome to move it around however it works for you. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions of things that have helped you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Putting together a weekly social media schedule: ne of the most important parts of being active in the social media world is taking responsibility for your Facebook, Twitter, and any other internet marketing outlets you have. When we put our posts out and we like other peoples posts that is a good start to taking responsibility. When we send out Newsletters or email marketing campaigns we want other people to read them right?

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Website in a Weekend [New Course]

We are so excited to launch our second course, which launches June 9: Website in a Weekend!

This course is geared toward the do-it-yourself-er  who is tech savvy, but just doesn’t know how to stylize and create a WordPress Website. We’ll be starting with the basics of purchasing hosting and installing WordPress and the Enfold theme, followed by selecting brand colors and fonts. At this point, I’ll bring your through creating captivating pages, inserting forms, and best practices for your website content.

The Website in a Weekend course includes self-paced lectures, handouts, tutorials, and step by step guides.

Over the course of June 23, 24, 25, I will be working with a select group of solopreneurs, marketing teams, business owners, bloggers, and those with brilliant ideas to create their dream websites. Prior to the weekend, I will host a free welcome webinar (registration below) to help you decide if you are a candidate for the Website in a Weekend course. I simplify the entire website design process, but still require individuals to be motivate and have some knowledge of technology.

For this weekend you will have access to me via the Members Only Facebook Group where I will be answering questions live. There is also the option for additional support that we can add on should you need it beyond this intensive weekend.

What’s Included in Website in a Weekend?

 

Module 1: Setting the Stage

Before you even start building your website, you need to think about your website and business as a whole. Here you will be guided through:

  • Defining your business
  • Researching your competitors
  • Thinking big

Module 2: Branding your Business

Without brand standards, your entire presence can feel disjoint. This is an integral piece to any marketing and can transform your website from blah to a true masterpiece. We will provide a:

  • Values tool to gain clarity on your person (and business) values
  • Font pairing workbook to select your core business fonts
  • Colors overview and step by step how to choose the colors that define your business
  • Overview of images and and overall feeling of your brand

Module 3: Your Website Content

We aren’t quite at setting up your website yet! Before you even create that first page of your site, it works best to know what pages you need and already have the content for those pages. Here you will:

  • Use a workbook to select the must-have pages on your site
  • Begin writing the content for these pages
  • Understand effective calls to action on your pages

You will also receive templates to write:

  • Your  About Page
  • Services Pages
  • Product Pages

Module 4: Website Layout and Wireframe

Finally, let’s think about your website design. Here we will work through:

  • Identifying the elements of other websites that you are drawn to
  • Constructing your page hierarchy (which pages are parent pages  vs subpages)
  • Building a wireframe (or visual layout of your website)

Module 5: Let’s Get to Building

As long as you have a guide and think only one step at a time, the technical side of building your site can actually be a breeze! You’ve already completed the tough stuff. Now we just need to work through putting the elements together. In this module we:

  • Purchase hosting and your domain if you haven’t already
  • Install Worpress and upload the Enfold theme (for $75, I am happy to complete this step for you)
  • Follow our Step by Step guide to checking your WordPress settings from hosting through to final design
  • Complete an overview of widgets on your site
  • Have access to numerous templates for page designs
  • Access to a guide to use additional elements in the Enfold theme

Why Enfold?

We love the Enfold theme and have found it customizes to really any design you desire without needing to add additional plugins or touch the code. From photographers to business consultants, technology companies and chiropracters, this theme does it all!

Module 6: Plugins

Though Enfold does it all, we have a list of plugins that we recommend for all websites to increase the search engine optimization, optimize your lead funnel, and more. This module

  • Walks you through the concept of a Plugin
  • Gives access to the top plugins we use for clients

Blog posts and articles are meant to be reused! Think of a typical blog you write, is there a list or bullets? Do you break the content up into multiple segments? Are there different ways to phrase the blog title? Your blog post can be recycled as social media posts and shared to other networks in its entirety.

Module 7: Forms, Freebies, and Subscribers

Congratulations! You have a beautiful, branded website to which you are empowered to make changes! A website is an ever-morphing project that can continue to grow as you write blog posts, expand your services, and create resources for prospects. The last piece of the puzzle is to set your business up for success using forms, freebies, and subscribers. Here you will:

  • Understand why freebies on your site are more than just giving information away for free
  • Receive step-by-step information on how to create and embed forms on your site using MailChimp
  • A sneak peak into Convert Kit for those looking to take their subscriber list to a new level
  • Templates for creating your own EBooks, Infographics, and more!

Once you complete the Website in a Weekend course, you will continue to have complete access to all the lectures, resources, handouts, and tools. Additionally, you will keep your membership to the Website in a Weekend Facebook Group for additional support from my team and other businesses that have been through the process of designing and building their website!

Website in a Weekend course: This course is geared toward the do-it-yourself-er who is tech savvy, but just doesn’t know how to stylize and create a WordPress Website. We’ll be starting with the basics of purchasing hosting and installing WordPress and the Enfold theme, followed by selecting brand colors and fonts. At this point, I’ll bring your through creating captivating pages, inserting forms, and best practices for your website content.

Next Steps? Join the Free Welcome Webinar on:

June 17, 2017 at 8 am Mountain Time (10 am ET)

On June 17th at 9 AM Mountain Time, join us for a Free Webinar to get started on your website design project. This course is designed for a specific group of people who are motivated and technically savvy enough to build their own website with guidance and over site from a WordPress website specialist. It is for the individual who has the goal of showing off their new site by July 4.

In this Free Webinar, you will have a clear sense of if the Website in a Weekend course is for you. You will also receive the first handouts for:

  • Beginning to organize your content
  • Brainstorming website design elements that you can’t live without
  • and more.

I know you are a busy professional, and taking time away from your business, family, and life two weekends in a row is a lot to ask! Because of this, even in the free June 17 webinar, I’ll be providing an in depth overview of exactly what you need to get started on a website design project.

 

Reserve your Seat Today

Enter your name and email address below to reserve your seat for the Website in a Weekend Welcome Webinar on June 17 at 8 am Mountain Time (10 am ET).

WordPress in a Weekend Pricing

 

Register for June 23, 24, 25 Launch

Lifetime access to all course materials including:

  • Lectures
  • Handouts
  • Step-by-step guides
  • Tutorials
  • Member only Facebook Group
  • Ability to build your site in 3 days

Only $397 




Or 2 Payments of $198.50




Additional Support with Course

Lifetime access to all course materials with additional add-on support:

  • Two 30 minute personal phone calls to work through your individual questions
  • One hour website development to tackle technical troubles including inserting layout elements, uploading theme, changing formatting and CSS.
  • Add-on: $400

Only $797 




Or 2 Payments of $398.50




Website in a Weekend course: This course is geared toward the do-it-yourself-er who is tech savvy, but just doesn’t know how to stylize and create a WordPress Website. We’ll be starting with the basics of purchasing hosting and installing WordPress and the Enfold theme, followed by selecting brand colors and fonts. At this point, I’ll bring your through creating captivating pages, inserting forms, and best practices for your website content.

Website in a Weekend: This course is geared toward the do-it-yourself-er who is tech savvy, but just doesn't know how to stylize and create a WordPress Website. We'll be starting with the basics of purchasing hosting and installing WordPress and the Enfold theme, followed by selecting brand colors and fonts. At this point, I'll bring your through creating captivating pages, inserting forms, and best practices for your website content.

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