2010 August | shesgotclients.com

Come Hear Me on the Wise Women of the Web Teleseries Event—it Starts Today (Psst–it's Free!)

August 30, 2010 By Christine 1 Comment

Just a note about the Wise Women of the Web event which starts TODAY, August 30 in case you hadn’t heard. This is a very cool, FREE teleseminar series with an absolutely amazing line-up of some of the Internet’s most well-known women and I am really honored to be counted among them!

No matter what your area of expertise, if you are a small business owner or solo entrepreneur then you really need to tune into this series. Instead of being a re-hash of information you have heard a zillion times, you will get tons of actionable, original, creative tips to start moving your online presence forward starting TODAY.

Check out the line-up of speakers for this call:

Donna Marie Antoniadis
Jennifer Bourn
Eleanore Duyndam
Fabienne Fredrickson
Christine Gallagher (that’s me! )
Lori Gama
Rosalind Gardner
Julia Kline
Crystal Parrett
Susan Rice-Lincoln
Pat Sutton
Jessica Swanson

The best part is that all the original content contained in this innovative event is yours for free. Just sign up and then come and listen to the calls.

Here are some of the topics:

Establishing the right mindset to achieve more success than you could imagine possible
Leveraging radio so you can grow your list, get more clients and position yourself as an expert
Achieving a six-figure income in four short months with FREE marketing
Tapping into the power of the huge, ever-growing Hispanic market
Transforming your website into a powerhouse branding and marketing machine
Taking full advantage of your social media tools through some great creative tips and tricks
Making your blog ROCK so you can make more money and attract lots of new clients
Hiring a virtual assistant to free your time and set your business alight
Taking your networking or multi-level marketing program to new heights
Using community marketing to explode your online presence
Transforming your lackluster Face book Fan Page into a fantastic, entertaining and profitable business tool

Oh, and by the way, just because this event contains an amazing line-up of female speakers does not mean this is a women-only event! All you men out there are warmly welcomed to join and benefit as well.

Don’t miss out—sign up and benefit from the advice of some of the web’s coolest women.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Filed Under: Online Business Tagged With: free teleseminar

How to Choose a WordPress Theme (and Why I Still Heart Thesis)

August 26, 2010 By Christine 6 Comments

If you know anything about me, you know I always recommend the WordPress platform to people looking to get their own website or blog up and running fast. You also may know that I use and highly recommend the Thesis theme. What’s a theme? A theme with regard to WordPress is just a way to alter and customize the design, look and presentation of your WordPress site.

Once you’ve installed WordPress, by default you will have one of WordPress’ own standard, pretty ho-hum themes out of the box. In most cases, you’ll want to find something a bit more unique beyond just sticking with the default.

Luckily, you have tons of choices, and you can go with a free theme or pay for a premium one. There are countless free themes available and you are likely to find one that fits the vision you have of the way your site should look.

So, why would anyone ever pay for a theme when there are so many free themes available? A big reason is that you may find yourself wanting to customize your site down the road and it can be time-consuming and frustrating to try and “hack” your theme in order to do so.

The alternative is to purchase a premium theme, which is usually priced in the $30-100 range for a single-use license. Premium themes often include lots of options making it easy to customize, plus available support and documentation if you end up with questions or issues.

When I first started using WordPress I created a few sites using free themes but decided to go premium when I launched my current site for the very reasons I listed above. The theme I chose is the Thesis theme for its clean, professional look, strong, built-in SEO and active and helpful support forum. (Full disclosure: yes, that is an affiliate link.)

The cost for the one-site personal option is $87. I have been extremely happy with Thesis and countless other business owners have been as well—it has an absolutely stellar reputation.

Of course this is just a tiny sampling, but some examples of other popular and well-regarded premium themes include:

The Station
WordPress Remix
Essence
Over Easy

It will really come down to what type of business you have, what image you are trying to project and how much you are willing to spend—however, there is definitely no shortage of choices.

Even if you have found a free or premium theme that you love, there may still be some customized details you would like to have added. If graphic design isn’t your strong suit, there are plenty of talented people out there who can create exactly what it is you need to enhance the look of your blog—and make your vision a reality. I went this route myself, having a header and some buttons designed to “dress up” my theme.

Ready to pick yours? WordPress has their own free theme directory and it’s a great place to start. If none of those strike your fancy you can browse a list of premium themes here. Be prepared to spend some time going through the myriad choices…or, you can just make it easy on yourself and start rocking Thesis and be on your way (hint, hint).

