So here it is….

Tip #1: Forum Marketing

Visit other network marketing sites like BetterNetworker.com and actively participate in discussion threads. Start a post, answer a question or give an opinion so you can enter your signature file. This provides exposure to your site as well as targeted traffic.

Tip #2: Create a Facebook Group or Fanpage

Use this free social site to brand yourself and attract your target market. By providing valuable content to your loyal following or fan base, you can invite them over to your blog.

Tip #3: YouTube Marketing

Video Marketing has a 400% response rate than that of print. Very powerful strategy that allows your prospect to see you, hear you and relate with you at some level. Once done uploading a video, be sure to have your Blog link in the description and make sure your video ends with you giving your prospect a call to action step to click on the link below the video to get more information at your blog.

Tip #4: Blog Commenting

Few nuggets on this tip. Not only are you doing the action but your learning from someone else’s blog post, your interacting with them, other networkers that frequent that site will get familiar with you and you will drive traffic to your blog in the process. Win Win for everyone.

Tip #5: Outbound Links

Utilizing Trackbacks, which is linking to another person’s wordpress blog. A trackback is automatically created which tells the other blogger where the link came from. Others can click that link and visit your site. Imagine a bridge between bloggers and there you go.

Tip #6: Yahoo Answers

Just heard about this one recently. Go to Yahoo! Answers, perform a search for your topic or niche and provide a small answer to a question your knowledgeable about. Reason I said small answer is because you’ll put a link pointing back to your blog that can provide a more complete solution to the original problem. Nice huh?

That’s it, Ladies and Gents! Again pick one or two of these tips, put them into action, master them, track your results, then use another tip. Happy Lead generating.

Brand is much more than a name or a logo. Brand is everything, and everything is brand.

Brand is your strategy. If you’re a consumer brand, brand is your products and the story that those products tell together. Ikea’s kitchen chairs’ tendency to fall apart after two years is part of the company’s brand. If you’re a humanitarian organization, brand is your aspirations and the progress you are making toward them. Share Our Strength’s audacious goal to end child hunger in America in five years is its brand. The work the organization is doing to get governor after governor on board is its brand. Its seriousness is its brand. Back in 1969 NASA didn’t have the best logo. But man did it have a brand. It has a nicer logo now — but the brand no longer stands for anything. If you don’t know where you’re going or how you’re going to get there, that’s your brand, no matter what fancy new name you come up with.

Brand is your calls to action. If Martin Luther King had offered people free toasters if they marched on Washington, that would have been his brand. Are your calls to action brave and inspiring or tacky? Are they consistent with some strategy that makes sense? Getting more Facebook “likes” isn’t a strategy, in and of itself. If you’re a humanitarian organization, the things you ask your constituents to do are your brand.

Brand is your customer service. If donors call your organization all excited and get caught up in a voicemail tree, can’t figure out who they should talk to, and leave a message for someone unsure if it’s the right person, that’s your brand. It says you don’t really care all that much about your donors. If they come to your annual dinner and can’t hear the speaker because of a lousy sound system, that’s your brand. It says that you don’t think it’s really important whether they hear what you have to say or not. If the clerk at your checkout counter is admiring her nails and talking on her cell phone, she’s your brand, whether she’s wearing one of the nice new logo caps you bought or not.

Brand is the way you speak. If you build a new website and fill it with outdated copy, you don’t have a new brand. If the copy is impenetrable — a disease of epidemic proportion in the humanitarian sector — that’s your brand. If you let social service jargon, acronyms, and convoluted abstractions contaminate everything you say, that’s your brand. If your annual report puts people to sleep, that’s your brand. If it’s trying to be all things to all people, that’s your brand.

Message is a central part of your brand, but message alone cannot make a great brand. How many times have you encountered a product or service that didn’t live up to what the copy writers told you about it? That disconnect is your brand.

Brand is the whole array of your communication tools. Brand is the quality of the sign on the door that says, “Back in 10 minutes.” It’s whether you use a generic voicemail system with canned muzak-on-hold, or whether you create your own custom program. The former says you are just like everyone else and you’re fine with that; the latter says you are original. You might have a pretty sale banner that adheres to all the right visual standards, but if it’s sagging and hung up with duct tape, that’s your brand. It says you don’t pay attention to the details. Can you imagine seeing a crooked banner with duct tape in an Apple store? Never. And that’s their brand. It says that the motherboard in the Mac isn’t hanging by a thread either.

