Empowering young entrepreneurs

14 Entrepreneurship Quotes By Teen Entrepreneurs

As this day comes to a close, with less than 30 minutes left before Day 7 in the UCB, I find I need a little inspiration. So, I went looking for some quotes about entrepreneurship that would mean something to me and to my young clients. And now I’m sharing them with you. I hope you enjoy them and that at least some of them speak to you.

“Everything started as nothing.” – Ben Weissenstein

“To any entrepreneur: if you want to do it, do it now. If you don’t, you’re going to regret it.” – Catherine Cook

“If you’re not doing the things that you love, then your life is not worth living. What are you here for?” – King Sidharth

“Manual labor sucks, dude.” – Alex Fraiser (I found this especially relevant today after spending hours planting the organic garden in gale force winds that suddenly started up.

“A lot of people have said that the internet is a teenager. Guess who understands a teenager best: a teenager.” – Syed Balkhi (This is why I empower teens to become entrepreneurs)

“Start today, not tomorrow. If anything, you should have started yesterday. The earlier you start, the more time you have to mess up.” – Emil Motycka

“There’s no committee that says, ‘This is the type of person who can change the world – and you can’t.’ Realizing that anyone can do it is the first step. The next step is figuring out how you’re going to do it.” – Adora Svitak

“Every single person I know who is successful at what they do is successful because they love doing it.” – Joe Penna

“Over-deliver every time.” – Alex Maroko

“There is no reason to be hesitant… becoming an entrepreneur is a learning experience.” – Savannah Britt

“You’ve got to stop doing all the things that people have tried, tested, and found out don’t work.” – Michael Dunlop (Duh, how much sense does this make?)

“I think what teenagers lack is the belief that they can be unique and extraordinary in life. Make the most of your age because you’re not going to be a teenager forever!” – Sabirul Islam

“You could have a million ideas, but they’re all worthless if you don’t get them done.” – Lauren Amarante

“Success comes down to hard work plus passion, over time. If you work really, really hard over a long period of time, it will pay off.” – Stanley Tang

“If you have a goal, be relentless in your pursuit.” – Keith J. Davis Jr.

“I’m going to reinvent the wheel. My vision of the wheel is unique.” – King Sidharth

“It’s not about how many years of experience you have. It’s about the quality of your years of experience.” – Jacob Cass

“If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not making decisions.” – Catherine Cook

“If you pursued something that you felt strongly about, then I call that success.” – Adora Svitak

“I like the idea of working hard now, so you can earn big later.” – Alex Fraiser

“The hardest part about being an entrepreneur is that you’ll fail ten times for every success.” – Adam Horwitz

“You always want to surround yourself with people who are rooting for you and who want you to succeed. Stay away from the naysayers who couldn’t do it themselves.” – Arjun Rai

“If you can’t communicate, you’re going to find yourself a lonely businessperson.” – Keith J. Davis Jr.

“I don’t want to look too far ahead. The journey is what’s happening right now, not what’s on the finishing line.” – Sabirul Islam

“Starting your own business is like riding a roller coaster. There are highs and lows and every turn you take is another twist. The lows are really low, but the highs can be really high. You have to be strong, keep your stomach tight, and ride along with the roller coaster that you started.” – Lindsay Manseau

“If you start with nothing and end up with nothing, there’s nothing lost.” – Michael Dunlop

“The biggest failure you can have in life is not trying at all.” – Emil Motycka

“If you can find people who think that what you’re doing is great, they’re going to do everything in their power to make it a success.” – Juliette Brindak (I have this kind of support right now.)

“All that you need to become an entrepreneur and change the world is a working brain – and pretty much nothing else.” – Adora Svitak

“Make it happen now, not tomorrow. Tomorrow is a loser’s excuse.” – Andrew Fashion (Amen!)

“I like computer games and I treat business a bit like a computer game. I count money as points. I’m doing really well: making lots of money and lots of points.” – Michael Dunlop (Hey, whatever works, right?)

