At a recent workshop I facilitated, a participant shared that she didn’t understand the big ‘hype’ about having a website.  Though she had one; she hadn’t attained any customers from it.  I explained that having a website is a good first step, but not enough to gain clients. If you are not engaging your visitors, chances are they will never return.  Do you have a website but not sure how to guide traffic to it? Here are 5 ways to steer traffic to your website:

Register with Major Search Engines

An important step to steer traffic to your website is to make sure is it is listed on all the major search engines such as Bing, Google and Yahoo.  This is one of the most efficient ways of directing free, targeted traffic to your website.  It’s easy and takes just a few minutes of your time.

• Bing
• Google
• Yahoo

Respond to Questions and Comments

People leave comments for a reason; they are interested in your response.  By responding, you’re letting them know that you’re actively involved in reading the comments and encouraging them to visit again. In addition, this is an effective way to become known in your industry as an expert.

Develop Article Marketing Strategy

Blogging is an easy way to drive traffic to your website and establish yourself as an expert in your industry. If executed effectively, this can be a smart online marketing strategy and an affordable way to grow your business.  Blogging is ‘big business’ among entrepreneurs, writers and those who just want to express themselves thru electronic communication.  More and more businesses are blogging as they realize the benefits.  There are several online sites where you can submit your articles for publication and back link to your website:

• E-zine Articles or www.ezinearticles.com
• Associated content or www.associatedcontent.com
• Articles base or  www.articlesbase.com

In addition, posting your articles on various social media sites is a great marketing strategy to generate traffic back to your website. Post your article using the following FREE social networks:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Use Social Bookmarking Services

Social bookmarking sites allow you to search, organize, share and store the bookmarks of different web pages. You are also able to promote articles and stay ahead of your competitors.  Here are 3 popular social book marketing services:

• Digg– The ultimate social media site; it’s become notorious for producing traffic waves so massive that they can have a DOS-style impact on smaller hosts.
• Stumble Upon – Helps members discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble, the site   delivers high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of 8 million+ other web surfers with interests similar to you.
• del.icio.us – A social bookmarking website; users can mark their favorites with del.icio.us and share them with each other; making it onto the front page of the “recently popular” section on del.icio.us will send a decent amount of traffic so long as the category you’re tagged into is popular.

Create Videos

Video marketing is all the RAVE!  Whether creating how to, testimonial, product review or interview videos for your website, it increases brand awareness and creates viewer action leading to more inquiries and sales.  In fact, according to Online Video Marketing Statistics, adding video to small business profiles:

• Increases number of business profile views more than 100%
• Increases number of profile clicks more than 30%
• Increases number of calls generated by more than 18%

In conclusion, by using these FREE methods to create visibility to your website, you will be able to generate more traffic over time, thus, have a steady flow of potential leads.

5 FREE & Extremely EASY Ways to Steer Traffic to your Website is a post from: She Takes on the World

Ready to start building a solid web presence through blogging? Being a contributing writer to well-renowned blogging websites has a series of benefits that give back to you, your business, and to the audience reading making it a triple threat (and a necessary one at that!) to have tied to your name.

You Gain Credibility

Want to prove yourself as an expert within your field? Offer to write a guest blog post on a topic that you have years of experience with. People love to read about the journey to success, particularly when you’re just starting out in the business world, because it’s inspiring and rings true to what they’re working on. Even stories about mistakes made are welcome in the blogosphere. In many cases they’re even more vital because in addition to learning something new, the audience won’t feel like they were “wrong” for what they did anymore.

Link Back to Your Website

While most blogs don’t accept self-promotional material (in which you talk about your product over and over) they do allow for hyperlinks to be included in your bio. Click the link and you get redirected to your website. More clicks equals more traffic and the unique visitors checking you out will begin to mount up.

Just Ask!

Want to become a contributing writer but too afraid of the potential rejection in writing for your dream outlet? Email either the editors or the contact info email provided on the site to see if you’d be a good fit and include a pitch on what you’d like to start writing. Don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t work out either- you can always try to reach again in the future. In the meantime, contact other websites (don’t be afraid to start small!) and polish up your company blog with solid content.

The Benefits of Becoming a Blog Contributor is a post from: She Takes on the World

Hiring someone used to mean a couple interviews, some discussion among team members, and a background check. Now, additionally, as the hire-er you can do a little pre background checking of your own.

I have found, just as I’m sure the majority of CEOs have, that doing a quick Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google (just for good measure) search prior to the first interview can be highly beneficial. Akin to those responsible student days in college when you would show up to a class having read the chapter you were learning that day (we all did that, right?). Doing a little harmless social media stalking prior to the interview will give you a heads up with what you’re about to be looking at.

