Category Archives: Online Marketing Tips

Teaching Online Courses to Share Your Knowledge

Are You Teaching Online Courses?

I honestly believe that if you have knowledge, experience, and insight into a particular area, you are morally obligated to share it with others who would benefit from learning about it from you. Back when I was a classroom teacher I worked with adults who were not willing to share what they knew. I struggled with the new technology in those days and found it difficult to believe that other teachers would not be helpful at all. I promised myself that whenever I figured something out I would be the person who would share my knowledge with anyone who needed it. Little did I know back then that teaching online courses would be a part of my life.

Once I came online I found a world filled with natural teachers. People were more than willing to share their knowledge, their experiences, and their insights on a variety of topics. It’s interesting to me that I had to leave the classroom and public education in order to surround myself with people who love and value education in the way that I do.

Teaching online can take many shapes and formats, and I have explored them all at one time or another over the past decade. Teaching online courses, both live and in home study have become my favorite way of sharing information with people all over the world. You can do the same thing, no matter what your area of expertise. There are always people somewhere who want and need to learn about your topics.

Start by hosting free teleseminars where you answer questions and share your knowledge. Create a short study guide listeners can print out for further reference. From these, choose the topics that the most people were interested in and then begin creating and teaching online courses on these.

I begin by writing an outline and making notes about what I will teach. Then I do some research to flesh out any parts of my outline that might be incomplete. Then I write a blog post on the topic to share with visitors to my site. I ask for comments so that I can open the conversation and find out more about what people wish to learn. That conversation continues on the social media sites, as well as with replies to my daily email messages. Within a few days I have enough feedback to begin writing my course. I divide my content into three or four sections or parts before moving forward with this part of the process.

I then create a slide deck that contains all of the information I will be teaching in my online course. I tend to work on this intensely for several days, then I go back to make sure I have included everything I want to teach, have omitted anything that is not relevant to my topic, and to put the slides in a logical order.

What topics could you teach and share with others? While I was a classroom teacher I knew that a student had mastered a topic when they were able to successfully convey it to someone else. I believe we are all natural teachers and that teaching is a valuable part of our life experience. Take a look at my training program on teaching online courses to get started right away.

I’m Connie Ragen Green, online marketing strategist, bestselling author, and international speaker on the topics of entrepreneurship and inner game mind shifts. Let’s connect to see how I may best serve you in the near future.

Humble Yourself as Part of Your Business

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Humble Yourself There is a scene from the movie “Runaway Train” that made quite an impression on me when I first saw it back in 1985. Two men have escaped from prison and dream of a life of freedom. Eric Roberts’ character Buck) tells Jon Voight’s character (Manny) about how he’s going to do things “his” way now that he’s broken out of prison. He dreams of the “big score” he could make from a robbery or bank heist. Buck goes on and on until Manny stops him and tells him a story.

It’s a story about how Buck should get a job and how he must humble himself to anyone who would be kind enough to give him one. He goes on to say that if he can do this he could be the president of Chase Manhattan Bank or other corporations. Buck then asks Manny why he doesn’t do that himself, to which he answers “I wish I could”. This three minute scene is so powerful and portrays the most desirable of all human traits, that of being able to humble yourself to others and expose your vulnerabilities.

So, how do we use this as a part of our businesses? I recommend starting with pure, unadulterated honesty. From the first day I started my online business I told my community where I was in the process of becoming a successful entrepreneur. This included sharing how many people were on my list, what I was doing each day that was working for me, and if I knew the answer to their question or had to research it first. If I encounter someone who knows more than I do, and this happens quite often, I defer to them and ask them to share their knowledge and expertise. And it doesn’t matter if they are newer than I am, or younger, or anything at all. Instead, I make every effort to treat everyone as an equal and a partner in this wonderful world of online marketing. I still grant interview requests to people I have never heard of and reach out to people I do not know. And ninety-nine percent of the time this works out in a collaborative way that is good for both of us.

How can you humble yourself to others as you build your business? Ask people for help. Social media has been good for this purpose. Ask people for recommendations. When I needed help with the technology for my podcast, I asked someone who interviewed me for his new podcast for assistance and he shared his team with me. Share your failures along with your successes. People used to be surprised when I told them a product or a course or an idea I had did not succeed. Now they look forward to learning along with me from what does not work as well as what is working extremely well. And if I am wrong about something – anything – I take the time and make the effort to apologize.

Be human and humble yourself in front of your community and you will reap the benefits forever.

