Let Your Website Do The Work!

Creating a Profitable Email List

There are many important activities that you should do as a small business owner, and building an email list should be at the top of your "list"!  An email list does a number of things for you, and is a powerful tool. 

There are several steps that you should take in order to create an email list that is truly profitable for you and your business.  After all, if you spend your time building a list, you definitely want to profit from your efforts. 

Some of the important steps or keys to building a profitable list include:

1. Obtaining a functional emailing program or autoresponder.  Having this tool in place will make the process of upkeep for your mailing list much easier and spam free.  It will also help to automate the process, saving you a ton of valuable time and effort. 

2.  Displaying a sign up box on your website.  You want to make the process of signing up for your email list as painless as possible.  You also want to make sure that visitors to your website spot your mailing list sign up box quickly and easily.  Therefore it should always be placed prominently above the fold, not where your visitors would have to scroll to find it. 

3. Create an incentive for signing up.  To help to ensure that you get great response to the option to sign up for your mailing list you will want to give an incentive for doing so.  This may be done in the form of a a free special report, an e-course, or even a discount code for one of your products or services. 

4.  Continuing to provide quality list content.  In order to keep your list subscribers on your list you will want to continually provide top-quality content and information like none that they could find elsewhere.  You will also want to help your subscribers to feel that they are getting something from the list that they could not otherwise obtain.  Make it "special" to be on your list. 

5. Creating a profitable list.  Finally, the part you have been looking forward to, profiting from your list.  You will need to offer specials and incentives that will help you to profit, you can also continually target your list subscribers with affiliate links that will help you to make residual income as well. Just make sure to protect your list and only offer products and services of high value.

These are the important steps or keys to truly making an emailing list work for you!  Of course, there are many other ways that will help to do this as well. 

If you are looking for more help in building your list, I highly recommend Carrie Wilkerson's list building course, click here to find out how you can easily build a list of raving fans!

Attract Your Ideal Client With Your Website

As small business owners, one of the most important tools that you can have for your business is a website.  With Google being today's yellow pages, most people who are looking for anything from party favors to a new hairstyle, from a new alarm clock to a new look for their living room will go to Google and type what they are looking for into the search box and wait a few seconds for the results.

Those business owners with the smarts to have a website and a good one at that will show up in these results.  So, as a small business owner, whether you own a beauty shop or a clock repair shop you should have a website, and not just a website, but one that will attract your ideal client or customer. 

After all, if your clients are searching Google for their needs then you want to show up, right?  So, how do you make this happen?  The following are some important parts of a website that will help it to rank well in Google searches. 

A good website will not only have a good layout, attractive site design, be easy to navigate and load quickly, but it will also put into action key concepts that will help it to rank well with the search engines, or be "SEO friendly". 

Some of these key items include:  titles, keywords and headers.  Which are simply areas of your website, that when utilized correctly can increase your search engine ranking.

Titles are viewed by a search engine first.  Therefore you will want to be certain to use your keywords in your title as often as possible.  Do not simplify your title too much by simply naming your homepage home your contact page contact and so forth, utilize these areas and insert your keywords there as well. 

Keywords, are one of the most valuable items in your website.  The search engines process your keywords in order to rank your website, the more specific you are with these the better.  You will want to use keywords in your title, in your header as well as throughout the website itself.

Headers, which are the bolded areas of your site are taken into consideration by the search engine and should therefore be utilized and filled with keywords as well.  The first two header tags are of the highest ranking in Google, therefore use them more readily than others. 

These are just three of the areas in which you can focus to make your website stand out among the search engine rankings and help your ideal clients to find you, when searching for your area of service or your specific product offering. 

If you're wondering how you can automate your small business and let your website do the work, you can check out my free video series at http://www.AutomateYourBizVideos.com.

Twitter: A Great Tool for Small Business Owners

If you haven't heard what it means to "tweet" or been in the world of "Twitterville", then you should definitely catch up on this hot new trend that can truly be a huge benefit to your small business.  If you are among the crowd who has not yet started "twittering" then you may be wondering exactly what it is. 

According to Wikipedia, Twitter is

"a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length."

It may not seem like a big deal, but in reality the more people you "follow" as a part of your Twitter world, and the more people who follow you, the larger your reach expands.  In reality you can begin to reach more and more people through Twitter, as one person follows you, another finds you through that person and on and on.  It is truly a way to "multiply" your contacts quickly and almost effortlessly. 

Besides allowing you to make contacts quickly, it is also a great way to broadcast information easily as well, and with the "retweet" ability that is made use by so many you can have the help of others to spread the word about your new product, website, service or your "special of the month" almost instantaneously and have people begin to take advantage of it. 

Yet another benefit of Twitter is the ability that it gives you to obtain information within minutes.  With the large number of people on Twitter, you can put just about any question you have out there to "Twitterville" and within seconds, or at least a few minutes, you are able to obtain an answer from the "knowledgable" people on Twitter.  Troubleshooting a problem on your blog, find the info that you need, looking for a service that will help you do this or that with your business, ask the Twitter world and get their opinions then and there.

These are only a few of the things that you can use Twitter for which are of benefit to you, and your small business.  As you use it more and more you will easily be able to see that there are many more benefits that are to be discovered. 

You can see what I'm up to and follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jhaubein.

Jennifer Haubein publishes "SiteNotes" a FREE award winning ezine for small business owners who want a website that actually works. If you're ready to let your website do the work, check out my FREE video series at http://www.AutomateYourBizVideos.com.