I believe having a real person in the office is just as important as having a qualified person in the office. I want to know if you go on fun outings on the weekends, I want to know if you have a family and what they’re like, I want to know you can get along with the rest of my employees.

That being said, I will look at your Facebook prior to having you in in order to see if indeed you do have a family so I know what sort of questions to ask about them (after we discuss your experience, of course).

So if you’re currently of the job-searching variety, assume your potential employer has done his/her research prior to having you in for an interview. You might want to Google your name and see what comes up!

Assume You’ll be Researched is a post from: She Takes on the World

Image Courtesy of Shutterstock

An article with Forbes I read recently proclaimed 10 ways to get more done at work, written by an anonymous Forbes staffer that I’m going to assume was a baby boomer because the tips given were old-school workplace protocol based. They included shutting off the Twitter account, checking your email only a couple times a day, and eliminating unnecessary meetings.

Just how is this effective again?

Technology today has manifested to the point where instead of subscribing to dozens of newspapers and digging through them to find the right news story, they are all available in bit.ly format in a Tweet on Twitter. On Twitter, it takes time to weed through specific articles to your job, but it’s worth it.

Social networks aren’t workplace distractions, rather they are there to better the personal development of an employee as well as the growth of an industry. A company in the know is a company that consumers will feel “gets them”- they understand the issues of the day and will learn and know how to respond to them. Here are my four cents (not two, there’s too many for just two!) on why getting distracted at work is beneficial:

Gets the creative juices flowing.

Depending on the type of industry you work in, this is crucial to your job performance. Coffee alone can’t be your only help here. News stories, photo blogs, and yes, even celebrity gossip are great fuel for the brain to help wake it up in the morning.

It’s interesting!

And fun! Enough said.

Breaks the day up into more manageable chunks to deal with.

A long day of work can often have you staring at the clock wondering when will it ever be 5 p.m. Avoid that action (it is noticeable when a worker isn’t fully engaged in their job) by breaking up the day with visits to Facebook. Do a chunk of work first and then “reward” yourself with 20 minutes at the site of your choice- work-approved that is!

By sharing the news, you can better bond with coworkers.

This also helps to strengthen the camaraderie of the workplace and engage your fellow workers in current events. Win-win all around!

4 Reasons To Be In Favor Of Workplace Distractions is a post from: She Takes on the World

Image Courtesy of Shutterstock

When brewing company MillerCoors realized it was struggling to retain female salespeople, the company turned to social tools to turn this trend around. Executives at the country’s second-largest brewing company wanted to make far-flung female sales reps feel less isolated and more of a cohesive team. But how could they do this when their workers are spread across the country, often on the road, and working odd hours? They went social.

What did they accomplish? And, more importantly, how can “going social” help YOU retain female employees?

• It can help you build connections. Women had more opportunities to connect with other people who have similar roles at work, and even similar workplace concerns.

• It can help you build personal relationships. Women also get to benefit from developing personal– not just professional – connections through the use of social software.  For instance, at MillerCoors, working alone was an issue for some, while others, mothers in particular, were having trouble with the hours, which require them to make sales calls at bars at night or on weekends.

• It helps facilitate sharing. Women can share discussion topics, such as developing a personal brand and work/life balance, and to share documents or articles that pertained to their discussion threads.

• It provides mentoring opportunities. MillerCoors decided to provide mentors to some of its saleswomen, connecting them through software designed to let mentors and workers connect one-on-one or in groups. The software also enables people to share documents and post comments. As part of the program application process, it also matches workers with mentors who have experience with issues the workers are dealing with.

• It helps facilitate learning. Having the opportunity, not just to speak with other women sharing the same struggles, but to have the chance to hear from a female executive can also be really valuable.

• It can help create unity. If workers are geographically isolated, social platforms can be very effective in building team unity.

• It can be cost-effective. Using social networks to build connections can save a company a lot of money. Workers can log in rather than buying pricey plane tickets to fly to meetings. And if employees feel more connected with one another, the company might see a decline in turnover and would therefore save money on rehiring and retraining new people.

How to Retain Women in the Workplace? 7 Benefits of Social Media is a post from: She Takes on the World

Let’s take a look at a few:

Pose:

Pose is a free iPhone app that urges users to strut their stuff by posting geo-tagged photos of their favorite fashion finds on Facebook, Twitter, and within Pose itself.  Users can then solicit style feedback from a panel of fashion-savvy experts, ranging from celebrated bloggers to other active members of the Pose community. Brands themselves can also leverage the app for promotions and in-store deals.  This is a great way for traditional brick-and-mortar retailers to reignite the thrill that was once associated with in-store shopping.

