There’s no question you can start and grow a business without a marketing plan. However, I can tell you from personal experience, if you’re feeling stuck and can’t get to the next level, it’s probably because you never took the time to put a marketing plan together.

Having a marketing plan really is the key to growing and sustaining a successful, profitable business. Otherwise all you’re doing is winging it, and winging it only takes you so far.

So if you’re ready to craft your 2012 marketing plan but you’re not sure where to start, read on — I’m going to walk you through 3 steps to get you there.

1. Start with the end goal. If you don’t know where you’re going, then you really don’t need a plan. (And it’s impossible to plan without knowing where you want to end up anyway.)

It’s probably easiest to start with the money. How much do you want to make in 2012? Write that down. You probably also want to divide it up into monthly or quarterly goals so you know how much you need to make each month or quarter to reach that goal.

Now figure out how you’re going to make that monthly or quarterly figure. How many of your products/programs/books/service packages do you need to sell to hit that number? Write all that down too.

2. Put the big blocks in place. In order to meet your quotas are you going to need to do some launches? Put those in first. Or is there something else you need to do to get clients or customers? (Attend networking events, host teleclass, etc.) Make sure those are all accounted for before you do anything else.

Once you’ve put in the big blocks, take a moment and eyeball your calendar. Is it packed with launch after launch? Or do you have hardly anything in there? Check that it’s balanced — you want to have enough launches or big marketing events in there to generate some visibility and momentum for your business but you don’t want so many you feel exhausted and overwhelmed just looking at your calendar.

3. Fill in the details. Marketing is a dance — a dance between promoting and giving. Creating and building relationships then harvesting those relationships. You need to make sure you have all both things covered. (And if you’re wondering what I mean by marketing activities that create and build relationships, I’m talking about doing things like an ezine or answering people’s question on Facebook — content-rich activities that don’t obviously lead to a promotion.)

You may also want to take the time to actually fill in the actual launch steps. When are you doing the preview call? When do you want the emails to go out? When are you going to have all the copy written?

The more specific plan, the easier it’s going to be to execute. Not only will you know exactly what you’re supposed be doing at all times but your team will be able to help you a lot easier.

About the Author:

Michele PW (Michele Pariza Wacek) is your Ka-Ching! Marketing strategist and owns Creative Concepts and Copywriting LLC, a premiere direct response copywriting and marketing company that helps entrepreneurs attract more clients, sell more products and services and boost their business.  To grab your FREE “Ka-Ching! Business Kit” with a FREE CD visit http://www.MichelePW.com/freecd

Do you need a leg up to jump start your career or business venture? Or launch and grow your small business? Well, we all do sometimes, especially when young and inexperienced. Not even our closest friends can always help us and give the right advice or support that we really need. Thankfully, there are social networks and communities where we can connect with seasoned professionals who can provide us with valuable tips, potential partners and like-minded people with similar interests, aspirations and goals.

Here are the 12 most useful social networks for entrepreneurs, small businesses and business professionals who are building their career.

1. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world’s largest and most important social network for business professionals with over 120 million members. Obviously, it is a must social networking site for everyone who is serious about her or his career and business. If you are not convinced, check out how many members use the following in their profile:

• 1,553,123 LinkedIn search results for “business owner”
• 1,532,870 results for “CEO”
• 2,420,655 for “general manager”
• 325,807 for “entrepreneur”
• 619,354 results for “business expert”

LinkedIn is therefore great for developing relationships and meeting people that you may want to work with. Furthermore, LinkedIn company pages can help you to increase visibility and brand awareness, as well as attract new customers through recommendations.

2.Viadeo

Viadeo is a network for entrepreneurs, managers and business owners with 35 million members worldwide. Founded in France in 2004, it is very popular among professionals from western Europe. Viadeo can help you to identify useful contacts, share information and knowledge, find new leads and partnership opportunities, showcase your expertize and strengthen your personal brand, discover and recruit talent or get recruited.

3. Xing

Xing is a social network for business professionals with more than 11 million members globally. Through Xing you can find new contacts, experts, colleagues, partners and jobs, or get headhunted. You can also discover events, groups and companies of interest.

4. Ryze

Ryze is a network for smaller business professionals. It helps the members to make and grow connections, and especially to “rise-up” through quality networking. You can network to build your career, grow your business or make sales. On Ryze you can customize your profile page, send messages to other members, join groups, add friends and keep in touch with them.

