Archive for the ‘Thursday’s Three Thoughts’ Category

So I had a few light bulb moments during the call with Craig Cannings of VA Classroom on the Social Media Boom.

As you know, I often challenge online business owners to be cautious with social media. It’s a big social net out there and it can grab you and never let you go if you’re not careful. For me, my own business assets (websites, blogs, mailing lists, products) are always my main focus and the use of social media is an extra and a complement to what I do.

In other words, take it in Sweetie-Stride:

As you know, we Internet Marketing Sweetie’s are social creatures and we like to help people, but more importantly we are very careful with our time. We constantly work to maximize our time and results from time spent on our businesses. With that in mind, a few things came from the call yesterday:

• Don’t jump in whole hog into every social media site or your key business activities may suffer. Craig actually shared the top 10 sites on the call and that has helped me figure out some new directions to explore. Oh…and no, you don’t have to do all 10 at once either. That’s just asking for trouble.

• Outsource certain activities involved with your participation in social media. NO…I’m not suggesting you hire someone to pose as you and post updates to Twitter or Facebook. Your social participation is required, but as Craig talked about on the call (you can get the recording here), there are plenty of related activities and tasks that you can assign to a VA, for example.

• Use social media as the amazing research tool it can be. This is actually something Lynette mentioned in a comment on a recent post, but Craig brought this up to…and it really gave me some food for thought. He talked about research, reputation management and again, these are items that can be easily outsourced, so you can focus on the big picture and what to do with this information -  instead of worrying about all the time-consuming fact-gathering details.

If You Missed the Call

You can still sign up to get the recording. Just click here to get on the notification list.

If You’d Like to Maximize Your Use of Social Media without Getting Bogged Down in the Details

Craig offers training for VAs to use social media for their clients. If you have a VA that you work with, consider enrolling them in the course…so you and your VA can work out a plan to use social media effectively without it taking you away from your business.

In fact, one of my VAs is about to embark on this training. I know I don’t personally have more time to dedicate to social media, but have quite a few ideas from the call that I want to put into action. I just want to make sure she has the right info and tools to do it right.

Here’s how to get the course info and enroll (and get a $50 tuition discount):

-> Information and sign up link

To get the discount, enter coupon code: imsweetie

A big thanks to Craig for a great call!

Over the past few months, we’ve been offering affiliate management services to a few clients…and for the past 6 years, I have been managing a number of my own programs too. If there’s one thing I’ve learned along the way is power of being consistent with your program in order to achieve a steadily growing number of sales.

I’m talking about consistency in a few ways from offering regular promotional tools, keeping in contact with your affiliates and reaching new affiliates. Here are 3 thoughts on how to make consistency work for your affiliate program:

1. Regular Promotional Tools: If your goal is to have an affiliate program that brings in a regular income, here’s a simple ingredient to add to your consistency plan -> Set a schedule to put together new tools for your affiliates to use on a regular basis. By giving yourself a schedule and planning your tools in advance, you’re more likely to actually deliver on what you hoped.

(By the way, if you’re looking for promo tool ideas, a while back I posted 29 ideas to get you started right here – it’s a PDF document you can download freely)

If you slapped up your affiliate page, put up some banners, ads and called it a day – that’s going to make it tough for your affiliates to promote your product on a consistent basis. Of course, you can encourage them to add promos to their autoresponders and post ads on their relevant high traffic pages so that a regular stream of traffic continues to come. But if you REALLY want your affiliates on board and getting the word out in a variety of ways, you’ve got to give them fresh stuff to work with – so they promote you over and over again.

2. Staying in Touch – In addition to broadcasting updates to your affiliates on a regular basis, make an effort to build an ongoing relationship with specific affiliates. If an affiliate contacts you with questions or requests help, they’ve opened the doors to further communication and you can use that to your advantage. If an affiliate is making sales, email them personally to thank them and offer them a special promotion they can share with their list. If an affiliate is sending traffic, but sales are a bit low, talk to them about the methods they’re using and see if you can help them improve things.

And once you start this dialogue with specific affiliates, keep it going if the affiliate becomes or continues to be an active member of your team. Don’t assume that your broadcasts inspire these affiliates to immediately take action. If you contact an affiliate personally, they are more likely to act (maybe because they like you, they feel obligated or any number of reasons – but it works!).