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: wordpress

The Top 7 Facebook and Twitter Strategies That Are Working RIGHT Now

August 19, 2010 By Christine 10 Comments

One of the great things about the work I do is that I have a birds eye view of what’s working and what’s not when it comes to social media. Every so often I like to give sort of a “state of the union” on Facebook and Twitter best practices, because as I am sure you know, social media is constantly growing, changing and evolving.

As you’ll see, some of the strategies I am recommending are tried and true—they have been working since day one and will probably continue to for the considerable future. However, there may be a few here that you’ve never considered—or may even be surprised by. But they are what I see as being the biggest keys to success and results for business owners on the two hottest social networks on the planet: Facebook and Twitter.

1. Find your peeps.

What this means is that you want to become part of the community you are looking to serve. The first step of course is to be clear on whom it is you want to serve and what problem you are solving for them. Once you know that, the goal is to go where they are hanging out.

There are specific tools you can use to easily find and interact with your target market. Two of my favorites for Twitter are wefollow.com and search.twitter.com.

2. Concentrate on conversing and building relationships, instead of broadcasting and selling.

One of the most common yet biggest mistakes that people make when they are first introduced to social media is to focus on pushing their product or service in a spammy way. That approach fails miserably in social media because most people are there to build relationships and interact.

There’s nothing wrong with letting others know what’s going on with you or your business sometimes—just be sure to intersperse your tweets or Facebook updates with some two-way conversation.

3. Use a Facebook personal profile AND a Facebook business page TOGETHER.

This might be a little “controversial”—and don’t get me wrong, your business SHOULD have a Page—but when you have a personal profile, you are able to interact with other people much more easily. As a business Page, a Page can’t go comment on another person’s Wall or profile or in their Group or on THEIR Page AS that Page. You are really contained inside the space of your own Page. This might be something to consider because a lot of the magic of Facebook and the relationship-building and rapport-building comes from that ability to interact.

4. Cross-post and cross promote.

Once you’ve decided to make social media a part of your marketing strategy, you don’t want to keep it to yourself. There are lots of ways to spread the word, for example: you’ll want to advertise your social presence on your blog, add links to your email signature and use one social media platform to post to another.

5. Use a social media dashboard like Hootsuite and other productivity tools to accomplish more in less time.

Hootsuite.com is my hands-down favorite, free social media tool, and the reason why is because it does so many different things. For example, you can use it to update many social networks at once, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn; you can use it to pre-schedule tweets and status updates and more.

6. Get them on the list.

In most cases, people aren’t going to buy from you right off of sites like Facebook and Twitter. You need to shift your thinking from “how can I get this person to buy from me or hire me now?” to “how can I bring this person into my community and strengthen the relationship with them on an ongoing basis?”

One of the best ways to do this is to offer people a way to provide their email address via your blog or website so that you have permission to keep in touch and build an ongoing relationship with them.

7. Measure and track your social media results.

Measuring the ROI of social media isn’t exactly cut and dry. I am often asked how you can tell whether the time you’ve spent on social media activities is really making a difference.

Some of the best metrics? Blog comments, blog subscribers, newsletter subscribers, social media profile engagement, number of friends and followers and website traffic to name a few.

No matter who your target market is, you can be sure that at least some segment of them is using social media. The important thing is to understand that social media is a great way to get in front of that target audience.

And remember, you may not be able to equate your interactions to dollars now, but what you are doing is planting seeds which can have big payoffs later on.

Most of the strategies I’ve mentioned here aren’t really “strategies” unless you keep applying them over time—so stick with it to reap those results you’ve been searching for.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Facebook, Twitter

8 Ways to Grow Your Business During a Summer Lull

August 14, 2010 By Christine Leave a Comment

This is a guest post by my own coach, Alicia Forest.

Have things slowed down for your business now that the warmer months are upon us and people are on vacation or otherwise taking a break from their usual routines? Use this downtime to focus on getting your business ready to rock for the fall by implementing some of the 8 ideas below:

1. Evaluate your staffing needs

If you haven’t hired an assistant yet, whether that’s a virtual assistant, an in-person assistant, or a combination of the two, now is a great time to do so. Begin by creating your ideal profile of what you want your assistant to look like, and then start putting out feelers to your networks about exactly what you’re looking for in an assistant.

Once you’ve found the right person for you, the summer months are a great time to train someone so they are up to speed come the busier fall months.

If you already have help, take some time to evaluate their performance. This includes taking a look not just at your current assistant(s) but also any outside vendors you work with, like your web designer, your shopping cart system, your list service, or your copywriter.

If you’re finding their work to not be meeting your needs and expectations, follow the same process as you did for hiring an assistant. Start with creating the ideal profile of who you’re looking for and then put that information out to your networks for recommendations.

