Your business website should effectively represent your brand while providing ways for your leads to easily engage you. All roads in your business should lead back to your website, making it the pivot point for all your marketing. And you want to treat your website that way.

Furthermore, having a website opens the possibility to not just market to your leads, but to create a powerful touch point for engaging your audience in conversation and building relationships with your prospects and clients.

So if you want a successful business, and I believe you do, it only make sense to create a website that fuels the growth of your business.

Yet, as a small business owner, it can be easy – or tempting – to get in the way of your own marketing. You may take shortcuts with your business website. These shortcuts can become mistakes that undermine your business goals and turn your website from golden egg to fried omelet.

The sad thing is that you may not know your making these mistakes and undermining your business website.

So let’s look at 8 common, and often critical, mistakes I see everyday with small business websites:

Mistake #1: No Clear Objectives for Your Business Website

The very first thing you should do when you plan your business website is define its purpose. What objectives do you want your website to achieve? In other words, what do you want our visitors to see, to read and to do. To do is the most important set of objectives so you want your website objectives to be action oriented. Do you want them to sign up on your list, get your RSS feed, buy a product or take a survey? Any of these can be objectives. Just make sure your objectives are clearly defined.

One more thing on objectives: if you have more than one objective for your website, you want to put them in order of importance. Then, make sure you primary objective is the most visible and easy to find on your site. Your secondary objective should take its appropriate place behind the primary…and so on.

Mistake #2: No Strategies For Reaching Your Business Objectives

Once you know the objectives of your website you want to create strategies around how you’re going to accomplish these objectives. Strategy gets into how you’re going to do what you’re setting out to do with our business website. The more thought out and researched your strategies, the more likely your marketing and your website, overall, will be successful. From a strategy comes our plan of action, which gets us into tactics.

Mistake #3: No Tactics to Achieve Your Business Objectives

If you’re like most people, you’re pretty good at thinking about what you want to do with your business website. Often, where the trouble begins is when you have go from thought to action. That’s where tactics come in.

Tactics are the actionable steps you’ll be taking to achieve your business objectives. Your tactics are, flat out, a task list of what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. Think of your tactics as being the implementation of your strategy. It’s how you’re going to do what you think.

Mistake #4: No Targeted Metrics to Measure Your Progress

One great thing about the internet is that if it happens on your business website, you can measure it. Which means, you can find out amazing detail about how your visitors as seeing, reading and using your website. So the only question is are you recording that information?

What’s sad is that I see so many small business owners who aren’t even looking at their most basic website statistics. Yet, it’s so much easier to know how effectively your building your list, for instance, if you know how much traffic you’re getting. And from knowing that, you can make a plan for increasing you list signups.

There’s no way else to put it, it’s a mistake if you’re not recording your website statistics and looking at them with some regularity (not daily). And it’s a further mistake if you don’t take the time to learn how to interpret your website statistics because they will tell you what’s working and what’s not working on your website.

Yet, it’s important to go one step beyond just your basic traffic stats. You want to also consider how you’re going to measure the effectiveness of your strategy and tactics so you can see how well you’re achieving your objectives. In other words, you want a solid system of metrics – even a simple one – so you can evaluate your marketing and make it work better.

Mistake #5: No Integrated Marketing Plan

So often I see small business owners thinking of their website as one part of their marketing and their offline marketing as being another part. Don’t make this mistake. Integrate the two. Communicate your offline promotions online. And even more effective, use your offline marketing to drive people to your business website. This works great when you can make an offer on your website that your offline audience wants. As I said above, your business website should be the hub of you marketing – not just online, but all your marketing.

Mistake #6: No Focus on the Value of Your Offer

I’m asked to evaluate a lot of websites for whether they’re business ready. One of the most common mistakes I see is small business owners not focusing on or effectively communicating the value of their service. Too often, the focus is on either the cost of service or the ‘unique approach we use that makes us different than everyone else.’ Yet, this just confuses the prospect because either they don’t care about the approach or they have to consider what they’re getting for the cost. In other words, they have to figure out the value themselves.

