5 Reasons 2019 Was Transformative

(I have decided to take a queue from my colleague Kristin Neil and share some insights from the past year and my hopes for the future.)

Elizabeth, Where the heck have YOU been?

I know. My emails have been less frequent, my social media posting has been non-existent, and my networking has been less than usual. Well, I made some changes in 2019, not all voluntary, and I have lived to tell about them. Here’s the scoop:

1 | I am no good to anyone unhealthy.

I have had some health issues over the years, none I care to divulge in a business setting as they have no place there, but none the less, I had largely ignored them until 2019 when I met some lovely people who helped me see them differently and how I could change what was happening to me and make it BETTER! I wrote some personal posts about it on my FB page and I hope everyone will respect that privacy. That being said, I focused on my health and stress levels mostly. I was so stressed with getting clients and making things happen, I was off my rocker! (mental and hormonal!) Now that those things are falling into place and back into line, I am able to take some focus off of that while still maintaining a healthy lifestyle for me. How have you chosen to put your health first?

2 | Social Media is a time-sucking awful invention that should be thrown into the depths of the sea.

Yet, it is something that we all need to use for business. Sigh.

BUT there is a way to lessen the impact it has on your psyche and still serve its purpose as an awareness and lead generator. As you know I developed my Social Media in a Day formula to help lessen the burden of constant posting while trying to run a business. In my own business, I wondered what would happen if I took social platforms off my phone, and closed my accounts. In April of 2019, I closed all my accounts or made them dormant. Some closed forever. NOTHING HAPPENED. I noticed no drop in sales or the caliber of leads. No one was paying attention. I kept my FB group and decided to focus my time and attention there. TADA! It worked! I got real engagement and a growing audience. I also kept LinkedIn because who doesn’t love them some LinkedIn. I don’t find the platform as intrusive or addictive as I do Fb. How will you lessen the burden of Social Media on your life?

3 | I began planning a conference, then I began to plan another one.

I had this hairbrained idea that I could get Squarespace (the platform I currently like for Web Design) to become the next Wordpress (my former and sometimes side chick platform for Web Design) and have a conference of their own. (Insert basketball buzzer sound here.) Wrong. Not only were they not open to it, but I was also fighting an uphill battle with sponsors and staff. It just wasn’t working because it wasn’t time for it to work. (You know those things you so long to will into existence, but they just aren’t ready!?) So, I let it go. I then attended a conference put on by one person and she inspired me that I could do THAT instead (I already had the venue booked and paid for non-refundable!). So I set out on a journey to create a 2-day conference teaching my principles and ideas to a crowd of 200 in May of 2020. WE SHALL SEE!

AbsoluteMarketingSummit.com If you care to take a gander at my efforts thus far! Would you like to come and hang out with me in May?

4 | My money can go a lot further than I let it in the past

I have always been a very frugal yet generous person. If I can get a deal, I will hunt for it. If I need to spend a little extra to make someone happy, I will sacrifice somewhere else. But when you realize, you are living Paycheck to Paycheck on 6+ figures a year, that just doesn’t fly! In May of 2019 I read “Profit First” and it changed my business and my life. I have been enjoying greater returns and the BEST feeling in the world. ALL MY TAXES paid for 2020. Ready to go, untouched because I didn’t NEED them! Also, did I mention my husband went back to school and I was able to come up with $4k for tuition/books, etc while still maintaining the household and the business? That’s PF for you Ladies and Gentlemen! (Note this is not to brag, I truly believe in the system and that is why I now teach it!) How will you take control of your money story this year?

5 | Taking time to learn a new skill (Not Work Related)

I have been on the worship team at my church for about 1 year. It has been great. My faith is very important to me. I sing mostly and have wanted to be able to “accompany” myself if I ever wanted to do a special song or something. (Sometimes my guitar and bass players are not always in town!) I decided to teach myself the piano. I can play by ear, and I wanted to learn some proper songs. My hubby got me a piano/keyboard for Christmas and I was able to learn one of the songs I sing already! I am determined to add one to my repertoire as time goes by! By the time this posts, I will have performed it at church! I believe no matter how fulfilling our work is, our brains crave something else creative to work with. Don’t forget that you are human and have/had hobbies. Like Singing, Riding a bike, Hiking, Swimming, Painting, Drawing, Or whatever makes you happy!! What will you try and rekindle or pick up this year?

Thank you for reading this post and I hope you will comment below with your inspirations and ideas. Thank you for following my journey! I hope you will stick around for some awesome strategies and simplifications in the coming days!

