Write Your Way To Expert Status

Everyone is an expert at something. Whatever product or service you provide in your business is your area of expertise. Writing articles about what you are an expert at and distributing those articles online through various article submission directories is a valuable marketing strategy called Article Marketing.

How will writing and submitting articles help your business?

Here’s how it works. You will:

Gain more exposure – When you write an article and submit it to various article directories it will be posted online for anyone to read. Surfers find your articles when they type related keywords into search engines to find what they’re looking for.

Generate more traffic to your site – You will create a ‘resource box’ that is included at the end of each article you submit. The resource box is a short bio about you, the author, with a link to your website. When someone reads your article and wants to find out more about you, they will click thru the article resource box at the end of your article & will be taken to your website.

Build trust – When you provide value to the reader by sharing information on your expertise through your articles, you gain their confidence in you, your products and services.

Grow your list – Make sure you have a ‘call to action’ in your resource box and a sign up form on your site to capture names and email addresses of those who visit. Offer a free report or a subscription to a newsletter that visitors can sign up for.

Boost business – When you build your market reach, name recognition and credibility, an increase in business is sure to follow.

Remember, no sales pitches. The directories are looking for content-rich articles of about 400-750 words. The only place you can promote yourself is within the resource box.

But what do you write about?

Consider:

• What is your area of expertise? What are you known for?
• Is there something that keeps coming up over & over again with several clients? Check your emails. What questions is your market asking you?
• Do you already write a newsletter? Repurpose your newsletter articles.

If there’s already many articles about your topic circulating out there, don’t worry, you will put a different spin on things as you write from your own experiences and in your own unique way.

Think you’re not a writer? Just write in your own voice, in a conversational style as if you were speaking one on one with someone. People like that.

Now that you’ve written an article, how do you go about circulating this article online?

Here are some simple steps to get you started:

1. Google the term ‘article submission directories’ to come up with various lists of the top sites you can submit your content to (start with 2 or 3 on up to 10).

2. Sign up for your free accounts and review their guidelines. I recommend starting with EzineArticles

3. Create your author resource box, about 50 words stating who you are, what you do, benefits you provide, call to action i.e. sign up for my free report.

4. It is best to convert all your articles to plain text with no formatting. To do this, copy from Word & paste into Notepad to remove any formatting. It makes submitting quick and easy.

5. Submit your articles making sure to track where you have submitted to, what you have submitted and when.

Repeat. Write and submit your articles regularly as an ongoing part of your marketing strategy. An ideal campaign would be to submit new articles weekly or bi-weekly. Articles are a great cost-effective way to market your business and gain expert status in your niche. What can you write about today?

The Top 5 Ways To Balance Your Commitments

Are you at the point of overwhelm in your business? Do you have so many clients or commitments that you’re not sure how you’re going to meet everyone’s demands? With too many commitments the quality of your work can suffer along with your good reputation and sanity. Does this overwhelm spill over into your personal life? If you work from a home office, others may not respect the fact that you have valid work to do and may put unreasonable demands on your time. Are you saying ‘yes’ to these requests too often?

If you’re at this point of frustration, it’s not too late to restructure a few things to achieve work, life and family balance. After all, as a business owner you have a highly sought after benefit that employees in the corporate world value highly – a flexible schedule. It’s time to get things back into perspective and enjoy this perk.

How? Here are the top 5 ways to balance your commitments:

1. First, start by setting boundaries: Solopreneurs working from home must have clear cut business vs. personal time. Set your business hours and stick with them. Ensure personal time is spent away from work-related activities. Don’t run errands during working hours or answer your business line when you’re about to sit down to dinner.

2. Next, start a waiting list: Too many clients may seem like a good problem to have when in reality it’s better to have fewer clients that get your full attention than more than you can handle. Never promise what you can’t deliver. There will always be an ebb and flow in your business which means that you can offer to put potential clients on a waiting list and contact them when you are available to fully accommodate their needs.

3. Or refer the work to others: Chances are that you have business relationships with others in your industry. Some potential clients may not be the right fit and you can choose to work only with those who are a good fit. Be honest and let the client know that a fellow business owner may be more suitable. Make the introduction.

4. Or build a team by subcontracting and/or outsourcing: Do you have a close knit group of colleagues that share your skill set, work ethics and standards that you would feel comfortable working with? Put together a team that you can subcontract out the overflow work to. And/or outsource to a Virtual Assistant rather than spending your own time on administrative and technical tasks. When you stop trying to do it all yourself, you’ll have the potential to offer more services, increase revenue and grow your business. Not to mention you’re helping others by employing them.

5. And last, but not least, make commitments to yourself equally as often as you do to others: What really matters to you? Make a commitment to yourself today about what you want to achieve. In my yoga classes we have been practicing making our ’sankalpa’ (a Sanskrit word meaning to set an intention using a short phrase or sentence). When you incorporate your intention into your daily routine, in time you can bring about positive change.

As a small business owner you already have many responsibilities. Setting boundaries, getting help and honouring commitments to yourself will satisfy the need for balance and boost your success.