In the digital age, user interface is your brand. If your website’s functionality frustrates people, it says that you don’t care about them. Brand extends even to your office forms, the contracts you send out, your HR manuals. Do you rethink traditional business tools or default to convention? The choice you make says a lot about how innovative your brand is.

Brand is your people. Brand is your people and the way they represent you. Having a good team starts with good hiring and continues with strong and consistent training and development. No matter how well your employees adhere to your new brand style guide, if they couldn’t care less about the job they’re doing, that’s your brand.

Brand is your facilities. Are the lights on, or is your team working in darkness? Is the place clean and uncluttered? Does it have signage that’s consistent with your visual standards? Does it look and feel alive? Your home is your brand.

Brand is your logo and visuals, too. A great brand deserves a great logo and great graphic design and visuals. It can make the difference when the customer is choosing between two great brands. But these alone cannot make your brand great.

Ultimately, brand is about caring about your business at every level and in every detail, from the big things like mission and vision, to your people, your customers, and every interaction anyone is ever going to have with you, no matter how small.

Whether you know it or not, whether you have a swanky logo or not, you do have a brand. The question is whether or not it’s the brand you really want.

The line between the two professions is blurry indeed, and we shouldn’t be surprised that comics like Jimmy Carr and Tim Sidell (aka @badbanana) had prior careers in marketing and advertising. They likely learned a lot from us! But now it’s our turn. Here are three important principles to bolster your social media strategy, extracted from the tips of the stand up trade.

1. Engage Your Hecklers

Hecklers make stand-up comedy a full contact sport. In smaller clubs, where patrons set their drink on the edge of the stage, back and forth with audience members is almost always part of the act.  And it doesn’t go away on bigger stages, either. I saw Jerry Seinfeld at Foxwoods a couple of weeks ago, in a massive ballroom, and he lambasted a heckler who was sitting at the back of the 2nd balcony, at least 70 yards from his mic stand. Detouring out of rehearsed material and into a conversation with a heckler is in a comic’s blood, and it should so too be part of how you use social media.

Marketing Takeaway:
You can schedule posts all you want, but a truly remarkable social media strategy is steered by someone who can go “off-script” to respond to unsatisfied customers or brand detractors. Doing so on the open and transparent forums will go miles to repair relationships, as well as increase the confidence of onlookers.

2. Use Props

Who remembers Gallagher? He was a standup in the late 80’s and early 90’s who made a name for himself by smashing watermelons with sledgehammers on stage (talk about remarkable!).  Folks with front row seats to his shows typically found rain coats waiting for them on their chairs, like they were opting for the “Splash Zone” at a Sea World show.  His use of props and penchant for liquid explosions added a dimension to his jokes, persona and performances that other comics didn’t have.

Marketing Takeaway:
Apply that principle to your social media strategy by including videos, pictures, surveys, and other types of dynamic content. Linking to website content is great, but text is one-dimensional and can get boring for folks following your brand on places like Facebook and Twitter.  Videos and imagery of you doing what you do, will enrich and deepen thier understanding of who you are.

3. Know Why They Laugh

George Carlin was a philosopher for the damned.  Bill Cosby satirized the nuclear family. Sam Kinnison shocked audiences with screaming serenades to ex-girlfriends.  They knew what chords they struck with their audiences, and wrote and performed material with those chords in mind. Whether they did ‘focus groups of one’ by the bar after the show, or measured reverb on the laugh-track machine – we’ll never know – but they knew what they were doing.

Marketing Takeaway:
You should likewise always keep a hand on your audiences pulse.  Be cognizant of what they like – doing so will help you avoid posting content that gets crickets, as they say. Measure interactions and traffic from social media as often as you can, and use that data to inform what you share next.

What other comedic lessons have you put to work in your maketing strategy?

But that doesn’t mean that you should ban guns — or snub social media like Facebook and Twitter. Companies shouldn’t be afraid of social media just because a few people shot themselves in the foot.

