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Get Control Over Your Dang Schedule People!

By Christian

I had a great discussion the other day with a friend at lunch. It was about the incessant need everyone seems to have to answer their phone. No matter what. If it rings, it simply MUST be answered. Doesn’t matter what’s going on. Doesn’t matter what you’re in the middle of. Do any of you see a problem with this?

Are you in the middle of a conversation with someone? Who cares? Must…answer…the…phone.
Are you trying to finish an important project, and there’s a rapidly approaching deadline? Who cares? Must…answer…the…phone.
Are you sleep deprived and need to get to bed, but a troublesome client is calling you at 11PM? Who cares? Must…answer…the…phone.

Seriously, where does this come from? Let it ring! Better yet…if you’re busy, turn the sucker off. Sanity and productivity are there for the taking. If you’re insane right now, it’s because there’s too much on your plate. Enough said. Is there any other reason? No. It’s the only reason. If you’re too busy, you need to do a better job at picking and choosing.

And the most powerful things that wreck our day are not the big projects that we take on. It’s the little ones. It’s the little “this will take just a second” phone calls, emails, IM’s and such.

What if you only took calls that you were expecting? Can you imagine how much more focused you would be? What if you simply returned all calls at a scheduled time each day? Would it be more productive?

Is your day getting wrecked by tiny little interruptions? Do you realize you have a choice in the matter?

Why I Use a Pop Up Opt In Box to Build My Email List

By Christian

I recently had a reader ask me about the pop up opt in box that I use on Next Level Blogger. He wanted to know how it was working for me and how I felt about using a pop up. He said he personally didn’t like pop ups and felt that it therefore might not be a good idea to use one on his site. I think this is a great concern, so I wanted to share my thoughts on this.

Why I Started Implementing a Pop Up to Build My Email List

I haven’t always used a pop up to build my email list. The reason was the same as what this reader suggested. I personally do not like them. Then a mentor of mine made a really interesting comment to me a few months back. He said he has NEVER clicked on a banner ad in his life. I realized that it is likely true for me too. I cannot remember a single time I’ve ever clicked on an Adsense link or banner ad. But this friend of mine makes bank on banner ads. Obviously, many people DO click on them. Just not me :).

After this conversation I realized that I’m really the last person I should use as a judge when it comes to what I should use on my site. After all, I’m not building it for me. I’m building it for my readers. I’m providing a service for others, not myself. And consequently, I should simply do what works for them!

Fact is, if a pop up opt in box generated a lot of complaints or failed to convert, I wouldn’t use it. So far, I have received ZERO complaints, and the pop up window on Next Level Blogger is the second-highest converting opt in box on the site. Clearly, it’s going to stay up for a while!

I use Aweber to generate the pop up, and I highly recommend using their service as well. It’s super-easy to design and install on your site, and it functions flawlessly for me. Anything that’s not techy and gets great results is always cool in my book 🙂

Lesson for the day: I encourage you to set aside any personal assumptions when it comes to building your online business. Don’t do what you like or think is cool. Do what works. A lot of times it’s the simplest stuff in the world that will make huge results for you.

Top 10 Myths and Mistakes About Blogging and Internet Marketing

By Christian

As more and more of my peers in small business come online and start trying their hand at blogging and internet marketing, there are a number of common myths and mistakes that need to be addressed.

If you’re considering starting a blog or using social media to promote your small business, I applaud you. My goal for this post is to simply dispel some of the biggest lies, misunderstanding and obstacles I’ve come across that you will likely run into.

Hopefully you can use these as a way of saving yourself some time and get straight to the business of making your blog or website reach your goals.

