Ok, I have to say it. I have been hearing from lots of people recently that social networking web sites are not “as good as they used to be”.

By this people who are talking to me mean that social networking landscape has changed. Here is what I have heard recently:

- There is much more noise on social networking web sites than there was two years ago…

- It is not as easy to invite people to your calls, or to your newsletter anymore…

- No one on Twitter and Facebook is interested in coaching…

The good news is, while social networking landscape has changed dramatically in the last two years, one thing remained the same. The spirit of social networking stayed the same. When you use social networking web sites to share, help, educate, give, connect and refer on social networking web sites, you will get the same in return.

Now, I do want to clear one misconception that a lot of people ask me about. Should you market at all on social networking web sites? Should you let your connections know about your upcoming teleseminar, your coaching program or your new book?

Here is what I think. There is absolutely nothing wrong with marketing yourself on social networking web sites. There is nothing wrong with inviting your social networking connections to a preview call you are holding or letting them know about your book launch. As long as you are using your social networking presence to share, help, educate and give, there is nothing wrong with using a few of your status updates to let your connections know about your offerings. After all, if your connections don’t know what you are offering, they will not do business with you.

But what if you are experiencing what I described above, that social networking just isn’t working for you? Here are a few things to take a look at:

- Are you connecting with the right people? Even if you are doing everything right when it comes to social networking, you still need to be connected with the right people, people who are interested in what you have to offer.

If you are not connecting with people who are in your target market, you will still have fun on social networking web sites, but you won’t see the results you are looking for.

- Are you sharing tips and ideas? Sharing tips is the best and simplest way to promote your expertise. You can share short tips as a status update. To share a longer tip, right a blog post and share it.

- Are you letting people know what you have to offer? Sharing your offerings in an authentic and thoughtful way is a huge part of social networking. If you share about them too much, many people will tune you out.

On the other hand, if you don’t share at all, you are guaranteed that no one will take advantage of your offers.

Learn more about using social networking web sites effectively:

- The Simplest Strategy To Build Your List With Social Networking

- How To Get Leads On Social Networking Web Sites

You know, sometimes when something isn’t working, you need to change course. I have always been an accomplished cook, but I had never baked. I didn’t really try, but I have always been convinced that I couldn’t bake.

Pear and Apple Crumble

Well, once I changed course and actually started baking, it all worked out. A few days ago I made pear and apple crumble. It was very tasty. And to think, if I were still thinking that I couldn’t bake, I would not have been able to make that great tasting crumble! This post is about doing the same thing in your business. If selling your services isn’t working for you, here is what you can do instead.

Many heart-based service professionals concentrate on selling their services. I see this every day. When I read someone’s bio on Twitter or Facebook, they tell me right off the bat that they provide services and give me a link to check them out and contact them about their services.

When I read heart-based service professionals’ bios that they attach to their articles, the same thing happens. They tell the article readers about their services and invite them to learn more about their services.

When I visit heart-based service professionals’ blogs, again, I get information about the services that they offer.

Unfortunately, many heart-based service professionals don’t get people to take them up on their offer to become a client, and that is no surprise. When you start promoting your services to people who had just met you on a social networking web site or had just read your article, you are skipping an extremely important step. Before you offer your services, you need to build trust between you and your prospects.

When you offer your services to those who already know, like and trust you, great things happen. People who already know you are much more likely to check out your services and become clients.

What should you do instead of offering your services to people on social networking web sites and people reading your articles and your blog? Instead of offering them your services, create an authentic process to invite them to your list instead. This process has no pressure and offers a ton of benefits to your potential clients. It will come as no surprise to you that many more people will take you up on this offer.

Once they are on your list, you will have many opportunities to tell them about your products and services. However, right now, when they are meeting you on social networking web sites, reading your blog and reading your articles, start by using your authentic invitation process to invite them to your list.

Here an example of how to apply this to your business:

Instead of saying: “I am a parenting coach”, say: “I help parents of teenagers communicate better with their teenagers. Get my no charge gift to learn how. [Add a link to where they can get the gift.]“

Do you see how your authentic invitation process is much more effective? Instead of telling your potential clients about your services, you are inviting them to get something that is of great benefit to them. This will they will take you up on your offer, and join your list.

Learn exactly how to create an extremely effective no charge gift and use it to invite people to your list in the Grow Your List Quick Start Guide. The Guide shows you an effective process to grow your list, which is as simple as 1-2-3.

http://www.EffectiveListBuilding.com

Happy March! I am very excited that March is here! To me, this means that spring is here and very soon flowers will start blooming and nature will come back to life.