5. Biznik

Biznik is based on a premise that “it sucks growing a business alone”. This is simply a community of entrepreneurs and small businesses dedicated to helping each other succeed. Biznik is about sharing ideas, not resumes. It is targeted to people who are building real businesses, not looking for their next job.

6. Cofoundr

Cofoundr is a fast growing social network for entrepreneurs. This is a community of startup founders such as CEOs, advisers, investors, programmers, developers and designers. By joining this community you can find co-founders, build teams and get advice.

7. PartnerUp

PartnerUp is a social network for small businesses. As a small business owner, you can use it to connect with professionals who can help you build and grow your small business, join discussions or get advice.

8. Ecademy

Ecademy is a business community for business owners and entrepreneurs to connect, share knowledge, support and transact with one another. Ecademy helps you to connect to the right people, market your business and grow revenue.

9. Entrepreneur

EntrepreneurConnect is a social community founded by Entrepreneur.com. It is intended for entrepreneurs who seek to connect, share expertise and network with their peers. Users can also promote their products and services.

10. Startup Nation

StartupNation is a free service founded by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. Startup Nation offers lots of useful resources like helpful articles, step-by-step guides, expert blogs. Members can also join very active small business and entrepreneur forums.

11. FledgeWing

FledgeWing is an online community for aspiring student entrepreneurs. It provides entrepreneurial students the opportunity to connect with professionals and mentors in their field of interest, have their ideas tested out with other users on the site and get advice on launching and growing their start-up.

12. Young Entrepreneur

YoungEntrepreneur is one of the largest online forum communities for entrepreneurs worldwide founded back in 1999.

Have you joined any of these communities yet? Or some other? Please share your experiences and opinions on networking for business.

About the author:

Goranka is an online marketing specialist and a small business consultant as well as Internet enthusiast. She is also an executive editor of a Serbian marketing blog.

I’m always looking for ways to improve productivity in selling because I know that it’s what makes the difference in the long-term. Productivity measuring makes more sense when you actually break down your working hours, days and months into some kind of programme where you can monitor progress over a period of time. If you put sticky notes on your wall instead of putting information into your desktop calendar, you won’t realistically notice if this creates beneficial results after just one day of trying, will you?

Make a to Do List

Just get a notebook and write down a list of 10 to do’s at the beginning of each day. Make sure that you write them out in order of importance and cross them off the list as you complete them. Don’t do the easier tasks first as this could create problems later in the day. People by nature tend to leave the uglier tasks to the last if they are given the choice and I couldn’t see myself making 20 cold calls in the last 45 minutes of the day. The most difficult tasks normally require more energy and drive and this is usually much stronger in the earlier part of the day.

Set Mini Goals

Setting mini goals each day is a great way of being more productive in selling. There’s nothing worse than setting goals that you will never achieve. Not only is this very disheartening, but it stops you from continuing the highly successful habit of goal setting. Remember the golden rule here is set mini goals every morning that will increase productivity, and monitor the success rate to see which ones work best.

Reward Yourself for Achievements

When you see that your mini goals have brought some positive results you are perfectly entitled to reward yourself for a job well done. I’ve seen situations in larger corporations where sales people don’t get enough thanks for their hard work. I’m sure that you will agree with me when I say that I believe that this is a huge mistake that can have very negative repercussions. Thanking people for their efforts breeds loyalty and consistency and is a must do for anyone managing a sales team. Great performers sometimes get taken for granted but they could quickly change their tune if they don’t feel appreciated.

Focus on Single Tasks in Blocks of Time

I’ve found this method of working to be extremely effective in terms of increasing sales productivity. It often happens in sales that you find yourself doing two or three different tasks at the same time. Maybe you’re answering an email from an angry customer while at the same time you’re on the phone to another client. Then on top of all this, a colleague walks up to you and asks you how to work the fax machine. All this multi-tasking gives you the feeling that you’re really busy and you’re getting loads of stuff done. Often the reality is very different because with multi-tasking you end up doing lots of things badly. What works much more effectively is to allocate blocks of time to particular tasks. For example, you can set aside 60 minutes for replying to customer emails and during this time you must switch off your phone and make yourself unavailable from any kind of disturbance. This will produce quality work and quality results. After such discipline you will also feel less stressed and more satisfied with the quality of your work.