“If you think that you are going to love something, give it a try. You’re going to kick yourself in the butt for the rest of your life if you don’t.” – Joe Penna

Do any of these strike a chord with you?

If you are interested in hearing some of the speakers from the telesummit, there are a few more days left and the replays will be available until until April 14^th. We are also pre-selling the recordings with three options at discounted prices. After April 14^th, the prices go up significantly. The CD package would make a great unique gift for anyone parenting (Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are coming up), teaching or otherwise working with tweens, teens and young adults. It would also be perfect for counselors, therapists and coaches who work with families. You can find out more at http://TheYouthEmpowermentTelesummit.com.

In another note, I am offering a deep discount on my coaching program “The Monetize Your Passion Blueprint – Empowering Young Entrepreneurs” for anyone registered at the telesummit. That discount is good through April 14^th as well. Contact me via email at julia@julianeiman.com if you’re interested in more information.

0 Introducing Myself on Day One of the Blog Challenge

So, here I sit on day one of the new blog challenge asking myself why I am doing this. Why did I take on this challenge again and commit myself to write a post every day when I have too much to do already? I’ll tell you what I told myself,

“You are about to launch your dream program Julia, you need to get the word out, you need to create activity on your site. You need to raise awareness about the program, you need to be in massive action. What better way than the blog challenge!”

Well, the blog challenge is only one way I am using to spread the word. Some of you may not know me, maybe this is your first challenge or you didn’t see my posts the last time around. So please let me tell you a bit about myself and my program.

I am a change agent, a youth empowerment coach whose mission it is to have a significantly positive impact on the global youth unemployment crisis. With the permission of one of my coaches, Rich German of Epic Coach Academy, I adapted his program, Monetize Your Passion to create a youth version, The Monetize Your Passion Blueprint – Empowering Young Entrepreneurs.

The program is designed to help young people develop an entrepreneur mindset and empower them to start a business either on the internet or using internet marketing. It’s a no brainer for our current economic and unemployment situation. I am a life skills professional and this program contains many life skills that can be applied in many areas of a young person’s life. With the proper guidance, they can actually start a business within the time frame of the program.

You can learn more about the program by visiting my home page for now. I am in the process of creating a new page just for The Monetize Your Passion Blueprint – Empowering Young Entrepreneurs. It is for life skills professionals, nonprofits that service teens and young adults, teachers and coaches who have youth clients, coach adults who work with youth, or who want to have a youth-centered business.

Included in the program materials are my two books, 31 Powerful Lessons Empowering Teens and Young Adults to Develop An Entrepreneur Mindet and Pick From the Passion Tree – Empowering Young Entrepreneurs to Start a Business (the printed versions), a client workbook, a trainers guide and several interviews with business folks meant as inspiration and information. Two of the interviews are from people you know – Michele Scism and Michelle Shaeffer, our lovely hosts for this challenge.

I wrote both of those books using the posts from two blog challenges. That’s right, I did. As of the July 2012 challenge I had no desire to write a book, I just wanted to create the program. After fifteen days into the challenge, I realized a book was writing itself and within forty-five days of starting the challenge, the first book, 31 Powerful Lessons was published and being sold on my site and on Kindle. We were a top seller on Kindle for a while with over 400 copies downloaded on the first day of the free download period. I’ve since taken the book off of Kindle because I don’t like their policy that you can’t use the digital book for ninety days.

Aside from the new program, I am wrapping up The Youth Empowerment Telesummit that includes 18 speakers talking about current trends and strategies in parenting and life skills training. The telesummit is available until April 14^th and we are offering deeply discounted prices on the pre-sale of the recordings from that event. After April 14, the prices increase by quite a bit. If you are interested in The Youth Empowerment Telesummit, you can learn more by clicking here. If you request a Free Pass to the telesummit, you can download 31 Powerful Lessons (wink, wink) for free by clicking on the gift icon next to my name. By the way, all the speakers are offering a free gift so you can download those as well.

