Facebook is my favourite social medial tool for business marketing. It has only relatively recently come out of the closet, moving from being ‘just’ a social utility to becoming a powerful business marketing tool. And yet it’s greatest power is still its social aspect.

A paradoxon?

Not at all, but let me explain. Until relatively recently, I was a mere browser on the social media scene. I surfed around, as you do, checking out this and that. Then I came across a video on You Tube, ‘The Social Media Revolution’ (check it out).

Suddenly the penny dropped…

• Facebook is the second most frequented website in the world today (after Google).
• There are currently over 400 Mio active users on Facebook. This means, that if Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd largest country on the planet (only dwarfed by China and India!).
• Facebook added 100 Mio of its over 400 Mio users in just 6 months (a TV ad that will take 13 years to reach 50 Mio people).
• I recently launched my first Facebook ad to attract new people to my business page. In just under a week, 442,852 saw my ad! That’s just short of half a Mio people.

Dazzling stats, or what? If you want to see some more mind boggling numbers, I suggest you might want to head over to www.facebook.com/press.php (click the ‘Statistics’ tab on the right hand side of the page); it’s an interesting experience!

Facebook has long ceased to be a ‘teen’ site, too. In fact, the fastest growing demographic on Facebook right now is women over the age of 45.

But I was talking about the ‘social’ aspect. Once my penny had dropped, I started to spend more time on Facebook. I created my business page and I started to be truly social, and participate in some conversations on other pages. The outcome was beyond what I’d ever thought possible.

In the virtual world of Facebook, I managed to make connections with people I could have never connected with in the ‘real world’. For example, one of Australia’s most prominent Copy writers agreed to be interviewed by me (that interview is now part of our membership program).

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

Over the next few weeks I’ll give you The Top 3 Reasons to market your business on Facebook!

Reason number 1: Facebook is Viral

Viral??? That doesn’t sound too good. Well, it is, when your business is the ‘virus’ (so to speak)! The viral aspect of Facebook is what makes it so incredibly powerful. But more on this next time!

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is something that most website owners misunderstand entirely. The common belief is that you can pay someone to SEO your site. They will perform their mystic and arcane rituals…and that’s it! From this moment hence you will always be number one on the search engines, everyone will hear of you, the crowds will come….and you will instantly make squillions!

This could not be further from the truth!

FACT 1: No one can make you number one on any search engine!

FACT 2: You cannot do this once and then forget about it!

FACT 3: Really good professional SEO costs!

So, is there anything that the average start-up can do so that they can play on the same level with the Big Boys?

The first thing you need to know about Search Engines to understand how they work is that they can’t actually see what your site looks like. They can’t read the words that you have embedded in the images. They don’t watch your videos. All of that content that you love is no good for you if you want to get everything on your site indexed.

The only thing that search engines understand is structure: ‘header’, ‘title’, ‘tag’, ‘meta’ etc, this is the language of the search engines.

And the only way to get indexed is to make sure that all of your content is delivered in as easy to read a structure as possible. The two best ways to make sure this gets done are either to employ a real professional (no, not your next door neighbour’s kid even if he looks like a computer wizard to you and will do the job for $50!) to lovingly handcraft every page for your site and set up a template system…

…or to simply run your site on WordPress!

WordPress is loved by Google, Yahoo and Bing (the world’s largest search engines), because it delivers properly structured (or ‘marked up’) pages. WordPress also loads extremely quickly (did I mention that search engines love speed?), and is completely configurable (meaning that you can change the entire look and feel of the sites in seconds by using freely available or professional themes).

By uploading and activating a theme in your Dashboard, you can instantly change the look of your site.

In the next blog, I’ll be telling you about one of the world’s best WordPress themes in term of SEO (you can venture a guess which one I’m talking about… . So stay tuned. Until next time!

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Defining your market is KEY to success in business. Sharon Pearson, one of my mentors and the most successful person in Sales and Marketing that I know, calls this ‘creating an Avatar’.

What is an Avatar?

Avatar

Your Avatar is the character that embodies who your market or your customer is.
When you visualize your customer:

• What do they look like?
• What’s important to them?
• What is their biggest problem that you can solve?

