1. Be friendly, but not so much.This advice is actually hard to pull off, especially with employees who are more skilled and older than you.  I believe it is one thing to be nice or friendly even, but it’s quite another to hang with them and drink beer all day on Saturday.  Your call.  Your perceived friendliness will be an issue with someone not in the group.  You want to be over-the-top fair with everyone.
2. Get excited about the little things. Many of the incremental improvements in a new company are fairly small and seemingly insignificant.  The entrepreneur needs to be able to get satisfaction out of these daily achievements.  They intuitively know that little things done well add up to a successful bigger event, a launch of a new software release, for example.  But along the way, you still must be able to get excited and more to the point, show it to your team.
3. Realize your sales people don’t work for you. The sooner you realize that all good sales people work, truly, for the customers and not for you, you will understand more about sales people than 90% of all non-sales people.
4. Ignore little things I knew we were well on our way to a good culture when one of our young sales reps brought his dog to work.  He didn’t even ask.
5. Don’t go with suggestion boxes.  They suck. I know there a lot of management gurus who recommend having suggestion boxes spread around a business, in person and even online.   If you need a box to generate such response, some other communication process needs fixing.  If you ask for suggestions, you have to react to each and every one.  Odds are, some will not be do-able.   Some are stupid.  Now, you have a negative moment in your company.  You have to tell the person that no, we are not getting a trampoline for those who need an after exercise break.  (An actual suggestion for me, once.)

Everyone knows that the best way to market to your customers is by building an in-house email marketing list.

The fastest way to get your email marketing started is to use a bought-in list. But the problem with that is you are sending unsolicited emails to people who may not even be interested in what you have to say. Therefore the chances of your campaign being successful are slim.

By far the best way to market via email is to build your own list where people have opted in. That way you know that your email messages won’t be met with hostility.

That’s all well and good, but how to you build your list? What techniques can you use to get people to sign up?

Well, that’s where this little list comes into play.

12 Ways to Build Your Email List

Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

1. Trade shows and fairs

If there is a trade show, fair or exhibition you attend regularly, have a sign up list with you on your stand. Then, as you engage and interact with your customers, you can ask them to sign up so they are the first to hear about your news and offers.

2. Shop event

Whether you are a retail outlet or if you have offices, why not have an open evening. It could be to launch a new product, celebrate a business milestone or just a new season event. Again, make sure you have a list available where they can sign up for your newsletter and email offers.

3. Public speaking

It may not be your favourite activity, but we all tend to get roped into giving a talk at some point. Use this opportunity to promote your newsletter. Weave into your speech mention of your newsletter and how they can sign up to receive your latest hints, tips and offers.

4. Prize draw

No one likes to think they’re missing out on anything. Offer your newsletter subscribers a free monthly draw. If there is a chance of getting something for nothing, people will sign up.

5. Packaging

If yours is a business that ships products out to people, make sure you have something within the packaging that mentions your newsletter. Make signing up more tempting by telling them of your email only offers. If they think it is in their best interests to sign up, they will.

6. Twitter

OK, let’s just get one thing straight, Twitter is not to be used for spam. Twitter is about engaging with your followers but there is no harm in mentioning your newsletter occasionally. Just make sure you don’t over do it. Perhaps if you have an email offer coming up, you can mention that: “sign up for my newsletter and get the latest email offer”.

7. Business cards

Business cards are often under utilised. They are seen as only being useful for passing on your contact details. Use the back of your card to tell people what you can do for them and include a call to action to sign up for your newsletter.

8. Email signature

Another under utilised tool. By simply inserting a hyperlink in your signature with a CTA to sign up for your newsletter, you are increasing your list building opportunities.

9. Something for nothing

Don’t we all like that? Getting something for nothing is always a great motivator so give something away in return for their signup. It can be an eBook, white paper, industry report, even a discount off a first purchase. Whatever it is, make sure it adds value.

10. Make the most of your bounce backs

Email addresses change, and most of the time people can’t remember what newsletters they’ve sign up for. So the first you’ll know about it, is when you get your email message bounce back. But don’t just delete it from your list, send out a postcard asking for their new email address.