Brainstorm New Methods

One final method that has really helped me to improve my productivity levels in selling is the simple old- fashioned idea of putting pen to paper and scratching my head for new ideas. We get so used to working in a certain way that we just don’t stop and verify if it’s the most efficient way of using our time and energy. This is why it pays to review our daily tasks and work out which ones are most important towards reaching our objectives and which ones could possibly be removed or assigned to someone else.

About the Author:

David Lynch is a Sales Training Designer & Accomplished Author. He has more than 20 years of experience in a variety of industries including software, insurance & hospitality. If you would like to learn more sales skills from David you can download a Free Copy of his E-book “25 Mistakes To Avoid When Selling” at http://www.saleswillgrow.com/freesalestraining2.html

Article Contributed by Lisa Cherney

I had no idea the twists and turns my business would take when I first left corporate America. When I started out, I thought I had it in the bag! I had worked for some of the biggest names out there, I knew how to market. But… something happened along my journey. I don’t like to use the word mistake, so I’ll call it a glitch. A glitch with a purpose.

When I started my business, I have to admit I thought it would be easy. After all, I had marketed for some of the biggest players out there! But I quickly learned that marketing for a major corporation and marketing for entrepreneurs require two very different approaches. Through this experience, I found my forte’: I had a way of asking just the right question to bring out someone’s brilliance and guide their marketing.

Working with entrepreneurs taught me how vital it is to be conscious about your marketing. It’s the core strategy behind what I teach. It’s why I named my business Conscious Marketing! But here’s where my head got in the way of my heart: I had an extensive marketing background. I played hardball with some of the top advertising agencies. I thought I had it going on! I didn’t think I needed any help, coaching or mentoring.

I was wrong.

And this was the birth of my own conscious marketing. Here I was painting this beautiful marketing portrait for my clients, and it just wasn’t setting with them. The clients I was working with didn’t feel right bragging about themselves like my corporate clients did. That’s when I had a light-bulb moment: they didn’t see themselves the way I saw them! How the heck were they going to get “out there” and impact their sphere of influence if they didn’t feel it for themselves?

I needed to find a way for people to find their own path to selling in a genuine, authentic manner. The glitch – I was not having success with my own marketing. But this glitch had a purpose, which was to show me that all of the marketing strategies and techniques that I had learned from top marketing and ad agencies didn’t work for entrepreneurs, and they didn’t work for me!

As entrepreneurs, we have to be clear in our marketing message. What you say or don’t say will impact your results, and in a huge way. You have to be real. Working through this concept allowed me to pass this transformational power of the message on to my clients. It took me a year to pay attention, and joining a mastermind group and allowing myself to be coached was a key part of the journey. This struggle had a purpose, and it was the birth of my own conscious marketing.

Now, about the rabbit. The holidays are coming, and one of my favorite things to do during this season is to watch The Velveteen Rabbit with my daughter. I love the part when the little boy, who is the rabbit’s best friend and just saw him fly, says “How did you know you could do that?” The rabbit simply responds, “How did you know you couldn’t?” Imagine if we all felt this way and focused on what we can do rather than what we can’t.

What do you do and who is it for? This foundational piece must be in place for you to fly.

About the Author

Lisa Cherney, a.k.a. the Juicy Marketing Expert, founded Conscious Marketing 12 years ago to help small business owners find their authentic marketing voice, attract their ideal clients and increase their sales. Following her own Stand Out & Be Juicy program, which centers on owning your unique self and laser-focus marketing, Lisa has tripled her income while working part-time.

Prior to Conscious Marketing, Lisa worked with many Fortune 500 companies, including AT&T, Lipton, Nissan, Blue Cross and Equal. She is a highly sought after speaker and often shares the stage with experts such as Jack Assaraf (The Secret), Jack Canfield and Jill Lublin. Learn more about Lisa at www.consciousmarketing.com or call 887-771-0156.

Article Contributed by Lisa Cherney

I was kicked out of corporate America. Literally. I was let go three times in two years! It was difficult at the time, but now I see – the struggle had a purpose. Because of that trial, I found my true calling: helping business owners find their voice, get on that soapbox, and attract their ideal clients like moths to light.

When I started my business, I have to admit I thought it would be easy. After all, I had marketed for some of the biggest players out there! But I quickly learned that marketing for a major corporation and marketing for entrepreneurs require two very different approaches. Through this experience, I found my forte’: I had a way of asking just the right question to bring out someone’s brilliance and guide their marketing.

