Blogging

This is a guest post by Anita Hampl, the Short Attention Span Writer. 

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, provides ways for you to drive its visitors to your website. Buckle up and read on to find out how!

LinkedIn is a directory of professional profiles, an archive of wide-ranging business articles, a targeted news feed, and a place for recruiters to find job seekers.

But the delicious irony of LinkedIn is how you can move viewers to your own (hosted) website!

Picture yourself stepping out to the porch from a noisy Chamber of Commerce Meetup to continue a conversation that may lead to business or romance. You can entice LinkedIn connections off the platform in a similar way, to cultivate relationships and develop business.

Bringing someone to your (internet) home from LinkedIn involves varying commitments of time and effort. Look at the possibilities, then choose your role: the Driver, the Passenger, or the backseat Driver!

1. The Driver: Active.

The Driver is a thought leader or trendsetter who loves new concepts. He’ll analyze them, talk about them, and write about them. His interests beyond the digital realm cover financial as well as corporate, societal, governmental, or industrial matters.

A winning Driver strives to educate, entertain, or inspire … with a call to action in mind for each step he takes.

Two practices he can use to drive LinkedIn visitors to his own hosted site are creation and curation.

• Creation: The Driver publishes in-depth, original articles on LinkedIn “Publisher.” Designed to showcase his expertise and leadership, they may be reposted from the Driver’s website.
• Curation: The Driver selects current news items, journal articles, or trending posts from the web. He reposts them in his LinkedIn newsfeed with witty, thoughtful, or curious comments.

The ideal posts on LinkedIn cause readers to:

• like the content,
• engage in the discussion by commenting,
• share the post with their network on LinkedIn, and/or
• click on over to the Driver’s own website to learn more about the author or their organization.

The Driver welcomes engagement with his postings. He understands that higher engagement causes the material (and the author) to place higher within the LinkedIn search algorithms.

Whether created or curated, each post should have at least one clickable link to his own website or to a relevant affiliate sales page.

Cool tip: People who are not your first-degree Connections—who are not necessarily allowed to read everything on your LinkedIn profile—may read your posts and click over to your website!

2. The Passenger: Passive.

The Passenger is a perfectly accomplished business owner or solopreneur. Between managing her day-to-day business and working to build her brand, she is content to update her own website regularly. But social media is just not on her radar.

She put up a LinkedIn profile ten years ago because everyone else was doing it. The classic case of “set it and forget it.”

With a little concentrated effort, a Passenger on LinkedIn can successfully take advantage of LinkedIn to drive their visitors to her own website.

She can set up a free Company Page (aka LinkedIn Page or Business Page) if her email is unique to her domain (e.g., not a Yahoo or Gmail address). The Company Page has two distinct places where a visitor can click and be taken to her website.

Using my Company Page as an example, notice that:

1. The Learn More button appears and leads directly to my (Mom Webs) hosted website.

2. On the About tab/page of the Company Page, my URL is listed again and is also clickable, taking me to my hosted website.

Cool tip: If the Passenger includes a logo on their Company page, that logo will populate the Experience sections of their personal LinkedIn profiles. And the more-attractive logo will be a live link back to the Company page.

Another person’s example:

But if someone does not have a Company page, the plain gray square will fill in the space in the Experience section.

Moving forward, once the Company Page is set up, the Passenger is free to populate it with content, actively post copy and engage in activity, or … just leave it. It will continue to allow any visitors to exit to her website.

3. The Backseat Driver: Passively Active.

The Backseat Driver on LinkedIn, just like their counterpart on family driving vacations everywhere, likes to give advice. And directions. And always has a comment.

On LinkedIn, however, this is okay!

The Backseat Driver is not responsible for creating anything (or for paying for gas and tolls) but seems to have more fun than the others. They can surf the web, browse through the news feeds, see who has a work anniversary or promotion, and read Publisher posts.

Then they can like, comment, or share whenever they find something relevant to their business or profession.

• The meatier or more detailed the comment, the greater likelihood that LinkedIn visitors will also like, comment, or share.
• With luck, the activity will become viral.
• Other viewers will notice the exchange, and many will click on their profile to see who this is. This is the first step in driving them to your hosted website.

