“So what do you say to the person who says, that’s a lot of work … I don’t want to do all of that.”

“Um, get a job.”

No, I didn’t say that. “Business is for gladiators,” I replied. If you want to be successful as a business owner, you’re going to need an incredible work ethic and steely resolve to persevere when the going gets tough. It has, it does, and it will.

When people talk to me about their struggles growing their businesses, I sometimes feel like they have a secret longing: they want marketing voodoo. They want me to show them how to wave a magic wand that will outline an easy, step-by-step marketing plan that will bring droves of clients to their doorstep.

I wish.

There is no magic wand when it comes to effective marketing.

I know that’s disappointing. After all, who wouldn’t like to get their hands on some sassy marketing voodoo? But the truth is, creating the right mix of offers and strategies that connect powerfully with your target market and escort them down the sales funnel to official customer status requires a lot of work.

I often say that the power of marketing is in sequencing: doing the right things in the right order. Once you bust this riddle, you’ll notice your sales funnel getting traction, more clients coming on board and your marketing efforts will pay off tenfold.

The best marketing voodoo I can share is what I believe is the fundamental goal of good marketing: setting the proper conditions to ensure that the people who would benefit most from your services know how you can help them solve their problems, alleviate their pain, take them to the promised land, in that very moment when they realize their need (because it hurts, or they acknowledge they’re tired of being stuck, or something comes up that makes change a MUST).

I created the Marketing Triad to help my clients understand the most important strategies independent professionals should put in place FIRST.

The triad includes three groups of strategies: Networking, Visibility Strategies and Grassroots Strategies. Here are a few examples of each:

Networking Strategies
· Local Meetings
· Trade Shows & Conferences
· Referrals & Strategic Alliances
· Telemarketing / Follow-up
· Social Networking

Visibility Strategies
· Local Showcases
· Speaking at Conferences
· Teleseminars / Webinars
· SEO / SEM (Web Marketing)

Grassroots Strategies
· Database / Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
· Follow-up Marketing
· Direct Mail
· Email Marketing
· VIP Lists

Determining the mix for your Marketing Triad is crucial to your marketing success, as these are the core strategies you should mobilize to sell your knowledge and expertise.

Start with networking and visibility strategies. Determine where you can go, who you can present to, to help you build a list of prospects whose needs are a match for your services. Get yourself booked, pencil key networking opportunities into your calendar, begin to connect with the marketplace. Maintain and nurture those relationships through Grassroots Strategies, drawing them into your sales funnel, all the while building TRUST.

If you’re in the Nashville area, we’d love you to come on out! You’ll experience big breakthroughs in your business and yourself. Learn, laugh, and leave with a ton of value.

Women attend Spark & Hustle for two main reasons: content and connections.

• Learn fresh ways to build your business and boost your bottom line
• Meet prospective clients, customers, collaborators and champions

Come join Misty and the other experts, and let’s make it happen together!

To learn more about the events—and of course to join us—visit http://www.sparkandhustle.com.

Today at 1PM Central, join me live for my interview with Caz Taylor on his show, SBA Radio. Caz is a professional broadcaster dedicated to helping small businesses succeed.

Together, we’ll be talking about marketing solutions for small business owners. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on how independent professionals can create marketing plans that encourage business growth.

You can check out Caz’s show and tune in for our interview here.

If you are tuning in now — or after the show, I’m so excited you’re here! If this is your first time to my site, you might want to check out my welcome page to help show you around and let you know how you can leverage all the content I’ve been developing to support your business. If you’ve got questions that we weren’t able to get to on the show, please leave a comment. I will personally respond to any comments from listeners so everyone can benefit as we continue the conversation.

Helpful (Free!) Resources

If you’d like me to come speak to your group, conduct a webinar or teleseminar, or facilitate a workshop or breakout session about marketing, check out my Meeting Planners page or contact Diana: Diana@MyStrategicMarketer.com for more information.  I love, love, LOVE sharing with groups and would be honored to receive your invitation. 

Today at 12 noon central, join me live for my interview with Diane Helbig on her show, Accelerate Your Business Growth. Together, we’ll be talking about leveraging the top two strategies for creating an ongoing pipeline of leads.

Diane is a speaker and workshop facilitator who helps clients see that having clarity in business and sales is the key to having a successful, thriving business. Her radio show, Accelerate Your Business Growth, brings valuable, actionable information to listeners and each episode provides a

Tune in for our LIVE call at 12 CT today to learn how to structure your marketing campaign to create business today and in the future.