In truth, many people are insecure when talking about what they do. Consequently, they’re not “out there” like they need to be. They need more clients, but they hate speaking in public. They have a website, but the message isn’t representing their abilities in the best possible way. They don’t like pumping up their accomplishments because it feels like bragging. Or, they feel that no one really cares about all that anyway. They couldn’t be more wrong!

People want to know all that about you. And how are you going to be “out there” if you don’t feel comfortable talking about yourself and your unique way of helping people? I realized I needed to find a way for people to find their own words. And it had to start with me. This was like a glitch with a purpose for me! The purpose was to show me that all of the marketing strategies I had learned from the corporate world don’t work for the entrepreneur. And this went for me, too.

It’s easy to feel like you’re making progress when you are busy all day. But when you don’t get results, and your bank account is at an all-time low, it’s easier to blame something other than yourself, like the economy. When you only look at the external cause, you overlook the true source of the problem – your marketing message is not clear!

Every entrepreneur needs a soapbox. You need to know how to access words that you can utilize in any marketing situation. They should roll off your tongue with passion as their source. That is a true soapbox! Use these words anytime someone asks you what you do. When you do, you will know exactly what to say when you encounter your Ideal Clients, and you will in turn begin to love working with every client you have!

You know who your non-ideal clients are. If you market to everybody, you’re marketing to nobody. So get on your soapbox, deliver the right message to the right audience, and find the people who want the transformation that you offer. Find the clients who want what you have!

About the Author
Lisa Cherney, a.k.a. the Juicy Marketing Expert, founded Conscious Marketing 12 years ago to help small business owners find their authentic marketing voice, attract their ideal clients and increase their sales. Following her own Stand Out & Be Juicy program, which centers on owning your unique self and laser-focus marketing, Lisa has tripled her income while working part-time.

Prior to Conscious Marketing, Lisa worked with many Fortune 500 companies, including AT&T, Lipton, Nissan, Blue Cross and Equal. She is a highly sought after speaker and often shares the stage with experts such as Jack Assaraf (The Secret), Jack Canfield and Jill Lublin. Learn more about Lisa at www.consciousmarketing.com or call 887-771-0156.

If you go to work every day, you might as well go all the way and shoot for the pinnacle of your profession. It’s a competitive world, so set your sights high. If you’re going to take the risk and invest the time, strive for greatness.

Ever since Jim Collins wrote his best-selling book, Good to Great, in 2001, business people worldwide have been fixated on greatness. Why do some companies do so well when a similar competitor languishes? Why do some companies transition from being merely successful to being truly great? What traits and behaviors separate the good from the great?

Of course, good-versus-great questions apply not only to companies; they can be asked of people who want to be great salespersons or marketers.

And remember, everyone is in sales and marketing regardless of their title.

Whether you’re selling medical equipment, working in business development or brokering international business transactions, it’s frankly easy to fail. Salespersons, marketers and dealmakers in every profession commonly fail. Some succeed, but only a tiny percentage achieves greatness.

The question then is what sales-and-marketing traits will lead you to the top of your profession?

Character – Great professionals are ethical and honest. They don’t tell a client or colleague what he or she wants to hear, it’s what they need to hear. Leaders with character tend to hire employees who are also upstanding citizens. Together, they attract clients of character. Everybody wins.

Be competitive – “Second don’t mean nothin’,” said Hall of Fame football coach Barry Switzer who led the Oklahoma Sooners to three national championships and the Dallas Cowboys to the Superbowl. Play to win. Be persistent. Don’t let anything fall through the cracks. Keep track of your competition and do what it takes to run at least a couple steps ahead of them. Be bold for the world has no room for shrinking violets.

Interpersonal skills – It sure helps if you possess some charisma, but rule number one is to listen. Great professionals listen and truly HEAR. When you are engaged in conversation, remember it’s not about you; it’s about your client.
Strategic Thinking – Have a plan that takes into account the big picture. What’s your philosophy? Strong organizations have developed mission and vision statements. Great individuals need them too.

Focus – Whether you are looking at this from an organizational perspective or a personal one, determine your competencies and spend the majority of your time, energy and resources working on those. If you feel like you’re spinning your wheels, ask yourself, “Am I doing what is truly important?”

