In this Business Blogging video, I am sharing with you some of the things I shared at a recent Marketing Workshop I did with Juli Amodei. I hope you enjoy!

Here are some of the links to different WordPress Themes that I recommend.

- Thesis Theme

- Builder

- Flexx

I hope those help… I have to be honest… My favorite theme so far is Thesis. If you need help with your blog or would like to hire us to make your business blog, please feel free to contact us. Talk to you soon!

P.S. Don’t forget to check out the 30 day Simple Business Growth System video series I am doing.

If you are using capture pages or sales letters to generate leads or sell products and services, you need to know that you can use the powerful WordPress software to do it. In this video I am going to show you how to do it. Be sure to check out the important links below this video. Enjoy!

WordPress Sales Page Resources:

Thesis Theme

Builder Theme

Flexx Theme

One Click Sales Sites

WP Sales Page Plugin

Hope you learned a lot from this video. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below.

P.S. You may also want to take a look at our Business Blog in 30 Days Series.

Because of the way the economy has changed, more and more businesses have seen the potential of using online strategies and getting out there in front of people.

If you have a web site or are thinking about having one made for you, I want to give you some things to think about before you go out and hire a web designer…

When it comes to using the Internet to grow your business, you have to be smart about it, just because you have a web site doesn’t mean you are going to get any traffic to your site.

Many web designers out there are very talented and very expensive, but that doesn’t mean they are marketers. This can be a big problem! Let’s say you are getting traffic to your site but no sales. Obviously it’s not because of the layout of your beautiful web site because it was done by a professional! Well, at least that is what the web designer is going to say… 

The looks and layout of your site is extremely important, just because it looks good to you, doesn’t mean it’s going to work for your customers.

It’s been proven over and over again the some of the simplest web sites and sales pages have converted better than the “fancy” ones.

Another thing I have noticed is that most web designers don’t optimize their clients web sites. It’s important to get the most out of your web site and make it work for you.

This includes:

- Calls to action.
- Ways for your clients to connect with you. (Social Media Icons)
- Lead generation. (Ways to capture your reader’s emails)
- Multiple streams of income. (Affiliate banners, Google Adsense, Etc.)

All of the above are ways to make your web site work for you. I have been amazed by the lack of everything I have mentioned by people who have promised business owners awesome web sites, yet those sites don’t do a thing for the businesses.

Which leads to SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Like I mentioned above, just because you have a good looking web site doesn’t mean you are going to be getting traffic to it. Which equals to no traffic, no sales…

SEO is another area that most web services lack in. If you don’t know what key word phrases you want your site to rank for and your site isn’t optimized for those phrases, all you have is one expensive virtual business card!

Below is a little video to help you understand everything that needs to be considered.

Click Here To Get a Jumpstart On Your Web Presence and Crush Your Competition!

Since so many entrepreneurs and small business owners understand the importance of having a web site or blog, I thought it would be a good idea to cover some basics on the topic of choosing a domain name…

The domain name you choose is important and I want to make sure you have thought things through before deciding on one.

5 Things to Remember When Choosing a Domain Name:

1.    Try To Get The .com

The majority of people have been programmed to automatically insert the .com. So if all possible, try to pick a domain with the .com.
You may also want to buy the .net, .org and so on to keep people competitors from getting it. (That’s up to you though)

2.    Keep it easy to remember.

There is nothing worse that someone telling you the name of their site and you not remembering when to go to find it. So pick a domain name that is easy to remember.

3.    Easy to Spell.

Let’s face it, we are not all great spellers… So keep it easy for everyone to spell.

4.    Use Key words.

From an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) perspective, you want to try to use a domain name that has good keywords in it. So if you are in the Niche of Organic Dog Food, the domain name OrganicDogFood.com would be awesome! This isn’t the biggest thing to worry about with SEO, but every little bit helps.

5.    Branding.

Before choosing a domain name, it is important to know who or what you are branding…
Back when I was teaching a lot of Network Marketing strategies, I always told them to brand YOU, not your business opportunity. But, because we’re not talking about Network Marketing, it is important to really know whether you are going to be branding YOU or your company…

When you brand you into your company, you are stuck there. So if you are looking to build a business that works for you, a business that you can walk away from and it still bring in cashflow, you may not want to have your name in the domain name. Make sense?

Take one of my sites for example, www.PaulCooleyMarketing.com. I could never sell that site if I wanted to, unless some guy named Paul Cooley wanted it. But, www.SureFireBusinessStrategies.com I could! My name is not branded into the company name.

I hope that has given you some things to think about before choosing a domain name for your business.
If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel free to comment below!

When we are focusing on business growth strategies it’s important to understand what all your options are and to get rid of all distractions that keep you from implementing those growth strategies.

Because we all want our businesses to grow, it’s important to really determine how you want it to grow and what you need to be ready for the growth.

I have found that many business owners don’t understand all their options when it comes to business growth. They just keep trying to do the same old traditional ways of doing things in hopes of something changing.

Well, I want to give you a bigger picture of all your options when it comes to business growth strategies… It’s important to remember, that you MUST get out to where your target market is, otherwise you will not see any business growth.

