Better Business Blog

The Power of Helping Someone Else (and you too!)

Wonder what it would be like to go from two clients a year to over $40K a month without buying leads or working yourself to death?

Check this out: 

Debi Berndt, founder of Attract Love Coach.com and author of the best seller Let Love In, did just this…

She went from two clients to over $40K a month (with the same list and the same marketing) just by getting out of her own way and shifting her focus!

Even though she had a background in marketing, Debi was “lucky” enough to be stuck at 100K a year. It was a painful seven years, and she felt powerless to shatter her income ceiling. She decided to take a stand and raise her rates, only to watch her business crumble.

All but TWO clients abandoned her. 

Debi says, “I was ready to give it all up.” 

That’s when Million Dollar Income Acceleration Mentor, David Neagle, showed her how to get her ego out of her own way and “serve her clients.” 

What does “Get Out of Your Own Way” mean? Check out David’s video series More Than enough and find out for yourself.

 

Check out the video by clicking here: 
 

Some of the biggest names in our industry pay David the big bucks to help them break through the five-or-six-figure income ceiling into seven easy figures (and often in as little as twelve months). 

Here’s your chance to get coached by Million Dollar Income Acceleration Mentor David Neagle (for free).

P.S. If you desire more freedom than you have now—more cash flow, more clients, more opportunities— these More Than Enough videos will show you how to open the floodgates of abundance into your life.

Check out the video by clicking here: 

 

Are You Missing This Critical Piece?

Do you ever look sideways at really successful people and think to yourself:  

“I’m as smart as they are. I’m working as hard as they are. I’m doing everything I should be doing. I’m checking every box…and I’m still not getting the results and success I see them enjoying! Why?!?”

You are not alone. 

Master Money Mentor, David Neagle used to wonder that himself. Eventually he realized that 99% of what he “knew” was wrong – and that his current level of thinking and believing was never going to get him the success and abundance he dreamed of. 

Then one day David says he discovered “The Confidence to Be Who I Really Am”, and he embraced the universal principle, “Success is not OUTSIDE of you. Success is an effect of who you are being.” 

David made an excellent video exercise to show you how you can make the same shift he did.

Check out the video by clicking here: 

Not only did David make the shift for himself, he helps his clients and students make them too! One client is Angelique Rewers, the founder of The Corporate Agent. She was trapped in the same mind set. Angelique was most-often the smartest person in the room. But she was suffering from “intelligent with the wrong information.”

Angelique’s business was stuck at 10,000 bucks a month. And she was working really hard to make that money. With David’s help she finally discovered “The Confidence to Be Who She Really Is”. In a few months she went from $10K in thirty days to $10,000 a one-day! 

BUT what does it really take to own who you are?!? 

In David’s video exercise The Confidence to Be Who I Really Am he shows you the same secret principle of the universe that he showed Angelique. 

Check out the video by clicking here:

QS World MBA Tour New York

To become a leader of tomorrow you continuously need to be ahead of the game, be creative, dynamic and innovative. Pursuing an MBA will definitely give you leverage to become a leader of tomorrow.

The QS World MBA Tour brings you over 120 of the world’s top business schools to New York on the February 2nd. This provides a fantastic opportunity to meet face-to-face with admissions officers and get the answers to all of your MBA questions in one day.

NOTE: Please RSVP on the TopMBA site. RSVPing Yes on our event page does not ensure your place at the event.


REGISTER HERE FOR NEW YORK MBA EVENT:
http://goo.gl/BGMGq


CLICK HERE FOR THE SCHEDULE OF THE DAY:

Attending B-Schools Include:

NYU Stern, Cornell, George Washington, London Business School, Cambridge Univ, Boston, Imperial College, Hult, IE, Northeastern, Univ. of Toronto - Rotman, Johns Hopkins Univ and many more...