Say for example, you are marketing a product or service directed at teachers. What do they have in common? What do they think about? Create the most detailed picture that you possibly can, and you’ve got your Avatar.

My Avatar, for example, is someone who wants more from their life than they are currently experiencing. They could be male or female. They are in their early thirties and up to mid-fifties. They want to make more money, but money is a vehicle for them: they want to be FREE,  free to travel, free to choose how they spend their time and with whom. They want to grow as people and in business. And they want to contribute, make a difference in some way.

This, of course, is only a very brief version of my Avatar. They are all that, and so much more! The more you get to know about your Avatar, the easier you will find it to adress the right marketing message to them.
If you already have a brick-and-mortar business this could be easier in some respects, because you already have a client base who you meet on a daily basis. In this case, I strongly suggest you study them.

• Give some of your best clients a call and simply ask.
• Design a form that you (or your staff) could help them filling in when they visit your business.
• Design an online survey and send it to your mailing list (online surveys are something I’ll get into in a lot more detail soon).

Your customers will love the attention. Everybody likes to talk about themselves, make their opinion known and feel validated. You will be amazed how much you are going to find out about them AND about your business. At the same time, your customers will instantly value you and your business more, because you have shown that you care.
If you haven’t got a business yet and therefore no list of clients, create your Avatar in a way that describes your ideal future client. At the end of the day, you want to create a business that you love and that has meaning for you, and the people you work with are an essential part of that.
Here are some questions you might want to consider about your Avatar before you do anything else:

• Are they male or female (or both),
• How old are they,
• Where do they live,
• Do they have family, children,
• What is their marital status,
• What is their state of mind (Are they happy? Outgoing? Depressed?)
• Do they rent or own their own home,
• Where do they hang out,
• What are their problems,
• What is their biggest problem, the one that keeps them awake at night,
• What vision do they have for their life,
• What do they love to do,
• What do they do on a daily basis,
• Where can you meet them,
• How do they like to communicate (Phone? E-mail? Letter?)
• What other businesses do they frequent,
• What do they eat and drink,
• What are their hobbies,
• Do they have a job or do they own a business,
• How much money do they make,
• What do they really want,
• What do they buy,
• What are they frustrated with?

You can add to this list, and the more you can find out about your market, the better the picture that you can paint of your Avatar, the easier you will find it to create a product for them that they will want to buy and will get value from.

So, if you are ready to create the meaningful and successful business and the lifestyle that you have always dreamt of, creating an Avatar is your first step.

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Building a website can be incredibly cheap, quick and easy these days. Off late, every smart web site designer seems to offer free web site templates. There’s Joomla, Mambo, Yola, Wix…just to mention a few.

So many options…but how do you find the best one?

WordPress has been around since 2003, and they have steadily built their base of followers. Lately, there has been a major surge in the amount of Small Businesses who use WordPress templates (themes or skins) for their Websites. One good reason for this is that Matt Cutts (the head of the Google spam team) actually recommended WordPress at the World Internet Summit.

If it’s good enough for Google, it’s good enough for me!

In fact, Matt uses the same WordPress theme on his Blog as we do – ‘Thesis’ (and we’ll talk about that in an upcoming blog)!

One of the top reasons why Google recommends WordPress is that it lends itself to adding fresh content. Google doesn’t like ‘stale’ sites that just sit there and get no updates. In fact, the more regularly you update your content, the better for your ranking in the search engines.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

Apart from giving you a head start in terms of SEO, WordPress themes are cheap and easy to set up and maintain. There are plenty of free themes to choose from as well as themes that will cost you around $100. If you are serious about your online business this is one of the investments that I would recommend you make, because of the many invaluable extra features that come with some of the paid themes, in particular ‘Thesis’.

Using WordPress you are in full control of your website at all times. If you ever do need support, there are plenty of experts that can help should you require some changes that you can’t do yourself. And it’s cheap to do.

So if you are still looking for the most cost-effective way to get started online and a way that will give you a head-start in front of your competitors, you’ve just found it, because WordPress is it right now.