Have a good product – Contrary to the popular saying, nobody can really sell ice to Eskimos. If your product or service doesn’t stand on its own merit, trying to sell it is no different than beating your head against the wall.

Others first – Real estate agents, accountants and trustees are said to have “fiduciary” responsibilities to their clients. In other words, they are legally required to put the client’s interest before their own. No matter what you do, pretend you have a fiduciary duty to the customers you serve. If you do this, you will build rapport, which leads to a relationship, which leads to the holy grail of sales and marketing: trust.

Ability to handle stress – “There are many guys who can paint an incredibly cogent picture of why a company should be investing in China or why a football team should run a certain offense,” says Joe Moglia, who serves as both chairman of TD Ameritrade and a head coach in the United Football League. “The reality is, when things are not going well, when you’re losing money in China, and your guys keep fumbling the ball, how do you handle yourself?”

Keep prospecting – No matter how busy you are as you put the finishing touches a big deal, remember to think about future deals. Always take time to fill your hopper, so you always have a steady supply of business. Don’t get emotionally attached to a certain piece of business, because you give up your power. Always go where the business is, where your best prospects live. It makes no sense to fish for business in a deserted lake.

Wrap it up – Ultimately, the purpose of marketing is to get somebody to say “yes.” Know what you hope to achieve from a prospect before you meet him or her and then keep steering the conversation toward closure.

About the Author:

Jeff Beals is an award-winning author, who helps professionals do more business and have a greater impact on the world through effective sales, marketing and personal branding techniques. As a professional speaker, he delivers energetic and humorous keynote speeches and workshops to audiences worldwide. You can learn more and follow his “Business Motivation Blog” at JeffBeals.com.

Article Contributed by Danielle

How many roads must a marketer walk down before we can assume he knows the value of social media marketing?

The tides have turned. Inquiring minds want to know: Does Facebook provide ample opportunity for B2B interaction via its tremendous social platform? The B2B Barometer reports that at least 70% of business-to-business marketers feel that social media is relevant to B2B organizations. They are, however, unsure how to harness the potential value of Facebook.

Some apprehensions involve Facebook’s inherently social nature. How could any meaningful business be conducted over such a highly personal platform? Commercial messages often reflect poorly on a brand when they interrupt social experiences. Add that to the fact that many working adults cannot use Facebook at work, limiting the amount of possible communication during working hours.

In fact, Circle Research has released statistics that suggest Facebook might not even be the social network to be questioning; top social networks according to B2B marketers are Twitter (87%), LinkedIn (77%) and then Facebook (67%).

The fact remains that Facebook is still the largest social network on the Internet. At 800 million users, that potential audience for your social media marketing is just too big to pass up. Those who maintain that the inherently social environment of Facebook is naturally detrimental to “business-doing” should consider that the professional/personal line is not what it used to be even as recently as two years ago.

Innovations pioneered by Google’s “Circle” system have been incorporated into Facebook and users can now select what coworkers see and don’t see, making it easier to “befriend” coworkers in the digital realm. Also, mobile usage is through the roof, and provides another channel through which businesses can connect to other businesses and also the community.

Facebook has proven itself to be a valuable asset in business to community (B2C) interactions for years. The site’s history in providing specified information about users to companies has helped in more relevant ad targeting and other marketing innovations that have deepened the B2C landscape. Facebook pages help promote activity, attract users, increase brand awareness and cultivate an active user base by engaging in frequent customer interaction.

So, the answer to the question of whether Facebook is a valid marketing channel is a resounding “Yes!” It offers a large pool of potential clients, it’s available on multiple platforms and it creates direct consumer demand in real time. Although results can be difficult to measure due to Facebook’s still-nascent marketing state, the benefits far outweigh the negatives and when social media is used correctly, the returns are bound to be impressive.

I know I’m not revealing any big eye-opening secret when I tell you that if you don’t regularly and consistently market your business, your business won’t grow. I know you know this. But none of that helps you when you hate marketing. (In fact, it probably makes you feel even worse, doesn’t it?)

So what did you do? Here are 3 steps to get you started (hint — these work even if you love marketing):

1. Find a marketing strategy or tactic you enjoy. There are LOTS of ways to market yourself, I guarantee at least one of them you will like doing. Your job is to find it and then build your main marketing strategy around it. Here’s a list of a few marketing activities to get you thinking:

a. Writing — blogs, articles, etc.

b. Speaking — live, on teleclasses/webinars/livestream, or even podcasts

c. Being interviewed on radio or television

d. Video

e. Chatting with people via social networking

At least one of those should resonate with you.