How to Market Your Business Without Breaking the Bank

Depending on your industry, building a business from scratch can be an expensive venture. From start-up costs like office space and purchasing inventory, it can feel like there just isn’t enough money to spend on marketing. Fortunately, you can start marketing your business today without breaking the bank, and your business will be on its way to profit in no time.

Social Media

Having an active and positive social media presence is an easy (and free) way to market your business by showing off your personality and expertise to your potential customers. As your business grows, you also have the opportunity to incorporate paid advertising into your social media strategy.

Website

Websites like Wix or WordPress.com give you the opportunity to build a beautiful and simple website for free, but it is well worth the investment to host your own website and domain name with WordPress.org or Squarespace. While these kinds of sites give you the opportunity to hire a web designer when you have the money, they are also pretty intuitive and allow you to build your own simple website while you get your business off the ground.

Groups

Joining groups on Facebook and LinkedIn is a great way to make connections, position yourself as a thought leader in your industry, and make you (and your brand) visible to your clients or potential customers.

Be Brilliant

The absolute best way to market your business without spending any money is to be AMAZING at whatever it is that you do. If you provide a quality service or sell an amazing product, your clients and customers will tell their friends and family about your business and you’ll have a line out the door in no time.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed with the possibilities and costs of marketing, but these are just some of the easy ways that you can begin to market your business without breaking the bank. What is your favorite way to market your business?

How To Choose a Name for Your Blog

Sometimes the hardest part of starting a website or blog is picking a name. You don’t want to choose something you may not like in a few years, but everything that you do like seems to be taken. So how do you go about choosing a name for your blog, without wasting too much time?

Consider Your Own Name

If you have a super common name this may be difficult, but it’s always worth considering just naming your blog or business after yourself. You’re already stuck with your name for the rest of your life, so creating a website with the same name is a pretty safe bet. If you don’t like your name, or someone already has a blog or website with your name, it’s time to brainstorm.

Brainstorming

Think about the mood of your blog or brand. How do you want people to feel when they enter your site, what service or product will you provide? What are some words that describe that feeling or mood? Write the words down then look up synonyms and other similar meaning words and don’t stop until you’ve filled up an entire page. Then, start pairing words together and make a list of what sounds good. Think about why you like the combinations that you like and try to come up with a list of options that you feel positively about.

Check If Available

One of the worst feelings is coming up with a name only to realize that someone else already has the website. My favorite place to check domain availability is namechk.com. Not only does it tell you if someone owns the domain, it also scans Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and basically every other social media platform to see if your name is being used as a username. Work your way down your list of name options and hope that at least one is available. If you strike out, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and brainstorm all over again.

Picking a name is just one facet of starting a new business but it can often be the most daunting. How did you name your business?

Are YOU Ready to Create an E-Course?

Creating an e-course is often touted as an easy way to create passive income - but it’s not as simple as you may think. Below are some things to consider as you try to decide if you’re ready to create your own e-course.

You should create an e-course if… you have more knowledge to share than you do time to help people, so a course gives you the opportunity to help as many people as possible within your own capabilities.

Not if… you know a little bit about a topic but you’re looking for a quick buck.

There is NOTHING worse than paying money for something, only to have it under deliver later on. That’s why if you create a course, you had better make sure it is chock full of information for your students to learn from. The best way to do this is to pick something you’re passionate about - no matter how niche it is - and put your energy into creating the best course possible for that topic. It may seem more lucrative to pick a popular course topic and try to recreate what other successful bloggers have done, but you will find a lot more success - and satisfaction - when you create a course that is meaningful to you.

You should create an e-course if… you’re SUPER passionate about your topic and you want to reach others who are passionate about your topic too.

Not if… you heard another blogger made a course that earned them thousands of dollars, so you want to imitate that course to make a lot of money.

Creating a course has the potential to be a lucrative moneymaking channel for your business, but if you’re in it for the wrong reasons, your audience will be able to tell. Before deciding to launch a course, it is important to isolate a topic that you are passionate and knowledgeable about and target your course to others who seek out the information that you provide. If you simply create a course that everyone else is creating because you’ve seen others make money doing it, you won’t be successful because your potential customers will be able to tell that you are not passionate about the subject, you are simply using them for money.

You should create an e-course if… you understand or are willing to learn how to successfully pique interest and hype up a launch.

Not if… you think courses are a set it and forget it way to massive passive income.