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When I talk to people about taking their business online, the first thing business owner want to know is How to choose a Domain Name.

And make no mistake about it: choosing your website name (or domain name) is one of the most important decisions you will make when it comes to taking your business online, or  when you start up an internet business from scratch.

The Top 5 Questions to consider before you register your domain name are:

Question 1
Why is your domain name so important?

Your domain name is your online address. Just like someone can find their way to your home when they know what street you live in, someone can find their way to your home-page when they know your domain name. It gives away the location of the virtual space that you occupy.

Your domain name can also help define your online identity, your position and branding in the market. You would expect to find a different quality of accommodation at www.cheapholidayaccommodation.com than at www. 1860luxuryaccommodation.com.

However most importantly, your domain name helps search engines determine how relevant your site is to a

Search Engines want to find you!

particular keyword* search.

[*A keyword is a word or phrase that someone enters into a search engine to find something on the Internet.]

Question 2
How should you call your domain?

Many people call their domains the same as their business name, and that seems to make sense. But this is not always the case.

My business name, for example, is Brilliant Minds. The name says nothing about what it is that the company is actually about, or what product or service we have to offer. It is advisable to choose a domain which indicates this as well as being catchy, like ‘Make Money in your Undies’.

If you haven’t got a business name yet, then that is a great place to be right now, because after reading this report you will be able to make a very informed decision on this topic!

Question 3
Should I buy a dot.com, a dot.com.au or a different extension*?

A dot.com is still the best extension. It is getting a little more difficult these days to find a relatively short, meaningful and memorable domain name for any niche. It’s ok to go for a longer name as long as it contains relevant keywords, and is easy to remember (no more than 20 characters though).

A local extension (like dot.com.au) is useful for local businesses. If you want to buy a pizza, you probably don’t want the pizza shop on the other site of the globe.

It has been said that when you type a keyword into a search engine, the search engine will first look for dot.com, and for any other extension afterwards.

My personal preference is the dot.com. Just think about it: when you think of a website or domain name, what do you think of? After all, ‘dot.com’ has long become an established part of our everyday language!

All that said, a dot.net can be an alternative if your perfect domain name is available there. And it might be useful to own the dot.net on top of your domain name so that you can extend your online presence into a second site for the future.

Make sure that whenever and wherever you market your domain (be that on your business card, on video or when you are giving a talk), use your complete domain name, including dots and hyphens and all.

[*An 'extension' is the combination of letters that follow the 'dot'. Some examples are com, com.au, co.uk, biz, org etc.]

Question 4
Can I use hyphens?

This is actually a bit of a controversial question. Some people argue that search engines prefer the separation between the keywords, because they can read it more easily.
For example read this domain name www.goodsexchange.com.
Try again!

What did you read? goods-exchange or good-sex-change?
I think you get my gist.
I try to avoid hyphens, because when you talk about your company and your domain name you are unlikely to say ‘goods hyphen exchange’. People also tend to forget about the hyphen or miss it when they are typing which will mean that they will end up on your competitor’s site. After all the reason why you are even considering a hyphen is because somebody else already owns the ‘better’, hyphen-free version.

Question 5
How about numbers in the domain name?

Bingo! This is a little known secret, but I’m going to share it with you! In any directory (on- and offline), names are ranked in a specific order.
• Symbols and punctuation marks rank first (but domain names don’t accept these).
• Numbers rank before letters.
• Letters rank alphabetically.

Why is this important? Well, whilst Google is a search engine, Yahoo is actually a directory! And it’s still the world’s second ranking website straight after Google! So whilst having a number in front of your domain name would not help you to rank in Google, you would come up before other domain names in the directories, like Yahoo.

Consider this when you name your domain. You could call it 3win, or 1stopshop or similar and this will improve your directory ranking which in turn has a positive impact on your search engine rank!

If you choose your domain name considering these 5 questions, you’re off to a brilliant start!

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Up until relatively recently, facebook has been viewed as a mere social utility that helps us to connect with our friends and family, and to find and reconnect with old school mates and other (almost) forgotten social buddies.

However with the enormous growth of the number of facebook users, more and more businesses and corporations are starting to tap into the huge potential for marketing their products and services here, for FREE.

