#1 Post back issues on your website. This will help both with your search engine optimization and you’ll give potential subscribers a taste of what you have to offer. Don’t worry too much about people not signing up because they have access to back issues. Most people want and appreciate the convenience of having content delivered to them instead of them having to go and look for it. Additionally, the timeliness of receiving content immediately rather than reading it three months after the fact holds tremendous value.

#2 Offer something really cool in exchange for subscribing. Free reports, online courses, audio and video products are all valued and will motivate prospects to subscribe. And if you’ve been offering something all along, freshen it up. Offer a new and improved product!

#3 Promote your newsletter in your email signature, forum and social networking signatures and profile pages and any other business communications. People are curious and will likely click through to check out your website and newsletter. Once there, your offer will be so compelling they won’t be able to resist signing up!

#4 Cross promote with other relevant businesses. For example if your niche is pet training, cross promoting your newsletter with a website with a pet food niche is perfect. They get the benefit of your website subscribers and vice versa.

#5 Offer coupons and promotions exclusively for newsletter subscribers. Everyone, particularly in the present economy, is looking for ways to save money. Couple that with the fact that people like to belong to exclusive groups. When you offer potential subscribers the opportunity to save money and receive exclusive coupons and promotions, it’ll motivate them to sign up.

#6 Test the location of your sign up form. Generally, sign up forms are located on the right hand side of a website, and always above the fold. However, it’s always important to test. A/B Split testing is the simplest way to test form location. Create two identical landing pages with your newsletter sign up form in two different locations. Test for a week, a month, or six months – test until you have enough data to draw a reasonable conclusion. Consider also testing your call to action.

Your newsletter can be a great business building asset. Make sure people know about it and boost your newsletter subscription rate by using one or more of these suggestions.

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Once you’ve created your business plan, it will:

* Guide your decisions based on your company mission and vision
* Help you create marketing strategies to attain your financial and sales goals
* Help you create a budget
* Outline how you’ll track money, incoming and outgoing.
* Provide lenders a financial blueprint for your business
* Gives flow chart of all aspects of your business from marketing to accounting so that all your bases are covered.
* Defines your target market.
* Documents your goals and your plans to attain them.

So knowing your business plan can help you accomplish all this is great but how is a more important question.

How to Use Your Business Plan

Step #1 25% of your time, at a minimum, will be spent planning your business. Your business plan is the foundation for this planning. If it’s comprehensive, it will guide your decisions, outline your goals and help you create strategies to achieve them. So, schedule a planning day each week. If you plan to work 10-12 hours a week then three hours of that time will be planning time, schedule it in and make it happen.

Step #2 When planning make sure to refer to your vision and mission statement to make sure you’re staying on course. If your vision is to become the single biggest online source for chocolate chip cookie recipes then your strategies and decisions should reflect that. If you’re offered an opportunity to partner with a baking website then you’ll need to see if that partnership supports your vision.

Step #3 Use your tracking tools to keep you on target. Your business plan will have a budget in it as well as a financial analysis and cash flow forecast. These are items that you’ll want to maintain and use on a monthly basis so you stay on top of your cash and create optimal cash flow management policies and procedures. However, tracking tools don’t stop there. You’ll also want to use the tracking tools to analyze traffic to your website and so on.

Step #4 When planning, don’t forget to use your business plan to stay on track with your target audience. You’ve defined it in your plan however, as time goes by and as you track your sales, visits and so on, you may find your target audience changes. Update your business plan to reflect your target audience and make decisions based on that information.

Planning is one of the most important tasks an entrepreneur faces and your business plan is your most effective planning tool. Create a thorough business plan and use it regularly to grow your business.

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Here’s how to advertise on Yelp and make the most of this online tool.

#1 Go to Yelp and visit the Business Advertising Page – http://www.yelp.com/business/advertising

#2 Check to see if you’re already listed on Yelp. Enter your business name and location and then click search. If you’re not listed then it’s time to list your business.

#3 List your business. Enter all of your business information including your website, address, phone number and category.

#4 Confirm. An email will be sent to the address you provided. Simply click on confirm and you’ll be listed.

#5 Don’t stop there. The more positive reviews you have, the better. Encourage your customers to visit Yelp and leave you a positive review.

#6 Enhance. Ad photos to your profile and consider sending messages to your list from Yelp.

Every step up until now has been free and you can stop here. However, if you want to stand out on Yelp you can purchase enhancement packages. Advertising packages range in price depending on what your needs are. You can choose from preset advertising packages or have one custom designed for you.