If you happen to be here after our live show, I’m very happy you’ve dropped by! Feel free to check out my welcome page where you can learn how to find marketing support on my blog and start to leverage all of the content I’ve been developing to help with your business.

If you want to know something that Diane and I weren’t able to get to during the show, please leave a comment and I’ll personally answer all of your questions. I look forward to sharing the benefit we’ll all receive from continuing this conversation.

Helpful (Free!) Resources

Ready to take your business to the next level? Schedule a free strategy session with Misty.

If you’d like me to come speak to your group, conduct a webinar or teleseminar, or facilitate a workshop or breakout session about marketing, check out my Meeting Planners page or contact Diana: Diana@MyStrategicMarketer.com for more information.  I love, love, LOVE sharing with groups and would be honored to receive your invitation.

I shared some thoughts on why marketing plans often don’t work and how to better-leverage social media.

You can check out the show: http://www.wsradio.com/radio_showspage.aspx?id=22.

If you heard me on the show, I’m excited you’re here! If this is you first time to my site, you might want to check out my welcome page to help show you around, let you know how you can leverage all the content I’ve been developing to support your business.

If you’ve got questions, please leave a comment. I will personally respond to any comments from listeners so everyone can benefit as we continue the conversation.

If you’re interesting in getting some support and would like a free strategy session, check out ways I can help you here.

Helpful (Free!) Resources

Emotional Triggers & Pleasure States
Library of Articles

Manipulation Free Marketing Report – What you need to know to book new business *almost* effortlessly!

How Should I Market Myself - Lesson 1

If you’d like me to come speak to your group, conduct a webinar or teleseminar, or facilitate a workshop or breakout session about marketing, check out my Meeting Planners page or contact Diana: Diana@MyStrategicMarketer.com for more information.  I love, love, LOVE sharing with groups and would be honored to receive your invitation. 

When I told a few colleagues the title of this blog post, I got big grins and dramatic nods without even telling them what the post was about.  If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’ve likely dealt with a hosting crisis that has fried your nerves and stressed you to the max. As a non-techie with over ten years’ experience hosting websites for clients, have I ever learned a thing or two about avoiding the potholes (because, *ahem*, I think I’ve hit them ALL)!

This is a topic that people write books about (I’ve mentioned it in another post, too), so without getting too deep, I want to share with you a few “secrets” I’ve learned along the way to avoid 95% of the issues that typically come with having a site live on the internet.  Let’s start with the most important considerations, in my experience, to ensure you’ve got a good setup.

A great server configuration for your website will include:

1. Reliable server with good uptime that allows your site to load quickly, with minimal downtime.  Not all services are created equal. You can test this by using Pingdom.com to evaluate the load speed of sites on different servers. (A great tool for analyzing the load speed of your website is Google Page Speed.)
2. Automated backup system that regularly backs up your site both on the server and on an alternate server (“backup” server) so that if your site crashes or is hacked, it can easily be reloaded and launched. (We have our sites backed up locally daily and offsite weekly).
3. If you use WordPress (and you should!) or any Content Management System (CMS), it should be updated regularly for security purposes (monthly seems to suffice).  There are some ways you can have this automated, or you should have a qualified programmer that does this manually for you (it doesn’t take long, and you need someone with more expertise than a typical VA).
4. If you are doing a lot of media or special launches or campaigns that could drive a lot of traffic to your site, you’ll want to make sure your hosting setup will accommodate the traffic.  I once had a client who was booked as a guest on a huge talk radio show, and the traffic he received during and after the interview crashed his site.  Reeeeeally bad time for the site to crash.  *Gulp*
5. Do not host your email on the same server. I repeat:  Do not host your email on the same server as your website.  I highly recommend using a dedicated email service to handle all your email.  First of all, if you’re hosting on the cheap, you are most likely using a shared server that is also hosting hundreds, thousands, or tens-of-thousands of other sites … if any of these sites are engaged in shoddy spamming practices (and they are), the entire server will be blacklisted, affecting your email’s deliverability.  Secondly, if anything at all happens to your site, your email will go down with it.  A crash, hack, explosion, server outage, or any number of scenarios could bring down your site.  It’s in your best interest to have your email hosted elsewhere so you still get your email while they’re figuring out what’s up with your site.  (If you need a third reason, most local email hosting sucks … they have poor spam filters in addition to their poor deliverability.) My favorite solution for email is Google Apps, for about a dozen reasons I might go over in another post.

