How to be Successful With Social Networking - ISSUE 16 - 1/14/12

As you probably already know, Social Networking has become a worldwide phenomenon but believe it or not, Social Networking isn't exactly what you think. Social Networking isn't just the mainstream websites such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Rather, it can be defined as any community gathering place including the mainstream sites, but also forums, blogs, and even the social networks of certain businesses.

Another point commonly mistaken about Social Networking is that community's rarely, if ever, form to talk about products. Instead, social networks are formed to help people solve problems or challenges they are facing or even for people to interact with one another to accomplish similar goals. As a business owner, you must realize that a social network is about the people, not you or your goals. Just as when you are at a party, no one wants to hear you talk about yourself. People will instantly run away. Instead, you must ask questions and interact with people on their terms.

Social networks are also constantly changing. By human nature, people will migrate to where other people are located. A perfect example of this is MySpace. In the early 2000's, MySpace was a powerhouse on the web but within a few years, almost all the members migrated to Facebook which is now the big player in the game. The point here is that you must always be humble because a Community is a gift, not a right. If you get over confident about your community, people may very well leave before you have time to blink. You must be a participant and representative of your company rather than think you're the owner and listen to your people as they share their thoughts and feelings about their needs; not yours.

Listening is the most important skill you must learn in order to be successful in business. If you fail in this area, you will fail as a business owner because there's no doubt that your competition is going to beat you. It will just be a matter of time before you're business fails. Also, when people share their thoughts or join your community, you must always acknowledge them as a human being and a participant. Thank them and let them know that you are a person who cares. With technology and the ability to automate mundane tasks, the personal human touch is oftentimes lost and people have become very frustrated customers. Oftentimes, just letting people know you're listening, a potentially explosive situation can be defused within minutes even if you don't solve the person's problem each and every time.

When you join or create a community, you must equip your customers with the necessary tools to become successful rather than to sell to them. You must also be the expert they turn to when they have a question, concern, or comment. Once you begin to do this, you will be amazed at the results. Your business can grow exponentially just by talking to people as people rather than just a dollar sign. People know that you want to acquire their business, but as Jeffrey Gitomer - America's #1 sales authority - has personally trademarked, "People don't like to be sold, but they love to buy!" Once you embrace this mindset and focus on value, you will be amazed at the results you get from your current and future customers.

Here's the 10 Steps to be repeated time and time again for you and your company to be successful with Social Networking:

• Listen.
• Find them where they are.
• Determine what they want.
• Decide if you join their community or make one. or both.
• Introduce yourself.
• Invite them.
• Ask them for goals and hopes.
• Share yours.
• Begin the journey.
• Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

As a value-driven company, we at Suited Marketing are always here to listen to your thoughts. Please feel free to comment on this posting as to what you think can be added to "How to be successful with Social Networking." If you don't want to share publicly, please email us at info@suitedmarketing.com. We look forward to hearing from you and serving your needs now and in the future.

Three Best Practices of Blogging - ISSUE 14 - 1/11/12

In today's world, information is constantly changing and what worked for a business owner in the past for acquiring new business, may not work in the present. You must strive to be the best everyday because if you don't, your competition most likely will. Search engines love blogs, and if you don't blog, your company's online presence will dwindle quickly and soon thereafter be overwhelmed by what other people are saying about you or your company and there's nothing you can do about it.

Before you start blogging, there are some things you need to know about it and some best practices for you to follow to ensure you are maximizing your time and your efforts.

First, in order for your efforts to be worth your time, you must blog on a regular basis. The search engines are looking for the most up-to-date and relevant information. This means that if you don't stay up with it, before long, your information will be outdated and irrelevant to what people are looking for. Depending on the amount of resources you have available to you, you should do your best to dedicate an hour a day to blogging. Before you know it, the search engines will be finding your articles and leading people to your blog which will then lead to more potential clients and therefore, more sales.

Second, make sure you are writing about topics that your potential clients will be interested in as well as topics relevant to your company. A perfect example of this is Best Western's Travel Blog - You Must Be Trippin'. In this blog you can find a wealth of information about travel to anywhere around the globe. In this blog, Best Western does not talk about themselves, rather a topic that pretty much anyone in the world would be interested in.