As if all that wasn’t enough, I am co-hosting the August 2013 Global Presence Humanitarian Dinner Event in Los Angeles. This is a global organization founded by Marlaine Cover of Parenting 2.0. I am very proud to be a part of this amazing organization that changing the paradigm for teaching life skills.

So, now you know what I’m up to. Busy, busy, busy. Yet here I am, blogging for the blog challenge, committed to submitting a post a day for the month of April. I may focus this month’s posts on how to have a telesummit. How does 28 Steps to have a successful telesummit sound to you?

What have I done to myself???

6 Inspiration Sunday Part 2

So I just realized that I posted Sunday’s article on Saturday. Well, it was Sunday in other places in the world already. Anyway, I decided to use this mistake to catch up as I was a post behind schedule in the blog challenge.

Rather than write a new article, I’m going to go with another Sunday inspiration and that will put me back on track.

This one highlights the differences between successful and unsuccessful people in a way that makes sense in a basic way.

I want to apologize to the creator of this graphic. I found it on Facebook and didn’t realize that it didn’t have a credit on the graphic and now I can’t find it again to see who created it. Sorry. I’ll be happy to provide the credit when I find it.

2 A 5 Step Blueprint to Change the World’s Economy

Yesterday I was explaining to someone that the global mission of my business not only has the potential to impact youth unemployment; through the ripple effect it has the potential to impact entire communities worldwide.

Whew, that’s a big picture. It is possible though. I like to dream big and I believe this can become reality.

Here’s my 5 step blueprint for changing economic reality around the globe:

1. Train and mentor young people to become entrepreneurs.

2. These young entrepreneurs will hire friends and family as their business starts earning money.

3. Friends and family will then be employed and have money to spend in the community.

4.The community will thrive due to this spending, small business will be able to create more jobs and people will have money to spend on the things they need.

5. The outcome is a thriving, healthy community that invests in newer and better resources.

Yes, I know this is a rather simplistic blueprint, but think about it for a few minutes. Once we fill in the details of all these steps, and while it may not be possible in some areas of the world until their politics change, it is possible and with enough big dreamers taking action, it is doable.

Let me leave you with one such example. There is a nonprofit called The Kind Fund. They supply school desks to children in Malawi. The desks are locally made and the Fund raises money, more and more desks are ordered, the local company that makes them has hired other members of the community to build the desks. More desks means having to order more wood which creates more work for woodcutters. Can you see that ripple effect at work here?

What is your world changing idea?

Do you have a clear picture of the areas of your life and business where change is required? It might be time for a reality check so you can discover those areas where you are incomplete or could improve. If you are subscribed to my blog, then you already have Julia Neiman’s 2 Step Reality Check to Discover and Overcome the Hurdles That Stand Between You and Your Dreams. If you don’t have a copy of the Reality Check, simply enter your name and email in the box at the top right side of the page and it will be on it’s way to your inbox in seconds.

6 Planning a Telesummit

Two days ago I decided to have a telesummit. I’m preparing to launch my coaching certification program soon and thought this might be a great lead in to start the launch.

I made this declaration in Adam Urbanski’s Navigator course and Adam immediately said, “name it now, find someone to get an optin page up for you and start promoting this today.”

Okay. I don’t move quite as fast as Adam does. I am doing what he suggested except it isn’t happening that quickly.

I chose a title immediately though, The Youth Empowerment Telesummit. And I have started contacting people to “enroll” them to participate as presenters. So far I have some very solid commitments from others who work with youth in one capacity or another. I am blown away by those who have accepted.

Tomorrow I will begin work on the optin page and get that up as quickly as possible. And I will reach out to extend more invitations to participate.

