When a non-Twitter user asks me why I have embraced Twitter as a communication method, I’m quick to point out that I think there are two reasons Twitter is MORE than a communication method; that it’s an entirely new way of engagement.

To say that Twitter is just another communication method is to suggest that it is equivalent to writing a letter or writing an email or picking up the phone – as if Twitter might be a fourth alternative. But I disagree (and I’m not the only one who thinks this, by the way).

The two reasons that I’ve embraced Twitter are because:

1. I enjoy real time person-to-person engagement.
2. I can search the real time web for up-to-the-minute information.

In these newsletters, I’ve generally been focusing on how you can more successfully connect with people in a real time, person-to-person engagement.

But in this ninth TweetsIn10 post, I would like to talk about Twitter search.
Go to http://search.twitter.com and search for something. Anything. Whatever you want. Your city or town. Your favorite movie. Your favorite hobbies. Your industry. Your big-name competitors. The results you get from that search is real time… and not just a real-time dry repeating of the facts, but a real-time discussion of the facts with thought and context.

These results are what people are talking about right now. If there’s a big news story happening, it’s being tweeted about from a thousand different viewpoints. If there’s a major playoff game taking place, every good play and every bad call is being announced, discussed, and analyzed… as it is happening.

That is a transformational way of thinking about our connection through technology to the rest of the world.

• Once, we waited for the daily paper to come out to read about events of the day.

• Once, we tuned in to the 11 o’clock news to watch thirty second sound bytes of the events of the day.

• Once, we waited until Google performed an update to find the latest and most relevant website on a subject.

• Once, we clicked to news sites and viewed the content they gave us when they chose to report on a topic.

But now, we get the information as it is happening. We see topics as they are trending. And, we see it through the unfiltered lens of the common person and not some news agency.

Now, just to clarify, I’m not against the news industry, they definitely have a role to play in delivering insight and in clarifying the facts. But the real-time aspect is huge. Sure, lots of people are quick to point out that this news isn’t necessarily accurate. On the other hand, I’d counter that content created through the traditional news industry may be more accurate but isn’t necessarily timely. There is some give and take and neither option is perfect. But I’d rather have a thousand different viewpoints of right-this-minute news – and rely on my own ability to discern which viewpoints are most likely to be trusted – than to wait until someone else reports the news later. That is very cool.

Lest you think I’m just ranting about the value of real time news, let me now talk about why this is important to you:

Real time connects you to your audience in a way that is unlike anything your business has ever experienced:

• You can change your website copy to be the most relevant based on current events based on trending topics and the latest news.

• You can shift supply lines when you read about the bad weather that is blocking your vendors from delivering raw materials to your factory. Just search for information about weather and road conditions in areas where that is critical to the operation of your business.

• You can immediately address any concerns that your customers might express as soon as they express them. Just search for your business’ name.

• You can modify what you sell and how you sell it based on what’s going on in the world and, specifically, in your clients’ lives. Just keep an eye on the news and search for problems and issues that your clients face.

Twitter search should be a regular part of your business research and you should be consistently viewing trending topics in Twitter so you can react immediately.

Bonus Tip:  Monitor Your Brand

Make sure that at the very least you monitor your brand or product via search. This assures that if anything is said negative or a customer or client needs help that you can respond right away using real-time search tools.

Related posts:

1. Tweets in 10 – #Great #Idea #for #Twitter
2. Tweets in 10 – Twitterpress: Combining Twitter and WordPress10
3. Tweets in 10 (Part 1) – Twitter in 10 Minutes a Day

Writing Google AdWords

Google will determine your ad’s placement based on how much you have bid on a keyword and based on how often it is clicked. (After all, it’s in their interest to have higher-clicked ads showing more often!). That’s important to keep in mind because it can help you manage your budget and it encourages you to take ad-writing seriously. Even lower-bid ads can out-rank the higher bid ads if they are well-written.

I’ve found that the easiest way to approach AdWords is to divide them up conceptually into 2 different types:

1.   The full story: A full story ad is one that tells the audience exactly what to expect. For example, the ad might say something along the lines of “Download the ebook immediately for $147″. Nothing is hidden; I’m putting it all out there for the audience to see.

2.   A teaser: A teaser ad is something that entices the reader to learn more by clicking the ad. It gives them only part of the story and then they get the rest of it when they see the landing page. An example might be: “Learn how to get promoted faster than your coworkers”.

In general, I’ve observed that all AdWords fall into one of these two categories. And, sometimes one type does better than the other. You might prefer to write one over the other, but I’m just mentioning them both here because your particular offering could work better with one than the other. For example, if you sell a relatively straightforward product or service that many other people sell, and if you find yourself competing on price, you might be better off to write a “full story” AdWords ad. However, if you sell something slightly more complex, or if you have a special system or technique that can’t be easily explained in a single ad, then the teaser ad will probably work better. I’d advise testing both and then finding the one that does better and working with that one.

Now let’s roll up our sleeves and start writing.

AdWords, as you well know, are 4 lines long. The first line is the headline and the last line is the URL and the middle two lines are the “body” of the ad. You don’t have a lot of control over the URL: You can write what it is and that’s that (and you can make the target URL to be a subset of the primary domain but only list the primary domain as the URL in the address line). Our focus will be on the top 3 lines.

Headline: Your headline can only be 25 characters long. So start with something attention-getting. If you incorporate a keyword into your ad, that word will be highlighted when someone types it in, and that can be eye-catching (although lots of advertisers do this). Another technique you can do that tends to work well is to focus on the benefits. So, if the benefit of your product or service is that the audience can make more money then make that your headline: “Make more money” or “You can make more money” or something like that. Think about the kinds of things that your target market will be interested in and will be likely to respond to and write the simplest, clearest headline from that.

Body copy: You have two lines of 35 characters each. Within this copy you can write the main content of your ad. If you wrote a benefit or two in the headline then consider writing some of the features here. Or if you wrote a keyword in the headline then consider writing how they can learn more.

So, if your headline was “Make more money” then your body copy might be:
(first line) 150 page ebook will show you
(second line) how to make money with pop cans

As you write your ads, think about how the ad itself sets up the audience to want to know more and entices them to click through to the landing page. Therefore, you need to make your promises accurate, authentic, and compelling. You may want to give a clear call to action in the ad so people know what to expect when they click to your landing page.