Don’t make your prospects figure out for themselves the value of the services you provide. Tell them about it. Show them what they get, what they can expect and how you will help them solve their problems. And offer testimonials of people who you’ve helped so that they can see the social proof in your offer.

Mistake #7: No Action Plan for Your Visitors

We said earlier that your website should have clearly defined objectives. Once you’ve identified what your objectives are, it’s likely they require an action by your visitors for you to achieve. So tell them to take the action. Make it exceptionally clear that if they’ve gotten this far in your website, that ‘this is the action step you want to take next.’ Could be a list signup, a free report, a set of articles – doesn’t matter (as long as it’s toward your business objectives). Just be sure you’re hyper-clear about what action steps you want your visitors to take.

Mistake #8: No Balance Between Design & Marketing Message

Having been a website designer for well over a decade, I’ve dealt with this one a lot. Often, business owners become too concerned over the visual look of their website and it gets out of balance with the purpose of their site – which is a marketing tool to promote and sell their products and services.

That’s not to say that a website shouldn’t be visually appealing – it should. For instance, I’ve had dozens of people contact me just to let me know how much they like the design of my site. Yet your website design shouldn’t get in the way of your marketing message and business objectives. It should provide a professional, attractive frame for your all-important content.

Ideally, your design will be something people see initially and get a good impression of you from. Then, as they begin to read your copy, it should fade into the background. So think of your website design not as a paramount piece of the marketing puzzle but as a frame for your marketing message. And remember, that you want to consider your business objectives in any website design.

So these are the 8 most critical mistake I see everyday in working with clients on growing their business and on developing their web presence. There are more, of course. But I’ve found these to be the biggest and most important 8 to correct.

Does your website make any of these mistakes? If so, which ones? And what will you do about it?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from iampeas on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Sounds sort of crazy, huh? No one in their right mind would ever conceive building a neighborhood or developing a community that wasn’t linked with ways to get in and out. In essence, without houses being connected by sidewalks and streets, there would be no community all – just a bunch of unreachable, free-standing (and empty) homes.

Well, if your website isn’t developing a community around it, then you’re not thinking too differently than the subdivision developer who doesn’t build streets. And if you’re not building community around your website, then it’s likely your business is suffering online.

The reason is people want to belong. They want to find like-minded people with similar interests to connect with. They want to associate with other people who are in similar situations. In other words…they want community.

Nowhere is this more evident today then in the explosion of social media on the internet. What do you think the 500 billion people are doing on Facebook? And what are all these ‘tweets’ on Twitter about? Why are people using these sites in record numbers?

Because these sites allow people to connect with other people. In some cases, people with similar interest. In others, people they can learn from. And in still other cases people who can help them solve their problems – whether they’re personal, professional, health or business and so on.

Everyday the internet becomes more and more of a space for social engagement. And so should your website. Your website needs  to evolve with the changes toward a social internet or you’ll quickly watch it fall behind. Right now, this moment, sites that are socially oriented are building communities and, through those communities, growing their business. Sites that are not community-oriented are merely becoming placeholders for outdated and uninteresting content. Sorry, it’s just the fact of the matter. People don’t just want to read, they want to feel they’re connected to something. That something could (should) be you, your website, your business, etc.

So what does all this mean for you?

Basically you need to engage your target audience where they are! And right now, they’re on social media sites connecting with other people (read: other service providers).

You need to develop a website where you can engage your audience – and them you. You need to develop a web-based marketing plan where you’re actively engaging real-life people through these social spaces using these social tools. And you need to remember that business happens most easily, most often from relationships. A community, remember, is just a group of relationships – nothing more really.