2. Increase your learning to increase your earning

The summer is a great time to educate yourself on whatever it is you need to know to take your business to the next level. Choose a business-building project, like building your list or increasing your search engine rankings, and invest some of your education budget into a program or product that will help you learn what you need to know. Then plan the time to actually learn and implement the material, and you will reap the benefits come the fall.

3. Makeover or create your ezine

Take an objective look at your ezine, and ask a few colleagues if they’d be willing to offer you some feedback on it as well. Make any changes you think might help it be more effective as marketing and sales tool.

If you haven’t started your ezine yet, the summer is a great time to put one together and start sending it to your list regularly.

4. Clean out and organize your email

Is your inbox an energy drain?

Mine was! So I committed to having an empty inbox before leaving for vacation this summer, and I can’t tell you what a sense of freedom and lightness comes with an empty inbox.

How did I do it? Delete, file, delegate, respond. DONE.

As I’ve been chipping away at this, I could feel the energy drain slipping away. Take some time each day to delete emails or unsubscribed from unwanted lists, delegate what you don’t need to answer personally (which is more than you think), reply to ones that only require a quick response, and set the ‘rules’ feature to automatically sort future incoming mail into appropriate folders.

5. Revamp your office

In preparation for a move to another state, this was another task I worked on recently. It felt great to purge so many old files and papers. And by doing so, I created space for more clients and more abundance to come into my business!

But revamping your office doesn’t just include cleaning out and reorganizing your stuff. If you also have tools that aren’t working the way they should, get them fixed so they do, or replace them. So, if you’re printer only works when it feels like it, get it fixed or get a new one.

6. Clean up your computer

Tired of wasting time searching for stuff on your computer? Take some time this summer to clean up your files, delete ones you don’t need anymore, reorganize what you do need into appropriate folders, and remove old software that you no longer use. Your hard drive will thank you!

7. Write down your accomplishments so far this year

It’s important to pause periodically and recognize your successes. And now that we’re halfway through the year, take some time to write down and savor your accomplishments so far. Then plan out what you’d like to achieve for the rest of the year. This will motivate and inspire you going forward.

8. Enjoy yourself!

Summer is a special time of year, where people are more laid back and life takes on a more leisurely pace. Make sure you take some time to enjoy it. After all, isn’t time freedom one of the reasons you went into business for yourself in the first place?

Alicia M Forest, MBA, 6-Figure Business Breakthrough Mentor, teaches entrepreneurs how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to breakthrough to 6 figures and beyond so you can live the life you ache for, visit http://aliciaforest.com

Filed Under: Business Building Tagged With: Online Business

Relationship Marketing on the Social Networks

August 6, 2010 By Christine 1 Comment

(Written by Guest Blogger – D’vorah Lansky)

How do you make your online social networking relationships some of the best relationships you have? Follow discussions and get to know people who are writing on topics that are of interest to you. If people capture your attention, go to their profile pages and click on the link to visit their Web sites. In that way you can find out more about them and their business. This will also provide you with information in case you are inspired to start up a conversation with them.

I have established several very important business connections in this way. The beauty of these types of relationships is that the connection usually happens because people genuinely like and/or admire one another. In the online community, it is not unusual to team up on projects or create joint venture partnerships.

Get Involved in Conversations

When you login to Facebook or LinkedIn you can see the update feed for people in your network and you also get to see whom they’re interacting with and what groups they are participating in. The best way to grow relationships is to become known as a giver. Take time to answer questions in your area of expertise. That’s going to show that you’re a giving person as well as a knowledgeable person. When it comes across that you care more about people than you do about selling, people will take note.

On LinkedIn you can ask questions of the community. If you ask a question that’s clearly a sales pitch, people are going to disregard you or think poorly of you. At the same time, if you ask a thought provoking question, people will respond. I have a story about this. My company had recently expanded into Australia. I was looking for ideas on how to connect with professionals in that country and thus decided to reach out to the LinkedIn community. I carefully worded my question by sharing that, “Our company has expanded into Australia. I would really value your input as I’m looking for ideas on how I can connect with professionals in Australia.” I didn’t say, “Do you live in Australia? I can help you grow your business.” I reached out for help.

I got 35 responses in 24 hours. I was amazed and appreciative. I wrote to one person and said, “I so appreciate your suggestion. I’d like to ask you a question, though. Why did you take the time to answer me?” They had provided me with a very thorough answer and many of the other responses included personal introductions to individuals or to organizations. The response I received was, “Oh, that’s easy. I always see you on the networks answering other people’s questions. I was glad to help.” So in social networking it is key to be respectful of people and participate in conversations, questions, answers, forums, and/or interest groups.

