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Writing valuable content-rich articles for your target market and submitting them to article directories and other publishers is one of the best ways to market your business, become known as an expert in your field, and add subscribers to your list.
For example, if you regularly write an article for your ezine, you can get a lot more mileage out of it if you submit it to article directories and other online publishing services. And making every piece you write work more than once for you is one way to work smarter and not harder. That’s called leverage.
There are several reasons why you want to do this. One is to get your name and your business out there so people will learn who you are and what you do, and it helps to position you as an expert. No more keeping yourself a secret and hiding behind your computer!
Another reason is that your articles give people a taste of your style, what it is that you offer, and it gives them an opportunity to get to know you a bit without risking anything.
At the end of each article include a resource box so if people want to find out more about you and your business, they have that information at their fingertips. Once someone reads your article, if they like your stuff, they will likely visit your website and sign up for your Free Taste (your free offering that gets people on your list). And writing articles is one of the fastest (and FREE) ways to get lots of exposure, especially if a publisher with a large list picks it up!
Want to get started? Here are the 4 easy steps:
1. Write the article or recycle one you’ve already written, giving it a fresh edit (it never hurts).
Write or revise an article targeted at your niche that is full of valuable content. A couple of tips: Articles can be anywhere from 400-800 words in length for the best chance of being picked up (if you have a longer article, consider chopping it in half and making it two shorter articles). Also, articles with lists, steps, or mini-chunks of information seem to be the most read.
2. Add your copyright.
Don’t forget to protect your work by adding a copyright. At the end of each article, put a copyright notice with the date of when you first published the article. For example, Copyright 2009 Alicia M Forest.
3. Write the copy for your author’s box.
After your copyright notice comes what’s usually referred to as the “resource box” or “author’s box.” In order for others to publish your work, ask that they include this information at the end of your article, keeping what you provide in it whole and intact. As this is standard practice, you’ll find most publishers will honor this request.
Write 3-5 lines that entice people to find out more about you by providing the web address to the sign-up page for your Free Taste. Using this space to encourage people to join your list by signing up for your ezine or other free offering is another way to leverage your article.
A tip: Again, don’t send your article readers to your home page. Send them to a page set up specifically to add them to your list. For example, say “for more articles like this, please visit www.yourezinepage.com to sign up!”
4. Submit your article.
Although this is one of the most time-consuming marketing tasks, it can be made much simplier by either hiring a Virtual Assistant to do it for you, or by using an article submission service.
There are literally hundreds of websites that offer free content for publishers who are in need of quality articles for their own publications or websites. Here are some of the best ones:
www.ezinearticles.com
www.ideamarketers.com
www.goarticles.com
www.article-host.com
www.articlecity.com
Bonus step:
If you want to see stronger results from submitting your articles, contact directly those publishers of ezines and websites in your niche. Google publishers of ezines in your target market and then send a query to the editor/owner about submitting an article. Present yourself as a professional and offer your article for their use, provided the resource box remains intact. Paste your article under your message (attachments can get blocked, and if the receiver doesn’t know you it’s unlikely they will open and read it anyway).
Writing and submitting articles is one of the tried-and-true, if slow-and-steady, ways to build your list, become known as an expert, and offer value to your target market.
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One of the reasons I love the business model I teach is because it effortlessly PULLS clients to me. I never have to chase them or worry about having as full a roaster as I want. The first step in making this happen is creating what I call your CFO – Compelling F.r.e.e. Offer. The problem is that very few solo-preneurs actually utilize this simple method of attracting all the clients they want.
Your Compelling F.r.e.e. Offer (CFO) is what entices people to want to find out more about you and what it is that you’re offering. When you make your complimentary offer compelling enough, more people will be interested in taking advantage of it, which increase the audience to which you can then market to.
Your CFO can be packaged in a variety of ways: a mini e-course, a checklist, a CD, an audio download, a special report, a free teleseminar, etc. I offer a few different CFOs – a special report, an audio download, and for joint ventures I offer one of my paid products for free as a bonus to their paid offering.
The content of your CFO should be broad in scope, yet address a particular problem your target market is struggling with, something that they’d pay to have a solution to. That’s what makes your offer compelling in the first place, and it’s what attracts them into your Marketing & Product Funnel. Your CFO should be loaded with valuable content, so much so that you leave your prospect thinking, “wow, if this is what he/she gives away, imagine what his/her paid stuff must be like!”
