So how do you value time?  I’m not talking about how much you should charge a client for your time or how much you think your employer should pay you per hour.  I’m talking about the actual value you of your time to others and yourself…Still confused?  Let’s look at3 examples and then you decide:

Example 1:  You and your family are invited to your in-laws for dinner at 6:00 and you don’t arrive until 6:15 or later.  To be courteous you should have arrived at least 30 minutes prior to dinner time so that you and your family had paid your respects to the other attendees and had settled in and were ready to be seated when the hostess summoned you.  Even if you had arrived at 6:00, you would at least be arriving at the time at which your hostess was expecting you. By arriving at 6:15 (especially if you didn’t call) is devaluing not only the time of your hostess and the other dinner guests but also yourself.  Obviously dinner with the in-laws was not important to you or you would have been on time, so you should have declined the invitation and spent your time doing something of value!

Example 2: You are the owner of a retail company and a repeat customer comes in and has a question about a new product or promotion.  Your salesperson is unable to answer the question so they come to reach out to you who he finds with the door open and of course you are on the phone.  Instead of putting the call on hold to hear the question from the salesperson, you hold up the old one finger which of course turns into 5 or 10 fingers…remember the client is still standing out front awaiting a response and now your salesperson is standing there looking at you for the same amount of time.  By failing to read the urgency on the face of the salesperson and putting the call on hold, you are decreasing the value of that salesperson to your team (obviously their success is not of value to you).  By leaving the repeat customer tapping their foot in the front, you are saying their repeat business and that of their friends is not of value to you.  So unless that phone call was to take a confirmed million dollar order, obviously your time isn’t of value to you either and you should have left the closed sign up for the day and gone out for a round of golf!

Example 3:  You’re an entrepreneur and you paid a hefty price to attend an out-of-town training seminar.  You subsequently arrive late for the sessions, fail to participate openly in the discussions, fail to engage those around you and fail to implement any of the lessons that you learned.  Now, not only is your time of no value but your money has lost its value.  You could have stayed home and gone out drinking with your buddies and had the same lost time and lack of value.

So again I ask…How do you value time?

We are now halfway through another calendar year.  By now (at least if you were one of my coaching students) you would be in a routine of promoting and growing your business.  But, there is still one  problem that I have seen with many business owners, new and old.   TIME MANAGEMENT.

Time management is not just about how much time you spend on your social media campaigns or talking with customers or reading the daily news. Time management is about using what limited amount of time you have doing productive things.  (We all know as business owners that time is limited especially if you have a family.)

One of the easiest ways to ensure that you are winning the war on time management is to clear on exactly what needs to be done when.  To accomplish this, you need to schedule activities…no I don’t mean by time slots…I know that goes against the grain, but I am known for doing that!  Here’s an example of how I run my business week:

Sundays – Action:  Write blog posts for the week and schedule them for automated posting throughout the week.  Result:  No more trying to write a quality blog post when things are hectic or your mind is focused on 12 other things.  Ideas for new posts that come up during the week are loaded into my notes database and pulled upon come Sunday! Time Spent:  Approx 2 hours (that’s for 9 different blogs)

Mondays – My Mondays are all about one-on-one coaching calls so the only items that I execute on Mondays are those that relate to the clients I am working with for coaching.  In between calls I do my social media and I end the day with verifying my schedule for the following Monday.  If there are blocks of times that are empty on a coaching day, then I will pull from my open tasks list for coaching related projects that need to be completed.  Notice I do not stray from the theme of the day which is COACHING!

Tuesdays - My Tuesdays are spent on the road with brick & mortar clients.  I normally start my day with a quick hit & run on social media and then after I return from my outside appointments, I will spend some more time with social media.  However, my focus on Tuesdays is to be on time to my B&M clients with their tasks ready for delivery upon arrival.  When I return, I usually write my summaries from  the days events for each client and posting the following week’s tasks & appointments into the calendar.  Again, my focus for that day is specifically on OUTSIDE clients, everything else will still be there when I get back!

Wednesdays – My Wednesdays are all about new business creation.  I work on executing new marketing campaigns, website updates, course scheduling, call backs, new client proposals, and follow-ups for clients that have not yet contracted.  Again I usually start and end my day with social media but my focus for the entire day is about NEW BUSINESS.

Thursdays -  My Thursdays are all about my Veterans.  I spend the day either physically at Veteran organizations or working on Veteran campaigns but everything on Thursday is Red, White and Blue (except for my normal am and pm social media breaks).

