Jan
5
Finally back from a long holiday break. 
I always love the first Monday in January. The holidays are behind us, it’s the beginning of a New Year, and I’ve got all my goal sheets and tasks laid out in front of me. I’m ready to get started on making the New Year the best yet.
Since I’m putting the details in place for my new class Make Money Online in 2009, I thought I would put together a post giving you some questions to think about.
1. Do you know the difference between SEO (search engine optimization) and SMM (social media marketing) and where you should be focusing your efforts?
The world has been using buzz words like SEO for years. For many years its been at the top of Internet savvy business owners lists. But now social media is rapidly moving up the ranks, and more importantly, giving business owners huge results.
Dec
30
As 2009 is quickly approaching, what’s the number one thing you should be doing for your business? Yep, its all about social networking.
How long have you been in business? When you first started out, did you decide on your business name in part based on the URL address that was still available? I know that’s top on my list anymore before I come up with a new business idea. If the URL isn’t available, I change the name.
If you name your company ABC Photography, and ABCPhotograph.com isn’t available, how will anyone find you? Or worse, what if ABCPhotography.com is used by one of your competitors? Any promotion you do will be completely for the benefit of your competitor (especially if you are using a more obscure URL like ABCPhotography.net, or ABCPhotoStudio.com). Yes, dot com’s still rule.
But now the social scene is also gearing up. And many sites allow you to capture URL’s on a first come first serve basis. Let me give you some examples.
On Twitter, I’m Twitter.com/LoriOsterberg. It’s taken – and no other Lori Osterberg will have access to it. That’s especially important with the more common names, both personal and business.
And when I capture my unique URL on these social sites, I also have the ability to establish a profile. Whether I use the account or not, I can put my information up and direct people back to my content. It’s mine. And I can choose to use it now, or at any point in the future.
If you’re one of the many who has ever said, “I don’t have time to work with all of these social sites”, don’t fret. Just capture your name, build a simple profile, and park it for later use. When the site becomes big and you do decide to use it, it’ll be there for you.
[And if you really want to get ahead in 2009 and learn how to use social networking to help you build your business, join me now … ]
Dec
23
Giving A Book To A Child With Just A Couple Of Seconds Of Your Time
Filed Under Blogging Success, Books | 1 Comment
Want to help out in the literacy campaign? It’s easy with FirstBook’s Bedtime Stories challenge.
If you post a comment by December 25th, Disney will donate a free book in your honor towards the fight for helping more children with the love of reading. (Click here to post your comment)
I’ve been following FirstBook for some time, and their mission is one I strongly believe in. Reading is the key to success. And in order to give kids a desire to read, its important to get books into their hands as early as possible. I’ve been donating books to a variety of sources for years.
One of the things I love about blogging is how easily you can have an impact. Post something as easy as Disney’s offer to donate free books, and let bloggers do the rest. You can have hundreds of comments in a very short time period.
Thanks to all that help in this wonderful cause. And have a very happy holiday season!
Dec
16
Every year I sit down towards the end of the year and come up with my goals for the upcoming year. This year is no exception. Yet I’ve also added a new level to my goal charts - a whole section on blogging.
Even though I’ve been blogging for years, I’ve never used them to generate revenue. Instead, I always saw them as a way to build traffic for my sites, ultimately selling my services.
But something clicked this year, and I’ve seen what blogging can do. So this year, I’ve decided write down my goals for my three blogs, (HowToBlog, Virtual and Vision) and use them to evaluate my performance throughout 2009.
Want to join me? Write up your own blogging goals, and post your comments here. Or if you want to make it even more official, write a blog post about your goals, and put your ideas in writing.
My 2009 Blogging Goals
- to reach 10,000 RSS subscribers on each of my blogs
- to reach 2,000 Twitter followers
- to make a full time, six figure income through revenue generated by my blogs
- to publish 1 new program on each blog, helping my readers develop their businesses
- to teach one class each month on the power of blogging
What are your goals?