Take 10 minutes and write 2-5 ads, or consider spending longer to write more. If you run several ads, Google will rotate them for you and will tell you which ones do better. As your campaign continues, you’ll be able to see which ads are doing well and you can refine them.

Refining your ads

Let’s say that you write 4 ads and you run them in a campaign for a week. You make some sales and you get a lot of data and you observe that people are responding really well to specific keywords and a certain type of ads. So, you should pause or delete the ads that aren’t doing well and replace them with ads that are closer to the ads you’re already running.

For example: Let’s say you write 2 full story and 2 teaser ads. One full story ad and one teaser ad targets the key phrase “make more money”; the other full story ad and teaser ad targets the phrase “internet marketing income.” At the end of a week you look at your data and you discover: the full-story ad for “make more money” and the teaser ad for “internet marketing income” are doing really well, while the other two ads barely get clicked.

So, write a couple more full story ads for “make more money” and a couple more teaser ads for “internet marketing income” and see what happens. Each week, refine your ads. Watch how certain keywords or ads do well. If you notice a couple of ads do really well and a couple that don’t, ask yourself what is common about the ones that are doing well and try to create ads like that.

Spending 10 minutes a day on your Google AdWords will be sufficient to keep you up-to-speed on how things are going. At the end of the week you’ll have spent nearly an hour on your AdWords and you’ll have enough data – and you’ll have thought about that data enough – to make efficient next steps.

Which leads to my next point:

Making more sales

There are a few things you want to pay attention to in your Google AdWords marketing and these things will influence how you modify your ads. You will get a lot of data but I recommend paying attention to these two things:

Impressions-to-clicks. This is often called the “click-through rate” or CTR. This is the number of times that Google shows your ad compared to the number of times it gets clicked. There isn’t a specific standard you should aim for because it will vary by your target market and offering, but you’ll know pretty quickly what it is (and it’s often lower than people hope for). 100 impressions and 1 click is a 1% click-through rate.

Clicks-to-sales. This is the second number to pay attention to. It’s basically how many warm leads turn into sales. It’s your conversion rate. Again, there’s not a specific standard to aim for, but you’ll learn soon enough what yours is. Again, 100 clicks and 1 sale is a 1% conversion rate.

Now, here’s what to do with this information.

First, try to increase your conversion rate as much as possible. Don’t waste your money on driving more traffic to your site until you’ve done some work optimizing your landing page to increase sales. Try different things: different price points, different ways to present the offer, different package deals, different calls to action, and different ways to express urgency.

The reason you want to start here is because if you can improve your conversion rate first, you are essentially increasing sales without increasing your ad spend. Once you know you have tweaked it as much as you can, then check out your ads and see how you can improve the click-through rate.

So let me give you some numbers to show you why this is helpful:

If you have 10,000 impressions of your ad and 100 of them click through your ad, you have a 1% click-through rate.

If you have 1 of those people buying your ebook, you have a 1% conversion rate.

Make sense so far? Okay, let’s look more closely at the numbers:

If you’re spending five cents per click, you’re spending $5.00 to get those 100 people to your site. And if you sell an ebook for $50 then your revenue less your ad cost is $45.

Now, some people would say that if you want to increase your revenue you need to increase your ad spend. They point out that you can double your ad spend to double your revenue: You’ll pay $10 to get 200 people to your site so 2 of them can buy. But I think it’s too early for that.

What if you could just make some small changes on your landing page copy that will effectively increase your conversion rate first? If you can get 2 people from those 100 clicks to buy from you then your profitability increases because your ad spend remains static but your revenue goes up.Then, once you’ve worked at increasing your landing page conversion rate, you can focus on increasing your click-through rate.

Make sense? I’ve just used simple numbers above to illustrate but the general principle will hold true no matter what numbers you encounter in your ads.

As you review your ads and the results you get from clicks and sales, remember this:

• If you have a lot of impressions and no clicks, you need to make changes to your ad.

• If you have a lot of clicks and no sales, you need to either make sure your ad and your landing page work together (that is, they are “selling” the same thing) or you need to make changes to your sales page.

The good news is, these steps – increasing conversions and increasing your click-through-rate – don’t have to take too long. In fact, they may only take ten minutes! That’s because you shouldn’t make too many changes at once. Start small and see what happens. Make a few changes and if things get worse, change them back. If things stay the same or if they get better, change something else.

The bad news is that this should be a never-ending process. It will be a very rare occasion when you can completely set this on autopilot and walk away. You may find the ultimate click-through-rate and the ultimate conversion rate and be satisfied with the profit you make from them, but the people I know who are most successful at this are constantly tweaking.

Wrap up

So try it out! You might spend a few hundred dollars but you could potentially make much more when you find the right product or service and write a great ad that drives people to your site.

Related posts:

1. Mastering Google AdWords in 10 Minutes – Part 1
2. Mastering Sales and Selling More -Part 1
3. Mastering Sales and Selling More – Part 2

I should point out that I’m focusing on Google AdWords here but there are other text-based pay-per-click ads out there. I just happen to like Google AdWords (although I have used others, including Facebook ads which are text-plus-picture PPC ads). If I were you, I’d consider starting with Google AdWords because Google is so ubiquitous so you can reach a larger audience; later, you can branch out to other PPC channels when you get comfortable with creating ads.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of ad creation (in the next issue), I want to address two questions: “Why Google AdWords?” and “Is Google AdWords right for me?”, and then I want to get you into the Google AdWords account and familiar with it.

Answering your questions

My answer to “Why Google AdWords?”: There are lots of marketers who prefer to use other types of marketing – blogs, articles, press releases, etc. Those are very good and I use them and swear by them. But they aren’t perfect for every situation, and I fully admit that they have their flaws. For example, once you put them out there, they’re out there and you can’t take them back. So if you have any changes in your business, such as a shift in what you sell or you revise your thinking on a particular topic or you change your domain name, these stop working for you. As well (and some would say more importantly), they aren’t easily measurable. Depending on where these blogs, articles, and press releases are posted, you can sometimes see how many views they have received, and if you run analytics software on your website, you can sometimes see who has clicked to your site from these sources . But that’s it, and even then it’s not perfect. You don’t know how well they are converting so it’s very difficult to calculate the return on investment.

