Last night was the season finale of the most recent season of The Next Food Network Star and I realized that over the course of the last 10 weeks, the judges’ comments and critiques given to the contestants can also serve small business owners, especially those who are just starting out and are still in the planning stages of forming their business.

Here are the top 3 lessons I learned from The Next Food Network Star:

1. Know your POV (aka Point of View). Some business coaches might also call this your USP, or Unique Selling Point. No matter what acronym you use, your point of view is what makes your business special. What makes YOU different from your competition?

Last night’s winner, Jeff Mauro, was the self-proclaimed Sandwich King from Day 1. There was never any question about what he wanted his show to be about. Did he have some sandwiches that missed the mark? Sure, but he stayed true to his passion and his POV and kept trying to improve with each challenge.

2. Be authentic; be yourself. Fellow competitor, Vic Moe, started the show off as Vic Vegas and felt it necessary to add some Las Vegas pizazz to both his food and his personality. Sometimes it worked but there were also some misses.

Once Vic started dubbing himself “Mama’s Boy” is when he calmed down in front of the camera and his food started hitting the mark. Sadly, this viewer favorite discovered his true self a little too late even though he made it to the final three.

3. Your experience can build your credibility. Runner up Susie Jimenez charmed the judges with her tales of cooking with her parents as a child. These loving family memories helped to make Susie likeable and reinforced to the judges that she has the experience and food knowledge they were looking for.

So…where do you stand with each of these lessons? What’s your point of view? Are you showing your true personality or trying to put on a show for your audience? Do you have work experience or lessons to share with your readers / viewers / clients?

I’m going to re-evaluate these things about my own business tonight. I’d love to hear what other business lessons you’ve learned lately so leave a comment below

It’s not an easy answer but we’ve demystified the process with some of our best tips.

Headlines that contain these elements do well:

1.  Use Numbers: It’s much easier for people to skim a numeral rather than a spelled out number. When you use a number it clues people into exactly what they’ll get. It’s also more likely to be reposted and shared on sites like Twitter that have a short character limit.

Example: 10 People From Your Past Who Will Haunt You On Facebook

2.  Make Lists: Lists are easy to skim and make information digestible. Make each point into numbered or bulleted list with subheadings. Lists tell readers exactly what they’re going to get.

Example: Free eBook Tells You 12 Secrets to a Greener Lawn

3.  Ask Questions: When you ask a question it makes people want to read to get an answer. It works well on Facebook or blogs because people can comment and give their input.

You can ask a leading question that sells your business. Let’s say you coach people on setting up an ecommerce business. You could ask a question such as: “Would You Like 2011 to Be the Year in Which You Build the Foundations of your Ecommerce Business for Long-Term Wealth?”

Example: Is Buying a Home Worth it?

4.  Use Emotion: I always thought using emotions meant that you wanted to tug at people’s heart with a heartwarming story. A better way to look at it is how you want your customers to feel when they use your product. You can help them feel sexy, loved, smart, accomplished, important, rich, or good looking. Or, you can associate with negative emotions people want to avoid, such as shamed, embarrassed, incompetent, lazy, etc.

By associating your product with emotions you create a more powerful response that motivates people to read more. Use strong words. The word “remarkable” is better than “great.” Stating that something is catastrophic is more dramatic and unexpected than just saying it’s “scary.”

In this example from Copyblogger, the emotional payoff of taking command of a meeting is that you feel respected.

Example: How to Take Command of Any Meeting

5.  Be Humorous (plays on words, cliches with a twist, etc): To me the best kind of humor is to state the unexpected. It disarms people and piques their curiosity. If you make them laugh you have made an impact.

Example: 4 Things You Love to Discuss that No One Cares About

6.  Promise a solution to a problem: If your product solves a problem that a lot of people have you have a market. Everyone has problems in life and business. They are looking for solutions. Since we’re trying to solve these problems, we’re compelled to read if there’s a promised solution in the headline.

