Magic In Word Blog

Cross The Digital Divide on Friday, August 8th at 3pm Pacific time when we’ll spend 30 minutes discovering how to syndicate our content in Facebook.

If you have a blog, you have the heartbeat to sharing your message with the world, in my humble opinion. Now, add a Facebook page and you have the beginnings of a megaphone on the Internet.

In this 30 minutes you’ll discover how to:

• Post to your blog once and share it several places
• Share your photos and videos
• Use widgets to keep your website or blog visitors "in the know"
• and maybe a few more tidbits….

So, sign up to Cross The Digital Divide with me on Friday, kick your shoes off, grab a beverage of your choice and learn how to spread your passionate message across the Internet.

Join me tomorrow, July 25th, in my online classroom and learn about finding content and marketing your business with YouTube.

One of the common questions I’m asked is how to come up with content for a blog. One of my strategies is to use YouTube. I also use YouTube for viral marketing.

Tomorrow I’ll show you how to search YouTube and grab the code you need to post video to your website. I’m also here to answer your YouTube questions. So grab a beverage of your choice, pull up the conference room, put your feet up and let’s cross the digital divide together.

I’m inviting you to Cross The Digital Divide with me tomorrow at 3pm Pacific / 6pm Eastern to chat in my online classroom  about You Tube.

I look forward to sharing with you, and answering your questions about how you can promote your business online. If you’d like to ask a question prior to our webinar, feel free to contact me directly.

Traffic Swarm is a free site that will generate traffic to your website. What you have to ask yourself is, will that be targeted traffic.

Recently I was pitched an internet advertising program. I pay, let’s say for example, $100 for advertising. I then am able to create an ad that rotates in turn to the visitor of the ad site. I can earn back my ad expenditure if I just click on 24 other member sites, in the rotation, and stay on each site for 15 seconds. To actually earn money, I have to bring others into the advertising program.

Traffic Swarm does the same thing, only free. If you sign up, you get to create your ad, which runs in a rotation. You then earn advertising credits by clicking on the other ads and staying on the site for 20 seconds. I click to earn my credits. You’re lucky if your site, coming up in rotation, is a site I’m interested in.

So how do you target your traffic? Are you blogging yet? Are you involved in social networking? You may want to consider visiting my Cross The Digital Divide free webinars to help you learn how to spot the scam from the legit on the net. Or check out the Resource Library and Article Library for info that helps.

If you try Traffic Swarm, let me know what you think by commenting.

Friday, June 27th, I’ll be talking about Blogs and Blogging at the Free Friday Webinars in our ongoing effort to Conquer The Digital Divide. The webinar starts at 3pm. If you haven’t been to one of my webinars before, you’ll need to sign up here. 

Are you wondering about blogs? Did you know that you’re reading a blog right now? Are you wondering what the advantages of a blog are for your business? These are some of the questions I’ll be answering during this 30 minute webinar.

If you have specific questions, use my contact us form to share them with me ahead of time and I’ll be sure to incorporate them into my presentation.

So, grab a drink of your choice, log into my online classroom, turn the speakers up and take some time to Conquer The Digital Divide.

Join me on Friday afternoon, June 20th, at 3pm Pacific Time, 6pm Eastern Time, for an afternoon break at the Digital Divide. This Friday we’ll be discussing strategic planning for our service businesses. My special guest will be Barbara Eldridge, Mind Masters, who will share some strategic planning tips for solopreneurs.

Part Two covers Your Competitive Advantage, or Your Personal Brand, how you develop it and how you maintain it.

This comes down to a characteristic of you or your business practices that your customers value, but that your competitors find difficult if not impossible to duplicate. In developing your competitive advantage ( brand) focus on who you are and what is unique about you. Then focus on who you want to reach and how you want to be thought of so that you package and promote yourself to accomplish your goals.

When you do, you predispose your audience by capturing the essence of what you have to offer, creating interest and enthusiasm for it and enhancing your image for differentiating yourself in your marketplace.

Come and discover how to create and implement plans for your business. Ask the questions you need the answers to in this informative hour long webinar (30 minute presentation and 30 minutes Q&A..

When registering for the webinars, please make sure to include your website address for the networking segment of the webinar and ask Barbara or myself any question you want.

Our webinar next Friday, June 27th will be an introduction to blogging.

Register Here!!

Join me on Friday afternoon at 3pm Pacific Time, 6pm Eastern Time, for an afternoon break at the Digital Divide. This Friday I’ll be sharing what New Media is and how solopreneurs and service professionals can add new media to their marketing strategies.

You’ve probably heard all about audio and video on your websites and you’ve probably been told it will cost you thousands of dollars to put video on your website. Let me share with you the advantages and some of the tools to help you put audio and video on your website for a fraction of what others might be telling you. When it comes to guerrilla marketing strategies for your website, you’ll want to incorporate new media and I can show you how.

Come and discover how to decide for yourself whether you need to spend BIG bucks on new media, or can you learn how to do it yourself.  Ask the questions you need the answers to in this informative hour long webinar.

When registering for the webinars, please make sure to include your website address for the networking segment of the webinar and ask me any question you want.

Register Here!!

An E-book that includes your marketing message and a link to your website is a proven technique in viral marketing. This method uses the multiplication effect to “explode” the distribution of your message by willing participants.

Using viral E-books as a marketing method is inexpensive. It doesn’t take long to set up a basic E-book. The recent versions of  Word let you create a pdf out of your document immediately. If you need to convert a document to a pdf, use this tool.

It’s even more effective if you use rebrandable E-book software to allow your book to be re-branded by others. Just do a web search to find many rebrandable E-books that are available on whatever subject you are interested in and that apply to your e-business.  Get a few of them and check them out to see how offering your E-book with a rebrander can drive it’s distribution.

