For the premise of this post, let’s say you’re a solopreneur looking for an accountant. You would rather spend your time giving the best service possible to your customers than balance your books and study up on the latest tax laws. You do a search on Google for a CPA in your area. You click on the first link and start to read the copy on the Home page, “XYZ CPA, is a full-service accounting firm serving clients in the Your Town, USA area, dedicated to providing clients with professional, personalized services …” You click the Back button on your browser and go to the second link. It reads, “Your business grows when you focus on what you do best. If accounting isn’t in your area of expertise, and you don’t want to pay your earnings back in taxes …”

Which page grabs your attention and says, “This site speaks to me.”

Last year, I wrote a post titled, “It Isn’t Me, It’s You” discussing the dangers of “I” (or “me”, “we”, “my”, “our”) centric-copy. While it’s fine to use these first-person solopreneur pronouns when you’re drafting the copy for your “About” page, you should minimize / avoid these same words when crafting the content for the rest of your pages and marketing materials.

When the average person invests 10 seconds or less looking over the website page they land on to determine if they are going to read on or leave the page, they are going to be looking first and foremost for copy that clearly articulates the benefits they are going to achieve if they invest more time reading the information on the page or contacting the site owner.

Consider this, have you ever gone to a live networking event … say a Chamber of Commerce mixer, a BNI breakfast or the like? When you meet people for the first time and they start with the “I” statements, how long do you listen (as in actually paying attention and not just giving the courtesy nod) to their canned pitch before you start thinking about, “What’s in it for me?”

Thinking in terms of “you” (meaning your ideal customers) when creating your marketing content forces you to think about what’s in the best interest of your target market instead of thinking about how you can brag about yourself. When you create a list of why you’re the best, you leave it up to your prospects to decipher how those points translate into benefits for them. When you talk in terms of “you”, you don’t force the prospect to come to their own conclusions.

If you want to capture your ideal customers’ attention and increase your conversion rates, think in terms of “you” and not “me”.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

This may sound like a strange topic for a solopreneur site, but unless you are investing in your SEO education, you are likely unaware that you are feeding a Panda. And if you provide this Panda with the wrong diet, your site could end up dinged with a lower page ranking on Google.

The Panda of today’s topic isn’t about the endangered black and white Chinese bear, but a machine learning algorithm created by Google engineer, Navneet Panda. Actually a version 2.2 Panda released in March.

It used to be that you could follow some basic SEO rules for page ranking dominance:

• Create keyword-rich original content on a regular basis
• Include keywords in your tags, titles, slugs and descriptions
• Get links back from quality sites
• Design user-pleasing pages clutter-free from spammy ads
• Include social media icons for easy sharing
• Include your content on a variety of social networking sites and directories

However, with the Internet becoming a more crowded and competitive virtual arena of solopreneurs, you now must do more so your site can stand out as a source of quality versus those that try to play tricks to grab attention and credit card numbers.

Google realizes this, so they created this machine learning algorithm, Panda, to assess how content creators disseminate information and offer sales opportunities to users and how users react to determine how they need to alter their page rankings.

One of the big changes with Panda is Google paying more attention to user and usage data metrics … i.e. How long do visitors spend on your site? Are they viewing multiple pages? Are they bouncing back out of the site after a quick review? How are your CTR (click through rates) from SERPs (search engine results pages)? What is the diversity of viewers? Panda can measure this through Chrome, Android, Google Toolbar, and more. When people click through to your site, do they stay and browse multiple pages or do they bounce right back to the search result that brought them there?

Google realizes that their algorithms aren’t perfect, so they try to create balance by employing quality raters (people who review sites per Google’s guidelines) to provide a human review of sites that may be unduly liked or disliked by their algorithm. This isn’t a fault-free system, but it is the system in which your site operates.

Some key guidelines quality raters use for rating sites include:

• How would you assess the design aesthetic of this site?
• Do you consider this site to be authoritative?
• Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids?
• Would you give this site your credit card?

So how do you feed this ruling Panda?

1. Implement the tools that will allow you to watch your site’s metrics,
2. invest in your SEO education and implementation, or
3. invest in a SEO consultant who knows how to strategize, optimize and socialize effectively.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

While social media, social networking, spending time on Facebook … however you refer to connecting with prospects and customers on the Internet … can seem very daunting and confusing, there really are just six basic elements that you need to master.

1. Research
While most people, including businesses, are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, does your target market spend time in each of these networks? If you’re a B2C marketing consultant, chances are you’ll find your customers spending time in the Big 4. However, if you’re a restaurant or other independently-owned small retail shop, you may be spending needless time on some of these sites. When you do your research, find definitive answers to these primary questions: Who are my primary customers? Where do they hang out? What are they interested in? What can I give them that is going to be of value to them?

2. Plan
Social media isn’t (just) a popularity contest. It’s about connecting and conversing with the right people. There are services that you can pay to increase your Twitter or Facebook following by thousands, but if none of these new-found fans are interested in what you have to offer, is it worth the investment? After you perform your research, create a plan defining the following: primary prospects, customers, primary competitors, goals, focus for your social media content, frequency, and sub-locations in each network (these can be groups, fan pages, Q&A forums, etc.).