Connie Ragen Green – My Theme for 2017

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Theme 2017 Do you have a theme for yourself and your business for 2017? The first person I knew who chose a word for each year was Mari Smith. We met in 2009 while we were both speaking at a marketing event and I was taken by her choice of the word Influence for that year. Here are her word themes over the years:

2008 – Focus
2009 – Influence
2010 – Team!
2011 – Commitment
2012 – Growth
2013 – Abundance
2014 – Selective
2015 – Partnership
2016 – Order
2017 – TBA on January 1st, 2017

Mari says…

When selecting your one-word theme, it’s important to not beat yourself up if you didn’t adhere to the word verbatim throughout the year. Adopt the approach of “correct and continue.” Do your best to use the word as a mantra, an internal guide. Then let go of any attachment to how the outside world is supposed to show up for you.”

And in another post Mari adds…

Every January 1st, I love to pick just one word as an overarching theme for my professional and personal life that governs a lot of my goals and decisions throughout the year. I’ve done this practice for the past nine years and it’s always amazing how the word serves me so well throughout the entire year.

The word can be used as a daily mantra, or a simple touchstone to remind you to stay on track. Even if you pick a word, then “set and forget,” you may be amazed by the end of the year just how much your word was a thread throughout so many of your experiences and accomplishments!”

Never one to be satisfied with what is already out there, I decided to choose several words or a phrase each year as my theme. I started midyear in 2009 with a theme of “Connect, Communicate, & Create” and loved the alliteration so much it has continued.

For 2016 it was “Rethink, Reinvent, Renew, & Relevance” and for 2017 I have chosen “Exposure, Expansion, Expectation, & Engagement”. I will explain both of these years so that you may further understand my thinking and intentions behind these themes.

At the end of 2015 I realized that I needed a makeover for my online business. Many of my courses and products were outdated and I was reading my own books for guidance on how to move forward. In one of my books I had discussed the importance of looking at yourself as objectively as possible and being willing to make changes. So in December of that year I worked harder than I had since coming online to outline my courses for 2016. The result was a flagship training program called the Internet Marketing Six Pack, as well as ten online courses in my “Really Simple” series. This was a great success and worth the time and effort that went into implementing all of my plans. It also upped my work ethic, and that will be the topic of my upcoming book.

Now it’s time for me to share my body of work with even more people from more diverse business backgrounds. I hope you will follow me throughout 2017 to observe and emulate what I’ll be doing to expose my work to the world, expand my business into all corners of the earth, expect more from myself and from those I work closely with, and engage with you and the rest of my community in a way that will enrich all of our lives.

Social Media and Forums for Entrepreneurs

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Social Media Tips

When I first came online back in 2006 the only way to connect with others using the Internet was through bulletin boards and forums. It was quite primitive and sometimes technologically challenging, but it was the only way to “talk” to others who were online. You might be wondering why we didn’t use social media, and that is because this was before social media! Here are some social media tips to help you get started.

Facebook was still for college students at this time, and even though I was taking classes as part of a graduate program at a university I was not aware of this site. Twitter was not even a gleam in its founders eyes, and LinkedIn was strictly for the corporate world. Once these sites opened up to the world our lives would never be the same.

One of the only negative things about social media is that these sites can be a time and productivity “black hole”, meaning that you may have the perception you are working but actually you are accomplishing very little during that time. The posts and comments can also be quite negative at times, especially when it comes to sensitive topics like religion or politics. That’s why these social media tips are so valuable.

I have made it a policy not to get involved in any way with anything that does not relate to my work or the people in my life. This has kept me positive and focused for all of these years. My motto has been and continues to be “Get in, get out, and get back to work!” when it comes to social media and forums.

Forums are probably the best places for you to spend a little time each week. The one I prefer by far is the Earn 1K a Day forum and membership group founded and run by my good friend and mentor Dennis Becker. I’ve been a part of his group for more than five years now and have been able to connect with some of the smartest and kindest entrepreneurs in the world. I give them credit for helping me to write a few of my bestselling books, create successful online training courses, and even plan and host live events. The comaraderie is so valuable, helpful, and even comforting at times. And if you’re looking for outsourcers or joint venture partners it is second to none.

These days there are most social media sites than anyone can name or think of, so be careful when it comes to how you divide up your time for each one. I recommend starting with the “big three”, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and then adding YouTube, Google Plus, and Instagram. Don’t go any further until you have achieved your goals on these six sites in a way that makes sense for your business. And Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K a Day forum is also a must-have resource and membership.