My Predictions For Small Business Websites in 2009

I wanted to share some of my predictions for 2009 for small business online marketing and specifically websites. I’ve been listening to other business owners, reading the technology blogs and studying the trends taking place in small business online marketing. Below are some of the biggest trends and thoughts regarding the future of small business online marketing.

1. Small business owners are already ahead of big corporations - The biggest trend is SOCIAL MEDIA and it's not going away any time soon.  In fact, it's just going to get bigger.  The good news is you are ahead of the game and big corporations.  Why?  Because as a small business owner, you are the brand, the personality, and the face of your social media strategy.  Corporations will have to find employees and others to be a part of social media where you can start right now.  If you haven't joined Twitter or Facebook yet, run now and get started.  But remember to put your picture in your profile.  Don't use your logo in place of your picture.  Don't try to act like a big corporation.  That's the biggest thing you have going for you is "you"; because, people don't want to work with big corporations, they want to work with people they have relationships with.
2. Small business websites will be more interactive - Enter forums, social networking, video, audio, integrated blogs, and much more. Small business owners are fed up with websites that just sit there and don’t actually bring in more clients. Websites will have integrated lead generation and ways to interact with their website visitors.
3. Video marketing will become bigger and more mainstream - With the addition of the flip camera, video is becoming more mainstream and easier to use. It’s also easier to upload video to your website with sites such as Youtube and other video sharing sites. More small business owners are turning to their webcam or flip video camera to get their message out to their potential clients. And as advertising is expensive, producing your own video becomes a great way to get out there in a big way.
4. Twitter will become more mainstream - With the recent twitter phishing scam and tweets being sent from a passenger on an airplane crash, it is a sign that Twitter is becoming just a little more mainstream. It’s not there yet and is still a very small community, but it’s getting bigger; which means more small business using this to effectively promote their websites, blogs, and businesses.
5. Facebook will continue to grow - Every one of my friends is on Facebook now! It is certainly now mainstream. They have integrated advertising similar to Google advertising and it continues to grow as a great place for business networking.
6. Economic downturn entices businesses into social media - You see a trend here right? More and more companies are saying “what the heck might as well try social media since I don’t have much of a marketing budget.”
7. Standard search engine optimization will become social media-savvy SEO- Even though there is a lot of hype about Facebook and Twitter a lot of consumers will not join these communities. But they will instead be spectators and will be served YouTube videos and blog posts via Google search. So combining a blog and other social media strategies with search engine optimization will be the best website traffic strategy.

So what do all of these technology predictions mean to you as a small business owner? Become a joiner of social media and show your personality rather than trying to look like a big corporation.

How To Easily Automate Your Small Business With Email Autoresponders

As a business and website owner you are most likely extremely busy.  You may feel as if you are a mouse running circles on a little wheel in a cage.  But, it does not have to be that way.  In fact, There are many things that you can do to easily automate your small business, one of which is to begin using email autoresponders.

Email autoresponders allow you to automatically send messages to someone.  Most commonly they are used to automatically reply to people who sign up for your mailing list, contact you for service, or email you while you're a way on vacation.

Any of these cases are valid and great uses for email autoresponders, but there are more uses that can help you to run your small business website more efficiently and to promote your business as well.  Some of these uses are: 

To run an ecourse.  Ecourses are wonderful way to help promote your business or a particular product or service that you sell.  They give your potential clients or customers a little taste of what you can do for them, leaving them wanting more.  They are also a great way to help build your list. 

For troubleshooting.  Often times your clients or customers may query you for help with a particular product or service, or if they have trouble on your website.  Setting up a troubleshooting email address and an autoresponce to let them know that you will indeed get back to them as soon as possible, or even to give them some possible solutions is a smart business move on your part, and will save you valuable time.

Other types of promotion.  Email autoresponders are an easy way to help promote your small business.  You can automatically send out special email promotions to someone after they have been on your mailing list for a particular length of time, or when you have a special promotion coming up, you can set up the autoresponder to email everyone on your list even weeks ahead of time, allowing you to plan ahead, and cover all your bases without having to wait till the last minute. 

Want to try out an autoresponder?  Check out Aweber, one of the most popular autoresponder systems out there today. 

Would you like to learn more about email autoresponders? I have a free video series all about how to automate your small business. To learn more visit www.AutomateYourBizVideos.com.

Twitter Phishing Scam- How To Stay Safe

Twitter has been very busy with lots of talk of phishing scams. I received one of the messages and wanted to pass along some tips to anyone who might have received a weird direct message via Twitter. The message I received said "Check out this funny blog post".

1) For now I recommend not to click on any links sent to you via Direct Message- This is just a safety precaution, because just clicking on a link does not seem to cause any problems. But why not just not take a risk and not click on any links until this scam goes away. I know this may seem controversial, because a lot people send out direct messages with links to their blogs or websites. But it just makes it easier for right now.

2) If you do click on any links make sure to not enter any logins or passwords- The link takes you to a website that asks for either twitter or sometimes facebook login and password. Do not enter this information. I would recommend not entering your twitter login and password into any website other than twitter. I know there are other applications that work with twitter that require your login and password, but again this scam has changed things. If you did click on this link don't panic, just clicking on the link does not seem to affect your computer.

3) If you did enter your login and password into website change your password- I recommend changing your password if your account was compromised. I don't know if it will help, but it can't hurt.

4) If you receive a direct message with scam message notify twitter user who sent it to you- Keep in mind they are only a victim of the scam. But it would be nice to send them an @ message letting them know their twitter account may have been compromised and recommending they change their password.

If I receive any more information as to how to protect yourself against this scam I will update this blog post.