It is better to have one resolution that gets an area of your marketing life organized than pages of resolutions that sound ambitious but don’t get kept.  If you were only allowed to keep ONE resolution this New Year what would it be?

1. Look back at 2009.  What was one marketing strategy you used that had lots of potential but didn’t live up to your hopes?
2. Is there one small thing you could do … and do consistently all year … which would improve your odds at finding clients using this strategy?  For example:
   1. If you were attending networking events – could you get more organized about follow-up?  Could you set a simple goal like “I will give out 5 business cards and collect five at every event.  I won’t leave the event until I have arrange to meet afterwards with 5 interesting people.  I’m going to focus on finding one potential referral source at each event!”
   2. If you are blogging – do you need to put yourself on a schedule?   ”I’m going to do just ONE blog entry a week.  I will announce my blog post on Facebook every time.  I will recycle all blog posts into internet articles one month later.
   3. If you are public speaking – do you need to consistently book a certain number of engagements per month?  Find some different venues?  Ask more people, more consistently, to refer you to speaking opportunities?  What is one more thing you could do to turn members of your audience into potential clients who want a free initial consultation?

The trick here is to focus on ONE improvement that would make a significant difference in your marketing if it was consistently done for a full year!

If you’d like to comment, please let me know what your ONE thing might be!

Not on the list because it is quite different is http://www.ehow.com/. It is a good place for beginners.

If you want to start with ONE article directory and don’t want to have to pay to submit articles, I would recommend EzineArticles as a good place to start submitting.  See below!
Directories requiring login to which SubmitYourArticle sends:

1. http://www.articlealley.com/
   
2. http://www.articlesbase.com/
   
3. http://www.ezinearticles.com/ – see their training articles library! This is one of my favorites.
4. http://www.goarticles.com/ 
   1. http://www.searchwarp.com/

   Directories not on the “automatic submission list” for SubmitYourArticles:

   1. http://www.365articles.com/
      
   2. http://www.a1articles.com/
      
   3. http://www.aardvarkarticles.net/
      
   4. http://www.allmerchants.com/
      
   5. http://www.allthewebsites.org/
      
   6. http://www.alumbo.com/
      
   7. http://www.amazines.com/
      
   8. http://www.article-host.com/
      
   9. http://www.articlebin.com/
      
   10. http://www.articlecodex.com/
       
   11. http://www.articlefeeder.com/
       
   12. http://www.articlelocker.com/
       
   13. http://www.articlesalley.com/
       
   14. http://www.articlesfactory.com/
       
   15. http://www.authorconnection.com/
       
   16. http://www.boconline.com/
       
   17. http://www.buzzle.com/
       
   18. http://www.content-syndication.org/
       
   19. http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/
       
   20. http://www.feedblitz.com/ I put it on the list myself. This one will send you good  tips, via e-mail, about article writing.
   21. http://www.free-articles-zone.com/
       
   22. http://www.info-hog.com/
       
   23. http://www.linkgeneral.com/
       
   24. http://www.niche-content-articles.com/
       
   25. http://www.peopledevelopmentarticles.com/
   26. http://www.rumorist.com/

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Best regards!

Dhyan

Dhyan Atkinson
Satisfaction By Design, LLC
303-415-0243 – Boulder, CO
Dhyan@SatisfactionByDesign.com
www.TheFiveEssentialSkills.com

Business Blog: http://www.TheFiveEssentialSkills.com/blog

JOIN ME ON:
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/DhyanAtkinson
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dhyanatkinson
Google Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/DhyanAtkinson

Providing business skills training, consulting and business coaching to English-speaking small business owners around the world. Learn the business skills you need to be successful and get help using them out in the real world to find new clients!

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Overkill, right? I should blush when I look at myself in the mirror, yes?

There are several things I have to say about including “everything” in your autosignature.

1. If you announce it, you better keep it up to date! For example, I have made a commitment to staying current on my business blog, Facebook and Linked In. People will also not go to one of my blog and find that I haven’t written any posts in the last six months. Keeping current with the links and blogs you announce is a critical part of maintaining the professionalism your auto-signature implies.
2. An auto-signature IS effective. I have had my friends, clients, and business colleagues forward my auto-signature to people they are referring to me and my business. By the time the person actually calls me, they have usually clicked on every link to take a look! The fact that they have continued the process by calling me immeasurably shortens the selling process. They are already more than half way there to hiring me!
3. You don’t have to use your full auto-signature on every e-mail.  My auto-signature can easily be deleted between the tagline at the bottom and my e-mail address when I e-mail a friend or someone who hears from me all the time.
4. Even if you think someone HAS your contact information it is a good idea to include it with every e-mail you send out.  Make it VERY easy for people to contact you without having to look your contact information up.  I don’t know how many times I have gone to e-mail first hoping that it will be a shortcut to contacting a client or friend only to find they didn’t bother to include their contact information because “I know them.”