During this one day event you can:

• Meet face-to-face with admission directors from top international and local B-Schools
• Attend a free GMAT seminar hosted by GMAC, the creators of the exam
• Meet with Ivy League MBA Alumni from Harvard, Stanford and Wharton
• Apply for $1.2M of exclusive MBA scholarships to help finance your MBA
• Get one to one advice on your MBA essay, application and MBA interview
• Executive MBA forum to find out suitable study options for professionals with six or more years of work experience
• Connect 1-2-1 forum to arrange personal interviews with a range of top business schools
• Inspirational Women in Leadership forum

CLICK HERE FOR THE SCHEDULE OF THE DAY:

REGISTER HERE FOR NEW YORK MBA EVENT:
http://goo.gl/BGMGq

We look forward to seeing you at the New York MBA event

 

10 Practical Tips for Surviving and Thriving at Tech Events

Tech events can be lots of fun, very interesting and bring great business outcomes. Other times, they can be exhausting, overwhelming and result in negative ROI. Many times we choose to blame the venue, organizer, fellow participants and such, but the truth is that most times the reason for the difference between these two scenarios is in ourselves – the way we prepare and the attitude we bring to the event. Here are some tips to make sure you do make the most out of every tech event you attend. 

10. Wear comfortable sneakers and clothes, even if they're ugly. If you use your time like you’re supposed to, you’ll be standing all day.

9. Carry a portable charger. Even if you won’t need it, you might be able to help out an investor, a journalist or someone else attending the event . “Do you need a charger?” is a winning pick-up line in many cases ;-)

8. Wear something unique so people will easily identify and remember you.

7. Buy a local SIM card with a data plan. Don't count on the conference WiFi. Ever.

6. Don't be the first to arrive or the last to leave. Don't worry, you won't miss anything important and you should use the time for some good rest.

5. Use the time to meet and connect with interesting people. Most stage talks can be viewed online after the event is over, and usually are not the main reason you chose to attend in the first place.

4. Go out at night with the people whom you really want to connect with. This is where the real relationships are built.

3. Reach out to people without hesitation; you might not get a second chance. Like our motto in Bizzabo: Don't be shy - be social! Use Twitter, LinkedIn, Bizzabo or your own interpersonal charm.

2. Remember to follow up, preferably in less than 48 hours, when everything is still fresh in your mind.

1. Enjoy, relax, and project positive energy. It’s addictive! 

Do you have other event tips that create miracles? Do share in the comments – we’d love to hear them. Make sure you join the Bizzabo community on Twitter and Facebook for more events tips and best practices. 

Post by Alon Alroy, Co-Founder & CMO, Bizzabo

Visit Bizzabo Online by Clicking Here: 

 

Here Are the Top 50 Small Business Influencers You Should Follow on Twitter

What better way to start a holiday weekend (For all our international readers (especially the UK and India!), 4th of July is Independence Day here in the U.S.) than with some light reading?

Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp, provider of credit building and credibility solutions for businesses, has released its now annual Most Influential Small Business People On Twitter.

Before you check out this year’s list of the Top 50 Small Business Influencers on Twitter, check out last year’s list of Top 68 Small Business Influencers on Twitter.

The list is a who’s who of online celebrities that you probably haven’t heard of in the offline world (another reason many write a physical book to get in front of late tech adopters), but you should definitely get to know them and their craft.

SEO specialists, social media strategists, PR/Marketing experts and writing/blogging coaches dominate the list, which is great for small business owners and professionals interested in boosting their brand online.

Grab an ice-cold beer and a hot dog and check out the influencers below to see how they can help your small business.

Here Are the Top 50 Small Business Influencers You Should Follow on Twitter

Read More:

Google's 10-Minute Guide to SEO Basics

From keyword research to backlinking, staying on top of search engine optimization strategies can be a full-time job in itself. But fear not, time-crunched entrepreneurs. Google has a killer resource for you.

It's a 10-minute video loaded with must-know SEO advice for startups from Maile Ohye, a developer advocate on Google's Webmaster Central Team. Some of Ohye's tips include:

• Don’t bother with meta keywords tags. Google ignores it for search.
• Sign up for email forwarding. Google can forward you notifications regarding issues with your site that could dent your search ranking.
• Use Google's Webmaster Tools to search for the keywords related to your domain name. If the domain's previous owners were spammers, your site might not rank highly in search.

