Should you care? With more than 200 million users in over 200 countries, you absolutely should care.

Let’s face it – your goal, whether personal or professional, is not only finding key decision makers, but also having them know who you are and what you or your company has to offer them. Someone with an optimized profile will be ranked higher in the search results than you – they will show up, and you won’t. What happens? You could damage your credibility, or – more likely – the Linkedin search engine will ignore you.

Of all the tips that I shared at the Summit, these are the three key sections you need to improve to make the biggest impact on engaging potential customers.

1. The Headline
This section of a LinkedIn profile is often under- or wrongly utilized. The headline is one of the most important spots in your LinkedIn profile. It’s your branding – your value proposition. Many times, this is all people will see of you in a search result.

Your headline is all about keywords (or key phrases) – the skills or expertise you want to be known for. After all, no one is looking for a president or founder. They are however, looking for experts to help them solve problems!

You’re going to need to use those keywords not only in your headline, but in your summary, and in your job descriptions as well.  Keywords are important because they give Linkedin (and potential customers) more opportunities to find and rank you. The best way to choose your keywords is to think about the words a client or employer would use to search for someone with your skill set.

To create your headline you can use skills keywords, or you can craft sentence using keywords or key phrases. For example, I help people do X (or solve X problem) with Y. Or, I help businesses improve visibility with social media and targeted marketing.  Make it engaging – be sure that this information is what your ideal clients want to know.

2. The Background Summary
This is the meat-and-potatoes of not only who you are, but also what value you offer to someone as a business or as a connection. In this section, you are allowed 2000 characters – use them.

Tell people why they should engage with you or do business with you. Use your keywords and key phrases in the description. Speak about your accomplishments and experience. Tell the story of who you are as a professional – and help your potential connections by allowing them to easily conclude why you’d make a good business partner. But whatever you do, DON’T put a job objective in your summary section.

Your background section also allows you to add video, PowerPoint presentations and other documents that show your expertise or convey your capabilities. Do it!

3. The Experience Section

Linkedin isn’t supposed to be an online resume, so be sure to use your chosen keywords or key phrases wherever they make sense, and especially in your position titles, where possible. You are allowed 2000 characters for the experience sections also, so use them to talk about what you were responsible for, and any great results you achieved and how you helped your customers achieve great things. Keep these sections updated as you move forward with your accomplishments.

And A Quick Fix:
The Activity section is sandwiched between the Name, Photo & Contact info and the Background/ Summary section on your profile. Unfortunately, the Activity section isn’t something over which you have control – Linkedin chooses what is posted here. Since things may be posted here whether you want them to or not, you may want to deactivate it.

Once you’re logged in, go to your account settings. Under Privacy Controls, click Turn On/Off Your Activity Broadcasts, and make sure it’s unchecked. You’ll still see it when you’re logged in to your account (see picture – mine’s deactivated but it shows up for me), but no one else will when viewing your profile.

Have you taken any steps to improve your Linkedin profile? Tell us what happened when you optimized your profile!

One question that comes up frequently: when should I send my emails?

Here are some tips for choosing a time of day and day of week to send those emails, in order to maximize the chance they’ll be opened and action will be taken. Check out Get Response’s full infographic here.

Send it on a Saturday or Sunday.
Believe it or not, research tells us that email open, click and transaction rates are highest on weekends, when volume is lowest.

Send it in the morning and early afternoon
The best times of day for clicking and opening emails are 8-9am and 3-4pm, the times when people are reviewing their inboxes, so schedule your email to arrive about 60 minutes before your target window.

Schedule by Time Zone
To hit those best times of day mentioned above, your email service may let you schedule deliveries for a set time in each time zone, which allows you to hit those 9am or 3pm sweet spots wherever your customers are.

 So there’s the research. But you need to test your own audience since their habits may differ. Try sending your emails at different times of the day and different times of the week – then measure your click through and response rates. That’s how you truly know when your email marketing is most effective.

When do you get the highest response to your email marketing?
Share your experience in the comments below!