Creating an e-course is a lot of work. It’s easy to get lost in the glittery sparkliness of “create it once then sell it over and over” that we hear with passive income, but the process of creating an e-course is time-consuming, and it doesn’t stop there. Building up hype, finding customers, and launching your course is an involved process that may need to be repeated over time, so if your plan is to create a course then “set it and forget it” creating a course may not be right for you.

In the end, only you can decide if you are ready to create and launch a course, but before you do, it’s important to ask yourself if you have the passion, knowledge, and drive to create the best possible course that you can.

Simplify Your Housework Routine

Everybody works differently, so there’s no universal trick to make housework a breeze. There are, however, three different methods that you can apply to your housework routine to make it more manageable for your cleaning style, your schedule, and your family.

Systemize

The biggest way that housework gets out of hand is if you don’t know what you need to do to get it under control. When your house is a disaster it can be easy to do nothing instead of trying to prioritize vacuuming, laundry, and dishes. To combat this, you need to come up with a system. Make a list of all the tasks required to keep your house clean and assign one task to each day (or each member of your household if you want to offload some work). Make sure to keep up with each task each week and your hours long weekend cleanup can take up as little time as 10-15 minutes a day.

Simpler Steps

Sometimes even the most sophisticated system just takes too much time. Take a look at your trickiest household tasks and think of how they can be sped up to be more manageable. Have a lot of carpets? Look into a Roomba or other robot vacuum to take your day of vacuuming down to the press of a button. Do you do a lot of laundry? Buy a laundry basket for lights, darks, sheets, and towels so you can skip the sorting. Any shortcut that you can come up with to reduce the time it takes to complete a task can help you simplify your weekly routine.

Spread. It. Out.

It can be tempting to save all of your housework for a Saturday marathon cleaning session but you work hard all week, you deserve a weekend as much as anybody else. Instead of batch cleaning your entire home, give yourself 15 minutes a night to do a clean sweep of your house, then enjoy your weekend - chore free.

These are just three ways that you can try to simplify your housework routine. What are some tips and tricks that you use?

How To Maximize Your Blog Content

There’s so much content floating around on the internet that sometimes it can be easy to forget - blog posts take a lot of work. The time it takes to research, draft, edit, and format your blog posts for SEO can really add up, which is why it’s important to remember the other places and ways you can use your blog content.

Email Automation

Whether you have your list sign up for e-blasts whenever you write a new post, or you incorporate old blog post content into your monthly newsletter, email is a powerful tool for getting more eyes on the blog posts you’ve worked so hard to create. From inserting teaser snippets to linking entire posts, your emails can drive a lot of traffic to older, “less loved” blog posts.

Evergreen Content

Unless every single post you create is event specific, it’s likely that many of your blog posts are relevant year round. Periodic roundup posts or social media shares are a great way to bring attention back to older posts that may have gotten lost in the shuffle

Social Media Posts

Do you ever write a line for a blog post and think “Man I’m good” - turn it into a tweetable quote! https://clicktotweet.com/ this, in conjunction with sharing old posts through social media and your email list, gets your readers to do your marketing for you by quoting your posts on twitter and driving traffic to your blog - long after the original post was written.

These are just three of the many ways that repurposed blog content can help you bring in more traffic and get clients. How do you repurpose your blog content?

Wordpress 101 PART 1 & 2

I had the privilege of speaking at WORDCAMP DAYTON 2019 this winter. It was a blast and I hope my Wordpress 101 Tutorial helps you with your site!

Here is my 2.25 hr WORDPRESS Dashboard Tutorial

Part I

Part II

3 Kinds of Graphics to Take Your Blog to the Next Level

We all know the feeling of entering a website and just being blown away by how amazing it is. From cohesive photos and branding to stylized social media images and infographics, a good website just screams “I know what I’m doing when it comes to my business”. Instead of being discouraged or envious, take your web graphics into your own hands with these three kinds of graphics that are sure to take your blog to the next level.

Photos and Stock

Having a cohesive set of photos throughout your website and social media presence presents a crisp and collected image to your audience and potential clients. There are great resources for free and paid stock images, but you also have the option to hire a photographer and “batch shoot” your own photos. This is especially helpful if you want to be in the photos and can be well worth the investment as it gives you a large bank of photos to choose from for your website, social media, and other promotions and advertisements. If you don’t have the money to hire a photographer, a patient friend and an iphone with good lighting can also provide you with an excellent bank of photos to choose from.

Social Campaigns

In addition to the actual photos featured on your website and social media, there are plenty of opportunities to include graphics in your blog or on social media. Branded images for Pinterest, facebook, and instagram to promote blog posts, sales, and other content can help your audience recognize your content more easily and pick it out from the crowd.