As for the tools – Twitter, Facebook, Biznik, LinkedIn, etc – forget about all the hullaballoo and fancy marketing tactics. You don’t need to know any of that stuff. All you need are to know can be summed up in these two words: Listen and Engage! Listen to what people who have similar interests as you are talking about. And then, engage them in conversations. From conversations you build relationships. String together a bunch of relationships and you have a community.

Listen and engage! Listen and engage! Listen and engage. That’s it. Do this and it will change your business, your understanding of the internet and bring you into relationships with people who you have a natural affinity to. Listen…and…engage!

How are you using social media and your website to engage potential clients?

Are you listening to what they’re talking about? If so, how….if not, why not?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Luke Chan on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

If you have a website, it serves one purpose – to sell something

Whether you’re selling goods and services or ideas and opinions – websites are about selling. If you have an offer, you want people to buy it. If you like something, you want people to try it. If you believe something, you want people to believe it too. And if you know something, you want other people to know it as well.

It doesn’t really matter how you slice it, the point of a website is to sell something. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a website? To display pretty pictures for everyone to see? Of course not. Websites are about selling because as people, we’re selling all the time. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

You see, selling is merely an exchange of something that’s valuable to someone. That’s it. Selling is nothing more than an exchange. It’s nothing to avoid, be concerned about or even fear. We’re selling all the time. I’m selling you my opinion right now. And if it has value, you’ll buy it and make it part of yours.

I think where selling gets a bad wrap is when we remember those annoying little experiences when someone was trying to pressure us into something we didn’t want. You know what I mean. The appliance salesman who really doesn’t get that sales is about relationship rather than the next commission to be made. Or the car salesman who follows you around the lot when you just want to look around. In these cases it’s pretty obvious that some sales people just don’t understand that selling is a natural, human process. They try too hard, really. And from our experiences with these sort of people, we feel icky about selling.

But there’s no need to fell bad about selling. As I said, we’re selling our ideas, our thoughts, our beliefs and our opinions all the time. So really, selling is as natural as having a conversation. And it’s through conversation that we go about selling –

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even on our websites. We use the conversation on our websites to develop relationships with people who may want to buy what we offer (e.g. what we’re selling). That’s the entire point of having a website.

So here’s some pointers I’ve put together to help you with selling on your website – and in your business as a whole. Use these suggestions and don’t be afraid to see yourself selling what you know, think or believe. Embrace it and find a new freedom in giving what you have of value to people who value what you know.

1. Don’t try to sell. If someone’s contacting you, they have some level of interest already. Find out what their want or need is first. Then, give them the information they need to make a choice. On your website, identify their problems and help them see that you can help them solve them.
2. Engage people. One of the most important aspects of selling is engagement. You want to engage your prospective clients and customers fully. Use your website to meet people where they are and engage them in conversation. Stay in the conversation as it organically moves toward a transaction. Not all will, but if you engage more people will buy than not because you’re showing them you care.
3. Care damn it! Really care about the people who you engage and who visit your website. Caring is the single most important aspect of selling. Listen to what they want, be empathetic about where they are and just give a crap about them as people. They’ll know the difference.
4. Be authentic. Selling is a natural as having a conversation. But we don’t often approach it that way. All you need to do is be yourself. People will naturally gravitate toward you when you’re real with yourself and with them. And forget all the sales techniques and just be a person trying to help people. You’ll refine how as you go.
5. Be transparent. Be a real person being real with people. Read that again! If you don’t know something, be honest about it. There’s nothing wrong with finding out the answer and getting back to someone. People will be pleased when you say you don’t know. More importantly, it will build trust with them.
6. Know what you’re selling. Clarity in what you’re selling is so, so important. If you don’t know, you certainly can’t share it and if you can’t share it you can’t sell it. So find out everything you can about what you’re selling. See it from different angles and approaches.
7. Know why you’re selling it. So often overlooked is this question of why. But you must know the answer. Is it just to make money? Or are you wanting to make meaning and a difference in people’s lives? If your product or service is about helping people, then know it and sell it that way.
8. Know who you’re selling too. This is so often missed…you’ve got to know who you’re selling too. Not the person so much, as their need, their likes, their dislikes. That means, listen. Listen to what their need is first. Get as much information as you can about what they believe they need.
9. Match your solution to their problem. If you listen well, people will tell you exactly what problem they’re trying to solve and specifically why they called you to solve it. At that point you merely need to match your ability to solve their problem to the problem they believe they need solved. Don’t change or reframe their problem for them , reframe your solution.
10. Remember, it’s okay to sell. Selling isn’t a dirty thing. Remember what I’ve said above, we’re selling all the time – our thoughts, our ideas, our beliefs, etc. So selling is natural. The oddities come in when money’s involved. And there’s nothing wrong with selling what you have to someone who needs it and making money, even a lot of money, from it. It’s just an exchange.

