I have a confession to make. I have been using social networking to build my list and market my business long before it was the “it” thing to do. In fact, social networking has been a solid list building performer for me ever since I have started my business.

However, something happened in 2008. Social networking went from being a solid performer to being the star list building referral for my list. You see, in 2008 social networking became very hot and everyone, and I mean *everyone* jumped on the social networking bandwagon. I saw people who have never used social networking in their lives create new accounts on Facebook and Twitter and jump right in.

More people than ever are using social networking, but how does it affect your business? More people using social networking means there are more people in your target market who are using social networking. You can reach many more people through social networking now than you could just a year ago. What are you waiting for? Now is the best time to use social networking to reach your target market and build your list. Here is how:

– Spend Time On Creating/Updating Your Profile Page. It amazes me that when I visit business owners’ profile pages on Facebook and other social networks, some do not have their web site listed. If your web site is not listed on your profile, you are missing a golden opportunity to expand your list.

When your target market is visiting your profile, they want to see your web site. If you do not have your web site listed, you will not be able to get subscribers from your social networking efforts.

– Link Directly To Your Newsletter Subscription Page. You want to get subscribers from your social networking efforts, right? So make sure that the links that you use on your social networking profiles link directly to your newsletter subscription page.

– Build Relationships With People You Meet. People buy from those they know, like and trust. Don’t just promote yourself all the time. Get to know your contacts and they will get to know you.

For example, on Twitter, spend 80-90% of your twits to help others, share useful content and network. Limit promotion to 10-20% of the time. When you do this, more people will follow you and more people will want to get to know you, which will translate into more subscribers over time.

– Blog And Share Your Blog Posts On Social Networks. Sharing your blog posts is another great way to demonstrate your expertise to your target market. And you don’t even have to share your posts manually. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all have tools that will automatically check your blog and post your blog post to the network automatically.

All you need to do is to set it up and your blog posts will be shared with your followers every time you have a new blog post.

– Offer Events. A great way to invite more people to your list is to offer an event and invite your social networking contacts to join you for the event.

Take action on at least one of these tips today and start building your list with social networking today!

I think that social networking is extremely important for list building. This is why there is a lot of information on using social networking to build your list in the Build Your List Home Study Guide.

Get the Home Study Guide now at https://www.EffectiveListBuilding.com

Biana Babinsky

P.S. This is the only time this year that I am offering this Teleseminar Series. Make sure to register to join me on the calls at https://www.EffectiveListBuilding.com

Article marketing is a great technique to use to build your list. In fact, each of your articles can bring you dozens or even hundreds of subscribers if your article and Resource Box speak to your target market. Here is your 3-Point Plan to build your list using article marketing:

Step 1. Write an article that is of interest to your target market.

Step 2. Create your Author’s Resource Box that convinces your article readers to subscribe to your newsletter.

Step 3. Submit your article to Article Directories, so that your articles are seen by your target market. Once your target market reads your article, your Resource Box will convince your target market to subscribe to your newsletter.

I have read hundreds of articles written by business owners and it is clear to me that many of them are making a mistake in Step #2. Some don’t spend any time on their Resource Boxes, and as a result, are not getting any of their article readers to subscribe to their newsletter.

Writing effective Resource Boxes is crucial to your success. If your Resource Box does not convince your reader to visit your web site and subscribe to your newsletter, then your article marketing efforts are a big waste of time because they will not produce the results that you want.

Here is how to create a Resource Box that will get results:

– Set aside time to create effective Resource Boxes. For many business owners a Resource Box is an afterthought that they spend just a few minutes writing. Don’t make this mistake. Your Resource Box is the most important part of your article. Take the time to create an effective Resource Box.

– Create a few different Resource Boxes to use with your articles.

– Test your Resource Boxes to see which ones produce the best results.

I have spent a long time testing different Resource Boxes, both for myself and on behalf of my clients. In the Build Your List Home Study Guide, you will see the examples of effective Resource Boxes and we will also talk about how to rewrite your current Resource Boxes to make them extremely effective. Get the Build Your List Home Study Guide at https://www.EffectiveListBuilding.com

Biana Babinsky

Happy New Year! Today, on the first day of the new year, I wanted to take a look back at 2008 to see what we would like to take with us into 2009:

– Social Networking. Social networking has been around since the Internet was around. I have been participating in discussion groups and forums ever since I got online.

But 2008 was the year of Social Networking. Social networking has finally come of age – everyone started talking about it and using in 2008. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – seems that everyone, including people who have never used a discussion forum before were jumping in. Social networking has helped me meet some great people, create business connections and get new clients for my business.

I am looking forward to hearing more about social networking in 2009 and, of course, using it as well.

– Learning New Things. I believe that we should never stop learning. I learned many new things in 2008 and am looking forward to learning even more in 2009.