11. Make it easy to opt in

Don’t hide your sign up box. Make sure it stands out. And to maximise your chances, include it on every page of your website.

12. Pass it on

Your email recipients are a great marketing tool in their own right, so use them. They are bound to know someone else who would be interested in what you have to say, so make sure you include a ‘forward to a friend’ button. Also, make sure when it is forwarded there is an opt-in form included in your communication somewhere so they can sign up immediately.

There are a few suggestions to get you started. Do you use any other techniques that I’ve not touched on here? If so, why not share them with us? Email marketing is a powerful tool that all businesses should be utilising. Building your list is one of the most vital aspects and by following these simple techniques, you’ll build a quality list, fast.

http://www.freelancecopywritersblog.com/1908/how-to-build-your-email-marketing-list/

Here at Freelance Folder we’re not going to overlook these so-called common sense principles. We don’t want anyone to fail at their freelance business. That’s why we’ve created this common sense post on building your freelance business for new freelancers or for those who need a refresher.

Four Common Sense Business Principles to Follow

Here are four common sense business principles that every freelance business person needs to understand in order to run a successful business:

1. A Business Produces Something Clients Want–I’m often asked by hopeful would-be freelance writers if I know of a market that buys poetry. While there are a few organizations (such as greeting card companies) that do purchase poems, I don’t know of a whole lot of companies that engage freelance poets. The same is true for artists who create art for its own sake–sometimes these folks can find a buyer (depending on the quality of the work), but often there is no demand. That’s why the first common sense principle is that a business produces something clients want. If you can’t find anyone who wants what you do, you can’t have a business.
2. A Business Earns a Profit–After expenses are paid a business has money left over. That left over money is called profit. Often beginning freelancers do not know how to track and calculate expenses. Expenses are everything that you spend to run your business, including your salary. Expenses could include the cost of software package that you use to create designs, the cost of your Internet connection, or even the PayPal fees that are deducted from the pay you receive from clients. If this second common sense principle of earning a profit isn’t being met you may initially get customers, but eventually your business will fail.
3. A Business Delivers to Clients–One of my long-time clients recently made a surprising comment to me. She said, “of all the freelancers I’ve hired you’re the only one who takes deadlines seriously.” I couldn’t believe it. While I’m sure that there are many freelancers who do take deadlines very seriously, I also know that my client was serious in her complaint. There’s no doubt in my mind that she has had trouble in the past finding a freelancer who would met her set deadlines. Reliability is an important aspect of doing business. It should be common sense that a business delivers to its clients on time and as agreed upon on.
4. A Business is Courteous–Professional courtesy has become scarce in today’s super-competitive marketplace. It seems like everywhere you look you can find freelancers complaining openly airing complaints about their clients and even naming those clients that they are upset with (which could harm their online reputation). While I’m all for exposing obvious scams that target unsuspecting freelancers, most client disagreements are not scams and should be handled privately. Treat your clients courteously and with respect, both in your communications to him or her and in your conversations with other freelance professionals.

When you’re battling against clutter, vagueness and unnecessary jargon as a writer, there are certain rules that come into focus.  These are not new ideas and they were thought up long ago by writers looking to say just what they mean in their prose and nothing more.

There are several ideas here that you can use as a potent charm against the kind of bad writing the muddles prose.

You should always prefer the short word to the long. In most cases when you stop and think about it or even consult a thesaurus or dictionary you can find the word that says exactly what you wanted to without needing to use a whole phrase or even a longer word. For example, in the end there is really no need to use:

accommodations for rooms

purchase for buy

utilize for use.

Of course the list goes on but as the old saying goes, why use a $10 word when a five cent one will do?

Prefer the familiar word to the fancy one. Showing off your vocabulary doesn’t really impress anyone in the end and this rule ties in nicely with the first one.

Prefer a specific word to the abstract. Remember that is usually the job of the blogger or anyone writing for the Internet is to make complicated ideas clear and to funnel meanings down so that the largest group of people will understand them.

Use the minimum amount of words possible to make your point. Being clear and concise means that you should be frugal with your writing.