Internet marketing as an afterthought: It’s a great idea to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. For many business models (dare I say nearly ALL business models) a customer’s most common point of interaction with you is your website. Your internet presence should be given a proportional amount of your time and attention. Many businesses ironically spend very little time on internet marketing. They’ll have a site that gets thousands of visitors a month, but they do very little if anything to effectively engage them. Instead, they expect people to call them and wade through an automated phone system in order to get information. You may prefer to do business a certain way, but it’s likely that your customer would prefer your website to be a lot more usable. And it may interest you that if you help them out in this regard, they will likely reward you for it : ) Don’t let your internet marketing be something that you’re just trying to squeeze in. It needs to be as integrated into your business as your customers would like it to be.
Let me just slam this website together. Let’s get this sucker DONE! This is a powerful myth and mistake many people make! Your internet marketing is an ongoing process. Think of it more as a dialog than anything else. When you walk away, the conversation stops. Ideally you want to be as active and engaged in your internet marketing as possible. Trying to crank out a website and then thinking that it’s going to keep pulling results for you without any additional effort is the wrong way of looking at it.
Marketing online is not the same as traditional marketing: Traditional marketing is interruption-based, which means that advertisers have always concentrated on grabbing people’s attention however they can. Getting a response was key. In online marketing, people are already paying attention, so trying to cram a message in front of them is just rude. Cultivating a relationship with your visitors is hugely important. That’s why blogging is something I consider to be pretty much mandatory for most small business owners, because it enables you to communicate with a large number of people very effectively and in a personal manner. Applying traditional marketing methods to your internet marketing most often comes off badly for you. It’s important to embrace the fact that a social approach to your marketing, while it takes more time, really is going to be the best approach.
Failing to build an email list: You want people to come out to your site, correct? And after they visit, you want them to come back. The number one way to get people coming back over and over again is by getting them to subscribe. And the number one way people subscribe is still via email. RSS is very convenient, but most readers still use email. If you’re not building your email list from day one, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. For email listing building tools and campaign management, I personally use Aweber and recommend you get in on that action as well.
Failing to have a coach or someone on your team who specializes in new media: Let’s be real. You have a business to run. You’re not a SEO expert. You’re not a web designer. You’re not going to be. You don’t have time. Too many business owners try to do too much. Consult with someone from time to time. Get someone on your team, whether it’s an employee or a virtual assistant, a coach or whatever asset your most comfortable with, and use their expertise to make sure you’re being effective. Have them critique you and tell you where you can improve. Talk with someone whose job it is to stay on top of these things, and take their advice. You will be 100% more effective by not trying to do everything yourself.
Focusing on design and SEO over content and communication: Everyone, especially business owners, want their site to look great. Yet look at some of the most successful blogs on the internet today, and not all of them look all that great. Why are they popular? How can you possibly create a winning online marketing plan without a $20k custom built website? Because believe it or not, all consumers really want is quality content. And they want it to come from you, because they care to know if you’re actually as cool as you want people to think you are. A glitzy website doesn’t impress many people any more. But quality, genuine content always will get the job done. What’s nice is that you can produce quality content for free. It just takes a little time and introspection. It’s highly worth it. Design is important, but content and quality interaction with your customers is WAY more valuable. It’s what your customers care about, so it’s what you should focus on.
Spending too much time and money on marketing that doesn’t work: This one isn’t so much of an internet marketing thing as it is a business thing. So many of my friends in business are still locked into a mentality that they HAVE to pay for certain forms of marketing that they’ve always done in the past, even when they’re not pulling results anymore. On the flip side, I know some forward thinking business owners who have literally cut out their print advertising completely, and it has had NO negative effect on their business whatsoever. Obviously I’m not telling you specifically what to do with your specific business, but I urge you to look at the results your marketing is getting you. Are your customers flooding your websites, but meanwhile you’re still spending thousands a month on billboards and space ads? It happens a lot. If your advertising is not working, CUT IT! And put your money into your online business; it’s where your customers are most likely to find you anyway : )
Not having fun: Fun is likely the most important element of this business. With all the options and tools at our disposal (blogs, websites, SEO, Twitter, Facebook, blah, blah, blah), it’s easy to get overwhelmed. But there’s an underlying opportunity here that most people seem to miss. You can do anything you want! You can literally make a great living doing anything you want, and as long as you’re willing to work like crazy you can do very well. Don’t become overwhelmed by your options; revel in them! Don’t be all stiff and proper with everything you do; have fun! With the amount of work that needs to be done, fun is mandatory. It also enables you to tackle the next step…
Not diving in: There’s a lot of concern amongst business owners as to the value of Twitter, for example. I get a lot of comments regarding how it just doesn’t make sense. There is a reasonable concern over wasting time on something that is not going to produce results. Time is valuable, and that concern is prudent. However, things change quickly these days, and it’s important to act if you want to get results. Instead of using your lack of understanding as a gauge, I recommend using something else. Look at the value of the network. If there are millions of people all in one place, and the community is very active, there is a huge amount of value there, and it’s a good idea to tap into it. Dive in. Trust me, after you’ve spent some time conversing with people on Twitter (or any valuable community), it will make more sense. And so it goes with the internet in general, the biggest community of all. Being committed to getting results is key to actually getting results. Being tentative with your internet marketing endeavors will only ever produce tentative results. Don’t focus on what you don’t know. Yes, there are things to learn, but the most important thing is to dive in.
Wanting results fast and automatically: I can’t blame anyone for wanting to get turnkey results from their internet marketing work. But it’s essential to measure your results properly. Measuring results from a blog or a social media profile in the same way that you measure results from a space ad you run in a magazine is not going to make you a happy camper. It doesn’t work the same way, and it doesn’t produce the same kind of results. Measure results using web analytics. Measure results via how many subscribers you’re getting and how many of them are buying from you. The details of this are certainly a topic for another post, but to suffice for now, don’t set up a blog and expect the orders to start pouring in automatically. Trust me, there are many points of data that you can use to keep your analytical mind more than pleased with the results you’re getting. Results are trackable using new media. But setting up a website and then sitting back and waiting for the money to start rolling in is going to lead only to disappointment.