VIZL:

VIZL is a new real-time app that enables retailers, stylists and shoppers to save time and money: two of the most precious – and coveted – things in our lives! Not only do brands provide abundant catalogs of their newest items, but stylists can snag photos of the must-have goods and get quick e-approval from their clients. And shoppers can upload whole wardrobes to the app for later use, e.g., when searching for matching pieces in stores. Outfits can then be shared on Facebook – for even more approval.

Where To Get It:

Ever wonder where you can score that must-have accessory or item? You search everywhere and come up empty-handed? Well, Where To Get It solves that problem for you.  The program employs crowd-sourcing to help site members determine the source of garments and accessories. Users take a picture of their object of desire—e.g., on the street, in a magazine, or in the closet of a stingy friend—then can post it to a community of knowledgeable shoppers who are able to identify both the brand and store.

What will this mean?

• More companies will operate in two realms – the traditional brick-and-mortar and the virtual. Effectively marrying the two in increasingly innovative and expansive ways will be critical.
• The creation of a more holistic consumer retailing and brand experience  will prove revolutionary to existing and new businesses in the future.

• Not only are traditional marketing messages being moved to alternative media, but new technologies and sales channels are spurring wholly new businesses.

Crowd-Sourced Fashion: New Social Shopping Apps is a post from: She Takes on the World

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Know Your Angles

When filming your online videos, where the camera is placed in relation to you (the presenter) can greatly influence the way your viewers perceive you and how they interpret your message. It is important for you to know the effect of using different camera angles, so you can choose to use them in appropriate ways.

Where the camera is placed in relation to (you) can greatly influence the way your viewers perceive you and interpret your message.

High angle

A high angle shot (where the camera looks down on you) can make you look smaller or weaker if you are presenting to camera.  It forces you to “look up to” the camera which diminishes your authority.  It psychologically conveys that you are subservient to the viewer. It can be useful if you want the viewer to feel superior, or to feel more empathy toward the person being filmed – for example if you are making an apology.

Low angle

A low angle shot (where the camera looks up at you) can make you look more powerful, authoritative, or in the extreme – threatening.  It is used by filmmakers when they want the viewer to feel vulnerable and small.  It is often used to portray kings, rulers, rock musicians, action heroes, and also for short actors like Al Pacino and Tom Cruise to make them look taller.

Often you will see CEO’s, thought-leaders, and public officials filmed from an angle with the camera positioned slightly below their eye level. The slight low angle puts them in a position of authority, and increases their power and importance. It directs the viewer to “look up to them” (subconsciously).

Use low angles with caution.  If you are not subtle, it can appear like you are looking down your nose at the viewer.  This can signal snobbery e.g. “I’m better than you,” or it can turn some viewers off by placing them in the position of feeling like a small child when they look at you.

Eye Level

If you want to have a neutral relationship with your viewers, then set your camera at eye level, so you are neither looking up or down. This is the way most people look at each other in casual situations (particularly in the Western world).  It comes across as friendly, equal, and helps put the viewer at ease.  It is the common approach used by news broadcasters, and presenters in documentary and educational videos.

Side (horizontal) angles

Intuitively, you might think that looking into the camera “front on” will show that you are a direct and confident person.  This “look them straight in the eyes” approach works in normal face to face interactions.  However, studies have shown that speakers on television are perceived as being “less reliable and less expert” when they speak “front on” to the camera – as opposed to those who are filmed slightly from the side.

Perhaps it is because people who face the camera front on are generally auto-cue readers (I mean news presenters), or actors fronting TV advertisements. These people stare into the screen with an unusual intensity, and viewers (perhaps subconsciously – having been exposed to so many TV commercials) are now very skeptical and cautious in their belief of people using this approach.

If you are filmed in an extreme close up (see my article “How to Frame Yourself”) and are too direct in your stare to the camera, it can make viewers feel uncomfortable.

Experts on the other hand, are usually filmed being interviewed by someone else, and are filmed on a slight angle.  They direct their answers off to the side of the camera toward the interviewer.  Check it out next time you are watching television, and you will see what I mean.

Choices!  Choices!

There are many ways to skin a possum, but you must start by knowing who your target audience is, and how you want to position yourself in their mind.  For example if you are an expert, you might consider getting yourself interviewed.

You might want to angle the camera upward just slightly so the audience perceives you as being an authority, and film yourself from a slight side angle where you are directing your responses to an interviewer standing off camera.

Stay tuned for more tips to make you look good online.

How to Find Your Best Camera Angle for Your Video Presentations is a post from: She Takes on the World

Natalie, Do I really need a Twitter Account? I have a blog and Facebook page for my blog. I don’t know if I have time for Twitter as well but everyone tells me it will help boost my subscriber base! -Natasha Mogilin, TheBlogWithBling.com

Hi Natasha,

I think bloggers should have a Facebook page and yes, a Twitter account. They are different platforms and by having a different strategy for each one you can greatly increase your subscriber base.