The Elegant Variation

You’ll also want to watch out for what’s called The Elegant Variation. Some writers think that reaching for big words to avoid repetition is a good way to make the text flow smoothly, but there are better ways.  Rather than using some elegant synonyms, it’s a good idea to try and use a few pronouns in their place.

For example,

the mayor’s task force was asked to meet with the owners of the structures, discuss whether they wanted their buildings preserved, and recommend ways to adapt older edifices to new uses.

works better as,

….to meet with the owners of the buildings, discuss whether they wanted them preserved, and recommend ways to adapt the older ones to new uses.

It’s important to write in the active voice as well. Police arrested John Smith is shorter and much more to the point than John Smith was arrested by police.

One of the helpful hints that can get you started off on the right foot is to try to select details the reader can ‘see.’ When you’re writing about anything in your blog make sure to ask your self how you can incorporate into the first two sentences the very thing that separates the subject and makes it unique.

There is an old rule in journalism that states a good lead should rarely exceed 25 to 30 words. If you try and sort through the information available to you and use that rule in blogging you’ll always have an effective start.

Karen asks:

Will a certain article submitted to Digg.com go popular automatically once posted? Or will it take time to be dugg by people?

For example if you submitted an article from your blog 2 months ago, is there a possibility that people will still be able to digg that article today? Is it possible for an article to get popular just now even if was submitted long ago?

First of all your article will not go popular automatically once you submit it on Digg.com. If you are a power user (e.g., a Digg user with many friends, who participates actively in the community and have sent many stories to the front page in the past), then you’ll probably get a good amount of votes right after the submission, but even in this case it usually takes from 10 to 20 hours to get the story promoted the front page, provided the story is a good one and matches the interests of the Digg users.

If you have a recently created or an average account, then your submission will probably only get a handful of natural votes. This means that if you want to have a chance of sending that story to the front page you’ll need to get busy asking friends to vote on it, including a Digg button on the page and promoting it through other channels, leveraging other social networking sites (e.g., Twitter and Facebook) and so on.

Getting a story to the friend page of Digg is a harder than it looks, however, due to the competition you have today and to the bias Digg has towards mainstream websites. This doesn’t mean it is impossible, but you’ll certainly need to put some effort there.

The main requisite is to understand what kind of content is well received at Digg, and to be able to craft such a content on your website. Once you nail that you’ll need be very active with your own Digg account (submitting, voting and commenting on stories). You’ll also need to go through some trial and error, until you figure what it takes.

As for the time window you have to make a story go popular, it is around 24 hours. After that the story won’t get promoted to the front page no matter how hard you promote it and how many people vote on it.

This is the current state of things, but they might be changing in the near future. Since Kevin Rose returned to his CEO position he has been announcing many changes, with the goal of making Digg more democratic, which should improve the chances of small websites and blogs making it to the front page.

NINE TIPS FOR WRITING MENTORS

To be an effective writing mentor it is important to approach mentoring purposefully. If you are a writing mentor, here are nine tips to help you become more effective:

1. Allow enough time in your schedule for mentoring. Remember, mentoring takes time. Plan your work and life so that you can devote an adequate amount of time to mentoring each week. Remember to communicate with your mentee regularly.
2. Define in advance what services you will, and will not, provide to your writing mentees up front. Also, specify what hours you will be available and how you wish your mentee to contact you. If payment is involved, you should use a contract.
3. Don’t take on too many mentees at once. Mentoring, if done correctly, is a lot of work. Most mentors can only effectively handle a few mentees at any given time. If you spread yourself too thin, nobody will benefit from your efforts.
4. Don’t talk down to your mentee or belittle him or her in any way. Remember, everyone starts their writing career somewhere. The fact that your writing mentee makes mistakes just shows that he or she needs the guidance of a mentor.
5. Treat your mentees as individuals. Every single freelance writer is different, so there are no cookie-cutter solutions to writing problems. Listen carefully to each mentee’s problems and provide ideas or solutions that truly fit his or her needs.
6. Do praise and encourage your mentee when he or she does something right. Be an advocate for your mentee. It helps if they feel that they have someone (you) on their side, rooting for their success. Make mentoring fun for both of you.
7. Be specific in your advice. Make sure that your advice is practical enough that your mentee can understand and follow it. Encourage your mentee to ask questions if they do not understand what you are trying to tell them.
8. Be honest. A good mentoring relationship is based on truth. Don’t try to gloss over mistakes or any errors that your mentee makes. When they need it, provide them with good, constructive criticism. But, you should also be honest with them about their successes.
9. Be an example. As a mentor, you are a role model for your mentee. Live and write according to the guidelines that you provide to your mentee. Remember, they are relying on your wisdom and experience to improve themselves.

