Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Productivity, Stress and Meditation

by

Are you burned out and stressed? Perhaps meditation will help. This is a guest post from Tom Von Deck of www.DeeperMeditation.Net

Whether you work for yourself or for a company, stress is a productivity killer. In fact, it is estimated that stress costs USA businesses about $300 Billion per year in absenteeism, insurance claims, sick leave, illness, poor communication, low energy at work, office politics and more. If you do the math, that’s a couple thousand dollars per person per year.

Meditation is one of the best ways to truly go to the root of stress by making life much easier to process from moment to moment. However, many people try to beat stress with meditation techniques, then give up.

You may have even tried meditation as a form of stress relief and failed. This is not necessarily because meditation is not your thing. In fact, meditation is for everyone because it is your natural peaceful state of mind when you’re not resisting experience. Resisting experience means clinging to comfortable experience and pushing away undesirable experience.

The key to a successful meditation practice is compatibility. There are many teachers and centers out there pushing the “best” meditation technique. Maybe you tried some and found that they were not for you. Regardless, there is a technique for you.

The first step to beating stress with meditation is to find an “object of focus” that you find deep, loving absorption in. This is something constant or repetitive that you can fall in love with easily. Examples include the breath, a visualization of Jesus or Krishna, a line of a peaceful song, a mantra and images of a familiar waterfall. Once you find your object of focus, choose a consistent time each day to meditate on it. Fall in love with it. It does not matter how “deeply” you fall in love. Your capacity for concentration will rise and fall in the short run and expand in the long run.

When thoughts come up, just take note of them like they are clouds and you are the sky. Practice observing thought and emotion in a detached manner. Then bring your attention back to the object of focus. This builds equanimity and reduces stress.

Meditating at the same time every day builds a momentum of peace behind the scenes regardless of the amount of time you spend doing it. If you’re busy, 5-10 minutes is ok. If you can aim for an hour, even better. Keep that consistency going and it will have a cumulative effect that greatly banishes stress from your life.

Another momentum builder is the wise use of “elevator time”. You have 20 seconds in an elevator to do whatever you wish. Why not do those yoga stretches, conscious breathing, spiritual song, gratitude work, prayer, etc? You know what “turns you on” on a deep level. Do those things regardless of the abundance or lack of immediate results. You will notice profound results in time.

If you properly follow this advice and develop a solid meditation program that slips into your time schedule, then stress will easily roll off of you and productivity will soar.

Tom Von Deck is an internationally available workplace meditation trainer, stress management speaker and author of Oceanic Mind – The Deeper Meditation Training Course and The Deeper Meditation Audio Course. His website is www.DeeperMeditation.Net

Blogging For Business: Does it Make Sense For You?

by

This is a guest post from Gail Z. Martin, author of 30 Days to Social Media Success: Making the Most of Twitter, Blogging, LinkedIn and Facebook.

If you’re in business, you’ve probably already been advised to create a blog for your company.  Odds are, that advice didn’t include much in the way of explanation on how to use a blog for business, or how to fit one more activity into your busy day.  Yet it’s true: a well-conceived blog can encourage customer loyalty, entice new buyers, and attract media interest, all goals that can be worth the effort.

What’s the benefit in blogging? Here are some of the most common benefits for business:

  • Because a blog is easy for you to update, you can add new content frequently without paying high fees to your webmaster for changes.
  • Blogging creates a way for you to comment on business, trends and issues that impact your field.  This helps to establish you as a leader in your industry.
  • Blogging is a way to let your personality shine through and create a more personal connection.  People like to do business with someone they know.  Blogging deepens that relationship.
  • Your blog can extend the information you share through articles, books and speeches, and invite comments and dialogue.  Customers and prospects appreciate it when you share valuable content without a heavy sales pitch.
  • Many bloggers have received national recognition based on the value of their content.  Your blog post could attract local, regional or national media attention.
  • Good blog posts increase the Google search results for your name and company.
  • Prospects who aren’t yet ready to buy may use your blog to learn more about your product, services, and company, positioning you at the front of the line when they’re ready to commit.
How can you use your blog to increase your Internet visibility, improve your search engine results and drive more traffic to your web site (which stands a good chance of increasing your sales)? Here are some ideas:

  • Comment on headline news from your professional perspective. If you’re a relationship coach, celebrity split-ups are good case studies. A financial consultant might provide real-life ways to reduce debt and save money. Talk about what everyone’s already talking about.
  • Extend information you’ve already provided. If you’ve written a book, provide extra related material. If you write a column, go into additional details on a subject you’ve recently covered.
  • Share short case studies or brief tips.
  • Keep it fresh, current and fun. Avoid long lags between posts and try to post at consistent times so readers know what to expect. Stay positive, and realize that going on a rant lasts forever on the Internet, long after you’ve cooled down.
  • Choose snappy titles to increase readership, and write in short paragraphs.
  • Make it easy for your readers to share posts they like by adding bookmarking icons from AddThis.com.
  • Consider getting together with a group of three to five other professionals in non-competing businesses that share the same target audience and share a blog so no one has to do all the writing.

