I've noticed that slowly more and more professionals are finally getting it! They realize being the most extraordinary expert, or specialist in their field isn't enough to bring on new business. People are more willing to buy your product or service if they LIKE you.

Here’s the single most important part of your website: YOUR WEB COPY! And remember: Your website isn’t about YOU, it’s about THEM!

Again, it's NOT about you, it's about THEM!

*Note: May I add, this is an area where most of my clients get stuck…If you find yourself at a total loss when it comes to writing, please let me know.

Recently, a friend asked "What's the deal with those DIY companies that advertise "How to get a website with everything your business needs for under $20 bucks a month?". "How can they do that?" she said.

"First impressions are very deceiving!" I told her...let me share my past experience with you!

First of all... folks get excited by the low price—don't do their due dilligence and end up with buyers remorse when they get their credit card statement.

And for many reasons.

So the audio greeting craze has finally caught on. How can you make your website stand above the rest? Pump up the volume of your audio, of course!

Folks have found many different ways to utilize this cool feature, here are a few you can try:

1) Be sure to add a little excitement and sparkle to the tone of your voice. Pretend you’re telling your best friend about a juicy piece of gossip. (I especially like my tone when I talk about things I LOVE like my kids, or my business) Don’t worry about sounding “hyped” or “salesy”. Remember to SMILE while you speak – you can “see” it when you listen. Practice in front of a mirror – don’t worry, nobody’s looking!

This week I’m adding the final touches to my Yellow Pages (YP) ad. Let me share my experience in this process with 12 tips for you to use.

#1 DON’T follow the advice of the YP sales rep about what to put in your ad. The sales rep is NOT a sales copywriter! Their main commission-based objective is selling you the ad space, not your bottom line. In the beginning my rep said “all the other web development companies have these features listed in their ad, you should too.” I’m sure my clients in the South Pacific heard my mouth hit the floor! One of the most important aspects of YP advertising is being able to STAND OUT from your competition. So I politely thanked him for his suggestion: but I’m writing my own ad mister!

Many people are disillusioned with the “build it and they’ll come” theory where you painstakingly build a website (either yourself or hire someone). Get it done, see your name in lights and don’t bother to follow thru with a marketing plan. Tsk. Tsk.

Or worse yet; you’re led to believe if you participate in search-engine, or pay-per-click hocus-pocus that’s all you’ll ever need to do. Period. WRONG! If you don't know what you're doing, you could end up farting around with your time and hard earned money!

The #1 marketing secret to online success is to combine offline marketing techniques with your website.

With the recent buzz about George Mason University making it to the final 4, I remembered an old acquaintance who attended GMU in the 80’s and of course “Googled” him just to see where he landed in the scheme of life.

What I found was delightful and also shocking since I’ve completely devoted myself to website marketing.

This acquaintance I’ll call “George” had successfully started up a family business in the fast growing niche industry for the affluent. Excellent! I thought, until I went to his company’s website.

As a kid I remember spending endless hours in the summer playing board games in the barn or the maple grove with the neighborhood kids. Now, my daughter who owns a babysitting service is doing the same. I stopped in for a game of checkers and to do a brain dump! Or so I thought.

For those of you not familiar, the object of the game is to capture all of the opponent's men, or block them so they cannot be moved. My strategy begins by being aggressive and getting a king first. This means being the first to lose some men, which gives your opponent a false sense of power, but it gets your opponent’s men out of the way so can blaze a path to making a king.