2011 May | Get More Clients Online

Archive for May, 2011

Content Marketing: 5 Proven Strategies for Turning Prospects Into Buyers

By Donna Gunter on Thursday, May 26th, 2011 | No Comments

I discovered a few years ago that I had accidentally stumbled upon the new wave of marketing, now referred to as content marketing, as I went about my regular marketing activities. As a card carrying introvert, it’s just always been so much easier to share my knowledge with others rather than trying to sell myself or my products. Ironically enough, that strategy has proven insanely successful for me. At the time, I never looked upon it as a strategy or a system — I just did what naturally came to me. Who knew that I was on the cusp of the newest marketing system about to be adopted by all sorts of companies around the globe?

This is a preview of Content Marketing: 5 Proven Strategies for Turning Prospects Into Buyers. Read the full post (812 words, 1 image, estimated 3:15 mins reading time)

Loving Google Calendar’s New Event Feature

By Donna Gunter on Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 | No Comments

One of the things I actually missed from my Outlook calendar when I switched to the Google Calendar was the ability to color code my events. In Outlook, I was able to turn my event listings to different colors so that I could eyeball my day and see what I had in store. Google, however, never permitted me to do that.

However, in the last few weeks, I noticed that Google has now added that feature to the calendar. Hooray! Now I can code my teleclasses in red, my client appointments in green, my personal appointments in yellow — you get the idea.

This is a preview of Loving Google Calendar’s New Event Feature. Read the full post (123 words, estimated 30 secs reading time)

Icon Finder

By Donna Gunter on Friday, May 20th, 2011 | No Comments

Because I do so much writing on the Web, I’m always searching for images to illustrate my writing or one of my many blogsites. I do have a subscription with an image service, but sometimes I can’t find great icons there.

Then I heard about Icon Finder. Icon Finder provides high quality icons for web designers and developers in an easy and efficient way. The site launched in 2007 as the first search engine focused on icons. Similar to Google Images, you can do a search for any type of icon you are seeking.

This is a preview of Icon Finder. Read the full post (162 words, 1 image, estimated 39 secs reading time)

7 Essential Sales Pages Needed on Every Web Site

By Donna Gunter on Thursday, May 19th, 2011 | No Comments

Web site creation has been at the forefront of much of what I’ve done as an online business owner. While I haven’t designed the look and feel of all of my sites, I’ve created the content for all of them. Determining what to include on a web site can be overwhelming to the most seasoned business owner. There’s nothing worse than staring at a blank screen and experiencing a severe case of writer’s block.

However, throughout the years, I’ve looked at many, many sites and have determined that there are a number of pages that generally appear on every site. These include:

This is a preview of 7 Essential Sales Pages Needed on Every Web Site. Read the full post (962 words, 1 image, estimated 3:51 mins reading time)

Updated SEO Strategies

By Donna Gunter on Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 | No Comments

Q: In the event of Google’s search engine recent changes what is the best way to optimize your website for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies?

David Pickette
www.BaysideJewelry.com

A: Hi David — The basic (standard) rules really haven’t changed much at all in terms of performing SEO on your site. The recent Google changes were really aimed at demolishing content farms (called the Farmer’s Update) that had a bunch of poorly written, unrelated content on a site.

Here’s what is still working:

1. Keywords in your domain. Google seems to be giving a small amount of priority to those sites that have keywords in their domain names.

This is a preview of Updated SEO Strategies. Read the full post (350 words, 1 image, estimated 1:24 mins reading time)

WP Twin

By Donna Gunter on Friday, May 13th, 2011 | No Comments

It’s quite time-consuming to install a WordPress blog and all of its associated plugins. Sure, you can outsource this to your team, but what if there were an easier way to clone the setup of your blog?

Now there is. WP Twin clones your ENTIRE blog in seconds,so you can move it to anywhere you want, back it up, or set up other identical blogs that you can then use for other purposes. No longer do you have to configure all the settings of a new blog. Now you can just clone a blog that’s already been configured just how you like it and have it ready to go in minutes!

This is a preview of WP Twin. Read the full post (301 words, 1 image, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

How to Become an Expert: 10 Key Questions to Ask to Unlock Your Expertise

By Donna Gunter on Thursday, May 12th, 2011 | 9 Comments

Many business owners wrestle with this notion of “expertise”, feeling certain that they don’t know enough to be looked upon by anyone as an expert. I avoided that expert label as well for my first 5 or so years in business, despite being very good at what I did. I was always comparing myself to other “experts” in the field and felt myself falling sadly short on the experience meter of what I thought an expert should be.

This is a preview of How to Become an Expert: 10 Key Questions to Ask to Unlock Your Expertise. Read the full post (1156 words, 1 image, estimated 4:37 mins reading time)

BeQRious

By Donna Gunter on Friday, May 6th, 2011 | 2 Comments

If you’ve run across QR codes and have no idea how to generate them for your own business, wonder no more. Now there’s an online site that will help you generate almost any kind o QR code that you need.

BeQRious is a free tool that helps you generate a QR code to your contact info, a text message, video, your social networking profiles — almost anything you might need. You can save the QR code as an image or a PDF file, which is nice is you need a copy of the code for printed marketing materials. If you like, you can simply copy and paste the embed code on your site from BeQRious without saving your QR code image to your site at all.

This is a preview of BeQRious. Read the full post (173 words, 1 image, estimated 42 secs reading time)

Ethical Bribes: 10 Most Effective Client Attraction Device Giveaways

By Donna Gunter on Thursday, May 5th, 2011 | 10 Comments

One of the quickest ways to build your email marketing list is by creating an ethical bribe, or what I refer to as a client attraction device. This free giveaway serves to entice visitors to your site to sign up for your email list because they want to access your solution to their problem proffered in your email list opt-in box.

What are the two most important characteristics of an effective client attraction device? It must provide the solution to at least one of the problems of your target market and utilize the keywords that your target market might use when seeking this type of solution. Secondly, your offering must have a high enough perceived value that your visitors would be willing to pay for it.

This is a preview of Ethical Bribes: 10 Most Effective Client Attraction Device Giveaways. Read the full post (1005 words, 2 images, estimated 4:01 mins reading time)