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Standing Ovation

Is there someone in your life who needs cheering up, or just needs to know that s/he has done a great job?  Send that person a  Standing Ovation.  Even though it's an automated service, it feels great to be on the receiving end of one.  Or, if your day isn't going well, send one to yourself!  My business coach sent one to me several years ago, and it arrived just when I needed a boost!

Send your Standing Ovation here.

Planning for 2010

As I mentioned last week, I attended a virtual retreat held by Sandra Martini in her Create Your Best Year Ever Program.  I had so much fun at this event, as it's been a long time since I actually ignored the phone, email, and whatever else was going on around me to really concentrate on planning for the growth of my business.  All of those ideas for my business that I'd either been carrying around in my head or had written up in various notes to myself were exhumed and inserted into my plan for 2010 (or just completely eliminated).

I had a couple of "ah-ha" moments during that virtual retreat:

1.  My life has certainly gotten in the way of growing my business.  From my relocation back to Texas to multiple hurricane evacuations and forced relocations to beginning a new romantic relationship to moving yet again to my mom's death to getting married...whew!  It's no wonder my business has taken a back seat in the last few years.

2.  I was stunned to discover that I had not offered a fee-based training or coaching program in almost 5 years!  Sure, I'd been a guest on teleclasses for colleagues and held my own free teleclasses for growing my list, but I had not put together anything that I charged for (other than membership to my subscription website, OnlineBizU.com or 1:1 coaching/consulting).  I used to do that fairly regularly and never realized I'd dropped the ball.

It's amazing what some dedicated time to be introspective does to help you with your own reality check.  And, while I wasn't looking, an entire decade of the 21st century whizzed by.  With Sandra's help, I'm getting my plans and my calendar in place, and am planning for a busy and prosperous 2010.  How about you?? 

In this issue, I'm re-running an article I wrote several years ago on creating your own business retreat.  I'm not doing my own in quite this way any longer, but if you're not doing one at all, it should provide enough help to get you started.

Week Dec. 14 -- What's New at OnlineBizU

Paid Membership Has Its Advantages!

The teleclasses, downloads, and articles listed below are available to members of OnlineBizU.com as a part of their paid membership. If you're not a member and would like to have immediate access to some great Internet marketing strategies and information, we'd love to have you  join us!

New Article:

Amazon.com Marketing: How to Get Your Blog Published on Amazon's Kindle
Donna Gunter
Amazon's Kindle is a electronic book-reading device that now permits blog publishers to have their blogs available to Kindle readers, as well, for a small monthly fee. How can you get your blog distributed on the Kindle? Here are the 6 easy steps to Kindle publication: . . . keep reading

 

New Biz Automation Tool:

My Live Signature
Donna Gunter
Using your "real" signature as an image is never a good idea in an online environment. It becomes too easy for an unscrupulous person to simply copy and paste that into any document and potentially make you liable for things without your knowledge. Instead, use a service that creates a signature font for you. . . . keep reading

Marketing with Holiday Cards

Over the weekend we received a Christmas card from our plumber.  It was a lovely card encased in a silver-lined envelope and beautifully embossed with a holiday message and the name of the plumbing company.  The customer inside of me said, "Oh, that's nice." and I immediately threw it away.  The marketer inside me said, "What a sad waste of a card and postage.  They didn't send me a call to action."

What do you hope to accomplish by sending out holiday cards to your customers?  Do more than send out a pretty greeting. Don't create a situation like my plumber did where the only thing I did with the card is put it immediately into the trash.  Make sending holiday cards worth your time, energy, and money and worthwhile for the customer to open by including a call to action.  Here are some examples:

1.  enclose a coupon for 15% off the next call or order
2.  create a tell-a-friend campaign by enclosing business cards or new customer coupons that the customer can pass along to family and friends
3.  offer to do a complimentary inspection
4.  send your customer a link to a free report on your website that will help him/her improve something

Get the idea here?  What call to action can you take in your holiday card campaign so that your card is saved from the circular bin?

Screentoaster

Have you ever viewed a tutorial where the speaker is giving a tour of a website or some software and instead of seeing this person speak, you're seeing a view of her computer screen? This is commonly referred to as a screencast, and was most commonly created by purchasing Camtasia Studio software.

Now, you can create the same type of screencast for yourself with the free web-based screen recorder,  Screentoaster. ScreenToaster is designed to capture screen activity in real-time to rapidly create and share tutorials, demos, training, lectures and more. You can then share and stream videos online in Flash, embed them on blogs and webpages or send them by email.

To record a screencast video, simply click on "Start recording" or "Record", start recording using the shortcuts or via the recorder. You can add audio and an embedded webcam while you are recording. When finished, you can add subtitles, choose your thumbnail image, and describe and tag your video so other users can easily find your screencasts.

ScreenToaster is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux and is optimized to run on Firefox 2 +, Internet Explorer 7 +, Chrome, Opera 9 and Safari.

Create your screencast  here.