Social media at its best is word of mouth, friend to friend.

Photo courtesy of AnyaLogic

An important part of online business marketing is using social media so you’re seen everywhere. The day a customer needs you, you’re handy and familiar.

How to Be Seen Everywhere

Create a profile for yourself at the big three: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Provide these sites with regular, helpful updates on you and your business with links to your good information. Make friends there. After you’ve established yourself there, created a Facebook fan page and joined groups, add your profile to more media sites.

There are Three Aspects to Social Media

You want consistent updates almost daily. For better response, make small contacts over the day in a trickle instead of a flood of tweets all at once. At least two times a week, spend an hour checking in with your sites, responding to any messages, interacting with and supporting other people. You can pre-schedule updates to come out over a few days.

Social media means social–people meet, chat, learn about each other, make friends. People don’t mind news about your business when given in friendly, helpful snippets. Spend ten minutes online when you can so you interact with others in real time, versus using only pre-scheduled updates unrelated to anyone’s conversation.

Provide tips people can use so you’re seen as a resource and an expert who cares about others, not just your bottom line. This helps foster invaluable word-of-mouth recommendations from your customers to their friends and contacts. Ask for their opinions.

Consistent Look and Feel Helps Brand Your Business

Use your same bio on all social media profiles, with a long, medium and short version you can use as needed. Use one photo of yourself when branding you, then use your photo or a logo when branding your business. If you have both a web site and a blog, use consistent colors people will associate with your business.

Your Brand Is Your Promise

Your logo or tagline is not your brand, just a part of it. You’re not a huge company like Pepsi with huge ad campaigns. Just the same, your brand tells people what you offer and will deliver when they connect with you.

Be a Giver and a Helper

Give your followers opportunities to buy about once every ten or twenty tweets so you’re seen as a person, not a soulless business machine. Use social media for your online business marketing wisely and well for best results.

Best,

Karen

P.S.

Remember, you run an online home business for greater income and fun. Do you know everything there is to know about branding with social media?

Start your online business with the persistence of a ram.

Photo courtesy of digitalART2

When you start an online business, what do your friends say? Do you hear, “You can do it! How can I help?” More likely they say you might fail, right?

What Kind of Friends Are They?

Maybe they love you like a brother or sister. Maybe they’re just a tad jealous that you get all excited about something new every other time they see you.

It hurries them to put in a day’s work, chill in front of the TV, hit the rack, rinse and repeat. Some don’t even summon up energy for a hobby.

“Don’t Spend Time with People Like That”

So says Brian Tracy. Have you heard of him?

Your Success May Come in an Unexpected Way

He says most things won’t work the first time, not the way you expect. Have you experienced that?

Is that why so many things you’ve tried online didn’t pan out? What have you learned? Sometimes what works for others doesn’t work for us because we don’t have their skills. We have other skills they don’t have, so we’ll succeed in our own way.

What Way Is That?

You’ll find out as you go along. You must launch, keep moving, keep learning, get experience, expect to try this, that and other things, making adjustments until you get your winning system.

Is this your fourth business attempt? Good for you! Are you applying what you learned in the first three businesses? Good for you!

You’re Special and Probably Don’t Know It

Did you hear Brian’s last statement?

Only about one percent of people have the ability to really take entrepreneurial risks. Ninety-nine percent of the population can work for a business once it’s established. Only one percent have the courage and ability to actually make the entrepreneurial breakthroughs that create those jobs.

That’s worth how ever many tries it takes, right?

Are you a one percent person?

I bet you are. You’re here reading a blog dedicated to home business, looking for information, tips and support for your own endeavors.

Small business is the foundation of America. The nation is counting on you, me and the other entrepreneurs to succeed–no matter how often they warn you off trying!

Best,

Karen

P.S.

I hear you make about the same amount of money as your friends. Oops, I need new friends! How about you?

Start your online business for success moments like this!

Photo courtesy of Search_Engine_People_Blog

If one of the things on your bucket list is to start your online business, what’s stopping you? You can overcome your fear, lack of passion or lack of purpose.

What Kind Of Business Would You Start?

If your friends and family ask you for help with a particular thing you’re good at, you might start a business offering that product or service. Would any of them PAY you for your expert fix-up? It’s a good sign.

What’s the Worst Thing About Running a Business?

You’re the boss. This can be the best or worst thing, depending on your abilities and temperament. If you’re an organized self-starter, you probably already have your business going full throttle. If you’re a dreamer who starts things but never finishes them, you need a partner. Consistent showing up and follow-through on tasks are crucial to success.

What’s the Best Thing About Running a Business?

1. You set your own hours.

Again this can be a best or a worst thing. Ask any self-employed person how many hours they work a week and you’ll more than likely hear “beyond full-time.” Maybe they get so interested in what they’re doing, they lose track of time and discover they’re up half the night.

Maybe they spend tons of time learning all the ropes of domain names, hosting, autoresponders, email marketing, article marketing, web site design, blogging, social media, attracting traffic, keywords and…you get the picture.