Now, don’t treat this like every other blog post

Really, I mean that. Don’t just read this post, leave a comment and then go on to the next thing to do. Use what I’ve given you here. Sit down with it and look over your website, your marketing, and how you convert your prospective clients. Refine your sales process. And if you don’t have a sales process, create one. Honestly, it will make a massive difference in how you do business.

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I’ll even make the 10 key points here into a PDF for you to download. Just click the icon at the right and you’ll download the 10 keys here right away. No email address or opt-in of any sort. All I ask is if you find value, share it with your friends:

• Retweet this post on Twitter
• Post it on Facebook
• Vote it up on Biznik

Remember, selling isn’t a scary thing and it’s not a bad thing. Selling is a natural part of being a human being. So embrace it. You can sell with integrity and give your more people the chance to be helped through your products and services.

How comfortable are you with selling? What’s your own sales process?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from darma communications on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

What is your business about?

Is it about branding and marketing? I’m sure it is. Is your business about sales and profits? I sure hope so. And is it about making some difference in the world? Ideally, that would be nice.

But branding, marketing, sales and making a difference require one thing – relationships. Ultimately, business is about relationships. Doesn’t matter whether you’re selling products or pitching services, ultimately people buy because they trust you. And trust comes from developing a relationship – even if that relationship is built from content on your website.

Whenever I work in my business, make plans etc, I always think about people. I remember that it’s people that I’m doing business with not some segment of niche market (though I may use the terms). And I remember that my own clients hire not my business, but me; they hire me. While they may like, want or need what I know or can teach them, ultimately they’re working with me because of the relationship we’ve built – and are building.

Solid businesses, especially independent and small businesses are built on relationships.

That’s always been the case and it will continue to be the case going forward. Which is why I’m such a big fan of the Cluetrain Manifesto. Sure, Cluetrain’s been around a while. Yeah, many others have said the same things – perhaps even better – since. But I still like the original. I like the way it’s put together. I like that it can be definitive and yet explorative at the same time.

For me, Cluetrain remains the quintessential work on how businesses are relationships and markets are conversations. Probably my favorite section is a piece written by Doc Searls where he describes a conversation he had with a Nigerian Pastor named Sayo:

…After hearing (about ‘markets are conversations’), he acknowledged that our observations were astute, but also incomplete. Something more was going on in markets than just transactions and conversations, he said. What was it?

I said I didn’t know. Here is the dialogue that followed, as close to verbatim as I can recall it…

“Pretend this is a garment”, Sayo said, picking up one of those blue airplane pillows. “Let’s say you see it for sale in a public market in my country, and you are interested in buying it. What is your first question to the seller?”

“What does it cost?” I said.

“Yes”, he answered. “You would ask that. Let’s say he says, ‘Fifty dollars’. What happens next?”

“If I want the garment, I bargain with him until we reach an agreeable price.”

“Good. Now let’s say you know something about textiles. And the two of you get into a long conversation where both of you learn much from each other. You learn about the origin of the garment, the yarn used, the dyes, the name of the artist, and so on. He learns about how fabric is made in your country, how distribution works, and so on. In the course of this you get to know each other. What happens to the price?”