Example: Little Known Ways to Get More Twitter Followers

If you were to write a “creative” headline for this blog post what would it be? Or, share a tip you’ve learned from writing headlines.

Contest! Win one of 5 great prizes from Publicity Spark!

First Place: The Ultimate PR Distribution List (Value $47)

Second Place: How to Create an SEO Press Release Ebook (Value $47)

Third Place: How to use Keywords in Press Releases (Value $37)

Fourth Place: Social Spark Service (Value $27)

Fifth Place: Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers Ebook (Value $7)

Simply tweet or comment below on your most pressing SEO question (or publicity question, or press release question) with hashtag #publicityspark!

Winners will be chosen according to content, and notified on Friday August 12, 2011

You can also still enter Monday’s contest to win Publicity Spark’s Ultimate Online PR Kit (Value $97)! See the details here.

To add some extra spark to the tour, we’re hosting a contest giveaway on Monday and Wednesday. We will announce the winners on Friday. There will also be one grand prize winner at the end of the Blog Spark Tour which we will draw from all the blogs in the tour. To learn more about our Blog Spark Tour and where we’ll be each week, check out our schedule.

Don’t let these mistakes hurt your SEO!

• Not including any links in your posts: Even if you are posting on a site that does not allow clickable links, you can still spell out your site in order get it out to your readers. Some sites will remove anchor links in your posts, so including the complete http://www.XYZ.com link in your post is crucial to generating more clicks to your page.

• Making “click here” your anchor text: Searching click here on Google will result in over 3.1 billion results.  Don’t let your links get lost in the crowd. Make sure your links have some description of what they are linking to, ideally a keyword or phrase that will also increase your SEO.

For Example: Instead of inserting your link like this, “Nike released new running shoes this week, click here to check them out”, change your anchor text so that the link appears like this “Check out the new Nike running shoes, released earlier this week”.

When you use a keyword phrase with a link to a related page it helps that page rank higher in search results for that page. In the above example, if someone typed “Nike running shoes” into Google, the nike.com home page should come up higher on the list of sites.

• Stuffing your post with links: Adding too many links into your post makes it look spammy and will automatically place your release on the editorial hold list on many sites. To avoid this delay, limit your links to 1 per 100 words of text. This will increase to value of the links you choose to include, increase their click-through rates, and stop search engines from assuming your post is spam and devaluing it.

Have a question about our article? Did you learn a new tip? Do you have your own tip to share? Please comment below. We’re looking forward to keeping the dialogue open all week long.

Contest Announcement! Enter to Win The Ultimate Online PR Kit (Value $97)!

Deadline date: Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time.

Contest Rules

You must adhere to all the rules as stated. Shall a winner be chosen who did not complete these rules, he/she will not be eligible to win. To be eligible to win you must be 18 years of age or older.

You must comment below telling us why you want to win the Ultimate Online PR Kit.

For Additional Entries

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• SAMPLE TWEET. ENTER UP TO TWICE DAILY:
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Are you a shopoholic that loves retail? Are you looking for a way to profit and help other people profit too? Are you already doing reviews and recommendations for the best deals out there? Consider starting your own online consignment business and profiting from what you are already doing.

A consignment business is a store that sells other people’s belongings. You take a commission on the sale and they earn money by selling their items. It’s a great way to make a nice monthly profit. Here’s how to start an online consignment business.

Step One: Decide what you’re going to specialize in. If you are thinking of selling retail then you definitely have products you love and can easily sell.  Remember that you can start with some specific specialties and add more as you grow.  There’s actually a great deal you can sell. For example, you can specialize in:

• Baby clothing
• Maternity clothing
• Housewares
• Pet items
• Art
• Collectibles
• Sports memorabilia
• Fitness equipment
• Formal wear
• Wedding attire
• Vintage items
• Designer clothing
• Teen clothing

The list can go on and on. Find a market where you see a need. Find a market you enjoy and would enjoy selling.

