How to Get Referrals for Your Business

If you sell a product online, and you want to have your customers send you other customers, you can do this several ways.

1. Ask. It never hurts to ask and many times, if you simply ask your customer, “Do you know anyone who might need our services?” they will tell you some friends they know who want what you have.  This is the most basic and classic way of getting referrals and it’s completely appropriate in most businesses and situations.
2. Reward. Offering an actual cash amount to those who bring you paying customers is a surefire way to get a response.
3. Incentives. Make it easy on your customer to invite their friends to look at your product–offer each referral a discount. You can even provide your customer with a link to a downloadable coupon they can give their friend. Couple this with option number two, and it’s a win/win for both of them!

Are you looking for ways to promote your product or service? My e-course “How to Sell anything Online shows you how.

How to get testimonials

Who Stole my Meatloaf?

All names have been changed to protect the guilty

 

It was 3:00 pm in the afternoon.  Five thirsty employees saw it….the sprite…staring them in the face on the top shelf. It was a communal fridge. Each day they saw it…sitting there…unmoved, and unclaimed.  Finally, on an especially brutal Friday, the torture continued.  At break time, each one of them, silently, reasoned with themselves on why their secret sin would be okay. No one was claiming this pop. Someone else will take it if I don’t. Joe is fat, and I need more. Marci’s a diabetic, and she’s tempted…gotta save her.

Is it any wonder that no one was very compassionate on the day that the temp came back to the plant to work on Thursday? They hadn’t seen her in weeks and frankly, everyone had forgotten about the pop. They didn’t really even know is she still worked there.

Here’s what she said ” the other day, I came into work and found FIFTY CENTS instead of my pop. And I went ‘argh.! I don’t want fifty cents, I want my pop!”

It was almost as bad as they guy who rented a room with me in a dump back in my earlier days. Bulging from side to side, the veins bursting on his sweating neck, we all knew it was time to run

“Who stole my meatloaf??????”

If you’ve ever gone into the break room at work and heard someone wailing this, it’s a scene in entertainment you don’t want to miss.

The offended will thrash about like a wild animal screaming explicatives while DEMANDING that the guilty party produces their food. I mean, like what?do they want the thief to get a barf bag and retrieve it?

The funniest thing is the absolute resolute chirp of crickets you hear from the peanut gallery. I mean, people are LOYAL in covering. No one even utters a theory on who MIGHT have done it (I think they’re in cahoots with one another).

And people are shameless with this. When I was a locker room attendant at a health club, workers would grab my health shakes which I sold on the side and slug them down when I turned my back for a moment.

If all of this seems surreal, consider what happens on the World Wide Web. Poor writers rip off content all the time.

Can you blame them? Can you blame the person in the story above who was dehydrating while lusting after that sprite that seemed…abandoned?

Or the hungry person who was eyeing Earl’s meatloaf all week long thinking, “Is this Joker ever going to eat this thing? Or is he done with it all ready”?

I guess in the end, feigned ignorance coupled with hunger and a disdain of waste makes it seem all right.

Reader, have you ever had your content ripped off? I know I have. Once I went on line and discovered that there was a mega site that had posted my beautiful article for my husband’s Business Blog, I was livid. Until. I looked and observed that the telephone number to my husband’s business was intact. Untouched. What? Turns out the webmaster could not speak english…only asian characters…and had NO IDEA he was promoting my husband’s business.

He couldn’t read english. He was desperate. And while that might not describe most “scrapers”, it is true of many poor writers. There’s all that beautiful content. “I wish I could write like that”  “This guy has abandoned his blog…he hasn’t posted in ages” “Anyway, no will know” and, click, the copy and paste forgery begins.

I would like to to tell you that this doesn’t happen, but the better I rank, the more scrapers seem to show up. One day I’ll write an article showing how to shut them down. But in the meantime, I want to talk about content creation.

Whenever you see one of these link farms with scraped content, you can be sure that the person is doing one of three things

a. experiencing low self esteem about their blog

b. has convinced his or herself that they have nothing important to say

c. really believes that they can’t write.

In my series “Blogging Basics” I go into intricate detail on the mechanics of creating  a viewable blog and developing fantastic content. If you’ve ever thought

I can’t write

I can’t spell or

My content is boring

Then this is for you. but before I continue pitching it, let me make a suggestion to all the best and worst writers out there…make an outline. Make sub outlines. Fill them in.

Can you do that please? If you write great or naturally, you can still benefit from this tip when thoughts flow too quickly to organize.

And if you think your writing could use some intensive help, Check out my tutorial.

Now (and this is the truth) I’m off to hide the evidence of the quick swipe I made of someone’s stack

(forgive me, family….)

It was talking to me.

You had more steak then I did last night

It isn’t fair anyway, because your older sister is doing her no meat for lent thing and anyway, you all have been hogging all the food.

And I guess I’m not too sorry, but I want you to love me.