If you have to produce something today, and your creativity has rebuffed you, here are some ideas to get the mental juices flowing:

1. Set the stage. You know where you like to write. Clear all of the mess off the desk or table. Put it out of your sight. Be sure you aren’t hungry or thirsty, in pain, or otherwise distracted. If you can write to music, play music that sets the mood for your topic.
2. Walk outside for a few minutes. Get a change of scenery and some fresh air to distract you from your mental sluggishness.
3. Re-frame your thinking. When you aren’t in the mood to write, you begin to think you are a bad writer. Don’t focus on the end product or your lack of inspiration. Just have fun in the process. Write without constraints and clean up the messy parts later.
4. Relax and detach for a few minutes. Close your eyes, breathe deeply and try to empty your mind. Meditate for ten or fifteen minutes if you have the time.
5. Send your subconscious a message. While your eyes are closed, ask for inspiration. Invite the ideas to come forth and the words to flow.
6. Visualize your reader. Think about the people who will be reading your words. What can you say that will inform, uplift, inspire, confound, or humor them? If inspiration doesn’t produce the words, use your intellect and refine later.
7. Do a warm-up. Get your fingers and mind ready for writing by writing mindlessly. Answer some emails. Revise a previous article. Type favorite quotes or paragraphs from other writers. Ease your brain and muscles into readiness.
8. Think poetically. Even if you aren’t writing a poem, think in the language and nuance of a poet. Make your words juicy and provocative.
9. Do some reading or research. If you know the topic you are writing about, read from some books you have about the topic or search the Internet to get your mind wrapped around the topic and to get ideas pumping. Look for inspiration in the words of others.
10. Take a lot of notes. As you are reading, write down everything that might be interesting or potentially pertinent to your topic. As you write enough notes, ideas will amazingly start to formulate into elements of your story or article.
11. Create a list of interesting words. Find melodious and beautiful words to have handy at your desk while you are writing.
12. Phone a friend. Call someone with some sense and creativity and talk through your topic and ideas with them. Ask for feedback. Draw from their energy and enthusiasm.
13. Write an outline or bullet points. Begin putting something on paper. If you have enough material in your head, write a full outline. If not, write bullet points of concepts or ideas that you might want to expand upon.
14. Set a time limit. Force yourself to write for 20 to 30 minutes without a break. Your writing might stink, but at least get the words flowing and some ideas formulated. Be disciplined even if you feel discouraged. Just keep working.
15. Take short breaks. Get up and eat something. Walk outside again. Run in place. Listen to music. Do some activities to recalibrate your brain and provide some energy. You’ll come back refreshed and ready for more.
16. Break your writing into chunks. If you know how long your piece has to be, break down the number of pages and how many pages you will write in an hour or an afternoon. Focus on the writing that doesn’t require a lot of brain power and work on that during your time frame.
17. Make love to your words. Metaphorically of course. View your writing as your beloved. Treat each word and sentence tenderly, and caress the most beauty and meaning from every one. When you aren’t in the mood, give instead of take. View your writing as an act of love and a gift you are offering. Then you humanize the entire experience.

Creating community: one of the biggest missing pieces in the marketing and PR puzzle. Whenever we present our accelerated marketing plans, we always talk about creating, building and nurturing a community.

In plumbing the depths of my experiences archive, I remembered this presentation I created four years ago. Dual cast to a live audience in the room and over the Internet, the presentation covered the five keys to creating your customer community. First posted in 2008, here’s the outline with 2010 updates. .