Other fun Backseat Driver activities that can garner attention for you on LinkedIn include endorsing people for skills and writing recommendations for connections.

When people on LinkedIn notice you (casually or via a search), if there is an obvious link to your website, many will click on it. While you cannot control who will click (or step away from the noisy Chamber of Commerce Meetup), or what steps they will take next, you may rest assured that you took some action to help drive traffic to your website.

SO which one were YOU: the Driver, the Passenger, the Backseat Driver? Or were you an overachieving all three?!

About Anita:

Misdiagnosed as an accountant in her youth, Anita Hampl serves cool people who have veered from the career paths listed in their Senior Banquet programs. She helps them showcase their fabulousness on LinkedIn and on About pages. You can visit her on the web here.

 

What Is a Radical Giver?

Jennie wanted to quit her job so she could spend more time with her twin boys. She began to look into work-at-home opportunities. She heard about the virtual assistant industry and knew it’d be a great fit for her.

But after almost six months, all she had were a handful of low-paying clients that didn’t seem to respect her. She was frustrated and wondering whether she should give up when she had a discovery call with a business coach, Anita. While they were talking, the coach explained that Jennie wasn’t serving anyone but herself.

Radical Givers Serve

“Your business does exist to make money, absolutely,” Anita shared, “But it should also be about serving your community. You need to discover how you can help your clients rather than chasing dollars aimlessly.”

Radical givers in business are entrepreneurs that want to do more than simply make a profit—they want to make a difference, too. Whether you’re serving your clients as a virtual assistant or selling digital products and memberships, you can practice radical giving.

Radical Givers Focus

One thing that sets radical givers apart is their focus. That’s because radical givers know who they want to serve. They have a target audience in mind that they’re excited about giving back to and are passionate about serving them.

Radical Givers Invest

Once Jennie knew who her ideal clients were, she made a list of places where these ideal clients spent time online including Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups. Then she joined these groups and began investing time in the groups.

She answered business questions, joined in the discussions, and made sure to welcome new members to the community. As Jennie put her roots deep into the groups, she began attracting her ideal clients and earning a much higher hourly rate.

She asked her coach why she was attracting so much positive attention and Anita said, “People are naturally attracted to givers. When you’re generous with others, they want to be generous in return. Kindness always comes back to you.”

Being a radical giver in business doesn’t mean that you never make a cent or that you have to work for below average rates. You can earn a lot of money and still be a radical giver. It just means that you’re dedicated to your clients and customers. You’re willing to go the extra mile and you truly care about the community you’re serving.

Developing the Radical Giver Mindset

Deidre joined a business group on Facebook where members read a business book each month. Every Monday, the group leader uses Facebook Live to start an interactive discussion about the book.

When the group leader started their usual livestream, she asked if anyone was struggling. Deidre quickly shared that she was.

“I grew up in a single parent household. My mom struggled just to make ends meet every month. I like the idea of being a radical giver but I’m worried there’s just not enough goodness in the world to go around.”

Deidre isn’t alone. Many online business owners struggle to become radical givers despite really wanting to. The problem is often linked to a poverty mindset.

Here are three beliefs that keep you stuck in poverty and how to overcome them:

Poverty Mindset #1: There’s Not Enough to Go Around

When you believe that there is a limit to the money or goodness available in the world, you can approach every situation with a belief that you must hoard things. You have to hold tightly to your money, your time, and your gifts.

But what if you flipped the script? Instead of telling yourself there’s not enough to go around, embrace the belief that there’s more than enough to share.

What you focus on will always expand.

Poverty Mindset #2: Helping Others Shine Means I Can’t Shine

It’s easy to think that if other people are awesome, you can’t be awesome, too. That’s because most people imagine the world as a small stage where only a few, truly gifted entrepreneurs can show off their talents.

But in reality, the stage is big enough to support everyone. In fact, your brand or product could be exactly what someone else needs. Instead of viewing other entrepreneurs or brands as your competition, see them as your friends. Going solo is lonely but a journey with friends? That’s so much fun!

Poverty Mindset #3: I Need to Take on Every Client or Project

Sometimes, a poverty mindset can show up as taking on every client or project that comes your way. It often stems from the fear that if you don’t, you might lose out on money or experience.

