LearnHub.com is a tool that allows you to put up a free or paid course with videos and tests. It’s a cool tool that can help you build credibility. Your best strategy may be to charge for the classes and invest the money into advertising. Not only do people take paid classes more seriously, but with more advertising you may get a bigger turnout.
General Business
YouTube
YouTube.com isn’t only popular with millions of people, it’s also popular with Google. More and more you seen YouTube videos coming up in the search results for Google. You can put both a brief description of your video as well as a link to your site in a post on YouTube, so it can certainly be a traffic magnet.
What kinds of videos might you make?
- Tour of your store/prodiucts/etc
- Customer testimonials
- PowerPoint presentation
Note: You can do this for free using MS Movie Maker, click here for video instructions - Informational video with instructions on how to use your product, or some related material
- Screen capture training, where the end user sees your screen and hears your voice
Note: Camtasia is a great tool to do this as well as an easier way to convert your PowerPoint presentations - Video of a special event
- etc.
You can use an inexpensive digital camera to take your video. This is handy as it makes it realitively easy to upload the files to YouTube.
A Good Product or Service isn’t Enough
Recently I switched my Internet provider. My new connection is faster and less expensive. I love the service.
In the meantime I’ve received the worst customer service I’ve ever experienced. I’m truly amazed at the level of apathy this company provides in place of customer service.
Now here’s a company who is advertising like crazy, spending millions to be sure. They have a great service at a good price. Still, I don’t feel I can refer my friends and family. Mind you, when Comcast first came out with high speed I must have helped them sign up 10 or more new customers with my raving broadband. Yep, that’s right, it’s not Comcast I’m talking about.
There is a certain synergy that happens when you put together a great product or service, at a great price, and back it up with awesome customer service. You may be able to have a little higher or even a lot higher price, but you certainly can’t skip the customer service aspect.
Don’t Market Your Business, Unless You Are Ready toâEUR¦
I was reading one of the Guerilla Marketing books (great books by the way), and it said that you need to make sure you have your customer service right before you use any great marketing tactics; otherwise you will only speed up the demise of your business.
I saw a great example of this on a trip to the beach. A small ice cream stand had sent a girl (about 10 years old) out to pass out coupons for a free ice cream cone. This was truly Guerilla Marketing, and it seemed to be working.
Rude Awakening about Password Security
A couple of weeks ago I came to a rude awakening about password security. I’m ashamed to say that I was using the check boxes in internet explorer to save my usernames and passwords. I assumed Microsoft would encrypt this information and keep it safe.
Well you know what they say about assuming. It turns out that while IE does encrypt the information it only requires a little freeware program to crack the encryption and give all of your information to anyone who gains access to your computer.
I need to manage more than 150 different passwords. Remembering them was not an option (not for this brain). Additionally, I want to use very secure passwords like… u%w6vvuXz&
The solution I found is RoboForm I’m actually using the 2go product which allows you to have all of your passwords on a flash drive. This gives you the additional security of being able to take the passwords away from the computer when you’re not using them. Additionally, now I can keep all of my passwords in my firebox.
Buying a program like this seems expensive, until something happens and you lose two days of work because you’re trying to reset everything. It took me a little bit to get used to the way RoboForm saves everything, but now I love it. It makes it so I can easily go from site to site without remember usernames and passwords.
I would suggest that you choose a good password management system before you have problems, and I believe RoboForm is the best.
The Word of Mouth Lie
One of the most widely held pieces of misinformation relates to word of mouth advertising. Specifically, business owners believe if they do a good job, people will tell their friends. This is just plain false.
You’ll understand why, when you realize two facts. First, people expect you to do a good job. Generally you are only noticed if you some how manage to wow them, or if you disappoint them. Second, most people don’t naturally talk about businesses, even ones they’ve had good experiences with.
How to Empty Your Email Box
This post is about managing your email better so you can be more effective. When I started working on this I was amazed at the amount of time I’m able to save with a few simple steps.
Would you be surprised if you found out that you are wasting an hour a week on email? I’m talking about a solid hour that you could be spending on other work. One hour a week adds up to more than a week of lost productivity a year. I think for some of us this number is actually low.
Breaking just one of the bad email habits (checking it too often) will also make you much more effective in other work that you are doing. Every time we interrupt a task we are in the middle of it takes at least a few minutes to get back into the mindset to work on it again.
Instead of explaining how to get control over your email, I’ll send you to the link for the page where I learned it.
Additionally, Remember the Milk is a great service for keeping track of tasks. You don’t want to keep track of tasks in your email system, because it’s not a very good tool for that. You need a trusted system.
Empty Head – Best Stress Relief for Business People
Are you a standard stressed out business person? It’s because you’re thinking too much… More specifically you spend too much of your mental energy on stuff that you aren’t completing.
In the book, Getting Things Done, by David Alan, I was exposed to a brand new idea. This is one of those ideas that as soon as you hear it, you know the truth of it. You say to yourself, “of course!”
Why Choose You?
You can easily use all of the tools in this blog to help promote your business and still get little results. The reason is simple. Consumers are completely overwhelmed with marketing messages. You need to create something that separates you.
You need to answer the question, “Why Choose Your Business Product or Service?” A good answer to this is a USP (unique selling proposition).
20 Minutes a Day
How much time to you spend marketing your business. I would suggest that you spend 20 minutes every day marketing your business online. You could just go through all of the resources in this site and find useful things to do to help your business on a daily basis.
So often in business we focus on how we use our marketing dollars. While of course this is an important question, I feel the better question is, “how do we use our marketing time?” Lots of businesses don’t spend much time at all on marketing. Of course, you probably don’t fall into this category, after all your reading this.