Fridays – Now those of you that know me, you know that I like to start my Friday’s early.  One of the luxuries of being self-employed.  Fridays are all about tying up loose ends and clearing away the stacks of paper on my desk.  So Friday as you have guessed is my admin day wher I catchup on routine emails, review bills, read the mail.  Action:  Schedule (and delegate if that applies to your business) tasks that must be completed the following week.  Result: No time lost on Monday mornings figuring out what needs to be done & the week runs more smoothly.  You can easily determine throughout the week if there is space to add additional tasks because you are know what the hot items are!  Time Spent:  About 2 hours (but that much time might not be required for your business, depends on size of your business).

Saturdays – Are all about having fun! No work on Saturday unless it is an out of town conference and then it’s still play anyway!!!

Hopefully you are seeing the bigger picture here.  Its not about you’re business not being the same as mind, its about WHAT ARE YOU FOCUSING ON EACH DAY.  You can only successfully focus on one thing at a time!  If you need help finding your focus as it applies specifically to your business, call me!  I’ll be happy to help you out!

Now that you have your new website up and running, you are hopefully keen on starting to make some sales! But, how can you make sales if you do not have high volumes of traffic to your website?

One of the challenges people starting a new online business face is that of getting traffic to their website. This article outlines four important steps you must follow to start generating some traffic to your website.

1. Have unique content on your website. Search engine robots and spiders look at all websites on a regular basis looking for sites with fresh and new content. It is therefore important for you to have fresh and high quality content in order for your website to get quickly indexed by search engines.
2. Have all your keywords on your website. It is important that you have all the relevant keywords and phrases that relate to your topic on your web pages and any articles you post on your website. This will increase your website ranking as well as the number of visitors coming to your site from search engines. When people visit your website, the high quality content you have will make people spend more time on your site and ultimately buy some of the products or services you offer on your site. DO NOT DECEIVE YOUR VISITORS BY USING KEYWORDS THAT ARE NOT ON THAT PAGE OF YOUR SITE!
3. Because your website is new, you must submit it to search engines. Submitting your URL to the search engines is an important step towards getting more visitors because it means your website will be visible from search engines. Having your website URL on search engines means that when people look for information relating to your topic on these search engines, they will find your website.
4. Announce the launch of new site on your social media platforms.  Hopefully as you were creating your website, you were already creating the hype to your social media circles about your forthcoming website and now is the time to announce that you are ready for visitors.  Ensure that you have added the link to all your social media profiles as well as the signature block of your business email templates!
5. Exchange some website links with websites that have a high popularity rank (PR). Exchanging links with popular and related websites is an effective way to drive traffic to your website, and improve the raking of your site. You will get some traffic coming to your website through other websites that you have linked to.  I personally recommend that you do this with people you know are reputable and that you have at least begun to establish a relationship with.  I do NOT recommend buying reciprocal links or backlinks.

By following the tips outlined in this article, you will realize that increasing your website traffic and getting more people to visit your new website is very easy to do. All you need to do is to follow these steps and you will soon see an increase in traffic to your website which will hopefully mean a lot of sales and online profits for your internet business!

Remember, driving traffic to your website is an on-going process and something that you continue to do with additional methods NOT just the ones that we have mentioned here!

Sometimes work schedules and just life in general get out of control and become overwhelming.  Sometimes just the amount of new ideas running through your mind having you spinning out of control.  If these things aren’t happening to you to some degree, then it would be my opinion that you are just not LIVING your life, you’re just coasting through.

Those of you that know me, know I don’t coast anywhere…my trip to the court house this week proved that point!  But sometimes even Wonder Woman needs a time out.  For me, a time out consists of a hot shower in the dark which is what prompted this post because while in the shower I realized that this was the 4th shower that I had today and it wasn’t even 8 pm yet!!!

So why so many showers you ask?  Well my shower (with it’s waterproofed notepad) is where I let off steam, clear the fog, and formulate action plans…I know more of a visual than you probably wanted!  But it’s true, all of us have something that we do ALONE that gets us away from the rest of the world when we really need it.

Think about it…do you run, walk, meditate, go to the gym, do yoga, and yes even eat or drink.

The whole point is that subconsciously you and your body know that it needs a time out but do you listen?  I learned the hard way that you have to listen to your inner self.  It’s all about being true to yourself so that you can be true to others.

