Back to Work…
Welcome back!
After a long sabbatical, I plan on writing here more often again.
In the meantime… Have a break, have a manatee! 
~E
Social Networking in Plain English
Oh, my do I love common craft. If you’re just getting into social networking – or learning how you can use social networking for your business – the vid below is for you:
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5 Ways Twitter Boosts Business for Small Businesses
There are so many useful social networking tools to aid you in your online marketing ventures – everything from Facebook to LinkedIn, Digg to StumbleUpon. You’ve heard it before “I’m on the front page of digg and I’ve gotten a bazillion page views!” or “I launched my new teleclass using Facebook events, and now I’m booked for the next 20 years!”
Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit, but you get the point: Social Networking is making promoting your business on the web easier, faster, and more efficient than you thought possible.
Depending on your niche, you could find the best results in any number of networks – each has their own demographics and strengths. LinkedIn is great for businesspeople of all disciplines, Facebook is great with the business-to-consumer market, and Twitter reaches small businesses and consumers alike on a personal level.
Have you tried Twitter?
Twitter is a micro-blogging platform where you have 120 characters or less to give a message. With over 1 million users, twitter is a platform which brings consumers and businesses together to communicate on a text-message level. Barack Obama is on Twitter. So is The White House and many other government agencies and elected officials.
So, how can you use Twitter to build your business?
1. Connect with prospects
If you’ve been craving one-on-one time with your potential clients and customers, Twitter will give this to you, and more. Twitter has quickly proven itself to be the way to connect individuals in a quick, easy-to-digest format. A simple search will help you find out WHO is talking about what you offer, and by offering useful information and advice you can quickly get on a prospects’ radar.
2. Connecting with Current Customers
In larger companies, it can be stressful just to find someone who can help solve your simple problem or larger issue. By making yourself available on Twitter, you may increase your value to a number of customers just by being available.
A good example of this is @comcastcares . An email rep from comcast set up this account to help people with minor issues – and he also uses this account to let customers know of current service issues and tips to keep everything working at their best. With over 3,000 followers, he’s obviously doing something right.
3. Congealing Your Brand
It’s easy to go unnoticed on the internet – sure some people look specificially for your service or product, but many others are just looking for cures for their symptoms. By talking about what you do – not just in a business sense, but in a real, conversational fasion – you’ll congeal your brand and get your products and services known to a rapt audience.
4. Market Research
Have you ever wanted to know what your customers are interested in beyond the usual demographics? The internet forums they participate in, the books they recommend? Twitter is a great vehicle for market research, and you’ll notice trends and be able to act on them quickly by watching the conversation closely.
5. Product Launches
Have you wondered how some businesses get so many people talking? If you’ve read any of Seth Godin’s Books, you’ll know being remarkable is necessary to get people talking. By being a real contactable person on a social network, instead of being a faceless entity, you’re doing something remarkable. With a good follower-base and the right message, you’ll quickly see how your product launches will be talked and blogged about, making your product launches exponentially more successful.
The first step to being successful in any online social networking venture is to begin! Create a profile, add some friends (or some people you’d like to be friends with!) and add to the conversation. It’s an easy and free way to get more knowledgeable on your online customers and presence.
Feel free to connect with me on Twitter, and other social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Plaxo.
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Is Your Business The Next ‘Sliced Bread’?
Did you know that when sliced bread was invented, it wasn’t a widely-accepted invention? In fact, it was almost a complete failure, as the inventor focused entirely on the inventing process instead of spreading the word… it wasn’t until Wonder came along and started marketing it that sliced bread became a household staple.
As Seth Godin talks about in the video below, marketing just doesn’t work the same as it used to – you must speak directly to your target market – the people who care about your products and services the most – loudly and clearly so your products and services can take off and have impact. Otherwise, you’re just stuck with a patent for sliced bread, without any shelf space.
Watch this video from Seth Godin’s TED talk. I took away a lot from it, you will too:
What did you think? Let me know if your comments below.
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10 Must-Have Plugins for WordPress
I’ve installed and configured quite a few wordpress blogs in my time. During this time, I’ve compiled a core of 10 plugins which I install with every wordpress site I work with – some of which make it easier to track and manage readers, some help me to categorize and create posts, and more: 
Akismet – Nowadays, (I’m dating myself here in internet-land) Akismet comes preinstalled in wordpress, you just have to configure it with your WordPress.com API key. (FYI – find your API key by reading this) Akismet has been around for a long time, but it’s still the best spam filter for WordPress.