Step Two: Take a look around your community for your first consignment products. Eventually you may acquire goods to sell from all around the country. However, initially it’ll be good to build your store with easily accessible items. Consider asking your friends and family for items to stock your online store. You can look to purchase things inexpensively on craigslist.com at first as well to practice your listings.

Step Three: Build your online store. Once you have a few items to sell online, it’s time to build your website. In addition to building a website you may want to consider selling items on eBay and/or etsy.com. Etsy deals with vintage and homemade items so you’ll have to be selling those to qualify. Otherwise, eBay is a great option. You can build a store right on their site. This way you’re both selling via your own website store and eBay or Etsy. There are great wordpress plugins to help you with it and you can get a site functional within a few hours.  If you are interested in building your own site let me know. I have hosting, will get wordpress added and plugins and have private coaching available as well.

Step Four: Continue collecting items to sell. Your store is only effective and profitable if you have items to sell. This means you’re going to have to market to two audiences. You’re going to want to market your consignment business to people who have things to sell. And you’re going to want to market your business to customers who want to buy.

Initially, it may be advantageous to gather consignment items locally and sell them on your site. As your business grows you can include a form on your website about selling consignment goods on your site and how they can get their own items sold.

Step Five: Agreements and policies. This step is actually a tangent step to creating your online store. You’re going to want to create agreements with both your buyers and your sellers. For example, what commission do you make per sale? How long do you keep an item in your store before you consider it “unsellable” and send it back to the owner? How do you ship? What’s your return policy?

You can glean much of this information by visiting other consignment stores and learning what works for them. Then you can create your own policies and agreements to fit your business goals and needs.

Owning an online consignment store can be tons of fun. As your business grows, you can add other items to your store. For example, you can visit garage sales and find suitable items to sell for a profit. Plan your business well and launch with confidence. To your success!

photo © 2006 Cheon Fong Liew | more info (via: Wylio)

A few weeks ago I had both my email inboxes well under 10 each. I can’t remember how low they both got, but it was probably 5 or under. It was AWESOME! I have two gmail accounts and I forward all my emails to these accounts. I came off of a very productive month of February and hit March by getting that inbox down. It was so easy to open my email and figure out exactly what needed attention. But somehow in the last 2 weeks it’s back to somewhat out of control. Not fully, but it’s not in a manageable state.

Thankfully Tishia Lee posted how awesome her inbox count was on her status. Yes, my first thought did include a swear word and I possibly even had to rewrite my first comment so it didn’t sound snarky instead of funny like I meant it. Then it hit me that this was possibly a direct correlation of how my last week of working has gone. I’ve let it overwhelm me.

Since I use gmail I dove in and cleaned up. I’m not down to where I want to be, but I started at 8:30pm and I really didn’t want to stay up too late working on it. How’d I work on getting a grip on it all?

1. UNSUBSCRIBE! This is always one of the first things I do when I notice my inbox is starting to add up. If there is an email list I recognize I don’t open regularly before deleting or hasn’t peaked an action from me in a while then I click the unsubscribe button.

2. Label and Archive. This is a major one for me and one I battle with. Of course it’s easy for me to label things that are directly site related, but I’ve had one of my gmail accounts for so many years that I worry about putting emails into labels and not coming back to them. If you have a suggestion for that I’d love to hear it.

3. DELETE! This one is such a hard one and I wish I didn’t take weeks to come to the decision that I am not going to act on an email. Typically these will be emails from a company that I’m an affiliate for and I mean to put up a post about the special or the new product. I need to set up a better system of adding a quick post (whole other story) or deleting quicker. I’m working hard at deleting emails about new products I really would like to buy. Needed products are purchased immediately, wants seem to end up holing up in my inbox.

These are my tops for instantly downsizing your email inbox. Sure they can be basic and things that you already have in place. But if you have over 20 emails in your inbox regularly then you are procrastinating on them. I know I’ve signed up for a few ecourses recently and have gotten overwhelmed now that I’m behind. Once it clicked in my head that my email was getting out of control, it dawned on me that this is a direct correlation to a week that I felt overwhelmed. I know that this month is going to finish strong because I’ve caught this much quicker than normal. I’m trying to burrow out from it and I’m on the way now. I have to prepare for spring break next week and much less time online!