Writing the copy for the page will be my biggest challenge so I’m going to have to spend some time researching other optin pages for other telesummits so I can see what they are including. I have to collect bios on the presenters and their photos and a list of things they will consent to give away to listeners. The freebies they provide will bring listeners to their website to sign up to their mail lists. It’s a win-win situation.

The calls will be live via freeconferencecallhd.com. There will be either one or two opportunities to listen to the replays, then the interviews go into the vault for safekeeping until such time as I repurpose them into a CD package.

It isn’t really that difficult to create a telesummit; it is time consuming. And it’s a great way to practice your “enrollment skills” by having to talk to people about participating. I find that people are eager to be involved in your projects if they feel your passion. If you are genuine, it’s contagious.

I’m quite happy with how much has been accomplished in just two days and I’m fairly certain that these presenters and I will remain connected and be doing more things together in the future.

Have you ever had a telesummit?

What was your experience in putting it together?

Do you have any suggestions or advice that you think will be helpful?

2 A Brown Bird Sang

I meant to have a post for day 9 on time, however, so many things happened today that required so much time that I never had a chance to think about what to write let alone write it.

That reminds me of a poem I learned in school a long time ago. The first verse reads,

I meant to do my work today,
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.

The name of the poet escapes me right now, and there is another verse, that I do recall but it isn’t relevant to my day. If only my afternoon was that lovely.

I started a new course today called Navigator with Adam Urbanski and our very own awesome Michelle Shaeffer. There was so much packed into this one call that it felt like months worth of training. I was so busy being in action after the call that the rest of the morning flew by as if I had found a time warp.

Then the outside world found it’s way in. My elderly dad had a geriatric assessment today and I had to be interviewed to fill in the blanks. He lives in a facility for dementia patients and I manage his life. It isn’t that I mind having to pay his bills, confirm his appointments, provide stuff that he requires and so forth, however, I am still finding a way to not let it take so many hours out of the days that someone decides I need to handle things.

In spite of this rather lengthy interruption, I got a lot done and made a lot of phone calls to invite people to participate in a telesummit I’m putting together for people who work with teens and young adults, teaching them independent living skills. The positive responses were gratifying and helped to keep my spirits up.

Hopefully I will be able to get back on track on Day 10 of the blog challenge.

How do you cope with interruptions and distractions in your day that interfere with the work you need to do?

19 Choosing Your Online Business Model

There are many internet- based business models to choose from, however, they are broken down into two types – low traffic and high traffic. My personal online business falls in the low traffic category, however, that will change to be a combination of both once my new program is launched.

Since there is a large learning curve on the internet, it’s a good idea to start out with a low traffic model. Service based businesses are considered low traffic. A sales site such as an ecommerce store is a high traffic business because the volume of traffic has to be high in order to make money.

Examples of high traffic business models includes low price products, the sale of merchandise, ebooks, videos, webinars, online courses or a combination of all of those. It also includes paid subscriptions to newsletters, ezines, community membership sites, affiliate marketing, adsense sites and blogging.

Low traffic business model examples include mid to high priced products or training courses, coaching, consulting, freelancing, speaker services, and higher priced services, membership sites and others.

As you can see, there are similar types of models in both the high and low traffic categories – the higher priced your service or product, the less traffic you need to make money.

Let’s take a look at the six most popular models of online businesses.

1. Blogging

A blog is simply an online journal of sorts. You decide how many times a week you are going to post a new article, then write something to post on your blog. Through Google you can add advertisements to your page, called AdSense. The idea is that you drive traffic to your blog and they click on the ads and you make money. The drawback is that for you to make money doing this, you have to really understand SEO and Google rankings, or hire someone that does.

My blog is a page on my website http://www.julianeiman.com/blog where I post articles relating to empowering teens and young adults to become entrepreneurs. The majority of my articles are geared toward this topic. I do not use Adsense though. My blog is an addition to my online business rather than a business itself.