Join me in learning! Decide what you will learn this year and take action! Pick up a book, find a few blogs you like to learn from, subscribe to a few newsletter, attend teleseminars or workshops.

– Cooking More Food. Well, you knew that I will mention this, didn’t you? Cooking is something I love to do, so when I am not teaching marketing, I am probably cooking or reading about cooking.

I even started a cooking blog in 2008, that I am looking forward to updating more in 2009.

– Creating Products. I have created a few different products in 2008 and I have plans for creating more products in 2009. One thing that is very clear to me about 2009 is that it is going to be more important than ever to offer products in the new year. Many people are slashing their budgets, which means you will see many potential clients in 2009 who will not be able to afford your services.

To still be able to help these clients, you must package your expertise into products. Your products will fit your clients’ budgets when your services won’t. So join me in planning (and creating) new products in 2009.

– People. This list would not be complete without thanking all the wonderful people of 2008. Thank you all – my clients, customers, colleagues, friends on social networks, blog readers, newsletter subscribers, and more. Thank you for making 2008 so great and I look forward to connecting with you in 2009.

Now it’s your turn – comment on this blog post and let us know what you are taking with you into 2009!

Biana Babinsky

P.S. Don’t forget to get your New Year gift from me, FREE Teleseminar 3 Most Important Keys For Building Your List

I have seen thousands of business owners do it. A business owner, let’s call her Carol, offers a great service, and she designs a whole system for her clients to get through her service and achieve amazing results. Carol sees the amazing results her clients are getting and, quite correctly, attributes the results to the system that she has created for them.

However, when it comes to her own business, Carol resists setting up a marketing system. Instead, she just tries using different marketing techniques, hoping that one of them will turn out to be the technique that will bring her all the clients that she would ever need.

She tries blogging, article marketing, social networking, search engine optimization, using each technique for a few days and then moving on to the next one. She starts her own list for which she now has 24 or so subscribers.

None of the techniques have really brought in customers, so three months later she goes back and starts from the very beginning – blogging, article marketing, social networking, search engine optimization, again for a few days each. Her list is now at 39 subscribers, but again, nothing is happening.

This is exactly what I have seen many business owners do. They rapidly switch between many marketing techniques hoping that one of them will provide all the clients that they need. None does, so they start over again, still hoping for clients….

The problem here is that they have no system in place for using online marketing techniques effectively. It is not enough to just apply the techniques; you must have a clear understanding of why you are bringing people into your sphere of influence, what happens with those people and how can you continue to communicate with these people to turn them into customers.

Here is a Three Step Online Marketing System For Getting Clients that you can use:

Step 1. Use online marketing techniques to identify your target market and drive your target market to your web site.

In this step you will apply online marketing techniques such as social networking, article marketing, business blogging, etc. But you need to apply them effectively, so that your target market will recognize that you can help them and visits your web site.

Step 2. Turn the web site visitors into leads. The web site visitors that you have acquired in Step 1 are now browsing your web site. Now either they will leave your web site and never come back or you must turn them into leads on the spot. You can accomplish this by offering them something of value in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter.

Step 3. Turn your leads into clients. Again, you must have a system in place for this – you must have an effective follow-up system that helps you turn your leads into clients.

Create an Online Marketing System for your business today. The System will make a difference between doing the same thing over and over again and not seeing results and actually starting to get clients from your online marketing efforts. I will be teaching how to create an Online Marketing System for your business during the How To Get More Clients Online Teleseminar Series. Register for the Teleseminar Series now at
https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zmarketing

Biana Babinsky

If you have read any marketing and business books, you will have read that you need to ask for a sale in order to get one. For example:

– When you are meeting with a potential client to discuss how you can help her, you need to ask for a sale at the end of the meeting.

– When you are publishing a newsletter, you need to ask for a sale at the end of your article/post/announcement

– When someone calls you for a free introductory coaching session you need to ask them to become a paying client at the end of the session

All of these are excellent examples of asking for a sale if you want to get one. In all these examples your potential clients have some prior knowledge of who you are and what you do. Because they are already familiar with the business owner offering services, they will be much more receptive when the business owner asks for a sale.

However, in social networking, when you just meet someone, they don’t know who you are and what you do. So asking for a sale is not appropriate. This is why you should not send an MLM pitch/sales message to someone you just connected with on Facebook.

Instead, you want to start building a relationship and get your new connections to know you. How do you do that? By promoting your newsletter!

If you want to keep in touch with people you meet through social networking for a long time, make sure you promote your newsletter! Promote it in your profile, link to it from your signature, post a link to it from your “About” page, etc. The more visible you make your newsletter, the more people will get on your list, and the more people you will be able to keep in touch with even if you stop using some social networking groups.

