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0:14 Facebook Comment Accountability
0:47 Taking Time Out For Yourself
2:49 Tools To Make Life Easier
3:09 Evernote productivity tool
3:26 What Evernote does
3:55 More powerful than just bookmarking
4:20 Accessing information at a later date
4:47 Evernote’s tagged notes
5:52 Two Best Sources of Traffic
6:08 Email List
6:54 Forums
Hi, Fiona Soutter here and welcome to the weekly update.
0:14 Facebook Comment Accountability
Just wanted to draw your attention to some changes with Facebook over the last week, especially in Australia.
You can now be held accountable for comments that are posted on your Facebook page, if they are misleading about your brand. So be very aware that you need to monitor what other people are posting on your page, otherwise you could find yourself in hot water.
It’s just a small thing but it could turn out to be a really big thing; you need to be very careful that you are monitoring your Facebook page at all times.
0:47 Taking Time Out For Yourself
Now the other day I was going through some very exciting changes for my business. I had some fantastic opportunities presented to me. But what this also meant was that I had to make a lot of thing happen very quickly.
Now the problem with that was that I had some technical issues and also one of my outsource staff was unavailable, so I found myself, in the middle of the night, trying to get things sorted, so I could take advantage of this wonderful opportunity in the next 24 hours. But things don’t always go the way that you want them to. The other thing that happened whilst all of this was going on was that my 3-year-old son came down with a really nasty tummy bug, and was very very ill and was basically being sick from every half hour to an hour, and this was going on and on. So while I was trying to juggle the stress of trying to get everything done in order to take up a wonderful opportunity for my business, I was also trying to nurse my son.
Why am I telling you this story? Well at the end of the day you can imagine how I felt the very next day. I virtually had no sleep and was feeling quite stressed and very very tired. But what I decided to do that day was rather than carry that stress and really build myself into a big hole, I decided to go to the hairdressers and actually take some time out for a bit of self-care, for myself. And as a result of that I walked out of the hairdressers feeling a million dollars. Yes, I was tired, but it was really nice to do something for me, and to actually making sure I was looking after my own needs and making myself feel better.
This is a very important thing as an entrepreneur, and also especially for those of you listening to this message if you’re a parent or a mother, and you’re constantly giving to others, it’s very important to take time out for yourself.
I was able to walk out of that hairdressers feeling really energised and really focused, and was able to actually get through a lot of work for the rest of the day.
2:49 Tools To Make Life Easier
Another thing I’d like to touch on today — and this is also about making life easier and also making your day run a bit smoother — and this is all about leverage.
Those of you who know me know that I’m a big fan of finding tools I can use in my business that are going to leverage my efforts and make things a lot easier.
3:09 Evernote productivity tool
Now one of the tools I’m a HUGE fan of is Evernote — and Evernote is free. Evernote is a plugin that you can add to your browser, it’s also an app that you can add to your iPad or your iPhone — and possibly even your Android devices. I haven’t looked into that but I’m sure it would be available.
3:26 What Evernote does
Now what does Evernote do? Evernote is a cloud-based bookmarking system — but it’s a lot more powerful that that. So if you imagine when you’re on your browser and you find a page you want to come back to later, you can bookmark it and store that page in your browser on your computer. Now what Evernote does is that allows you to actually store that page in a cloud-based system, so it doesn’t matter which computer or device you’re on, you can access that page again.
3:55 More powerful than just bookmarking
Now this is where it becomes a lot more powerful than just a plain bookmarking service. You can then tag that bookmark with categories or however you want to tag it. So, if I see a website for instance and it’s related to emails, then I might tag it with ’email marketing’ or just plain ‘marketing’, or it might be ‘copywriting swipe file’, because maybe the email had some great ideas for copywriting.
4:20 Accessing information at a later date
And it means that at a later date, if I want to go an access information on that particular topic, I just open up Evernote, and go to the tag or the category related to email marketing, and everything I’ve tagged with email marketing will come up. This is great when you’re creating content and you want to get inspiration and ideas; it’s great for when you’re wanting to create your own presentations and you want to draw on information as well.
4:47 Evernote’s tagged notes
The other thing that you can do in Evernote however is not just bookmark but you actually create notes, and you can tag those notes with the same tags you’ve been bookmarking your pages with. So, for example, this is how I use it: I go to a seminar and I hear some really awesome information that I know that I’m going to want to refer back to at some point. And you know what it’s like when you get back from these seminars — you take your notes on paper or maybe you type them in the computer, and you often forget about them. Or when you do remember them, you don’t know where you’ve stored them, or how to find them again. Or perhaps you don’t even remember that you took notes on a specific topic.
By using Evernote, what I do is I actually type on my iPad or write notes on paper when I’m at the event, then I come home and put it into Evernote and then tag it. So once again when I want to find out information about a specific topic, I just go to Evernote and I can put all of that information up in one easy step. It’s fantastic! If you’re not using it already I highly recommend it. That’s just two ways that I use Evernote, and perhaps I’ll just write a blog post to share with you some of the other ways.
5:52 Two Best Sources of Traffic
Now someone asked me the other day when I was coaching them about the best traffic source. And yes, there are so many great ways to get traffic, but my answer to this person was, that in my opinion, there are two ways that you get the best quality traffic.
6:08 Email List
One is through your email list. Now your email list is your ‘warmest’ way of getting traffic. These are people who have the ‘know, like, trust’ factor with you. These are people who are already part of your community. So as far as getting traffic back to your site, or especially when you’re promoting a product of yours, or maybe an affiliate product or anything like that, you’re probably going to get a higher click-through rate than if you were doing paid advertising or SEO or video marketing. It’s a really great way to get traffic back to your site. So if you’re not currently building a database of subscribers, with first name and email, then you’re really missing out on the best source of traffic. Make sure your website does have an opt-in form with a really strong lead magnet.
6:54 Using Signature Links in Forums
The other place I do get good traffic from is through forums. And once again I believe this comes down to the ‘know, like and trust’ factor. If you can be part of a good quality forum that allows you to put a signature link in your posts, then you can have a call to action in there that sends people back to one of your pages… perhaps it’s a page for your product, or perhaps it’s a page for one of your free sign-ups, your opt-in, which is great, because then you can collect name and email.
These leads are often very very strong leads, and they’re ‘warm’ leads — they’re people that have seen you in the forum, and if you use forum marketing the way I do, then you use it in a way that people get to know you, because you provide good quality content, you’re helping others — you show that you know what you’re about. So these people often are interested in finding out more about you. So they’re my two top tips for getting high quality traffic back to your website.
That’s our update for this week, we’ll see you again next week.