Still, people frequently choose them over Google AdWords because it seems like a better value to put a little bit of money up for an article and then publish that article for potentially unlimited views on the web. That article could do very well for you, or it might not, and it takes some effort to calculate. But with Adwords, it’s easy, partly because of the very clear cost/benefit analysis you can quickly observe and partly because of an AdWords/Analytics tie-in you can do. Yes, you definitely have to pay every time someone clicks your ad but you know that they have seen your ad and considered it worthwhile enough to click.

My answer to “Is Google AdWords right for me?”: This is a more difficult question to answer but here is my general recommendation: Use AdWords to sell something very specific – a specific product or a specific service. You will increase your sales and clarify your ad’s return on investment by doing this. If you just drive visitors through AdWords to your general website, you are going to lose money because the call to action isn’t clear. They might call or they might not or they might call later, and you don’t know.

However, if you drive visitors through AdWords to a page on your site that has one specific service or product for sale, you’ll easily see how people are receiving your offer – either positively with a purchase or negatively by clicking away.

If you have a bunch of services and you’d like to sell them all, or increase awareness about your business, you can still use AdWords, but I would make this recommendation: Write a free report and make it downloadable from the landing page and then drive traffic to it through Google AdWords. Although this may not have an immediate revenue-generating impact, you’ll at least get some marketing material out there.

(Now, some of you might email me and point out that there are exceptions to this rule so let me say up-front that there are. But I believe the exceptions are rare. Most of my audience will benefit most by following this rule).

Getting started with Google AdWords

STEP 1: Setting it all up
Google AdWords are easy to set up and run. And, what I really like about them is that you can start getting immediate feedback from your target market based on just a day or two of running ads.

Before you create your ads, the first thing you’ll want to do is set up your sales page. Again, you’ll want to identify one single offering so that people will be more likely to respond to it.

Set-up will, admittedly, take longer than 10 minutes and it really depends on your offering and your web design and your target market. These factors will influence how your sales page is crafted. (Oh, and be sure to read through this whole issue first because it may influence what you write in your sales page.)

STEP 2: Keyword research
Next, you’ll want to do some keyword research. Go to Google’s keyword tool and type in some of the keywords you’re thinking about. You’ll get a list of additional keywords and keyphrases to consider. Pay attention to the Global Traffic Volume number because it tells you how many people are searching for those keywords. And, pay attention to the little line-graph that indicates the number of competitors competing on that keyword because that will suggest to you that the more competitive keywords will cost more to bid on.

This step should probably take you ten minutes. I suppose it could take you longer but there’s a good chance that you’ll hit the most important keywords in the first ten minutes.

STEP 3: Divide your keywords into groups
When you sign into Google AdWords, you’re not just going to see a whole bunch of ads. Google makes it a little more manageable for you. They have Ad Campaigns, which are made up of Ad Groups. And their Ad Groups are made up of AdWord ads. You can have several AdWords ads in an Ad Group and you can have several Ad Groups in an Ad Campaign and that way you have several levels of control. For example, you might want to pause just one AdWord, or just one Ad Group or the entire Ad Campaign; you can easily do that.

Here’s how you might use these tiers: Let’s say you are an executive coach and you are selling an ebook about getting promoted. Here’s what I would do: I would create one Ad Campaign for this ebook. Within that campaign I would create a series of Ad Groups around different sets of keywords. I might have one Ad Group focused on keywords relating to “getting promoted” and another Ad Group focused on keywords relating to “career success”. Then, within the “getting promoted” Ad Group, I would create a series of AdWords ads around related words (“get promoted”, “getting promoted” “get ahead”, “get the job”, etc.) and within the “career success Ad Group I would create a series of AdWords ads around related words (“job success”, “career growth”, etc.)

You don’t have to divide it up like this but I just wrote this here and an example to illustrate. There are many ways you can use Campaigns and Groups. For example, you might focus on your target markets or seasonal buying patterns or specific keywords.

This step will probably take you less than ten minutes.

STEP 4: Go to Google AdWords
Next, sign in to Google AdWords (you can use your Google Account username and password). Go to the Campaigns tab and click “New Campaign”. You’ll be prompted to name your Campaign, choose the geographic locations you’re targeting, and set a budget.

When it comes to your budget, you can manually set your bid per click as well as your budget per day. This is a good place to start. Eventually you can adjust these numbers but I’d start with something that is affordable but still gives you a good amount of data to tweak your pages. For example, if you set a budget for ten cents per click, and you set a budget of $20 per day, you’ll get up to 200 clicks per day (or less, if there aren’t enough people clicking your ad). If you want my opinion, $100 ($20/day for 5 days) is a small price to pay to understand your target audience’s behavior. You might make some sales but even if you don’t, you’ll still learn a lot.

Don’t be afraid to go exploring around this part because you can really zoom in on who you want to target, including countries, languages, and devices. When you’ve got your Ad Campaign set up, press Save to continue.

And this step, too, will likely take less than ten minutes.

STEP 5: Create an AdGroup
Next, you’re going to create an AdGroup by simply giving it a name and starting to write ads. (You’ll be able to create more ads later).

And that’s it. You’ve got your first AdWords marketing campaign started, although it’s not running yet because you don’t have any ads. In the next issue I’m going to show you how to write good ads and how you can increase your sales.

Related posts:

1. Mastering Google AdWords in 10 Minutes – Part 2
2. Mastering Sales and Selling More -Part 1
3. Mastering Sales and Selling More – Part 2

Google isn’t the only search engine around but it is the biggest and most popular and that means it’s the search engine that 99.999999% of us tend to use in our searches and when we’re considering keywords for marketing. So when I say “search engines” I’m generally talking about Google (so if you use another search engine, be aware that there might be differences). Also, when I say “keywords” I could mean a single word or I could mean a phrase (which is sometimes called a “key phrase”).

When someone goes to Google to search for something, the words they type into the text box are the keywords that they are looking for. So you need to know what keywords you want to be searchable for and then you need to build your website and your external marketing to target those keywords. (Most of my readers know most of this already, of course, but I need to start somewhere).

