Everything!

The truth is both you and I would be hard pressed to find a small business owner or entrepreneur with a gut feeling that they really need to step up their online marketing either through website redesign, social media, email marketing, or one of the hundreds of other ways to market a business online. In fact, that person might be you.

So, what’s the hangup? Why don’t you get started?

The Question: What is keeping you from busting into the world of effectively marketing your business online?

The Answer: You don’t know what you want for breakfast?

That’s right, you don’t know what you want for breakfast.

Have you ever woken up in the morning, hungry, walked over to the cupboard, opened it up, stared at a box of cereal, closed the cupboard, and mumbled to yourself, “There’s nothing to eat for breakfast. I’ll wait for lunch,” then went to work hungry convinced what’s there isn’t worth it?

You were just staring at a box of cereal weren’t you? But what was the cereal? Super Duty Bran Flakes

So, why didn’t you eat the Super Duty Bran Flakes? You bought it didn’t you? You put it in your shopping cart and paid for it didn’t you?

In fact, didn’t you stand there staring at the cereals saying to yourself, “Yummy Fruity Pebbles? Super Duty Bran Flakes. Yummy Fruity Pebbles? Super Duty Bran Flakes. Yummy sweet sugary indulgent breakfast bliss? Dry raspy healthy bran breakfast hell?”

The problem was, you didn’t decide and commit to that decision. So you just picked the one on sale and now, a day later, you’re frustrated with yesterday’s attempt to buy cereal. So, that box of Super Duty Bran Flakes sits on the shelf long past its expiration date gathering cob webs in the back of the cupboard.

The same holds true for online marketing.

A business owner knows he or she needs to get a website and start marketing online. Unsure of whether the website should be lively and exciting or clean and simple, the business owner either blindly picks one or “plays it safe” with a boring generic website with the hopes that it will appeal to all audiences.

Well, that generic middle-of-the-road website doesn’t appeal to anyone, and what you’re left with is a website that sits on a virtual cupboard shelf gathering cobwebs while the business owner convinces himself that online marketing doesn’t work and isn’t worth it.

What’s the solution?

DEFINE YOUR TARGET MARKET AND TAKE ACTION!

When you were buying cereal, you didn’t commit and take action what you really wanted, so you just took what was on sale.

When you were starting to market online, you didn’t commit and take action to attract the customers you really wanted, so your generic website and marketing continues to pull in generic non-committed customers.

In the grocery store, had you committed fully to either Fruity Pebbles or Super Duty Bran Flakes, you would have open up the cupboard for breakfast knowing exactly what was in there, and ate a great breakfast.

In your online marketing, had you committed fully to build your website and develop your online marketing plan to attract your most valuable customers, you would open up your email every day knowing exactly what kind of business leads you are going to find in there, and have a great list of pre-qualified leads.

So what’s it going to be? Fruity Pebbles or Super Duty Bran Flakes?

It’s time to commit and give new focus to your online marketing efforts.

Have you  ever found yourself in this situation?

You are driving the car, your kids are being loud, or you’re in a noisy environment and your phone rings with an strange phone number. . . and you instantly freeze staring at your phone debating whether you should answer it and run the risk of a potential client or customer being turned off by the noise in the background, or let it go your your personal unprofessional voicemail and risk losing the sale. You don’t know.

If you have a virtual phone number, either a toll free number or a local number, that forwards to your cell phone or home phone, with caller ID you’ll know that it’s a business call coming through so you can get to a quiet place and take the call. Or, you can let the caller go to a professional voicemail recording for your business.

How helpful is a virtual phone number?

I have like 5 of them. That said, eVoice is now giving away 6 month free trials. I have honestly never seen an opportunity like this. I’ve seen free 14 day trials, and free 30 day trials, but free 6 month trials? Never.

If you think this might be a good tool for your business click the banner below to get the offer.

It happens to everyone that unrolls an effective online marketing campaign. First, there’s the thrill of new business leads magically appearing in your email box. Then, those leads get lost among your other email, then your mental Rolodex of leads maxes out, and finally all leads mix together and your lead management turns into and endless game of 52 Card Pickup.

Ah, you remember 52 Card Pickup. I remember the first time I was taught how to play that game. I was about 8 years old and I was invited to play a card card came. “What’s it called?” I asked enthusiastically. “It’s called 52 Card Pickup,” was the reply. “How do you play?” I asked. And down went the entire deck of cards all over the floor waiting for us to pick them up.