In fact, you’re making a big mistake if you’re NOT using social media. Twitter says it has about 200 million registered users and Facebook claims 600 million active users — you can’t ignore perhaps nearly a billion potential customers.

“If you’re not going where everyone is going to sit and talk and chat, then you’re going to miss out on an opportunity to be part of the conversation,” said Jason Sadler, who runs social media company “I Wear Your Shirt.” And here’s the best part, it’s cheap! You can sign up for a Twitter or Facebook account for free. And it’s far cheaper to hire a social media expert — in house or through a company like “I Wear Your Shirt” — than it is to make a commercial or buy advertising. In fact, social media companies like “I Wear Your Shirt” saw their business soar during the recession because they could get a lot of bang for a couple of bucks.

Plus, it’s a great way to interact with your most loyal fans and even reward them with things like free content and deals.

Your best “experts” when it comes to social media are your interns and junior employees. They grew up on this technology, using it every day, and they’ve probably experienced a mishap — either personally or through one of their friends. But, you can’t just hand it over to them carte blanche. Use them for their expertise but treat it like any corporate correspondence and make sure it’s vetted first. And make sure it’s clear to the person you have updating your pages: No updating their personal account at work.

One of my favorite Twitter feeds is from the Zappos CEO. That’s right, from a SHOE WEB SITE. Why? He makes you feel like you’re friends with him, sending you interesting links about business and technology, offering a few personal anecdotes and then working in a few promos.  You can’t just use it for promos — no one’s going to want to tune in just for advertising!

And don’t be afraid to be funny! What are some of the links you send around the most? The funny ones. So, it never hurts to have fun on your Twitter feed. Just keep it in check. Don’t tell any jokes you wouldn’t say in front of your kids.

And here’s the most important thing — If you goof, own it. So many times when politicians or others goof, they try to deny it and hope it will go away. The Internet will never let something like that go away. So, the best way to deal with it is to own it.

When the Red Cross’s social media person accidentally posted a Tweet meant for her personal account about buying beer, they immediately apologized, and, owned it — with a dash of humor. They came back with this Tweet: “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.”

After you have researched and outlined your business model, would a logo or would a website be the next logical step? Why do you think one is more important over the other? Have you ever had to make a choice to pick one over the other? How has it affected you and your business?

I am a logo designer to the core and I would probably brand our holiday activities, certain parts of our home, create logos for our kids and important events and occasions if I am not kept in check. So going by that alone, I would say that a “logo” is more important for a business than its website. Having said that, 10 years ago when we launched a website that grew exponentially over the years, we didn’t give its logo much thought. Despite having no unique identity, the website became extremely popular and generated a lot of interest and a lot of revenue. In retrospect, when I look back at that time now, I wish we had branded it formally and rightfully. It would have been that much more identifiable now.

In my opinion, a logo trumps over a website for any business. When we have a business idea, a brainwave, a startup dream; it is very easy to get carried away and rush things. “Do it before someone else does!” your mind tells you. “Just put a name together, slap on a clipart and get the ball rolling!” it goads you on. “The website is going to cost heaps of money, so better save up on your logo costs because you really shouldn’t be paying to get a logo made or wasting your own time on it!” your brain advises you. So we rush things in our race to get there first, to land that first client, to make that inaugural sale. But in doing so, we are being extremely short sighted. We turn away a long term relationship for a quick one night stand. I have made that very same mistake every single time I launched a website until LBOI happened. Now I truly believe in giving a business the respect it deserves. And I educate my clients on the importance of having a unique identity, tirelessly.

When a child is born, you don’t slap on a designer nappy, put on stylish headgear, call it “B” and shove it in front of the world to announce its arrival. Then why do you do it for your business? The local electrician in our suburb doesn’t have a logo and yet has a booming business. So whats the need? All I can say is that I forget his name and remember the name from the catchy logo of the “other electrician” for whom I search on Google and call every time I have wiring issues.

Just the other day, we spotted that Gap’s logo on theirwebsite had changed to this new version. There’s not much to say about our thoughts on it, other than we are all in agreement here at Brian Joseph Studios that the new Gap logo is a shocking direction to go with such an iconic brand.

