Having positive energy is important – whether you are focusing on a relationship or improving your business. The following video really uplifted me. I hope it makes you feel great as well.
Love is Energy – Pass it On

So pass it on!

Many years ago I attended business school. After school, I got a job in the corporate world of business. Writing in these two venues was very formal – just like this paragraph.

Then I started blogging. Blogging is casual and uses conversational language that my professors and bosses would have cringed at. (Yes that is a preposition at the end of the previous sentence.)

So what does language have to do with building rapport? Everything!

1) Using Casual Language is the first block to building rapport. Readers are looking for solutions to problems – not perfect prose. Imagine a casual conversation with your good friend as you write.

2) Being Personal is the second rapport-building block. Sharing stories, about your business or personal life, makes you come alive to your readers. You become someone they can share with, not just some faceless “blogger.”

3) Sharing your struggles and failures is the third block of building rapport. This is my favorite building block because I have so much to learn. I hope people will be patient with me as I learn and share with me their solutions to problems. I am so excited when I find something that works that I love to share it – especially after I have struggled with a problem for a while.

4) Talking about others’ achievements is the fourth rapport block to use. Everyone likes to savor their successes. It is especially fun when someone else talks about that success. It shows that you are wiling to share the spotlight and help them.
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I love my children’s orthodontist. So the other day when someone asked me if I knew of a good orthodontist, I didn’t hesitate to recommend him and his great staff. I knew he did a good job and that he and his staff understood teenagers. Besides that, their office is organized enough that I don’t have to wait for my appointment when I arrive. I felt confident in my recommendation.

The same type of recommendation exists in blogs. It is called linking.

When you link to something in your blog, you are giving the linked content a mini-letter of recommendation. So make sure you know what and who you are linking to, and that your readers will appreciate the reference.
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Many business people understand the value in blogging. They start a blog and as they see how much time it takes, they soon quit. Use these tips to keep your blogging simple, successful, and full of life:

1. Decide on a post schedule. Some people love to post several times a day. Others can’t find time for more than once a week. Choose a schedule somewhere in-between these two and stick to it. Readers will come to anticipate your posts on the schedule you set. (I personally post 3-4 times per week.)
2. Schedule time to write. Like anything else, unless you schedule time for writing, it won’t get done. Blogging is a form of advertising. It is cheap compared to other forms, but it does take time.
3. Drip your posts. You don’t have to publish a post immediately after you create it. You can create several posts in one session and use the publish date feature to have them appear on your schedule. This makes it easier if you have a very full week coming up.
4. Relate your life to your business. Add some personality to your posts by relating things you’ve noticed to what you write. Ideas come from the news, your spouse, and even your dog.
5. Carry a notebook EVERYWHERE. Ideas will strike you and you can quickly write them down in a small notebook.
6. Collaborate. Have a friend help you with some posts. Or hire a writer. New people can give “fresh blood” to your site.
7. Create an editorial calendar. I hope you already use a calendar of some sort. If not, buy a cheap one. Write down ideas for holidays, sales you anticipate having, new products or services you want to promote, etc. It keeps things organized.

An example of using an editorial calendar is this very post. I knew Halloween was coming up and I wanted some good photos to use. I found this one on flickr and decided to create a headline around “sucking.” This post was the result.

So what tips do you have for keeping the life in your blog?

Did you know that it takes about 7 exposures to a product or service before someone buys! Obviously this is an average, but I find it astounding how much people need to see things before they buy them.

So when you advertise an item, it is good to come up with as many ways to show it as possible. My good friend Jennifer, owner of Reflections Printing, recently did this with a project she was creating.

Jennifer is a graphic artist. She created a poster for a client advertising a haunted house. Besides printing several hundred posters, Jennifer suggested to her client that they also print business cards. These cards had the event information and $1.00 off coupon on them. These would give prospective ‘hauntees’ a reminder and an incentive to have a scary-good time. It would also encourage them to pick up a few cards and hand them out to their friends, thus increasing attendance and revenues. These cards were placed on the counters in the businesses where the posters were put up.

I thought this was a clever way to add value and more exposure to a great project. What ways can you increase your exposure?

Remember watching John Travolta in the shower belting out the Band-Aid song, “I am stuck-on bandaid because bandaid’s stuck on me?” This is a classic example of branding.

Advertising has changed a lot in the past few years. It is no longer enough to come up with a clever jingle, show it to tons of people, and hope they will buy your stuff. Consumers are smarter than they were in the 70’s. They want more from their products than just clever advertising. So what’s a small business to do?

Develop your Relationship Marketing. Relationship marketing is cheaper, more measurable, and much more fun than branding. Relationship marketing is about getting to know your customers and helping them solve problems through your products or services. In the process, you actually develop your very own brand. Seth Godin describes a brand as: “a promise made over time.”