All in One SEO Pack – WordPress is fantastic for search engine optimization, but it’s difficult to change the meta settings for singular posts manually. This plugin allows you to change the description for each page, including keywords, meta description (the part that comes up in search engines) and more. The best part is it’s very simple to use as it’s placed on every write page.
GoCodes – Do you give out links to your blog posts? If so, GoCodes will help make this simpler and more effective. Let’s say, for example, you were going to link to this article – the full link would be http://www.trinityjacobs.com/blog/2008/08/06/10-must-have-plugins-for-wordpress/. What a PAIN to type out, right? However, if you’re using GoCodes, you can shorten that link to make it easier on you and your readers – for example, it would be trinityjacobs.com/go/10-Wordpress-Plugins. This great tool also works to shorten and track click-throughs with any affiliate links you may have.
Google Analytics Plugin – Google Analytics is a free website statitistics program from Google. It’s robust and has all the tools you need to track your website visitors – the only issue is getting the code placed correctly on the page. This plugin will allow you to just enter your GA information in one area, and it will immediately propogate on the pages for you.
In Series – This is a new plugin for me, but it’s a fantastic tool. When you’re writing a series of posts, it can be tiresome to create the series links for each article. Instead of fooling around with it, use In Series, a simple tool which allows you to specify with each post a) if the post belongs in a series b) the name of the series c)what number the post is in the series. THEN, it automatically adds the links into your finished post! (And, if you upload the entire series at once to be published later, it won’t show the links for the future posts until the articles are live on the site!)
Simple Tags – The great thing about this plugin is that it allows you to enter tags directly into the writing interface (it can even display your most commonly used tags to choose from), and then it takes those tags to create a ‘related posts’ list at the end of each entry for the user to explore.
Sociable – Sociable adds user-defined social networking buttons to the end of every post, thus allowing your readers to easily Digg, Stumble, or otherwise share the information with others.
Twitter Widget – It’s no secret that I’m a newly-appointed Twitter addict – It’s a great networking medium and I’ve found a lot of like-minded entrepreneurs over there. The Twitter widget allows you to place your most recent twitter posts in your sidebar. (I’ve gotten quite a few Twitter Followers this way)
What Would Seth Godin Do? – This is a fantastic plugin! For the first 5 times a visitor comes to your site, it embedds a message (see top of post) that urges you to follow the rss feed. After 5 vists, it welcomes the visitor back. It’s a great way to get your readers to take action without being intrusive.
Feedburner Plugin – Feedburner is a great tool to help track your RSS readers, it gives you an overall count of subscribers plus some subscriber data – much like Google Analytics, but less robost and exclusively for your RSS feed (which Analytics doesn’t track). In order to get this to work, however, you have to replace all your RSS feed links with the feedburner RSS feed link, which can be a hassle if you’re not a WordPress Coding Wizard. Thankfully, the Feedburner plugin automatically changes all RSS feed links from the default WordPress version to the Feedburner version, with only a little configuration in the settings panel. (Feedburner was purchased by Google about a year ago… hopefully, they’ll integrate this functionality with their Analytics program.)
Do you have any plugin suggestions? Let us know in the comments below!
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How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 3
Table of contents for How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business
- How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business
- How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 2
- How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 3
This is part 3 of a three-part series on how to productize your service-based business.
What systems can I use for my product?
If you’ve been doing business on the internet for any length of time, there’s no doubt you’ve bought a few info-products. As soon as you get into their funnel, you’re put on a list where you get follow-up emails, helpful advice, ideas on how to implement the product, a monthly (or more frequent) newsletter, and more.
All this follow-up is made to help you, the consumer, understand the product and for the author to build rapport with you. It’s been estimated that it takes between 7-10 contacts with a person for them to buy anything from you. These contacts not only reinforce the content you’ve bought, but it also allows you more face-time with the author – thereby getting through those 7-10 contacts. This system is invaluable to any business.
Your system will allows you to help your customer use the product, and it will also builds rapport and shortens the amount of time it takes for them to buy a product from you.
Building Your System: It starts with email
As we discussed in Part 1, AWeber is my #1 favorite follow-up tool. Why, you ask? AWeber is a robust tool that allows you to segment your list and send out messages specifically to that list.
For example, if you have three items in your product funnel – product a, product b, and product c, you can have all of them filtered into one main list (newsletter) as well as having them on separate lists. So, this way, when you’re sending out your newsletter you can send advertisements specific to where your leads are within your funnel.
Neat, huh?
