The recent presidential debates illustrated the example of how Twitter was being used to see what were the most influential topics and interest of the millions of people viewing.

They definitely have value and a place in what and how we use these tools to communicate, describe our business and who we are.

One that doesn’t get the notice as much is Linked In. If you’re a business owner Linked In needs to be your new best friend if it’s not already.

Linked In goes way beyond just connections. When used effectively, you can literally take your business to a higher level with new relationships, new clients, referral business and introductions that you may have previously thought impossible.

Plus the added benefit of joining Linked In groups. A powerful added benefit that will get you noticed by the market your business lives in as well as again gaining new clients and forging the types of relationships you need.

Linked In groups also can help with challenges in your business and getting help with answers from professionals that are willing to assist.

Going to the Group Directory and enter a search term that relates to what you do or what you are looking for. You can refine your search by using the check boxes on the left.

This is just a small sample of the power of Linked In. To learn more how Linked In can benefit you and your business feel free to contact me.

Make Success Happen,

Dale Stefancic

As Google changes, we must at least be aware of the changes. The online world everyday becomes more of our world as well.

Technology without a doubt is guiding how we buy, pay and look for the deals even with offline companies and stores.

Over the next few months, Google’s search engine will begin spitting out more than a list of blue Web links. It will also present more facts and direct answers to queries at the top of the search-results page.

The changes to search are among the biggest in the company’s history and could affect millions of websites that rely on Google’s current page-ranking results. At the same time, they could give Google more ways to serve up advertisements.

Google isn’t replacing its current keyword-search system, which determines the importance of a website based on the words it contains, how often other sites link to it, and dozens of other measures. Rather, the company is aiming to provide more relevant results by incorporating technology called “semantic search,” which refers to the process of understanding the actual meaning of words.

Amit Singhal, a top Google search executive, said in a recent interview that the search engine will better match search queries with a database containing hundreds of millions of “entities”—people, places and things—which the company has quietly amassed in the past two years. Semantic search can help associate different words with one another, such as a company (Google) with its founders ( Larry Page and Sergey Brin).

Google search will look more like “how humans understand the world,” Mr. Singhal said, noting that for many searches today, “we cross our fingers and hope there’s a Web page out there with the answer.” Some major changes will show up in the coming months, people familiar with the initiative said, but Mr. Singhal said Google is undergoing a years-long process to enter the “next generation of search.”

Under the shift, people who search for “Lake Erie” will see key “attributes” that the search engine knows about the lake, such as its location, altitude, average temperature or  content. In contrast, those who search for “Lake Erie” today would get only links to the lake’s visitor bureau website, its dedicated page on Wikipedia.com, and a link to a relevant map.

For a more complex question such as, “What are the largest lakes, Google might provide the answer instead of just links to other sites.

Make Success Happen,

Dale Stefancic

As we continually strive to understand our markets and our potential customers we need to identify with  the mindset of our customers . How are they learning about us as a company or our products and services. The behaviors of  customers is an ever changing landscape.

Are you positioned into the places the consumers are gathering information. These are key questions you must have the right answers to in order to stay on the winning side of business.

It takes various types of stimulus to put your business in front of buyers. More common types refer to TV, radio. Newspapers, magazines etc.

Today with so much technology the new level of branding, marketing in creating that awareness is becoming larger. This relates to more than just having the website presence, Facebook or Twitter.

Here is a great resource to get a better grasp on what is taking place.

Go to: http://www.zeromomentoftruth.com

Make Success Happen,

Dale Stefancic

First let’s talk about traffic you own.  This is the traffic from your email list, Facebook, blogs etc. and it is the best traffic to own. The goal is to convert all traffic into traffic that you own.

The reason is simple. Once you own the traffic, you can send a sales letter, sent people to your blog, or tell them about your new product or service.

Owning traffic is one of the most powerful items you can have doing online or offline marketing. Let’s take an example. Your list is 1000 people that you can contact information for. You have just released a new product that you will sell for $29.95. You email your list and get a 5% response to buy. That’s 50 sales @ $29.95 = $1,497.50. This is the power of your list and having control and owning it.