Common Misconceptions about the Cost of Hosting a Website

There are lots of misconceptions about hosting out there … the biggest one being that hosting is cheap.  Renting square footage on the server is cheap, just like buying land is cheap compared to the cost of laying cable and plumbing and building the house (metaphors aplenty on this one).  Here’s what is not cheap about hosting a website:

• Moving your site to a new server,
• Backing up your site regularly,
• Testing to ensure it’s working properly,
• Keeping the server up-to-date with the latest patches and software updates,
• Keeping your site software updated (different from server software),
• Making sure all the software and plugins on the server plays nice with your site and your CMS (like WordPress or Drupal),
• Troubleshooting server-related glitches, and more

All of these things cost money.  Choosing a service provider based on price alone is like picking up a puppy from the pound: you don’t know what you’re getting.  What kind of diet has it been fed (translation: vet bills)? What kind of bad habits has it picked up (translation: chewed Manolo Blahniks, a bitten milk man, gnawed table leg, “spots” on the carpet)? What’s its temperament like? Has it been properly socialized?  How much is it going to eat every day (translation: $$$)?  How much exercise will it need?  Puppies become dogs, and they’re the furthest thing from cheap.

When finding good hosting for your site, there is a LOT to consider, and most people are clueless until something goes wrong and they’re looking at hundreds or thousands of dollars in emergency programming expenses to fix things (not to mention the time and energy–unplanned–that you expend resolving your issue[s]).  And sometimes, God forbid, things can’t be fixed.

Learn about SMS’ web hosting support for WordPress sites.

Question:  What are your server nightmares, and what have you learned? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

I’ll be sharing my thoughts on how independent professionals can create marketing plans that encourage business growth.

You can check out Paul’s show and tune in for our interview here. If you want to call in, the number is: (646) 595-4797.

If you are tuning in now — or after the show, I’m so excited you’re here! If this is you first time to my site, you might want to check out my welcome page to help show you around, let you know how you can leverage all the content I’ve been developing to support your business. If you’ve got questions that we weren’t able to get to on the show, please leave a comment. I will personally respond to any comments from listeners so everyone can benefit as we continue the conversation.

Listen to my interview here:

To download today’s resources for the call, click below:

Manipulation Free Marketing Report – What you need to know to book new business *almost* effortlessly!

How Should I Market Myself – Lesson 1

Listen to my interview here:

If you are tuning in now — or after the show, I’m so excited you’re here! If this is you first time to my site, you might want to check out my welcome page to help show you around, let you know how you can leverage all the content I’ve been developing to support your business.

If you’ve got questions that we weren’t able to get to on the show, please leave a comment. I will personally respond to any comments from listeners so everyone can benefit as we continue the conversation.

If you are tuning in now — or after the show, I’m so excited you’re here!  If this is you first time to my site, you might want to check out my welcome page to help show you around, let you know how you can leverage all the content I’ve been developing to support your business.

If you’ve got questions that we weren’t able to get to on the show, please leave a comment. I will personally respond to any comments from listeners so everyone can benefit as we continue the conversation.

Helpful (Free!) Resources

If you’d like me to come speak to your group, conduct a webinar or teleseminar, or facilitate a workshop or breakout session about marketing, check out my Meeting Planners page or contact Diana: Diana@MyStrategicMarketer.com for more information.  I love, love, LOVE sharing with groups and would be honored to receive your invitation. 

Like many, I’m struck by the tragedy we all feel at losing someone so innovative, so extraordinary … so young.  In spite of all his amazing contributions to modern culture, I’m wondering, Did we receive all of his gifts? A heavy thought to ponder, no doubt.  But one thing is certain: he lived to give them.  An intense, driven creator, there’s no question that he lived his life as one committed to giving us all that he had–and he took a lot of heat for it.

My colleague, Lori Collins, pointed out what is sure to be remembered as the most profound part of his speech:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.  Because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is important.  Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.  You are already naked.  There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

The chills are relentless as I contemplate the gravity of his observation, the unchanging reality that he is gone forever. I’m thinking of the times I wallow in my own selfish self-pity when contemplating a next move, or weighing the risk-reward of showing up authentically, of risking rejection, of (god-forbid) being a total failure at something I care about succeeding at deeply.

When reflecting on his life, he profoundly reveals:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.  You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever… because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

Every week, I talk to amazing professionals who are struggling to figure out their next move, trying to make sense of their path, digging deep in hopes of hitting inspiration or courage to fuel the next leg of their journey.  These people are incredibly creative, loving, giving souls who have been given really special gifts which often are considered “unconventional.” They don’t quite fit into the current molds and models of society, so giving these gifts requires courage and heart, passion and conviction, and FAITH that this journey is the right one, that everything will pay off in the end.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the ttrap of thinking you ahve somethign to lose. You are already naked.  There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs.  And thank you.