If you feel like you’re constantly playing 52 Card Pickup with your leads, you need a lead nurturing software to keep all your leads under control in a tight deck.

As soon as the cards, I mean leads, start hitting the floor there are usually two reactions: 1) generate more leads to replace those that you know are falling by the wayside or 2) tighten up the deck and get a follow up system for lead management.

The best solution is to tighten up the deck and manage or nurture your leads effectively.

So, what do I personally use to manage my leads? Well, I’ve tried all kinds of solutions that I won’t go into here and the best solutions I’ve found is a software called Act! It’s fantastic. You can track your leads from the source, through the sales process, and into production. It will even track the money your leads are converting into.

Is it intuitive? Yes. I don’t have time to read instruction manuals, and I use the software just fine.

Can you take it for a FREE Act! Test Drive to try it out? Absolutely.

Now, I don’t own Act! or anything. I bought the software to use for my business, it solved my problem, and I recommend you check it out. Here’s where you can get FREE Act! 2010 test drive, no strings attached. Great company!

For those of you who have been attending my workshops on a regular basis, you know that I often recommend a specific company by the name of GoDaddy for registering hosting and domains. Well, things have changed for me and I have new hosting and domain favorites,  and what are they?

For domains, I recommend NameCheap.

For hosting, I recommend HostGator.

Now, I’ve played with both in the past but over the last 2 weeks I’ve experienced the quick power of both. Why the switch you ask?

Well, don’t get me wrong, GoDaddy is a good company. In my opinion, their customer service for the newbie is unsurpassed. However, here’s what put me over the edge and has me converted to NameCheap and Hostgator:

As some of you may know, my wife has a stand up paddle lessons school. Well, every month we organize a big cleanup where we invite anyone who wants to come, to paddle up the river and gather as much trash as we can from the riverbank and bushes, then bring it back down the river and throw it all away.

The event has been growing in popularity, and yesterday in the local paper, an article was printed announcing the next cleanup, which is this Saturday. The problem was, the article directed people to go to www.anahulucleanup.com for more information. I DIDN’T EVEN OWN THE DOMAIN NAME YET!

A few weeks ago, I registered some domain names with NameCheap and used Hostgator for the hosting, and I had a website live in about 10 minutes from domain registration to uploading the site. I was definitely impressed. Well, in a rush I decided to register the domain with NameCheap, then use my GoDaddy account for hosting. The domain registration and configuration went off without a hitch. Then, I went to GoDaddy to link the domain name to the hosting account hoping it would all come together quickly.

I submitted the request to GoDaddy, and quickly whipped up a crude website just to get something online. Everything was ready to launch and I was still waiting on GoDaddy! I waited at least an hour for it all to go through, and it never happened.

Fed up with waiting,  I canceled the request with GoDaddy, went into my HostGator account to add the domain to my hosting account, and shazzam! The site was live in about 2 minutes! Perfect. And, I was converted.

What does that all mean? If you don’t have the patience to wait on your domain or hosting account changes, like me, I recommend NameCheap to register your domains, and Hostgator for hosting. It’s quick, easy, and changes seem to happen instantly.

Hey, if you’re planning a product launch, you don’t want to be waiting on your hosting account or domain registrar make your site live. You need it now! You don’t have time to wait on www.GoDaddy.com to update all the necessary settings for your website.  Go with my new recommendations and you may save yourself a headache. Now I know why GoDaddy has to have good customer service.

On a side note, I also don’t agree with GoDaddy’s marketing plan and would have started moving my business elsewhere for just that. I found my new favorites just in time!

Social Media can be a powerful tool in your marketing bag of tricks, and it’s FREE! What is social media?  Think of yourself sitting at a little table in a café sipping a hot chocolate with . . . hundreds of millions of people! What would you say? How would you say it? How would you get people to listen to you?

In this workshop you will learn the basics of how to use Facebook and Twitter and how to use them to promote your business. This is not an advanced social media workshop.

In this workshop I will start at ground zero with the basics of using Facebook and Twitter, and then demonstrate how to use it to grow your business. You will learn the essential fundamentals of social media for your business.

Here are some of the questions you will get answered:

What is social media, Twitter, and Facebook? *How much time does it take to use social media?

Can I automate my social media marketing? *What privacy issues are there with social networking?

How can I brand my Twitter background for my business? *Can I advertise on Facebook and Twitter?