Second is traffic you control. Almost as good. You still have the ability to send the traffic where you want.  For example if you are running an ad and someone clicks on the link you have placed in the ad. You can send them to a website, blog etc. and control where that person is directed.

Anytime you run an ad or past out a flyer at an event. Send those people to a squeeze page and turn that into traffic you now control.

Thirdly is traffic you do not own or control. This traffic includes search engine, blogs, and press releases. Your site or squeeze page is still a part of these types of exposure.

By using targeted keywords in your blog you will cause that page to be listed when someone does a search. Then people can go to your squeeze page or website.

These types of traffic will build your list provided you have something of value or an irritable offer on your site, blog or squeeze page for people to give you their information.

So even the traffic you do not control at first can be traffic you do control. Keep building your list. The leverage and financial wellbeing is amazing.

Make success happen,

Dale Stefancic

These are some sites where you have the opportunity to make income.

One of her best sources is SocialSpark.

They’re a network that acts as a go-between for Brands and Bloggers. You simply sign up and submit your blog(s), and companies that are looking for reviews and exposure will choose relevant niche blogs for sponsored blog post opportunities.

Once you sign up for SocialSpark, be sure to sign up for the ad network as well. You’ll get offers and leads by email, but you can also go into your account and browse the Marketplace for opportunities.

AND you can express interest in specific Brands (go to Account > Brands).

Other Networks she Work’s With…

While SocialSpark is one of her favorites, there are other networks.  BlogFrog,Sponsored Reviews, and Escalate Network.

Enjoy these,

Dale Stefancic

Information technology is important. It is apparent that technology does not have to be complex or costly to be effective. Technology is probably the most important enabler for change and tracking results that a company can introduce.

This is a very big topic so I am going to ask you a few questions.

Does your company have a plan on how to use technology to grow sales?

Does you company have a plan on how to use technology as a competitive weapon?

If not you are missing some great opportunities.

Information technology should be an asset to a business and support the business through a clear definition of the role technology will play in the business. This is done in the business plan.

Implementing a full technology strategy can have a benefit that cascades throughout the organization.

Let’s talk a minute and discuss how to create and implement an information technology strategy. The approach to information technology must first be addressed as part of the business plan. It must ask and address the role technology will play in the business. From an information technology perspective there are only three kinds of projects:

• Those necessary to stay in business.
• Those necessary to stay even with your competition.
• Those that give you a strategic advantage.

For our discussion we will focus on the third type of projects: projects that give you a strategic or competitive advantage.

But first let me define strategic and competitive advantage. A strategic advantage can be thought of as redefining or changing how the game is played. For example, Amazon changed the rules for bookstores. Books could now be purchased on-line and shipped to your door very quickly and inexpensively. Amazon further redefined the rules by implementing One Click. One Click is the way Amazon allows any product to be purchased with just the click of one button.

A competitive advantage raises the bar in a specific market or industry. For example, if a manufacturer creates an innovation that allows a product to be produced 20% less than the industry average, the rules haven’t changed but the bar has been raised to a whole new level. Another definition of a competitive advantage could be higher quality, lower cost, speed to market, or improved customer service.

What kinds of problems are suitable and can be addressed by the effective use of information technology? This is a broad question and information technology (IT) can be used in many markets, on many kinds of applications and on many different kinds of problems. The challenges generally fall into the following categories:

• Manufacturing & High Tech Firms
• Deregulated companies
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Companies facing financial crisis
• Companies under heavy end user demand
• Highly competitive service industries

IT does not typically generate value directly, unless you are a technology driven company committed to using technology to change the rules. IT adds values by enabling the productive and effective use of existing business processes.

If you have an immediate opportunity and want a way to appraise the opportunity within the organization, the first step in the process is to identify the opportunities and/or threats being felt. Once the opportunities/threats are identified take the following action: Prioritize the opportunities/threats based on impact to the business plan, if a plan exists, otherwise assess the impact to the business overall.