Last month, for my birthday, we went to a great Greek restaurant. I love Mediterranean food, and there was lots of great food at the restaurant. Fried zucchini with a fabulous garlic spread, grilled octopus, Greek sausage. All of these dishes had fabulous bursts of flavors. This is why I really enjoy Mediterranean cuisine - lots of herbs and spices translate into real bold flavors in food.

Speaking of bright and bold, what kind of bold statements will you make with your business this spring? In today’s article I am sharing with you three ideas to help you make a bold statement with your business, provide more value to your clients and bring in more revenues.

Spring is in the air, even despite all the snow. Many stores have been promoting spring merchandise ever since February. The stores are hoping that the brightly colored Spring merchandise will get people excited about spring and about shopping at the stores. You can use the same technique to create excitement about your products and services.

Springtime is usually associated with rebirth and a new beginning. It’s also a particularly auspicious time to start a new marketing campaign. As warmer weather arrives and spring starts, more people will be interested in starting something new in their lives and their businesses. Offer them a compelling reason to work with you to help them start something new, and you will get new clients!

Here are three ways to start your spring marketing and get more clients:

Offer A Spring Special To Your Potential Clients

Everyone likes a special, and your offer may be just that one extra push that your potential clients need to start working with you!

Offer a discount on one of your popular products, or create a bundle of products and offer the bundle at a special price. This way your clients will get more of your products that they need.

Do Your Spring Cleaning

Not the spring cleaning you usually do in your closet, but do a spring cleaning of your current offers, products and services.

Review your lineup of products and see whether any one of your products needs to be retired. There are many reasons to retire a product - maybe your business is moving in another direction, and the product doesn’t fit anymore. Or maybe you are creating another product on a similar topic. If you find a product that should be retired, offer a spring cleaning special on it for a few weeks, and then retire it.

Doing this will help you increase your revenue and will help you finally set a deadline and retire an older product to make way for new products.

Start Using A New Marketing Technique This Spring

Spring is the time for starting something new, so get started by using a new marketing technique to bring more clients to your business.

Start a blog, start writing articles to do article marketing or finally join social networking web sites. A brand new marketing technique means a brand new stream of potential clients coming to your business.

Start something new this spring - become a new member at the online mentoring group for heart-based service professionals, and get help with getting clients for your business. Spring has started, so join now and start getting all the members’ benefits at http://www.MarketingSalad.com

When heart-based service professionals see how many marketing techniques are there for them to use - Twitter, Facebook, social marketing, blogging, article marketing and many more - they get confused about how each technique is supposed to bring in more clients and help them build their lists.

Actually, social marketing, blogging, Twitter, articles, Facebook are just techniques that help you reach people in your target market, promote your expertise and build your list.

I recommend focusing on one technique at a time, discovering how to use it effectively to invite people to your list, mastering it and then moving on to the next one.

For example, if the technique that you are starting to use for building your list is blogging, here are some of the things you can do to use it effectively:

- Blog on a regular basis

- Add a very visible subscription box to your blog

- Using the RSS feed to your blog to share your blog posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Once you are happy how a technique helps you build your list, move on to the next technique, and optimize it to do the same.

For more information on how to build your list in a non-salesy way, get my FREE Report, Four Keys For Building Your List at http://www.effectivelistbuilding.com/4keys/

I am sure you have heard that in order to create a successful service business, you must have a niche. If you don’t have a niche, you won’t be able to promote your business effectively and you won’t be able to get clients for your business.

When I just started my web design business many years ago, I didn’t have a niche. As a result, both business owners needed ecommerce web sites AND people who wanted a web site for their dog where my potential clients. I couldn’t position myself in either market, though, because I was marketing to both (and to 50 more different markets) at the same time.

Once I decided to work with ecommerce businesses (no more dog web sites for me!), I became known in my field, and started getting referrals and clients on a regular basis.

If you don’t have a niche, there are a ton of things you won’t be able to do effectively:

1. You Can’t Create Effective Marketing Materials. Effective marketing materials are all about your perfect clients and what problems you help them solve. Good marketing materials help your potential clients see how they will be transformed after working with you. In order to achieve this, your marketing materials have to be written with your niche in mind.

If you don’t have a niche, your marketing materials will be very general, and won’t appeal to your perfect clients.

2. You Can’t Use Social Networking Web Sites Effectively. I have had many heart-based service professionals tell me that they are not getting results from their social networking. And many times the problem is deeper - they cannot get results from social networking web sites, because they are not using them to connect with people in their niche. And they cannot connect with people in their niche, because they don’t know who their niche is.

