Being in the technological age it only makes sense that if you have a business in 2011 that you are marketing it online. Now that doesn’t mean just slapping together an amateur website…. hosting it for $10 and you are in business. There is a lot more effort and attention that needs to go into your online marketing strategy. I will outline what I feel are the top 5 strategies every business should be doing online as a base.

1. Professional Online Business website
Everyone knows that a website is your online shop front. But a lot of people don’t really put enough time or resources into making sure it really captures your target audience and makes a great lasting impression. It needs to look professional, so let the professionals design it for you. You really shouldn’t try and design your own website unless you know what you are doing. In my personal opinion a bad website is worse than having no website at all.

So once you have a great looking website here are a few key points to keep in mind.

The industry stats show the most important things ‘a prospect’ must instantly see (within 8 seconds) is: who you are; what you do; what your point of difference is. Sounds simple, but often when you get someone not involved in your business to review your website they don’t get that message. The point of difference is important, as people now shop around more and is more comfortable on the internet – you need to make yourself stand out above your competitors. Standing out – Make sure you utilise the real estate on your home page, so people can find what they are looking for instantly. Use images as well to clearly display what services / products you sell. Also, identify your purpose of your website and what you want your visitors to do – then make it easy for them to do it. For example, if you want people to phone you make sure your phone number is big and bold in your heading. Or get a quote – have a quote button big and bold at the top of your website, or to buy – clearly display your website is a shopping site. Sounds simple but many people miss this, and it can make a massive difference to your success.

2. Professional Facebook Business Page
A Facebook business page should be a mini version of your website within the Facebook platform… here is an example of what I mean http://www.facebook.com/lovinglifenow2
It should once again look professional as it is another shop front for your business. It should have all the relevant information about your business to encourage someone to take action… phone, purchase, email etc. There are a lot of companies out there that can design this page for you, than once it is up and running all you need to do is continue to make posts to the page. You want to make your posts a mixture of promotions, education, advice, encouragement etc… It is not about trying to ‘SELL’ your products or services all the time. My suggestion is, if this is all new to you do a search and find some other companies that you like and click like on their pages… and watch what they do, it will give you some great ideas on what you could do.
P.S – A note here if you are new to Facebook. You need to set up a personal profile for yourself first to be able to set up a business page, do not set up a profile under your business name.

3. Linked In Personal Account
You will need to set up your linked in account under your personal name, not your business name. As people do business with people… Linked in is about building a business network, to be able to recommend and refer others. Linked in is a lot different to Facebook. Facebook is more the social fun side… so posting photos, lifestyle, making comments on others status etc, where as Linked In is more about professional business relationships and sharing knowledge and expertise. There are a few things that you want to be doing on Linked in. You want to be connecting with others and building your network, so in a nutshell inviting people to connect with you (you click on add to my network). Then you want to be joining some groups, you can search for groups based on keywords, then once you are in the groups you want to be posting a new interesting discussion and commenting on others. A note here, be sure to send a personal message to the person you are wishing to connect with as to why you would like to connect and read their profile first, it is not about quantity but quality.

4. Facebook Personal Account
Yes, you need to have a personal Facebook account if you want to market your business on Facebook. It is not as bad as it seems. I know some people cringe at the thought. You don’t have to be on their 10 times a day updating your status and uploading photos. You just want to have a nice professional photo and be actively posting interesting things about lifestyle, education etc (Feel free to add me if you like http://www.facebook.com/leeannebartlett ) You will see that it is once again not about trying to sell anyone your products or services, it is about building your reputation – expert status. You want to be assisting, inspiring others and educating them. And you also want to show lifestyle, family etc, as you are human, people like to see who someone really is, if they can trust them. You want to be doing the same here as you do in Linked in, you want to be joining groups, liking other business pages and building your friends list. It is about building/making friendships, so when requesting to friend someone tell them why, don’t just randomly add people… as Facebook frowns on this! Also only add between 5-10 people per day no more, as Facebook will stop you adding people if you don’t obey their rules.

5. Twitter Business/Personal Account
Same as all of the above, you want to set up either a business or personal twitter account. Now this will depend on your business and what you are marketing. Twitter is like a really simple version of Facebook and is basically all about status updates. What you want to achieve here is having people follow you. So to do this you need to find some people to follow. Do a search by keyword and find some interesting people/businesses to follow. You will find overtime, people will start to follow you back. Once again you want to build on this long-term. Your status updates you do here will be similar to your Facebook Personal Profile or Business Page depending on which way you decide to go.

A few things to keep in mind – Make sure you are using Consistent Branding Across all platforms including your photo for your personal profiles; use the same photo – Professional headshot. Have fun with it and remember you are investing some time into this as a marketing strategy to grow your business; it may cost you nothing but a little time… better than spending thousands on an advertising campaign and getting no results. You are doing more than just making a sale, you are building strong alliances and business partners which will continue to grow, assist and build your business.

So go slowly, if you put aside 15-30 mins a day and do a small amount of each thing, over time you will have started building some great momentum in your business and will be generating some free customers to your business. A really cool program to save you time and makes it easier to manage all your status updates and posts is www.hootsuite.com and it is FREE. Enjoy

Here is to an awesome 2011.. It will be the best year ever!

Did you notice I used the word wanted and not expected…? When I was thinking about the title of this blog.. I almost wrote expected and then realized that if you expected it…. it would have arrived.

So have you in the past year been able to tick off all the goals you had for 2010? If not, then why not? Was it because you had too many excuses as to why this didn’t happen and that couldn’t happen?