Advertising on Yelp is a great way to take advantage of your local market. It’s a great way to build a community and to collect positive reviews. Particularly because you can get listed and promoted for free, it’s a great way to start.

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Here are a few ideas to help you repurpose your content:

Recycle. There’s no need to just use great content once. Recycling your content benefits everyone in a positive way. A good way to do this is to think about each piece of content and how you can reuse it.

A few ideas may be:

#1 – Take a special download report and use the content for article distribution. The report is only available for download on your website but you can use several articles within the report to distribute to article directories. That content will then work to bring you new subscribers to your site.

#2 – Use product content to create an autoresponder series. If you have an info product available for sale (or a free one) you can take snippets of that content and turn it into an autoresponder series. This way your customers can preview the content through the AR series and the AR series can promote the actual product.

#3 – Use the content on your website for a product. If you have articles on your website or blog you can easily turn these into a product. Simply choose a collection of articles you’ve previously written and make them available in download format for customers.

You can choose to use this content as a free giveaway to gain more subscribers, or you can turn it into an actual product for purchase. Not everyone is likely to look through your whole website or blog to find the content. Also, people will often pay for the convenience of having the information at their fingertips without having to search for it.

#4 – Use your newsletter to attract search engines. If you have a regular newsletter which you send out make sure you also add it to your website or blog pages after sending. This will help you attract more search engine traffic and will give customers an archive to view previous newsletters.

#5 – Turn your audios into content. If you have audios on your website, use them to get more free search engine traffic. Have the audios transcribed and place them on your website or blog pages. This also gives your customers options, as some people will prefer to read rather than listen to an audio.

With a little thinking and planning you can make your content go a long way.

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Here are a few reasons why maintaining your website is important:

# Attracting the search engines – Search engines are important to the livelihood of your online business, but they don’t like “dead” websites. Websites which have been left static without updates or fresh content are a no-no in the online world. Another thing search engines don’t like is broken links.

As you build your web pages it’s easy to miss broken links. A good strategy is to double check every link you add to your website. Inevitably you may miss some or some may become broken with time (as web addresses change and so on). Regular maintenance and “check-ups” for your website will help you spot these broken links and keep your customers and search engines happy in the process.

# Updating information may increase your sales – Regularly looking over your website will also help you make changes and adjustments as necessary. For example, you may have started promoting what was a great product two years ago but now that product may be outdated and not so great anymore. By updating your website you may find products and promotions which are a better match for your visitors. This means more money in your pocket and more satisfied visitors.

Look through your old web pages to see if there are any promotions which can be updated or given a little extra “oomph.” Times change and on the internet time moves at a faster speed – keeping up with the times is important and you can do this by simply looking over your pages and tweaking as you go along.

# Keeping track of your stats is important – Another part of your basic web maintenance is keeping on top of all your visitor statistics. It makes sense to regularly go through your website and check how many visitors you have on a monthly basis, where they’re coming from, how they’re finding you, what pages they’re accessing and so on.

A running log of these statistics will help you quickly identify any potential problems such as loss of traffic or reduced income from sources such as Google AdSense and so on.

Regular web maintenance for your website is important. It can help you keep up with changing times, help to attract more visitors and ultimately make you more sales. If you find this task difficult to squeeze in, try scheduling it in for a set time each month or every few weeks. It shouldn’t take long and the time investment may make all the difference to your business. And finally, if you don’t have time to do the web maintenance yourself you can always think about hiring an assistant to help you with this task.

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Here are a few things to bear in mind when building your first website or blog:

#1 – Forget the bells and whistles – keep it simple

Design on the internet needs to be easy on the eye, user friendly and make sense to the average user. Never assume your customers will be as web savvy as you – many may just be familiarizing themselves with online surfing while others may simply have come to expect traditional navigation on a website.

Simplicity always rules on the net. Let your website stand out by making it easy for the visitor to find what they’re looking for, and most importantly by providing great value and content within your site. Then simply follow a few basic good design rules and you’re set to go. Here are the most important rules to follow:

* Don’t use color for the background. Keep the background of your website or blog white. In some instance a light color will work but avoid dark colors. Black can be especially difficult on the eyes. When in doubt, go with a white background and black text.

* Don’t use too many graphics or flash images. Flash images can make a website slow to load and be downright annoying in some cases. Use images sparingly and make sure you use Alt tags in your images to make them search engine friendly. A few well-placed graphics can make a good impression and add to the actual content of the website – graphics should always enhance your text, not take away from it.