Step 1: Imagine the possibilities (Duration: 10 minutes)

The first thing to do is to pull out a piece of paper or open a Word document and write down what you do in a couple of sentences. Write it the way you normally would, which is usually from your own perspective. (For example, I might write: “I am a coach who helps small business owners with productivity and social media and project management” or something along those lines).

Once you have that, try rewriting it a couple of times using different words. Bust out the thesaurus if you need to. If you can’t think of anything, imagine what your mom would write if she were to try to describe what you do to her friends. And, imagine what your top 5 customers would each write about you to a peer who they think might benefit from your services. You should end up with 3 or 4 total summaries (yours plus a couple of others). And it’s here that you can start to put together the keywords that are important for you.

Look over the list you’ve created and think about what an internet searcher would type in if they wanted to find your services online. It’s usually (but not always) a derivative of the words you used in the paragraphs you just wrote. For example, from the one sentence I wrote about myself earlier, I imagine that someone is going to search online for the keywords “productivity coach” or “social media coach” or “project manager”, so those might be keywords, as well as their synonyms (like “social networking consultant”).

Don’t worry if these don’t exactly describe your services perfectly. That’s not the point. The point is that you first need to find the possibilities; you can always narrow the list down later. Now that you have a list (hopefully a longer list than the few I’ve just listed as examples), you can move on to the next step.

Step 2: See what Google has to say about it (Duration: 10 minutes)

Go to Google’s keyword tool at: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. This tool lets you type in a keyword and see a bunch of information about it. Now, you can type in all of your keywords at once and do a single search, and that might work fine if you do one thing. However, many of us (myself included) might want to target keywords for slightly different audiences (i.e. project management, social media, and productivity) so I prefer to separate the keywords out into individual categories (i.e. I’d put “project manager” in one and “social media coach” and “social networking consultant” into a second one and “productivity coach” into a third one) because they can be downloaded to your hard drive and I like to keep them in different files based on what I’m working on.

So, type in one (or all) of your keywords, then type in the “I’m-a-human-being” security word and click “get keyword ideas”.

You’ll end up with a big list of keywords and key phrases that people use when searching for services that are similar to yours. Some will be relevant to you, others won’t be, and some will be somewhere in between.

In this list you’ll also see the number of local searches for the phrase in the past month and the average global per-month searches for that phrase. At this point, I like to choose a “top 10″ keyword list for each of the original keywords I had found. There were 3 original “categories” of keywords – “productivity coach”, “social media coach”, and “project manager” so I have a list of about 30 (give or take) keywords – a top 10 preferred list for each one.

There isn’t a formula that will identify which keywords you might prefer. You don’t have to base it on search popularity: A keyword with hundreds of thousands of hits is obviously more popular and therefore might be more difficult to appear high on the rankings, but a small piece of a big pie can still be good. Likewise, a keyword with only a few dozen searches might not be as popular and will therefore probably be easier to get higher rankings, and a big piece of a small pie isn’t that bad, either.

Step 3: See it in context (Duration: 10 minutes per day over a couple of days)

Once you’ve found your top 10 keywords, start looking around the web at each one. (This might be a good project to outsource, by the way). Find out what the top 10 results on Google are for each of the 10 keywords. Yes, you’ll end up with 100 websites but you’ll also have a clear idea about where you fit. It’s not uncommon to find that a couple of the keywords just aren’t quite what you want to be searchable for. Or maybe the competition is so fierce somewhere that you don’t think you have a chance and therefore don’t want to bother trying to be searchable for that keyword. Or perhaps you see an area where the competition is fierce but you add real value.

This can take some time so break it up over a few days if you need to.

Step 4: Narrow (Duration: 10 minutes)

Now you need to narrow your list a bit. 10 keywords might be a bit much to be able to market effectively. Aim to narrow it down to a core list of 3-4 primary keywords that you want to be searchable for. This doesn’t mean that you’re going to ignore the other keywords, but it just means that you’re going to focus your energy on a few places where you can make the most difference rather than spreading yourself too thin and being ineffective at all of them.

Narrowing your list is pretty easy because of the information you collected in step 2 and step 3 but you may still need to do a bit more work to narrow further. Deepen your search to see what other search results there are beyond the first page of the Google search and expand your search to http://search.twitter.com to see how people are talking about your keywords there.

By the end of this effort, you should have a list of 3-4 (no more than 5, seriously!) keywords that you can then use.

• Embed them in your website and blog content
• Write articles about them and post them at an article distribution site
• Write guest blogs and articles for online magazines
• If possible, incorporate them into your URL
• Make sure they are in your bios
• Create a Google Profile with the information
• … and the list goes on and on.

There! You’ve done keyword research in just 10 minutes a day that you can use to set the course for an aggressive and effective marketing campaign.

Related posts:

1. Competitor Research in Just 10 Minutes per Day
2. Mastering Google AdWords in 10 Minutes – Part 1
3. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 1

In the previous article, I showed you a six step process about hiring freelancers and contractors in just ten minutes. Step three of the six step process reads:

Take ten minutes to post your project. You could Google the kind of person you’re looking for (“bookkeeper” or “copywriting” or “web designer”) but, frequently, the sites that appear high on those lists are informational or very high end or too broad for your needs. Instead, I recommend visiting a site like Elance.com or Guru.com. On these sites, you can post your project within a specific category (there is a significant variety of categories so most of your business needs will be met) and you’ll have many freelancers and contractors submit proposals. Creating a project on these sites is free and fast, allowing you to take just ten minutes to do this part of the process… Once your project is submitted, sit back and wait. The proposals will start coming in from freelancers.

So that’s my starting point for this article: Use Guru or Elance to put your project out there and receive proposals back from a number of freelancers that you can then sift through to find the right one. (By the way, in this article I refer to “proposals” and “bids” interchangeably to mean the same thing: Responses from professionals about your project).

Tips on creating the right proposal

In steps 1 and 2 of the previous issue, you spent ten minutes thinking about what you want and then another ten minutes thinking about the details. Now it’s time to put those things into a proposal that professionals can understand and respond appropriately to.