Using new media is a little interesting…you basically cannot ignore this shift in the way of doing business. You really can’t. You have to learn to use these tools, and learning to use them is basically going to force you to rethink a lot about your business, how you measure results, etc.

The Power of 100 for Blogging Success

By Christian

I’ve learned something from being in direct sales. It’s something that I feel a lot of other bloggers don’t get. As internet marketers, we spend so much time working on our sites, to optimize and get more traffic. We want to capture as much search traffic as possible, and I think it’s smart to make those efforts.

But I think there’s something a lot more important that we should put at the front of our priority list when it comes to building our small business online. And that something is the power of 100.

For the past week, I’ve been tweeting out updates like “30 down, 70 more to go!” I’ve received many inquiries about what the heck this means, and what it means is that I have a rule, and I’ve decided it’s important to once again follow that rule.

Here’s the rule:

Make 100 contacts a day.

That’s it. Touch 100 people every day. Whether I respond to an email, call someone on the phone, send a letter in the mail…it doesn’t matter. 100 daily. That’s the rule.

Why? Because it forces me to be social. And being social is not only energizing and a heck of a lot of fun, but it’s also an essential process for building your business. In case you haven’t noticed, people rock!

Where the Power of 100 Came From

It comes from my direct sales experience. In direct sales, if you’re not making contacts you’re out of business. Well, I’ve learned to adapt to internet marketing, and here is something I’ve learned about internet marketing…a lot of us hide behind our computers.

It’s very easy to tweak on your site all day. VERY easy. I’ve done it. It’s very easy to spend all day reading blogs or studying tutorials, or God forbid, coding! Tweaking ads, the list goes on…and I’m not busting on any of these things. It’s important to have your site looking good. It’s important for your ads to be optimized, etc. But it’s MORE important…MASSIVELY more important to talk to people.

Why the Power of 100 will Transform Your Business

Why? Because no matter how awesome you are, and no matter how awesome your site is, if you’re not talking to people every day, no one is going to care. Because at the end of the day, no one cares if you’re awesome! People want to know what’s in it for them, and if you want to make money online, you need to be interested in interacting with them to find out how you can help!

Here is My Challenge to You

So here is my challenge to you: make 100 contacts a day. Do it with me! I will continue to put out my updates, and I encourage you to do the same. Are you following me on Twitter? Do it, and let’s kill this thing together! There is power and motivation in numbers! Make 100 contacts a day. It will build your business; I promise!

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.

I’m using the #powerof100 hashtag to track tweets related to this program. Even if I’m the only one doing it, it’s cool. I’m doing this because I know it works, and since I write a blog, it occurred to me how cool it would be if I could get even one or two other people doing this also. I guarantee, it’s difficult to produce like this every day, and it also changes your business like you wouldn’t believe!

Like I said, I have seen many top performers over the years employ a simple rule like this, and it creates tremendous results. Bottom line, it goes along with all the basic concepts I cover on Next Level Blogger:

It’s very simple
It’s a lot of work
It gets MASSIVE results over time!

Here’s what counts:

Respond to a message: email, tweets, phone calls…it’s all good.
Blog comments: real, thoughtful, engaging ones…not thoughtless spammy ones. The point is real contacts.
Writing a letter, emailing a friend, following up on a lead, etc.
You get the idea…here’s the rule: it needs to be a PERSONAL, ONE-ON-ONE contact.