I see Facebook as the “having coffee with a friend” platform. You can have longer conversations and engage with people on a deeper level and really get to know them. I view Twitter as a “catching up and keeping in touch” platform, like when you see someone at the grocery store and say hello. You keep the conversation short and sweet which doesn’t take a lot of your time but it keeps you relevant and in people’s minds. I have connected with far more people in my niche on Twitter than I have with Facebook. On Twitter you can find and follow people in your niche whereas on Facebook people have to come to you unless you pay for Facebook ads. Twitter is my second largest source of traffic after Google and it doesn’t cost a penny!

I hope to see you on Twitter soon! Don’t forget to follow me @nataliemacneil

What do you think?

Are you on Facebook and Twitter? Which do you prefer and what’s your strategy for each one?

Do I Need Facebook AND Twitter? is a post from: She Takes on the World

Hi Natalie,
I was at one of your keynotes about how I can use social media for my business. I did everything you told me to and it has been working. I just caught on to how to use my Facebook Page properly and now IT’S CHANGING! Help?!?! Thank you,
Diane

The first thing you should know is that your page won’t be switched over until March 10th so you have some time to get used to the new look. For now, if you visit your page you’ll be given the option to preview the new look or change your page over now which we did on the She Takes on the World page.

Let’s go through the new Facebook Pages features and what you need to know:

Use Facebook as Page

Unfortunately you can't "hack" the strip of photos at the top of your Page like you can with your Profile as I did above because the photos on Pages are randomized.

Yes, the layout has changed in that your “Tabs” are now in the left side bar and there are now photos at the top of your page (more about that later!) but the biggest change -and the one I’ve been waiting for -is that you finally have the option to “Use Facebook as Page” as circled above in red. By choosing this option your page can do some cool things that you couldn’t do before:

• Your Page can like other Pages -Take advantage of this by exchanging likes with other Pages in your niche and expanding your audience.
• You can comment on Pages as your Page -This is great for raising brand awareness in your niche and increasing engagement.
• Your news feed will be a feed of activity from the Pages you like -Keep up with content on the Pages you like within your niche. Don’t forget to comment as your Page when you can add something to the conversation!
• Receive notifications when people interact with your Page -These notifications help you stay on top of who your new fans are and what people are saying on your page so you can respond. You can choose to receive email notifications as well by going to “Account” in the top right corner and clicking on “Your Settings” in the left side bar. That means you have no excuse to neglect your page!

Showcase Your Photos

Photos are displayed randomly in the strip along the top of your Facebook Page

• Introduce fans to the team that updates the Facebook Page or the people who work for your business
• Showcase your products and what makes them unique
• Post photos from events and conferences

Build a Win-Win Community

The default setting of a Page's Wall is now set to show posts by everyone.

Where can people find your Facebook Page? Do you have any specific questions about using the new Facebook Pages? Leave a comment below!

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to She Takes On The World and never miss a post!

New Facebook Pages: Tips to Make Your Page Rock is a post from: She Takes on the World

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

With this article we answer the 3rd of the 3 questions your personal brand must answer from the perspective of your target market audience:

1. Why should I care?

2. What’s in it for me?

3. Why should I believe you?

In our previous article Marketing Success Favors a Specialist, I emphasized the importance of clearly and simply stating what it is that you do – or more specifically, what is the #1 benefit for your target audience to work with you or do business with you?

If you can succeed in making yourself known for doing 1 thing really well – you are far more likely to be remembered and recommended, than if you try to pass yourself off as a jack of all trades, 1 stop shop.

The challenge we face today with online personal branding, is that people are much less trusting than they used to be. Politicians, corporations, celebrities, sports stars, the news media – wherever we turn, it seems another person or organization that was previously put on a pedestal, is exposed for lying or deceiving.

Social media has helped expose these people. The ability for ordinary people to search for information and publish their views online provides a welcome balance to one-sided PR and spin.

The key lesson from all of this – is that you must tell the truth, and you need to provide your target audience with real reasons to believe any claims you make. It’s one thing to make a claim, but you need to be able to back it up.

To do this you need to provide evidence to support your online personal brand. This could include things like:

• Relevant experience and qualifications
• Testimonials from satisfied customers / recommendations on LinkedIn etc
• Personal media / press-kits / third party endorsements
• Evidence of achievement / professional successes
• Verifiable data and statistics
• Demonstrations – this is the ultimate proof. Don’t just tell them. Show them. Let them see and hear for themselves that you are the real deal.

What have you done to back up your claims?

As our world moves increasingly online, customers need to feel they are dealing with a real, authentic person. This is where the role of video will become increasingly important in online personal branding.

In future articles we will cover the “Do’s & Don’ts” of using video to promote your personal brand online.

Why Should Your Prospect Believe You? is a post from: She Takes on the World