• Determine the seriousness of the threat or the impact of the opportunity.
• Make a decision about the urgency of the threat or the potential of the opportunity.
• Perform problem analysis to validate seriousness, urgency and impact.

Take some time to see if there are any opportunities in your organization where IT can be used to reduce cost or improve productivity. Do your homework and find the right partners and trust their judgment.

We can apply technology in a more mundane environment that provides the same kind of competitive environment for small business. Many small businesses do not have a system that tracks leads and automates the communication between the company and its many customers, clients, and contact. We think of this tracking as part of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. There are many variants of CRM or marketed as CRM: Constant Contact, High Rise, and Zoho to name a few. I use AddressTwo (http://addresstwo.com) it comes with a 14 day free trial. AddressTwo is easy to use and fully integrates contacts, calendar, email marketing, task management and follow up with post card marketing to simplify my life. I consider this application to be a competitive advantage for me in my business.

Ask yourself what technologies can you use in your business to increase your productivity (when you use it) and reduce your cost. Ask yourself how this technology will grow sales, increase revenues and shorten the sales process. The key to a good technology purchase is knowing what you want to accomplish (we are back to the business plan) and how technology will help us achieve our goal. Ask yourself how technology will help you:

• Stay in business

• Compete effectively with your competition.
• Provide you a strategic advantage over your competition

When you evaluate your technologies purchases against those three criteria it is hard to make a bad technology investment.

Today as business owners we have to constantly evaluate our processes and identify the best practice to stay ahead of not only our competition but the current trends in your marketplace.

Technology allows us to do this and use it as a tremendous tool to make the best and most practical use of our time. As the old saying goes ,time is money.

Make Success Happen!

Dale Stefancic

Today it’s not only challenging to be in business but the question of how do you get more business from the thousands of new companies starting up every day.

With many people losing their jobs or not being able to find new employment, many of these people are electing to start their own businesses.

For many small business owners this presents the challenge of increasing competition and giving more consumers more choices in selections in an ever growing marketplace.

So that brings us to the question of how do we stand out from the competition as well as how can we separate our businesses  from our fellow competitors.

Perhaps you hope to develop a product or service that has not been seen before or may be design a brand with a new expression and distinct values. Perhaps you may even be aiming to be extremely unique in your marketplace.

In reality there a few ideas and products that are actually unique.  More often new products and services solve the same problems or fulfill the same needs as others, but in a slightly different way or with a slightly different twist.

The good news is that an idea does not have to be unique or completely new to the marketplace to be a good business idea.  It is enough for business to be distinctive or just to be better than the competition at what it currently does.

There’s some good ways to accomplish being aware of your competition and what your competitors are doing to address the needs and the value they bring with  products and services as well as price points into the market you serve.

Take a look at the competition

The first activity to being better than the competition is to find out what the competition is doing while keeping informed and doing some simple research.  What you basically want to know is what products are competitors are selling to which consumer  groups and the price of their products and services.  You must also relate to any special characteristics if any and finally, your research should include a look at how others in the market communicate and market  their business.

So how does one do this.

One of the easiest ways I know is it’s as simple as going to Google.  Google will provide you with about as much information as you’ll need about  your competition and finding out how they market, advertise, if they have a website presence, if they have a blog, almost anything you can think of.

The Internet has revolutionized many aspects of having a business in the way that you as a small business owner can gather the information about your competition.

In the past it took  a greater effort to identify the other players in your field or to simply get a sales brochure from the top competitors.  Today, this information is available to us the minute we look for it.

For example, with Google alerts,  which is a free service, it can set up keywords or keyword phrases, that pertain to your specific product or service in your market, and the then  receive  emails when there is news of a product or service from any of  your competitors.

The Internet, however, is not the only source of information to keep up on the awareness in  your marketplace and what your competitors are doing to bring new products or services as well as pricing strategies to capture consumer attention.  Other places may include magazines, professional papers or just local advertisements where other businesses that are similar products for services are addressing the needs and competing for the customer’s dollar.

The important thing is to be a constant student of the game.

How can you be better than the competition.