But the problem with this belief is that it keeps you from doing your best work. If a project comes along that’s not a terrific fit for you, say no. When you do this, you open up room in your business for projects that truly light you up.

Moving past a poverty mindset and becoming a radical giver isn’t something you can do overnight. It often takes a few months of practice and the support from a loving community of like-minded business owners.

Becoming Part of a Community of Givers

Arielle was committed to being a radical giver in her business and she wanted to build a community of like-minded entrepreneurs. So, she started looking online for groups that she could join.

She found one Facebook group filled with positive, encouraging posts from members and decided to join. Once she was accepted into the community, she focused on a few key tasks…

Answer Questions from Members

When another member posted a question about publishing a blog post to her WordPress website, Arielle responded and explained how to do it. She even linked to a helpful tutorial she found on YouTube.

Share Your Journey with the Group

Arielle didn’t just focus on helping other members. She also openly shared her journey with the group. She posted about searching for a new WordPress theme, then she posted again when she’d decided on one that fit her needs.

As she was installing the theme, Arielle asked a question about customizing themes and received several responses. She finished the edits to the theme then posted a link to her new site, thanking everyone that helped along the way.

Welcome New Members

Whenever Arielle saw new members join the group, she made it a point to welcome them. Then she went on to ask about their business and who they enjoyed working with. This gave her a chance to get to know new members and meant Arielle knew who to refer a client to when they needed a specialized service or product.

Create A Thriving Community

Within a few months, Arielle had built a strong network of entrepreneurs she could rely on. She loved being able to support them and receiving encouragement in return.

If you’re like Arielle and you want to give back to others, consider joining a group like Kelly’s Love People + Make Money. Then actively participate and engage with members, so you can build your own thriving community.

Don’t Wait, Create: Radical Giving in Your Content

One simple way you can practice radical giving in your business is to be generous with your content marketing. Instead of making all of your content focused on you and what you can do, focus on providing value to your readers or listeners.

Therese Kienast of Radical Leadership recommends that online business owners create more content. She says, “Don’t wait, create!” If you wait, you’re less likely to follow through and publish excellent content.

Instead, try to capture inspiration the moment it strikes. If you can’t right then, try to do it as soon as possible. This will keep your enthusiasm and energy revved up as you create and share your new content.

Here are a few easy ideas you can use to create content that serves…

Curate Content from Other Bloggers

Don’t be afraid to tell your community about the bloggers you admire or link to their amazing content. You can’t serve everyone and even if you could, that would quickly get exhausting. There’s more than enough attention and applause to go around, so take some time to focus on content curation.

Interview Industry Leaders

Another way to practice radical giving in your business is to interview industry leaders. You can do this through podcast episodes or by creating webinars where you feature an authority on their area of expertise.

Add A Bonus to a Great Product

When you find a product you’d like to promote to your community, go the extra mile and give back. Offer a juicy bonus that only your buyers will get. This bonus could be a short report, an audio course, access to an upcoming webinar, or any other product you can think of. Make sure your bonus is relevant to the actual product being sold.

When you open up a space that invites interaction between members, you’re not just talking at them, you’re Creating Community and it’s a beautiful thing!  And that’s exactly what Create More Community will teach you. 

You’ve finished your first webinar and you feel amazing. You’ve grown your list, deepened your connection with your community, and had the chance to show off your smarts. Before you move onto your next project, spend some time making sure that your webinar continues to work for you. Here’s what you need to do…

Check Your Recording

The first thing you’ll need to do is to listen to your recording. Make sure it sounds clear and the words are easy to understand. If there’s a lot of noise or it’s difficult to hear, you may want to hire a virtual assistant who specializes in webinars, improve the sound quality for you.

Update Your Landing Page & Welcome Email

Now that your webinar is over, you’ll want to update the landing page to mention that the event has passed but that they can still register to get the recording. Giving away the recording this way will keep a steady stream of new subscribers coming into your sales funnel.

After the landing page, tackle your welcome email. Make sure to provide the recording and the handout link. Visitors will want to access this gift right away so make sure this email sends as soon as a new subscriber joins your list.