Tips for Harnessing the Power of Social Networking To Grow Your Business

Once you have developed a presence on the social networking platforms with your name, brand, and Web site information as well as your photograph, you will begin to get noticed for your expertise, provided, of course, that you have shared information and joined along in conversations with others. Remember, the key to building relationships and community is to give of yourself with no expectation of getting anything in return. This simple concept will set you apart from the rest and ultimately get you noticed.

I welcome your thoughts and questions and encourage you to scroll down and leave a comment. As part of the Blog Tour that Christine and I are participating in, you will earn points for each comment as well as for each of the blog tour articles that you tweet using the hashtag #blogworldtour.

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If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to receive a free chapter of my book at www.ConnectCommunicateProfit.com

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best,
Dvorah

D’vorah Lansky
Relationship Marketing Wizard | Author | Speaker | Educator
www.BlogWorldTour.com/blog

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Social Networking

Online Interviews as a Source of Rich and Vibrant Content

August 4, 2010 By Christine 2 Comments

(Written by Guest Blogger – D’vorah Lansky)

One of the easiest and most effective ways to generate relevant and pertinent content is to do an audio interview series. By doing so you will be providing valuable content to your audience while building relationships with the people you interview. I have developed a deeper relationship with each person that I have interviewed on my online radio show and my listeners are really enjoying the content.

Some of the questions that people ask in regards to developing an audio interview series are:

Who do I interview?
How do I record the interview?
What questions do I ask of the person being interviewed
What do I do with the audio recordings?

Who to Interview

As far as who to interview, that depends on who your audience is. As an example, my audience is business professionals and entrepreneurs who want to learn more about blogging and marketing their businesses online. Thus, when looking for people to interview, I look for people who are experts in this area. This provides them with exposure to a new audience while providing my listeners with relevant and pertinent content.

It could be that you already know people who speak on topics of interest to your audience. If not, you can visit LinkedIn and Facebook groups on your niche topic and take note of who is posting articles and answering questions in a way that adds value to that community. Another place to locate relevant content and connect with potential speakers is at EzineArticles.com. Do a search on the topics you’d like to interview people on and spend some time reviewing the articles and visiting the Web sites of the authors.

How to Record the Interview

There are many options available for recording your interviews. I’ll share with you a free option that is easy to use and has many wonderful features. Go to www.FreeConferenceCalling.com and set up a free account. Spend some time reading through their documentation and set up a test interview with a friend or business associate. This service allows you to create a podcast of your calls or your call series, download the MP3 of your interview and interact with your audience through a web interface.

What Questions to Ask During the Interview

To date I have conducted over 40 interviews. Fortunately, before I began my online radio show I was a guest on someone else’s show. Before the interview I was asked to provide a typed list of 8-10 prioritized questions. This has proved to be an invaluable tool for me. By asking each of my guests to provide a list of their 8-10 prioritized questions, based on a topic that we agree upon ahead of time, they are prepared and are able to speak about things that they are knowledgeable of and passionate about.

What to Do with Your Interviews

So what do you do with these interviews? It depends on if you’re selling them all at once or individually or if you are giving them away. Some people would use a series as a bonus giveaway for people joining their program. You can offer your interview recordings as an incentive for people subscribing to your list. Invite people to enter their name and email address in order to receive a weekly interview with an expert, or you can simply utilize these interviews as content for your blog.

The first thing you want to do is have your interviews transcribed. I highly recommend that you have them transcribed by a professional service that only employs native English speaking transcriptionists. When I first got started online I would outsource my audios to be transcribed by a service in the Philippines. As nice as the people were, English was not their native language and it would take me hours to clean up each transcript.

Transcription services offer a wide variety of options. The options can consist of a straightforward transcript or transcription that is already formatted as an eBook. They can also break the transcript up further so it becomes content for your eCourse, articles, or blog posts. You can also take a blog post and utilize the content for creating a couple of slides in PowerPoint. You can create a video recording of that PowerPoint presentation, with Jing Project or Camtasia Studio, and turn it into a video. Now you have a video article that can be uploaded to YouTube or to your blog.

What things have you done to repurpose your content and/or build relationships with your audience by connecting with them in a variety of ways?

We welcome your comments and questions. As part of the Blog Tour that Christine and I are participating in, you will earn points for each comment as well as for each of the blog tour articles that you tweet using the hashtag #blogworldtour .