Let me share some stats that will give you an idea of just how big this is:

According to their own Press Room, facebook now has 400 Mio users worldwide (that is more people than live in the USA today).
100 Mio of them were added between April and September 2009 – that is in the space of less than 6 months! (It’s been said that to reach half this amount of people (50Mio) via television takes 13 YEARS!)

• 50% of all active users log in every day.
• Worldwide more than 8 Billion minutes are spent on facebook every day.
  

  Click HERE to become a fan!

• 2 Billion photos are uploaded each month.
• If facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd largest country on earth, only preceded by China and India.
• 8 Million people become a fan of a facebook Page every day!!!

These are mindboggling numbers and it was only going to be a matter of time before businesses would catch on to facebook as a platform to boost their own online marketing success, especially since facebook makes it so easy, and again, it’s completely free!

1. It drives traffic to your website.

2. It helps rank your own website in the search engines.

Search Engines want to find you!

3. It’s viral.

4. It’s free.

5. It’s fun.

6. It’s easy.

7. It gives you a platform to interact with people and vice versa.

If you spend a bit of time and thought on it, then your Page will create all the new leads that you want, and then some. It can be an incredibly powerful tool to boost your sales. It takes as little as 10 min to get started and then a couple of minutes every day to keep it updated with valuable content.

If you want to read more, or if you are ready to create your own page, then all you have to do is request the FREE video guided course on How to create a Facebook Page that generates New Leads for Your Business.

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Summer holidays, and the kids are doing a fast-track swimming course at King’s.

Whilst they are swimming, I’m thinking.

We’ve been at King’s for a few months now. I love it. It wasn’t love at first sight though.

The first time we went, I walked in and thought: wow, this is HELL! The place was packed to the rafters, it was hot and humid, and the noise…!

My mood started to swing when a member of staff walked past, nodded politely and gave me a beaming smile. Then I noticed how much fun the kids were having. A little later, I was offered a cup of tea (they had me then)!

If I’ve ever seen a well run business with a fantastic underlying business model, King’s is it!

• King’s follows a classic ascending model passing the kids through different skill levels (K1 to K15),
• they tie you in from day one by asking for a joining fee and monthly payments,
• they give you some really nice looking gismos (T-shirts and a folder to keep track of progress),
• they are extremely well organised,
• the place is always clean,
• there is plenty of staff and they look after you.

There’s a lot more to be said about this model (and you’ll probably hear about this again from me, just can’t help it!).

Over the months, I (and the kids) have become raving fans of King’s (for differing reasons, I guess). If you asked me why we keep going back, it’s because they go the extra mile, every time. When it was baking hot in Melbourne the other day, they came round with cups of iced water, not just once – they kept them coming! It’s just a pleasure to be there, because the staff seems to recognize you, appreciate your custom and take care of you.

Which of these traits can you apply to your business right now? How would this improve your business over the next few months?

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[Make Money in your Undies is a project of the Brilliant Minds Group]

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Here’s a recap what you’ve just seen:

Step 1: Research your Market
To research your market, the first tool you will use is the Google Keyword Tool. If you google Keyword Tool, it is displayed at the very top of the page.
I have created a document called Create an Avatar that tells you even more about this. You can get it on my facebook page, it’s free. Just head over to http://bit.ly/4HQ0tb, and once there click on the little flag. Scroll down the page until you get to Avatar and click the link.

Step 2: Create a Product
Here you have seen how you can create a product in a matter of hours, by recording an interview with an expert, recording your own voice or yourself on video, or writing an e-book.

Step 3: Create a Website to sell your product from
Websites are relatively easy to create these days through sites like www.joomla.com or wordpress. I recommend wordpress (Because google does! If they like it, who am I to argue? .
You can get a lot of wordpress themes for free. Just google ‘free wordpress themes’ and you will find one that suits your needs.

I hope the video has inspired you to take action right away. Maybe some brainstorming and trying out that Google Keyword Tool after dinner tonight? If you start taking action today, then you too could have a product online for sale within a couple of months (or even weeks).

