If you are serious about expanding your business using Facebook, this is an event you won’t want to miss. Mike Stelzner (featured in Success Secrets Of The Social Media Marketing Superstars) is the founder of the highly successful Social Media Summit which I personally attended a few months ago.  It wasn’t good, it was over the top great.

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Are your prospects paying attention?   Consider these two realities:

1)  It has been said that people are exposed to over 3000 messages a day and probably more with the explosion of social media.

2) As you can see from this picture we are getting to be society of multi-taskers which makes it even harder to make an impression on your audience.

So the truth is, your prospects may not be paying attention. But this lack of attention is not really new.  Read the following list and then the date it was written, it may surprise you.

1.  The first time a man looks at an advertisement, he does not see it.

2.  The second time, he does not notice it.

3.  The third time, he is conscious of its existence.

4.  The fourth time, he faintly remembers having seen it before.

5.  The fifth time, he reads it.

6.  The sixth time, he turns up his nose at it.

7.  The seventh time, he reads it through and says, “Oh brother!”

8.  The eighth time, he says, “Here’s that confounded thing again!”

9.  The ninth time, he wonders if it amounts to anything.

10.  The tenth time, he asks his neighbor if he has tried it.

11.  The eleventh time, he wonders how the advertiser makes it pay.

12.  The twelfth time, he thinks it must be a good thing.

13.  The thirteenth time, he thinks perhaps it might be worth something.

14.  The fourteenth time, he remembers wanting such a thing a long time.

15.  The fifteenth time, he is tantalized because he cannot afford to buy it.

16.  The sixteenth time, he thinks he will buy it some day.

17.  The seventeenth time, he makes a memorandum to buy it.

18.  The eighteenth time, he swears at his poverty.

19.  The nineteenth time, he counts his money carefully.

20.  The twentieth time he sees the ad, he buys what it is offering.

The list you’ve just read was written by Thomas Smith of London in l885.

What does this mean for you as an online entrepreneur?

Yes, is it may be hard getting people’s attention, but savvy business owners have been overcoming these challenges since well before 1885. 

You must be focused, strategic, consistent, interesting and patient with your marketing and business development efforts over time.

If you do you will significantly increase your chances of standing out in a cluttered and distracted marketplace.

What specific actions can you take can you improve these areas this week?

Adapted from the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification Program

 

Funny social media cartoon by David Horsey

Joel Comm is one of the world’s leading experts on web-based, money-making strategies. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers, The AdSense Code and Twitter Power.

Today he is releasing his new book KaChing: How To Run and Online Business That Pays And Pays.

Click here to get a copy and find out all the cool bonuses he has in store for you!

Here is a terrific audio interview I did recently with Joel Comm…

Three Biggest Mistakes Business Owners Make With Social Media

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For more Social Media Superstar interviews and posts click the top social media tab.

The following post is excerpted from YouTube Expert, Julie Perry’s chapter in Success Secrets Of The Social Media Marketing Superstars.

Scoring lots of video views on YouTube is only useful to you if you can get your audience to take an action step once they’re on your channel and enjoying your videos. So how can you increase the chances they’ll make their way over to your main website, blog, or other online content?

1. Insert your website domain into your videos using video editing software. Remember that the sharing mechanisms on YouTube might lead to your video being embedded elsewhere online, such as in a forum or on someone else’s blog. Since those off-site viewers won’t have immediate access to your YouTube channel or a video’s title and description, you want to be sure your main website domain appears at the beginning, middle, and end of your video. Consider adding it via a watermark so it’s always visible (just don’t obstruct the view). You can always outsource such video editing tasks, or take a stab at using the free video editing software that should have come installed on your computer: Windows Movie Maker for PCs or iMovie for Macs. More expensive video editing programs are also available, such as Pinnacle, Final Cut, and Premiere.

2. Get your website domain into your videos using the YouTube Annotations tool. If you don’t have time or money to delve into video editing, your domain can be added to the beginning, middle, and end of your videos using YouTube Annotations—a way to add interactive commentary onto your videos from within the YouTube interface (and without having to use any video editing software of your own). Add such annotations after your video is uploaded. You control what the annotations say, where they appear on the video, and when they appear and disappear. You can even create a live link from an annotation to another YouTube video, channel, or search result. Annotations will also show up on YouTube videos embedded elsewhere, off of the YouTube site.

3. Ask and You Shall Receive. As I mentioned earlier, it never hurts to ask your audience to do what you want them to do. My “Ask and You Shall Receive” rule goes beyond simply flashing your website domain on the screen. Say it out loud several times, and for goodness sake, tell us what all we’ll find when we get there. “Visit my website at www.xyz.com because I’ll give you (more information, a free report, a downloadable coupon).” Or just drop hints to tempt us to go there.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is an excerpt from my presentation at Entrepreneur Magazine’s Boost Your Sales With Online Marketing Event in Chicago.

In this cluttered marketplace  it is more important  than ever to keep your message simple. People just don’t have the attention span to work hard at  understanding what you have to offer.   Consider Google’s core message as they sought out venture capital years ago.

“Google provides access to the world’s information in one click” .

Can you do that with your business?

I hope you join us at one of our live events or online programs (stay tuned for a new program)

“Perhaps the very best question that you can memorize and repeat, over and over, is, “what is the most valuable use of my time right now?”  — Brian Tracy

Building and training teams of qualified people to help you is a wonderful way to leverage your time – because it allows you to focus your energies where they can achieve the most meaningful impact.

And, in my opinion, one of the best ways to do this is by outsourcing work – i.e. hiring other people – employees, bookkeepers, contractors, etc. – to work with you.

Here’s an illustrative example.

Let’s say Sally is a consultant who charges $250 an hour to advise and develop deliverables for her clients. Then let’s assume that she regularly sets aside four full hours each week to generate and mail her client invoices, which means that she unable to bill her hourly rate ($1,000) during that time.

The way I see it, Sally’s losing a lot more than a few hours. Since she could hire a part-time booker for $25-$50 per hour, it’s actually costing her $800 or $900!

Keep this in mind as you continue to develop your online business and look for ways to delegate ongoing administrative duties and focus your energies on revenue-generating tasks or ones that play to your strengths and passions. That’s why I pay an hourly fee to someone else… they’re trustworthy, reliable and far more knowledgeable. And it frees me up to write books; advise clients and market my online businesses.

Here are some professionals you can hire to help out:

1. Bookkeeper - If you’re not good with numbers but want to keep your bank account under control get someone to do your invoicing, reconciliations and billing.

2. Virtual Assistant - These are people who can help you with administrative duties or in many specific areas of your business. With all of the technology available today, they can easily be located almost anywhere in the world. They can answer phone inquiries, manage email and schedule clients, among many other things. And as your business grows, you may even consider using your assistant as a kind of “gatekeeper…” one who can provide people with appropriate information and “shields you” from routine calls that might take up large chunks of your time.

3. Webmaster - Unless you are somebody who really believes that the core revenue-generating activity in your business is developing and modifying web pages — which for some people it is — then hire a webmaster, even if it somebody who organizes, maintains and updates content that you’ve already put in place. Even though you may be skilled in cyberspace technologies, it may not be the best use of your time.

Managers are people who never put off until tomorrow what they can get somebody else to do today. Unknown

If you are ready to take the leap, here is a simple roadmap getting started… Read the rest of this entry »