This has been happening more and more and it causes people to lose respect for the company that issued the email. They clearly are either sloppily assembling their subscriber lists or are buying information off other companies.

Either way, they don’t deserve any attention, or  business. A company that does this to enough people will slowly create a legion of unloyal customers, unsubscribers who will likely never return. This is ineffective email marketing at its worst.

If you’re an Internet entrepreneur, or at least interested in becoming one, you should take note of the ways in which social media can essentially replace the need for an email newsletter and create your own brand ambassadors. Since most popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest require users to ‘like’ or ‘follow’ someone before they receive updates from them,  a social media presence for your company allows you to gauge who actually wants to hear your updates, creating an interested audience, instead of blindly sending out emails to people who might have never subscribed in the first place.

Social media posts can help virtually any business, from keeping clients apprised of medical equipment shipping dates and costs to offering discounts on electronic products or services.

Social media posts can be effective at relaying information, garnering real-time feedback, and actually converting ‘followers’ into customers. Facebook exposes your brand to hundreds of millions of people; Twitter allows you to track trends and hashtags and tap into niche markets; Pinterest gives you the inside track into one of the hottest networks on the Internet. Even the photo app network Instagram (freshly acquired from Facebook) can be a clever way for businesses to brand a new line of products.

If you’re running a small business and are looking to up the ante on your Internet retail sales, make sure that you are not  just another pesky email in someone’s inbox and start creating active dialogues with consumers on social media networks. You stand to improve your revenue, enhance your brand, build your customers base, and stop annoying the unsubscribed.

Step One

What are your goals for each? What do you want to accomplish? There are a number of goals you might consider. They include but are not limited to:

* Driving traffic
* Increasing awareness
* Strengthening brand
* Building your opt-in list
* Boosting credibility and authority
* Attracting partnerships and affiliates
* And of course selling products or services – increasing sales

Step Two

What tactic(s) will help you reach your goals? Offline you have a number of tactics at your disposal. They include but are not limited to:

* Flyers
* Radio advertisements
* Television ads
* Print ads
* Media spots – radio or television interviews
* Press releases
* Publicity – events
* Direct mail
* Yellow pages ads

And of course online you have a wealth of tactics to choose from as well, including:

* Email marketing
* Article marketing
* Social networking
* PPC advertisements
* Banner and text ads

Integrating your online and offline marketing is where the real challenge and opportunity begins. Before you implement any tactic, explore how you might integrate the two for maximum effect. Create a comprehensive strategy to accomplish it. For example, if your goal is to drive traffic to your website, you could offer a free report. You might market this report by:

* Radio or printed ad
* PPC (pay per click) ad
* Social media exposure

Step Three

Launch the campaign. Here’s where you’re really going to need to pay attention and where integration can be effective. There are three keys to successful marketing integration. They are to launch your campaigns:

* Simultaneously – Launch your radio and print ad at the same time you launch your PPC ads. This way you’re capitalizing on momentum. You’re also in control of how long the promotion lasts and you’re being consistent.

* Complimentary – Make sure the campaigns complement each other. Continuing with the same example, your radio and television advertisements are going to be driving traffic to your website for your free report, just like your PPC advertisement. You want to make sure your offline and online marketing tactics support the same goals and each other.

* Consistently – Consistency is important. Your marketing tactics are designed to promote your business, increase awareness and exposure and strengthen your brand. If they have a different voice, personality and approach, the inconsistencies will be noticed. Your prospect who hears your advertisement on the radio is expecting to find the same tone, personality and voice at your website and supporting marketing materials.

Step Four

How will you track success? Often, offline marketing tactics are more difficult to track and test. However, if you have the same goals, then testing may be easier. For example, if your call to action in your radio and television advertisements sends people to a website, then you can track your traffic to that particular URL and analyze increases in traffic. Tracking success is an essential element of any marketing tactic or strategy, regardless of whether it’s online or off.

When creating your marketing strategy, take a look at where your prospects are and create tactics that reflect that. Most often, you’ll find that a little offline marketing works quite well to build your business, particularly when it’s integrated with your online tactics.