FOR OUTLOOK USERS: I use Outlook as my e-mail provider. I can’t speak for all the other options, but in Outlook you set up an auto-signature by going to the “Tools Menu,” clicking on “Options” and then selecting the “Mail Format” tab. Then select “Signatures” on that drop down menu and off you go! One more tip: Unlike Microsoft Word the links will not automatically “go live” when you type them. Select your e-mail address or url; click on the little “chain links over the world” icon, click “existing file or web page,” click “ok,” and the link will go live.

A few notes on using this site:

1. You can enter the keywords you want to check by hand, one at a time.
2. You can put the url for your website into the second search block and Google Keywords will go to your website and look for keywords you use there. It will then tell you how often those words are being used for searching.
3. Once you hit the search button you will get the statistics on the keyword for which you wanted information. BE SURE TO TURN ON THE FULL LIST OF STATISTICS.
4. Under the word you searched for, you will also find a list of many other related keywords. Look for ones that could be of use to you!

You can find out:

1. How popular this keyword is by looking at how much it would cost to purchase an adword
2. How many times the word was used LAST month
3. On average, how many times this word is used each month
4. If there are any months in which this word is used more often than other months

Each one of the “popular” words you find would be great to use in an article title!

All of the activities in the following list involve writing and can help potential clients find you: keeping your website optimized and up to date, sending out e-newsletters, blogging, posting on Facebook and Twitter, keeping your Linkedin or Google profiles current, keeping abreast of your favorite listserv or community bulletin board, submitting articles to online article directories.

The trick is, business writing is not effective marketing unless what you write is spot-on to catch the attention of your ideal target clients!

Let’s briefly look at ways in which you can optimize your writing by organizing your writing goals for each month and then modifying your writing for use  in multiple venues.  Here are six tips to help you get the most from your business writing:

SO! I did a google search and once again Squidoo is coming through for us. Here is a link to their detailed instructions for creating a Facebook page where you can directly communicate about your business to people on Facebook.

http://www.squidoo.com/facebookpage

Here is what Facebook has to say about the difference between personal and business accounts:

• What is the difference between a business account and a personal account?
  Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Pages and their ad campaigns. For this reason, business accounts do not have the same functionality as personal accounts. Business accounts have limited access to information on the site. An individual with a business account can view all the Pages and Social Ads that they have created, however they will not be able to view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not live on the Pages they administer. In addition, business accounts cannot be found in search and cannot send or receive friend requests.

RE:  Personal Accounts:

• It sounds as if a personal account is the better option and has more functionality.
• You can create a “page” on your personal account that gives information on your business.
• You are free to post about your business and business related topics on your personal account.

Here is the link: www.facebook.com/help/new_user_guide.php

On this page you can learn how to

• Find friends
• Set up a profile
• Explore Facebook

Also note the link at the top to the help center: http://www.facebook.com/help.php

• On the help list you can search for answers to your own questions
• Or you can peruse the list for things you might need or want
• Note especially information on: Applications and Features
• Note especially information on: Ads and Business Solutions

Keep in mind that the very best place for your business blog is on your website where it will help dramatically with the search engine optimization of your site.  With that said, Blogger is a Google tool and can be accessed with the same user name and password as your free Google account.  I have found it to be one of the easiest ways to get a blog up and running for my classes.  I actually prefer it, in many ways, to wordpress, which seems more complicated and doesn’t display digital photographs, in my opinion, as nicely. 

Follow the instructions below and get up and blogging in minutes using Blogger!

