Let Your Website Do The Work!

3 Biggest Mistakes Small Business Owners Make With Their Advertising

I'm so excited to interview Kathleen Ann of Power Up Your Marketing!  Won't you join us Wednesday July 23rd at 8pm EST. 

You’ll leave this call with key strategies to boost your leads and sales – you will know:

• The difference between Image and Direct Response Advertising
• Why big companies use Image advertising and why small companies and entrepreneurs must never do it
• What a “unique selling proposition” USP is, and why you must have one

To sign up for this FREE call go to: http://www.powerupyourmarketing.com/jennifer_teleseminar.html

I look forward to hearing you on the call!

Email Newsletter, SiteNotes, Wins 2008 APEX Award For New Newsletter

I am proud to announce that my hard work has paid off!  My Ezine, also called an email newsletter, has won an APEX award.  APEX Awards are based on excellence in graphic design, editorial content, and the ability to achieve overall communications excellence.  This year’s competition was tough with close to 4,500 entries. 

I wanted to say a big thank you to my team members Sherry Harmon and Heather McMillian who help me proof and publish the Ezine.  Also, thanks to my loyal readers!  Another big thank you goes out to my mentor Alexandria Brown, “The Ezine Queen”.  I have learned a lot from her about how to put together an award winning email newsletter. 

If you would like to sign-up for SiteNotes and get Free easy to use technology tips, tools, and tactics to create a customer attractive website go to http://www.bestbizwebsitesolutions.com/newsletter.html. You’ll also receive my Free report “5 Reasons Your Current Website Just Isn’t Working” as my gift. 

Also, if you’re interested Ali Brown is offering a free teleseminar series that starts tomorrow. On these calls, Ali is going to reveal the EXACT steps she took to transform her original service-based business to an Internet-based business and skyrocketed her income to multiple 7- figures per year. The first call is on *Tuesday, July 15* and you can click here to sign up and get the details here now.

The First Steps Before Beginning Your Business Blog

Before beginning a blog for your business, I recommend you take a couple of steps first to ensure you will have a successful business blog. Even though a blog can be put together a lot quicker than a website, it's important to have a plan for your blog. A blog with a clear plan, goals, and expectations it's on the way to quick success. One of the first steps I suggest my clients take before beginning their blog is to get involved in the blogging community.

Getting involved with other blogs allows you to get a feel for blogging and an opportunity to see what works and doesn't work on other blogs. Start off by finding a few blogs in your industry or niche by searching Technorati. You can then comment on these blogs and start building a relationship with the blog owner. When you develop your own blog hopefully they will link to your blog and help you drive traffic to your new blog.

Make sure to determine the goal of your blog and decide what type of material your blog will cover. For business blogs, I suggest you keep the goal to a business nature and create a separate personal blog for personal topics.

Decide who will write for your blog and come up with a preliminary list of topics. If you're struggling for topic ideas you can check out one of my recent blog posts at www.bestbiz.typepad.com to get you started. The more planning you can do before launching the blog the better off you will be in the long run. Will you have a ghostwriter write posts? Will you have guest authors? Will you have one author or multiple authors?

It's important to come up with a timeline of how often you are going to post to your blog. It's easy to forget about your blog when life gets busy, but with a specified goal of the number of posts you are more likely to stick to it. There's no set magic number of how many posts to make to your blog. When you're first starting out it's ok just to post once a month until you get used to posting. Of course the more you post the easier it is for the search engines to find your blog. Eventually it's best to post 2-3 times per week. If you're going out of town, you can write several posts in advance and then schedule your posts to your blog.

What's the next step now... get involved in the blogging and social networking community and get your business out there in a big way!

Are you ready to start blogging, but don't know how to set up your business blog in order to attract more clients? The answer is laid out step-by-step in my Blogging For Business System. You can get yours at www.BestBizBlogging.com.

Jennifer Haubein publishes “SiteNotes” a FREE bi-weekly ezine for small business owners who want a website that actually works. If you’re ready to get insider tips website developers don’t want you to know, and start making more money online, get your FREE tips now at http://www.BestBizWebsiteSolutions.com/newsletter.html.

Website Traffic Secrets Video Revealed by John Reese

John Reese just revealed his new videos on traffic secrets 2.0 in order to promote his newly updated traffic secrets 2.0.  This video is well worth taking a look even if you're not interested in website traffic secrets, because it has all the great elements of successful video for a product launch.  It's a great learning tool for online entrepreneurs. 

To take a look at the video visit this link: http://www.trafficsecrets.com

I'm always on the look out for helpful tips on how to increase your website traffic.  I think this is one of the biggest issues on my client's minds.  John revealed 10 helpful tips on how to use research and your competition to improve your website traffic.  He certainly left me wanted more information on the actual strategies he employs with this different tactics. 

After watching the first video, I then continued on to the second video where he confirmed what I've been telling my clients "content is king."  The more content you have on your website the better your traffic and if you know seo tactics on how to optimize this content the better. 

One of his tips really resonated with me.  He said you need to approach website content like a television producer.  This really spoke to me, because I used to be a television news producer loved the link between the two.  As a television producer I was always planning, researching, and implementing.  You should be using these techniques when developing content for your website. And remember to increase your traffic you will need to always develop new content for your website or blog. Create your very own swipe file of articles to help with your content creation.  Newsrooms are filled with press releases and articles in order to constantly create new content for their viewers.  Your website visitors are just like television viewers, they are hungry for new content!  So are you feeding them new content?  If you're worried you don't have the time, in my next post I will talk about how to outsource your article writing. Stay tuned.

Jennifer Haubein publishes "SiteNotes" a FREE bi-weekly ezine for small business owners who want a website that actually works.  Is your website not attracting you clients? Don't miss my Special Report "5 Reasons Your Current Website Just Doesn't Work!" Get your free report at www.BestBizWebsiteSolutions.com/newsletter.html.

   

Blog Content Ideas To Keep Your Writing Going

When I'm struggling for content for my blog, I go through a list of ideas of different types of content that is great for a business blog.  Here's some of my best suggestions:

1) Comment on a recent news article related to your business

2) Write a review of a recent book you read and make sure to keep it business related.

3) Conduct a poll or post about some poll results you recently found interesting.

4) Get the help on a guest blogger to give your blog some fresh content and you a needed break.

5) Write about the latest problem you solved with your customers.  I bet you're spending a lot of time answering emails (I know I am :)) So why not take those answers to your clients and post them on your blog?

6) Re purpose the articles you write for your newsletter and post them on your blog and other article directories.

I hope these different ideas helped you spark some new content ideas for your business blog. If you have any content ideas that you use for your blog I would love to hear about it?

Jennifer Haubein publishes "SiteNotes" a FREE bi-weekly ezine for small business owners who want a website that actually works.  Is your website not attracting you clients? Don't miss my Special Report "5 Reasons Your Current Website Just Doesn't Work!" Get your free report at www.BestBizWebsiteSolutions.com/newsletter.html.