Thursday, February 21, 2013

5 Common Mistakes Businesses are Making

Common Mistakes that businesses make -loss of traffic, customers and sales.

Out there on the world wide web, I'm always surprised at the simple mistakes I see.

If you're running a recipe blog and want to build a following, make it easy for your followers to pin those recipes to Pinterest. Add a plugin, lots of them run on wordpress.
What I've seen a lot lately and just love is "Pin for Later". There's no doubt that with information overload we just don't have enough time to do everything we want. Pinning  it allows your followers to find that great recipe, brag about your business and perhaps buy your cookbook. Pinning is in, do it.

On your Facebook business page, put your website address front and center in the about us section.
Make sure it's clickable. How easy is it to contact you? Have you used your keywords in your about us section? That is prime real estate, take advantage of it.

We've all heard not to put all your egss in one basket. This is so true. Diversify. Do not depend on google for all your traffic. They keep changing their search optimization requirements and a "slap" from google can really hurt you. Look at other avenues to advertise or sell on. Amazon, Etsy, Ebay are just a couple examples. They already deliver the traffic, take advantage of it.

Know your audience. It's so much easier to serve your customers when you know who they are.
Do a survey, interact with them on social media and learn what they like and what they're looking for.

Don't depend on one social media for all of your social media. Create a schedule for social media and track your results. Don't fall into the trap of being on social media hours and hours a day "working".

This is so important, build a newsletter. There are free and low cost ways to do this. I recently changed over to Aweber. Free trial and $19 a month. Mailchimp is free.




How to Make Scratch off cards


How to Make Scratch off  Cards in 

6 Easy Steps


It’s easy to make scratch off cards and I’ll show you how. Once you’ve made them you’ll wonder why you haven’t tried it before.
   1. Gather your supplies. You’re going to need card stock, scratch off stickers, printer. 
   2. You can design your card in your favorite graphics program or use a free scratch off template.
   3. Once you have your card designed, you’re ready to print.
   4.  Print your scratch off card sheets onto cardstock.
   5.  Apply scratch off stickers over the prizes.
   6.  Cut your scratch off cards apart with scissors or a trimmer.
That’s it! Now you can see how easy it is to make your own scratch off cards. You can visit www.easyscratchoffs.com for more free scratch off templates and a variety of scratch off stickers.