For this type of “promise-made-over-time” branding to work, you have to have a promise that is exciting – to you and to your customers. You have to fall in love with your business.So quit thinking of your brand as a clever jingle and instead work on developing your business integrity. A good way to do this is to:

1) Offer a high-quality product or service that people want.
2) Make sure your product or service is something you love as well.
3) Give your clients great customer service.

This reputation or status is what branding in business is all about anyway. You really can’t have that before you start. It’s like a baby learning to run before they walk. So worry more about building value in your business than choosing exactly the right logo for your brand. Here at Digital Marketing Diva, my branding is that I help small business owners (who are overwhelmed by all the ’stuff’ to do on the internet) get online with their business. It’s an exciting process to see the light turn on inside someone’s head as they figure out how they can help others through the power of the internet.

So what promise does your business make?

You know you love your job when:

1. You wake up excited to start each day.
2. You have tons of ideas you want to develop.
3. You have to set a buzzer to remember to eat lunch.
4. You eat your lunch and continue working on your business.
5. When your kids come home from school, you are amazed that it is the afternoon already.
6. You are continually learning about what you do. You buy books, join online programs, etc.
7. You talk about what you do to everyone who will listen.
8. Your family and friends tell you, “you look happy!”
9. You would do what you do for free! (But of course it’s more fun to make money.)

So what do you do if you don’t love what you do? I struggled with this for several years. Then I came across Leslie Householder’s course on Family, Time, and Money. It has helped me align my priorities with my goals, and my goals with my actions. This has led me to work that I truly love. Leslie’s program starts with a free ebook, The JackRabbit Factor, which was a NY Times Bestseller.

I hope you love your job. But if you don’t, check out the Family, Time, and Money course. (At least download the free ebook and read it. It’s an easy-to read story that just may enlighten you about some things in your life.)

Are all women created equal? I certainly thought so until I read this report from marketing profits. I assumed that most women were like me in how they perceive advertising. How wrong I was!

The report showed that women with children like to be marketed to differently than women without children. Who knew? I mean I might not go out in the evening as much as my childless-counterparts, but I assumed that they wanted to be marketed to in the same ways I do.

When I am interested in a subject, I like to know what is going on and about new products. Of course, that means someone has to tell me about these things. I either get this knowledge through news, friends, or ads. Many times I sign up for emails that I am interested in. But as the chart below shows, women without children DON’T like to be marketed to through email as much as women who have children.

Also, women with children are much more responsive to samples than non-mothers, as this chart below shows.

It is fascinating to me the breadth of information that is available online. Now if I can just figure out how to apply it to my life and to my customers.

What do you think? How does this apply to your ideal customer and marketing strategy?

I like to write; I also like to ramble. So to keep on track I developed an “ideal client.” I even have a picture of her:

I put this picture and her statistics (the answers to the questions below) by my computer. That way when I write, I don’t get too off track. Develop your ideal client with the following checklist:

1. Is your idea client a man or woman? (Women are more openly touchy-feely than men. They go online more often than men to socialize and express themselves. Men, on the other hand, go online to do more business.)
2. How old is she? (In general, the age of your target-market determines how much jargon they understand. For instance my 76-year old mother has no idea what “BFF” means and I in turn have no idea what my teenagers are talking about some of the time; so I have to ask them.)
3. Where does he work? (from home, in corporate America, at a small business, etc.)
4. What is her job? (Title and functions such as ’salesman who sells specific widgets,’ or a ‘consultant to life coaches,’ etc. Where someone works and what they do is important if you are marketing products to businesses.)
5. How much money does he make? (This helps in determining the size of the offer you make on your product or service.)
6. Is she married or single? (This helps in connecting with your ideal client in the examples you use.)
7. How many children does he have, or is he childless? (I will discuss tomorrow how this affects your marketing specifically to women. You may be surprised like I was.)
8. What does she do in her free time and what are her hobbies? (Again, this can help in forming connections.)
9. What are the biggest concerns in his life at this time? (Most people buy products to solve problems.)
10. How can you help her solve those problems? (This is probably the most important question in putting together an offer for your products or services.)
11. How technically savy is he? (If I ask my mother to download a product she will be confused. She is much more comfortable in having something mailed to her. However, many people expect things immediately and so want downloadable products.)

All the answers to the above questions help you define how you market your products and who you market them to. Come back tomorrow for some more information on marketing specifically to women.

Did you know that business lunches (and other meals) are 50% deductible? Many people think they are 100% deductible. But it is only 50%. However if you’re audited, and can’t prove that the lunch was for business, then the deduction might be allowed at all.

So how do you prove that it was a business lunch?
Will the IRS take your word? NO
Will a receipt prove it? NO.
Will the say so of your long lost brother’s uncle be sufficient? NO
What can you do to prove that a certain was for business? You can use the receipt to record the date, the time, who you went to lunch with, and what you discussed. That will be sufficient proof. Or you can keep a tax diary.

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