Once you figure out your favorite marketing activity, the next step is to build your marketing strategy around that activity. (More on that in step 3 but first…)

2. Outsource what you hate to do. The problem is no matter how much you may love one marketing activity, there are probably other essential activities you don’t love quite so much (hence why you probably hate marketing to begin with). So the trick is to build your marketing plan around what you enjoy doing then you outsource the other pieces you don’t enjoy.

Sounds pretty easy when I put it that way, eh?

Okay so what if you have no one to outsource to and you’re worried about cash flow. My advice is to take a deep breath and find someone. Look, outsourcing your marketing is the easiest way to see a return on your investment — if you start consistently marketing your business that money WILL come back to you.

Start by looking at your budget. See what you can put aside each month for marketing help. Then find someone who can do the tasks you need done in that budget. You might not be able to get everything done, but prioritize what’s most important (i.e. what you’re going to see a return on your investment the fastest) and focus on that.

3. Start small and build from there. Yes I know there are lots of marketing activities out there you could be doing, and the more marketing you do the better your results. However, that doesn’t mean I want you try getting everything done tomorrow.

Here’s the minimum of what you need to have a successful, growing business — one main lead source bringing leads into your business and one main way of converting those leads into customers and clients. That’s really it (at least for the marketing side). You get that nailed down and the rest will come.

And here’s some examples of how this can look:

1. Lead source (speaking, blogging, videos, interviews, social networking)

2. Lead cultivating (ezine, free calls)

See how simple this can be?

And to take this one step further, let’s say you love speaking and hate writing. You can focus on speaking and hire a virtual assistant to take care of putting an ezine out for you.

Voila! Marketing plan built around your strengths and outsourcing your weaknesses.

Then once you have that nailed down you can start adding more marketing activities to the mix. Before you know it, you’ll find you have built up an amazing marketing system that’s feeding your business (and better yet, you may discover you don’t mind marketing quite as much as you thought you did).

Michele PW (Michele Pariza Wacek) is your Ka-Ching! Marketing strategist and owns Creative Concepts and Copywriting LLC, a premiere direct response copywriting and marketing company that helps entrepreneurs attract more clients, sell more products and services and boost their business.  To grab your FREE “Ka-Ching! Business Kit” with a FREE CD visit http://www.MichelePW.com/freecd

Every entrepreneur starts her business wanting to make lots of money doing something she loves. We dream about it. We plan out what our life will look like, and where we will take vacations. But then something happens. We start getting nervous about not making money fast enough, and think maybe we’re charging too much. We spread a wide net and take on clients that are more of a drain on resources than a boon to our cash flow.

Think about your business. Does your income reflect the value of your services? If what you do is worth more than what you’re making, this is a sign that you are selling yourself short. You need to take yourself out of the equation and get an honest assessment of your business strategy. There’s no slick cookie-cutter formula to use for every business, but here are some points that helped me create a successful business model:

1. The main reason you’re not charging enough for your product or service could be that you don’t believe in yourself. Ouch! But it’s true. When was the last time you raised your rates? Don’t be afraid to ask for what you’re worth. The clients who get what you do, and appreciate what you can do for them, will pay it.

2. You need the right words to describe what you do: on your website, blogs, advertising copy – anything that your ideal client might read. An unintended wrong message could be what’s standing in your way. Write as though you are having a conversation with the person you are presenting to. Don’t worry about the economy, and what you think people can and cannot afford. Just put the right message out there, and let them decide.

3. Invest in your #1 asset – yourself! This is where a mentor and/or mastermind group is key, to give you the support to command the level that you are worth. Friends and family, though well-meaning, don’t always get what you do. And seminars are worthless if you just put another notebook on your shelf. The Mastermind group I joined in 2009 was the next big step for me. At the time, I didn’t know how I was going to pay for it; I just knew I had to do it for myself. Have that faith in yourself and let it take you to the next level. I had my best year ever the year after I made that investment. And it’s no accident that now I have my own Divine Juice Inner Circle Mentorship program!