Because I’m the one that does the cooking every night.

And buys your snacks  which you grab and run away with and anyway, I wanted some quality time with you while we have a stay at home order. And here you all are bonding with me and providing me with content for my website and, well, gee, I know you are learning Karate at the school which is at home now, but could you just maybe, like, get over it

(okay, students, that’s going to be my final example in “self revealing writing” for this season).

Buy “How to Build rapport with your Blogging Base”

Build trust and respect along with loyal readership and a group of followers by following these tips for building rapport with your viewer base.

$83.00

 

Affiliate Marketing |New Release

I’m about to release my new e-book, “Using Google Adwords to promote Your affiliate offer.”  It’s  a robust book that details different strategies for making serious rankings in paid search.

I wasn’t going to offer this to my tribe, because I am always encouraging people to sell their own stuff. However, in this new economy and with everything going on lately in the news and world, I think affiliate marketing is a good alternative for some….when done right!

If this interests you, you can pre register here for a sneak peak at my first chapter, The book is scheduled for release in June

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How to Build Rapport with your reader

Building rapport with your reader

rap•port ră-pôr′, rə-
n.
Relationship, especially one of mutual trust or emotional affinity.
To have relation or reference; relate; refer.
n.
Harmonious relation; correspondence; accord or agreement; affinity; analogy: used as a French word, often in the phrase en rapport, in or into close relation, accord, or harmony.

When I first made my blog, I remember how sharp it was.  I was very proud of the informative articles, and professional formatting.

The problem was, I was treating my blog more like a website than a blog.

Rather than speaking to my reader, I was simply encyclopedic in my writing approach.

I still got good rankings in the search engine, and even good, return traffic.

It wasn’t until I began using the human element that I really found increase in my business.

Now, I need to tell you all something…I am a very private person. What I mean is, I don’t really like revealing too much of my personal life, and really, from a professional stand-point, that is a good stance to take.

I mean, aren’t we always taught to keep our private lives out of the workforce?

I was certainly taught that. But  then, things began to change.

Internet marketing began to take on a much more personal tone.

People began using social media to promote their business.

Businesses which used to be blue chip quality began acting like chimpanzees, and doing all sorts of weird stunts just to get “share” and “likes”.

And it seemed to work for them.  For a while. Until everyone began acting zany, and then the appeal was gone.

Thankfully, many such businesses regained their sanity and quit acting like teenagers, gangstas….anything…just to get attention.

Now that things have calmed down a bit and the smoke has cleared, many businesses are still left wondering,
“How can I seem approachable while not being too casual, or unprofessional”.
“Is it okay to mention what I do in my personal life? Just how personal should I get with my audience base?” And
“which parts of my true self should I actually share”?

I answer all of this in my ebook, “How to build rapport with your blogging base”.

If you have ever found yourself wondering how to reveal just enough without seeming too familiar or forward, then you need to read this.

It’s just a straight forward read on how to connect with your readers without revealing too much.

If you have ever wondered where the  professional “line” is with blogging, then you need to grab a copy.

You’ll learn

1. How to assume the proper tone with your audience so that they instantly connect with you—without seeming too casual or too serious.
2. How to identify with your audience while still positioning yourself as a thought-leader
3. When it’s really okay to let it all hang out, how to do it, and how often.

There’s a special bonus section for information marketers (what can be more stressful than creatively trying to provide daily content without giving away your product?)

By the end of this course, you will know how to wake up each morning and provide fresh, relevant, meaty content that touches the heart of your reader.

The cost? $83

Note: This does not cover the technical aspects of setting up or designing a blog. This is strictly about writing, psychology, and content.

Buy “How to Build rapport with your Blogging Base”

Build trust and respect along with loyal readership and a group of followers by following these tips for building rapport with your viewer base.

$83.00

What is content marketing

So what is content marketing? Well, that’s almost like asking “what is internet marketing” although the term “content marketing” is not quite as broad.

Content marketing can refer to any process of marketing that utilizes content, including lead magnets, articles, reviews, editorials, even forums and comment segments.

Whoa! That is a whole lot of possibilities. Now, add to that mix the whole genre of non-text media available, such as videos, graphics, and online profiles, and you are just beginning to see how spacious the whole arena is in the field of content marketing.

But now, we are honing in today on the concept of making money with content. And I don’t necessarily mean your own. In fact, many marketers make lots of money running forums, which is just a fancy term for letting other people’s content be a base for your ads.

Forum site’s make their money by drawing highly targeted traffic to online forums designed to let other users discuss specific issues. Then, the forum website owner runs ads on that site. See, he uses the traffic he gets from the content to justify charging big bucks from his advertisers. Or, maybe he runs Google adwords on the side, and he gets paid whenever someone clicks on an ad.

The point is, he would never get that traffic (resulting in the sale of ads or the commissions from adwords) if his content wasn’t compelling. That’s because, in the world of content marketing…

Content is king