My granddaughter and I love to read a wonderfully illustrated children’s book (more on the book later) about a little boy whose grandfather once sewed him a special blanket. Over time, the beloved blanket grew worn and well-used. The disappointed little boy went to his talented grandfather who cut the blanket down and made the child a new coat.

Time went by and the coat became worn so the little boy took it to his grandfather who cut it down into… well, you get the drift. Eventually the grandfather only had enough cloth left to make a button for the boy.

“You can buy attention (advertising). You can beg for attention from the media (PR). You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales). Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free.”

 – David Meerman Scott, marketing speaker

As small business owners, we're always looking for cost-effective ways to promote our business. With over 400 million members worldwide, LinkedIn can be a great resource for connecting to current clients and customers, as well as a way to bring in new prospects.

Why, you may be asking.

There are the obvious reasons - to collect money and to create a community. Ah, but it goes much deeper than that...

Depending on where you live, the summer can be brutal. It’s too hot to really do much of anything and you’re distracted by thoughts of that summer vacation just around the corner. It’s also the perfect time to market your business while your competitors are feeling like one of those melting clocks in a Salvador Dali painting.

So prep ahead and beat the summer slump with some hot summer marketing! 

Here’s how...

Featured Resource this week - Digital Product Delivery

Digital Publishing for eBooks and Downloads

DPD is an easy to use digital publishing platform for selling and delivering downloadable content. Upload your products to DPD and start selling in minutes. With DPD, all sales are paid directly to you with no per-sale fees, bandwidth charges, or commissions.

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

What do your members want?

It is important to deliver what your members want, NOT what they need. Hang in there with me and I’ll explain.

Over the course of this series we have discussed why you should have a membership site, how you might structure it, mistakes to avoid and some specific usage scenarios of membership sites. However, if your site is not successful, none of that matters.

Viewing data used to be boring. Not anymore, thanks to the infographic.

It seems you can’t venture onto the Internet these days without running across one of these handy little aids. Whether it’s how to properly wash your dog or the keys steps to accurately installing the latest version of Adobe Photoshop, you can bet that somewhere out there is an infographic.

So how do you make use of these tools that Internet geniuses seemingly whip out of thin air, and more importantly: how do you make your own?

Featured Resource this week - Call Monitoring with Infusionsoft

Call Monitoring Integrated With Infusionsoft!

Novice marketers focus on getting the lead, but experienced marketers know that the job is only done when dollars exchange hands. You can cut the cost of generating a sale by 50% or more when you monitor and track how well incoming calls are being handled.

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Featured Resource this week - Time Fusion

Automate Your Appointments

Are you using TimeTrade or Full Slate to give your clients online access for setting appointments with you? If not, you should be!

TimeFusion integrates Infusionsoft with TimeTrade and Full Slate to automate your appointment scheduling!

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

As of April of 2016, there are over 1.65 billion monthly Facebook users, a 15 percent increase over last year.

One in five page views in the United States occurs on Facebook.

At a billion plus, Facebook has more monthly active users than WhatsApp (500 million), Twitter (284 million) and Instagram (200 million)—combined.

After a grueling week, you finally have some downtime. How will you spend it? Running errands? Cleaning house? Squeezing in a little extra work? Maybe you’ll do absolutely nothing— recharging the batteries, so to speak. If you have kids, you may notice that neither of those options produces a very enjoyable day off, particularly when they insist on spending some time with you.

Are you as crazy busy, day in, day out, as we are? Work, spending time with family, getting the yard ready for summer, hobbies, exercise, household chores, travel… shouldn’t there be more than 24 hours in a day?? Focus, organization, and productivity have a huge impact on our lives and even our peace of mind. Take a look at these 8 amazing apps and tools.

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
Say, who are the people in your neighborhood?
The people that you meet each day.
~ Sesame Street

It’s become a bit cliché to say we now live in a global village, but it’s true.

Featured Resource this week - Grammarly

Grammarly is the world’s most accurate grammar checker. 

Grammarly makes you a better writer by finding and correcting up to 10× more mistakes than your word processor.

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

A big stumbling block about marketing that I hear from clients is, “My copy won’t convert.” The ideas are your own but the technique can be learned by just about anyone. You might not be world-class but you’ll be better than before. Get 17 Tips here.