1. Go to http://www.blogger.com/
2. Click on the big orange button that says “Create a Blog!”
3. Just follow the three steps: – You need to Create a Google Account (if you don’t already have one, it is free of charge and doesn’t sign you up for unwanted e-mails or any other undesirables.) – You need to Name Your Blog (Blogger will tell you if the name you want is already taken) and you need to Choose a Template.
4. Now you can customize your website.
5. Click on the “Settings” tab and go through the option tabs. The most important for just getting started are the Basic, Formatting and Comments Tabs. Read the Comments section carefully as you fill it out.
6. Next go to the Layout Tab. You can customize your blogsite from here and add all kinds of cool gadgets in the right column such as a profile for you, followers, an archive of your blog posts, lists of blogs you recommend, a list of your other blogs (if you have others), your contact information including active links to your website and etc.
7. Once you start writing your first blog notice the functions across the top. They are a lot like word-processing options. You can choose different fonts, make your text larger or smaller, choose bold or italic (underline is reserved for links), choose font colors, create links to other internet sites, put your text flush left, centered, flush right or justified; create numbered or bulleted lists, block paragraphs, do spell check (oh so important for yours truly!) and embed pictures or movies in your blog, and erase all the formatting in your blog. WOW! What lot of options!
8. Notice in the upper right that you can “preview” what you have created so far at any time, look at and edit the HTML (I know a smattering of Spanish and html. They both come in handy.) In compose mode you see pretty much what you would see in Microsoft word as you type.
9. Under the text box you will see the words “Post Options” in blue text. When you click here you can change the date and time of the posting. I used this to put all the Twitter entries UNDER the Welcome post, even though I actually wrote them “later” than the Welcome post and thus, they would normally be at the top. (Most recent posts show at the top of blogs.
10. There is also a small text box for entering keywords. If you want the search engines to find your blog, put in lots of keywords here. Blogger will save as you go every few minutes or you can save manually. (Rule of thumb: Save often!
11. Once you click “Publish Post” off it goes to your blog. This doesn’t mean you can’t go back and make corrections, additions or changes. Simply go to “Posting” and then “Edit Posts.” You will see a list of ALL your posts, even ones that you have left in draft and haven’t published yet.

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A note about Wordpress.com: You can also make great blogsites using Wordpress.com (more about that another time.) I prefer Blogger because I love putting in photographs and the pictures are much brighter and nicer in Blogger, I think, than in Wordpress.com. BUT in wordpress you can create extra pages for your blog that look just like pages of a website and you have many more templates (themes) to choose from!

See my wordpress blog at http://www.marketing4introverts.wordpress.com/.

• Notice that I put in a “Best Posts” page because some of the first blog posts were really important.
• Icould also include an “About Us” page, which is not an option with Blogger/Blogspot  and, most importantly … 
• I was able to include in a “Programs for Marketing Introverts” page that lists options people have for working with me.

Because of these extra options, Wordpress.com may be a better option for you than Blogger.

If you are smart, your 30 Second Commercial will be 1/3 about you and 2/3 about your target clients!

10 Seconds about YOU:  include …

1. Your name:
2. Your company name OR what you do
3. A BRIEF description, in plain English, that any person on the street can understand, about what you do. ONE to TWO sentences!
   1. Do not be esoteric here!  The #1 mistake I hear small business owners make is to list a BENEFIT here instead of saying specifically what they offer.  For example, a nutritionist I once worked with started out saying she provided “health and wellness” to her clients – before she even mentioned she was a nutritionist!
   2. Be really clear:  If you do individual and small group coaching, say so. If you provide quality health care supplements, say so. If you write personal histories, say so.

18 Seconds about YOUR TARGET CLIENTS:

1. Paint a vivid picture of the people you work with (or your customers) and the reasons they want your product or service.
2. Use very vivid words: “frustrated by, overwhelmed about, struggling to, absolutely committed to, strongly value…” like that!
3. EITHER create three bullet points for a single type of target client, or list three different target clients.
4. Introduce this part of your 30 Second Commercial by saying something like: “Typically the people I work with….” or “Some of my clients/ others of my clients” or “Often the people I work with….”

2 Second “Rising Statement”

• Often it is nice to “cap” the end of your 30 Second Commercial with something positive that tells people you really have solutions for them or that you work “together” to solve their problems.

EXAMPLE:

My name is Dhyan Atkinson.
My company is “The Five Essential Skills.”
I provide step-by-step Business Skills Training, Consulting, and Coaching for small business owners!

Typically the business people I work with:

• Have found work they love but are struggling to meet monthly financial goals
• Many are first time business owners responsible for every aspect of growing a business for the first time

My programs teach the essential skills small business owners need and help them use those skills out in the real world to find more clients!