* Don’t use music or audio without controls. An audio welcome can be a great addition to your website but always give visitors the option to click to hear the audio if they choose to. Otherwise, you may startle or annoy your customers when they suddenly hear a message they weren’t expecting.

Music in most cases is just not necessary and will distract from the message of your site. If you feel that music is a good addition, again, give your customers the option to click to listen to the music rather than taking that choice away from them.

* Don’t use too many text colors. As with the background and design of a site, text color should be kept simple. At most use three colors within your site, preferably two – one for the standard text and one for headlines. This will make reading easy on the eye and look more professional. Using two colors also means that your headlines will stand out to the reader and draw them into the text.

* Break it up. Text can be very difficult to read online. Make it easy on your visitors’ eyes by breaking up the text into small, manageable sentences. It also helps to add bullet points and sub-headlines throughout the text as many readers on the net skim pages rather than absorb them in full.

#2 – Don’t forget the content

Good design is important but great content can make all the difference to your internet success. The best approach is to gel good design with stellar content and you’ll have a sure winner on your hands.

Always give a little more than other websites and keep your content fresh and up-to-date. Add interesting stories, articles, downloads, videos and information that will help your visitors achieve their goals.

#3 – Don’t avoid feedback

Feedback – good or bad – is important to your business. Ask visitors to fill in a poll, reply to your newsletter or give them feedback in general. Use this feedback to improve your site further and to help your visitors achieve their goals. This will pay off nicely for you too in the long run.

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You can use this concept of viral marketing via YouTube to market your business. Viral marketing is one of the best ways to get your business from 0 to 60 in seconds flat. It’s amazing how an idea can spread and if you can create a buzz with viral marketing, you’ll watch your traffic – and profits – soar. And YouTube is one of the best ways to launch a viral campaign.

In order for a viral campaign to be successful it has to have two ingredients:

1. It has to be entertaining or valuable – it has to be something people will share.
2. It has to be easily shared.

So YouTube almost automatically makes it easy to share. With the links YouTube provides, the ability to embed video to a web page and the social networking functions it links to so you can share your video, YouTube is a fantastic way to launch a viral campaign.

You can share your video on:

* Facebook
* Twitter
* MySpace
* Orkut
* StumbleUpon
* Live Spaces
* Bebo
* hi5

But what about Digg?

Digg is a social bookmarking site. It lets you share content from anywhere on the web and it lets you share any type of content – even video.

Once your viral video goes live on YouTube and you’ve embedded your video on your website or webpage, you can submit the page to Digg. Be sure to include a “Digg this” button on your webpage too.

On Digg, make sure to network and connect with others. And consider using their “Digg Traffic” buttons that show how many times a page has been submitted. Interestingly enough, the more times something has been submitted to Digg, the more people are inclined to submit it themselves.

But how do you make sure your video goes viral?

Here are some considerations when it comes to creating your video:

* Make it entertaining. Humor is a great way to capture a viral market online. People love to laugh and if you can make them laugh and market your business at the same time, you’re golden.

* Consider making it controversial. Controversy can really get people talking. Be bold, make a statement.

* Make it valuable. If you can create an informative video people will share it with others.

Using YouTube and Digg to launch your viral video campaign is smart business. With a good video, you can quickly multiply your number of viewers in a matter of hours. Spread the word; go viral with YouTube and Digg.

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You need to increase your visibility. In other words, you need more people to know about you and the service you provide. Then, when they’re ready to make a purchase, you’ll be the one they want to buy from.

One way you can increase your visibility is by writing free content for newsletters. You may wonder why you should write for free. After all, you’re in business to make money and you should be paid for your expertise. But writing articles for newsletters with links to your website can be very effective, free advertising for your business.

Newsletter publishers are always looking for quality content to publish. There are newsletters on almost every topic imaginable. It is very likely that someone is publishing a newsletter on your area of expertise and has subscribers who are interested in what you know. By getting your articles published in these newsletters, you will become more visible to that market. In exchange for your article, the newsletter publisher includes your resource box and a link to your website – free advertising for you.

To get the best results from writing articles, write articles that answer your market’s burning questions. You can explain how to do something, or give a list of your top ten tips. In your articles, it’s important to not advertise your business or make the article sound promotional. You want to focus on delivering quality information that will genuinely help your readers.