If a family emergency happens, you can take off for a day, week or month at a moment’s notice. Gotta go? Go! You don’t ask for anyone’s permission, rearrange shifts, call in sick, or upset anyone. Sporadic Internet access could be enough to check your email and keep tabs on your business if need be.

2. You can build a business on a passion.

If you’re lucky enough to be crazy about a hobby lots of other people are crazy about, you can have a successful business in that niche. A quick search online will reveal whether anyone spends money in your niche, and what they buy. Sell whatever they’re buying!

3. Money, honey.

Work it right and you can make an excellent income from your business. If you need enough for your mortgage, fine. If you want extra dough for a charity you love, fine. Maybe you start your online business as a sideline providing another stream of income as an extra cushion and feeling of security.

Best,

Karen

P.S.

What did the business woman in the photo win? I know a woman who wins iPads and such in affiliate marketing contests. Why? Because she builds business relationships that feel personal. Click for tips on building business relationships so customers stick like Velcro.

How visible is your work at home online business?

Photo courtesy of apbeatty

Why do you need to change visibility for your work at home online business? Because people search Google or even YouTube to find you.

Nowadays one listing in Google’s top ten isn’t enough. When your ideal customer sees your name and business mentioned several times, that gets their click!

How to Get Your Business Seen Everywhere

1. Blog

Make a blog the hub of your business. Post at least three times each week, giving your ideal customers excellent information in a conversational way. Engage them with questions, videos or polls so they answer, click and participate. This turns a reader into a participant, then into a customer.

2. Use Social Media

Build your profile on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. Interact with people as a professional human being. On Facebook, set up a fan page for your business so you don’t mix your professional image with too many personal messages. Link your social sites together so one business message hits all channels.

3. Use One Consistent Image

Pick a great head shot of yourself looking friendly and professional and use that same picture everywhere. It’s one way you can brand yourself and your business. Place your photo in or near your blog header and into your profiles all over the web for a consistent look. Don’t overlook building a profile for yourself in Google.

4. Attract, Don’t Push

Being professional online doesn’t mean you hard sell. Quite the opposite. Your blog establishes you as an expert as you provide useful information in an approachable way that invites your reader in. Social media is meant to be primarily social. Bombarding Twitter with nothing but sales pitch after sales pitch gains you no friends. For all anyone knows, you might be a robot, and a pushy one at that.

5. Monitor Your Name and  Business Name

Set up a Google Alert for your name in quotes as “Your Name” so your results don’t include others with your first name or your last name. Set up another alert for your business name. This way you’ll see what’s being said about you and your business online on a daily or weekly basis. If you see anything incorrect or negative about your work at home online business, change your visibility by creating more content you want seen instead.

Best,

Karen

P.S.

Help yourself to more tips on how to get seen everywhere as the super-duper person your ideal customer is looking for.

A home business blog, like the Tower of Pisa, needs a good foundation.

Photo courtesy of Argenberg

How do you start a home business blog? Find a hungry crowd, use keywords in your domain name, then sell a product they can’t resist? Nope, you missed a step.

You Forgot to Dream Up Your Ideal Business

What excites you about starting a new business? If you start one out of desperation over a lay-off, lost job or need for cash, you don’t start from a position of strength. You won’t plant a magic bean in prepared soil with excitement and a vision of a magnificent bean stalk that will feed you and your customers.

Instead, think about and FEEL what kind of business stirs your blood, connects with your heart and makes you say, “THAT’S what I’ve always wanted to do!” Envision your ideal business where you do what you love with great success.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

I must admit, I never did my dreaming. I started this blog on nothing more substantial than, “I’m sick of tailoring. I want an online business.” I saw other people make money as affiliates and selling info-products and figured I could too.

What’s Wrong with Not Dreaming?

When instant success didn’t come (no surprise there!), my little spurt of momentum fizzed out. I got discouraged, then started yet another blog. Trust me, flitting from one start-up to another with no clear idea of what you want is NOT a success formula!

How to Give a New Business Momentum

Infuse it with your energy. While listening to an audio today about this topic, it struck me how often I wished I were one of those people who thrives wherever they find themselves.

Drop one of these people onto a remote mountainside where most would starve. Instead, he or she starts a coffee plantation. As he thrives, he employs new friends and neighbors.

This is Small Business, America’s True Powerhouse

Can I become one of those people? Can I teach others how they can become one too? I don’t know. Is that a viable business idea? I don’t know.

What would I love? To learn how to turn any situation into prosperity. Not only turn lemons into lemonade, but notice good raw materials around me, combine them in ingenious ways for a great income with great fun!

Lay These Groundwork Steps for a Prosperous New Business

1. Prepare yourself.
2. Feelize.
3. Mine the gold from the old.
4. Re-feelize your business.

Go listen to Laurie LaMantia’s audio and fill out her workbook. What’s it cost? Free! What’s it worth?

Well, considering this is how multi-million dollar businesses are born from someone’s heart into the world, priceless. Can you say J.K. Rowling?

Then when you start your home business blog, enjoy how eagerly synchronicity and coincidences help you.

Best,

Karen

P.S.

Meet me back here and we’ll check up on each other. Go down to the empty box below, tell me what business ideas you discovered listening to the audio and what you’ll do with them. Deal?