Read More:

10 Blogging Tips for 2012

Are you getting the most out of your blog? With the explosion of social media sites and a whole range of blogging and content sharing platforms at your fingertips, you should take another look at your blog. Is it still serving its purpose, reaching your customers and making the most of available resources? Here's a checklist of questions you should be asking and things you should be considering when evaluating your blog and planning for 2012.

1. Is blogging the best platform for your business? By now you probably already know about the success of new, highly visual online outlets such as Pinterest and Instagram. If your business depends on people seeing big, beautiful photos of your product or location, maybe these are a better fit. You could also look at blogging through Tumblr, which supports multimedia sharing well. And if you have the resources and manpower, you can always do both, using a photo-sharing site to showcase your visual appeal, then integrate these into longer traditional blog posts.

Read More

 

12 Essential Tools for the Content Marketer

 

One of the questions marketers get asked most often starts like this. “I think I get content marketing, but what kind of content works best?” The short answer is that there are at least twelve types of content you can utilize as part of any content marketing plan.

In this case, the focus is on content that can extend your brand’s reach, beyond your website or blog. There’s no single type that works best for all companies. In fact, diversification and having a portfolio of content you can pull from is key. Here are the twelve types of content to focus on, and how they can be used.

Read More

 

A Clever Way to Spy on Your Competitors

Get to know what your rivals are up to online. Don't worry--it's legal.

Knowledge, as they say, is gold—particularly when it comes to knowing what your competitors are up to.

So I'm going to share a little golden tip on how to use the Web to spy on your competitors. Don't worry, it's perfectly legal.

One way to dig up details on a rival is to mine its link-building strategy. You want to look at inbound links, which are links coming to that website directly from outside sources.

What is the value of these links?

Here's what the Google Webmaster Central Blog has to say about inbound links: "Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are merit-based and freely-volunteered as an editorial choice, they're also one of the positive signals to Google about your site's importance."

Those "positive signals" result in a higher ranking in search results for keywords relating to the website. There are a number of ways businesses acquire inbound links: getting press coverage, creating content that is picked up by other sites–in other words, by getting attention.

Read More

The Power of Your Blog’s Hidden Community and How to Find It

I’ve talked about “community” many, many times here on The Sales Lion. It’s a subject that fascinates me and frankly it’s a subject that continues to develop in my mind each and every day.

Understanding “Blog Community”…and What it Really Means

When I started this blog 3 years ago, the thought of getting comments on a post was magical. The idea that someone would come to my website, read my stuff, and then actually feel prompted to leave their own words was purely exhilarating. But for a long time, almost no one did.

In other words, for the first 6-12 months of blogging here and pouring my heart and soul into this blog, I didn’t sense I’d developed much of a community at all, which was a tough thing to deal with.

After about a year of writing, I shifted my thoughts and actions towards networking. I built up relationships with other bloggers. I commented often on other posts. I worked very hard to serve others.

All of these actions paid off, and the comments started rolling in. The “community” started building, and I was happy…at least for a time.

Something was missing

But even though I would often get dozens, if not hundreds of comments per post, I began to feel a lack of true community in one main regard—I started The Sales Lion to help marketers and business owners—big and small—to overcome their trials and struggles in this information and digital age.

Read More

 

58 Ways to Create Persuasive Content Your Audience Will Love

Would you like to become a better writer?

Would you like to create content that people will remember, tweet, and plus?

How about content that inspires your audience to click, subscribe or buy? That’s the Holy Grail, right?

It may sound difficult, but it really isn’t.

You’re about to become a writer that’s incredibly persuasive and completely unforgettable.

Ready?

Let’s start with structuring your content so your message becomes irresistible.

How to streamline your content creation

Are you forever chopping at and changing your text?

Use the following tips to structure your writing up front, so your message isn’t buried deep in your post:

Read More

 

How to Make Money with Content Marketing

There’s been a lot of buzz this year around content marketing but no one is really talking about how to directly make money from a campaign.

If you want to generate revenue, it’s important to understand how information spreads on the internet. StumbleUpon and BuzzFeed recently teamed up to figure this out.

They found their most viral stories since 2007 were so popular because of cluster sharing. This means that the biggest hits were all shared lots of time among small clusters of friends instead of a few people broadcasting it to a large network.o figure this out.