With many other tools, it would take an eon to get this set up – but with AWeber it’s simple as pie. THAT is why I love AWeber so much.
I have an Autoresponder/Broadcast System – Now What?
Now it’s time to systemize.
This process is designed to allow you to communicate and build rapport with your clientele and readers without having to spend a lot of time speaking to each person individually.
Set up an autoresponder system for each product. During each phase of your funnel, you want to ensure you’re communicating with your customers, especially directly after they buy.
After each purchase, set up a series of autoresponders – anywhere from 5-100 messages – to help entice your customers to consume the product they just bought, to help educate them about other things going on in the area of interest, and to open dialog.
You can use your autoresponders to:
- Give step-by-step instructions on how to complete a task related to your product
- Give industry insights not included in the product
- Reference supplemental materials so customers can better utilize & understand your product
- Ask for feedback, testimonials, and questions
Following Up Systematically
Following up is the key ingredient in your funnel – you can have as many products as you like, but you’re not going to be as successful unless you follow-up using the autoresponder. This is how we generally follow-up in a product funnel:
- 1. Free Report/Newsletter
- 7-message autoresponder series, supplemental tips to free report.
- 1 email inquiring for testimonial.
- Promote Tier2 Product at bottom of each message
- 2. Tier 2 Product
- 7-message autoresponder series, supplemental tips to product.
- Additional 3-5 messages on topical information and interesting links.
- 1 email inquiring for testimonial
- Promote Tier 3 Product at bottom of each message
- 3. Tier 3 Product
- 7-message autoresponder series, supplemental tips to product.
- Additional 3-5 messages on topical information and interesting links.
- 1 email inquiring for testimonial
- Promote Tier 4 Product at bottom of each message
And so on…
As you can see, with each product, the customer interacts with you between 8-15 times (not including regular newsletter). Each time you give the customer new information, it adds to their ‘rapport’ bank and the closer they get to moving up your list.
The funnel is a win-win situation for everyone involved. You increase the trust level of your clients and move them along the funnel, and your customers get the information they sorely needed as well as solving a problem with which they’d been struggling.
When you began reading this series, you were at the beginning of productizing your service-based business. Hopefully, this series has helped you to not only create products and systemize the process of moving your leads through the product funnel, but it has also helped you gain clarity with your upcoming products and systems.
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How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 2
Table of contents for How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business
- How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business
- How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 2
- How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 3
This is part 2 of a three-part series on how to productize your service-based business.
Find Part 1 “Are you Ready to Productize Your Business” here.
Productizing Your Business: Developing Your Products
In the last installment, we brainstormed your potential products, and we covered beginning your product funnel. In this installment, we’ll go more in-depth on developing products and getting your nose to the grindstone.
From the brainstorm, you figured out what you like to do, what your clients get from you, and the problems you solve. Now it’s time to take those ideas and flesh out your funnel into problem-solving info-products.
Won’t Developing Solution-Based Products Put Me Out of Business?
This is a common question from service-professionals creating info-products. When we’re creating products, we don’t want our customers to only buy the products and leave – right? We want them to buy the products and then eventually buy more products and/or upgrade to our one-on-one services.
By creating solution-based products you can:
- Save yourself energy from doing time-consuming repeat tasks – tasks that your customers want to know how to do anyway
- Give your clients time to work with you (without having to be with you in person) so they’re jazzed to learn more when you send out a newsletter or another problem-solving product
- ‘Systemize’ your revenue so you can focus on your ideal clients – which still helping everyone else.
Developing Your Product Line
Photo Courtesy Jim Sneddon
As we discussed in part 1, developing your product line to fit neatly in your funnel is tantamount to your success as an info-product creator. Let’s review the general funnel again:
- Freebie (free newsletter w/report, etc.)
- Small price point product ($10-$50)
- Mid-Price product ($51-$100)
- High-Price Product ($100-$700)
- Highest Tier (reserved for your ‘ideal’ client – $700+)
As your customers move up the funnel, you will help them to solve bigger problems. A social networking expert might have a funnel that looks like this:
- Freebie (“Social Networking 101″ + newsletter)
- Small Price (“Can Twitter really make me a client magnet? A Twitter Strategy Guide”)
- Mid-price – (Audio: “Using Your WordPress Blog To Increase Visibility using StumbleUpon, Digg, and del.icio.us”)
- High Price Product – (Home Study Course – using Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn to increase get clients and become a web superstar”)
- Highest Tier: One-on-One Social Networking strategy and ongoing Coaching
As you can see, there are multiple places where you can have a variety of products in your funnel – ranging from ebooks, reports, newsletters, software, audio, home-study courses, etc.