Lastly, don't forget to add some type of call-to-action and a way to interact with your followers so that you can build the necessary relationships and ultimately, build your business. If you don't then all your efforts will go to waste. One of the best aspects of a blog are that they are already equipped with a Comment section for your readers to share their thoughts and opinions, but since not everyone will be interested or confident enough to share their thoughts, you should incorporate a poll section into the sidebar. This will give you a very good idea of how many people are interested in the topics you write about, as well as the questions you ask.

To get more great business development information, visit www.suitedmarketing.com. We look forward to serving you.

If you would like more insight from the expert bloggers at MarketingProfs, take a look at the following online workshop hosted by the Chief Content Officer, Ann Handley (Twitter - @MarketingProfs), and her associate, Mark Collier.

How to Blog Effectively for Business (GF101)

How to begin creating your company's online presence - ISSUE 5 - 3/10/10

You may have already owned your company for many years, or are just beginning the journey. Regardless, you are very aware the Internet is creating wealth like never before. However, you don't have a clue how to market yourself online, nor do you know where to begin. Never worry, we are here to teach you some basic fundamentals.

We are adding very valuable information to our website on a regular basis. Please visit us at www.suitedmarketing.com when you have a moment. You will be making the best decision you've made since starting your business.

Step 1: Blogging, Email/Ezine Marketing, and eBooking

Just imagine. About 10-15 years ago, none of these words existed, however, they have become a few of the most important words in today's world to guide you towards your path to success. You no longer can be successful by cold-calling. Today's successful business owners write "Value Messages" to their clients. These value messages include items which will help individuals, or build value in their lives, but will remain directly related to your business.

Great Ideas for eZine articles

Here are a few "teach tips" to get your team to the next level...

• Teach EVERYONE that attitude is the foundation of success, both personal and business
• Teach EVERYONE the importance of friendliness
• Teach EVERYONE that speed of response is not an option
• Teach EVERYONE how to respond to customer complaints
• Teach EVERYONE that service is as important as sales
• Teach EVERYONE to ask for more business
• Teach EVERYONE to suggest more
• Teach EVERYONE to thank the customer for their business

Inspired by Jeffrey Gitomer

Don't just take my word for it. Visit www.gitomer.com by Jeffrey Gitomer, author of "The Little Red Book of Selling," and distinguished motivational speaker. He has tons of great insight.

Other topics to write about

The following are just some ideas you can use to write value messages to your customers. Please, feel free to use or alter them in any way you feel fit.

1. How and why you decided to start your business "X" years ago.
2. The struggles you went through in the beginning stages.
3. The success you experienced over the years.
4. How you initially obtained clients.
5. What you did to keep the clients coming back.
6. How long it took you to become profitable.
7. What you would do different if you had to do it all over again.
8. Why new and existing customers choose you over the competition.
9. What is unique about your product and/or service.
10. Your short-term and long-term goals.
11. How you could help a business owner build their business by purchasing your product or service.

Step 2: Partnering with other companies

Once you re-program your mind to focus on helping other people, you will quickly begin to see the rewards come back ten-fold.

The search engines rank your website/business based off the relativity and quality of content, and even the popularity of your page. Your primary goal is to get to the top of the search engine when a potential customer/client is searching for information. The higher your ranking, the more traffic your site will receive.

One great way to do this is to research for companies you could partner up with to send each other referrals. For example, if you own a printing company, such as my friend Dan Wees with Advanced Printing Solutions (www.apsslc.com). He has a great market niche because his printing company is able to print on just about anything.

I am recommending he contact and build partnerships with such companies in the industries of computers/technology, medical, outdoor, t-shirts, etc. Once he has built the partnerships, he needs to offer to put a link to their website on his and once it's completed, he should ask for the same in return.

Step 3: Never stop learning

The moment you stop improving yourself and/or growing your business will be the moment your company begins to fail. It may take five or ten years, but eventually the competition will surpass you. Don't ever get comfortable. Don't ever get content. Company B is always working just as hard, if not harder than you, to become company A.

Please check out our FREE eBooks at our Library as well as some motivational and informational videos by other great leaders of our country and successful entrepreneurs at our Resources page.