Are you frustrated with your marketing efforts because your business isn’t gaining any traction? There may be many reasons for that, but sometimes it is simply because you don’t know who your customers are.  Good marketing starts with speaking directly to your customer or prospect, in language they themselves use and with which they are comfortable.

Finding Your Perfect Client

I have one new client – an established service company – who has no idea who their ideal customers are. In fact, they don’t even understand who their customers have been historically. This is fairly common for a small business, but it doesn’t make it okay – especially if you want to grow! At that point you have to stop with the shotgun (also known as the “throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks” ) approach to marketing.

The customer identification problem for this client is compounded because they believe they do know. But they’ve made two mistakes: they cast too wide a marketing net, and used faulty underlying assumptions about their customer-base.

What happened? Their business hasn’t grown the way it should have. And they know it. Now we’re on the path to fixing the problem by taking the first step of data mining their client list.

Everyone has an ideal customer.

Customers are drawn to you for any number of reasons. It could be your attitude. It could be your background. It could be a specialty that differentiates you from your competition. It is most likely a combination of these factors. The key is to understand what draws a particular pool of clients to you…what is it about you that attracts them. Once you understand why customers come, you’ll know how to market to them more clearly.

The most effective marketing requires a laser-like focus. First, understand the psychology of your audience and quantify them. Second, produce content specific to the needs and perspective of that audience in a voice they find engaging.

Demographics Matter
Targeting your marketing means assembling strong demographic customer data, and there are many ways – both formal and informal – to go about gathering it.  Here are some places to start gathering your customer data (some may not apply to all business types):

1. Sales Records

Who you’ve sold to in the past has historically been one of the biggest predictors of who you should be targeting in the future. This is about more than collecting mailing addresses or emails – you need to understand the common traits of customers who’ve sought you out in the past so you can begin to build campaigns that target that audience – an audience that you know is already comfortable buying from you.

2. Online – Your Website and Social Media

The more engaged you are online, the better the demographic data available to you. Sites such as LinkedIn provide access to Follower and Page Visitor demographics. While it is just broad data, it allows you to get a sense of where your customers are, what types and sizes of businesses they come from and their position in the company.

Google Analytics – which most businesses from small businesses to billon dollar companies install on their websites – is a much richer source of client demographics that shouldn’t be ignored. Take half an hour to look at the various analytics pages each month. Sometimes, large demographic assumptions will become clear (“wow, my audience is almost exclusively in Sedona, Arizona” or “every single visitor to my site is from a huge corporation”), though such trends should be watched and evaluated over a period of months.

3. Your Prospect Lists

The lists you assemble of customer prospects (yes, you should be doing this!) – whether it’s a business card from a networking event or an email list signup form – can also shed light on your customers. Email addresses can sometimes speak volumes. For example, mary@merck.com or amy@amgen.com – they tell a story of potential Big Pharma customers. Business cards provide additional demographic tidbits: a person’s title, for example, can indicate whether they have buying or recommending power for your product or service (e.g., “VP of Sourcing”).  

4. Customer Interactions

No matter how casual, each conversation you have with a customer or prospect can be enlightening – and a source of demographic data. Casual comments – “We love that you’re open at 7:00am,” or “Everyone on the West Side raves about this place” – can shed light on the reasons people come to you. They can also help you understand which particular demographics – location, age, income bracket, company size, etc. – matter to your business.

5. Your Competition

Even if you don’t know exactly who your customers are, your competition might…and they also might help you on your path to ‘demographic discovery.’ Whether it’s signage in their windows highlighting a particular benefit to customers or a slew of web pages aimed at tweens on their website – look at what your competition is saying, and try to understand who they are saying it to. If they are competing for your clients – and especially if they are succeeding in pulling some away from you – understanding their message can help you clarify your own.

6. Customer Psychology

Your ideal customers typically have the same problems. These problems lead to the same thought patterns and underlying emotions – whether it’s fear, envy, confusion, anger, joy, happiness, or love. Knowing their emotional state, why they take action the way they do or why they think the way they do, is key to crafting your marketing messages.

Share what steps you’ve taken to understand your customers in the comments!

How are things going?

His customers keep asking “What’s wrong with your website?” They hate it. It won’t load (at least not quickly), it doesn’t tell them how he can solve their problem, it’s ugly, and they can’t find anything they need.