Knowing what to look for about the market and the customer.  You can take some steps towards becoming better than your competitors.  This entails making a systematic comparison of your own company in the competitors, we look at all the various aspects of your product in or service as well as your company and begin to  make the comparisons.

One of the  simplest ways to do this is to make a chart identifying five key areas  of your business.

1). Your product design or what your service  entails. 2). The buyers experience.  This one is huge and that’s one we talked about frequently.  If you’re not serving your customers,identifying  why they buy from you, what they like most about your product or service, if their experience with your company is positive and what improvements you may make then you’re missing a huge component.  .3). Customer relations.  The relationships and  behaviors you have with your   customers is more than just when they walk in your store or they call you on the phone about  the next order or problem they may be having.  You need to consistently be engaged with all of your customers on somewhat of a regular basis whether they are buying from you at the present time or not.  This can be as simple as making service calls to ensure customer satisfaction or simply sending out a postcard of thanks or reduction of price on their next order of business with your company.  This component alone is becoming more critical as competition in your marketplace becomes fierce.  4).  Brand value and 5).  Price.

In these areas  you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of your company in relationship with two key competitors and identify where your strengths as well as your weaknesses may lie and implement strategies tuned to continually increase on your strengths as well as continually identifying ways to work on the weaknesses of your company.

Setting  yourself apart from the competition can be a challenging way to think in that  are certain risks as well as rewards when moving forward on this very unique idea.  It takes a a lot of resources to be the best of all times, while in the attempt to be the cheapest one might end up with you being the one who makes the least amount of money.

So don’t let price be a key indicator when separating yourself from the competition.

A key strategy in setting yourself apart is make your design,  your products,  and your company in a way that positions you outside the common notions of how a company acts in that particular industry.

One way to do this is to consider whether you can create a whole new market by going beyond the traditional limits of your industry, and maybe become a part of several small industries at the same time.

A few examples to illustrate are, the restaurant that becomes a school for chefs, the fitness center that offers a dietary and nutritional classes in the evening or which commonly we see in bookstores that offers  pastries and Starbucks coffee.

You’ve added value to your customers and identified other markets which you now are part of.  Customers coming  into your store will identify with this and in many cases take advantage of these products or services versus  going outside your company.

To make your company stand out from the competition can be at first challenging. If you start to map the process and ideas of how you can stand out with your company, this will only become easier and provide additional income and resources for your customers to buy more as well as more often from you,

But so let’s start the process by first making a list of your competition or competitive products. Secondly do some research on the competitors’ products and compare them to your own and lastly deciding which areas you want to be like the competitors and which areas you want to stand out.

Remember every day is a changing marketplace, and you, your business, and your products or services need to continually change and evolve with it.

Make It Happen,

Dale Stefancic

It’s 2012 and another new year. What will 2012 bring for you and your business?

I’m sure many small business owners are asking or have already gone through their sales analysis and resolutions for their new  year goals for the coming business year.

Many times already I’ve heard “ I hope things are better this year” or the question “ you think the economy’s going to get better?”

Well, we all know things are tough out there and I doubt much will change in a presidential election year.  So I guess it’s up to all of us as small business owners to do what is a favorite phase of mine , “make it happen”.

I’m sure many of us last year attended business functions such as chamber meetings, trade shows, seminars, and  heard  some excellent talks on some great business topics. Maybe some of us read some good books or listened to some educational CDs.  These are always excellent things to do but here’s the payoff.

How many of us actually took the step of implementation on what they learned and even more importantly took the step of implementation through to the end.  Without implementation it’s like buying a new book that sits on the shelf in your office you never read.  It serves no purpose and has no value to your business.

So many business owners are looking for the quick and easy, jumping to the next shiny object in the room.  Yes, business owners are wearing many hats, you’re overwhelmed, but many times being overwhelmed is the result of little or no planning, having nothing very well organized, or a proper business plan going into the new year.

But here are some simple questions to ask yourself on whether 2012 will be extremely profitable and a much easier year to achieve success, or just another year of the same.

