Business Tips
HereNextYear Announces New Product Launch Coming Thursday July 29
There are three simple concepts to using the Internet to get more leads or sales for your business and to make more money online. No matter what products have been launched over the past year or what social networks have sprung up, the same three concepts haven’t changed. We figured with all the hoopla going on right now in the Internet marketing world, it was perfect timing to unveil our new educational manual for accomplishing those three tasks, which are:
1) Converting those who visit your website or interact with you somewhere else on the web to taking action with you
2) Enabling yourself to be not just “found” or “stumbled upon” but ever present
3) Maximizing your sales potential by either making or creating something to sell on your own or promoting someone else’s product.
I Wish I Could Just Design My Own Business Card
Well, you can design your own business card. A business card design is much more than just the look of it. The most important part of a business card design is the text you choose to include. Here’s an example of the back side of my business card. The front side has a picture of “Action” and me along with contact info.
I chose the words in a design format that I wanted my designer to use when she created my business cards. So, sure, I took things to a little higher level by first creating my design and then sending it to my designer. But, you don’t have to. There are a number of free business card creation tools on the web. Just search Google for “free online business card maker” and you’ll find a bunch of them. Or, just drop your text into an MS Word template.
New Online Store for Internet Marketing Education
It’s been a long time coming but we finally have launched Action’s Store. If you’ve attended any HereNextYear workshop, you’ve been introduced to “Action,” our president Marty Dickinson’s mascot. And, for the first time ever, we’re offering the actual processes and procedures we perform for our clients to the general public. So far, there are five Internet marketing related manuals with checklists to follow and one audio file. For the next couple of months there will be at least one new product added each week. And, of course, we’ll feature those new additions here on the HereNextYear blog. Checkout the new Action’s Store for business and online marketing and let us know what you think.
Is the Romaine Lettuce Recall 2010 Like Amazon’s Associate Program Recall?
Seems like every year around this time, there is some major recall of something we ingest. Earlier this week it was cough medicine. And, now romaine lettuce is being taken off the shelves everywhere. Here is a nice writeup about lettuce announcement.
The post says the recall is in 23 states and 19 people have already been impacted by E. coli. Can you even imagine the dollars lost in all the lettuce that has to be thrown out now? Lettuce is almost (not quite but almost) as popular as potatoes in usage. Lettuce is everywhere!
There’s nothing funny at all about the lettuce recall and for me being someone that east salad daily for lunch I have to wonder if I should settle for a burger today. But, I do find it somewhat curious why Amazon came to mind immediately when I heard about the 2010 lettuce recall.
Be Careful of Twitter Email Attack
If you get an email in your inbox from “Support Engineer” with an @Twitter.com email address and a subject line of “Ticket #040″ or something similar, do NOT open the email. Just discard it. I’m usually quick to catch these viruses, because there are usually 10 of them sent to me at a time with different from names. Easy to spot. But, this one looked legit…Good going loser hackers! Anyway, just wanted to post a warning about it.
Selecting a Website Hosting Company in 10 Steps
You’ve just returned home from a well deserved and relaxing dinner out with friends after a long hard week launching an extensive promotional campaign for your web site.
Before deciding to call it a night, you can’t resist checking your e-mail one last time to see how many orders have come in over the last few hours.
When you click on your e-mail “Inbox” link, you’re met with a long pause….
The message, “Can’t Connect to Server” finally appears.
A slight tingling begins in your fingers. You wonder how many important e-mails have been lost. You then wonder if the problem is with your connection, the e-mail server, or worse yet, your web site.
Sure enough. The web site is down.
You call your web site hosting company. The voice mail message tells you that office hours will begin Monday morning. As suggested on the voice message, you submit an emergency support request by e-mail.
10-Step Website Checklist Before Promotion Launch
Whether you’re just starting your first website or are re-launching one that has been around for years, there are 10 key things to check before you begin your promotional launch. They include:
- Update the copyright date on every page of your website and blog.Few things will be as quick to tell your website visitors that your content is outdated than having a copyright date from a previous year.
- Proofread content you haven’t looked at in a while. A prospect was reviewing my site when she pointed out that I had a sentence half-written on one of my pages. How embarrassing. Proofread and then proofread again and then have someone else proofread.
- Run your pages through a spell checker. Many HTML editor programs have this built-in or use this free web-based spell checker. Even if a bunch of people proofread for you, spelling errors will get through.
11 Questions to Ask Before You Hire an Internet Marketing Coach or Company
The story is all too familiar. Guy writes ebook, guy sells ebook online, guy starts coaching or consulting business, guy changes name to protect his family from death threats.
Every day, thousands of starving entrepreneurs fork over their $4500+ payments to capture the precious few 15-minute time blocks offered by Internet marketing coaches. Then, they wonder why their Internet marketing coaching doesn’t work.
On the other hand, I have not ever met someone that made any real headway on the web without some type of guidance.
We all have our mentors. We all have those people who taught us how to market and sell online. We all have had projects that bring images of a toilet flushing into our minds. Eventually, if we stick with it, a few things work too.
When you hire a consultant or coach to help with your Internet project, you need to have a realistic mindset. No success will be achieved without time and effort.
The Here Next Year Method
When people ask me how to turn their websites around, they’re quite surprised when I tell them the answer is almost the exact same method every time no matter what industry you’re in or whatever product or service you provide. Here is the HereNextYear method as I describe it to people:
- Determine where your website “is,” meaning, number of sales, visitation rates, search engine positioning, links, design, usability, and a list of other checkup items. The first step is kind of like getting a physical at the doctor’s office. You don’t really try to fix anything but more find out what kind of hand we’ve been dealt.
- Identify the areas that need to have the bleeding stopped. I like to look at exit pages, for example, and find the top 5 or 10 pages where visitors are leaving. Sometimes, a bleeding wound needs a bit more attention than just a few word changes. Web design is a good example. So, we might recommend an immediate re-design of the site to stop major loss of visitation.
How to Get on CNN as a Guest Using Video
I always make a point of giving advice only for things I’ve already done. Then if it works for me, I share what I accomplished. If it’s a dog, I tell why it failed.
Today I need to deviate from that and tell you what someone else did to get herself on CNN.
First, click this link or copy and paste this link to your browser: http://tinyurl.com/na7adu to see the video that was shown on CNN last Wednesday morning, made by someone who identifies herself only as Adriana.
Here are three reasons why I believe she got featured:
1) Her Video is About a HOT and STEAMY SEXY Topic: Health Care Reform – She “attended” a town meeting where the health care plan was discussed. CNN is looking for town meeting attendees right now to hear their “real people” opinions.