#1 Outline your ideas – Before you sit down to write or type, make sure you know what you’re going to write about. Jot down your main point or headline. Underneath, bullet your supporting point ideas. When you actually sit down to write, you’ll have a format to work with.

#2 Choose a format for your content – Every single thing you write adheres to some type of format.

For example, a tips article offers a series of bullet points or quick two- to three-sentence paragraphs. A “how to” article will list steps. A review article will summarize the product or service being reviewed and then dive into the pros and cons of the item. A tutorial will break the topic into manageable lessons. And an informative article will have a topic paragraph with three supporting points and a conclusion.

Decide when you’re outlining your content, what format you’re going to use.

#3 Research later – This may not make a bit of sense at first, but let’s explain it. Research takes time and we often waste time in the process. We research blindly, looking for information we can use in our content. However, if you write your content first, making notes along the way about where you need to do research, then your research will be focused.

For example, imagine you’re writing a report on comparing sugar substitutes. Researching sugar substitutes can be a very broad and time-consuming process. However, researching the illnesses caused by saccharine is much more specific and will take you a tenth of the time.

#4 Edit later – This is a habit that takes time to learn. Many people correct their spelling, change their sentences and even add and delete content as they’re writing. This takes too much time and it breaks your thought flow. Instead, just write. Don’t edit anything until you’re done.

Once you’ve put all of your thoughts on paper, then you can go back and make changes, edits and corrections. This habit takes time, commitment and practice but it does work. It’s about letting go of perfection and enjoying the process of writing. It’s okay to have a really bad first draft. No one will ever see it.

#5 Finally, this little trick is a real time saver – When you’re writing, simply write as if you’re answering a friend’s question. This helps in two key ways. The first is that you’re writing conversationally. Conversational copy is accessible copy and it’s something your readers will appreciate. It’s also much easier to write.

Secondly, if you’re answering a question it’s really easy to determine what you want to say.

For example, let’s go back to that report on sugar substitutes. When you’re creating your outline using the question format it might look something like this:

* What are sugar substitutes?
* Are sugar substitutes bad for your health?
* Are there any benefits to using sugar substitutes?
* Which sugar substitutes are the best?

If you’re writing this report and you are an expert in health and nutrition, then answering these questions will come naturally. It helps kick your brain into writing mode and removes any procrastination or stress from the writing process.

The honest truth is, you don’t have to be a professional writer to write great content quickly. Take advantage of these trade secrets and boost your content productivity today.

Here are a few key strategies to make your content go further.

E-books and Reports

One of the wonderful things about e-books and reports is the sheer size of them. There’s a lot of content packed into a thirty page e-book or report. That thirty page e-book could be repurposed to create:

* Articles
* Blog posts
* Guest blog posts
* Email messages/autoresponders/business newsletter
* Social networking posts (imagine the number of Tweets you could pull out of a thirty page e-book!)
* Lessons for an online course
* A workbook from the e-book or report, depending on the subject matter.
* Audio files – Get really creative, read the e-book or report aloud and create audio files. Add screenshots and make it a video series.

Articles and Blog Posts

While articles and blog posts are generally shorter in content, they can still pack a powerful punch. You can use articles and blog posts in almost as many variations and formats as you can repurpose e-books and reports. Here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

* Collect like articles and/or blog posts and create a report
* Collect articles and/or blog posts and create an e-book. Organization is key here. You’ll want to add an introduction and transitions to make the report or e-book flow. However, your organization will be the biggest time expenditure.
* Pull tips or information out of blog posts or articles and post on social networking sites.
* Repurpose blog posts or articles for article marketing sites.
* Collect articles and/or blog posts and create an online course.

Finally, you may have a few pieces of content you’re completely unaware of that can be tremendously valuable to you and maximizing your overall content strategy. They include:

Blog And Forum Comments

Your comments are often well thought out and valuable, right? These comments can be used as material for articles and/or blog posts. Don’t let your input go to waste by leaving it to just one site. Reuse it!

Social Networking Interactions

Quite often the material you receive from social networking interactions is ripe for republication. Upon receiving permission from the contributors to your discussion, you can use the material as a blog post or article on your site.