Email Your List

Don’t forget to email your list of subscribers after your webinar. Thank them for attending and provide a link to the recording along with the handout.

If you made an offer at the end of your webinar, remind them of it. You could say something simple, “Remember, I only have enough space to take on five clients and spots are already filling. If you’d like to work with me, do [your call-to-action like fill out a form or reply to this message].”

Optional: Turn Your Webinar into a Product

If you used your webinar to educate your community, you can turn your webinar into a product to sell. Add 2-3 worksheets that will help your attendees implement what you taught as well as an audio version of your webinar. This will boost the value of your product in the eyes of your buyers.

Then bundle these extras with the original webinar and upload it to a host like Amazon S3. Put a buy button on your webinar page and charge visitors to access this content, just like you would for any other product.

What you decide to do with your webinar is up to you. There’s no right or wrong answer. Just make sure you don’t leave your webinar in a closet collecting virtual dust. You want to keep this content fresh so you can promote it again and again for years to come.

Speaking of webinars, if you’re looking for a fun way to stretch yourself in September, why not join the Stretch Yourself Challenge? One of the challenges you can pick from is hosting a webinar 😉

Hosting your first webinar can be intense and make you feel a bit jittery. But don’t let your nerves hold you back. Use these tips to make sure your webinar runs smoothly from start to finish…

Choose Webinar Tool & Style

Now is the time to make a firm choice about the webinar conference room you’ll use so that you can start to work with it and get comfortable.

Begin to work on your message outline as you’ll share it during your webinar. If you don’t want to present it by yourself, you could get a friend to co-host and ask you questions in an interview style.

If you’re not experienced with presentations, the interview option may be the most comfortable and easiest solution for you. But if you want a co-host, pick someone who has a personality that’s a great fit for yours.

Create a Beautiful Handout

Now you’ll want to make a beautiful handout for your participants to use to follow along with you. You can do this by creating a document in Microsoft Word or Google Documents and saving it as a PDF.

Type up your main points and remove some of the words so your attendees can fill-in-the-blanks as they listen. Don’t forget to include a notes section. You want your handout to be about a page or two in length.

Try a Practice Run

Continue working in your message outline and get it fleshed out so you know exactly what you will be covering from start to finish. Go over this with your co-host if you have one or if you’re going solo, dive in and do a rehearsal presentation. Doing it this first time gives you a chance to adjust to the webinar software, position your microphone and make minor tweaks to your content.

You may even want to invite a few friends to act as a live audience.  Practice it as if you were doing it for real. This step is invaluable because it gives you and your co-host the chance to identify any potential problems and compensate for it when the official date arrives.

Email Your List with the Webinar Link

Give your list a two day advance reminder. Share your excitement with your subscribers. Remind them of your topic and what they’ll learn when they attend. Then provide them with login link and instructions.

Have a Final Meeting

Go over your webinar presentation one last time. If you’re working with a co-host, make sure both of you know what you’re doing and when. You should also upload your final webinar handout. Make sure to grab the download link.

Send Your List Reminders

Before your webinar, you want to send out two quick messages. Send an email with the handout link and login instructions in the morning.  Then message your list about an hour before webinar begins.

Once it’s go time, go live and have fun. Don’t forget to hit record so you’ll have a replay available for attendees who couldn’t make it live.

Speaking of webinars, if you’re looking for a fun way to stretch yourself in September, why not join the Stretch Yourself Challenge? One of the challenges you can pick from is hosting a webinar 😉

Once you’ve created a landing page and you have an opt-in form, it’s time to begin promoting your webinar. It’s important that you get plenty of traffic flowing to your page. Without enough traffic, you’ll only get a few sign ups and even fewer attendees.

But the good news is that getting the word out about your webinar can boost your traffic and drastically increase the number of attendees you see. Here are four quick tips to help you promote the heck out of your webinar…

Publish a Blog Post

Start your promotion efforts on your own blog. Write a post that introduces your banner message and backs it up with a couple of strong points.  Shoot for at least 500 words. You can go for a longer word count (think 800-1000 words) if you feel you need and have plenty of content to share.