Yep. $500 smackaroos per month. Six thousand dollars for the year.

And he has to start over.

Sometimes being frugal isn’t the smartest financial move.

Much of your success depends on a website that works. One that loads quickly, looks good, is easy to navigate  - and – above all, tells the customer you understand their real problems and shares how you can solve them. You also need your organic search to work so clients can find you through search engines.

Sometimes business owners end up telling their web designers, “I’ll just use the stuff from my brochure.” The thought of having to create web content is overwhelming. They are confused by what each page should talk about and how the web copy needs to be written. But they are shortchanging their customers and their company.

Why web copy costs what it does.

Investing in good web copy is smart – and ultimately cheaper! People sometimes ask me why the words on a page cost so much. After all, they’re just words, right?

Fact is – they’re much more than that. The words you present to your customers are your business, in action. People are spending less time reading and more time quickly scanning, and search engines read your pages for categorization and ranking information. Every single word counts more than ever.

Good copywriting involves more than tossing some sentences down on paper. Behind every project is a lot of work, research and multiple writing skills. You may not realize it, but a good web writer should have SEO writing expertise, marketing writing expertise and – depending on the type of business – technical writing skills as well.

On top of the time, skills, reliability, experience, good copywriters deliver, they continually participate in ongoing education. Even if your writer has mastered the skills, they know that there are always new things to learn, new methods to use, new channels, etc.  While many of the principles of marketing and marketing writing stay the same, there are constant changes to web writing and social media content.

What goes into writing solid and engaging web content?

Your writer needs to do competitor research. They need to understand buyer personas, their buying process and emotional state. They must precisely define a company’s differentiators and marketing message. They need to understand your overall marketing strategy and branding so they can create or use the proper ‘voice.’ They will also need to do keyword & SEO analysis, and much more.

In social media projects, for example, a copywriter needs to understand where your target audience is hanging out online, what they’re saying and doing, and the best ways to reach and engage with them.

In fact, research is one of the biggest chunks of time invested in good copywriting. Where are the clients? What are they saying? What are they reacting to? What elicits a positive or negative reaction? What are the competitors saying and doing? What differentiates your business from the competition, and how can that be clearly communicated? Are there industry trends you can stay in front of – so you can be seen as a thought leader?

A good copywriter needs to become a mini-expert in your field – able to communicate about your business in language that engages your current and prospective customers.

Web writing is science and art – combined.

We’ve already talked about the science of good web writing. The art/creative part of it is far more difficult to quantify and explain because it all happens inside your head.

I think the best description of the creative process I’ve ever seen was in a book by James Webb Young called A Technique for Producing Ideas. While originally written in the 1940′s, it still applies to the most cutting-edge creative person today. After all, the brain still functions the same way when creating something new.

Once your copywriter has all of the info, they need to turn it all into communications that “sing.” When we hear the “singing,” we know we’ve got it! But what happens in between?

The first step in the creative process is chewing on the information. Your writer will use all of the information like pieces in a puzzle – turning each piece backwards and forwards, then looking at it all from different angles. That’s when the ideas start flowing.

Once we get to this stage, the notes of phrases and draft sentences get captured on the screen, page, white board – whatever happens to be available. Sometimes these ideas can be pretty out there – but they are just notes to work from, so we capture everything. We usually end up confusing ourselves at this point with too much information and ideas. This is when its time to let our brains go to work again.

We need to let the info simmer like a pot of soup. This is the brain working to assemble the pieces in the best possible way. It may be while gardening, ironing or in the shower (where most of my “a-ha” moments happen). That’s when it’s time to put the first draft together.

Then we edit. Edit some more. Then we do the second draft and maybe even a third before we even let the client see it.

That is what goes into writing for the web, for direct mail, for social media. That’s why good copywriting costs what it does. And why investing upfront will save you heartache and money in the long run.

• Did I damage my credibility? Maybe.
• Did I beat myself up over it? Yep – you betcha.
• Did I just give up because I screwed up? Nope! That would damage my business more than starting back up again.