Here’s what doesn’t count:

Emailing your list: if you email a bulk list of 1,000 contacts, it doesn’t count as 1,000 contacts! Emailing your list is good and necessary, but this principle is only for PERSONAL, ONE-ON-ONE contacts. The point is personal engagement.
Spam commenting: you surely understand this, right? Any form of automation is not the point.

If you make the effort to personally engage 100 people a day on a personal level, you will see real power and real results from this. Like I mentioned, I learned this in direct sales, and I know some of the top sales people in the US literally are employing this concept right now, today, as you read this. It works! Get to it and let me know how it goes!

10 Essential WordPress Plugins for Your Business Blog

By Christian

I don’t typically do technical stuff on this blog, because my focus here is the effective use of blogging and social media and how to monetize your business using these tools. In other words, I don’t usually concentrate so much on the technical side of things, because my focus is on sales principles and the human element of making money online. However, it seems appropriate for me to share with you what plugins I personally use on this site and which ones I consider indispensable for any business blog.

If you’re going to operate a blog for your business, efficiency, effectiveness and security should be top priorities. Use these 10 Essential WordPress Plugins, and you’ll be in good shape 🙂

All in One SEO Pack – this one is a classic. It’s one of the most downloaded WP plugins of all time and for good reason. It is a huge asset to your blog with regards to search optimization.
WP Super Cache – this one makes your pages load faster. Why the heck wouldn’t you use it?
Google XML Sitemaps – builds and maintains a sitemap and robots.txt for you automatically. It also lets Google know when it should visit your site again to index new content. “What’s a robots.txt?” you say? You need this plugin.
Login Lockdown – if you’re not too concerned with someone hacking your site, you obviously are not aware of how often blogs get hacked and how much damage they can do. One way they get in is by randomly trying passwords over and over again until they get through. It’s called a brute force attack, one of the most common types of attacks. This plugin shuts your login page down after 2, 3 or however many false attempts you feel should be the limit.
Redirection – It’s essential to think ahead. You probably won’t need this plugin right away if you’re just getting started blogging, but it’s inevitable that you will take a page down, rename a post or something that will break links. This plugin allows you to make sure that everyone visiting your blog lands on a valid page. A very cool tool.
SEO Smart Links – strong internal linking is good for SEO. This wordpress plugin allows you to attach specific words or phrases, and anytime they appear on your blog, they will automatically link to whatever page you designate. This is a great tool for quickly establishing a good internal linking structure. Get it.
WP-DB Manager – your blog is going to require ongoing maintenance. Database optimization and repair, backups, etc. This plugin gives you an easy way to do a lot of these things, and it automates most of it as well, saving you time.
SEO Friendly Images – Images can be your friend when it comes to search engine optimization. Especially if you use good alt tags on all your images. For me, it’s easy to forget to do this, and it takes a minute, so this WordPress plugin automatically does it for you. Another no-brainer as far as I’m concerned.
MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer – Pinging google and other directories when you produce new content is a good thing. WordPress does this automatically. The problem is that when you make a change to an existing post, WordPress pings em again. And when you make any other small change to your site, WordPress pings em yet again. Basically anytime you hit “save”, WordPress pings Google. This can get you blocked. Not a good thing. This WordPress plugin knows the difference between when you should ping search engines and when you’re just doing edits. This way, you’re getting all the exposure you need, and you’re not abusing the system. A lot of bloggers don’t even know about this. It’s a very good tool.
Google Analytics for WordPress – having some type of analytics program installed on your site is essential for anyone serious about getting results from their business blog. There are other more robust alternatives. Google analytics is definitely not the holy grail of analytics utilities. However for me it is the best, because it’s free and it gives me everything I need. I’m not going to spend all day analyzing my web traffic. I want a really good snapshot of what’s going on…where people are coming from, my most visited posts, etc. Google Analytics gives you this and more, and it’s free. As far as I’m concerned it’s the best analytics application out there for business bloggers, and this plugin makes installation a snap.

If you’ve been involved with using WordPress for any length of time, you will likely have heard of all these before. My personal take is to keep plugins to a minimum. I like to run as lean as possible with plugins, because the fewer you have, the fewer things can go wrong. I prefer to spend as much time as possible on content and networking…and as LITTLE time as possible on design and coding, etc. Technical stuff is not for me, although I’ll learn whatever I need to learn to get things working smoothly.

That said, a handful of plugins, like what is on this list, will save you a lot of time, make your business blog more secure and much more effective for both your visitors and for search engines.

All these plugins are available for download at no charge by visiting the WordPress Plugins page.