If you don’t have a clearly defined niche, you won’t be able to use social networking web sites effectively.

3. You Can’t Get Clients. Here is another question that I often get from heart-based service professionals - I am willing to work with anyone, so why is it so hard to get clients?

Many service professionals think that if they want to work with everyone, then it would be easy to get clients. After all, if everyone - people on the street, everyone they meet on social networking web sites, every person who reads their blog - is their client, then it is going to be very easy to get a few more service clients.

But, the exact opposite is true. If you don’t have a niche and you are marketing to everyone, it is going to be very hard to get clients. Without a niche, you won’t be able to showcase your expertise and how you help people. When you define your niche, it will be much easier to show to people in your niche how they will benefit from working with you, and you will get many more clients as a result.

Learn how to find your perfect niche during next week’s call, How To Find Your Profitable Niche , that you can register for at http://www.marketingsalad.com/niche.html.

Are you wondering whether you need to create a whole long sales page to product your product or whether 1-2 paragraph write-up will do? The answer is you do need longer sales pages.

When I just started, many years ago, I was promoting my products with just a paragraph or two of text and that’s it. I did have some sales, but I have noticed a definite increase in sales once I created longer sales pages.

The reason they work better is because they contain more information about the product that you cannot include in just 1-2 paragraphs.

Here is what I recommend to my clients who are starting to create their sales pages:

Concentrate On Benefits Of The Product

I see so many heart-based service professionals spending a lot of space in their sales letters discussing the features of their products instead of benefits.

Write out benefits of your product before you are even starting to write your sales letter.

Here are a few examples of benefits:

- You will eat healthier, while saving money on food

- You will communicate better with your children

- You will get more clients while having fun marketing

Pay Attention To Headlines and Sub-Headlines

Very few people will read the whole sales letter, but they will pay attention to headlines and sub-headers because those stand out.

Spend some time on creating effective headlines that communicate the benefits of your product.

Use The Sales Letter To Answer The Potential Buyers’ Questions

As people are reading about your product, they have a ton of questions. For example:

- What is the refund policy?

- How do I know that this product is right for me?

- How is this going to help my situation?

The more questions you address, the easier it will be for your potential buyers to make a decision whether they want to buy the product or not.

More blog posts about sales pages:

- Three Tips For A Better Landing Page

- How To Write Landing Pages For Products

You know the riddle, “How do you eat an elephant?”. The answer to it is “One bite at a time.”

I was reminded of it as I was reading a discussion on my Facebook Page, What is the BEST way for a service professional to build their list?

Here is my response to it:

“I don’t think there is one best way for every service professional to build their list.

I recommend picking one that resonates with you the most and mastering it. Then, once you know how to use it for inviting people to your list, continue using it, while trying out other techniques.”

It won’t work if you start using ALL of the techniques at once. You will immediately get confused, and abandon the idea of building the list altogether. It is much better to start one bite at a time, the same way you would eat an elephant.

Here is what I mean. Let’s say you picked article marketing technique to get started with. Here is what you will need to do:

1. Find good topics for your articles by doing research and finding topics that your target market is interested in. Create a list of topics.

2. Pick one of the topics to write an article, keep the rest of them for future articles.

3. Create an outline of the article, doing this will make it much easier to write your articles.

4. Write the article, edit it.

5. Create an eye-catching headline, the better your headline, the more readers you will get for your article.

6. Create a Resource Box that invites your readers to subscribe to your newsletter.

7. Post your article to article directories.

Repeat steps 2-7 for the rest of the topics that you have research. Once you have written enough articles and mastered article marketing, you may move on to the next technique, such as blogging, free teleseminars, social networking, etc.

More blog posts to help you build your list:

- How To Invite People To Your List In A Non-Salesy Way

- How To Create An Irresistible Gift

- List Building Secret No One Is Telling You About

I have met service professionals who took a year or even longer(!) to launch their newsletter. First, they spent months agonizing over whether they need to start a newsletter in the first place. Then, they did research to make sure everything would be perfect. Then, they started thinking about which newsletter service provider to use. Then they did more research to make sure they find the absolute best provider. Then they started thinking about creating a page on their web site about the newsletter. Then they did some more research to build the perfect layout for their web page….

They were waiting to make sure that everything would be perfect before starting their newsletter. As a result, after months of trying to make everything perfect and agonizing over whether they make the perfect decisions or not, they still haven’t started their newsletter.

In the meantime, those service professionals who picked a good newsletter service provider, created a good gift and started giving it away in exchange for subscription to their newsletter have been inviting people to their lists and building their client base for months.