But don’t try to cover everything that you’ll be sharing on your webinar. You want to give visitors a taste of your content, not the whole cake. The whole cake is your webinar. Right now, you’re just trying to lure them in with a free sample.

Become a Guest Poster

Find a blog you’d like to guest post on and ask if they’d welcome a post from you ASAP to promote your webinar.  This is where you’ll want to make the most of your networking relationships – the people closest to you are most likely to say yes. So start there first.

Make your guest post helpful and informative for your readers. You should introduce the main theme of your webinar and back it up with strong points. Then link back to your landing page in your author bio.

Get Interviewed

If you have business friends or friends in your niche that already have a platform, reach out to them. Share with them that you have an upcoming webinar and ask if they’re looking for a guest for their next podcast episode or an upcoming Facebook Live video.

Being interviewed makes listeners associate you and your brand with authority. When they think of you as a leader, they’re more likely to visit your website and sign up for your upcoming webinar.

Be a Social Media Star

Use social media to send more traffic to your landing page. Post about your webinar and why your fans should attend. But don’t just stick with text updates—use video to tell your followers about your webinar. You want to use video because it often gets more views than traditional text updates. It’s also a simple way to make your fans feel like they’re connected to you.

You can also update your social media banners with information about your upcoming webinar. When fans visit your profile, they’ll learn about your webinar.

If you have a budget, you can also try paid advertising on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. But you only want to do this if you know how paid advertising works or if you have a trustworthy VA you trust to manage this step for you.

Be sure you link back to your landing page in each of your promotional pieces. Whether it was an interview, Facebook Live video, or a post on your own blog, you want your visitors to clickthrough to that page and sign up for your webinar.

Speaking of webinars, if you’re looking for a fun way to stretch yourself in September, why not join the Stretch Yourself Challenge? One of the challenges you can pick from is hosting a webinar 😉

After Janice decided to put together her first webinar, she became nervous. She didn’t know what tech skills she needed. But her online business friends shared their favorites and explained how they worked so she could put together an awesome webinar. If you’re ready to create your own webinar, here are the tools to help you rock it…

Webinar Software

Choosing a webinar conference room is all about getting the features you want at a price you can afford. You want a room that allows for full interaction by text and audio.  You want to be able to share your screen or at least co-browse. You also want the ability to record the session.

Zoom allows you to hold meetings with up to 100 participants for free. If you’re creating your first webinar and have under a hundred sign ups then Zoom could be an affordable option for you.

But Zoom isn’t the only tool that’s available for virtual events. You could also use Adobe Connect or GoToMeeting for your webinars. Both websites offer free trial accounts so you can test out their software and see which one is right for you.

Landing Page Software

You need a landing page where you can send traffic to sign up for your new webinar. On this page, you’ll need an attention-grabbing headline, a paragraph that highlights the topic you’ll be covering, and a bullet list that tells visitors what they’ll be learning.

Some WordPress themes come with a landing page template. Some frameworks like the Genesis Framework also contain this feature.  If you’re not using a WordPress based website or if your theme doesn’t have a landing page template, you can use a service like LeadPages or Thrive Leads to create your landing page.

Mailing List Manager

After you’ve put together your landing page, you’ll need a mailing list. When a visitor arrives at your website and likes the idea of your webinar, she can sign up for a special webinar mailing list.

Now that she’s on your list, you can email your attendee before you go live and remind her about your event. You can also follow up with all of your attendees and share follow up information and even exciting offers with them.

If you already have a mailing list manager like Aweber in place, then all you have to do is create a new list and add the sign up form to your landing page. But if you don’t have a mailing list yet, you’ll want to start building one right away. You can do this by signing up for a marketing automation tool like Active Campaign or Drip.

Make sure your welcome email thanks new subscribers for registering for the webinar and lets them know that you’ll be sending access details when the date is closer.

Once your landing page is working, you may want to get some other online business owners to critique it. They can point out problems, suggest additions, and even give you tips on how to boost your conversion rate. When you share your link, make sure you mention you’re looking for feedback so you can improve the page.

Speaking of webinars, if you’re looking for a fun way to stretch yourself in September, why not join the Stretch Yourself Challenge? One of the challenges you can pick from is hosting a webinar 🙂