So, tell me….where or what is your time out?

By Stacy Kinney

Your success in business depends on making sales. Without enough sales to maintain the business and your lifestyle all you really have is an expensive hobby. To maximize your sales potential, you want to focus on attracting people in your target market to your business.

What is a Target Market?

Your target market is the group of people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service. This group is often defined by a combination of demographics such as their gender, age, income and educational level. Although there often is overlap, target markets vary from business to business and product to product.

Once you have created a definition of your target market, you can use a variety of social media tools to help you connect with them. Here are a few Twitter applications that will assist you in identifying your target audience so you can market your product or service more effectively.

1 – Twitter Local: This is an Adobe Air application that allows you to filter the public Twitter streams based on location. So if you were looking for someone in your local area, you would simply enter your city and state and you will be presented with a stream of users who live close to you. This is great for businesses who want to market to their local customers.

2 – Twellow: This is a directory created by the producers of WebProNews that categorizes Twitter users by topic. So if your target market were people who have an interest in social media, you would click through their list of categories until you found the appropriate one. Clicking on it will bring up a list of all the people tweeting about that topic.

3 – Twollo: This is an application that lets you track conversations based on keywords. You can follow the discussion of specific topics related to your business. For example, as the owner of an online shopping portal, I look for people who shop on the internet or who may be looking for good deals online.

4 – Tweetbeep: This Twitter tool is similar to Twollo except you are sent email alerts every time someone mentions the keyword you entered. You can also use this to keep track of who is talking about you, your company and your products.

5 – WhoShouldIFollow: This tool analyzes who you are currently following and gives you a list of other users who are similar that you might like to follow. If your follow list is already full of people in your target market, this tool can help you reach more people in the same category.

Finding and connecting with your target market is a much easier task when you use social media tools to help you. By selling to people who are interested in your product or service, you’ll have an easier time building the profitable business you want.

Stacy Kinney is an Internet Network Marketing and Social Media coach. She teaches the most effective methods for lead generation on the internet today. For more tips and tools you can use to take you business to the next level of success visit:
http://RockYourBusinessOnline.com
Follow Stacy on Twitter.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stacy_Kinney
http://EzineArticles.com/?Identify-Target-Markets-With-These-Twitter-Tools&id=3789394

We are now well into the second quarter of our business year.  Now is a good time to take a quick look at the results of your existing marketing plan and determine whether or not your plan is effective.  There is still plenty of time left in the year to make the necessary adjustments and still have 2010 be your best business year ever.

For those of you who are not familiar with designing a marketing plan, here is Part 1 of a training that I recently gave on marketing plans:

Another amazing Monday is about to come to an end!  I hear people all the time hating Mondays like they were intentionally put in front of them to stop their progression in life.

Mondays are great…Why you ask? Because they set the momentum for the rest of your week.

Nobody finishes their projects on Mondays…their always starting new beginnings on Mondays!  A real professional looks at Mondays as a fresh start towards their goals and achievements.

Corporate America is known for packing their Mondays with staff meetings and change management announcements so that they can complete implementation by the end of the week.  Why is that?

Mondays were meant to be greeted with new energy and enthusiasm so that by Friday there is a sense of celebration in the air for all that has been accomplished.

I challenge you to make your next Monday the best day ever by implementing just a few quick and easy steps:

• Greet the day with enthusiasm and excitement
• If you haven’t already done so, prepare a list of what you want to accomplish for the week
• Tackle the hardest things on your list on Monday! (The rest of the week then becomes a breeze!)
• Keep the momentum going throughout the day by challenging yourself to completing just one more task on your list before calling it a day
• End your Monday by taking a few moments to celebrate your day’s accomplishments and setting up the list for tomorrow’s agenda
• Then shutdown the office and enjoy a fun and relaxing evening

Every Monday can be a new beginning, but only if you allow it to be so…If you greet Mondays with a heavy heart and sense of resentment, then that’s exactly the type of Mondays you will continue to have. Go and have a GREAT Monday!

As you know, I am always looking for new ways to make our business on the internet as simple as possible for people with all levels of computer experience. This weekend I found yet another great tool that is FREE and requires:

• No File downloads
• No Camera
• No technical expertise
• No extra disk storage

So if you are ready to use video to do screen casting…this is the product for you beginners!  Don’t forget to share what you have created as well as if you life the software…share it with a friend!