I believe you must have a strategy in place before you start spending endless hours reading, posting, and commenting in social media or forums. Instead, think of the message you want to disseminate among the people who follow you and then look for ways in which you can make that happen. In addition to the content I share regularly about my overall topic of online entrepreneurship I also include content that shows my lifestyle and the charity work and volunteering that are such a big part of my life.

There is no doubt that social media makes everything we are working to accomplish as entrepreneurs more fun and interesting, but your goal must be to make sure the people you connect with know who you are and what you have to share with them in terms of your business expertise. Please leave a comment to let me know if these social media tips have been useful and helpful.

Joint Ventures for New Online Entrepreneurs

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Joint Ventures Used Wisely for Online Entrepreneurs

Joint ventures can be defined as a commercial enterprise undertaken jointly by two or more parties that otherwise retain their distinct identities. This business entity is generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance and participation. Many people seem to think of a partnership as a type of joint venture, but for the purposes of this discussion I’d like to consider these two arrangements – joint ventures and partnerships – as separate entities. You may want to consider these options when you get started as an online entrepreneur, especially if your previous business experience is somewhat limited.

My first experience with a JV project came in 2009 when Dr. Jeanette Cates and I decided to teach an online class together. She had already been working online for about fifteen years when we met, so it did not make sense for us to become partners. There are also legal considerations to take into account, but since I am not an attorney or other professional in the areas of business, finance, taxes, or anything similar I will not share my thoughts and opinions on this part of the equation. Instead, I’d like to focus on exactly how a joint venture can be beneficial to you.

Because of Jeanette’s vast experience, she was in charge of handling all of the behind the scenes pieces. This included using her shopping cart to take orders and her autoresponder service to stay in contact with the people who registered for our training. Once a week she updated the spreadsheets in our shared Google Docs folder so that I could see what was happening.

We shared ownership of the course, meaning that we both worked on the course content, the membership site, and presenting the material to our students. Her tech team completed the work we needed done for this and that worked extremely well. We used Jeanette’s hosting company, while I purchased the necessary domain names.

This was quite a learning experience for me, and being able to work virtually alongside someone of Dr. Cates’ caliber made it possible for me to have some on the job training in my newly founded and conceived online business. If I wasn’t sure of something we were doing, I would simply contact Jeanette to discuss it. In fact, our arrangement progressed so smoothly that we went on to create additional courses and programs, as well as a series of workshops and conferences throughout the next several years.

Then we decided to create a course on exactly how to set up and implement a joint venture as a new entrepreneur. We offered this training for two years and many people told us how grateful they were to learn from two people who had actually been quite successful with this business model.

My primary advice if you are considering this is to make sure you choose a joint venture partner you can see eye to eye with when it comes to specific choices and decisions that must be made. Start with something small, like Jeanette and I did with our first course and then move on to bigger and more sophisticated projects over time as the relationship evolves, You’ll be glad you did and your success will be all the sweeter.

Recruiting Affiliates to Help Sell Your Products

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Recruiting Affiliates to Promote Your Products

When you sell products online, a great way to get the word out about your offerings is to have an army of people behind you. These people will represent your brand, refer your brand, and encourage people to buy your brand. You can end up with loyal customers, who will eventually do that for free. But, if you want to hurry it along, incentivizing people by recruiting affiliates who will make a percentage of sales to help you promote is the best way to accomplish that. I’ve been a part of this world from both sides since coming online in 2006 and can attest to the importance of this piece of your marketing.

What Are Affiliates?

An affiliate is someone who is a sales person for you. The great thing about an affiliate is that you do not have to pay them unless they make a sale. The way it works is that by using specialized software, that keeps track of sales for each individual affiliate, the affiliate posts links to your sales pages, and when a sale is made via their link they get the percentage promised for that individual sale.

For example, if you’re selling a two hundred fifty dollar product such as an information product, the seller (affiliate) will make commissions, which you’ve set up in your affiliate software to pay. Percentages range from 5 percent to even 100 percent depending on the goals of the campaign and the type of product you’re selling. If you are selling something that causes you to use personal time, you may want to lower the percentage. If you’re selling something that is a digital product that has already used time, you can give a larger percentage. Fifty percent is the standard for digital information products.

So in short, an affiliate is a salesperson who earns a percentage of the price from every single sale that they make using their special link. Recruiting affiliates on a regular basis can significantly increase your bottom line.

Why You Need Affiliates

The best way to make a profit on anything is to sell a lot of it and being that you’re only one person you can only tell so many people about your offerings. But, imagine if you could double, triple, or quadruple yourself by getting other people to spread the word about your offerings? Wouldn’t you do it? The cost of having an affiliate program is minimal. It’s also less expensive than other types of marketing such as placing ads, and what’s most important, if you plan it right, it really works.