How many readers do you need?  Don’t get caught up in the “more is better” frenzy.  Your readership goals depend on your reasons for blogging.  If you create a blog focused on helping your customers get more value for their money from the kinds of products/services you sell, then you want to attract the majority of the people with whom you’re doing business, as well as prospects.  If your focus is on outreach, then you’ll want to attract newcomers by putting your blog site on your business cards, marketing materials and website.  It can take a few years for a blog to build a following.  Don’t worry about the readership numbers.  If you’re using your blog to share good information and update your main website, you’re already getting plenty of value for your time investment.

Excerpted with permission from 30 Days to Social Media Success, by Gail Martin, new from Career Press in September, 2010.

Gail Z. Martin owns DreamSpinner Communications and helps companies and solo professionals in the U.S. and Canada improve their marketing results in 30 days. Gail has an MBA in marketing and over 20 years of corporate and non-profit experience at senior executive levels. Gail also hosts the Shared Dreams Marketing Podcast. She’s the author of The Thrifty Author’s Guide to Launching Your Book and 30 Days to Social Media Success: Making the Most of Twitter, Blogging, LinkedIn and Facebook. Find her online at www.GailMartinMarketing.com, on Twitter @GailMartinPR and check out her Facebook page at 30 Day Results Guide.

Tried and True Marketing Strategies for Home Based Businesses

by

This is a guest post from Bethany North of The Coffee Bump, about strategies home based businesses can use to market their products and services.

With the convenience and availability of the Internet, many people have attempted to start their own home businesses online. Are you one of them? If that is the case, there are specific things that you need to do to set your business apart from the pack, specifically having to do with the way that you market.

Giveaways

This is one of the most effective forms of small business marketing. If you are attempting to use only SEO and ads to promote your business, those tactics are very useful but will only get you so far. In this day and age, you need innovative strategies that will bring attention to your company, and one of the best methods to use is a giveaway on a reputable blog. But don’t wait for the blogger to contact you! Yes, there are some blogs that spend time e-mailing companies to ask to do giveaways, but you may have even better results if you e-mail several blogs in your niche market to ask if they would do a giveaway of your product.

Promotions

Do you already have a Twitter account for your business? Good! That is the first step in getting a loyal following for your products and services by continually advertising your promotions. This is something that you can also submit to other deal or coupon blogs so that they are aware of the specific promotions that your company has available. There are hordes of people online that are only attracted to freebies and coupons, so if you make regular deals known for the products on your website, you could potentially generate a following that continues coming back for more.

Although these tactics seem quite simple, I can assure you that they are highly beneficial to a small business. Instead of beating your head against the wall using the same marketing strategies over and over again, try one of these ideas for results that will work to get your company recognized!

For a great selection of the Bunn o matic coffee maker, check out Bethany North’s website, The Coffee Bump.

Two Sure Fire Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Home Based Business

by

This is a guest post from Vinil Ramdev, founder of StartUpGrowthExpert.com.

#1 Think Database

If you do not have a database of existing customers, then you are in big trouble. You are making the biggest marketing mistake of your life. Almost every great marketer focuses on database marketing. You are nothing without your customer list.

What is database marketing?

It is nothing but storing contact information of your customers in a database. If you are a home based business, you can make a start by storing information on an excel spreadsheet or even a word document should do the job.

If you want to use sophisticated software like salesforce.com or even Microsoft Outlook, you are welcome to do so. If you have never collected information about your customers then moving to salesforce.com or even Microsoft Outlook might be a big leap forward. So, I suggest you make a start with an excel spreadsheet with name, email and phone number of your customers.

The biggest mistake most small business owners make is to collect too much information and this can not only turn off your customers but it can also become overwhelming for the business owner to process the information.

#2 Try Co-Marketing

This is a strategy that most home based business owners very seldom use. Co-Marketing is finding other home based or small business owners who serve the same target market as you do and devise marketing programs that will benefit all of you.