Infographics

Infographics take a chunk of information and display it using a combination of images and words to create a highly shareable, visually engaging piece of content. When executed properly, infographics communicate information in a way that is easily digestible and looks very professional. Infographics do especially well on platforms like Pinterest and Twitter, because they are easy to understand and share.

What’s your favorite kind of graphic to work on?

6 Ways to Include Others In Your Content Creation

Working with others to create quality content is sometimes a challenge, but it’s an amazing way to give your readers access to a new perspective and introduce a fresh voice to your blog. Below are my six favorite ways to work with others to create amazing content.

1. Guest posts

Guest posts are a great way to a. Hand your content over to someone else for the week and b. Introduce your audience to another valuable person in your industry. You can find guest posters by offering to collaborate with someone else in your industry, or simply making it known that you are looking for guest posters.

2. Collaborative content

Collaborative content can really be anything that two or more people work on together. From writing an alternatingly hosted blog series to working together on an e-book or course, the opportunities for creating collaborative content are endless.

3. Quotes

Quotes are a great way to draw attention to others in your content - especially on social media. Whip up a quick graphic in Canva (and be sure to tag whoever you’ve quoted) and share away!

4. Podcasts

Podcasts are an amazing way to work with others in industries similar to your own. Whether you partner up with another business owner to start a podcast together or incorporate a series of interviews into your podcasting schedule. Podcasts bring together people from all corners of the internet to help educate and share valuable business information.

5. Interviews

Interviewing others in your industry or industries similar to your own is a great way to make connections and help your audience learn about other valuable resources in your niche. Interviews can be hosted within a podcast, presented in a blog post, or even as a series of Q&As on social media!

6. Conferences

Conferences are a great place to meet others in your industry to collaborate with, as well as create content in the moment because you are all together, but this barely scratches the surface of the potential for conferences and collaboration in your business. For more ways to find collaborative opportunities at conferences, check out (Elizabeth’s Book Title Here) and you’ll be on your way to collaborative content in no time.

These are just a few of the many ways that you can work with others to create killer content for your website and blog. What are your favorite ways to collaborate?

Why You Need to Shake Up Your Inbound Marketing Strategy

When you think about your marketing strategy, you’ve probably checked all of the boxes. You have a cool website, your social media game is on point, and you have an awesome opt-in that is getting people subscribed to your email list. But what about your inbound marketing strategy? You may be doing all of these things, but how are you focusing your energy towards getting people to click through to your site and actually make use of all that you have to offer

Social media

You know all about it. Optimal posting times, the appropriate text-to-image-ratio to do well on Facebook. But do you have a call to action? Is your copy compelling and making viewers feel like they HAVE to click through to your website to make the most out of their ad viewing experience? It’s one thing to understand the nitty-gritty of when to post on social media, but are you thinking as strategically about your call to action?

What to do: Go over your social media strategy for the next few weeks and ask yourself: Why am I posting this? What value is my viewer going to get from this information and how is that going to translate into a sale? Whether that’s cute pictures of your dog with a “click through for more cute puppy pics” or an inspirational quote with a call to action on your website, you can greatly improve your inbound marketing strategy by simply being more intentional with what you post on social media - rather than what time it’s posted.  

Email

You’ve checked all the boxes. You’ve completed all the steps. You’ve built up an email list you’re so gosh darn proud of… now what? Your list is worthless if you don’t know what to do with it.

What to do: be consistent - but not overwhelming. Pick an email frequency that you can handle, whether it’s weekly, biweekly, or monthly, and send your list regular emails that are chock full of value, information, and temptation to click through to your site and make a purchase or schedule a consultation.

Website

While the goal of inbound marketing is to bring people to your site, the challenge doesn’t end there. If you’ve done everything you can to bring people to your site but the sales just aren’t happening, it’s time to take a closer look at your website to decide if it’s serving you as best it can

What to do: have a friend or family member who isn’t familiar with your business go through your website and write down any questions or complications that they encounter. Where do they go from your home page? What questions do they have when they look at your products or services? Your website may be clear to you because you are familiar with your business, but if site visitors don’t get what you’re trying to project, no amount of inbound marketing can save you.

When you’re struggling with sales, the first place to look is your inbound marketing strategy to make sure you are getting the traffic that you need to convert. Shaking up your inbound marketing strategy is helpful for improving reach and site visits, but if you still aren’t seeing results, you need to step back and look at the big picture.