Where is the best place to take advantage of cluster sharing? Studies confirm that email is still the most widely used medium for sharing information between small groups.

So how do you make more money with it?

Read More

 

Secret Sauce: What Does It Take to Create a Viral Video?

“Going viral” is a distinct phenomenon particular to today’s Internet culture. But if you think about it, viral movements have been around forever. How else do you explain those horrifying motivational posters from a decade ago, or Britney Spears, or Furbies? Ick.

An incredibly powerful sub-category of viral content on the web is video. And everyone from Aziz Ansari to Apple to Allen’s Apricot Farm is trying to produce the next viral hit. Why? It’s all about eyeballs. And yours have probably seen a viral video in the past month, past day or even the past few hours.

The guys at creative agency Seedwell specialize in imagining, producing and distributing viral video. Partners Peter Furia, Beau Lewis and David Fine represent the heads of strategy, business and production, respectively.

Read More

 

 

10 Proven Ways To Market Your Website

So, you’ve taken the steps to create your company website…but what do you do now?

Now you face the challenge of actually bringing in new, qualified traffic. After all, that’s how you will make more sales and increase your customer base.

Check out these 10 ways you can pull in visitors to your website:

1. Search engine optimization

SEO is the process of increasing your website’s visibility in search engine’s organic results through optimizing your pages with the keyword phrases people are likely to search for. Think about it: when you search for something in Google, do you typically go beyond the first couple pages of results? Probably not, and neither will your potential customers.

Read More

 

The Secret to Landing Pages That Sell? Understand Your Unique Star …

Almost every big Hollywood blockbuster you’ve ever watched has a common factor.

There is the star, and then there is the supporting cast.

The star gets all the lines. The star gets to do most of the work. The star is the focus, and gets most of the glory. The movie is about the star.

So what does the supporting cast do?

The supporting cast have smaller roles, fewer lines. They have less work to do, but it’s crucial work.

Your sales page is a lot like that. And understanding how these two Hollywood factors work together can make all the difference in building landing pages that sell.

As every regular Copyblogger reader knows, a good sales page has features and benefits of a product or service. It has some fascinating bullet points. It has a strong headline. It has a compelling opening paragraph.

These elements are your supporting cast. They highlight the things that the customer needs and wants to know about your product or service.

But they’re not the star.

The star of your landing page is the uniqueness of the product or service. The star gets a lot more space. A lot more explanation. And in fact, the script writer (that’s you) may re-write the entire story to let a particular star shine more brightly.

Read More

 

Online Ads: 7 Dos & Don’ts

You don't need an agency to manage your digital advertising. But if you're going to go it alone, you need to understand a few ground rules.

While many businesses these days want to improve their online visibility, many don't know how to approach it other than to build a website and maybe do some search engine marketing.

Yet 14 years after the launch of the first self-serve advertising platform, GoTo.com, I'm still surprised how little many businesses still know about do-it-yourself online advertising opportunities available to them.

After all: Even though Google's DIY pay-per-click search, contextual and display ad networks create an 800-pound gorilla, and yet there are plenty of other places to try self-serve online advertising.

Why, you might ask, as an owner of a digital ad agency, would I want to tell you about self-serve advertising platforms? There are several reasons:

Read More

7 Practical Marketing Productivity Links

This week on The Lede …

• When Should We Add Marketing?
• The Best Procrastination Tip Ever
• Take a Hot Shower. Get Creative.
• Want More Social Shares? Don’t Ignore These 3 Things …
• The 13 Minute, 33 Second Website
• 20 Days to a High-Quality, Highly-Engaged Twitter Following
• One Piece of Indispensable Writing Advice

If you want to grab more useful links (than the seven we highlight here) every week, follow @copyblogger on Twitter.

When Should We Add Marketing?
Mr. Godin’s answer to this question is simple, but not easy. He argues that the age we now inhabit has turned the tables on the discipline of marketing products, services, and ideas. The Mad Men are gone, as is the way they brought products into the public eye.