To lead them further down your funnel, you’ll want to be sure to not give away the store in your CFO, but share what the problem is, what your solution to the problem is, giving them a taste of how you can solve it for them. But what’s key to making your CFO successful is to not just give great content, but to leave them with wanted more. The ‘more’ comes by way of your paid products and services.
The results of having a CFO are three-fold: you build your credibility and become known as an expert in your niche, your word-of-mouth marketing catches fire, and you’re approached to share your CFO with even more people through joint ventures and strategic partnerships.
The mistake I made when I first started my consulting business was trying to pitch my services to people who didn’t even know me (I cringed when I remember all those wasted early morning networking breakfasts). We all know that it’s much easier to get business by referral, right? Because the person referring you has a relationship with you, and they have come to know, like and trust you well enough to pass your name along to their friends and colleagues.
That’s what this method of marketing does for you. Your CFO is the start of building that critical know, like and trust factor with your prospects so that when they are ready to invest some money in a solution to their problem – whether via a product or service – your name is at the top of the list.
And the best part? You NEVER have to sell them on what you’re offering. It’s brilliant, really.
So, start researching what it is that your target market wants most, what problem is keeping them up at night. Then create your solution and offer it to them as your CFO to get them into your Marketing & Product Funnel. It’s a winning formula every time!
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One of the many things I discovered when on my recent private retreat with my mentor coach Kendall Summerhawk was that I sometimes still have a tendency to bend in situations where I shouldnt. Not actually bend-over backwards, but enough that I end up not feeling good about the situation. Ive actually strengthened this boundary quite a bit in recent years, but as always, Ive been tested on that a few times lately, so I wanted to share some of the ways Ive strengthened this boundary within the way I run my business so you can do the same.
Here are 4 ways that you can gracefully set boundaries in your business:
1. Have a policy page
For every product, program or service you offer, someone is going to ask you to do something different for them. It could be to offer it in a different format, at a different time or day, with a payment plan option, or dozens of other scenarios than I cant possibly cover here. As a general rule of thumb, dont accommodate. Yes, there will be times when you make a different decision, but most of the time, stick to the parameters you created in the first place. You cant please everyone, and every time you accommodate someone, you a) typically un-accommodate someone else who was just fine with the way your offer stood in the first place, and b) attract more people who will ask you to bend things for them in the future.
What do you do with the requests you get? Create a policy page from each and every decision youve made on how you will or will not run your business. Then when the next person makes a similar request, you simply send them to that page that explains clearly what your policy is, and that the policy applies to everyone. It takes the edge of it feeling like saying no was a personal decision as much as it makes it super-simple for your team to handle these requests.
2. Be fair to ALL your clients
Being fair to all my clients is one value that I hold that makes it easy for me to be clear about the boundaries I have in place in my business. If you remember that its NOT that you arent willing or dont want to be accommodating, but that it simply wouldnt be fair to the rest of your clients and customers by doing so, it makes it much easier to say no graciously, and it keeps your integrity intact.
3. Have a buffer
Having someone on my team who manages these requests is imperative. First, as the businessowner and leader of my company, its not the best use of my unique brilliance to be dealing with these requests personally. Second, my team is quite capable of knowing when a request may require my attention, and I trust them to let me know. And third, it makes saying no less personal and much more graceful and respectful to the person making the request when they get an answer from my team instead of from me.
4. Be willing to let go
Ok, this is the one thats popped up more than once the last month or so and got me thinking about writing this article. I still struggle with a tendency to over-explain. I like to craft just the right words to make sure someone understands my decision about something. Ive realized that in doing so Ive wasted a lot of time, energy and emotion. So I stopped doing that for the most part. Recently, I found myself back in that loop again, and when I realized how much of my teams time I was wasting, it bopped me over the head. I instantly went back to my short-but-sweet way of responding.
Heres the thing: theres always going to be a tiny percentage of people who want you to customize and accommodate them. But let them go play somewhere else. Because what happens when you stick to your guns is that you honor your value, your time, and your self-respect. You attract more clients and customers who are ideal and who are respectful of you and your team as well, and your business runs more smoothly and more joyfully.