We come to the walkin periodically and I figured it wouldn’t be very busy since we got here at 10:30am. I know coming in after school is really busy. But alas, it doesn’t matter during the flu season. I’m an idiot.

Thankfully I had charged my phone so I’m using the wordpress android app to blog this from the waiting room. But I wish I had my notebook to write out newsletters. I don’t have all my sites loaded in this app yet and I can’t remember other passwords.  I’ve been meaning to get them all loaded but I obviously needed something like this to make it more of a priority.

I always carry my notebook and pen with me when I’m going to be waiting anywhere. It’s sped up my wait time everywhere because I’m prepared for the wait. Of course, the time I don’t bring it will be the longest wait in years.  My bad.

I was eating small light meals today and that’s going to kick my butt. A little bowl of cheerios 3 hours ago is just not cutting it. Lol

I will definitely remember to bring my notebook everywhere I go now. I will also remember to put protein bar in my purse that I can eat. The one in my purse has whey so I can’t eat it. But daughter could if she was hungry. I swear now that they’ve gotten older I need a diaperbag size purse again. I have to pack so much stuff for sports and appointments.  Then there is all the stuff I need so I can be productive while I’m waiting around.

Now I think I’ll go search out more apps since I don’t sit and research all that this phone can do for me.  Have to be productive somehow!

I have a Wii and my son has the xbox360. If I want to play a game then I’ll shut down my laptop and go to one of my game consoles. It’s better that way. Differentiate work and play. I don’t watch tv or movies from my laptop because I can’t work and watch, so why didn’t I differentiate between the games before now?

I’ve had major motivation. This has been my best month for as long as I can remember. It’s January people, it’s not “supposed” to be a good month. Getting off the games has proven very productive. Was it all because of getting off the games? NO, not even. But getting off the games had a big impact on it. It was the mindset for where I was spending my time.

I’m a procrastinator. I have been for as long as I can remember. I don’t need help being a procrastinator I do it very well on my own. I don’t apologize for it, I’ve done some incredible work under pressure. But I don’t want to be working under that pressure all the time. So I’ll do what I can to keep it at bay.

Do I miss facebook games? Yes, I do. I think a major reason I miss them is because of how high I’d gotten. My name and face was way up there on my friends game walls. Oh well, I let it go and all with a click. Those games are deleted and there is no going back.

Now I’ll build my fanpages up and live through those instead! They are so much more me than those games were

Scott Stratten gives lots of case study examples, which help you to understand the context of each chapter (there are over 50 of them). His funny and entertaining style keeps your attention from the first page to the last. Learn about viral marketing, strategies to treat your customers well and turn them into long-term prospects. Social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are covered. The book is filled with lots of great advice and top tips on what works in today’s marketing world and what doesn’t.

Overall, if you are interested in reading up on Scott Stratten’s successful, modern marketing approach of engaging with your customers, Unmarketing would be a great asset to your business library.

photo © 2010 Channelship Web Agency | more info (via: Wylio)

Four years ago (November 6, 2006), Facebook launched their advertising program. It’s essentially a PPC, Pay Per Click, program. However, it offers a number of features and benefits that other PPC programs don’t. Want some good reasons why Facebook advertisement works?

1. Facebook is in millions of homes around the world. In fact, it has more than 500 million active users. When you create a Facebook ad, you have direct access to those 500 million users.

2. Facebook allows you to narrow your ads to be seen by more specific demographic. For example, you can specify your prospects’ age, sex, location and interest.

3. Facebook ads are delivered directly to your target audience. The advertisements show up on their profile pages. This is a much more focused method of advertising. Other ad programs don’t guarantee this degree of attention from prospects. The more targeted the program, the more likely it is to convert.