“Maybe I want to pay him more and he wants to charge me less”.

“Yes. And why is that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You now have a relationship”.

Their conversation goes on to talk about the importance of relationship in public markets. ”Transaction still matters, of course. So does conversation. But the biggest slice in the social pie of the public marketplace is relationship. Price is less set than found, and the context for finding prices is both conversation and relationship. In many cases, relationship is the primary concern, not price.”

In essence, price matters – but not as much as relationships. Just think about the recent purchases you’ve made. How often was it just about price and how often did you pay a little bit more because you had established a relationship with the seller? Branding, marketing, selling and good will all have their foundations in relationships.

So in creating your business, in running your business and in marketing your business, why not make it about relationships first? Sure, you absolutely need to know who you are, what you do, why do it and who you do it for. But once you know that, the rest is about building relationships. And relationships begin with conversation. And now, we’re back to using your website, your email list, social media and search engines to get into the conversation. This is where successful businesses are built.

What specifically are you doing to build relationships in your business? How do you nurture your current and post clients? And how to you build those relationships with prospective clients?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from dbarronoss on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Poke around the web and you’ll find numerous opinions on why, as a small business owner, you should be blogging.

Some say you should blog to increase your reach. Blogs can certainly help you reach a larger audience faster, and often cheaper, than your usual website. Toss in social media and you can gain a large following quickly. So it’s gotta be reach, right?

It could be. But increasing the reach of your website doesn’t mean you’ll land more clients or get more customers. The blogosphere is full of bloggers who have tons of traffic and are making pennies.

Another oft-quoted reason for blogging is search engine optimization. And it’s true, there are some pretty major SEO benefits to blogging. Blog posts tend to be more keyword centric since often they’re on a specific topic. Then there’s the backlinking opportunities that can come with a well-written blog post. So it’s gotta be the SEO factor, doesn’t it?

Well, maybe. But that’s not what I’m thinking. SEO drives traffic and while traffic is important, getting more traffic doesn’t always mean more sales. It could, but not always.

Then there’s those that say you small business owners should be blogging to grow a community around your business and create brand loyalty. I’ve been someone who’s built my businesses through conversation and relationships, so community is definitely important in building a successful business. And brand loyalty is a plus as well.

But I think that each of these are putting the cart before the horse. I think focusing on reach, traffic and community is useless unless you position yourself effectively in your market.

I’ve worked with hundreds of small and service-oriented business clients over the past thirteen years. Many have had great offers and understood copy writing. They’ve known the importance of keywords and building a following. But what they often lacked was one of the most fundamental aspects of running a business: how they positioned themselves and their offer.

Some think of positioning as just branding. Others see it as image or identity. Neither are wrong. Yet, I define positioning a little differently. I see positioning as what your target audience believes your business provides. In other words, can you clearly illustrate that you have the solution to your target audience’s problem. It’s how you communicate what you do.

But to clearly and successfully communicate what you do, you must have that clarity yourself. And that’s what blogging affords.

When you blog, you write often about your business, your knowledge, and your capabilities. You share stories about how your product or service has been uses by your customers and clients. And you provide valuable proof of the effectiveness of your offer.

Yet you also have the opportunity to let people respond to what your write. They can certainly respond in the comment box. But they also respond through how often they share your posts on Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon. They also respond by how long they stay on the page. And they respond by whether they clicked links in the post or a call-to-action at the end of the post. All of this is feedback on whether people are getting your content or not.

With a blog, you can take this a step further. You can also display your expertise in solving problems your audience face – whether personal or professional. You can offer advice on dealing with circumstances and write specifically to their needs. Then you can watch the response. If it’s positive, you know that you’re communicating well about what you do. And if not, you know that you need a bit of work.