If you wait for everything to be perfect, you will never take action. Instead, make sure that you make good decisions on what you need and move on to taking action.

If you are starting your newsletter here is what you need to decide on:

- Your Gift To Your Newsletter Subscribers. Find a good topic for your gift and create it. A good topic is something that your potential clients really want to know - an answer to one of the questions that they have, a solution to a problem that is bothering them.

- Create A Page To Give Away The Gift To Your New Subscribers. This page is called a squeeze page, and its only goal is to convince the people you send to that page to register for your gift and join your list.

- Set up Your Autoresponder To Send Your Gift To Your New Subscribers. This is how you will deliver the gift to those who sign up.

Don’t try to make everything perfect before you get started. If three months later you find out that you want to make changes to your autoresponder or giveaway page, you will be able to do that. Right now your goal is to stop waiting for perfection and start building your list.

Get started now, so that six months down the road you actually have built a client base, instead of still waiting for everything to be perfect. Learn exactly what kind of gift to create, how to create a squeeze page (I give you one to model!) and much more in the Build Your List Home Study Guide at http://www.EffectiveListBuilding.com

On my Facebook Fan Page I recently answered a question that I have received from many heart-based service professionals. Here is the question:

“How can a heart based service professional invite people to their list in a non-salesy way?”

I shared a short answer on the Fan Page, but I wanted to share a longer one here on the blog. Let’s say you are a life coach, providing life coaching services to women in their 30s-50s. They are unhappy with their current careers, and they are looking for something better. You want to help them first, define what this “something better” is, and then find it.

You are looking to invite many of these women to join your list, so that you can share tips and ideas with them, and they can get to know you, like you and trust you. And as you are sharing your tips with them, you will also be letting them know about your life coaching products and services. If they feel that they need your help, they will be able to take the next step with you and check out your offerings.

So the question is: “How do you invite them to join your list?”, because until they join you, they cannot start learning from you and building a relationship with you.

The best way to do that is to not just invite them to join you, but to offer them a gift. Your gift should be a report, an e-book, an audio recording, or an e-course on a topic that your target market is really interested in. You want them to say: “I want this!” and register to get your free gift.

For example, a great free gift for women in their 30s-50s looking for a new career would be a report on “Five Steps To Uncovering Your New Career”. Since they are looking for what it out there for them, giving them a report that helps them uncover this new career will help you build a list of people in your target market in a non-salesy way.

Learn much more about building your list in a non-salesy way in the Build Your List Home Study Guide.

Are you looking to help hundreds or thousands more people, without having to spend hundreds or thousands of hours? How would you like to share your passion with people who need your help?

You can help many more people if you are able to help them in groups. The best way to do that is to teach no charge teleseminars. When you offer no charge calls to people in your target market, great things happen. The people who join you on the call will be able to learn from you and they will also learn more about your business and your expertise. This way, when they need your products or services, they will already know you and will be able to contact you. You will be able to help more people and share information about you and your business in a completely non-salesy way. What could be more authentic than that?

How do you do that? How do you create no charge calls that will help you share your gift and your
passion with hundreds or even thousands more people? Here is a 3-Step Plan to help you do just that:

Find A Topic For Your No Charge Call

The topic of the call is very important, so spend some time on doing research to find an effective call topic. Look at what your clients and customers ask you about on a regular basis. Check out social networking web sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and see what kind of questions people in your target market ask there.

You want to help them, but the only way you can help them is by offering help on the issues they actually care about. Powerful things will happen when you offer what your target market really needs - they will get results and they will finally know that you “get” them.

Create An Outline For Your Call

Once you have found a powerful topic for your call, it is time to create the outline of the call. This is going to be a 45-60 minute call, so you will want to have 3-5 major points that you will want to discuss.

Don’t try to stuff everything you know into this call. If you provide too much information, you will overwhelm your participants. It is much better to share less, but make sure that the participants actually understand are able to take action on what you do share with them.

Once you have the outline, use it to create your talk.

Set up Your Registration Process

In order to have people register for the call, you must create a squeeze page. A squeeze page is a page with information about your call and nothing else. This page contains information on the benefits your participants will receive and has a sign-up box, where they can sign up and receive the call-in information.

To learn how to turn your no charge calls into powerful tools to help thousands of people, join me this Friday for the How To Use Free Teleseminars To Build Your List And Get Clients call.

This call is only available to members of my online business mentoring group. If you are not a member yet, join now and register for the call at

http://www.marketingsalad.com/teleseminars.html