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If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to receive a free chapter of my book at www.ConnectCommunicateProfit.com

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best,
Dvorah

D’vorah Lansky
Relationship Marketing Wizard | Author | Speaker | Educator
www.RelationshipMarketingCafe.com

Filed Under: Online Business Tagged With: Online interviews

Repurposing Your Content for Multiple Paydays

August 2, 2010 By Christine 2 Comments

(Written by Guest Blogger – D’vorah Lansky)

I’d like to thank Christine for having me as guest blogger this week and for being a guest blogger on my blog at Relationship Marketing Cafe.

Christine and I met on Facebook and then as fate would have it, we ended up sitting next to one another at Ryan Lee’s Continuity Summit. I was immediately drawn to and impressed by Christine’s magnetic personality and positive attitude. Christine was also a guest on my online radio show. In fact, you can listen in by visiting: www.RelationshipMarketingCafe.com/guest-bloggers/christine-gallagher

This week I’ll be sharing three articles with you on the topic of “growing your business via Relationship Marketing online”. In this first article I’ll be sharing tips for repurposing your content, thus making it more accessible for people to consume your content, and thus get to know you.

Repurposing Your Content for Multiple Paydays

We each have a limited number of hours in a day. If you are in a profession where you get paid by the hour, your income is limited by the number of hours you can work. If, however, you leverage your time and develop ways for creating passive income, you get paid over and over again for work you did yesterday or on the work that others are doing on your behalf. An example of this is when you get paid a commission on the work that your staff completes.

A way to amplify this is to generate passive income by building a team in a network marketing company. This is an excellent way to build passive income as you get paid over and over again, not only on the work that you do, but also on the work that your team is doing.

A way to generate a passive income on the Internet is to create a product and turn this product into multiple products, thus getting paid several times on the same content. This process is called repurposing. Some people prefer to read while others like to listen to a CD in their car and still others would prefer to view a video. Why not provide all of these options and give people a choice of products to choose from?

If you are a specialist, such as a professional organizer, coach, therapist, or photographer and you are billing for the services you are providing, you only have so many hours in a day. It does not matter whether you are a heart surgeon or a high-priced attorney, you are still only able to bill for the time you are working. What if the attorney, heart surgeon, professional organizer, or business coach could take their knowledge and turn that into content which people could ingest in a wide variety of ways. They could then be paid over and over again on this content. By doing this they also position themselves as an expert on this topic and provide a wide variety of ways to connect with their audience.

A fantastic source of content is audio-recorded interviews. Interview people who are experts in your topic area or whose message your audience would love to hear. Transcribe the audio recordings and use them in a variety of ways. You can:

•   Offer the transcripts to your subscribers
•   Sell the transcripts to people who attend your interview series
•   Create a simple PowerPoint presentation to accompany the audio and turn it into a screen capture video
•   Create a collection of related interviews and sell the audios and transcripts individually or as a collection
•   Offer the transcripts alongside the companion video as another product
•   Chunk your transcripts into smaller segments and you’ll have content for articles, blog posts, or even for an eCourse

Find a way to take what you know and what you can teach people and put it into different formats so that it is available for sale, 24/7, on your Web site. You may be off on vacation and yet people can come to your site where you have packaged your expertise in a variety of ways, at several price points, and they can be buying your content through an automated process that you set up. This is a fabulous example of passive income: You are not working directly with a client, yet you are still making money.

What things have you done to repurpose your content and/or build relationships with your audience by connecting with them in a variety of ways?

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If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to receive a free chapter of my book at www.ConnectCommunicateProfit.com

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best,
Dvorah

D’vorah Lansky
Relationship Marketing Wizard | Author | Speaker | Educator
www.BlogWorldTour.com/blog

Filed Under: Online Business Tagged With: Passive income, repurposing content

1. Find your peeps.

2. Concentrate on conversing and building relationships, instead of broadcasting and selling.

3. Use a Facebook personal profile AND a Facebook business page TOGETHER.

4. Cross-post and cross promote.

5. Use a social media dashboard like Hootsuite and other productivity tools to accomplish more in less time.

6. Get them on the list.

7. Measure and track your social media results.

1. Evaluate your staffing needs

2. Increase your learning to increase your earning

3. Makeover or create your ezine

4. Clean out and organize your email

5. Revamp your office

6. Clean up your computer

7. Write down your accomplishments so far this year

8. Enjoy yourself!

Get Involved in Conversations

Tips for Harnessing the Power of Social Networking To Grow Your Business

Who to Interview

How to Record the Interview

What Questions to Ask During the Interview

What to Do with Your Interviews

Repurposing Your Content for Multiple Paydays

Connect With Christine!