Right now I am not consistent with how often I post an article because I’ve been busy creating a new program. However, I participated in several blog challenges where you post a new blog every day and other people comment and share your blog with the goal being to increase awareness of your business and traffic to the blog. I used the posts from two of the challenges to write this book and my first book, 31 Powerful Lessons Empowering Teens and Young Adults to Develop an Entrepreneur Mindset.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is where you make money through commissions from selling other people’s products. This works if don’t have a product of your own to sell. However, be aware that affiliate marketing is a high traffic model. The person whose product or services you are selling has all the systems in place, you sign up with them, get your personal affiliate code, then hit the internet to promote their product. I am an affiliate for the Word Press Store and for several coaches who sell expensive programs, or what’s commonly called big ticket products.

Once you drive traffic to their business, it’s up to them to make the sale and you receive whatever commission they are offering. I earned two $1000 commissions when two people signed up for an online course that cost in excess of $3000 and I receive commission from time to time when someone uses my link to purchase the Word Press Estore, the Affiliate Software or other products.

You can do affiliate marketing through Clickbank as well. They have a large database of products to choose from. Find several that interest you, sign up and start promoting.

3. Information Products

People that create and sell information products are often called Infopreneurs. This is where you are selling information products that teach people how to do things. For example, “How to Market Online,” “How to Buy a Car,” “How to Cook Chicken.” The topics are only limited by your imagination. You can also sell information products that are created by others if they have the resell rights attached. Make sure you have permission to sell someone else’s work before you do.

You need to develop some skills to be an infopreneur. You need to be able to either create or locate products with great content that people want. You need to be able to drive traffic to your site in order to make sales, and you need to have some sales ability in order to convince people that this product is a good investment and will help them either solve a problem or learn how to do something.

Once you have these skills, you are in a position to make a nice income as information products are the top selling products on the internet.

4. Ecommerce Sites

An ecommerce site is online retail store. You can create your own store front of buy one from a company that is already set up. This is called a “turn-key business.” A turn-key business is like an online franchise. The person you buy they store from usually has additional fees aside from the purchase price so do your homework before deciding to go this route.

Ecommerce sites are more difficult to position in terms of ranking in the search engines because they don’t often have fresh content. You might want to add a blog to your ecommerce site so you do have fresh content and are consistently updating. You can sell your own products if you have them to sell, like shoes, or car products, musical instruments, jewelry and just about anything that is legal. You have choices here too. You can keep your own inventory, or use a drop-shipper. A drop-shipper is a company that stores the product and ships it for you. You receive the order from your customer along with payment, you send an email with the order to the drop-shipper and they mail it out and charge you their price for the product.

I don’t recommend ecommerce as a way to start online if you aren’t already experienced in retail sales. This type of business has a large learning curve and there is a lot involved, including returns, replacing broken items, knowing if there are restrictions to shipping certain items to certain states and a lot more.

5. Provide Services

Providing services through an online site is known as freelancing. You have to have a skill that you can promote in order to be a freelancer. If you can write, do graphic design, know programming code, design games or be a virtual assistant (an online secretary or business manager), you can build a successful business as a freelancer. You can also coach other people if you have the know-how and experience in a particular area to do.

There are drawbacks to freelancing such as having deadlines to meet. If you aren’t disciplined and can’t meet deadlines, then this isn’t for you. I used to freelance my writing services and believe me, it was a struggle sometimes to meet a deadline. I never missed one, it just isn’t professional and you won’t get repeat business.

There are many places where you can list yourself as a freelancer. I used to use Guru.com and elance.com. Now there’s Fiverr as well where you provide a service for $5. That gives the customer an almost risk free way to use your service and if they like you, you will have repeat client at full price and perhaps some referrals as well.

6. Membership Sites

Membership sites seem to be trending as a business model right now. Basically, they are a community that you provide an online site for, that people pay a fee to be a part of. They are a lot of work because you have to continually update your information, add new content and keep up with your subscribers. People can cancel their subscription at any time so your income could be inconsistent.