Dec
10
50 Ways To Use Twitter
Filed Under Blog Resources, Social Sites | 1 Comment
1. Use your real name. (Twitter.com/LoriOsterberg) This is a way to build your expertise.
2. Use a photograph that shows who you are.
3. Change your photograph out, but make sure it always represents your business image.
4. Change out the free Twitter background to include more about you or your business.
5. Start using some of the different applications for Twitter
6. Automatically feed your blog posts into your Twitter account.
7. Automatically feed you Twitter posts into your Wordpress blog.
8. Start a discussion.
9. Ask a question.
10. Comment on a post made by someone you’re following.
11. Share cool tools and sites. (Love to travel to exotic places? My newest find – CouchSurfing.com)
12. Survey your followers.
13. Find a great virtual assistant.
14. Hire a sales person.
15. Find restaurants when visiting new places.
Dec
9
What To Expect For Cash Flow When You Start Your New Blogging Venture
Filed Under Blogging For Business | Leave a Comment
When you take on a blog, it’s for one of three reasons:
1. You want a place to write for fun and for personal issues.
2. You want to become a professional blogger and have your blog earn you a full time income
3. You want your blog to drive traffic to your site and help you sell your own products and services.
Obviously number one will earn you no revenue (unless you later see the benefit and turn into a professional blogger).
Numbers two and three are your revenue generators. And both will have different tactics in which they make money for the business.
A professional blogger writes for his audience, and brings in revenue based on his audience. A professional blogger will typically make money from:
Dec
1
Turn Your Questions Into Blog Posts
Filed Under What To Blog About | 1 Comment
When you’re out networking, what questions do people ask you about your company or your industry?
When you’re meeting with a prospect, what questions do they have before they become clients?
When you’re working with your clients, what questions do they ask you as you go through the process of the sale?
These are perfect blog posts.
The purpose of a blog post is to educate your potential customers, and provide them with quality information that proves your expertise. People are more likely to do business with people that provide quality information – people they look to as a resource, and can rely on for help throughout their learning process.
They will also make your job easier.
Nov
21
Blogging For Business Tip #9
Filed Under Blogging Tips | Leave a Comment
"Is it okay to promote?"
Everyone tells you blogging isn’t about blatant promotion.
"You should be offering great advice to your readers. "
"Offer them something of substance."
But the whole reason you’re online is to do business. Can’t you promote yourself too?
Yes!
Adding a bunch of content
is great. The purpose is to provide enough content to prove your expertise, and to develop relationships that enjoy the information you supply.
Online people have a choice. If they don’t like what you do, they have the opportunity to leave. I have many lists of email addresses that I promote to all the time. And occasionally I promote a product, service, or even a special promotion. And yes, I have people leave my lists every time, saying they don’t want to be sold to.
But think about that for a minute. If you’re offering a ton of quality information on a regular basis, occasionally you have the right to ask for the sale. You have to stay in Read more
Nov
17
Blogging means you can have instant awareness to millions of people. If they like what have to say, it may circulate. If they hate what you have to say, it could be a virtual wildfire.
This past Saturday a new ad was put up on the Motrin site. It was an ad about moms using slings to carry their babies [read the full description here]. Unfortunately they made the assumption that moms use slings to be fashionable, even though it made them tired and crazy.
Moms spoke back. Big time. 
Within minutes, bloggers began posting about the video, and how they found it offensive. On Twitter, “motrin” zoomed to the top of the most tweeted subject. That’s the power of online media. [you can follow the #motrin trend on hashtag]
As of Monday morning, the video is gone from the Motrin site, though it will probably live on YouTube Read more
Nov
13
Wasting your time with microblogging?
Filed Under Social Sites | Leave a Comment
For the last couple of years, microblogging has developed as an option for small business marketers. By f
ar the largest in use is Twitter. But other sites have popped up into the horizon as well. Other sites include Plurk, Pownce and Jaiku.
So what if you start using one site - let’s say Twitter - and another soon joins in and becomes even m ore popular? Have you wasted your time?
Ultimately no. Think of it as knowledge. Even as different sites come and go, you’ve gained a variety of things.
- knowledge on how to use a particular type of social site
- connections that help build your business
- friends that you can migrate from one site to another with
Building up profiles and Read more
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