Increase Your Reach – If you know there are other audience members out there who have not heard of your products and services finding affiliates to help promote your products to their audience will definitely increase your reach and enable you to help more people.

Make More Money with Less Effort – While it may seem expensive to pay for a sale when you’re dealing with digital products, remember that your costs do not go up with each additional sale, as they do with physical products. You can give a larger percentage of the price and still end up making more money, with less effort on your part.

Grow Your List – Encouraging affiliates to promote you not only increases sales but once someone buys from you, they’re now part of your audience and are on your list. Now that they’re on your list, you can market directly to them the rest of the items in your funnel.

Build Relationships – Once your affiliate program gets momentum you’re going to notice some true movers and shakers. These people make the most sales and the most noise about your products. When you notice that, reach out to that affiliate and offer them a special deal such doing a joint webinar, or offering them a larger percentage of sales to encourage them to do even better. You can become quite close to your affiliate people and even get ideas for new products from them if you’re open to it.

Grow Bigger Than You – You’re only one person, working from your home office, or your kitchen table. But with affiliates, you can grow a literal army of sales people to promote your products and services making your job one of management and creation rather than just sales. Eventually, you can grow a business that earns multiple six figures for yourself and others.

These reasons are great ones to find affiliates to promote your products. The main point to take away is that you can sell more products with other people doing the work for you than you can sell on your own. While giving out a percentage of profits might seem painful at first, it’s really one of the least expensive options to improve sales. Focus on recruiting affiliates and your online business will prosper. I have been a “super affiliate” for almost a decade, meaning that product creators depend on me to help launch and sell their information products.

Be sure to check out my exclusive training at Really Simple Affiliate Marketing and learn how to both earn income as an affiliate and to get involved with recruiting affiliates for your own products and services.

Email Marketing to Increase Your Sales and Conversions

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Benefits of Email Marketing

There are so many reasons to focus on email marketing for your business, whether it’s a brick and mortar business or a digital one. Let’s discuss some of these reasons so that you can make the most informed choice.

It used to be that only huge corporations were able to take advantage of email marketing as a targeted and very affordable form of digital advertising. Now this strategy is available to everyone, from Fortune 100 companies to solopreneurs. With the click of a mouse you are able to get your name, brand, and offerings in front of your prospects and clients.

It takes much less time to connect with others via email. Marketing in this way is a shortcut that just makes sense. Using a template for your copy and graphics makes it possible to accomplish in hours what previously took days or weeks. Also, email marketing is all done in real time, so there will never be lag time when it comes to time sensitive offers, sales, and other happenings within your business or industry.

You most likely love personalized messages as much as I do, and marketing in this way makes that a simple task. Using the mail merge features of your autoresponder service allows you to include special information within your email messages, such as birthday, login information, and purchase history. This is an amazing feature!

You can also segment your database to send them more targeted email marketing campaigns over time. These will convert well and increase your sales because they are so specific. The idea here is to provide them with the most relevant message they are likely to respond to at that point in time. And because these messages are short and to the point, you can communicate with prospects and clients more frequently without additional costs.

When I use email marketing with a new niche, part of it includes testing new marketing strategies to see what people are responding to. Because there is no printing or postage costs involved this part of my business is much faster and easier to implement on a regular basis.

And forwarding an email that has an enticing or a useful offer or information is only going to take a few seconds. A lot of people will do it if you remind them to share with others who might be interested and benefit from the information. This means that your marketing efforts will not only have a wider reach but people will also begin to act as your brand ambassadors by sharing your information.

Email marketing can also be done at a low overhead cost. You don’t need to have a lot of employees, marketing analysts or even designers, and many online entrepreneurs do this with only the help of one or two virtual assistants. There are services such as Aweber which will provide you with professionally designed templates that can be changed to suit your needs. An effective marketing campaign will only need a good email marketing platform or service. You can become a skilled marketer who knows how to put the right offers and graphics in front of their community. The return on your investment from email marketing cannot be surpassed.

A well thought out and developed email marketing platform will provide you with tracking information on the number of people on your list that opened and email and read it, the number of people who clicked the link in an email, the specific link in the email that was clicked, how many people complained the email was spam, if the email was unsubscribed and if your email reached the recipients inbox. These simple metrics can mean everything to your business success over the years.