How to Get Back on the Blogging Track

So how do you get going again? After all, it’s kind of nice not to worry about your blog, right? And now maybe you’re feeling a bit stuck for what to say.

So, it’s “get back on track” time.

Well, I can tell you that I don’t really have an issue coming up with blog topics.  Marketing and marketing writing -whether for the web, social media or even print – has such a huge scope that the topics are nearly inexhaustible. If you spent some time focused on thinking about your own business, I’m guessing you’d probably have an unending supply as well.

Here’s what I did. I hope it helps get you back on track.

First, I committed to my accountability partner that I would get my blog calendar completed and that I would finish off March’s posts and newsletter. (I also told a couple of other people what my goal was and I know they’ll call me out on it if I don’t get it done.)

As an aside, an accountability partner is someone who has agreed to hold you accountable for your actions or inactions. They are there to provide tough love and support. Some people work better with a paid accountability coach –they feel that since they are paying for the service they will be more responsible for accomplishing their goals. Note also that this partner must be a person you respect. It must be difficult for you to tell them you have not completed the goals you set yourself.

Second, I decided that it was time to implement self-discipline and spend the weekend getting myself together.

Third, I thought things through and decided to make a Plan B – a plan for next December in case the kiddies deliver another lovely bug. My content calendar now goes clear into February 2014.

Fourth, I sat down and started to draft ideas, headlines, and get things on paper/computer screen. I actually started to do this right inside my content calendar as I was putting it together. You’ll find that once you start getting your raw thoughts on paper, you will feel more comfortable and less stuck in a rut.

Fifth, I have a plan for getting my content done. Most of the topics I’ll be writing about are topics that remain the same over time. They are “evergreen” to use a technical term. I can write them at anytime and they’ll still be valid and valuable in a couple of months. This allows me to create my blog content during slower periods and stay on track with my blog. As timely information comes along (which happens all the time with social media) I’ll be able to supplement my content so that my readers will be up-to-date with the latest info!

Is it just one weekend that you need to spend on blogging?

Heck no! Even for marketing writers or blog writers it would be completely ridiculous to assume it’s that easy to crank out 26 blog posts. You see, blog writing is a process.

You might spend hours on one post or you might just take a few minutes. It depends on your topic. Just be aware that most substantive posts do take time. Don’t get frustrated – stay on the blogging path.

*Note: No customer marketing or content creation efforts were harmed in the slip.

the indicators of your own future success?

Look at it this way – the people you hang out with the most are influencing you – you’re absorbing their thoughts and their ways of thinking. Will it take you and your business where you want to go – the places you dream about? Is it enough, or do you need to re-think your influencers?

Fresh Information Equals Growth

I wrote a post not long ago about the importance of continual learning, and how investigating new information can help you grow as a person and help grow your business. This new information is coming from all angles – books, e-newsletters, meetings, blog posts, phone conversations, Mastermind sessions, webinars, teleseminars, and any number of other channels – and behind each of those channels is an individual.

So, who influences you the most?

Is it friends? Family members? Do you have e-Mentors or in-person mentors?

I recently read a blog post in which the writer suggested that a peek into one’s inbox would reveal who our top five influencers were. Definitely a very good suggestion! I’ve been looking at my email box ever since and realizing that one, I’m following a few too many people; and two, many of the people I follow need to be eliminated. Why? They no longer serve as valuable mentors and influencers.

You see, over the course of my business thus far, I’ve signed up for information from many people. At the time I signed up, they answered questions for me, gave me new ways of thinking about my business growth and – in general – helped me with issues I had encountered.  What I’ve continued to do is gain more mentors – both in person and e-mentors. What I haven’t done is release myself from the influencers I’ve grown past.

I find that the key influencers in my business’s success and growth are always changing. As the needs of my business change and evolve, different e-Mentors vie for my bandwidth. We all need to remember that we might be comfortable with someone, but there may come time when we’ll outgrow them.

As you look through your inbox for your own top five influencers, here are some things to think about.