Both Guru and Elance give you some options to select prices and dates, and select whatever you think is appropriate for you. For price, though, I’d recommend selecting “I don’t know” or “Private” as the price because I strongly recommend against setting a price if you’ve never worked with freelancers before. Even if you want to mention a price, I’d suggest mentioning it in your proposal instead of mentioning it in the earlier “details” section of the process. The reason is: Some professionals look at that initial price (or even use sort-by-price functions) and if they don’t like the number, they’ll move on without looking at your project. You want lots of qualified professionals looking at your project and bidding so you can choose the right one. So don’t push away many freelancers by filling in a price.

During the request-for-proposal process, you’ll have a chance to enter some text about your project and this is where the work you did from the last issue will come in handy.

First, write a brief introduction. You may not be allowed to give a lot of personal details (for example, your website will sometimes be removed) but I’d suggest that you say something like: “Hi, my name is Heather and I’m looking for a graphic designer for a series of logos I need created.”

This first sentence does three things:

1.    It makes you seem nice and approachable (and professionals who are really busy – and are the kind of people you want to work on your project – want to see that you’re approachable).

2.    It clearly and succinctly outlines the project. That way, someone who is a graphic designer specializing in website headers will see right away that they are not the right professional for you while a graphic designer who specializes in logos can see that they are the right fit.

3.    By giving your name you can also help to weed out people who submit standardized bids on projects without reading them. (This happens a lot). Good professionals should provide a customized proposal and many will say something like “Thank you for the opportunity to bid on your project, Heather”, which is an easy way for you to see if someone actually read your proposal. (Clarification: Not all professionals will use your name when submitting a proposal and if they don’t it doesn’t mean they didn’t read your proposal. But it is a good way to quickly scan and see who has read your proposal).
Next, talk about the big picture details (which you should have done in your step one work from the last Tips In Ten issue where you gave some thought to your overall project). So, to continue with my own example, I might write something like: “I’m looking to create logos for 3 ebooks. I’d like the logos to graphically depict the benefits that the reader gets when they read my ebooks and I’d like the logos to incorporate a specific set of colors.”

By writing this “big picture” paragraph, you’re telling the professionals what your intended outcomes will be. This is important and is missed by many businesses who look for professionals. When you tell them what you hope to achieve from the project, you’ll help to get a lot of proposals that bid on similar things (thus helping you with an “apples-to-apples” comparison) but you’ll also make sure that whomever you finally choose has a good understanding of what you want… Not just what their deliverables should be. (In other words, they aren’t to just deliver 3 logos to you; rather these logos need to accomplish specific things as indicated by you).

Next, give some details, which you’ve already outlined in the step two work from the previous Tips In Ten issue. A simple bullet point list is good. Your bullets should include details like preferred timeline, price (if you’ve decided to include a price), and subject matter. Subject matter is important and is frequently missed by many businesses with the mistaken impression that professionals can work within a variety of industries. That is not always the case. Sometimes, the best professionals specialize.

So, in my example I might write something like:

• The ebooks are B2B ebooks about social media networking and marketing
• I’d like rough drafts of the 3 logos within 2 weeks of project acceptance
• I’d like to have 2 review cycles
• I’d like final delivery of the logos a week after the second review
• I’d like the logos provided in .png format

Here, you can see how I’ve included enough details for someone to be able to submit a proposal and it is clearly written in an easy-to-follow bullet point format.

You might invite them to show you samples but here’s my opinion on the matter: If they’re good professionals, they will show you their samples anyway, whether you ask or not.

Then submit! It’s that easy and can take less than ten minutes (if you’ve done the work from the previous issue ahead of time).

Now all you need to do is sit back and watch for freelancers to reply. (Note, you might be contacted with questions by freelancers and be sure to pay attention to those because they might indicate that you forgot to leave out an important detail which you can edit in later).

In the next article, I’ll talk about how you can pick the right freelancer in just ten minutes.

Bonus Tips:

Just a couple more points:

• If they ask a question, be quick to respond

• Create requests-for-proposals for each separate portion of the project rather than lumping a complex project into one proposal.

• You don’t have to wait the entire period of time you set for the bidding process, but you should wait long enough so that you get a variety of freelancers that you can pick and choose from.

• If no one bids on your project, take a look at it more closely. If you put in a price and timeline, perhaps they were too restrictive. Try taking it out and resubmitting. Or, have someone else proofread your proposal for clarity.

Related posts:

1. Choosing the Right Freelancer or Contractor
2. Successful Business Proposals in Just Ten Minutes a Day
3. Creating and Managing a Marketing Plan

In this bonus Tips In Ten, I’ll give you some article submission sites that I’ve found to be effect.

Before I get too far in let me make a couple of important points first:

General versus specific: The article sites I’m going to show you are general article sites. That is, they have a number of topic categories that are as diverse as “automotive”, “finance”, “parenthood” and “spirituality” and everything in between. But you should be aware that there are other article sites focused on a specific niche… and there might be one for your niche. To find out, Google “articles” and “[your niche]” (so you might Google “real estate articles” or “parenthood articles”, etc.) Try adding the words “free”, “submission”, or “distribution” into the search to help you narrow even further if you don’t find what you’re looking for the first time.

Compare what your category’s articles are like between the general site and the specific site (if there is a specific site; there might not be). For example, I’ve found that investment-related articles are sometimes considerably more basic in a general article submission site than in a site specializing on that specific topic. This may not be the case for all industries or categories (I’ve never done a thorough study) but you may want to check and be aware. You might find that your articles simply fit better in one instead of the other. It also depends on who you think the audiences are at these sites (and the easiest way to tell is to read some of the articles).

Free versus paid: Some article distribution sites allow you to submit your work for free while others require payment. In theory, the paid ones offer superior service and more proficient distribution while the free ones offer longer approval times and potentially less distribution. (The reality, though, is that it’s a mixed bag: I pay for some article distribution and have been happy with it but have also used free sites that have surprised me by being superior.)

Pick a selection and test them out. For example, write ten articles and submit one to each site and see what happens. Some articles might be approved quickly but go nowhere. Other articles might take a long time to be approved but will become widely distributed. If you are going to make articles an important part of your business (and you should), it’s worth taking the time to figure it out.