How do I know what format to use for my products?
The format, placement, and cost of your product are entirely dependent on how much value it has for your customers. The bigger problem it solves, the deeper in-depth it goes, the higher the cost. Your home-study course may be the top tier, and an ebook may be just below it.
In fact, if your product is better off learned in-person, you may hold a monthly free teleclass for 100-200 callers so they can learn hands-on. You must pay attention to your market, and cater to what they need.
Bundling multiple products together will allow you to charge more for your product. For example, your home study course may have some audio, an ebook, and a short coaching call included. Therefore, when you’re beginning this phase, look for ways in which you can combine different formats to appeal to more customers, and put those products in the higher-tiers of your funnel.
Order Of Operations: Start with FREE!
When you first get on your roll for creating products, you automatically want to begin with the highest-priced product – it is, after all, the one that has the most information and probably is most interesting.
You must create your free product first. The whole purpose of creating products is so that you don’t have to spend so much time with one-on-one clients, I know, so it seems like the best place to start. However, if you jump ahead and create the time-consuming ‘whole enchilada’ package, chances are it won’t sell very well.
Why? Because (and this is especially if you don’t have a list) going from nothing to hundreds of dollars is not an easy purchase for anyone to make. You may have a lot of people thinking about your product, but few will buy.
Instead, begin with your free product and work up:
- Start off with your free product and newsletter, and begin to market it like crazy. People love to get free stuff, and when they sign up you immediately begin building a relationship.
- Then, move on to the next product tier. And then the next, and the next. Move up the ladder, because as you go, you’ll have mucho inspiration – fodder for the high-tiered products higher in the funnel.
- Stay the course – keep promoting your Ezine & Free Product – this is where your potential customers are coming in. You’ll treat them like gold – give them great information and treat them like family. In return, they’ll move through your product funnel and keep buying from you.
“The Internet will help achieve “friction free capitalism” by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other”
Bill Gates
In our next installment, we’ll look at systemizing your product line – how to make it work days, nights, weekends, and when you’re on vacation.
This is part 2 of a three-part series on how to productize your service-based business.
Find Part 1 “Are you Ready to Productize Your Business” here.
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Do you have multiple social networking accounts? I’ve got a Ping.FM code for ya!
I’m trying to get my feet wet in the whole social networking scene. For the longest time, I just stuck to the forum scene to connect with clients and other virtual assistants. In the past month, I’ve decided to really take the plunge and dig into Facebook (for business, instead of pleasure), Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. Much to my dismay, though, it was turning into a god-awful chore updating everything.
Fortunately, Karen pointed me out to ping.fm, which is a service that automatically updates the stauses on all your social networking sites, as well as blogs and microblogging. Fun!
It’s still in beta stage, so you have to get a code – fortunately, I’ve got a ping.fm beta code: pingadactyl
Use it while you can, they expire pretty quickly, and I just got mine up and running. I’ve tried two other codes, both expired quickly.
Hey, and while you’re at it, feel free to connect with me on any of these sites:
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How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business
Table of contents for How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business
- How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business
- How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 2
- How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 3
This is part 1 of a three-part series on how to productize your service-based business.
Are You Ready to Productize Your Service-Based Business?
Having a service-based business is highly rewarding – you get to work with people and see results first-hand, you increase your expertise and know-how with every project, and it defines you as a “client superstar” to your clientèle.
However, service-based businesses also have their limitations: you’re restricted by the number of hours that you can work and the number of clients you can have. You want to help more people – and you want to make a profit – so maybe it’s time to take it to the next level – it’s time to productize your business.
How do you create products for a service-based business?
When Carol first began the process of productizing her business, she was confused. She’d seen many internet ‘gurus’ launching products left and right, but she couldn’t find her inspiration. How could she create products appealing to her potential clients, without alienating them from future purchases?
Brainstorming Your Products
For many people, this is the most difficult part of the productizing process – finding out what to create! It’s important to remember here that the best-selling products solve a problem. It’s good and well to write about the things you love, but it’s even more important to create products that help your clients to fix something in their lives.
Finding the balance between your passions and your clients problems will take careful consideration:
- What are you most passionate about in your business?
When you began your business – you had a driving force – you wanted to do something. What was it you wanted to do? What problem did you set out to solve?(Supplemental question: do your clients focus on that? If not, skip this section) - What Makes You Unique?