(c) 2009 Alicia Forest
About the author: Alicia M Forest, MBA, 6-Figure Business Breakthrough Mentor, teaches self-employed professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create wild abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com
What's a Niffler, you ask?
Well, if you've read Happy Potter and the Goblet of Fire, you might remember that a Niffler is a critter that hunts treasure. Once it finds one treasure, it moves on quickly in search of the next prize.
Do you do the same thing in your business? Meaning, are you a constant gatherer of the things that you think will move your business ahead, but not so much the implementer of them? Do you get distracted by anything and everything that's new in your industry? Do you come up with one great idea after another, but you never fully commit to completing one of them?
Yes? I hate to break it to you, but there's probably a bit of Niffler in you! You could also call it distractibility-disorder or failure-to-follow-through or fear-of-success/failure, or focus-challenged… but personally, I like having a bit of Niffler in me. It means I'm still passionate about what I'm doing, I'm still excited about learning new things, and I'm still interested in what's happening in my industry, which lends to my ultimate success.
But what can happen is that all those ideas and thoughts and half-completed projects don't move my business forward. For example, when I started my own business almsot 8 years ago ago, there was a fraction of the business-building technology and tools available that there are now. And it's so easy to want to jump on the cutting-edge bandwagon. But at some point, if I didn't focus on actually completing things, I'd still be spinning my wheels instead of driving in the fast lane.
So, how do you tame the Niffler in you?
The strategy that has worked the best for me (not 100% of the time, but close enough) has been to keep an Idea Log. The one I have now is just an old-fashioned composition book, and whenever I have a new idea or thought about something I want to do related to my business, I just jot it down in my Idea Log. Then I go back to working on my current project that I am committed to completing. I know my ideas are saved there for me so I won't forget them, and eventually I do go back and refer to what I've written and choose some to work on.
What this also does, besides helping me to maintain my focus, is it stops me from wasting time on ideas that ultimately don't fit into my business. Many ideas end up almost self-selecting themselves out by virtue of time. So by keeping my focus on the ultimate treasure, I don't get side-tracked by fool's gold… 🙂
If you think you have a little Niffler in you, try this idea and enjoy a dramatic increase in your own productivity!
© 2008 Alicia M Forest and ClientAbundance.com
In the Client Abundance coaching programs, we work on implementing several strategies that are designed to PULL your business forward, almost effortlessly. One of those strategies is creating a powerful vision for your business. My private clients have found this exercise to be both motivating and inspiring, and I'm certain you will too.
Once a year, I take a short retreat to work on revising my vision for my business (and my life). This is an annual break I take away from my business (but with my family, although some of my clients prefer to go it alone, which is perfectly fine) to really think about and decide what I want the next 1 to 3 years to look like. I write my vision and I create a whole bunch of goals for my business. I also use this time to talk with my husband about my vision and goals. He is a great sounding board for all the ideas I come up with… and we usually have this conversation while hanging out on the beach… 🙂
Being near the water definitely has some powerfully positive effects on my brain, and I always come away from this retreat with a renewed sense of energy and passion for my work.
Creating a powerful vision is your first step on your path to achieving your own business success. Knowing where you are going will make the journey that much easier and faster, as well as simply more enjoyable. So, let's get started…
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Did you take some time this past week to think about and perhaps even write down your resolutions for 2008?
To be honest, I’m not exactly a fan of resolutions – really, what’s so different about January 1 that’s going to make a dramatic difference in whether or not you keep your resolutions? If you just have a list of things you’d like to accomplish, well, the answer is ‘not much’. But if you have a PLAN to go along with your list, well, that can make ALL the difference.
What I’ve done for the past several years, as part of a much larger strategic planning process, is create what I call My Simple Business Plan. It includes just 4 goals that I want to achieve in my business within the next year. I review the previous year’s goals before setting down the next set for the upcoming year, and what I’ve found from doing this process over and over is this: I’ve reached AT LEAST those 4 goals within the year (and usually quite a few more). How? Because those were the ones I created a plan around to achieve.
So even though 4 goals may not seem like a lot, if it’s 4 more than you usually reach, wouldn’t that feel great? 🙂
This year, instead of creating resolutions for your business, try the following steps to create your own Simple Business Plan:
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