Motivated To Learn

People tend to do business with companies they know, like, and trust. A personal relationship grows with the help of a blog, Twitter, and Facebook, No longer are you just the store down the street. You’ve become a person who understands the needs of your market, someone who can be trusted for customer service and quality. An advertisement in the phone book or local paper could never produce that kind of loyalty.

Interacting with your potential clients doesn’t have to be time consuming. Sites such as Hootsuite.com allow you to update Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in a matter of minutes. In addition, whenever you come across an informative website that might benefit your audience, click the Hootlet tool to instantly send the web address to those networks.

Once you start reaping the benefits of positive customer interaction, why not add audio and video to your online marketing efforts? A simple two or three minute video uploaded to Youtube will add another dimension to your business. It could be a tip on how to use one of your products or questions about when your service might be needed. If you prefer photos and PowerPoint slides, go to Animoto.com and create a short film complete with royalty free music, then upload that to Youtube.

Host your own Internet radio show at BlogTalkRadio.com. The show can be live or pre-recorded, anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, a one-time event or a regular listing. Interview someone or use the time to discuss a topic of interest to your listeners. The resulting audio can be downloaded via iTunes or placed on your website for future visitors.

When using social media tools, always include a link back to your website for more information. Not only will you gain traffic to your site, but all of those inbound links from high ranking websites will help your position in the search engines. It’s possible to get your site on the first page of Google simply by posting a video on Youtube.

Promoting your business on the Internet can be an enjoyable way to reach out to your target market. By knowing your objectives, you can focus on using the right methods of social media for you.

Technorati Tags: social media tools, using social marketing

I recently gave a presentation to a local women’s networking group called POWE, short for the Power of Women Exchange. The topic was ‘Promoting Your Business Online’ and the following are the key points I covered. How many of them are you including in your marketing plan?

• Start the same way that someone looking for your product or service would start.
• Search on Google and see whether you are listed. It is possible to dominate the first page of Google depending on your linking strategy. Beyond the second page of search results, people won’t bother looking.
• Then go to freekeywords.wordtracker.com and see what people actually are looking for.
• Make a list of those keywords and keyword phrases and use them in future posts and articles.
• Set up local Google search at google.com/places using those keywords and your contact information.
• If you have an existing site, look it over carefully and note any flaws with design, ease of use, etc.
• Choose an autoresponder service, such as Aweber, Mail Chimp, or Constant Contact to gather names and emails.  Review the features and costs of each before you decide. Then set your service up to automatically contact your list every time your website is updated. It’s important to capture your visitor’s name and email with an opt-in form. This way, you are gathering a list of potential clients that you can keep in touch with.
• Learn to create an opt-in form and paste it to the top left or right of your website. Set text, audio or video message re confirming with double opt-in.
• Add Google Analytics to site to measure statistics.
• Set up social marketing avenues and use a service such as Hootsuite to keep updated without spending too much time.  LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook all ready to update from one central location. With Hootsuite you can also easily notify your social networks whenever you find a website that might be of interest to your readers.
• When using Twitter, follow others in your target market or geographic area. Offer good information that will establish the Know, Like and Trust factor people need before they will do business with you.
• Use a Facebook Fan Page and make use of their Vpype application to do a face-to-face live presentation geared to your topic and target market. Capture names and email addresses from your fan page as well.
• Use videos on Youtube and articles on EzineArticles.com to send traffic to your site. Always make sure that your website address is included in the description on Youtube and the signature box on EzineArticles.

Technorati Tags: promoting business online, using social media, getting traffic

As we age, there are so many experiences and so much expertise that we gather along the way. Although we may not think those things are valuable, other people need our knowledge. It’s our responsibility to share what we’ve learned. 85-year-old Eleanor McCallum has learned that lesson and now we can benefit. The following is an article written by her. I hope it motivates you to go and do likewise.

Many years ago I started a bookkeeping career, long before there were computer programs to do the necessary calculations automatically. Double entry bookkeeping was used at that time with large journals and ledgers for the accounts, which consisted of purchases, sales, inventory and a general journal. Each business transaction was manually recorded in a journal consisting of several individual pages. The transaction and cost, broken down into base price, taxes and whatever else needed to be specified was recorded on its specific page.

These expenses and amounts would then be copied to a general ledger where there would be several pages headlined with their respective categories. At the end of each accounting period it would be necessary to manually total the expenses for each category and transfer these totals to a balance sheet and profit & loss statement. That type of manual bookkeeping could only be enjoyed by someone who wanted to learn all of the ins and outs of bookkeeping and perhaps find a better way to facilitate all of this.

When computerized bookkeeping and accounting programs came on the scene, I definitely wanted to be able to use them. Then everything could be automatically delivered to its proper location in the company books, quickly and efficiently. Accpac and then QuickBooks were two programs that I learned to use to advance my bookkeeping practices.

Quickbooks Easy Start is set out in such a way that a person with no bookkeeping experience can begin using it immediately. It tells you how to set up your business, explains money in and the related sales receipts, deposits and how to accept credit cards.

Money out, explains writing checks, recording expenses, issuing refunds and paying employees. In the your business section, customers and vendors with all related information can easily be recorded, then lists are created so you can go back in to any account to make adjustments.

My step by step guide to help new users with QuickBooks Easy Start for their home based businesses is available right now. This guide features screen shots and easy to follow instructions for each step. I really enjoyed compiling it and hope others will want to read it.

Eleanor McCallum

http://quickbooksguide.biz

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eleanor_McCallum

We are one of many families who use one company to supply our Internet, cable television, and phone service. Usually that isn’t a problem, but now I’ve realized we need to have an alternate plan for our communication services. Our neighbours were having satellite installed and no longer needed the cable. But the panel for our street had the wrong house numbers allocated, so instead of disconnecting next door, we lost all of our services.

That wouldn’t have been so bad for a short time, but it was Friday of a long weekend. We called right away to report the mistake, but the technician couldn’t come back and we would have to call again Monday. It turned out that the whole week was a busy one and our service wouldn’t be restored until the following Thursday.

We did have a cell phone for emergency use. It was necessary since one of our grandkids had to go to hospital. An old tv antenna helped us get a couple of channels. As for the Internet, I visited places that had wireless access and managed to get some of my email. Without a laptop and the mobile phone, it would have been much more difficult to take care of our family and our business.

Now that life is back to normal, we have some decisions to make. Should one company supply all of those services in the future? What alternatives do we have?

Technorati Tags: loss of communications, Internet problems, telephone interruptions

One of the things I’ve noticed a lot of business owners do is to set up a free blog on Blogger.com or one of the other free hosting services and then neglect to register a domain name of their own for the blog. So instead of being able to tell people to go to FromKnowledgeToProfit.com, for instance, I would be telling them the Internet address is FromKnowledgeToProfit.blogspot.com instead. Not nearly as professional sounding. And when the price of domain names today is less than ten dollars a year, not a very good business decision.

I’ve created a short tutorial to help you register a domain name and then point it to your free blog. I hope you find the information useful and welcome your comments.

DomainRegistrationBooklet

Technorati Tags: domain name registration, forwarding a domain name