If we get really serious the reason we didn’t achieve our goals this year was because we didn’t expect them to happen and didn’t take the necessary action needed to achieve them.. hence our excuses.

Can you make that change in your mindset and really go for it in 2011 and make it happen? Some of us will. Awesome (hats off to you)! But the sad thing is most of us won’t. Most will continue on their treadmill of life, doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result. (But we all know that if nothing changes, nothing changes – you can’t get a different result from doing the same actions.)

I would like to put this challenge out to you… and would love to hear your feedback. I am going to make it really simple. Pick 1 goal (only 1) and post it on this blog. By doing this you are stating to the world that you are going to do everything in your power and totally expect that this goal is going to become true for you in 2011. Go for it NOW!

Have a wonderful New Year… you absolutely deserve it. Lee Anne x

Buddha said, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” The mind conquers all, it is everything. Our sorrow and happiness, success and failure, riches and poverty, and everything in this world depend on this wonderful gift called mind. All through mankind’s best, the statesmen, scientists, historians, and even philosophers have told us that the most powerful tool available to human being is their minds. The mind’s range is borderless and we do not need to look for proof just to understand this reality. The truth is around us. We are surrounded by the greatest minds. However, not all of us may achieve what these greatest personalities had; they just stretched their mind a little longer a little bigger.

What is holding you back from attaining greatness yourself? You fear your dreams because you do not believe you can attain them, so you confuse your mind with non-self belief. You tend to argue your limitations. You bring negativity to yourself because you decline to have faith that good things can happen to you. If you continuously tell your Universe that you are of less use then the Universe will agree. But if you release your mind completely from self perceived boundaries or if you just strive to never giving up, then, your Universe will respond to you in amazing ways.

If you persist to have faith as you continuously believe, you will keep on acting as you have usually acted, you will keep on getting what you always gotten. By changing how you use our mind, you will get different results in your lives in all areas. If you would like to achieve something which you think is unattainable, then deliberate on that thought for a while. Visualize attaining it and be determined to reach success.

Converse to your mind and train it. Observe the performance of your mind in times of sadness and joy then perform and respond appropriately. As they say, your mind is like the sand you pour into your palm. If you try to grasp or hold of it, the more it sneaks out of your palm. Thus, do not force your mind to be uncontrollable, instead, discipline or tame it towards something else productive. Do it steadily that it becomes a habit to you as well as to your mind. As a result, you will no longer need to tame it. It is then you will appreciate the power of mind.

Every person is under stress these days. The economy has hit an all time low; the housing market is down the drain and the unemployment rate keeps getting higher. Even if you have not experienced any consequences from the current state of the market, you still experience some level of stress on a daily basis. Stress is a big enemy to the human body and can make a person feel tired, sick and just generally drag them down. You may have heard that if you have been under a lot of stress lately that personal development will help you cope and now you want the inside scoop.

It is very true that personal development can help a person cope with stress. When it comes down to it, personal development can not only help you cope with stress, but it can also help you deal with any negative emotions or feelings that you have. A good deal of stress that a person feels comes from the fear of the unknown, anxiety or the fear of change. Personal development will help you cope with these emotions and teach you how to control them so that your stress level stays minimal or at zero.

Personal development will show you that many fears are unfounded and therefore, there is no reason to feel stressed. For the fears that could become a realization, such as job loss, personal development will show you how to successfully deal with your emotions. It will also show you how to bounce back and become resilient in the event that anything negative does occur in your life.

Becoming resilient leads to a healthier life and will have a positive effect on your life. If a negative situation happens in your life and you have the skills that you need to quickly bounce back, you will then have the best opportunity to feel better quicker and also be able to move on faster.

While it is not possible to remove all negative situations from your life, it is possible for you to cope with those situations more effectively. Personal development is all about teaching and showing people new skills in order to achieve what they want in life. If you are working on your personal development, you may have already noticed a reduction in your daily stress level. If you are just trying to find out more information on how personal development can help you deal with stress, then you are headed in the right direction to leading a stress free life.

Not everyone is familiar with affirmations and its real power. Affirmations are utilized as reminders, aiding to maintain positive messages to our awareness. It is not only essential to habitually think of these affirmations; it is also a great initiative to leave them displayed around the house, where you frequently see them. In short, they become your thoughts that you go over and over again until they become an attitude where the subconscious acts on them.

Before going any further, let’s first clear some misapprehension about affirmations. In order to affect somebody else’s actions, one cannot use affirmations. For instance, you cannot say an affirmation to act in a way you want them to do. You cannot say affirmations to alter past events or correct something that is already false. Affirmations perform superlatively when they are associated to you and your behavior and your objectives. Like for example, if you want to improve your relationship with someone and you want him to listen and understand you better, as mentioned earlier you cannot dictate someone to behave with an affirmation. Instead, you should be concentrating on you and your behavior, how you behave accordingly. You should be finding ways to aid someone understand you better. You should be saying the right words to help someone listen to you. You should look for ways to persuade someone to listen and understand you better.

In creating affirmations, you concentrate on what you desire and not on what you do not desire. Exercise to say your affirmations in your head to yourself. Train your mind to concentrate on what you want and create corresponding affirmations. When you exercise the affirmation in your head, you educate your mind to dwell positively and think positive and the most important, it stops from being negative.

Affirmations are powerful instrument that can help you build the life you’ve been wanting. But you have to continuously work and use them properly and regularly to the extent that they become your routine that you want to say them all of the time.

Affirmations are just one of many powerful methods you could utilize to get your subconscious mind going at a faster rate towards making the life you desire