The revenue issues Gap have been experiencing recently doesn’t have much to do with the branding. The problems all stem from the generic identity of the clothing, the lack of style and mundane fashion involved in their products. With this new brand identity, it appears that the corporate suits at Gap headquarters felt that the traditional Gap brand was partly to blame.

The gradient of the logo really cheapens the overall identity and it lacks any sort of strength or visual interest. It’s a struggle to really understand how this new logo came about, what its purpose is and why it fails on so many levels. I’m sure we’ll find out as the days go by……

The week’s discussions reinforced two important points for me – firstly, that emerging markets like Turkey are absolute goldmines of ecommerce opportunity just waiting to be explored, and secondly, just how important it is for companies to think about how their branding will travel across cultures before they go multinational.

E-commerce is growing much faster in emerging markets than in its traditional heartlands of North America and Western Europe. Turkey, for instance, is the fifth largest internet consumer in Europe, behind only Germany, Russia, the UK and France, with some 35 million web users – that’s just under half the population – despite ADSL only being introduced in 2003.

The trend bears out in other emerging markets as well – Chinese is the second most widely used language online behind English (with almost 300 million more users than the third most popular language, Spanish). Meanwhile, in India internet use has doubled since 2007, from 42 million to 81 million users.

So it seems that, just as ‘tele-commuting’ may be the future of work, ‘tele-exporting’ will be the logical future of business, especially for start-ups without the ready resources to get established on-the-ground in foreign markets.

But what does a company need to do in order to ensure success across several different markets?

Essentially, the point that keeps coming up in discussion is that you need to think global from the start – even when you’re drafting up your very first business plan on your kitchen table, before you’ve even started looking for investors, you should be thinking about which foreign markets you can expand into when your domestic market is solid, and what those markets will require for the ‘transcreation’ of your message across language and cultural barriers.

This means taking a few different things into consideration – first of all, your brand name. Ideally, you can use a brand name that doesn’t need to be translated as it has no meaning outside of your brand – think of Coke, as opposed to Mountain Dew, or Hertz, as opposed to Budget Cars.

It’s also worthwhile thinking about what values your brand is going to embody, and how these values will be understood and appreciated by different cultures. For instance, positioning your brand as the ‘affordable’ or ‘budget’ option may work well in cash-conscious markets like the UK, but in societies where flaunting your money is the norm and budget options are seen as tacky, such as the UAE or Lebanon, your branding will need to do a full 180 degree turn.

Your international web presence is also due consideration – it might be worth buying up your brand’s domain name under several country codes, in case you need to use those domains in the future, and when it comes to your website translation and design, it’s also crucial to think ahead as to how easily you’ll be able to switch the language of the content (Unicode UTF-8 covers nearly every written script) and design aspects, such as the navigation and images (CSS keeps your content separate from design).

These are just a few things to keep in mind about the potential for your brand to go international – because in a market place where constant diversification is essential for survival, exporting to foreign markets using the internet is one of the safest and simplest options, if you factor it into your plan from the outset.

As a small business owner, how can you get customers to swoon? Here are 11 practical suggestions.

1. Monitor the social networks for people talking about your company. When they’re saying positive stuff, say thank you. When it’s negative, get more details and then say thank you. When they’re asking questions, answer them and say thank you. When you find people talking about your company, respond.

2. Show up places they wouldn’t expect. Your customers have certain places where they hang out on the Web, even outside of Twitter and Facebook. Find their local watering holes and be there when they need you. Don’t hijack their conversation or try to sell your services; just be part of their world and let them know you’re there.

3. Create a blog, write content designed to address customers’ problems. Check your site logs, customer e-mails and/or complaint section to identify your customers’ biggest issues/problems/concerns. Write content that will take these issues away. Solving someone’s problem and making them look good is the best way to make them fall in love with you. Women have known this for years.

4. Plant small surprises. Whether it’s a surprise Thanks For Commenting page for new commenters, a small gift included with their order or chocolate sent on their birthday, offer a small gesture that your customers wouldn’t expect. You’ll rock their world and tie that unexpected experience into their perception of your brand.