Miscellaneous Downloads

This includes blueprints, worksheets, templates, mindmaps and other miscellaneous content. Your downloads can often be compiled into one large file for added customer value. It’s a great way to add a bonus to a product, launch an opt-in list promotion or simply draw attention to your website. Collect your downloads into one nice package and offer them to your customers.

Before you sit down to implement next month’s content plan, create a content maximizing plan too. Decide in advance all of the many ways you’re going to reuse that content and watch your return on investment grow.

But for many of us the question eventually surfaces: Should I get myself an office space? A real, physical one?

Answering this question has become increasingly difficult to do. For those of us who work primarily online, it was once perfectly common to operate our business from the kitchen table. The online industry was still in its frontier-style infancy, and it didn’t matter where you were so long as you had a computer and perhaps a Skype account.

But a few things have happened to change that in the past couple years. First, the internet business has gone mainstream and “settled down” more, meaning that once again people are more likely to work out of an office than a garage. Second, the popularity of shared work spaces – offices where small or solo businesses can rent out a desk or two in a room full of workers in a similar industry – has brought many cost-conscious entrepreneurs out of the shadows in places like New York and San Francisco. And, finally, when you work for a while in one job you can go through long periods where it is hard to be productive outside of an office environment. You’ll never miss the commute, but you likely will occasionally regret not having a set workspace outside of the home.

So this is all to say that getting an office can be a tempting proposition, even for someone who does all their work online and rarely needs to meet with a client. If you feel that renting out an office or a desk would truly help improve your productivity, doing so may ultimately help your business’ bottom line. In this case, you can start searching out comfortable office chairs for sale and prepare to make your working life a bit less migratory. But make sure that you aren’t simply getting an office to counter a productivity slump or keep pace with your peers.

After all, not having your own place certainly comes with its disadvantages. But as self-employed workers we know that nothing can ultimately tie us down – not even an office.

But working on your own and for yourself carries its disadvantages, too. Primarily, it requires you to be a creator, an accountant, a business manager, and a salesperson depending on specific day-to-day needs. These days it also requires that you work as a web developer, integrate with social media, and have sufficient leadership training to manage your employees in a digital world. More so than ever before, the modern entrepreneur truly needs to be a jack of all trades.

While even the creative types among us can make a budget when called upon, it’s another story when capital raising in concerned. All entrepreneurs need money to turn their idea into a product, and almost all of them will need to seek outside funding sources in order to amass sufficient funds. This means courting investors, pitching a business plan, and forecasting future financial growth. Bringing in money means acting like a salesman, but rather than selling a product you are peddling an investment – a difficult undertaking for the average entrepreneur.

Here are a few tips for strengthening your investor-courting skills:

-Start with friends and family members. Before venturing out into the unforgiving venture capital world, start by perfecting your pitch with discerning friends and family members – especially those who have some money and a business background. You’ll definitely get some good practice and you may even find an investor or two in the process.

-Don’t be shy. Entrepreneurs courting investors at trade shows and over the phone often assess their bid by admitting that they were too passive in their pitch, that they didn’t push the issue hard enough. While asking someone for money may seem like an undertaking that shouldn’t be pursued aggressively, a more insistent and forceful approach is usually necessary to convince an investor of your benefits and your zeal.

-The more the better. When it comes to preparing forecasted financial statements, you really can’t go wrong by including every possible data point and any applicable reference, footnote, or stipulation. Even if a given number doesn’t appear incredible, providing full transparency to potential investors is only going to make them more reassured and help them truth your credibility and competency even further.

-Tighten your story. Investors are often more interested in numbers than in emotional appeals, meaning that a story or mission that may gain favor among consumers might not sway an investor in the least. Still, it is always important to deliver a story and a plan alongside your financials – just make sure that it is a concise and condensed one.

-Consider equity stakes. Many entrepreneurs shudder at the idea of diluting their ownership and providing investors with a stake in their company. But this stake doesn’t need to guarantee any voting rights and it may give you the opportunity to raise far more capital than you otherwise would. For some entrepreneurs, then, this is a good route to consider.

These are just a few tips to keep in mind when trying to raise funding for your business, product, or project. While seeking out capital may not make for a fun experience, it is just one of the many tasks assigned to the entrepreneur – and one of many that he is capable of doing well.