My business is going to have a membership site soon; however, there will be no charge for the site, at least in the beginning. I will start the site as a Facebook group. Membership will be limited to those people who have completed the certification process to coach my new program, Monetize Your Passion: Empowering Young Entrepreneurs to Start a Business, as well as their teen and young adult clients that have completed the coaching program. The group will offer a place where both coaches and clients can make connections, network, find answers to their questions, marketing ideas, mentors and further learning opportunities. Through this site, I hope to provide the support that is required long after the coaching program is complete.

I hope this helps you on your journey to choose the type of online business model that will be right for you. As you can see, it can be complicated and require a lot of research and work on your part. Are you willing to do whatever it takes to get a business up and running?

Do you have a clear picture of the areas of your life and business where change is required? It might be time for a reality check so you can discover those areas where you are incomplete or could improve. If are subscribed to my blog, then you already have Julia Neiman’s 2 Step Reality Check to Discover and Overcome the Hurdles That Stand Between You and Your Dreams. If you don’t have a copy of the Reality Check, simply enter your name and email in the box at the top right side of the page and it will be on it’s way to your inbox in seconds.

10 Thoughts About Money

Here is another lesson I learned many years ago from my spiritual teacher:

Material flow has to do with marketing your personality for a job or selling a service or product independently. Your personality includes your skills and abilities because the personality reflects the whole person. Material flow creates money and cash flow is the way the money is used to create more money. Your personality is the magnetic attractor of material flow.

Everyone that has jobs or whose business serves the markets of the middle class or the poor are in danger of not being able to sustain an income. The only jobs or businesses that will be secure will be those that have the rich as their market. The rich have become a separate society of the rich providing for the richer.

The secret of being rich and being happy is not having any more than is needed. So if you want a lot of money, you have to create a positive purpose for being rich in which the money is used well and wisely for purposes larger than just having wealth to buy stuff.

This lesson came into my life sometime in the 1980s. At that time my spiritual teacher, told me that people with jobs, unless they are top executive jobs with top Fortune 500 companies, will see their incomes drops, their benefits fall away and their jobs disappearing altogether and that there would be little or no possibility to recover from that. He predicted that the middle class, which was very strong during that decade and most of the next, would wither and shrink to become very small and the poor would increase in great numbers.

Today, we see exactly that. I’m gratified to see so many people turning to entrepreneurship as that is the way to a more secure future for many who walk that path. Some of us will get rich and some of us will be comfortable, and in that way we will escape being poor.

Where are you on this path? Are you making good decisions and wise choices? Have you worked to improve your personality?

11 So You Want To Go Online With a Business

Today’s article is by guest blogger:

Kaye Dennan of Home Business Success Ideas

If you are an internet surfer you go online and within minutes you find answers to your search. The first ten listings for your search term come on the front page of Google (although I appreciate there are other search engines you may use) and the sites on the first page are not necessarily the best, but they are the best ones recognized by the search engines. If you look at the top of the Google page you will see that there can literally be millions of pages covering the search term that you have used.

So what you have to do to get your site recognized is find keywords (search terms your customers will use) that are not so common so that your site will be easily found on the web.

Let me assure you that there are plenty of clients out there for everybody and if you try to get page ranking with the more popular keywords it will be years before you get to the front page. But if you use the less common search terms you will be found by more than enough customers to keep you busy.

In saying that, you will have to be patient. The internet has billions of written, videos and graphic items being posted every single day so it may take up to 3 months before you will get to the front page for your chosen keyword.

Getting to the front page is not just about using the right keywords but also marketing your site using that keyword.

How Does This Affect You

It affects you in the way that when you build a website you need to be able to get your pages up into the first 10 search terms so that you will get the clicks from potential clients.

Without optimizing your website with keywords to take advantage of the search terms you are really wasting your time building a website in the first place. If page placement is not important to you then this exercise is not so critical.