Let’s face it, ACTIVE affiliates aren’t as common as we might hope…so whatever you can do to encourage this continued action is going to go a long way.

3. Reaching New Affiliates: Although you may get affiliates who stick around and promote you for years, most come and go. They’re busy or they move onto new ventures, so you can need ensure you continue to bring new affiliates into your program.

You can do this by contacting potential affiliate individually, inviting your customers to join your referral program, asking for referrals from your existing affiliates, creating joint promotional tools with other product sellers and a ton of different ways…just make recruiting,  in some form, a regular part of your affiliate program.

But How Do You Get Consistent?

Saying you should be consistent is easier said than done. There are tons of things we want to get done and sometimes things like nurturing and growing our affiliate programs fall by the wayside. One way to stay on top of things is to plan your activities at the beginning of each month:

• Decide what you’d like to offer and set dates to release your promotional tools, special offers, etc.
• Look at your stats and see who you might start a personal dialogue with.
• Find “an excuse” (a mutually beneficial excuse, of course!) to contact affiliates you’ve been in personal touch with before.
• Look for new potential affiliates or figure out a promotional strategy to bring in more affiliates that month.

Just a few ideas to get you started…but as always, when you have a plan, it’s easier to get where you want to go

(And pssst…if you have troubles coming up with the ideas, we’ve got something coming very soon to help you out with that and more. )

Just about every week, I give you 3 thoughts on a particular subject. Well, you know what? I’ve been depleted of thoughts! I know, it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I’m sure it’s just a temporary thing, but I’m hoping you’ll give me a little hand on this one.

And besides, listening to me all the time get…well…a little dull. I want to hear from you instead.

PLEASE POST YOUR 3 THOUGHTS on the 3 key activities for your online business.

Now, I don’t mean to give us your important business secrets, but what 3 general things do you do on a regular basis that are crucial to your success/productivity.

Can’t wait to hear!

When I first heard the term “swipe file” in regard to copywriting a few years back, I was horrified. If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s basically keeping a folder (printed or digital) of sales copy to refer to for your own copywriting.

Here are three thoughts on why keeping a swipe file is a GOOD thing:

I soon got over myself because I realized one of the best ways to dramatically improve your own copywriting, is to study the copywriting of others. Yes, getting a foundation in copywriting principles is important, but honing your skills comes from study and of course, practice. Studying shows you how people can create compelling stories, make copy flow and transition seamlessly and more.

Studying the copy of others increases your copywriting vocabulary. By studying copy, you start to see which words and phrases can be most powerful. Sure, you can buy lists of “power words” or “power phrases”, but seeing them in action really solidifies how it all works.

Just use your brain when you use your swipe file. Realize that every product and every target market is different. What works well with one, may not work well with others. Also, there is often some specific logic in using a particular angle, wording, etc. in copy – and you need to build your understandings of the WHY certain things are done in certain ways. Through basic and then in-depth study and practice, these things will become more obvious to you.

So…what’s in your swipe file?

I’m always amazed when I hear other online marketers talk about how they’ve been up all night working tirelessly on a project or launch. Me? No way. Even if I was up against a deadline, I’d find a way to work around it creatively so I did the minimum work needed or I’d simply extend the deadline. I’ve never stayed up all night (except to party as a college student) and I’m not going to start now.

And outside of the fact that I’m a mama and my kids/family are way too demanding for me to pull it off, here are 3 thoughts on why I don’t do all-nighters:

Productivity goes down the tubes when you’re tired. Minds tend to wander, mistakes get made and less work gets done. I know that ultra-successful individuals like John Reese frequently pull all-nighters and not that I’m qualified to give him any business advice, I bet he’d fare better with a more regular sleep pattern. Plus, he doesn’t have kids jumping all over him for breakfast, help with art projects and more.

The next day is a write-off. After a sleepless night, the next day is a complete write-off. Either I’d be sleeping all day or feeling so jittery and sick, I couldn’t get anything done anyway. Why not get a good sleep and start fresh the next day?

A regular schedule is good for your mental and physical health. Even though we’re online entrepreneurs and one of the perks is a flexible schedule, maintaining some type of sleep/work/play routine is remarkably good for you. Personally, if I feel good…I get a lot more good stuff done.