Socrates

The simple solution to this is as follows: Never stop learning.

When you learn something new, you are either accepting that preconceived notions were false or filling in the voids of ignorance. In either scenario, you are admitting that you are indeed not the knower of all things. By doing this, you begin to break out of the bad habit of thinking you’re always right.

It’s a phenomenon you may have experienced in your school days. Maybe you started off certain you knew everything, but eventually an educator blew your mind away with a color wheel or some other introduction to basic knowledge. From there onward, you at least knew you didn’t know everything.

But then you graduated from high school, went on to college and earned your diploma, and stopped spending several hours a week learning new information. Without that constant reminder that you don’t know everything, it became easier to accept that your outlook on life required no further fine-tuning.

There’s no reason why you can’t make it a habit to keep learning new information everyday. While reading up on current events is part of that, acquiring new and detailed information about deep issues and unfamiliar subjects is equally important.

What’s great is that there’s never been an easier time to make this a daily habit. E learning is increasingly connecting those who want to know more to video lectures and other online resources that can be accessed wherever there’s a computer and a web connection.

In addition, there’s the go-to Wikipedia as well as trusted information available through a multitude of college and government agency websites. While you shouldn’t simply rely on Google to find these sources for you, virtually any information on any topic can be uncovered with the right web search.

Let’s not forget the library. It’s free after all and jam packed with information you’ve yet to absorb.

By making a habit of learning everyday you accomplish two things: you never forget that you are, relatively speaking, a child lost in the library, and you inch yourself a little farther out of the depths of ignorance. Learning is the only way to turn knowing you know nothing into something.

Some colors are very cheerful. Some are sophisticated. Some are energizing. Some are relaxing. The list can go on and on.

They type of business you have  - and the market you are trying to reach – dictates which colors you should use.

For example: If you have are a virtual assistant who wants to put energy into your clients’ businesses, use energetic colors in your marketing.

On the other hand, if you make aromatherapy products and you specialize in helping people de-stress and relax, you would want to use calming colors.

Not sure what to use? Start by making a list of  words that describe how you want people to  think and feel about your business. Once you have your list of descriptive words, find colors that match the description.

By using these colors, you will be “setting the mood” for your potential customers. Just seeing the colors will help them develop a “feeling” about your business. Using the right colors can make a big impact!

For more info on this topic:

Webinar: ‘The ABC’s of Web Graphic Profits’.

Time: 2pm-3pm ET, Tuesday, February 7th

On the webinar you’ll discover three ways to increase profits with web graphics:

A: Advertise It – On the webinar Angela will share with you some simple ways to promote and advertise your business with graphics. Some ways are paid, some are free. You do what works for you.
B: Brand It – If your branding is a complete mess then people won’t recognize your company. On the call I will give practical, useful and easy to implement tips for creating a brand using nothing but some simple skills and Gimp (the free web graphics design software).

C: Compliment It – On web pages, blog posts, emails and salespages a good image is a complimentary way to draw in readers attention, get or keep them reading and compel them to take action upon completion. On the webinar Angela wills cover how to easily (and affordably) add complimentary graphics to any piece of content.

There will be a drawing that will take place during the webinar for ‘The Graphics Mojo Project’ (value $297), an exciting new project where a select few students will work with Angela to create graphics with purpose.

Sign up to secure your spot in the webinar, click here

If you manage to stay healthy this entire winter and not catch any type of cold, well, consider yourself very lucky. But if you do get sick… I want you to give yourself a break.

Yep. That’s right. I’m telling you to take a little time off of your business. And don’t feel guilty about it.

I just spent the last week and a half feeling like h-e-double-hockey-sticks. It wasn’t fun. Everything hurt, including my head which was full of pressure from my sinus congestion.

I made some attempts to work and catch up on email, but I wasn’t getting much done.

Instead of feeling guilty over it, I got a lot of rest. I drank a lot of fluids. I took my medicine. And, I am finally starting to feel better. So much better, that I’m writing several blog posts tonight and post dating them. I would never have had the energy or stamina to write several blog posts in one sitting last week!

Click Here for some tips on how to stop a cold before it gets the best of you