1. Discover who you are and how you relate to your community
Values + Communities = Core Business Values
values: how to determine your core values
communities: internal, external, vendors
business values
What types of communities do you belong to or resonate with – personally and professionally? Online and offline?

For me, my online connections become real life relationships that get nurtured and cared for at events like Social Media Club Chicago. When you see people frequently, you get to know them. Common sense – yes? What’s really intriguing for me is the ability to carry on simultaneous conversations face to face and screen to screen. What intrigues you?

2. Reveal how your community relates to you
Target x Questions = Answers + an active customer advisory board
current target market
interview questions
evaluating answers
Choose your top ten customers and interview them to find out how your business fits into their lives.

You [and your company] are who you hang with. So, choose your social media and IRL [in real life] friends and business associates carefully. Target your interactions to connect with people that bring you alive and make your more successful. Marathon runners train with marathon runners. Who’s running as fast as you? Who has a common course or finish line?

3. Listen to your customers tell your story
common vocabulary
case studies = successes
open lines of communication
Can you tell your story in your customer’s voice?

One client asked us to interview 43 people – that’s how many folks he thought he needed to hear from to be able to tell his company’s story. In the course of the interviews, a vocabulary developed, an approach took shape and a success theme got scripted. How do people talk about you and what you do? Last night someone told me I had the reputation of being very friendly and approachable – I treat everyone the same. While it felt good to hear that, it was also a call to action to keep being who I am. What’s your reputation?

4. Connect your inner circle of communities
who: customers, partners, vendors, personal
what: you do for them
what: they do for you
How do you fit together?

Some people never, ever, ever mix business with anything other than business. In their personal community, they’re more known for social, athletic, family or local leadership accomplishments than they are for professional pursuits. Social networking allows you to blur the borders and present a multi-dimension presence. How do your communities represent you? How do you represent your communities? How does your business get social?

5. Cascade communications in tiers
internal: inside
external: outside
online: on screens
offline: direct
in person: face to face
The most effective communication plan delivers consistent messaging to every audience via sequencing to maintain a visible presence in each community.
How do you draw your circles?

http://wiredprworks.com/2010/05/community-pr-relationship-circles/

When it comes to marketing in the current economy, small businesses need all the help they can get. They don’t have the ad budgets, the personnel or the time that the bigger competition has. But none of those factors really matter to search engines, and SEO is a great way to both level the playing field and steal marketshare.

Here are a few tips that small businesses can use to improve their SEO and user experience.

Content is still King. Search engines still love unique content, and the more useful content there is on your website, the more opportunities you give searchers to find your products and services. Rob Snell gave a fabulous presentation at PUBCON South, and one of the main takeaways was how to turn everything on an e-commerce site into content. Here are some ways to “free” extra content on your site. Here were some of his tips:

• Record everything and transcribe it all into text. Interviews, conversations, product DVD’s, personal opinions, etc.
• Turn support emails into FAQ pages on your site
• Turn PDF’s into HTML pages (although PDF files can rank on their own)
• Start generating videos of everything

Small businesses have a major advantage that most bigger businesses don’t:  A personal voice. By making your voice heard, you’re showcasing your authority in your market, and adding trust. Buyers love hearing recommendations or reviews, and are more influenced to buy from those vs. product feature and benefit pages. Consumers use search engines to research products, and other than the lowest price, they’re looking for recommendations. Give them some! If you have a catalog, make a buyers guide in addition to product listings. Show you’re an expert and turn your knowledge into personalized business. Teaching is a great way to make sales.

3. Optimize for local search

Odds are that your small business can take advantage of local search. 63% of consumers use search engines to research information about local companies. Start with Thomas’ excellent guide on local SEO tips that range from claiming your profile to adding media to submitting to content aggregators.