In essence, your blog allows you to find the most effective way to communicate with your audience. It can help you refine how you talk about your products and services so that your readers can clearly understand what your business offers. But more importantly, you can use your blog to display exactly how your offering can help them solve the problems they’re facing.

The bottom line is that before you drive traffic or focus on keywords or even build a community, make sure people know what you do. They won’t buy from you if they’re not clear what you’re about. But once they are, in other words, once you’ve positioned yourself well, then you’ll find that more people will buy from you because you’re talking to the right audience in the way they want to be communicated with.

And needing work is fine. It’s what having a business is all about. You need to allow your business to never be finished – to always be changing.

So small businesses, especially, can use blogging to experiment with how they talk to their audience. With a blog, they can explore different avenues for communicating. But moreover, they can find clarity in their business.

So how are you using your blog to find clarity in yours?

(note: image from horizontal.integration on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Can Twitter really help your business?

This is something I get asked all the time by clients, prospective clients and just about anyone else I meet and chat with. Heck, my mom called me a few weeks ago just to ask me, “what is Twitter?” So if it’s reaching my mom, who is somewhat computer savvy, it’s probably something we all want to figure out how to interact with.

But the question still remains – can Twitter help your business?

The answer…well, yes…and…no.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking…how could it be both?

Simple! Twitter is nothing more than a channel you dial in to whenever you want to connect. You can use that channel in any number of ways. For instance, if you don’t have a business or if you’re not trying to market your business on Twitter, then you just get to follow and engage in conversations. From those conversations you’ll meet interesting, like-minded people and possibly develop new friendships.

The same can be true if you have a business you’re trying to promote using Twitter. You can also get into engaging conversations, meet interesting people and develop new friendships. And, that’s all Twitter can be.

But if you want to use Twitter to increase your reach, or find prospective clients, you need to go about using it in that way. Which means you want to have a plan.

Now, when I say plan, I don’t necessarily mean some highly structured, graphed out approach to leveraging Twitter to meet your business objectives. Rather, I mean that you’re clear about the possibilities and opportunities that you find yourself in as you use Twitter. It’s difficult to take advantage of opportunities – even see them – if you’re not looking for them.

And that doesn’t mean that every tweet you ever write, respond to or retweet on Twitter should be about gaining business. As a matter of fact, that’s often the wrong tact. People smell it when you’re not forthright about your intentions. And they definitely smell a marketing ploy. Just be a real person who has a business interacting with real people knowing that some of them will likely want what your business offers.

So here’s some tips on how to see the opportunities when using Twitter:

• Be clear on your Twitter objectives. If they’re personal, great, keep it that way. If they’re professional, then make sure you know what you want from using Twitter
• Do it. In other words, do the things that will meet your business objectives. And if you don’t know how – get some help from someone you trust.
• Reach out. Twitter can be a great place to reach people you normally wouldn’t, or couldn’t. So be the one who reaches out to others. Just be sure to keep the conversation honest and be upfront if you have business motives.
• Follow the people who follow you. It’s more difficult to do as you get more and more followers. But, especially in the beginning, people will often connect with your immediately if you follow them back.
• Be aware. Always look for business opportunities. I not saying always be marketing. Just be aware that even the most benign conversation could open into a business possibility. Be looking for them – just don’t force them.
• Remember, it’s about people. Twitter is about conversation and building relationships. Even if you’re using Twitter to promote your business, be sure you’re clear that it’s about the people on the other end of your tweets.
• Do your research. When you get into a good conversation with someone, find out about them. Learn about their business, visit their website, signup for their feed. Learn what you can so you can deepen your relationship.
• Find partners. Twitter can be a great place to find people to partner with in your business or on new projects. Again, simply look for the opportunities.
• Be aware. I know I said this already, but it needs repeating. Be awake to the possibilities around you. Listen closely in conversations about what people want. And when you find something that you can help with – help them.
• Lastly, and MOST IMPORTANT, be real. Even if you’re promoting a business on Twitter, remember that you’re a person interacting with other people. Be true to yourself and transparent with everyone else.