1. Know Your Business…and What it Needs

Understanding what matters at any given stage of your business means always having a snapshot of where you are and what your challenges are. Whether it’s growing big enough to necessitate revolving lines of credit or deciding how much of a marketing budget to allocate to New Media (hint: think at least 10% for traditional brick and mortar businesses, and up to 80% or more for various technology endeavors), it’s critical to recognize not just where you are – but also what you need to grow.

2. Where Do You Want Your Business to Go?

Now that you’ve familiarized yourself with where your business is and what it needs to continue to be (or become, in the short term) successful, consider where it is you want it to go. If your typical client spends $100 monthly with you, is it possible to raise that to $1000 by targeting a different audience? Pick a few of your e-Mentors based where you want your business to be in 1, 2 or 5 years.

3. Your Values Matter

The entire point of a business mentor – whether in your email inbox or through a more formal arrangement – is to help you build your business. Their values and beliefs need to align with yours in order for you to achieve the maximum value possible from them.
So take your e-Mentors for a test drive. Remember: understand your business, think about where you want it go, and make sure your potential mentor’s values and beliefs line up with your own. Above all, make sure your mentors are always relevant to where you are going.

How many mentor voices do you have in your head?

Every November, repeat clients as well as new faces begin filling my inbox and voicemail with talk of next year. “Next year we want to expand our brand into social media…what do we need to do?” “Next year we want to revamp our website…what should we be doing?” “Next year we want to change the way we communicate with donors…what do you think we should do?”

The first things I ask are what is your goal for the next year? And what is your overall marketing strategy? In most cases, it isn’t well-defined: sometimes it’s a line-item in an overall budget, other times it’s just a collection of hazy, half-formed objectives and dreams.

But success in 2013 starts with proper planning. You can either back into the plan from your dream/goals or start with your budget and your goal and move forward into a solid plan. Either way you need two things – your goals and your budget.

Here are three recommendations to get you focused on planning your business growth strategies in 2013:

1. Set Big – But Reachable -Goals

Lots of folks are afraid of setting expansive, ambitious goals…but they shouldn’t be. Every year since I started my business, I’ve established a percentage growth rate I wanted to achieve, and every year I’ve hit it. Laying out your objectives in writing is the clearest way to make them come true. I’m not proposing you craft outrageous, unrealistic goals (“next year’s sales at our dry cleaning business will top Apple’s sales”), but you do want to set stretch goals. Reach for the stars, as they say, but choose a constellation that’s a bit closer than Apple’s revenue figures.

2. It Isn’t Real if You Don’t Write it Down.

Sure, I admit to being partial to the written word, but crafting a business strategy can’t just happen in Imagination Land. My significant other is a pretty smart guy. He graduated at the top of his class and raised more than $1 million in start-up capital. But he also barely remembers to put his shoes away every day. The point being that the likelihood of anyone remembering the details of their entire strategic plan is pretty slim.

Research shows that when goals and tasks are written down, more is achieved. Your business strategy is a living document that evolves, adapts and shifts with your business. Many times your growth will come from completely unexpected sources so be open and flexible. Bottom line: commit your strategic plan to paper, and revisit it often to make sure it reflects where you are and where your business is going. When you need to shift your tasks to meet goals– do it.

3. Spend Wisely.

Don’t go chasing the latest marketing tools just because they happen to be the latest marketing tools. Likewise, don’t ignore the latest marketing tools because you think they may just be a fad.

Let me be upfront: I’d love to produce your email marketing, web language and social media content for you. Blog entries, newsletters, Facebook posts, LinkedIn updates, maybe some action on YouTube, you name it. But the truth is – depending on your client base – it may not be what your business needs to get ahead. And the same holds true for traditional print brochures and direct mail campaigns, billboard advertising, or any other method of reaching out to potential customers.

Understanding where to spend your valuable marketing budget means knowing where your customers (or prospects) hang out, what their pain is and how you can reduce or eliminate it. There are many valuable marketing avenues available to business owners today; selecting the right ones to use and spending wisely means understanding everything about your customers. Do the work.

How will you grow your business in 2013?

Not too long ago, I’d started doing some preliminary planning and analysis on where to take my business in 2013. (For all you procrastinators: yes, it’s time to plan now). By whatever twist of fate, I found myself reading “The Art of Non-Conformity” by Chris Guillebeau. As many of you know I question everything, so unconventional thinking tends to be quite attractive to me.