When you have just met someone through social networking web sites, it is not time for a hard sales pitch. Start building a relationship and invite them to join your list. Once they have been on your list for someone, they may contact you about your services and your products. This is when you will be able to ask for a sale.

Want to learn more about using social networking to get clients? Join me for the How To Get Clients And Build Your List With Social Networking Teleseminar Series at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znetwork

Biana Babinsky

I received this question from a coach recently:

“I am a career coach and have been coaching one-on-one for the past few years. I decided to start creating group programs and a few months ago I offered a Coaching Group option to my newsletter subscribers. Basically, I envisioned it as a group of 5-10 people who would get together on the call twice a month and ask me questions about their careers. I promoted this a lot – through a networking group, my newsletter, web site, seminar sites – but could not get a single participant. What am I doing wrong? How can I get people to sign up for my coaching group?”

Biana’s Answer: What strikes me from your description is that you are just offering a Career Coaching Group. That is not enough for me to make a decision if I need your group and if it would work for me.

Is the group for people in their 20’s, just starting their first jobs? Is it for people in middle management trying to move up? Or is it for people trying to switch jobs? Or maybe it’s for people who are unemployed and need help landing a job asap?

As you can see, there isn’t much information about who exactly you are doing this group coaching for, so your potential customers are not sure if it’s for them. And if they are not sure, they will not sign up.

So how can you create a better group coaching offer? Don’t just call it a coaching group, name it something meaningful, name it something that will communicate value and give people an idea about who it’s for, so that they can self-select either in or out.

So do not call it a coaching group. Instead, create a very specific program for your target market that helps your target market solve one of the problems that they are experiencing. To get the most people register for your group you will need to offer them something they really want. For example, if your target market are college students looking for their first job, how about a program on landing a great job right out of college.

The next things you want to do is to create a compelling sales letter for your program. And then you need to create a good marketing plan to market the program.

You need to give your target market enough information about your program, so that they can say: “This sounds like a program that will help me solve the problem that I am experiencing. I really need the solution and this program offers it to me!”

Once you get your target market to think this way, you will get many members for your group!

I was asked on one of the calls I did recently about what steps I would recommend to take for a coach who wants to take their coaching from a part-time hobby to a full time profitable coaching business.

It takes time to re-adjust and what you need to re-adjust the most is your way of thinking about what you do. When you have a hobby, your priority may not be making money. When you run a business, your priority is to have a profitable business that brings in income.

You also need to re-adjust the way you think about marketing. Marketing is the cornerstone of your business and helps you bring in clients. If you are not marketing your business you will not be able to have a successful business, it’s that simple.

Here are some marketing tips to help you take your coaching from a hobby to a successful coaching business:

– The very first thing to do is to decide on a good target market for your business. Before you can bring in clients consistently, you need to decide on WHO these clients are. After all, if you do not know who your clients are, how are you going to bring them to your business?

Make a decision about who your target market is. Knowing your target market will help you make other decisions and will help you simplify your marketing. And we all want to simplify our marketing :)

– Decide on marketing techniques you’d like to use to market your coaching business. It is great if you want to use blogging, and social networking, and article marketing, and public speaking, and e-mail marketing to promote your business. However, don’t start using them all at once!

The best way to market your business is to pick one technique, master it, start using it on a regular basis and then move on to the next one.

And remember, you don’t have to use every marketing technique you have heard about. For example, I have clients who enjoy public speaking, who speak often and for whom public speaking is one of the most effective techniques for getting clients.

On the other hand, I have a client who says that she would never ever do public speaking, it’s just not for her. Her favorite marketing technique is blogging, she is good at it and she uses her blog to generate interest in her business.

Pick the techniques that you enjoy applying and you will be more successful with them.

– Have a marketing plan! Create a plan for bringing in more clients, marketing your business, etc. You are much more likely to take action if you create a plan and put it on paper.

Members of my online business mentoring program have access to thousands of dollars worth of resources on creating a marketing plan, picking a profitable target market and using online marketing techniques to promote their business. Get immediate access to all these resources by joining us at https://www.MarketingSalad.com

Biana Babinsky

After reading my my blog posts on list building, many coaches have asked me what comes next. Once you get some people on your list, how do you leverage your list to get clients, make money and improve your business?

Just like with using any other marketing technique, in order to get the best results from your newsletter, you need to create a plan to get clients, make money and get results with your newsletter list.

Here are some things to think about and include into your plan:

– You Need To Bring In More Subscribers Every Single Day. Your target customers subscribe to your list and they also unsubscribe. Your goal for your newsletter list is to have as many people as possible see your message and learn about your business. Therefore the more people you can attract to your list, the better.

– Publish Your Newsletter On A Regular Basis. Your subscribers will not do business with you and will not buy from you unless they hear from you. The only way they will know about your expertise and about what you have to offer is by reading your newsletter issues.