At the end of each article to write, you’ll place your author’s resource box or author’s bio. This is where you promote yourself and tell what your business can do. Describe your expertise and include a link to your website where the reader can go to learn more about you. This is where the free advertising comes in.

In your resource box, be sure to give your reader a good reason to visit your website. You may want to tell them what they’ll find there. Alternatively, you can offer them a free report or e-book for visiting your website. That gives them more incentive to click through. If you’ve impressed them with the quality of information in your article, there is a good chance they will click through to get more information from you.

Now that you have your article and your resource box, you need to distribute it. You can contact newsletter publishers directly, but it’s even simpler to submit your article to article directories. These are places that publish free reprint articles. Publishers come to these directories looking for new content for their newsletters. If you’ve written an interesting, informative article, there’s a good chance they’ll reprint yours.

When readers see that you consistently provide good information, they’ll come to see you as an expert. As they see articles written by you published in various newsletters and websites, you will become more familiar to them. Then, when they’re ready to purchase a product or service like the one you provide, they’ll be more likely to think of you first.

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Here’s how to generate customer confidence into your website.

Quality Content. One of the best ways to communicate your strength in your industry and give your customers confidence is to write quality content. Quality content positions you as a credible and trusted source of information.

It won’t come up until your customer is ready to make a purchase however a secure transaction with an SSL certificate is important. It shows customers you value their business and respect their privacy and security.
Testimonials. Customer testimonials are social proof. They tell your visitors that you have followed through on your claims and promises. Post testimonials on your landing page and where appropriate throughout your website.

Certifications and associations. Any certifications or associations you belong to will also ad credibility to you and your website. They help increase customer confidence when they know you belong to other business organizations. For example, a BBB, Better Business Bureau, certification can be the difference between a purchase and a click away.

Contact information. Including your name, address, email and phone number helps people feel reassured that you’re not only a real business, they can get a hold of you if they need to. Place the information on your home page, in the footer is fine. And consider including a “contact” button or page to make your information easy to find.

Use your About page to tell people who you are and help your visitors get to know you. As a small business owner, who you are is often your strongest asset. Tell them your story.
How long have you been in this business? What made you get into it? Why do you enjoy it? People like to buy from real people. What is your experience?

FAQ/customer service. Make sure you have an easy to use customer service system including a FAQ page. When people have questions, they tend to trust those who present the answers up front or make it really easy to find the answers.

Policies and procedures. In this day and age transparency is essential. Make sure all of your policies and procedures are 100% communicated and up front. This can be communicated with autoresponders when people sign up for your list or buy your product. However, you can also make sure to communicate on your website itself. For example, if you have a subscription form, you can have a link in that form to your privacy policy.

Establishing customer confidence on your website is an important strategy. Take a look at your website from your visitor’s perspective. Are you doing everything you can to ensure they have confidence and trust in you?

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These questions are some of the important reasons why you need a properly set-up marketing strategy plan. A marketing strategy plan will help you gain maximum benefit from your marketing. It goes a step beyond a marketing plan.

A marketing plan describes the activities you are going to do to promote your product or service. A marketing strategy plan establishes the basis for your marketing and provides the goals for all your marketing activities. It gives you a tool you can use to define your market, position yourself, and increase your sales.

Here are some of the things a well thought-out marketing strategy will tell you. This information will help you gain maximum results from all of your marketing efforts.

* Describe your business and your objectives. This is where you will write down what your business does and what product or service it provides. You will also consider what the goal of your business is. When you have established your goals, you will be able to choose marketing activities to help you reach those objectives.

* Describe your products or services. This describes what you do and how you provide your product or service. It is important to understand exactly what service your business provides so you can tell others about it effectively. This may seem obvious, but many business owners can’t describe exactly what it is they do. Including this in your marketing strategy plan will ensure that you understand what you do and why it’s important, and can relay that information to others.

* Profile your target market. Who are you providing your product or service for? This will tell you who you should be marketing to. Research your market to find out what appeals to them about your product. This will help you market it to them effectively. Learn everything you can about your market so you can speak their language and make sure your marketing is appropriate.

* Know your business’s role in relation to your competition. This will help you understand your unique position in the marketplace. Find out how you’re different than your competitors, whether it be stronger or weaker. You can use this in your marketing to make yourself stand out from the competition.

Your marketing strategy plan will provide the goals for all your marketing activities and help you reach them. It will also simplify your marketing because you have done your research ahead of time. For these reasons, a marketing strategy plan helps ensure that you gain maximum benefit from your marketing.

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