1.  Do you plan your business agenda on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule?

2.  Do you measure what activity in your business is profitable so you can focus on that activity or eliminate completely if it is not.  If you don’t measure it,  you cannot improve on it.

3.  Do you know what your daily, weekly or monthly financials are? Your break- even point.

4.  Do you have processes in place that are easy, duplicatable and provide a clear and understandable path to successful outcomes and profits.

The correct answers to these questions can only improve your bottom line, add time to your day, and provide clarity on what works and what does not work in your business.

Make 2012 your year!

Dale Stefancic

You can be the difference this year and I have put together a list of some of the things to pay attention to and use to your advantage.

1.  The location, location, location.

The location of your marketing message is huge today.  With location based marketing  such as social networks like Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter,  you need to make sure your message is where your potential customers are looking for value in the marketplace.  Foursquare alone pasted ten million users in 2011 and is growing at one million users a month.

2.  Adding personality to your marketing message.

Today it’s more than just advertising your product or service.  Savvy marketers are adding photos, audio and video  to personalize their marketing message. Your marketing  message must become  more human.  Adding video and voice to advertising messages adds the human touch prospects are attracted to.

3.  Design your marketing message for multiple devices.

Smart phone sales recently passed PC sales and the gap is growing. Tablet sales are predicted to nearly double and reach over 100,000,000 users in 2012.  With smart phone technology there could be as many as 25 billion mobile downloads by the year 2015. Make sure your marketing fits all. Emails, web site pages, blogs, and videos need multiple functionality with the viewing consumer.

4. Knowing your customers behaviors

Having a system in place that tracts customer activity, when your customers buy, and how frequently will be critical to increasing sales.  This allows you to measure when to market, how often and to use specials to re-activate customers who have stopped buying or buying less frequently.

So whether your  marketing programs had been adapting to recent changes  quickly or a slower pace. 2012 brings new opportunities for the ambitions marketer to engage their customers and prospects.  If you’re feeling overwhelmed that’s OK.  The important part is to get started in your marketing efforts and see them  through to he the end and then evaluate if they have significant return on your investment of  time and money.

With all the new marketing going on today in the marketplace, it  boils down to knowing where your customers congregate and look for information, and how you will get your marketing message in front of those consumers with extreme value that will attract them to your business.

In conclusion we ask you to take our challenge.  Want if you can get 100 new customers in 100 days.

To find out how, please visit www.GetAmazingMarketing.com  and sign up to watch a FREE 60 minute webinar.  Think what that will do for your business!!!

Make It Happen,

Dale Stefancic

              First lets set the new year for what we must be clear on and decide what your purpose is and if

you  even have purpose. I think you need to truly ask yourself some qualifying questions to

sure you are clear on what your purpose actually is.  If you are not, you will have much

internal conflicts with the actions you are taking, and what your thoughts are.

It’s no wonder so many have trouble achieving their goals.  So first let us get crystal clear on

Is important to us and what our purpose really is.

Two things to keep in mind went going through this process. Is what I am doing moving me closer

To my goals or isn’t it. If is not, simple quit doing it.  So lets get into some of the simple things you

Can do.  

Know what you need to do on a daily basis.

As small business owners we wear a lot of hats, but lets break what we need to do daily with good scheduling and being most productive with our time. The difference here being is productive, not just busy.

Have a Deadline

Having a deadline is extremely important.  This also reinforces the daily activity.  Looking at your                 daily activity shows you your deadline as your view your schedule.

Create Accountability

Ask a or co-worker or friend to help you stay on point. Getting into a small business group where like minded people engage in discussion can provide a huge benefit.

Break Big Goals into Smaller tasks

At times you can break down a large goal into a more manageable task and still have success with the end result. Plus you will not feel overwhelmed in the process.

Take a Break

The time comes went you just have to take a break and go do something fun that you enjoy and return with a fresh mind to move forward.

Reward Yourself

When you have a break through or have made the goal, go have a celebration. Feel good about what you have accomplished.

Merry Christmas and Happy and Successful New Year!!

Dale