3. Observe
If I were to ask you, why do you think you need to become active in social media, you’re likely to respond with: “I want to sell more.” A big part of selling is observing the behaviors and actions of your target market. Your research will help you find where your idea customers are spending time, but it isn’t until you join the party that you’ll discover how the prospects in each of these forums interact. Interactions on Facebook are different from the conversations on LinkedIn. You can’t create quality contributions, if you don’t understand how and why people engage in each network.

4. Engage
Engage influencers in the forums. Engage prospects in the networks. Answer questions. Ask questions. Comment on content. Generate your own. Just remember when you engage, it isn’t all about selling. Yes, your goal is to sell more … more customers, more frequently, and profitable products and services. However, if you’re new to the network and you simply jump in by pitching your products, you’re going to push most people away. Take a deep breath. Remain calm. Remember to observe. As you make an effort to get to know people by engaging them, they will want to get to know you (if you’ve done your research and you’re engaging the right people without just trying to pitch them).

5. Respond
While TV and radio ads, billboards, print ads and other passive forms of marketing where the only option for getting your message out to your market, social media changed the rules by including the quality of conversation to the quality of content. Copywriters and ad men used to get paid big bucks just to create attention-getting content. However, with social media, customers want to be heard and understood. And you have the opportunity to do so, so don’t waste it. The best way to accomplish this is to respond to the comments that your market makes. Set your alerts to notify you when someone comments on your content. If you don’t have alerts in place, schedule times to go back and review any customer created content, and make sure you respond. Remember, social media is about being social.

6. Consistency
Connecting with customers and converting them into active evangelists spreading the word about your business takes a consistent effort. People grow weary of fair-weathered friends. Your customers want to be able to connect with you regularly. If you disappear on them, they will go spend time with your competitors that pay attention to them. If you look at social media as something you have to do, instead of something that you want to do, you won’t do it regularly. And you won’t build a following … or sell more.

If you struggle with social media, you can hire on consultants to manage it for you. However, make sure when you interview them, they get to know you, your business and your goals … and create a proposal that includes these six essentials.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

Did you catch country crooner, John Rich, hear The Donald proclaim him the winner of the most recent season of Celebrity Apprentice last night? I love watching the pressure cooker situations that Donald Trump and Executive Producer, Mark Burnett, create for celebrities to fight for exposure and big donation dollars for their favorite charities. The show treaches tremendous lessons on how to be a successful entrepreneur including time management, project management, marketing, sales, and

If you missed, I’m sorry if I spoiled the surprise. John Rich and actress, Marlee Matlin were the final two contestants. While I felt that Marlee had the stronger final task, it looks like John Rich may have pulled of the win for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital based upon overall season performance.

While Entertainment Weekly claims this season’s finale had the lowest ratings, this season overall was my favorite season. I did miss a couple of TV airings, but I caught the missed episodes on NBC’s web site.

Here are my top 4 reasons why this season was the best:

1. Gary Busey.
‘Nuff said. Not sure why? Catch an episode on replay, especially how he handled Meatloaf coming at him like a bat out of hell.

2. Meatloaf’s passion.
I am passionate about helping people maximize their passions for a more fulfilling business and life overall. From Day 1 through helping Marlee try to achieve the big prize for her charity, The Starkey Hearing Foundation, Meatloaf was pure passion … which some took as a sign of craziness or weakness. I loved his passion.

3. Marlee Matlain’s focus.
While there was some question whether she was delegating responsibility appropriately during the finale, overall, I thought she shined. Plus, she raised $1 million for her charity in one episode. Even with Hollywood friends, this is no small feat.

4. John Rich’s entrepreneurial move.
While the final task didn’t include raising money for their charities, John Rich figured he might as well take the opportunity to leverage the exposure for some extra dollars for St. Jude’s. Marlee was taken aback when John announced he raised over $250k for his charity during the finale. She said if it were part of the task to raise more money, she could have. I give it to John for not playing by the rules and just doing what he was told he could and going for what was really important to him, raising money for his charity.

Congrats, John Rich. And congrats St. Jude’s.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

For most marketing savvy solopreneurs, this blog post title isn’t breaking news. What is surprising though is the number of solopreneurs and small businesses who are still considering if social networking and social media content are the real deal or just a fad.

Let’s start by looking at some recent numbers stated in the American Express OPEN “Small Business Monitor” spring 2011 edition (change in percentage from Fall 2009 to Spring 2011):

Companies with a website … up from 49% to 65%
SEO … up from 20% to 36%
Mass email … up from 13% to 24%
Online social networking … up from 15% to 35%
PPC advertising … up from 9% to 17%
Banner ads / pop-up ads … up from 5% to 11%
Blogging … up from 3% to 12%

Which social networking sites were small businesses the most active on?

1. Facebook
2. LinkedIn
3. Twitter
4. Blogs
5. YouTube

The most amazing stat was that 56% of small businesses that American Express survey stated they were not actively using social media.

So where are you in this competitive mix? Which of these social media activities are a part of your campaigns? Are you one of the active 44%ers in social media or are you one of those 56%er solopreneurs and small business owners sitting on the sideline waiting to see how this all plays out?

A bit of advice: Start building a buzz for your business online now.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide