This is a quick little tackle it Tuesday so that you can get right to work..

“Clean Up Your Inbox”

Set aside a day (yes, I said a day) to thoroughly go through your email inbox with a fine tooth comb.. what needs to be dealt with, deal with it.. If the task at hand (in the email) needs more than a reply back, transfer it onto a piece of paper so that you can do that task later, and then move onto the next email.

Check out your deleteds and sent items.. if you’re like me you keep a LOT (Hey! Sometimes I need those messages from 2001 ok?!) Anything that is not from 2009 till now, DELETE it.. it’s ok! You have my permission…

Once you’ve done that, you will feel much much better about opening up your inbox – I PROMISE!!!

Till tomorrow

A

Happy Thursday!
I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s Tip sheet on Turning Admin Nightmares Into A Dream! I have to say that I am sorry – I forgot to include the download link – so here it is!

Our Retweets continued – putting tons more entries into the prize pot!
Make sure you join us on Twitter and Retweet this post for your entry to win one of our great prizes!

So far, our Small Biz Week Prizes include:

• A $265 Small business Tax Package from Hilary McDonald Accounting
• A Virtual Office Subscription from 5050Biz
• The Couponizer coupon system
• New York Times best seller “One Year to an Organized Work Life” from the author herself Regina Leeds
• Limited edition T-shirts from RIPT Apparel
• The book 101 Media and Marketing Tips for the Sole Proprietor from Nanette Miner, a.k.a. The Training Doctor
• “How to Do Space Age Work with a Stone Age Brain: using your brain style for small business success with less stress” from Eve Abbott, Organizer Extraordinaire
• .. more prizes arriving daily!!

Every time you Retweet this post you’ll receive one entry to win a prize!
Prizes will be given out tomorrow so keep the Retweets coming!

Please accept my apologies in advance as you will be receiving 1post a day (only for this week), but I know you will not be disappointed with the content!

Check out today’s article to learn about proven tips, must haves and Must NOT do’s for Marketing Your Biz!!

Less Than $500 in the Bank? MARKET Your Biz!!

Many Business owners have been conditioned to believe it takes tons of money to successfully market a business! The time has come to be “re-conditioned” – to KNOW that you don’t need money! We’ve rounded up some of the best Proven Tactics and Must-Haves for a Cheap Campaign as well as pointed out what NOT to do when marketing your business! Grab a pen, a pad of paper and get set to market!

Proven Marketing Tactics

Make Google Do the Work
Take “Google Alerts” out for your name and company and also on “keywords” that target your marketing niche. I have Google Alerts on “kindergarten” and “Let’s Get Ready for School”. Everyday Google sends me a list of free leads that tag all the stories and blogs that include my key word(s). Those leads are for journalist and bloggers who tell you amazing details – like a school just received 1 million dollars for their early education program!
Stacey Kannenberg, Cedar Valley Publishing, www.cedarvalleypublishing.com
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Network
Creating relationships with other small businesses will fuel you forward. Think of companies or products your clients might also be interested in and develop relationships with those business owners. Offer coupons to their customers or a referral bonus to the business.
Laurie Davis, Founder, eFlirt – www.eFlirtExpert.com
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Give ‘Em Something for Free
Offering a free resource related to your business, such as an e-book that guides your prospective customers through a particularly difficult part of the purchasing process, can be a way to attract attention within your industry. Such an approach does require you to spend a little time promoting that resource (as well as creating it), but the monetary cost is negligible – most business owners know more than enough about their businesses to effectively educate clients.
Thursday R. Bram – www.thursdaybram.com
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Enter a Contest
I entered every entrepreneur contest I was old enough for and some that I wasn’t. At age 11, I wanted to enter the Young Entrepreneurs of America contest but the minimum age was 16. I entered anyway and in my entry essay explained why I thought they should consider me. I was told the judges were so impressed with my creativity that they created a new category for kids under 16 and I was the first recipient to win.
Jason O’Neill, Creator, Pencil Bugs Plus, Forbes Top 10 – www.pencilbugs.com
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Establish Yourself as an Expert
Answer questions on appropriate online forums and groups (such as LinkedIn, MarketingProfs, etc). Being helpful establishes you as an expert and keeps you top of mind when members of the forum have a problem you can solve
Jodi Kaplan, Principal, KaplanCopy – http://www.kaplancopy.com
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Pick Up the Phone
I know its old fashion but a new start up cannot be afraid of using the phone. Creating a script, a sales letter and looking up suspects online doesn’t cost anything. Instead of waiting for social media (blogging, tweeting, answering questions online) to get results take a proactive approach and this will result in uncovering qualified contacts.
With the $500 spend it on creating a website that reinforces the message that is being said during the phone call.
Ceri Ruenheck, It’s Your Call – www.itsyourcall.com
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Beg, Borrow & Sell
Borrowing someone else’s audience is all about finding a win-win. For example, I wanted to produce seminars but with no list, no facility and no built-in audience, it would be expensive and difficult to get started. Instead, I joint ventured with local organizations to put on seminars for their audiences. Leisure Learning Unlimited hosts a variety of classes on everything from computers to dance to goat farming (Really!). Getting my courses into their catalogues meant that they handled the marketing, registrations and other administrative tasks, while I could just show up to speak.
Cathy Stucker, The Idea Lady – http://IdeaLady.com
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Show It Off
One of the best ways to market start-up small business on the cheap is by attending live networking events—and paying for a display table. The key is to commit to attending at least 2 per month, and making sure you have some helpful, fun or interesting freebies on your table for people to take away. This works whether you’re selling products or services. When I launched my last business as a small business marketing copywriter I did it exactly this way. Even though I was selling a service, I had writing samples, one-page tips sheets people take-aways, a promo letter explaining my services and business cards. Together these made a nice little display. And within 6 months I was very busy with new clients.
Stacy Karacostas, Practical Marketing Expert, Success Stream – www.success-stream.com
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Put It On The Map
Set up a profile in the Local Business Listings on Google Maps, Yahoo Local and Bing Local. It’s free, it doesn’t take too long and will give them a presence in the Local search results for the area in which they do business. It will also serve as a mini website where they can give details about their business, themselves and their products and services, offer coupons, post photos and videos and get reviews.
Mary Bowling – http://www.seoverflow.com
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Pay For It
Offer finder’s fees/commissions to people that refer you business.
John Schulte, President and Chairman, National Mail Order Association (NMOA) – http://www.nmoa.org
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Have an Open House
If you are lucky enough to have a retail location use it to your marketing advantage. Invite speakers, have distributors give product demonstrations. Then serve tea or wine & cheese and invite your customers & prospects. Tell them to bring a friend. You’d be surprised how well this can work for you.
Randye Spina, Chief Solutions Officer, Affordable Marketing Solutions LLC – www.myaffordablemarketing.com
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Get Media Coverage
Belong to all the free sites for media leads: www.helpareporter.com; www.pitchrate.com; and http://www.reporterssource.com to name a few. I have been interviewed on hundreds of radio shows, over 30 parenting magazines, over 30 television segments and 15 newspapers! Can you say free publicity and free credibility?
Stacey Kannenberg, Cedar Valley Publishing – www.cedarvalleypublishing.com
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Reach Out

• Change your voicemail monthly – have you listened to your voicemail lately? If not, try it.
• Give one referral away every day – who will you recommend today? I believe the more you give out the more it comes back to you 10 fold! It works, try it out.
• Write one thank you note every week – there are so many reasons to thank people but few people take the time to do this, it will make you more memorable.
• Invite someone to a networking event with you – help them expand their network while you get to increase yours too.
• Conduct a tele-coffee – (this is where you make a coffee, and I make a coffee and we talk on the telephone!) I do tele-cocktails on Fridays! These take no more than 15 minutes and they are very productive!
• Ask your network for help – reach out, you will be so glad you did. People want to help you but maybe they don’t know what you need? Choose to reach out to one person today.
• Join a non-profit Board – giving back in your community will increase your brand and your network and feels great too!
• Donate your time – give to a cause you are passionate about i.e. read at your local school, volunteer at a soup kitchen, visit aged care facilities where you live, and offer to shop for someone – there are so many people who could use your time and talents.

Neen James CSP – http://www.neenjames.com

Must-Haves for a Successful “Cheap” Campaign

Get A Signature
One of the biggest returns is to put testimonials in your signature lines on email.
Colleen Francis – www.engageselling.com
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Have a Website
The most important marketing tool a startup needs is a website and it doesn’t have to cost you. You can have a website that works for you and one that is cheap; about $8/month for hosting. My website is not the most fancy but it does what it’s supposed to do.
Tina Hill, Owner, Kidzsack – www.kidzsack.com
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Use Postcards
They are cheap (both to print and to mail) and they are colorful and eye catching.
You cannot NOT read a postcard; If an envelope comes in the mail you look at the return address and decide to pitch it in the garbage right then or look at it (usually later) with a postcard, by the time you look at it – you’ve pretty much read it
They allow you to send small bits of information to your target base on a regular basis –staying in front of your clientele rather than doing a big push and hoping it hits.
Nanette Miner, Ed.D., The Training Doctor, LLC – www.trainingdr.com
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Send a Greeting Card
Use greeting cards to market your service…they are affordable, effective and boast a 99% open rate. They must however, identify and relate to the problem your target is experiencing and include a strong call to action.
Donna Pullan, MAKE CONTACT MARKETING – http://www.MakeContactMarketing.com
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Have a Writer in Your Corner
If you’re starting a new company, I also strongly urge you to hire a talented writer. Tweeting about something timely, interesting and newsworthy will certainly help you acquire Twitter followers and drive them to your website, but you’ve got to have something attention-grabbing on your site to keep them there. Write a monthly newsletter or a blog – again, both free. And don’t boast. Write about things that are affecting your market. Think outside of the box.
Jessica Knott, Marketing Coordinator, Mary Kraft Staffing and HR Solutions – www.marykraft.com
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Use Creativity
During a conference a few years back, I went to the Dollar Store and put together “survival kits” for all attendees, which included an assortment of goodies – pens, doodle pads, post-it notes, breath mints, a highlighter, paper clips, and a piece of chocolate. I put them in quart size Ziplock bags that had my photo and contact info on them.
After the conference, I sent a pair of Dollar Store flip-flops saying, “It was great to get my foot in the door. I can’t wait to meet you.”
In the end, 4 business owners each gave me $3500 sponsorship packages, which totalled over $14,000.
Nancy Michaels – www.GrowYourBusinessNetwork.com
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Give Incentives
We are currently around 1000 fans on both Facebook and Twitter. We feel that creating a community is key to maintain a customer base and have it grow quickly. We currently are running a tee give away promotion on twitter where we give away a free tee each week to a follower who tweets a phrase mentioning our name. In the past 10 days that has reached over 4800 people. Facebook is great because our new design shows up in the news feeds of our fans each day. If they comment or “like” the design this is then put on their friends news feeds.
Matt Ingleby, RIPT Apparel – www.riptapparel.com
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Make it Visual
Create a home grown video and put it on You Tube and your website.
If you don’t have a camera you can get an inexpensive flip camera for under $165. Provide information that’s of real value to your prospective clients or customers.
Make it short, sweet and pertinent.
Lisa Tener, Author, Book Coach – www.LisaTener.com
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A Social Profile
Create social networking profiles on all the sites that match your target market as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I am on over 40+ sites. Even the sites that I am not active in get traffic. I have one that has over 24,000 page views, another over 5,000, 6,000, 150 — now times that by 40 and that’s free exposure for YOU! The more people that know your name, the bigger you will be! The best compliment I get is – I see you “everywhere”!
Stacey Kannenberg, Cedar Valley Publishing – www.cedarvalleypublishing.com

Do NOT Attempt These Marketing Snafus

Inconsistent Branding
Make sure that your company brand is consistent across all of your marketing mediums. If you have a social profile, ensure that the look is in line with your website and print marketing collateral. If it is not consistent, you run the risk of confusing potential clients and making yourself look unfocused.
Ariane Griffiths, President, Foundation Studio Marketing & Promotions – http://www.foundationstudio.ca
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Don’t Buy It
The most expensive and least effective thing you can do as a new business is to pay for advertising. It will suck up your budget instantly and rarely has the desired result. Come up with your own “advertising”…it could be as easy as printing out handouts and distributing them at a local Farmer’s market.
Dick Barnes, The Freeland Group – www.freelandgroup.com
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No Pushing or Bribery
Do not try to push journalists and bloggers who are not interested in writing on your topic and do not offer payment for PR people to do things for you.
Danny Wong, Director of Marketing, Blank Label – www.blank-label.com
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Don’t Forget to Follow-Up
Most sales are lost because no one bothered to follow up and no one asked for the sale. Don’t leave money on the table.
Deb Kolaras, Small Business Coach – www.bizcoachdeb.com

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Here is the link to today’s tip list! Go forth and MARKET! and don’t forget -Prizes will be given out tomorrow so keep the Retweets coming!

Have a great day!!
Ariane

Happy Hump Day!
Hopefully you’ve had a chance to check out yesterday’s Tip sheet on Managing Your Time Effectively!
We had lots of Retweets for yesterday’s post; entering themselves to win one of the great prizes we’ve got lined up, including a new one!!
Make sure you join us on Twitter and Retweet this post for your entry into the prize pot!

So far, our Small Biz Week Prizes include:

• A $265 Small business Tax Package from Hilary McDonald Accounting
• A Virtual Office Subscription from 5050Biz
• The Couponizer coupon system
• New York Times best seller “One Year to an Organized Work Life” from the author herself Regina Leeds
• Limited edition T-shirts from RIPT Apparel
• The book 101 Media and Marketing Tips for the Sole Proprietor from Nanette Miner, a.k.a. The Training Doctor
• “How to Do Space Age Work with a Stone Age Brain: using your brain style for small business success with less stress” from Eve Abbott, Organizer Extraordinaire
• .. more prizes arriving daily!!

Every time you Retweet this post you’ll receive one entry to win a prize!
Prizes will be given out at the very end of the week – Keep the Retweets and Comments coming!

Please accept my apologies in advance as you will be receiving 1post a day (only for this week), but I know you will not be disappointed with the content!

Today’s article is all about Turning Your Admin Nightmares into a Dream.

Absolutely every business owner agrees on one thing – Administration is a “nightmare”, a “burden of time” and usually results in “just not doing it”. A few experts weigh in on how to change that nightmare into a fully functioning dream. Read on..

Getting a Handle on Paperwork

Take 5
Always take first five minutes (or last five minutes) of the day to file.
Jeffrey Cohen, ImageWorks, LLC – www.ImageWorksLLC.com
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Just STOP!
It’s key to STOP doing – versus doing everything on your lists. Daily & Weekly Entrepreneurs and their teams should find stuff to not do at all. Get rid of or don’t bother doing stuff that seemed like a great idea at the time but now isn’t. Start focus on working on the critical few things versus the important many. I could give you lots of ideas and specifics around this if you’d like.
Cameron Herold, Founder, BackPocket COO – www.BackPocketCOO.com
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Everything Happens in 3’s
On my desk, I have 3 file folders: one for things to do this week; one for things that need to be filed; and one for things that I eventually need to look into. Inside my filing cabinet, I have 26 files – one for each letter of the alphabet – and everything is filed by the company name that issued the document.
I clear out the “needs to be filed” folder at the end of each day. It’s only purpose is to allow me to work each client more effectively. Once I’ve gone through my emails at the end of the day, I also look at the “to do this week” folder to ensure I haven’t missed anything, and to create a must do list for the following day.
Dawn Martinello, Monday Morning VA – www.mondaymorningva.com
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Become Regular
DO file on a regular basis. Filing regularly prevents eventually having to face a mountain of filing.
DO make a habit of filing on a particular day or at a particular time. That will remove the decision making process from the mix and put filing on auto-pilot.
Alice Price CPO-CD®, Organize Long Island Inc – www.organizelongisland.com
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Digitize It
When it comes to filing – build a computer based structure of folders that matches the paper filing system, then, you only have one logic to follow.
Susan Lannis, Time Liberation Agent, ORGANIZATION Plus! Inc. – www.LiberateTime.com
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Go Paperless
We worked very hard to reduce the amount of paper in our office;
All faxes are coming into a computer – and are left there. They are not printed out!
Invoices and quotes are sent via email directly from QuickBooks – none are printed
Bills are filed based on vendor
We registered with every credit card we have – as opting out of any offers, etc – this has reduced our junk mail by about 90% ( aside benefit is that we spend less time processing mail.)
Orit Pennington, TPGTEX Label Solutions, Inc. – www.tpgtex.com
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Go Mobile
Make time and expense tracking brain-dead simple by using mobile/web based solutions like Xpenser
Parand Tony Darugar, Xpenser – http://xpenser.com
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Outsource It
Small business owners that outsource their Human Resources have more time to focus solely on the day-to-day tasks of running a business, without having to spend time and energy on employee issues. Overall an HR outsourcing firm shoulders the tasks that business owners don’t have time to deal with — including HR, providing competitive health coverage, claims management, payroll taxes, direct deposits, etc. It is a way to simplify a small business owner’s life by taking away the administrative burdens.
Rob Wilson, Employco – www.employco.com
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A VA is Always the Way
Hire a part time administrative assistant who comes to my home based business. It’s helpful to have another computer (or a laptop.) – She works 3 to 10 hours a week. She does typing, filing, manages my customer contacts, addresses Christmas cards, takes meeting minutes and cleans and organizes my supply and filing cabinets.
Valerie McCaw, President – VSM Engineering, LLC
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Don’t Bungle – Tungle!
One area where a lot of small businesses are wasting time is scheduling. The endless back and forth of emailing & phone calls to find a time to meet is a huge time suck. Add in the fact that small businesses do a lot of business with people outside their organization and it gets even more complicated.
Enter Tungle.com. It works in sync with existing e-calendars making it quick and easy to make meetings happen. Syncing your calendar with Tungle lets you share calendars across systems and companies, send meeting invitations that propose multiple times, publish your free/busy schedule and more.
Erin Lariviere, Marketing Analyst, Tungle – http://www.tungle.com

Email & Voicemail Nightmares

Broadcast Your Availability
First, choose when you will—and won’t– be available electronically. For example, if your business sees fewer customers on Tuesday afternoons, create that slot as your no-click zone, and use that time for focused thinking and action to strategize around your biggest business challenge.
Then, once you’ve decided, teach people by example. Set clear expectations with your team and others so they know not to expect email responses from you during that time. Clarify the exceptions for them (i.e., I’ll only check email if we’re on deadline and we’ve agreed in advance on a time I’ll be online.”) And stick to it—no matter what. It’s a rare business situation that has to be handled immediately—in fact, most situations benefit from taking a little time to think about the right response.
Darcy Eikenberg, President & Chief Creative Officer, Coach Darcy LLC – www.coachdarcy.com
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Make Some Rounds
Handling Email and Voicemail: In my personal business, I work in rounds. That means that when I’m working on Customer A and I receive a personal email – it’s ignored; if I receive a phone call from Customer C – it’s ignored. At the beginning and end of each day, I check ALL voicemail and email that may have been missed to ensure that I catch any potential problems and handle any rush assignments that have come up.
Dawn Martinello, Monday Morning VA – www.mondaymorningva.com

Procedures and Policies

Policy Can Be Lame, but Systems Can Save Your Life.
There is nothing worse than a useless procedure doc or process. At the same time, we found creating and using some simple systems such as work folders, file management, resource tracking, etc, saved us a ton of time. The key for us were to find the areas that were repetitive, and create a system that worked well for us. We found that in some cases clipboards and pencils worked better for us than spreadsheets. Find what works for you.
Tyler Hammond – The Engine Is Red – http://theengineisred.com
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Make it Manual
We do have an operations manual. It makes it much easier to train staff.
If an employee knows the rules, they are less likely to make up their own rules (which could result in last sales).
Sharon McRill, The Betty Brigade – www.bettybrigade.com
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Map it Out
Every biz needs to map out their systems – how they get clients, how they engage them, how they retain them, office/team mgt and financial mgt. I don’t call mine policies and procedures, but the steps are laid out clearly and can be replicated over and over.
Ann Ronan, Ph.D., Authentic Life Institute – www.authenticlifeinstitute.com
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Be on Alert
Set up alerts in Outlook if you need to, in order to keep yourself on schedule. All reoccurring tasks should be scheduled and broken up evenly throughout the week. For example, in regards to social networking, schedule yourself to add x number of new twitter followers every Monday, and every Friday delete the ones that haven’t followed you back.
Hilary Brooks, AVirtualEdge – http://www.AVirtualEdge.com

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So now that you’re set on the right path to admin euphoria, make sure you Retweet this post and come back again tomorrow because we’re discussing super cool ways to market yourself and your biz for LESS than $500!!! You won’t want to miss that!

Cheers!

A