5. Start relevant conversations. Whether it’s on your blog, a social media site like Facebook, or in a competitor’s forums, start conversations with qualified experts about topics relevant to your customers. Don’t use these conversations to sell; just share your advice and act as a helpful member of society. If your customers want to know more about how you can help them, they’ll know how to get in touch with you.

6. Guest post on their favorite blogs. You love bacon. And you get really excited when you find other people who love bacon. Why? Because you feel an instant connection with them because you already have something in common. Guest post on your audience’s favorite blogs and show them you love their favorite blogs as much as they do. It will create an affinity that never existed before.

7. Admit you don’t know everything. Woo your customers by asking them questions. Hold polls. Ask for constant feedback. Invite customers in and make them part of your sales process.

8. Be responsive. When someone takes the time to e-mail you, leave a comment or write you a letter, respond. Timely. Always.

9. Write for your audience, not for the search engines. The search engines may bring you traffic, but they don’t bring you customers. To find customers, you need to solve their problems and give them something they can use. That’s what your content should focus on–not on what’s popular or what search the engines want you to write about.

10. Make your blog and website accessible and easy to navigate. Don’t make your customers feel stupid. They’ll leave.

11. Build your own network, but don’t lose sight of your core readers. Go out and build your small business. Grow your network, create relationships and network your way into powerful partnerships. But don’t lose sight of the people you’re trying to reach. They are your core and the people who, at the end of the day, matter most to your business.

Those are some ways I think businesses can woo customers and turn them loyal to your brand. What’s worked for your company? What programs do you have in place to attract and retain customers?

In fact, the actions required to start and run a business are well documented, the subject of many books, and taught in college courses across the land. As confirmed by a recent book on this subject by John Spence, Awesomely Simple, turning business ideas into action consists of six essential strategies:

• Build a vivid vision. Having a clear, vivid, and compelling vision in your head is without question an essential component in building a successful company. But that’s not good enough. The vision has to be documented and communicated in a way that makes it vivid to every member of your team, your customers, and your investors.

• Team with the best people. The best people are highly talented and motivated individuals who are also masters of collaboration. The future of your startup is directly tied to the quality of talent you can attract and keep. You must create a winning culture that people love.

• Practice robust communication. Open, honest, frank, and courageous communication, both inside and outside the organization, is critical. The key skills can be learned, and include deep listening, logic versus emotion, and reading body language. According to Spence, this is the biggest problem he has to deal with in client organizations worldwide.

• Cultivate a sense of urgency. Get things done. A fast, agile, adaptable organization makes the important things happen now. Urgency is allergic to bureaucracy. Reward fast action. You set the model for your startup. You become what you focus on and become like the people you spend time with.

• Enforce disciplined execution. Build a performance-oriented culture that demands quality in every operation, encourages continuous innovation, and refuses to tolerate mediocrity. Most organizations execute only 10 to 15 percent of their major goals. Do a periodic effectiveness audit to check your operation. Then fix it.

• Show extreme customer focus. Put feedback mechanisms in place to know that you are consistently delivering what customers truly value. Attitude and listening are the keys. Superior customer focus can drive as much as an 85 to 104 percent increase in your profitability.

It should be pretty easy to see the interdependence and synergy among the six principles, each building on the next, all the various elements working together to create a highly successful business. But you don’t have to go out and address all six principles right now. Pick one that will create leverage immediately, and begin with it.

Spence defines three simple watchwords that will lead to business excellence – focus, discipline, and action. If you are missing any of these, the outcome will most certainly be mediocre. Once you start accepting mediocrity, you become a magnet for mediocrity.

Your great ideas deserve more than mediocre actions. Simple actions done in an outstanding fashion are far more effective than complex and time consuming actions done poorly (thrashing). Also, don’t be fooled into thinking that “simple” means “easy to implement”. Start now to turn your innovative ideas into action. Every entrepreneur loves a challenge.

Many fall into one of two major categories. The first category is goals we set that we have a 95 percent chance of accomplishing–mostly because we have done it before, so the likelihood is high that we’ll succeed. (Our overeater above almost didn’t pig out because she was feeling poorly. But she pulled herself together and gorged.) The other category is goals where there is a 95 percent degree of uncertainty that we’ll accomplish them, and we have never done it before, but we would like to. There are benefits to both kinds of goals.

