Blog, they say. That’s the best way to get your small business noticed, to raise your search engine rankings, to increase customer engagement, to imprint your brand on customers, and much more. It’s true that blogging has a lot of benefits for helping small businesses get noticed. But it’s not always an affordable form of marketing. Many small businesses struggle with investing adequate funds into their blogs because the capital doesn’t stretch as far as they hoped. As a result, the blog ends up published on a low-quality platform with short, unuseful content and poor imagery. This is unfortunate because…

If you didn’t already know, WordPress powers more than a quarter of all the websites on the Internet. There’s a reason why and if you are still on the fence, here’s why you want to use WordPress. Abundance of Help Because of its popularity, you can find all sorts of help on WordPress. Free discussion forums, tutorials, virtual assistants, and developers. Plenty of people out there providing help or some sort of service related to WordPress. If you are the DIY-er, that means you are rarely without guidance. If you prefer to outsource, guess what? There are plenty of people…

After I shared a simple method for keeping your social media streams busy, I was asked on Twitter by @sliceworks, Yeah, but how do you solve the problem of finding time to share all this content? That is an excellent and very valid question. The simple answer to it is, Scheduled times Let it occur naturally Scheduled Times Let’s tackle this one first. This all boils down to my complete belief in the Slight Edge or the Compound Effect. The premise is simple. Do something small every single day You’ve heard of it before. People tell you massive action = big…

Are you caught in the constant struggle to keep your social media profiles updated? I know the feeling. That’s why my social media accounts have languished for years. When I have more time to devote, there are spurts of sharing and engagement. When I don’t – which is most times – well… you can imagine. I wasn’t ready to give up though and recently started simply sharing 6 items every day. The results have been quite interesting. On Twitter, I went from these figures in March: To this in July – the first full month I started consistent, daily sharing. What I’m after are…

In the past, my experience with story-selling books and courses have not been great. This could be my own mental block. In my mind, you’re either a story-teller or you’re not. And, I think it’s not that easy to teach people to become story-tellers. It’s a challenging skill to master. As you can imagine, this made me quite skeptical when I got a review copy of Sell With A Story by Paul Smith. This is not Smith’s first book on using stories. He also authored Lead with a Story and Parenting with a Story, but I’ve read neither. This is my first introduction…

Everybody tells you. Don’t do everything. Outsource it. Get someone to help you. Focus on what you do best. They are right! But every time you try, you end up with: A design that is completely different than what you imagined. A project that seem to require more money at every turn. Someone who disappears. Sound familiar? There are some rotten workers out there for sure. I’ve hired freelancers since 2006. I have experienced every one of those and more. It is not easy to admit but these are the lessons I have learned. Reason 1: Not Defining Scope According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, scope…

We’ve been very fortunate to receive a copy of Tim Hughes and Matt Reynolds’ book, Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers Overall, I was a bit disappointed. It is likely due to my failure to fully understand who the author is talking to, and it is not for someone who operates an online business and already familiar with the ins and outs of using social media in your own business. That said, who is this book for? Sales professionals. Particularly those who operate in offline, not-so-connected industries, and more specifically, those in B2B. Even so, that’s a wide brush. If you are one…

It’s Monday. Are you excited to get going? Or are you dreading the grind? Are you passionate about what’s you are about to create this week? Or is work your enemy? Watch this… Don’t love your comfort zone too much. Security is over-rated. Don’t settle. Do not be that person who regrets not going after their passion on their death bed. Now is the time. Decide to do it now. Whatever it is. If you’re ready to start a business, do it today! Here’s one to get you started. “Launch A Profitable Podcast”.

A little reminder and encouragement. Business building is hard work. You probably have more failures than you care to admit. Just remember to rise again. Every. Single. Time.

So you took the experts’ advice. You created lead magnets, set up opt-in pages to collect leads. You work hard to keep your emails out of the spam box, promotional tabs, and what have you. And yet… Click throughs are dismal. Nobody responds when you try to engage them. Where did you go wrong? Click to download this entire process to developing an engaged list We’ve got you covered. Here are 29 simple steps you can start doing immediately to cultivate a more responsive list by creating a deeper relationship with your subscribers. Phase 1: Improve Your Subject Lines The subject line is undoubtedly the key…