How can I find customers using Twitter and Facebook? *How do you share photos on Twitter? What are the demographics of most social media users? What’s the difference between a Facebook Group and Fan Page? How do I create a Facebook page for my business?

I am going to pack in as much as possible in two hours! Come learn the lingo and the how-to of promoting your business through social media.

This workshop has been on our most wanted list for months, so please register early.  If there are specific questions you want to make sure get answered at the workshop,  go to www.nateburgoyne.com/hwbcmedia and let me know.

I invite you to come early to network with other business owners and entrepreneurs, and to get your website and online marketing questions answered. Check in begins at 5:00 PM and the workshop begins at 5:30 PM.

Register today online at  hwbc.org.

If online registration is still open, there are still seats available. Get yours quick. We anticipate this workshop to sell out early.

However, I think we all may be forgetting that face-to-face networking is still an important part of lead generating. This morning I was invited to attend a business networking group here locally and I’m excited to be part of it. I met some great like-minded business owners and entrepreneurs that are willing to work together to grow each other’s businesses.

There something special about meeting people in person, especially when you see the same people at different venues and different networking events. You remember their smiles and personalities.

One of the greatest things about being small business owners and entrepreneurs is that, in most cases, we are able to choose who we do business with. In fact, for me, when I meet a new potential business contact and start get to know him or her, I’m really trying to make the decision of whether this person and I will be able to connect and work effectively together toward a common goal.

While, all of this trust can certainly be developed online over several weeks of Facebook updates, the same connection can take place in about 30 seconds or less in a face-to-face meeting.

Happy networking both online and off!

As a gift through the holidays this year, Google has subsidized WiFi internet access at various airports across the country to help promote the new Google Chrome browser of which I, personally, am a fan. How much are they subsidizing the internet access? Well, it’s Free. I’m telling you, Google it taking over the internet world.

Well, Bing and Yahoo! have answered back. Bing has been keeping up with the Joneses by offer the same free internet service at other airports across the country, while Yahoo! has decided to wire up New York’s Times Square with free WiFi through the holidays. Boy, the search engine and browser battle is getting pretty heated, and it looks like Google is still the Jones to keep up with.

From what I can tell at first glance, Peoplestring is a social networking and email service that rewards you in multiple ways for using their services.

Here’s one of the free banners that People String gives you to help spread the word on your blog or website.

Similar to Facebook, there is a social networking aspect of the site where you can update your status, add friends, join groups, etc. . . Additionally, there is a chat feature that brought me back to they days of AOL chat rooms of the early 90′s.

The system gives you an email address such as nateburgoyne@peoplestring.com that is free, though it may take you a minute or two to find it. I found it by clicking on the rotating “Mail” icons on the right side of the  page.

Before I share my thoughts on the program, I actively participate in Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, so that’s where my social networking foundation lies.

I think Peoplestring has  a great idea about putting money back into the pockets of the users, however, in my opinion, I think it’s a  ”features overkill”.  For me, the dashboard is too busy with banners, buttons, links, tools, and news.

I’m guessing that once you get into it and spend some time with it, you’ll be able to easily navigate through the site.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled with the simple Twitter layout that asks nothing more than, “What are are you doing? and the Facebook update box that asks the question, “What’s on your mind?”.

Am I going to take Peoplestring as a serious business venture? Maybe. They have a lot of new features planned coming up for the network and I’m sure they’ll be working out the kinks as they go along. While I was trying to figure out the system, the number of people online was bouncing around 176 at any given time, which in today’s social networking word, is minuscule, however, you have to start somewhere.

Personally, I think People String needs to clean up the interface some so it’s easy to follow and so that it intuitively tells you what to do to use the services and generate income with the system. From what I can tell, you get paid by getting others to use the system,  taking surveys, and promoting some products like this Black Grape antioxidant drink.  It’s a bit overwhelming for me.

They do  have some tutorials and webinars and so forth to show you how to use it all, but to tell you the truth, I’m in an iPod state of mind. I want to be able to look at the dashboard and know what to do without an instruction manual.

Will I personally pursue Peoople String as a business?

Well, I’ve signed up  for my free account and I’ll definitely check in with them from time to time to see how the system is progressing. If they do clean things up to where I understand the system, I’ll definitely be launching my business and helping my downline to do the same.

Should you sign up for Peoplestring?

Yes. Why not? It’s free.

Sign up as part of my group by clicking the banner below and when I decide to take this business into full gear, you’ll be one of the first to get first-hand training on how I do it. Might as well jump in early and get paid a couple bucks doing so.