Read More

 

Wikia: The largest social network you’ve never heard of

Everybody’s heard of and uses Wikipedia, but what about the for-profit company founded by Wikipedia’s own Jimmy Wales? Wikia is one of the biggest internet companies around, but it’s likely not on your radar yet. This year, that’s all going to change.

I had personally heard of Wikia but never knew exactly what it was. Put simply, if you’ve ever seen a specialized Wiki outside of Wikipedia, the odds are it was hosted on Wikia. The site packs an enormous amount of content, with users collaborating, discussing and consuming nearly anything you can imagine.

Wikia is also completely free, ad-supported and is all linked together under one navigation bar that sits atop every page. So far, all of its driving growth has had everything to do with users.

Read More

 

In a world overflowing with information, what is the key to curation? [Video]

Today, Percolate’s co-founder Noah Brier sent me the first in a series of videos explaining the shifts we’re seeing in the world of content creation. “Curation has exploded with the growth of Twitter, Tumblr and now Pinterest. In this video, we wanted to try to get into the heads of some of our favorite curators to understand what makes them tick,” he explains.

Read More: In a world overflowing with information, what is the key to curation? [Video]

2,154 Words and One Question Answered: Should Every Business Have a Blog?

To blog or not to blog??….that is the question.

In fact, it’s a question that kept coming up again and again with all the discussion around last week’s Ford debate.

But not only did it come up in that particular article, I’ve seen it mentioned in various corners of the blogosphere by other peeps stating, “Not everyone should have a blog!” again and again.

And for the record, before someone gets the very wrong idea and just skims to the bottom of this post, let me say this loud and clear:

Not every business should be blogging.

Read More: 2,154 Words and One Question Answered: Should Every Business Have a Blog?

16 Webinar and Webcast Tools for Online Meetings and Marketing

It’s hard to talk about marketing to a group these days with all the one-to-one focus of social media. You might engage on a mass level, but experts advise you to “engage the individual.” This is timely and good advice. But it puts webcasts, webinars, and online seminars in a “past their prime” bucket, for some.  Don’t discount the method yet, lots of people still like to connect with companies and brands in a good old fashioned (in web years) webinar. This review is for the business owner considering a broadcast type campaign.

Read More: 16 Webinar and Webcast Tools for Online Meetings and Marketing

How to turn blog readers into brand advocates

If you have been blogging for more than a few months than you have super fans whether you know it or not. You just have to keep an eye out for them. Fortunately there some key indicators.

• They comment regularly
• They send you personalized emails
• They share EVERYTHING you write

But simply knowing who they are is not enough. The same way you water seeds for a plant, you must cultivate your super fans.

Read More: How to turn blog readers into brand advocates

15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly

We’re big advocates of conversational writing that’s engaging, persuasive, and fun. So that means it’s perfectly fine to fracture the occasional stuffy grammatical rule (and many times it’s preferable).

On the other hand, making some grammatical errors just makes you look bad, and hurts your effectiveness. Sometimes we even misuse words simply because we hear others use them incorrectly.

Read More: 15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly

How to Harness the Power of LinkedIn – INFOGRAPHIC

A presentation on the topic of how to cook a chocolate tart is  going to “bomb”at a cheese maker’s  convention.

 

It will be the wrong audience for an interesting topic, but the cheesemakers didn’t pay $1,200 for a conference ticket to hear information about “Tarts”!

A paying participant at a car dealer expo will want to hear about horsepower and handbrakes and will either leave the hall or fall asleep if the speakers start talking about knitting and slipper making.

Read More: How to Harness the Power of LinkedIn – INFOGRAPHIC

How to be a Social Media Writer in 10 easy steps

My mother writes a blog on social media. Everyone you know has penned a grand treatise about Twitter and Facebook. If you Google “social media news,” there are 3 billion results.

But this is not enough! We need more. In that vein, I wanted to create a simple ten step plan for you too, to become a social media writer.

1. Write about Pinterest

Pinterest is HUGE. There’s been quite a lot of stories about Pinterest‘s rapid growth, and how the social media world’s darling is now becoming an interesting marketing and business tool. Be sure to mention how it can be applied to [insert anything]. Oh, and be sure to talk about user demographics!

Read More: How to be a Social Media Writer in 10 easy steps