So let me tell you how to make sure that your website or at least some of its pages are going to get front page ranking.

Pretty Is Not Always Best

I know many people who have paid thousands of dollars to have the ‘prettiest’ website made by skilled technical people, but there has been no keyword research and these website owners are wondering why their website which they paid thousands of dollars for is not being found on the internet.

Google and other search engines do not care about ‘pretty’ they care about content.

The Very First Steps To Building A Successful Website

Whatever you do, don’t underestimate the importance of doing your keyword search first. It is absolutely critical to the success of your website and your business, even when deciding on your business name.

Keyword research will ensure that you find the best keywords for your business, not only for online marketing but offline as well. These words should be the focus when you are deciding on a business name and also on a domain name (the name of your website, e.g. http://julianeiman.com In Julia’s case she is well recognized in her industry so she can get away with using her own name for her website.

But if you do not personally have a well recognized name in the field that you wish to pursue then you need to choose a name which will find bring you clients when people use these search terms.

So How Do You Find Quality Keywords

One of the simplest ways is to go into the Google keyword tool.

Here is how to fill this form out:

Go to the ‘word or phrase’ box and type in the best word that describes your business
In the left-hand column tick the ‘broad match’ box
Make sure the locations box (in gray) says ‘All’
Then fill in the captcha word box. (In the screen shot below I have already filled in the captcha word box and been taken through to the next step.)
Scroll down and you will see a list of keywords of which some of them will be suitable to use for your business.
You can download these keywords in a csv file to your computer.

At this point you are looking for keywords that have a quality score.

Find keywords that have a Global Monthly Search of 500+ preferably over 1000. Then go into Google search and see if the pages come up to under 30,000.

It is tempting to go for the higher number in search terms but if you do you have so much competition that you will find that your website just does not get ranked and your potential customers just do not find you.

Here is an example of two keywords. The first you might think of is “tomato blight” but when you do your searches you will come up with over 120,000 pages but if you use the keyword “tomato blight treatment”, which is a much more defined keyword you still have a good monthly search volume of 1,600 and only 30,800 competitive pages. So by defining your main keyword “tomato blight” even further you will get quicker and better rankings in the search engines.

So if you were going to have a website about tomato blight you could if it was available have tomatoblighttreatment.com (I don’t know if this is a domain name or not) with your the tag line saying “Stop Tomato Blight From Ruining Your Tomato Crop”

Another Consideration

One point that I have not brought up is the fact that you may only be interested in local contacts. Say for example, your business is to visit people in their homes and eradicate tomato blight then might use your local town, area or county as part of the name and this will definitely help in that instance.

Finally

Put the time into your keyword research as it is the most important part of a successful website. Don’t rush in to setting up your website or choosing your business name and domain name until you have done this keyword research because it is such an important part of your business success.

Make sure you follow the links on this page because it was not possible to cover all the information you need in this one article. Good luck.

Kaye Dennan is an author of many ebooks but her passion is helping people set up and market home businesses. For this specific purpose Kaye has set up http://homebusinesssuccessideas.com and has shared tips for people wishing to start all types of home businesses and who want to market online and offline.

One very important skill or attribute of being an entrepreneur is the ability to get stuff done. Not everyone is organized and some might require a system to help them figure out what needs to be done. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a student or a homemaker, The Get Stuff Done Tool is that system to help you manage your time.

Time is the one thing that we all have the same amount of every day. Time, when lost or wasted, can never be replaced. Don’t waste your time or anyone else’s. The Get Stuff Done Tool is still available as a free download. Leave your name and email address in the box with the red arrow at the top-right hand side of the page and get the free download now.

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6 Building Brands for the Connected World

Today’s post is based on a report – Building Brands For The Connected World, A Social Business Blueprint by Facebook based on a commissioned study by Forrester Consulting, February 2012. This is just a summary of the 16 page PDF I downloaded and stored in my resource folder. You can find this PDF here http://fbrep.com/wp/building_brands.pdf.