Terms of service: Read the terms of service and/or author’s guidelines. It’s worth the time. Yes, they may seem long and unwieldy but here’s why it’s good: Some sites will let you submit your articles elsewhere, others won’t. Some sites will let you put links into the article, others won’t. Some sites will let you talk about yourself, others won’t. Some sites restrict the length of your articles or what you can talk about. You will save time by reading these guidelines because it will keep you from submitting articles that will be rejected (causing rewrites and resubmission delays).

Free and paid article sites I recommend, along with their URL and Alexa Ranking:

Free sites

Ezine Articles
Website: http://ezinearticles.com
Alexa Ranking: 113

Article Trader
Website: http://www.articletrader.com
Alexa Ranking: 7,637

Article Base
Website: http://www.articlesbase.com
Alexa Ranking: 343

Helium
Website: http://www.helium.com
Alexa Ranking: 1,157

SearchWarp
Website: http://searchwarp.com
Alexa Ranking: 5,559

Amazines
Website: http://www.amazines.com
Alexa Ranking: 4,604

Go Articles
Website: http://www.goarticles.com
Alexa Ranking: 1,628

Idea Marketers
Website:  http://www.ideamarketers.com
Alexa Ranking: 4,196

Article City
Website: http://www.articlecity.com
Alexa Ranking: 5,802

Article Click
Website: http://www.articleclick.com
Alexa Ranking: 6.849

Promotion World
Website: http://www.promotionworld.com
Alexa Ranking: 26,358

Article Sphere
Website: http://www.articlesphere.com
Alexa Ranking: 20,929

Add Me
Website: http://www.addme.com
Alexa Ranking: 5,870

Self Seo
Website: http://www.selfseo.com
Alexa Ranking: 7,192

Articles Factory
Website: http://www.articlesfactory.com
Alexa Ranking: 10.358

Article Rich
Website: http://www.articlerich.com
Alexa Ranking: 7,308

Article Blast
Website: http://www.articleblast.com
Alexa Ranking: 14,308

1888 Articles
Website: http://www.1888articles.com
Alexa Ranking: 28,351

Paid sites

Isnare
Website: http://www.isnare.com
Price: Starts at $2
Alexa Ranking: 5,433

Submit 2 Please
Website: http://www.submit2please.com
Price: Starts at $20
Alexa Ranking: 46,736

Submit Your Article
Website: http://www.submityourarticle.com
Price: email for rates
Alexa Ranking: 8,869

BusinessSeek
Website: http://www.businessseek.biz
Price: With payment options
Alexa Ranking: 22,559

I’ve given you 18 free article sites and 4 paid ones. Choose some of these and get started. Test them out and find out which ones you like the best for what you want to accomplish in your article marketing

Related posts:

1. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 4
2. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 3
3. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 1

In this Tips In Ten article, I’m going to show you how to submit your article in just ten minutes.

Which article distribution sites to use?

There are many article submission sites. If you Google words like “articles” or “article submissions” or “article distribution” or “ezine articles”, you’ll find a large selection of article sites to submit your articles to.

Some of these article sites are free, others require a small fee. I actually use a combination of free and paid sites that I’ve found over the years. About 3 days after you receive this Tips In Ten, I”m going to send you a free bonus Tips In Ten issue which will have a list of my favorite article distribution sites for you.

There are so many article distribution sites out there – and you’ll find several in the bonus issue I send – so how do you know which ones to use? There are a few different ways that you can decide. Here’s what I recommend.

• You may want to pick one or two sites and become prolific on those sites, publishing all of your articles there.
• You may want to select several sites and spread the articles around in the hopes that you”ll reach a broader audience.

I’ve seen success in both ways but let me tell you about a colleague of mine. He carefully selected four distribution sites and has chosen to publish specific topics on each site, depending on who his intended audience is and what he wants to accomplish. He is a business coach and here is how he has broken down his distribution across multiple sites:

• He uses one to write specifically about business growth strategies.
• He uses one to write specifically about business start-up ideas.
• He uses one to write about specific industries.
• He uses one to write about general topics of interest to his customers.

That might be more work than you want to do. So, at the very least, start with one or two article distribution sites and focus on those.

Guidelines

Every single article distribution site has its own guidelines – they might be called “author’s guidelines” or “article guidelines” or “terms of service” – and it’s important that you follow those guidelines or else your article will be rejected.

Using the article writing instructions I gave you in the last Tips In Ten, your articles will be suitable for most article distribution sites (assuming that you wrote about an acceptable topic and you didn’t promote your own business in the article).

Most guidelines are easy to follow and they’re generally standard across all article distribution sites (with some small variances, like in word count).

Sign up

Sign up at the article distribution site(s) of your choice and get ready to submit your first article. Most sites will want the following things input into separate boxes when you submit an article:

• The category of the article so they can categorize it within their library of articles.

• The title. Don’t forget to include a keyword!

• An article summary. Not all distribution sites ask for this. Don’t copy and paste something from the article; write something new just for this summary. It doesn’t have to be long – just a sentence or two is okay.

• The article itself. Don’t paste from Word into the online text box. That’s because Word uses “smart characters” (like curly quotation marks) which don’t show up properly online. If you copy from the Word document and paste it into a Notepad document and then copy from Notepad and paste it into the online text box, you’ll “clean up” all of your smart characters and the article will show up properly online.

• The resource box. We talked about this in a recent Tips In Ten issue and you should have it saved somewhere. Paste it here.

• Keywords.  Here, you can paste the keywords you used in your article (which should be in the Excel spreadsheet document).

Submission details: Formatting

In some article distribution sites, you’ll be allowed to do some really basic formatting. They might give you formatting functions in buttons (like you might find in Microsoft Word) or they might require you to use html.

If you have to use html, this is what you need to know:

• Most sites that require html coding will only let you use about 3 kinds of html: Bold, italics, and hyperlinks. (They may give you more options but these are the most common 3 and the ones I use most often). I’ll show you how to create the code for these right here.

• To bold something, use <b> at the beginning of the section you want to bold and </b> at the end to “shut the bold function off”. So, if you wrote: Heather Villa is a <b>business</b> coach, it would look like this: Heather Villa is a business coach.

• To italicize something, it’s very similar to the bold function, except you use the letter “i” instead of “b”. So, if you wrote: Heather Villa is a <i>business</i> coach, it would look like this: Heather Villa is a business coach.