One method of distributing the E-book is to offer it to visitors in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter. If they pass it on to their friends and family it will promote your business for you. This also works when you are at a live event. Offer to send the book to them in return for subscribing to your newsletter. Then go back and add them to your subscription list and let the autoresponder send them the E-book.

E-books are capable of reaching a large audience and are limited only by the enthusiasm of the participants.

E-books are fairly easy to create. It’s possible to produce your own E-books by combining articles that you have written or have gotten from public domain sources, such as directories. I encourage clients to start with their frequently asked questions. I’ve found it’s easiest to answer the questions up front. It’s like ready your evaluations after a presentation, then altering the next presentation to address those concerns right up front, at the beginning. An E-book based on your FAQ can do the same thing for your sales cycle.

A common approach is to use material that has Private Label Rights, including articles and reports that have been written specifically for that purpose, for that niche. Using a portion of a larger work that you have prepared such as the first three chapters of a large E-book could also be used as a viral E-book. You can also hire a writer to work with you on the content. Check our archives for more tips on writing your E-book.

Let me know how it goes, by commenting or contacting me.

by Leesa Barnes

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn. These are just 3 of the many social networking tools available online. They are great for finding new prospects, making new friends and connecting with colleagues.

Podcasters use social networking websites to build traffic and grow their audience. It’s an easy way to share your audio or video content to attract attention and gain new fans.

Despite this, many have forgotten their networking manners. They are pushy and greedy. This type of behaviour is enough to make you hit the ignore button.

Want to make enemies? Here are 5 ways you can lose friends online, and how to make sure it never happens to you.

1. Hard sell during the introduction. Along with saying "Hi, we have some mutual friends, so let’s connect," you include the URLs to your blog, website and everything else you’ve created online. Whether it’s asking for donations to your favorite cause or asking for a visit to your blog, you go in for the hard sell on the first hello.

What should you do instead? Become a friend, then offer a quick tip. I recently became friends with a man, a health buff, who reminded me to stand up and stretch every few minutes if I work at my desk all day. He was being helpful and I appreciated this.

Final advice? If you want to lose friends, do the hard sell. If you want to make friends, be helpful.

2. Bombard your friends with notes and emails with your offer. Whether it’s a teleclass, a workshop or a new book, tell all those in your friends’ list about your product. As many times as you can.

What should you do instead? Create a video offering a quick tip and ask for feedback. My friend, Nancy Mar recently did this. In just a few hours, she got 18 replies from friends providing feedback on her video tip.

Final advice? If you want to lose friends, be egotistical. If you want to make friends, be humble.

3. Send the same message one by one to all your friends. I’ve seen a few people send the same message over and over to different people. How do I know they’re doing this? When you login to Facebook, the front page contains the activities of your friends. Often, I see someone posting the same message to different people’s profile. The only thing the offender changes is the individual’s first name.

What should you do instead? Visit your friend’s profile page and find out if you share any hobbies. If so, share your thoughts on that hobby with your friend. If the person is celebrating a birthday, send a birthday greeting. Anything to make the note much more personal.

Final advice? If you want to lose friends, sp@m people. If you want to make friends, personalize your message.

4. Requesting friendship from everyone, including your contact’s 13 year old son. Some join Facebook and MySpace to be friends with as many people as they can. Their goal? To do #2 and #3 above. They are so focused on numbers, they neglect to check if they’re requesting friendship from teenagers.

What should you do instead? Read people’s profiles, study who they are, then request friendship. This will help you avoid the embarrassment of being called pedophile.

Final advice? If you want to lose friends, focus on quantity. If you want to make friends, focus on quality.

If you focus on being helpful and on developing a few key relationships, people will be so interested in you that curiosity alone will send them to your website, blog or podcast. Practice these 4 tips and watch your business grow as people start to trust and like you.

Award-winning blogger and podcasting expert, Leesa Barnes, teaches insider tips on how to boost your sales and make a six-figure income using a podcast. Visit http://www.leesabarnes.com and sign up to receive 2 FREE chapters from her book, Podcasting for Profit.

Got An Internet Question? Free Fridays at the Webinar Cafe has the answers!

Join us each Friday afternoon, beginning June 6th, for a virtual coffee break at the Magic In Words Webinar Cafe. You’ll meet like minded soloprenuers and service professionals and you can get some of your internet related questions answered.

• Looking to drive traffic to your site?
• Want to turn your free loading website into a fee loading website?
• Should you participate in Social Networking?
• Need to raise your online visibility?

These are some of the questions you can find answers for at the Magic In Words Webinar Cafe each week. We’ll be bringing in marketing, sales, business and other professionals to help you build your business.

Find out what topic we are discussing this week by visiting the Webinar Cafe. When you register please ask you question, but more importantly give us your website address. During our time together on Free Fridays at the Magic In Words Webinar Cafe we’ll be putting your website up for everyone to see.

Feel free to contact us with any questions, and come and end your work week with a virtual cup o’joe and learn someth

Learn To Become An Amazon Associate

Monday, May 12, 2008
3pm Pacific Time / 6pm Eastern Time

• Looking for a passive stream of income?
• Looking for products to sell?
• Want to make your site work for you?

This is your chance to LEARN how to become an Amazon Associate. To LEARN how to create product links, widgets and online stores. Debra Simpson will teach you how to add product to your website, creating a passive stream of income. Why pay someone like Debra to do the work for you, when you can do it yourself, for a fraction of the cost?

This 90 minute long, hands-on webinar will take you through signing up, creating your product information and grabbing the code for your blog or website.

Sign Up Today, Only $25.00

What are you waiting for? Come and join us from the comfort of your home office, with a beverage of your choice!