In a previous post I talked about product funnels. Today I’m going to tell you that the funnel is an outdated model that inaccurately reflects the reality of today’s consumer journey in three significant ways:

1. Most importantly, the journey must be described from the consumer’s point of view, not the marketer’s.

2. The journey to customer loyalty is not linear, but rather is a continuous process of exploration and interaction.

3. The journey is not isolated to just one person at a time — the entire connected world influences it.

The new process looks like a circular motion (see the graphic above) of learning, investigating, purchasing, and interacting. The product funnel can still be useful for planning products and services, however, it is no longer relevant as a marketing plan.

The process is completely influenced by social media. Consumers hear about new brands and investigate via social media. When it comes time to buy something, consumers increasingly consult their friends via social media. Then, they expect to be able to interact with the brands through social media after the purchase.

What this study concludes is that in order “to succeed in the connected world, marketers must create connected brands:

Brands that continuously engage with people when they want, where they want, and how they want — particularly through social media. To do so, they must first reconcile the gap between modern consumer behavior and outmoded marketing tactics. Then they will take the six steps outlined in this report to incorporate social marketing into their brand-building strategies.”

To win in the connected world, marketers must:

1. Articulate the brand’s social identity so the brand communicates with a unique, compelling, and authentic voice.

2. Connect with your best and most likely customers by giving them a reason to like or follow the brand in social channels.

3. Engage people by making brand communications more participative and personally relevant.

4. Influence people by inspiring and enabling people to share messages about your brand with their networks.

5. Integrate social into the brand and product experience to make it more cohesive and useful.

6. Rejuvenate the brand by using insights from social channels to monitor the brand’s health and improve the brand experience.

To begin building a connected brand you must have a vision for what it means to become a connected brand. Ultimately, you must ask how you can gain a competitive advantage by becoming a connected brand. It will also require you to reassess how your company allocates resources, develops strategy, and formulates budgets. To jump-start your journey, use the questions below, provided by Forrester in the study for Facebook to identify opportunities to build a connected brand.

Answer the follow questions to identify the gaps that need to be filled in all six steps in order to build a connected brand:

Articulate:

• What about your brand is inherently social?

• Why do people engage with your brand and talk about it with friends in the real world?

• How could social media help you fulfill your brand promise?

Connect:

• Have you created a hub for your social identity that expresses your unique brand personality?

• Where are you currently reaching people that could be leveraged to form a connection (i.e., your website, email newsletters, mobile experience, in-store experience, etc.)?

• What are you doing to motivate people to connect and how are you offering them a better experience once they connect?

Engage:

• Are you creating content and communications that are highly relevant to your audience and aligned with your brand?

• Do you build content and communications that encourage participation and sharing?

• Do you respond to and communicate with your community?

Influence:

• Do you motivate people to participate in content and generate stories about their experience with your brand?

• Do you encourage people to share their stories with friends through actions, recommendations and reviews throughout the customer life cycle?

• Do you use paid media to ensure that content gets distributed to the friends of your connections?

Integrate:

• How could you leverage the information people share with you in social channels about their preferences and friends to create more personal, relevant, valuable and engaging product and marketing experiences for your customers?

• Are you building programs and experiences across the customer life cycle to be social from the beginning, rather than adding social on at the end?

• Are you using social to create a more cohesive experience for your customers that can plug into your CRM and customer service programs?

Rejuvenate:

• Do you have a process for surfacing and sharing the consumer insights and learning from social channels back through your organization?

• Do you use social media to monitor brand health and customer satisfaction?

• Do you use social media to identify new product or marketing opportunities?

The report says that 51% of consumers are more likely to buy a product or brand after liking them on Facebook. How active are you for your business on Facebook and other social media? After seeing this report and considering the questions above, have you identified any gaps that you can fill to better build a connected brand?

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