• Hyperlinks seem slightly more complicated, but you’ll get the hang of them. (And you saw them already in the Tips In Ten issue where we talked about the resource box). You simply write the code <a href=” “> and put the URL in the quotation marks. Then, you write the name of the website and follow it up with a </a>.
  
  So, if you wrote: Heather Villa is a <a href=”http://hireheathervilla.com” >business consultant</a>, then it would look like this: Heather Villa is a business consultant.
• Just remember, everything has an open tag and a close tag. The open tags are <b>, <i>, and <a href=”…”> and the close tags are </b>, </i>, and </a>.

There aren’t rules to using these throughout your article, although you should always be consistent with whatever you decide to do. I like to use bold for subtitles and I like to use italics for emphasis and book titles. Some article distribution sites put a limitation on how many hyperlinks can appear in your article.

After inputting

After you’ve input your article, proof-read one more time! It doesn’t hurt. It will just take a moment or two and it will help to ensure that you copied and pasted correctly and that the line spacing looks okay.

Then click “submit.”

And then you’re done! That should only take a couple of minutes.

And then…

After you submit the article, it usually goes into a queue to be read by editors who make sure that you didn’t break their guidelines. If they find something that doesn’t comply, they will usually send you an email to say that your article is rejected and they may tell you why. If they approve your article, you may get an email to let you know. (Many of the article distribution sites I work with will tell you that they’ve approved your article… although some might not).

Once you hear that your article has been approved, you should do the following:

1. Promote it! Link to it on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, and anywhere else you have a profile. That way, people might click to it because the topic is interesting to them and then they might click to your website.

2. Reference the article in other situations (such as a blog or a press release).

3. Periodically search for the article on Google to see who is publishing it and what their website is about. (This will help you to know who is sending people to your website and what their audience is like).

4. Sign in to your account at the article distribution site because they might offer basic metrics (suchas article views) that you can use in tracking.

That’s it! By doing this, you can submit an article in less than ten minutes. And, if you follow the system I outlined in the past few Tips In Ten issues, you’ll be submitting one high quality article each week in just ten minutes a day!

Stay tuned! Next article will outline some of the of the top article distributions sites available.

Bonus Tip:

Whatever you choose, you will want to be careful that you only publish your article at one or two sites. Many distribution sites will make sure that the article isn’t plagiarized by scanning the internet for similar content. If they see (your!) content at the other article distribution site, they may reject your article. So just submit it once, or submit it to two sites that have flexible publication guidelines.

Related posts:

1. Bonus: Article Submissions in 10 Minutes
2. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 1
3. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 3

“Okay, now Heather has officially lost her mind – 90% of my job is project management.”

So true, so true! What I have learned, though, is that the key to project management is “organization”. A project is almost everything in your business – either a client’s work, or something as common as waiting on the web designer to update your web page. I always have at least 2 dozen things going on at any time and the way I keep it organized is through a simple spreadsheet. It was not simple to set up but it is simple to use.

Don’t worry, I am giving you that spreadsheet for free, so download it here – and let’s show you how to use it.

Initial Spreadsheet Set Up:

Note: This spreadsheet was developed in Microsoft Excel 2007. It has been found to work fine in older versions (97 – 2003) as long as you have the compatibility pack from Microsoft installed. It has also been tested in Excel 2008 for Mac and worked fine, as well as loaded into Google Docs and works like a charm.

There are 6 tabs:

By Project
By Client
By Project Manager
By Staff
Data Fields
Copyright Information
The last tab (copyright information) you can ignore – it just protects me.

Most people are going to use two tabs, but I have found that some use them all, so I have provided them here for you.

First determine how you want to keep track of your projects: By project, client, project manager or staff?

I prefer By Client, so I would select the By Client tab and begin working.

Prior to populating the data, I need to update my data fields, so I would click on the Data Fields tab.

The first column is Project Statuses. I have listed typical project statuses used in project management but feel free to change/update any of them.

Then the second column is Staff Names, the third column is Project Manager names, the fourth column is Client Names, and the fifth and sixth columns are the corresponding client details.

Go ahead and populate the fields to make them correspond to your business. (Note: It is set up for a list of 8, I will show you in a minute how to work/change those for larger lists)

Going back to my By Client Tab I can start entering my data, the first field under column name is a drop down box, it lets me pick from my list of clients in the Data Field. You will note that it then automatically populates the fourth and fifth column with the corresponding client data.

If this is an internal project I would just leave the client column blank, or I would customize my client name field to include company projects or company departments. Maybe I might put IAC (the name of my company), or better yet, I could put IAC-Web Department and then put my Web Guy’s email and telephone number where the client email and phone number are in the data field.
Then in the second column I enter my project name and in the third column my project description.

Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth columns are drop downs. Again, I’m picking from Data in my data fields tab.

Then my notes column. Notes are very very important. The notes really should not be used to tell about the project. That should be the description. The notes should help you understand “where” the project is at any given time. Here are some examples of good notes:

Key: Adam = Project Manager, Keith = Graphic Designer, Daniel = Web Developer

Status: Waiting on Client | Notes: Adam sent mock up of 3 logos to Client and waiting on response. – 1/5/2009

Status: Waiting on Staff | Notes: Keith sent new icons to Daniel for placement in clients site. – 1/7/2009

Status: Waiting on PM | Notes: Project assigned to Adam. – 1/9/2009

So, the goal is to get all the data in for my open projects.

If you have more than 8 of anything, you need a larger list on your data fields page. That can be done by entering the additional staff, project managers, statuses, or clients, however you have to change the preset name array. I don’t have every version of MS Office to tell you how to do this so I will give you instructions in Office 2007:

Click on the Formulas Tab –> In the Defined Name Section click on the Name Manager Icon –>  A list of your array names will show up. You should have 4 clearly labeled as “ClientNames”, “ProjectManagers”, “ProjectStatuses” and “StaffNames”.

Highlight the one you want and click Edit –> In the Refers to: field you will see something similar to =’Data Fields’!$D$2:$D$10. What that says is the field array is Column D Row 2 through Column D Row 10. So if you now have names all the way going down to row 25, you would just change that last “10″ to a “25″ and click OK.