Finally, using email for your marketing is good for the environment. Cutting down fewer trees is a noble goal and you are making a decision that’s helping the planet while improving your business. It’s a win-win!

Email Marketing: Writing to One Person

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Email marketing was not an activity I had any knowledge around when I first came online. I began joining people’s list and receiving their regular emails, but when I needed to start doing this for myself I was at a loss as to how to structure each message.

Early on I had started sharing a little bit about my life and business, but I would word it in this way…”I know all of you are interested in how I got started online.” Or “Many people wrote to ask me when my next teleseminar was going to be.”

The problem with writing in this way is that you are attempting to write to everyone instead of writing to the one person who will read your email. I also did this on my teleseminars, addressing “all of you” instead of simply “you”. Even though this may be perceived on a subconscious level by the people you are connecting with, it is perceived nonetheless and will definitely affect your relationship with them over time.

When a mentor pointed this out to me and I made the change to my email marketing, my business changed overnight! I began to have greater engagement with the people on my list, as well as more sales. Each person on my list felt like I was writing just to them instead of to hundreds or thousands of people.

I would encourage you (in the beginning I would have said something like “everyone who is reading this”) to go through your own autoresponder sequence and broadcast messages to see how your wording is structured. And host another teleseminar as soon as possible to start speaking to just one person instead of to everyone. Do this with your blog posts, short reports, and videos as well.

Over the years I have studied with some of the greatest online marketers of our time and they each emphasize what I am sharing with you here today. By making the Internet a place where I person is able to connect with one other person, instead of one person connecting with the masses, you are able to leverage the power of reaching so many while still speaking to just one person at a time.

I ask my students to do an exercise where they write an email message to their list and see how many times they can use the words “you” and “your” and how few times they can use “I”, “we”, “my”,or “us”. It takes some getting used to, but the result is most definitely worth it and your email marketing campaigns will become epic instead of random and commonplace.

You have come online to build a business that will serve the needs and desires of yourself and your family. When you take that leap of faith and follow what you know in your heart will change your life forever, you open up the possibilities forever. You also set an excellent example for the people closest to you. It is my goal to serve you in a way that will allow you to take the necessary steps to success as an online entrepreneur.

Do you see what I mean?

Public Speaking for Your Business

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Public Speaking for Your Business

It is said that most people fear the idea of public speaking more than they fear their own impending death. I can speak from personal experience and tell you this was most definitely true in my case. Even though I had been a classroom teacher for twenty years before coming online, the very thought of speaking to a group of adults struck fear in my heart and mind.

Because of this I told myself a story (it was not at all true) that I did not want to become a public speaker. I attended two Toastmasters meetings before throwing in the towel, and when I spoke to a small group (fewer than a dozen) real estate agents on a topic I knew extremely well my mouth became as dry as the Sahara. People kept telling me that doors of opportunity would open up as soon as I started speaking, but I continued to tell myself that I did not want to pursue that path along my journey to entrepreneurship.

What changed my mind? Actually, it was a series of events that occurred during 2006, my first year online. The first of these was joining my local Rotary Club. They would regularly thrust the microphone into my hands so I could tell our members about our upcoming projects. After I would speak and pass the microphone to the next person I couldn’t hear anything for the next few minutes. My face and ears were hot, I was thirsty, and I thought everyone was staring at me. But afterwards people would come up to me and thank me for the information and I enjoyed that feedback. I made the conscious decision to keep on speaking even though it was physically painful each time.

Right around this time I was asked to make a presentation on topics related to online marketing to a local group of small business owners. I believed they already knew more than I did and didn’t want to speak to them at that event. The man putting on the workshop asked me personally to share what I was learning about blogging, SEO, and social media and I decided not to let him down.

This event went much better than my Rotary speaking experiences, most likely because I had a bit more experience under my belt. The business owners were not familiar with the information I shared and again the feedback was very positive.

Within a year I was giving live presentations to Rotary’s District Conferences with audiences of several hundred people, as well as being asked to speak at a marketing conference in Atlanta the following spring. Each time I was nervous leading up to my public speaking, but once I got started the nerves subsided and I was able to deliver helpful information.

I can even remember the time I was speaking at a marketing event in Minneapolis the following summer and I began to have fun with the audience. At that moment I told myself to remember this forever, because it was exactly the feeling I had been reaching for during the previous couple of years.

If you have any interest at all in public speaking to enhance your life and business, step forward and accept all invitations. I’ve now spoken on three continents, as well as on hundreds of webinars and teleseminars and I will tell you that my opportunities continue to grow and doors to open because I was willing to share my knowledge and experiences with others.