If you work with women in mid-life, or solopreneurs who need a website, they all come to you looking for your unique take on the world. The problem, as you see it, speaks to your clients and potential clients. What makes you a unique problem-solver for your clients, and how do you do ‘it’? - What service do you do that you can outsource to your client?
It’s not outsourcing in the traditional sense, it’s helping your clients help themselves. So, whether your clients need help with getting their relationships on the right foot or getting their Facebook marketing strategy in place – what steps of your processes can you outsource to your clients?
When you’re productizing your business, you want to create several products so customers can move through your sales funnel. By moving through your funnel, you can ensure that the clients you work with are not just ready to work with you, but they’re right in line with your ‘ideal’ client.
After a productive brainstorming session, Carol realized that most of her clientèle came to her with issues surrounding career growth. In realizing this, she formed several product ideas ranging from an eBook for developing a career strategy to Skill Growth Group Coaching Sessions. Armed with a cache of product ideas, she was ready to begin creating her products.
Build Your Marketing Funnel
“Build the Funnel” is your new mantra. Say it now, “build the funnel.” Ahh, that’s nice, isn’t it?
When you’re selling your services and products, it’s much easier to sell to people who know and trust you – and this is accomplished by having a list of customers in your product or marketing funnel.
The crux of your funnel is to bring in customers through low-price or free products, and then increase trust and rapport by developing a relationship with them through a newsletter. Using the newsletter will allow you the opportunity to build a relationship, and to sell your products and services in small increments without being pushy.
Essentially, your product funnel should look something like this:
- Freebie (free newsletter w/report, etc.)
- Small price point product ($10-$50)
- Mid-Price product ($51-$100)
- High-Price Product ($100-$700)
- Highest Tier (reserved for your ‘ideal’ client – $700+)
Now, your list can be much bigger, or a bit smaller; your list can have higher price points or lower; but, this is the general outline you want to use.
Place each of your product ideas in one of the above categories. Make sure your highest point products have a lot of value added to them – so if you can add an audio, ebook, workbooks, complimentary products, and more with these products, the more valuable they’ll become to your customers. “Fill ‘er up!” as they say.
Don’t worry about having too much or too few products in your funnel. If you only have a couple of ideas right now – it’s fine! You’ll hit inspiration while you’re working on and promoting these products.
Once you’ve figured out your general outline, the next step in productizing you business is to use an autoresponder/broadcasting service to bring customers into your funnel. An autoresponder/broadcasting service will allow you to keep all your leads in one place and automate much of your sales process. I use AWeber . I use AWeber for my personal and client lists, and they’re hands-down the best email broadcast service provider available.
When prospects come into your funnel, start by offering them a free product in exchange for their email address. From there, up-sell a bit at a time while giving some great information and useful advice – make your free information valuable and move them delicately through your product funnel.
“Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.”
~Peter F. Drucker
Learn More about the Marketing Funnel with Andrea J. Lee’s Pink Spoon Marketing and Robert Middleton’s Action Plan Marketing – two of my favorite and most-recommended ebooks.
This is part 1 of a three-part series on how to productize your service-based business.
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Link Love – July 18th, 2008
Skelliewag gives us a Complete Guide to Finding and Using Flickr Images. Bookmark the Creative Commons search page, I have to say that I’m going to be implementing this ASAP – I’ve used images in this blog, but not nearly to the extent that I wish. Now that I understand more about the Creative Commons’ Licenses, you’ll see better pictures more frequently on TheMarketingVa.com.
- If you read no other blog post about blogging this week, Darren Rowse has hit the nail on the head with 21 Ways to Make Your Website or Blog Sticky. My favorite:
6. When you get a rush of traffic to one particular post….
When the spikes in traffic come along you need to be ready to act (and act fast – because they can be momentary).
- Mark Silver continually amazes me – Check out his article on Biznik, “The Bermuda Triange That Eats Your Referrals“. (Connect with me on Biznik by clicking here) “After the 10,000th time (it seemed), a client told me they referred someone who never contacted me. I began to call it “The Bermuda Referral Triangle.”So… where were they? Why didn’t Frank, or Joan, or Amin, or Josephina ever call, despite glowing recommendations and urgings from their friends?”
- Firefox Shortcut Keys: My knowledge of Firefox shortcut keys was driving me batty. I NEEDED an alt+tab for Firefox! (I found it – ctrl+tab) Wanna know for yourself? Learn Firefox shortcut keys here
*photo by jurvetson