Step 4: Using the tools available

There are many great services available to help you build your online presence at little or no cost. Every one of the following sources are imperative to your success so please, make sure to create an account for each of them. We will go over how to utilize these tools in a later edition to the Suited eZine so please make sure to subscribe by visiting our Library.

Don't forget to put all the accounts in your business name. This is very important to increase your web presence. No one will know who you are unless you tell them.

Google Account

google.com/accounts/createaccount

Google Profile

google.com/profiles

Business Solutions

google.com/services

• Local Business Center
• Adwords
• Adsense
• Analytics
• Friend Connect
• And any other service you find useful

Blogger

blogger.com

Twitter

twitter.com

YouTube

youtube.com

Toll Free Number

TollFreeNumber.org

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• Only One Number to Remember & Provide
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Be More Productive

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• Never Miss an Important Phone Call Again
• All of Your Communication in One Spot
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Learn More

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Please visit www.suitedmarketing.com to learn more about our company, educational products, services, and promotions and our What We Do page for more information.







www.suitedmarketing.com
shane.russell@suitedmarketing.com

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Why You Should Quit Your Job & Start Your Own Business - Issue 2 - 12/22/09

Every day I would wake up more sick and tired than the next. Although I was a little sick and tired from the winter weather and the season, I'm was more sick and tired of working for someone else.

The thought of going to work for someone else every day made me sick to my stomach. I woke up in the morning, got ready for work, and headed out the door. I'm was always in a good mood when I'd leave the house and was away from work, but as soon as I walked in the door at my job, the happiness subsided and the frustrations arose.

The following situations are not intended to be complaints (because I did something about it), but rather situations you can relate to in order to motivate you to quit your job. I'm very confident that everyone reading this article has experience similar situations in the past.

Situation 1

Even though I worked very hard and did a great job month-after-month, I still had my managers riding me every day to do better because nothing was ever good enough for our company. As employees, we were constantly scrutinized.

One day I got so sick and tired of it and not being paid the money I knew I was worth. I finally told my boss to get off my back because he was constantly breathing down my neck and there was no need to ride me the way he was. I've always been a very self-motivated person, and the way he approached me was hands down the worst way to get someone motivated to do a better job. He told me that if I didn't change my attitude, I could go home. For fear of not having a job the next day, I changed my attitude and went about my business.

Situation 2

My family is spread throughout the country and my boss told me that I couldn't go home for Thanksgiving nor Christmas because I HAD to work the following days. If I wasn't at work bright and early the day after the holidays, I would be out of a job. If it weren't for a few great friends who knew I was far away from home, I would have had to sit at home alone on Thanksgiving & Christmas.

That was the last straw!

I had to sacrifice a ton of fun, friendships, and enjoyment of life for the greater good. I made a commitment to myself that I would not quit pursuing my dreams until I was able to quit my job and live the life I have always wanted to live. I had to put my life on hold for a short period of time which was very difficult. My friends constantly asked me to go out and have fun. If I didn't go out, they would get very upset. Finally, I had to ask them to be supportive of my goals.

I received a lot of grief in the beginning because most people couldn't comprehend the thought of working for themselves and what it takes to be successful. Most people have been programmed from an early age to work 40 hours a week for 40 years for someone else, but not me. I was re-programmed in my early 20s and vowed I would quit my job before I was 30. Of course, I wasn't able to before then because I never sacrificed enough.

If you really want to quit your job and accomplish the goals you have set for yourself, you must sacrifice and become obsessed with your business. You must become well known in your business community and be the first person every potential customer or client thinks about when they are ready to purchase the product or service you provide.

IIn my opinion, obsession is success' predecessor. To quit your job and become successful, you must wake up early in the morning before anyone else is awake and work on your business; you must get off work in the evening and come home to work on your business; you must talk to everyone you run into about your business; you must pass out business cards to everyone you talk to; you must write down all your thoughts and ideas; you must share your expertise with the world; you must subscribe to my blog; and lastly, your must stop what you are doing right now, and ask yourself whether you are doing what you love.

Whether you are doing what you love or not, make the right decision today for a better tomorrow.

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