Offline Business Growth Strategies:

1. Find What Works & Has The Best ROI

This is important, when my wife and I owned our coffee shop we fell into the trap of just doing what everyone else was doing, which consisted of newspaper ads, local newsletter ads and so on. We soon discovered we were not having a good return on our investment. It was time to change the way we were marketing.

2. Getting Out And Being Social

Joining your local Chamber of Commerce or other business networking groups is a good idea. Plus, if your area has local festivals and things of that nature, you can always look into getting a booth if that will help get your business out there.

3. Radio, TV and Billboards.

This may only be an option if you have a bigger spending allowance. Once again, you really need to be careful when choosing your strategy. It would make no sense to market your quilting store on a hard rock station. You have to market to where your target market is!

4. Other avenues

I have recently seen smaller advertising companies come into play and some seem do get the job done nicely. This could consist of poster ads in your local movie theater or your city’s information center.

5. Texting and SMS Marketing

This is something you are going to start to hear more about. This is where you can now advertise by sending text messages to people. I will be covering this more in depth in an upcoming article.

Online Business Growth Strategies

1. Social Media Marketing

We have been talking a lot about this lately and you will continue to hear a lot about this, we are in the Social Media Revolution! In case you have been under a rock, Social Media consists of:

- Twitter
- Facebook
- Youtube

And the list keep going and going! These are all very smart things to add into your marketing strategies. Remember, it’s all free and I have had a VERY good return on my investment with them.

2. Web sites and blogs

There is a transition happening that many Internet Marketers started a while back that many Store Front owners are now seeing the bigger picture…

Which is blogging! Blogs are now taking the place of traditional HTML web sites. Blogs are an awesome way to now only get out in the search engines, but a great way to build a community of loyal customers.
Here is a quick rundown of why I would choose a self-hosted blog over a traditional HTML web site:

- SEO friendly.
- Easy to use.
- Great way to build a loyal tribe.
- Easy to get people to connect with you on your other social media sites.
- Easy to customize

It’s definitely worth taking a look at!

3. SEO & PPC

To have a web site is not enough to be found in the search engines. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it’s a totally free way to get your web site or blog found in the search engine through keywords and keyword phrases. This is a big topic which we will cover later as well, I just wanted you to know about it.

PPC which stands for Pay Per Click advertising are the ads you find when doing a search on the right hand side of the screen. Playing the Google adwords game can be tricky, but a great way to get more sales fast.
I should also mention that both SEO and PPC can be outsourced to professionals.

4. Free Online Classifieds

This was a business growth strategy I implemented back in my MLM days. It worked very well. People are always looking on classifieds for good deals. Whenever I need to grow my business, I would just post a nice ad with good sales copy and it worked great!

5. Buying Ads On Other Sites

This is another option if you are willing to pay. All you will need to do is find a high traffic site that is in your Niche and see if you can buy an ad space from them. Depending on what you are selling, this could be a powerful strategy.

6. Discussion Forums

I will end with this one…
Doing a Google search for discussion forums in your Niche is an excellent way to:

- Get to know target market.
- Interact with like-minded people.
- Position yourself as a professional.
- Get traffic back to your site.
- Get to know some “heavy hitters” in your Niche.

Although this can become time consuming, I highly recommend at the very least doing this when researching your market.

I hope you see some nuggets of gold for you and the growth of your business. Again, when it comes to business growth strategies, be sure you pick the right ones for you. Plus, if you find some you think would be good, but know you can’t pull it off, hire it out!

Keep moving forward!

It’s interesting to listen to people talk about business. I have talked and met with different business owners and soon to be business owners over the past week, while talking with them it was interesting what I heard…

Most of them didn’t really know what they wanted, I mean they had a basic idea. Like “run a successful business” or “make a million dollars” but nothing very specific. I thought back and remembered those days when I was just starting out and how I did the exact same thing. I didn’t have a clue what I wanted other than be successful.

It’s very important to have a specific idea of what you want and what you don’t want. If you don’t define these things, your business could end up owning you. But, if one of the things that you DO want is to have more time with your family, now you have something to aim for and work towards. Far too often, our businesses end up owning us because we have put no thought into how we are going to make our business work for us and we end up pouring our lives into our business. Plus, then we can become so emotionally attached to our business because we have put so much time and effort  into it, that we will not make the right choices on how we grow our business.

I encourage you to take some time and write down a detailed list of what you want in life and what you do not want in life. It may be a little harder than you think. Don’t write down: “make a million dollars” or things like that. Be specific and detailed.

Now that you know what exactly you want and don’t want, the next step is to decide how you are going to strategically build your business to allow you to have what you want.
Here is an example:

Let’s say at the moment you are doing EVERYTHING in your business, but you want to start spending time with your family at 2 pm every afternoon. Well, doing EVERYTHING isn’t going to allow you to do that, because there is just too much to do!
So maybe something you could do is outsource the little tasks so you can focus on the profit making tasks, which will free up your time and make you  more money.
Make sense?

Depending on your business, there are so many different things you can do. But the main point is, if you start out thinking this way instead of how the majority start out, you will be far ahead of the game and your business will not end up owning you.

So take the time and make a detailed list of what you do and don’t want so you can build your business the right way.

I would love to hear what you want out of life and from your business, so leave a comment below and let me know!

Untile next time…  Keep moving forward!