Research shows that people need to hear from you on average 7 times (sometimes many more!) to buy something from you.

If you want results from your newsletter, such as more clients and more money, you need to publish! Publish your newsletter on a regular basis with useful information that your subscribers want to know about AND promo’s of your own products and services. A win-win for everyone.

– Create Products In Different Price Ranges. While lots of people are interested in coaching, the vast majority of them will never become your one-on-one coaching clients.

Some can’t afford one-on-one services, others may be able to afford them, but are not at the stage where they can justify the money they are going to spend.

But many more people would be willing to pay for group coaching, ebook, audio and other products because they cost much less than one-on-one service packages.

Create your own products and offer them to your list – that way you are using your list to build passive income streams for your business.

In my Grow Your List Home Study Course I discuss how to use your list to get clients, make money and create passive income streams. Check it out at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znews

How do you use your list to get clients?

Biana Babinsky

I am sure that by now you have heard about social media and social media sites. Lots of people are networking on them, talking about them and using them to promote their businesses.

Because there is so much information about social media and social networking everywhere, I have been getting lots of questions about social networking from my clients, members of my mentoring program and web site visitors.

Everyone wants to know how to get results from social media web sites. And by saying results the majority of business owners mean “more clients”.

So how can you, a coach, consultant or other business professional, use social networking to get more clients for your business?

What you want to use to use social networking for is to meet and connect with your target market. Just like with any other marketing technique, you want to get your target market to know you, so that they can do business with you.

My recommendations for using social networking effectively are:

– As always, look for where your target market is and go ahead and meet it! There are tons of groups on many different networking sites, and you can start by participating in a few different groups that your target market frequents. Don’t join every single group that you see – there are thousands, if not millions of those, and you will never be able to use all of them.

Instead, find groups where your target market hangs out and networks. Increase your visibility by participating in the groups.

Everyone knows the leader, right? The best visibility comes when you are the leader of the group, so start your own group where your target can hang out and you can demonstrate your expertise!

– What’s the next step for your target market? What step should people in your target market take in order to get into your sphere of influence? They subscribe to your newsletter!

Make sure that you offer people plenty of opportunities to get on your list.

– Explore social networking sites and use the available resources. Different social networking web sites have different resources for you to use, and some are not so obvious. Some offer resources to post your upcoming events, post your articles and blog posts, etc. Use the available resources to get more visibility and exposure for your business.

I discussed many more ideas for using social networking to promote your business during the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar last month. You can get the audio recording of the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar at https://www.marketingsalad.com/social-networking.html

Biana Babinsky

Over the years I have helped hundreds of coaches get clients and sales from their newsletters. Since I have worked with hundreds of coaches on improving their newsletters, we have had quite a few conversations on how often to send out a newsletter.

Before working with me, many of my clients have sent out their newsletters once every two or three months. Sending out your newsletter once every two or three months will not bring any results – this is way too rare for building relationships and getting your subscribers interested in what you have to offer.

If you are struggling with how often you should send out your newsletter, here are frequently asked questions about the frequency of sending out your newsletter:

Q: I don’t want to bother my subscribers too often, and sending out my newsletter more often than every two months feels like I am bothering my subscribers and wasting their time. What should I do?

Biana’s Answer: First of all, you are not bothering your subscribers by sending them your newsletter. They requested it by subscribing to it and they want to hear useful and interesting things from you.

You are the expert, and they want to read information and tips that come from you, the expert.

Q: I only send something out when I have news in my business, such as a new service. Why would I send out my newsletter if I have nothing new in my business?

Biana’s Answer: Your newsletter is not just about your business. While you should use it to promote your business, you should also use it to build relationships with your subscribers and sharing useful information with them.

You need to send out your newsletter more often in order to build relationships and connect with your readers. Also, if you do have a new service to promote, promoting it just once will not do much. Your potential customers need to see your information at least 7 times before making a purchase. Therefore, you should promote your new service in a few of your newsletter issues in order to get more clients.

Q: Every time I send out my newsletter, a few people unsubscribe. So if I send out my newsletter every few months, I will get fewer unsubscribes, right?

Biana’s Answer: Think back to the purpose of your newsletter. Its purpose is NOT to get fewer unsubscribes. Its purpose it to introduce you to many people in your target market, promote your expertise and sell your products and services.

As I mentioned in the answer to the previous question, your potential customers need to see your message on average 7 times before deciding to buy from you. They also need to remember that they heard your message earlier. If they only see your message every two months they will not remember it at all. So if you only send out your newsletter every few months, very few people are going to believe you and buy from you.

Learn the exact information that I use to help my clients get clients and sales from their newsletters with the Grow Your List Home Study Course at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znews

Biana Babinsky