I realized I had developed a full fledged habit the other day when my daughter used my standard ‘morning’ phrase to me when I was leaving the house the other day.

With parenting, I’ve come to realize that there’s not really a good way to prepare for everything you’re supposed to do – as the kids get older, you encounter new situations and as the parent, you’re supposed to know what’s going on and what to do.

As an example, a few years ago when our kids starting going to school and waiting for the bus, I realized that I should probably send them out into the world with something a little more directional and (hopefully) inspiring than just – ‘See ya’ or the ever popular and simple ‘Good-bye’ as they walked out the door.

But what do you say in those kinds of situations?  I still haven’t found the user’s manual for our kids and I’m not sure it would cover those kinds of things anyway.

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Stephen Heiner is a client of mine and the owner of Get Smarter Prep – an ACT/SAT test preparation company (the scores you need for the schools you want).  Get Smarter continues to do very well  – although he did go through some challenging times in last couple of years.

But beyond the success, Stephen has created something that’s bigger.  He’s created a product that his customers talk about – and go out of their way to tell others about.  He’s created a large number of advocates that are the biggest key to his success.

So what’s his secret – how has he transformed his buyers into advocates that go out and sell on his behalf?

First let’s take a look at some of the struggles:

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I couldn’t stand it any longer – I needed to find out what all the buzz was regarding Twitter, so I decided to join up and start learning.

For those that don’t know, Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ platform that limits you to 140 characters per post (or Tweet).

What’s the point?

Well that’s the interesting thing – I have no idea how planned this product was and there are a lot of opinions out there, but I think the forced brevity encourages more of a true conversation format.  You can leave short posts on what you’re doing, you can share sites that you found interesting or you can engage people.

There are a lot of ways to participate in Twitter – here’s a few that I’ve noticed so far: Read More…

                                                                photo by Hamed_Saber

Smiling and Dialing!

I’ve had several conversations with clients recently specifically on the topic of cold calling.  Most of the people I talk to feel fairly strongly that it’s not effective and more than likely it’s counterproductive because it annoys potential prospects.  On top of that – they really hate doing it.  Most people don’t want to be perceived as annoying.

There’s a reason why there are state and federal laws that prohibit telemarketing to consumers.  People became so fed up with the annoying intrusions into their life that they demanded legislation.

Why would we think that business owners would feel any differently about receiving cold calls?

Having said that, if you need to generate business quickly, you don’t have a lot of options – here a few things that you might consider to make it better. Read More…

Photo by scottwills

I can’t think of too many other topics that generate the same level of confusion, controversy and frustration as Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”                         – Arthur C. Clarke

From a business owner’s perspective, you really don’t want to mess with something like SEO.  You’re trying to run a business, get a product (or service) out the door…and oh by the way, it would be great if you made some money and got some time off eventually!

However – you also probably realize how helpful it would be to have your website show up – ideally on the first page, when people searched on the right term.  Having a top spot for the right search term is big!

Unfortunately the combination of being mysterious, complicated and potentially very important to the success of your business has led to a very profitable industry of people claiming to be able to sprinkle some fairy dust and drive lots of traffic to your website, all through the magic of SEO and Google ad-campaigns.

Although there are plenty of legitimate service providers, there are also a lot of schemers, many of them using tactics that either don’t work at all or using questionable tactics that could get you in trouble with the Search Engines.

The good news is that a lot of the complexity with SEO has been overstated or doesn’t really apply to the typical small business owner.

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