As always, I look forward to your comments and questions. Just fire away. Cheers, Kath

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We all know that it’s a big world out there, on the worldwide web. It’s been said that there are currently around 1 Trillion websites on the Internet.

What this means for us who want to create and maintain websites for our businesses, is that for every service that we require, there are hundreds if not thousands of different service providers. It can take a lot of time and money to find the best service for your dollars.

This is particularly true for web hosting services.

As with most other products and services the very cheapest is rarely the very best. When it comes to hosting, the plans often differ only by a couple of dollars per month. However the service provided for these dollars can vary enormously, and cheap hosting can turn out to cost you dearly in the end.

What is a Web Host?

Your web hosting company provides the space and support systems necessary to run and maintain your website(s) on the Internet.

Hosting is usually provided and billed on a monthly basis. These are the features that you want to look out for when you are looking for the best hosting plan for your business:

1. The amount of Domains  and Bandwidth allowed per hosting plan.

For most businesses, it is advisable to go for a hosting plan that allows >20, and if possible unlimited domains (meaning unlimited web sites). This might seem a little excessive when you get started, but once you have created a couple of successful sites and you’ve learnt how easy it is to do so, you will want to build more, trust me!

The ‘bandwidth’ is the space that you are allowed to occupy online. It describes the  amount of information you are allowed to store on your website. Once you start sharing video and audio content, the amount of bandwidth that you are using will quickly spiral out of the ordinary. There should be no limit on the bandwidth you are allowed to use, because some companies start charging a premium once you exceed the permitted amount of bandwidth.

2. The support system

Especially when you are a newbie online, a good support system through your web host is essential. Challenges invariably arise at some point, and there’s nothing worse than not knowing what is happening to your site, and then finding that your web host will go out of their way to NOT help you sort out your challenges.

This was certainly the case with the first web hosting company that I chose. Whatever my problem, the technical support would invariably get stuck and tell me that it would take a manager to sort this out for me, and that a manager would contact me ‘asap’. I quickly learnt that ‘asap’ could mean anything from ‘tomorrow’ to ‘next week’ to ‘never’, and that I had to write many e-mails before anybody would deem it appropriate to respond.

A great support team will answer all your questions. They will be accessible 7 days a week and make sure they solve your problems as they arise.

3. The control panel

In the beginning, there will only be a few things that you will require on your control panel. Fantastico De Luxe is a feature that you must have. This is an application which will allow you to install WordPress (and other applications) onto your website with just a couple of mouse clicks, and a short form to fill in.

Be aware of free hosting, because there is usually no support system, and it often means lots of down time where your website suddenly ceases to be accessible online.

We use and recommend Hostgator, because they fulfill all our criteria and more. They are definitely ahead of the pack in terms of value for money, offering unlimited domains and unlimited bandwidth on their ‘Baby Plan’ for as little as US $ 7.95/month. If you want to save yourself time and money, use them.

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I have been working on the internet for a while now. I first became interested in how to create an income online a few years ago by buying my first e-book on internet marketing: TheRichPom.com for $75! It was actually not a bad program at all. But I my heart wasn’t in it.

Since then, I have spend hundreds of dollars online trying to figure out how to make the internet work for me, and by ‘me’ I mean ‘me and my clients’, naturally. My clients are other small business owners who already have a business, but are keen to maximise their profits by using internet marketing strategies.

I would love to save you the time and the money that I have spent on study and more study, and most importantly asking myself: will this work? The truth is, no matter where I looked, and which ever system I studied, I couldn’t find the magic pill that would do it for me overnight!

What I found was that it all boiled down to a couple of Simple Strategies…

In a nutshell (and because each of the steps is worth spending some time on, I will go through them in great detail in my upcoming blogs):

The Mindset
You can achieve almost anything in life, if you have the right mindset. The mindset includes:

• belief in yourself,
• belief in the system or strategy,
• a burning desire to succeed.

• Create a downloadable product that you can sell {on the internet(yes, even if you already have a brick-and-mortar business!),
• Create a blog and deliver valuable content consistently,
• Create a page on facebook,
• Have both linked to an effective company website,
• Link your online and offline business presence.

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