4. Improve your site’s speed

Small business sites can be notoriously slow. Site speed is usually one of the last things that small business owners care about. But now that Google has introduced speed into the ranking algorithm, it’s time to seriously start checking out how fast your site loads. But more importantly, when you improve your site’s speed, you’re also improving your customer’s experience. Don’t make users wait to buy your products! You can use tools like Web Page Analyzerand the Firefox extension YSlow! to see what’s taking your pages so long to load. If you’re using a blog or shopping cart software, search for caching plugins for your software.

5. Refine internal linking

Internal links can add value to your site considerably, but many small businesses don’t understand that you have to develop a linking mindset in order to really capitalize on it. It takes extra time to research old post links and include them in your articles, but the benefits are great. Sites like Copyblogger do an excellent job of referencing older posts in their articles. Not only does this strategy help with SEO, it also adds to the user experience, giving them more Think long and hard about your site’s linking architecture. Is your navigation schema getting to all of your content? Aside from adding sitemaps, related products and posts keep both visitors and search engines happy. Popular posts lists are also great for making sure your best content is getting seen and linked to.

6. Create content for people

If you’re generating content specifically for search engines, you’re missing a major chunk of your market. Humans don’t like to be bamboozled, and when they come to a page on your site that was obviously made for a search engine, they’ll leave in a hurry and never come back. Plus, only humans can link to your site. If you want to get more inbound links and retain customers, you need to write for customers. The goal to higher search results is still to get more people to your site. After all, search engines can’t buy anything from you.

7. Don’t fret about getting nofollow links

It’s easy to get carried away with only trying to get incoming links without the dreaded nofollow. But really, a link is still a link. If that link can bring in a potential customer, then you want it. If you’re only looking for specific types of incoming links, than odds are you’re missing lots of the low-hanging backlink fruit and worrying about the wrong things.

Who knows how long the nofollow link will be around? If you’re smart, you worry about what’s most important: creating great content. You can’t control how Google ranks things in the future. Focus on things you can control, like creating a killer experience for your customers. In the end, if you focus on giving your customers and visitors great content, many aspects of SEO will take care of itself. Great content attracts great links, especially when you promote it and leverage social SEO channels of distribution. If it’s good for your potential customers, odds are it’s good for SEO too. http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/05/7-seo-tips-small-business/

When you take away the high-tech veneer – the fancy apps etc.,-  and the various forms of Social Media are appraised for what they really are, things get pretty easy.  Social media are simply new communications tools and as such, the same basic principles for effective human communication apply and anyone can learn them.  In fact, everything you need to know to use Facebook,Twitter and the like you should have learned in Pre-School.  But in case you didn’t, here is a refresher:

1. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.Never put anything in digital form (email, wall post, tweet, whatever) that you are not comfortable sharing with the whole world for eternity.  Once you put something in digital form, it can potentially reach every person on earth until the end of time.  They don’t call it viral for nothing.  You have no control over the reach of your postings, so keep control over your content

Never be negative.  Ever.  No complaining.  No kvetching about anyone.  Negative comments when written on a screen, come off as petty and mean, much more so than is generally intended.  In the words of my mother, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

2.  Share.  Once you get on Social Media, say something.  Participate in the conversation.  Don’t just lurk.  Remember the golden rule?  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?  There is a reciprocity culture in Social Media and if you want people to pay attention to you, eg. by following you on Twitter or liking you on Facebook, pay attention to them.  Post things that may be useful to others.  Retweet or Share (on Facebook) something you  find interesting or amusing.  Comment on the posts of others.

3.  But don’t share too much. Though shalt not overtweet, or over post.  When people post too often, say six posts in a row on Twitter, it is oh-so-easy to just roll right through them.  Over-posters become like white noise.  So what is the right amount of posting?  It depends but bear in mind the old mouth-to-ears ratio comment.  It’s about right.  Listen twice as much as you speak.

4.   Content is King. Ok, so maybe you didn’t learn this one in pre-school but you should have because it is true.  Do not use Social Media tools to only promote whatever it is you may be selling.  To get people to pay attention to you and to keep them interested, you have to add value.  Your social media strategy should be to become an interesting and relevant voice in the conversation. When that is your focus, you are more likely to be successful so carefully consider the ratio of non-promotional content to promotional content in your postings.

http://socialmediatoday.com/school/199869