Twitter provides some amazing opportunities. I’ve met hundreds of interesting people on Twitter myself. Some are just interesting conversations. Some become more regular relationships. Some have become friends. And others are interested in how I can help them in their business. And I try to meet each of them where they are.

Getting clear on how to use Twitter can be the difference between wasted time and a growing business. It’s important, then, to know what you’re doing with Twitter and then do it. This is one of the reasons I’ve created my teleclass, Learn How to Use Twitter to Get More Clients. I’ll be sharing a number of the things I do to successfully use Twitter to promote my business without being an annoying marketer who’s only out to make a buck. Read more about the teleclass and register by clicking here.

And let me ask…How are you using Twitter? Do you promote your business? And if so, are your efforts giving you returns?

Or are you lost and uncertain how to use Twitter to find more clients?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from wiselywoven on Flickr, some rights reserved)

I work with business owners all the time who aren’t sure about what they want, what they’re doing or where they’re going. Nothing wrong with that at all. After all, unless your expertise is in small business development or marketing, there’s little reason to think you’d have a solid understanding of how to structure and grow a business.

Yet one thing that thatseems to set successful small business owners apart from those who aren’t is their mindset.

Business is all about creating your space in the market place – in your niche market, that is – and working hard to inform people how what you sell can help them. The thing is, if you’re wishy-washy you’ll get wishy-washy responses. Just as if you’re pointed, certain and clear in what you offer your clients, your clients will often be clear and pointed in what they want from you.

That’s why being uncertain about how you’re positioned within your niche market leads to uncertain, and often lackluster, results. Little focus means little results. And what other positioning in your niche market is there than being considered the best in your market space? Do you hear any of your clients say, “I’m working with Dawud because he’s the 12th best business advisor in his field?” Of course not. People always want to feel they’re working with the best. And usually they are – the best for them.

So I’ve never understood having a business unless your intent was to be the best in a market space. And that means that you set out from the beginning to dominate the market. It doesn’t always mean you reach your goal, of course, of being the top-dog in a niche market. But that’s not the point.

The point is your mindset. Do you go after the people who can serve in your niche market or do you sit back and let them come to you? Do you work hard to develop relationships that help establish your expertise and grow your business or do you sort of stay within your comfortable group of peers who will never be clients? And do you set out to be the best in your highly specific, targeted niche market or do you reserve yourself to having a business that doesn’t create the lifestyle you want?

It’s all in the mindset. Set out to be seen as the best in your niche market and you will be – at least by those who you bring into your business. And that means you have to dominate your niche. How else can you grow and maintain a successful business?

As Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” So what we believe is what we end up creating.

Love to hear your thoughts on how you’re dominating your niche market? Or are you at all trying to dominate your niche? And if not, why not?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Danius! on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

According to James from Audio Mecca, it’s necessary to accept “that the other fellow is not a moron.”

I keep saying again and again that conversation leads to relationship and relationship leads to business. No matter whether we’re talking about clients and customers, referrals and affiliates, partnerships or friends – it all begins with building relationships.

That’s why I find James’ comment so interesting. It’s true! We need to believe that the people we get into conversations with, and ultimately building relationships with, are not idiots. Don’t they have a point? Aren’t their comments, perceptions and ideas important in some way?

If they’re not, why are we in the conversation with them in the first place?

When I think about all of you who have commented on my blog, for instance, I can’t think of any instances when I thought someone was an idiot or a moron. Really, I’m not just saying that. But that doesn’t mean every comment I’ve seen has been a highly intelligent one.

Yet I know that people (read: me) sometimes say things that are off-beat a little bit with how they feel or what they think. I know that sometimes in trying to explain something we can just get way off track and start sounding like an idiot. But does that make us one?

Maybe it does…What do you have to say?

Let’s be honest…do you think the readers of your blog are morons?

How about the people your customers and clients? Why/why not?