The idea behind this is to share each other’s customers. If you are a Hair Salon for example, find neighboring stores like book stores, DVD stores, super markets and create a coupon book of some sort where customers from each other’s stores get a discount by shopping with their co-partners.

There are several other co-marketing strategies you can use like having a special promotion in each other’s business premises or mailing each other’s mailing lists. It’s called a list swap by many marketers.

If there’s just one thing you are going to do after reading this article is to take a walk in your neighborhood and meet other home based business owners, get to know them and set-up a lunch meeting where all of you can meet and brainstorm ideas to co-promote. Even if it is a group of 3, it can still be very powerful. Just imagine each of you having a list of 1000 customers each, all of a sudden together you have 3000 customers to promote to. Talk about the power of working together and collaborating.

This is a powerful strategy most home based business owners miss out on. They are constantly trying to do it all alone and this often leads to their downfall.

Vinil Ramdev is an entrepreneur, business coach and author of several ebooks. He is founder of StartUpGrowthExpert.com – An Online Magazine For Entrepreneurs who want to start and grow extraordinary businesses.

Figuring out Where to Start

by

If you are just starting out with a new website, it can be pretty tricky figuring what your first move should be. 

There are so many ways that you can promote your new website, and it is easy to let overwhelm prevent you from actually getting off the ground.

So with that in mind, I am going to break it down for you and suggest how you can conquer the choice effect and pick up your first few drops of momentum. Once you are moving, picking up speed is much easier, but those first few steps are the ones that matter right now.

Let’s Break down Internet Marketing

For the sakes of simplicity, let’s think about website promotion in 4 categories. Each category is a consideration on it’s own, and whilst they can all be thought of as being interlinked, it is simplest to start with if we get to grips with each on it’s own.

Social Media

All those things like Twitter, Facebook, Technorati, Digg etc! There are literally hundreds of social media tools that you can consider using for your site. Don’t worry though, none of them are absolutely essential. Just pick one to start with, which ever one you can understand the most easily, and work on finding ways to use that. Unless you are already an expert on social networking, it is easiest to learn one at a time rather than rushing in and trying to learn ten.

SEO

SEO is all the stuff you do to get free traffic from the search engines. This is in my opinion one of the most important bits to get right. Good SEO results take time, but once you have developed good search engine ranks, that will continue to bring you free traffic. There is a lot to learn, but if you start with the basics and build a solid foundation right from the start, you can learn more about SEO as you go along.

Paid Advertising

I’m talking about things like banner Ads, and most notably; Adwords. Paid advertising is great if you have the cash to put into it, but you have to be very careful about how you do it. Sometimes it is only possible to break even with PPC programs and you might find that repeat custom is your only way to make it profitable. My recommendation would usually be to take your time. When you have the time to test and know exactly how much money (if any) your Ads are bringing in, then you can start experimenting with PPC.

Email Marketing

Perhaps the single most important aspect here, yet also the most often neglected. I could write pages about the importance of a good mailing list, but suffice to say for now; setting up a good email marketing strategy should be number one (or at least top 3) priority from the outset.

Just Starting? Here’s What to do

Promoting a new website is not necessarily a one size fits all activity, your own situation, and market might be better suited to different mediums. But if you are at risk of being overwhelmed, having a simple plan to start off is better than being paralysed into inaction.

So here’s my recommended plan to get you started with your new website business:

Set up your site first of all, get it working. Then you can start laying the foundations of your SEO efforts. Just build a couple of links and write some good content to get your site bulked up a little. In the meantime, figure out how you are going to sign up new email contacts and get a working mailing list.

Figure out a plan that will help you to keep on top of your email marketing. This is all important because it is very easy to never get round to actually using the email contacts you gain.

Once that is set up, pick up a social networking site of some sort and learn how to use it. My first one was Twitter, but you can pick whichever site you “get” the most easily.

Once everything is running reasonably well, start to learn the basics of setting up and tracking an Adwords campaign, and if you then feel comfortable, set up a cheap Ad and see how it goes. Never set up an Adwords campaign without using conversion tracking. If you can’t track successful sales you can’t know whether it is worth the money you are spending, so always track.

Once you have gotten that far you should have a much better idea of what you are doing, now you can start to develop your skills in more depth, getting started is the biggest hurdle though. Just remember this: you don’t need to do things perfectly, just doing something is what matters.

—

Mark Johnson is the founder of Marks Marketing blog, a blog for internet entrepreneurs and info-preneurs. He blogs about everything from starting an internet business to maximizing your Adsense profits.