4. Last but not least, take time for yourself as well. Acknowledge what you need to do to maintain the mindset, energy level and positive space to live a life you love. As an entrepreneur, you get to do that! And it looks different for everyone. It’s all about what’s important to you. Create time for yourself to not work. To rejuvenate. What can you do today because of the freedom that you have, no matter how small? Like taking a walk or going to work-out, or to a movie. What little thing can you do to create that space now? Start a practice that keeps you grounded and centered at the beginning of each day. Maybe get up earlier to lengthen the time you have to prepare mentally and spiritually for what lies ahead.

Create an opportunity for yourself to get support for your business.  One of the tools my team and I offer is a Juicy Business Assessment.  Someone on the outside can see your position more clearly than you, and help you get clarity on the changes you need to make.  There are people out there who need your services, and you need to get the fulfillment from your business that you deserve.  Don’t give up before the miracle happens!

About the Author:

Lisa Cherney, a.k.a. the Juicy Marketing Expert, founded Conscious Marketing 12 years ago to help small business owners find their authentic marketing voice, attract their ideal clients and increase their sales. Following her own Stand Out & Be Juicy program, which centers on owning your unique self and laser-focus marketing, Lisa has tripled her income while working
part-time.

Prior to Conscious Marketing, Lisa worked with many Fortune 500 companies, including AT&T, Lipton, Nissan, Blue Cross and Equal. She is a highly sought after speaker and often shares the stage with experts such as Jack Assaraf (The Secret), Jack Canfield and Jill Lublin. Learn more about Lisa at www.consciousmarketing.com or call 887-771-0156.

“I chose that word because it’s a good SEO keyword,” they say.

Ah. It may be a good SEO keyword but it’s certainly not a good people word.

But before I get too far down this path, let me give you all a little background info. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. What that means is you make your website and other online copy “search-engine friendly” so the search engines will rank you high for your chosen keywords. (Like on the first page when someone does a search for that keyword.)

One of the main tactics used to optimize your site is to scatter your chosen keywords throughout your copy (the frequency and positioning seem to change depending on how close the Moon is to Jupiter so I’m not going to even go down this path today.)

Why do you want that? Presumably so you get more online visitors to your site.

On the surface, it makes sense. Your website ranks high on the first page when people do a search for your keywords, they see your website and click on the link.

Easy, right?

Well…

First off, SEO (like everything Internet-related) has changed. A few years ago, SEO made perfect sense. That WAS the main way people found things on the Internet.

However, with social networking taking the world by storm, and more people on Facebook and YouTube then Google, people using the search engines have dropped significantly.

Now, that’s not to say you don’t need to take the search engines into consideration. There’s no question people are still using the search engines. But their searching habits have changed. Now they’re more likely to search for you after hearing about you via offline methods (like newspapers, magazines, television, direct mail, speaking, meeting you at an event, etc.)

Of course, people will still do generic searches for keywords that relate to what you sell. But trying to get yourself on page 1 of those rankings can be really difficult. And with Google changing their algorithms every time the wind changes directions, you can be on Page 1 one day and knocked down to Page 20 the next. (Also known as the dreaded “Google Dance.”)

So what do you do?

Well, my thought is while optimizing is not a bad idea, I wouldn’t put too much energy into it. And I certainly wouldn’t put words that sounded weird or off to my ideal clients on my online materials even if they were strong keywords. (Look, if you’re going to do all this work to get your ideal clients to visit your site, do you really want to turn them off with bad writing and poor language choices?)

Google and all the other search engines are going to reward you if your website isn’t deceptive, offers great content, and the content changes regularly. If you do that, the search engines WILL like your site regardless of your SEO. (You might not end up on Page 1 but the search engines will regard you fondly and will probably not move you around too much during any dances.)

And the reality is, it makes far more sense to focus on other avenues for people to find you. Be active on social networking sites, post articles, upload video, blog more. All of these things will increase your visibility out in that wild world we call the Internet FAR more than simply focusing only on SEO.

And if you focus on those activities, then you can put your very best writing on your website — the kind of writing that will make your visitors eager to learn more about you and do business with you — instead of suffocating your copy with keywords that may make those very same visitors click away.

Michele PW (Michele Pariza Wacek) is your Ka-Ching! Marketing strategist and owns Creative Concepts and Copywriting LLC, a premiere direct response copywriting and marketing company that helps entrepreneurs attract more clients, sell more products and services and boost their business.  To grab your FREE “Ka-Ching! Business Kit” with a FREE CD visit http://www.MichelePW.com/freecd