(note: image from judemat on Flickr)

The answer I give almost always revolves around creating relationships. If you’ve been reading a while, you know one of my favorite statements is people don’t do business with businesses, they do business with people. So relationships become key to business success.

Before the internet, before social media, much of the business world seemed to focus on producing and selling. You’d produce a product or create a service and do everything you could to get people to buy. In other words, marketing was about peddling what you had.

Today, however, and especially with the explosion of social media, the business world is changing. No longer is business just about producing something and selling it. Now, business is more about communication, relationship, community and innovation. And all this is being driven by the conversations happening all over the blogosphere.

As business owners, this means we need to rethink how we go about doing business. We need to consider and engage in the conversation with people who need what we offer. It means we need to be more concerned with customer service – even before the person becomes a customer. It means that what you share in your business is just as important as what you do.

I found this great little video on YouTube that illustrates just that. It was put together by Charles Leadbeater who’s a leading authority on innovation and creativity. Charles’s website says he’s currently involved in research which “focuses on how mass, user driven innovation is reshaping organisations.” If you’re in the UK, you may want to check out Charles book, We Think, The Power of Mass Creativity.

One of the quotes from the video that I found so interesting was this:

Communities don’t just want to make money, they want to socialize and gain recognition for the work they do.

Would you agree?

Take a look at the video. It’s about four minutes long. And at the end, I’d love to hear what you think.

[youtube qiP79vYsfbo]

So, are you what you produce or are you what you share? Or both? What are your thoughts?

(note: image from Marcio Ruiz on Flickr)

Then came talk radio. Now people could call in and add their two cents to the topic discussed by the host. I often think of social media as being like talk radio.

For instance, now people can interact with the ‘hosts’ of blogs; engaging in interesting, lively and informative conversations. Or they can meet each other in Facebook or on StumbleUpon. Yet it goes further than that. Now, rather than just commenting on topics, social sharing and networking sites allow users to have control over what content gets seen – which stories get pushed to the top. It’s really an amazing time.

Yet, whether we’re talking about blogs, Facebook or new social sharing sites like Mixx, one thing remains constant – the relationship. Social media has made the internet about relationships.

Knowing I see the internet now almost solely through the eyes of social media, Liz Strauss asked me:

What do you find is the key to great relationships with social media friends?

I can answer in one word - connect!

The key is to make contact. When anyone comes your way, send them a thank you by email. Or give them a phone call. Bloggers love to meet each other. Find out what you have in common…and share.

For instance, I don’t go into the relationship looking for anything. Sure, I may see some potential for business or business partnerships or so on. But I don’t let that be the motivating factor. Rather, I just want to connect with the person on the other end of the keyboard. Then, I let the relationship evolve organically.

What holds the key for me has been to be real, authentic and honest. I’m simply who I am and I try to make space for people to just be who they are. So I think you have to make room for the relationship to develop in its own, organic way. Some people I’ve met have remained acquaintances. Some have become friends. While others have become clients or business partners. Yet each developed in its own way, without any manipulation or prodding. And I’ve loved it.

Of course I say this knowing that the past few months haven’t afforded me the time I had previously to make those connections. I’ve been a bit busy with a major house remodel and the birth of our third child. So I have less time these days. Yet I still reach out. And if you haven’t heard from you me yet, don’t think you’re not on my list. Just give me a little time and we’ll meet.

So in a phrase, the key to great social media relationships is to connect. Reach out and make a new acquaintance, a new friend or a new business opportunity. You never know where the relationship is going to go.

Which is why I’m chomping at the bit to continue our one2one conversation by asking Liz:

How do you find the time to be so engaged with your readers in the comment box, keep up your thousands of connections, write on yours and a number of other blogs, while taking care of your clients? Where do you find the time?

I’d love to know how you keep it all going. Not just Liz, but you too. How do find the time, with family, work and personal time to keep up with your social media relationships?