4.There’s less competition on Facebook than other PPC services. This means you pay less per click than you might with another program – Google AdSense for example.

5. You can advertise your website, blog or your Facebook fan page with a Facebook ad. More options is nice.

6. People can “Like” your advertisements. This helps you generate attention for your advertisement. The more people who like your ad, the more attention – and clicks – it receives.

7. Facebook provides a wealth of data. Like many other PPC programs, Facebook provides you with the ability to test and track your ad’s success. This gives you the power to get the most return on investment from your advertisements and change things up as needed.

Facebook advertisements offer the most targeted options found anywhere. Business owners can create user-specific campaigns to drive traffic to their landing page, sales page, opt-in form, blog or even their Facebook fan page.

For example, with Facebook you can create one separate ad for single women, married women, and divorced women. You can then further segment them by age. For example, single women aged 30-40. Each advertisement you create can be designed to speak to this person specifically. Your choice of keywords, your headline and your call to action can all be written to target that exact audience.

Facebook advertising offers one of the lowest cost PPC options on the market. Combined with the ability to target a specific demographic, you can really maximize your ad’s effectiveness. If you use PPC in your marketing strategy, consider trying Facebook’s advertising program.

Have you had success with your facebook advertising?

There are a few options out there for going the full route.  I can do quite a bit of the work myself, pulling in help for things I’m not incredible at like web design. Or I can go with a full web product design agency and watch aspects of my site grow that I hadn’t considered.

In this case, I don’t think I will be needing a full site redesign for once. I have the logo as I like it, but I may need to go with a new theme. With how many wordpress theme’s there are, it’s major overload trying to find the right one. But I know the right theme will convert to more sales in this case. So I have been going to other sites I like for a few minutes each week and seeing what themes they are using. Visually appealing sites will help keep visitors there for longer.

The major revamping question is how to get the membership area exactly as I want it. I am close to saving up for amember and I know this is the resource that many I like to learn from use and it’s also a resource I use a lot as a customer. But it is possible for me to change my delivery at this time and use options I’m already paying for each month. One really great thing is amember is the one time charge. No monthly payment being taken out for services. I have to say that when I go back and add up how much I’ve paid over the years, this one time option is very appealing.

My list has built slowly which is good since I haven’t promoted it like it should. I have also not stayed connected with the list. So basically I have a targeted list and I’m wasting it. Definitely a big one I’m hitting. Starting this week as a matter of fact. Then I need to use this list to contact them twice a month. When I send out a quick broadcast to this list it converts to 2-8 new subscribers. DUH, isn’t that motivation enough right there? I just need to use the scheduling options in aweber and get a few done for January and February. Work ahead instead of feeling behind.

More products are in the works for said site. As the year went by (SO QUICKLY!) I came up with new ebook ideas. I started outlines for these products and in some cases they are quite close to finished. I think I will outsource making them pretty as I can have them proofread at the same time. These new products give me a start on where my marketing needs to be for next year and I can literally get my calendar out and plan when the marketing needs to get started.

Affiliates is another big place I need to hit. I need to get them more ways to advertise for me. Some graphics to match the new logo and in different sizes. A freebie they can give out or if they want to hold a giveaway. I haven’t pushed the affiliate program because I wanted to get more resources in place and better communication with them.

These are all things (except for the graphics) that I can do myself. They are things that I should already have been doing. They are things that directly convert to more sales. I will be setting my goals for this site on which one’s make me more sales the quickest. When I make more sales then I can bring in a VA to help with other aspects. With two of us working on my goals list it’s that much more of a win-win situation.

I try hard not to kick myself for things I know I should have been doing. Yes, I take a quick look at why I’m not doing them, so maybe I can watch if I fall into that poor habit again. But I can’t dwell on how much money I would have made last year if I’d done these things. I need to look ahead to growth and keep excited about the future of the site. Woulda-coulda-shoulda will just get me sitting here in the same spot next year

Do you have a major revamp or site restructure planned for 2011?