Once you have the project management sheet set up the way it needs to be:

When you start your day (or after you finish your email), it’s time to go through your list and make sure you have updated statuses and that everything is correct. What you have created is a snapshot of everything going on and you’ve created an ease-of-use factor.

Step 1: Make sure that you have updated the statuses and notes columns to correctly reflect any notices that you have received in the prior day (i.e. an email from a staff member saying it is ready for your review or an email from a staff member saying that they sent it to the client).

Step 2: Go through the list and see what is waiting on you. Do your part and turn it over to the person it needs to go to next. Then update your status and notes.

Step 3: Look at each status and note combo and see where the project’s at and what may need to be nudged along or updated. It very well may be that it is farther along than you think, but nobody has clued you in, or you have overlooked an email. Take Action.

To give you some examples, I will use my 3 statuses above. Let’s assume it is the 10th of January and I have these three statuses:

Status: Waiting on Client | Notes: Adam sent mock up of 3 logos to Client and waiting on response. – 1/5/2009

Status: Waiting on Staff | Notes: Keith sent new icons to Daniel for placement in clients site. – 1/7/2009

Status: Waiting on PM | Notes: Project assigned to Adam. – 1/9/2009

First one: We are waiting on the client. The client was sent the logos on January 5th and it has been 5 days, so it definitely needs to be updated. So I would send an email: “Adam, Logo Project for Client X is not moving along. Please check in with client and see which logo he wants. It has been 5 days, update me accordingly.”

Second one: We are waiting on Daniel to do his web development work with the icons Keith sent. It has been 3 days and developers get easily distracted. So I would send an email (and cc: Adam his project manager) “Daniel, please confirm that you received the icons from Keith 3 days ago and provide Adam and I with an ETA on completion.”

Third one: We are waiting on Adam to do his thing (signing it out to the staff), but it only has been a day, so we don’t need to do anything with that.

Step 4: Save and Close and work on it tomorrow.

Every business is different and it may be that you don’t want to do this or need to. It may be that your project managers are very efficient. So why not pass this email and spreadsheet along to them and just have them turn their spreadsheet in to you on a daily basis? Then it is all done for you. It may be that you don’t have a project manager and that you are the project manager. So in that case you can just ignore the project management column.

This easy 4-step process has proved invaluable to Coaches, Independent Professionals and Freelancers that outsource work to independent contractors.

Related posts:

1. Self-Directed Project Management in Ten Minutes a Day
2. Project Management Gone Wrong
3. Horror story from the front lines of project management

5 Favorite Link Building Tools – Having the right tools will save time, return better results in terms of both likelihood to acquire a link and its quality. This post offers some tools that will not only save you time but also improve your link building abilities.

Magalog – A sales tool with untapped potential – I had not heard of a magalog before reading Aaron’s post. He gives a clear picture of what it is and the beneficial uses. “One way to make sure your sales material gets into the hands of the people it’s supposed to get to, and to make sure it gets read, is to use a magalog”.

Understanding why Social Media works, in less than 3 minutes – Well put comparison with a video clip and social media that shows exactly why social media works for companies. “Just as Pixar makes inanimate objects more real, social media is making companies of all sizes more human.”

Google Caffeine – What It Means To YOU – This post discusses Old Google vs. New Google. It lists some of the advantages we will see in the upcoming future and how it will affect us. “In short, Google may have gotten faster and bigger – but did they really change THAT much?”

The Secret of Today Versus Todo – Most folks use a todo list on a daily basis. I know I do. This post goes over why keeping the todo list simple will benefit you more. Designate your top tasks that must get done that day and keep them on the top of your list but, always remember it should be as simple a possible.

No, You Can’t Automate Social Media! – There are disadvantages to automating too much of your social media. Even though one might have x followers on twitter, it’s not going to be beneficial if all the tweets are wholly automated. Don’t forget to be human too. It’s that easy!

Related posts:

1. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 5/14/10
2. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 7/16/10
3. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 2/19/10

Pictures of Insanely Cool Creative Workspaces – What comes to mind when you think of what you hear about Google.com’s office? Amazing? Fun? Creative? Here is a group of photos from various well known businesses “behind the brand” in their most intimate thinking place, their office!

Freedom’s Just Another Word (Um…No It’s Not) – Allison is clearly big on “Freedom” considering how much she has grown and found herself over the past year. She takes an in-depth look at what Freedom means to her and what can potentially be a freedom blocker. This is a really great empowering read and if you look at the very end of the article she has included a link to an exercise that will help you uncover your “4 words”.

Smart Phone, Dumb Life? – How many people out there do you know that don’t have access to the internet from their home? What about those that do not text message from their cell phones or go online from that same cell phone? Not too many!! Have you ever thought about the term “Crackberry?” Think about it. Once you live with it, experience it, and love it – you will crave and become reliant on that little bundle of technology with that cute little keypad, and the beautiful little full color screen….. Uh-oh! Where did I put mine? =)

A little Chipmunk’s Story- OMG, what an adorable story about this little guy (or girl). He was found on a trail by a hiker. Here is his story of survival and recovery. File this one under too cute!!

Your VA is an essential part of your Social Networking Strategy – Social Media – time consuming, involved, time consuming, lead generating, time…. (You get the idea.) Carol Ann Quibell posses a good question. Is it possible to have your VA take care of your social media site(s) and still have your sites be running like well oiled machines? Heck yeah! For everyone out there who has a VA or IS a VA read this blog. Whether it is idea inducing or points you can bring up in interviews about your skills you will take away something from the info. Oh, not to forget, hiring a VA to take over your social media upkeep really frees up your time to work the leads uncovered and all other aspects of your business!

Great Designers Are Spawned From Mediocrity – This is great. And if you sit there for a second, I am sure everyone can think back to a moment where you took on a new task, like writing your blogs, and you hated it. You knew the final product was not what you wanted but you tried your damnedest! So you kept at it, hopefully! Then there was that one day in which you though – I am pretty damn good at this! Melody writes about just that in this article. It is inspiring!

Have a great weekend and check out more of my favorites on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

Related posts:

1. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 6/11/10
2. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 7/9/10
3. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 4/9/10