When You Want To Learn Wordpress

---

Please welcome my guest blogger, Kelly McCausey of Mom’s Talk Biz! Kelly has helped me immensely through her Wordpress Orientation group sessions. Participants are able to log in and follow along and ask as many questions as needed as Kelly walks you through each issue live on screen. I highly recommend these classes if you’re working with Wordpress and don’t want to tackle it alone. Sessions are ongoing. Please note that I am a compensated affiliate of Kelly’s products.

---

Wordpress is the website building tool of choice for many business owners these days. It’s a great option. No software needed on your computer, great functionality and flexibility – and you can update your site content from any computer, netbook or smart phone. It’s no wonder that it’s become so popular.

You’ve probably heard that Wordpress is incredibly user friendly – and it is! Still, most first time users find it overwhelming at first. If you ever tried to tackle Wordpress on your own and felt like giving up, you’re not at all alone. There’s a lot to take in at first.

I was lucky though. I had several patient friends available to help me over the learning curve. Still, I wouldn’t say that I felt truly comfortable for months after. The more I got to know it, the more I realized that Wordpress is both simple and complex all at the same time.

If you only want to use Wordpress to publish content, it’s pretty darned simple. The visual editor operates like any basic word processor. You enter content, press publish and you’re finished.

Think of Wordpress as being three things at once.

1. It’s a Content Management Script that runs on your web server, letting you enter content as easily as writing an email.

2. Your content is stored in a Database on your web server.

3. Finally, it wears a Theme, a set of template files, that determines how the content is displayed online.

Entering content is easy. The database takes care of itself. Customization, want to alter your design and manipulate the database for special needs, you have to tap a whole other area of knowledge and that’s where many get stuck.

There’s good news and bad news for those who want to learn more about managing their Wordpress site. The good news is that there’s a huge resource of documents and a large community of developers and users who are willing to answer your questions. The bad news is that there’s a huge resource of documents and a large community of developers and users…

The trouble for newcomers is usually that they don’t know how to ask the right questions to produce the answers they really need. The documents and forums seem to be written in a foreign language and newbie questions are often answered with links to more foreign explanations that just add to their feelings of overwhelm.

My advice? Don’t give up. Keep asking questions. To get the best answers, provide as much information about your problem as you can. If you’re persistent, you’ll find that things come easier over time.

—————————————-

About the Author:

Kelly McCausey of Mom’s Talk Biz invites you to Wordpress Orientation, your all access pass to exclusive Wordpress learning. We demonstrate answers to your questions during our live web conference sessions. If you’re goal is to do it yourself Wordpress Orientation is your pathway to learning how.

How Improv Can Improve Your Small Business

If you would like to try something new and fun that can help you as a business owner, try taking an improv class. It may not be what first comes to mind as a traditional learning environment for the purpose of developing new skills, but what you will discover about yourself in the process is priceless.

You may be wondering what exactly improv is and why learning improv may be of benefit to you as a business owner.

Improv is basically acting without a script or costumes and few if any props. The audience often creates the scenarios and character traits for the actors. Some of the actors may not be made aware of this information but must play along as if they know what they don’t know.

The workshop I attended was a one day introduction to the basics of performing improvisation described as a ‘crash course in improv’. Through various games and exercises (alternating as actors and audience) we learned how to perform without the luxury of a script or rehearsal and sometimes without intelligible language. In one exercise we could only communicate using the language of ‘gibberish’. Each actor quickly tried to convey their character and the setting through movement and meaningless babble so that the other actors could react appropriately. The laughter never stopped!

What can you learn from all of this playfulness that can be applied in your business?

There are some key skills improv teaches you and developing these abilities can complement your work. They are:

1. Thinking on your feet. Being spontaneous, creative and working without a script go hand in hand with improv. In business we often need to react quickly to unexpected events, adjust to changes and come up with creative solutions.
2. Hone your listening and communication skills and improve memory. While performing improv you have to work as a team, focus on what others are saying and then respond appropriately. Maintaining clear and consistent communication is one of the most important aspects of a relationship with a client. Listening and responding proactively, replying to messages in a timely fashion and ongoing progress reports are top priority.
3. Building confidence. Performing in front of an audience is beyond our comfort zones for many of us. We wonder if we said the right thing and what people are thinking. Improv classes teach you to get out of your head and learn to trust your instincts. As an expert in your chosen field, these skills allow you to speak with self-assurance to prospects and can open up public speaking opportunities.
4. Risk Taking. We learn the ‘Yes and…’ principle in improv. This means we reply with ‘Yes and…’ to whatever someone says to us and run with the idea to see where it leads. Often in life and business our natural reaction is to play it safe or shut down an idea with an excuse as to why something can’t be done. However, taking a risk can open up a whole new revenue stream and a world of possibilities.
5. Self Awareness. We can learn a lot about ourselves in an improv class. Stephanie, our instructor, commented that within the first 10 minutes of a class, she sees personalities begin to emerge. The exercises improve our awareness of natural strengths and areas that need improvement for personal growth and success.

If you haven’t already, get involved in an improv class. It is both an entertaining and learning experience and the fun and laughter are guaranteed.