I found a number of concepts and thoughts that will certainly help my business in this book. But one thing in particular stood out. It turns out that Bill Gates had a habit while running Microsoft in its glory days of holding something called “Think Weeks.” Apparently, twice a year he would shut out all distractions and go into a room full of reading material he’d selected for several days at a time. Food would be brought in and he would “plot the future of Microsoft’s world domination strategy.” (Give the man some focused time and he took over the world…at least until Apple’s iPod Revolution firmly caught our attention.) 

Intriguing, isn’t it?

I thought so too. The idea of shutting out the noise of the world for a couple of days and spending the time quietly looking at your business and absorbing new information from research, mentors, e-mentors and even your competition provides a new perspective on your direction. It gives you the ability to discover what “rings true” to you.

The Lesson? Learning is Good Great For Your Business.

Learning and expanding your expertise and worldview is one of the best things you can do for your business. But as with all things, it’s important to carefully choose the materials, authors and people of influence you look to for guidance. All of this information – including the people you spend time and surround yourself with – is what leads to how successful you will become.

You Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Hurricane!

My advice: don’t wait for the next power-robbing storm for some ‘business growth strategy-planning downtime.’ Make the time and take all of that information you’ve been collecting into a quiet room – you never know where all those minds will take you, or how they’ll inspire you!

Who are some of the thinkers and doers you follow? How have they helped you develop your business?

It’s important to remember the common phrase used in the sales profession: ‘All things being equal, people buy from people they like.’

not truly care enough about others to serve them and help make their lives easier, better, richer, etc. As I said in my last post – we can all spot the fakers. But you can demonstrate your likeability in more ways than just one-on-one meetings.

Try these five suggestions for creating a likeable business presence:

1. Make Life Easier.

People love others who can make their lives easier. Think about how you can help your clients and prospects make daily life simpler. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about what they need. It might not always be something you offer as a product or service. It might be as simple as giving them the name of a power washing company or the name of a great pet-sitter, if that is what they need. Talk about building a relationship!

2. Share Your Expertise.
Customers and prospects come to you because they require your expertise. That doesn’t mean you should lecture them. Be informative-engaging rather than boring-lecture-yawn-yawn-yawn. There’s a fine line between arrogant and knowledgeable, so tread carefully. Imagine how you would want to be educated about your subject matter if you were a customer. The best advice? Be yourself – but be the ‘you’ that customers want to turn to first in your industry.

3. Don’t Talk About You…Talk About Them.
Business owners often (erroneously) believe that by sharing as much information as possible about themselves and their business, customers will learn who they are and want to do business with them. The truth? Customers and prospects want to know what your product or service can do for them. If they want to learn about wheelchairs, do you really think you should spend much time talking about your company’s 83-year history and that you started out as an iron foundry? Save it for your Company History page…and spend your time talking about what your product or service can do to make their lives happier, richer, easier, better.

4. Get Real.
In today’s crazy, always-on world, it’s as simple as being genuine. Be sure to let your customers and prospects know they are important. Show you care and be there for them.

5. Can Technology Make You More Likeable?

Technology – especially social media, mobile marketing and email – has had a huge impact on our personal and professional relationships. It’s changed the way we communicate – with many of our messages becoming shorter and more casual. It has also added exponentially to the number of marketing messages that bombard us these days. That means you and I – as business owners – work harder for smaller and smaller amounts of our prospect’s or customer’s attention.

Email (used properly) and social media can be amazing tools for showing who you (and your business) really are. Use tools like Twitter and Facebook to engage with your audience on more personal levels. Your email marketing and blog can also give your readers a sense of your personality and how you can help others. All of these electronic channels are great for letting some of the professional ‘real you’ shine through.

But make sure you understand your audience. If 83% of your target demographic consists of organic gardeners, tweeting about your use of pesticides won’t engage them (and might – instead – enrage them!). Give them info they find useful, but make it personal – make it connect with them…and remember, social media doesn’t replace the in-person you.

Are you struggling with how to turn your brand into a likeable business?