Of course, that’s just me. You might prefer the all-night craziness. What say you?

Sure, it’d be terrific if we could recruit a handful of Super Affiliates that would sign up for our programs, take action and send us a flood of sales. If you’ve been an affiliate manager for any amount of time, you’ll know that life doesn’t work like this.

Most people who sign up for an affiliate program may not have huge resources at their disposal and may not have a lot of marketing savvy, but reach highly targeted markets that could collectively bring in a lot of new customers. It’s your job to create the promotional tools they can easily use to tap into the resources they have.

This coming Sweetie Saturday, I’m going to offer a free download with “28 Affiliate Promotional Tool Ideas”, but for now, here are 3 thoughts on creating better affiliate promo tools:

Affiliates like things easy. Give them as much copy-and-paste stuff as possible. Yes, they’ll often get better results by modifying the materials to suit their audience, but give them a starting point.

Ask your affiliates what they want. Keep the dialogue open between you and your affiliates. Be sure to ask them regularly what they need to promote your products and be willing to offer customized solutions.

Test your materials. Track the results of your various promotional materials and tweak and improve as you go along. The better the results, the more likely affiliates are to continue to promote for you.

Just a few things to consider for now. Feel free to share your own ideas and questions…and I’ll be back soon with those promised 28 ideas.

A little while back, I was feverishly working on scheduling my blog posts so I’d have plenty of content before the birth of baby #3. I had managed to schedule 20 posts in about 2 1/2 hours and some of my Twitter friends were dumbfounded. They said 1 blog post could take them up to that much time – how could I do 20?

If you’re interested in making fast work of blogging, here are my 3 thoughts on getting more (GOOD) posts done in a short time:

Plan your topics and make notes ahead of time. I regularly get my notebook out (no, not my laptop…an actual paper notebook) and write down my ideas ahead of time. I keep the notebook with me at all times and I plan posts a few weeks (or in my recent case, a couple months) in advance.

If you prefer to use your PDA, go for it, but I do recommend getting away from the distractions of the computer to start your brainstorming. If you need to do research, that’s fine…but do your final planning away from that computer.

Novels are not required. There is no length requirement for blog posts. In fact, some of my shortest ones ar the most popular with my readers (ex. the whole Tough Question Tuesday category). Sure, sometimes you have a lot to say on a subject, but overall – keep it short, sweet and to the point. Your readers will likely appreciate and you don’t have to be chained to your computer for just 1 blog post.

Use the scheduling feature of your blog. You probably do use your scheduling to some degree, but really take advantage of it. If you plan a few weeks in advance and realized you don’t need novels, you can load up your blog with plenty of fresh content to roll out over the next few weeks. Just doing everything in chunks (a bunch of planning and then a bunch of writing), makes it a whole lot easier.

Time to write this post: 8 minutes.

This topic is nothing new to the Sweetie blog and it’s no secret that together with my business partner, Annette Elton, I run a content writing business that stands to profit if I convince you that it’s okay not to do all your own writing.

But there’s a reason we gathered some great writers to offer our services to online marketers – it’s because we KNOW and UNDERSTAND the power of content creation. And we also know there just aren’t enough hours in a day to get it all done yourself.

And regardless, NOT writing all your own content doesn’t mean that you have to hire someone to do it. There are different options for having others write for you that don’t require a ghostwriter. You can work on co-projects with other business owners, offer guest writing opportunities and more.

But let’s get back to the subject of this post and WHY you don’t have to do all the writing:

In most cases, you are a business, not an individual. Even if your own persona is important, there is always room for other voices. Ghostwritten, paid contributors or volunteers…allowing others to express a unique voice can be valuable.

The more content you have, the wider your reach – but you don’t have endless amounts of time. You can work yourself half to death trying to find ideas and typing away, but then other aspects of your business get neglected. Letting others do the hard work frees up your time to focus on the big picture of your business.

You still have the last word. Just because someone else writes it, doesn’t mean you need to accept things as is. It doesn’t matter if you have guest contributions or ghostwriters writing for you, reserve and use the right to edit content as you see fit.

Of course, you can continue to be a control freak and limit what you can do with your business. The choice is entirely up to you.