You might think the first kind of goal is for slackers, but there is some value in setting goals that you’re confident you’ll achieve. Using that confidence as a springboard for trying new things can be a useful thing–kind of like doing the perfect swan dive as a warm-up for an Olympic-caliber diver. The problem is if you stop at those, you don’t get to really compete with the big dogs.

Let’s dive into the second kind of goal–the uncertain one.

Goal-setting has been written about every which way. This article is a little bit about setting, but more about accomplishing the goal. The kind of goals you set is certainly important, but for the sake of brevity, I’m going to assume you’re setting an uncertain goal that has some reasonable chance of success. The human brain is set up to help you achieve goals that you sincerely believe are achievable. If you want to stretch yourself or your business to new heights, here are my thoughts on goal-setting and goal-getting.

1. Dream, but be motivated.
   It’s OK to dream and have big goals. But if you’re actually going to accomplish them, you have to DO something about them, and that takes motivation. The very first thing you need to achieve a goal is a reason and deep desire to achieve it. The path to achieving goals is fraught with boredom, excuses and difficulty. You will have a lot of opportunities to talk yourself out of the goal. But if you can keep going back to the reason and your desire for the goal, those will help you stay on track.
2. Break it down into 24-hour bites.
   The brain has a built in B.S. monitor that rings out when all you do is set an enormous goal but then don’t manage it to 24-hour cycles–daily mini goals. If your goal is to shed 50 pounds, your brain doesn’t see you 50 pounds lighter in 24 hours, but it can see you five ounces lighter in that time. Set your goals so that your B.S. alarm doesn’t go off. To prevent that alarm bell, the mini goal must be reasonable and sustainable. Losing one pound in a day is doable, but it’s not reasonable or sustainable, so the B.S. sentinel will scream its head off, and you’ll eventually stop going after your big goal.
3. Do something daily.
   Nothing replaces repetition and creating momentum like doing something to get you closer to your goal every day. You will naturally take some time off, but if you don’t take seriously the first 30 days of work on the goal and use them to create momentum, it’s almost guaranteed you won’t get there. The first 30 days are critical to convincing your B.S. monitor that you’re serious. Organizationally, it convinces colleagues you’re serious.
4. Adapt and adjust.
   As you work on your daily mini goals and toward the bigger goal, be willing to adapt. Make the mini goals more difficult if they seem too easy. Make them easier if they become too taxing. The main thing is that if your brain deems the mini goal to be too difficult, you’ll quit. If it’s too easy, you’re running in place. Find the middle so you have advancement each day.
5. Feedback and reward.
   The human brain responds to two things to learn and attain new behaviors and knowledge: feedback and reward. As you go about your goal-getting, be brave enough to request feedback from others, and then reward yourself each day for accomplishing your little goals. Research has shown that even keeping a calendar where you put a little gold star on the days you are successful (a la kindergarten) can be effective positive reinforcement. The visual is enough reward for the brain to know it’s doing something right.
6. Schedule slop time.
   When I was a television news producer, the worst thing you could do going into a newscast is be so tightly scheduled that there was no room for error. Every newscast was filled with anchors reading more slowly than you counted on, reports going longer than they were supposed to and other time-gobblers. The good producers always included “slop time” in their show. They would leave one to two minutes of unscheduled time to be stolen by the gobblers. You should do the same with your goals. Schedule time when you’re not focused on your goal, when you get to cheat on it or not do it at all. You’re going to do it anyway, so you might as well allow yourself the room to be human so you don’t feel dejected by temporarily ignoring your goal. Just don’t make it a habit.
7. Know you’re going to get bored.
   Doing something in small pieces each day can lead to boredom. Do it anyway. Achieving goals isn’t always about a daily cork-popping ceremony to celebrate something sensational you did. It’s usually about sticking to the daily, boring small stuff. Get that right, make it slightly more difficult each day, and do it again and again. People who achieve their goals usually do it because they kept going when it gets tough and boring.

There is no secret formula to success. Sure, luck comes into play, but it’s foolhardy to count on that. Mostly, it’s having a direction and place you want to get to and then showing up for the daily grind. Hopefully, it’s not about overeating. Go get ‘em.