I ask this because I work as the Content Manager for a client’s website and he has five categories, that’s it!

Part of my job is reviewing guest article posts that are randomly sent in and even though they may be very well-written, very often I have to send back a rejection notice because it’s a topic that he just doesn’t cover on his site.

Is Being Focused Better?

When you start writing your blog or website, it’s so easy to just start writing the first thing that comes to mind. It might be business related, it might be about a friend’s business, or it might be about how your kids are fighting while they’re home on spring break.

But what do your readers want?

For example, if you opened up a doggie daycare center in lower Manhattan, would you target dog owners who live in the outlying boroughs, who would have to travel a farther distance, as potential customers? Not likely. You would have “niched down” your audience to target dog owners who live within a certain block radius of your site.

The same goes for your website. Using this same example, would these doggie day care customers want to receive tax tips every April? Well, they might want to hear this from their accountant but not from their doggie day care. You would be wise to stick with articles about the benefits of doggie daycare, safe dog treats, organic dog foods, keeping dogs safe at home, boarding your dog safely, etc.

Research Your Market

It’s never too late to do some market research and really delve deep into who your target audience is and what they want. After you have this list, go back to your website and whittle down your category list. You’re not Walmart – trying to have something for everyone. You’re YOU – a unique businesswoman who has a special service or product for a smaller audience.

I’m going back to whittling down my category list. I’m down to 30…still have a ways to go!

Feel free to share your progress as you get your site super focused!

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.

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Each comment below designates an entry number. Create a new comment for each entry requirement you complete. We will use Random.org to pick a random winner from the total number of comments below. The winner will be contacted by email. If no response is received in 48 hours, another winner will be chosen. Confirmed winners will be announced in each Friday’s blogpost and on our blog at PublicitySpark.com

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

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?

>photo © 2008 Andres Rueda | more info (via: Wylio)

I lowered my hourly fee a few months ago and I was immediately disappointed. I started losing money even though I was busier. It quickly became obvious I was not charging for all of my time.

I have had clients that take a lot of email time. I mean A LOT of time on emails. One client in particular could eat up 2-3 hours of my time a week just on deciphering email communications. I have other client emails that are quick, to the point and job is completed. Needless to say when you know exactly what you want completed you are going to get more work done for your money.

I unfortunately was NOT charging these higher maintenance clients for all the time they were taking. It was definitely my error but until I recognized the problem I was miserable. I was angry all the time and no fun to be around at home. I spent even more time on these clients because of the energy I was spending thinking of their projects all the time. Getting frustrated about these projects taking so long, led to more frustrations, a few missed deadlines on other projects and then having to let clients go. Let alone the fact that none of my personal projects were getting worked on at all.

I definitely have more patience to get projects completed no matter how many emails it takes and how much I have to decipher those emails when I know I am being compensated for my time. I can also schedule clients better. If I set aside 2 hours in a day to work on a client and they eat it up in emails and phone calls, then I can track a communication problem and work with them on that issue.

It is most important that you charge for your time. Whether it’s added into the bid of a project or you keep track of communication hours spent for those you work with hourly. This will help to ward off burning yourself out.