The Robin and Judy Show

The Weakest Link In Your Security

Have you ever thought about the fact that YOU may be the weakest link in your security? We are all learning, to not automatically believe phone call information, or website information. The employee you’re talking to, or the website you are looking at, could be anywhere in the world, and the “helpful agent” could be drinking a beer while he helps remove you from your money!

Entrepreneurial Quiz

Here is an entrepreneurial quiz, that we ran across from The Small Business Bible, by Steven Strauss February 2, 2009, but it still applies today. We wanted to share it with all of you because we are always asked…”How do you know you are truly entrepreneurial? Do you have what it takes? Take a minute … take the quiz, and find out.

Making Money Is A Hobby

Most of us are finding money to be an interesting hobby. REALLY? Hmm…now that is an interesting thought! But, there is money in the world, even though it can be hard for some of us, to find.

There is more money floating around, changing hands and making more people wealthy than ever before. And yet, it seems that most of us work very hard to get rid of it as fast as we can. Let’s look at this a little closer:

How to Use Benchmark Studies

One question or comment keeps popping up on our blog, that we want to share with all our readers. That comment is usually something like: What is the average response rate for …(you can fill in the blank here) ?

We totally understand why marketers want to know those facts, but what are you going to do with the answer? Truly…if we said the average email open rate was 24%, what would you do with that information, and more importantly, how would you act on that data?

Time To Upgrade Your Word Press 3.1

It’s that time again…the scary thought….”Time to upgrade your Word Press 3.1 blog site! Yes, we can hear your groans!

Why are we so worried? Well, the truth is, that the upgrade procedure can be dangerous, but so are many of the things we do daily, like driving a car. We are not usually concerned, with driving because we are so used to it. We understand how to drive, so we are not worried about it…

10 Characteristics of Human Behavior

While researching information about the 10 characteristics of human behavior, I found some interesting insights from marketing guru Jay Abraham: Take a look and think about the effect it would have on your business. The more you study the communication process, the more you realize that successful communications… be they ads, sales letters, brochures or proposals… tap into key characteristics of human behavior. The more you are aware of these obvious, “commonsense”, basic attributes, the more powerful and effective your communication will be.

Mind Clutter

Clean out the Mind Clutter!  We have all heard it, some more than others, but if you are in the network marketing business, you have heard it.

“This business is so hard.  People are just too busy to want to hold parties.”

“I love my products, but I feel like they’re too expensive.”

“I can sign up a lot of people, but then no one wants to do anything.”

Sound familiar?  Maybe too familiar because you were shouting, “That’s what I think!”  So, what do all of these things have in common?

Top 10 LinkedIn Marketing Tips

We recently ran across a very good article by Lewis Howes with 10 great tips for maximizing LinkedIn. So good in fact, we wanted to share it here.

We know that many people have accounts at LinkedIn, but we think very few people know how to fully optimize their LinkedIn profiles for success, and even fewer probably know how to get the best out of LinkedIn.

Where Facebook tops the list of fun social networking sites, LinkedIn tops the charts for business networking. With over 85 million users, LinkedIn offers…

Make Your 2011 Business Plan Now

As we near the end of this year and the start of 2011, it’s a great time to take some time to begin writing new marketing plans.

Each December, we take some time to review what we’ve done the past 12 months. We begin to think about what we want to do in the new year and what we want to accomplish.

Taking the time in December to make a plan for the following 12 months can be one of the best things you can do for your business.

Here’s a few things to consider as you make your own plan for 2011…..

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How “Related Posts” Plug-ins Can Help Your Blog

If you are not already using a “related posts” plugin for your WordPress blog, you’ll definitely want to read on.

This is a type of plugin that can bring your blog extra traffic, extra page views, boost your search engine rankings and so much more.

The plugin works like this; At the end of each of your blog posts, the plug-in will suggest to the reader, other posts you have made that are similar to or related to the one they just read.

Each suggestion will be automatically generated by the plugin and will be a link to another post in your blog.

There are a number of reasons why you need to be using a related-post plugin on your blog. Here are a few of the benefits you’ll want to know…

Target Market: Six Things You Must Know About Yours

You’ve got a great product for consumers. You have memorized every detail, every benefit and you know your market “is huge.” You can’t wait to start to tell everyone about it.

You’ve spent hours on your website, created a Facebook Page, set up an auto-repsonder series, finished your Twitter setup and you’re ready to go.

Are you really? Isn’t there something you may have forgotten? How about defining your target market? Who is most likely to want to buy your product?

If you’re silently saying “everybody” right now, you should keep reading. If you don’t understand six things about your target market, not only will your sales suffer, but ….

Google Instant Previews; Will Your Website Be Affected?

Rolling out this week is yet another search tool from Google.

“Instant Previews” will now be added to each search result, displaying a snapshot of a webpage containing the search term.

From the standpoint of a web searcher, this feature will be a great help to finding what you are looking for.

From a marketers standpoint, it may reduce the number of visitors to your website and here’s why…

Sell What People Want, Not What They Need

One of the hardest marketing lessons to learn (or so it would seem) is to always understand that people buy what they want, not what they need. Yet, mastering that understanding is the key to success or failure. It doesn’t matter what product you sell or what industry you’re in, if you are trying to sell based on your customers needs, you’re headed down the wrong road.

Rarely do people buy based on needs. We’ve all seen people who may not have a job, or may not have health insurance, but they will be lined up to buy the biggest, baddest high definition television. People buy because they WANT, rarely because they NEED…….

New: Google Feedburner Offers Real-Time Stats and More

Last week, Google rolled out the Beta-version of the new Feedburner stats and we’re loving it! As in Analytics and the new Goo.gl shortening services, Feedburner Beta stats is offering some great in-depth analysis.

Whether you want to know which country your readers are coming from, or which of your blog posts were most popular in your feed, or how many clicks your feed received, you’ll find it all in a very familiar Google-esque manner. We particularly like………

Video – Tweak Your Blog Comments Setting (Never Show “0 Comments” Again)

When your visitors arrive at your blog, there are two things they are likely to notice; They will notice the date of your most current post and they will notice how many comments have been made on your blog posts. Both of those items give an immediate picture as to how popular your blog is.

Nothing says “Readers find this blog post boring” than a post that shows “Zero Comments.” Unfortunately, there is a time when every one of your blog posts will show “0 Comments”….. when you first post the article!

Here’s a short video on how you can make changes to your blog theme to change that wording to something much more interesting…….

Three Tricks to Get Your Tweets Noticed

Getting noticed in the Twitterverse can be difficult. When your one tweet of the day is among hundreds of thousands of tweets passing through the time line of your followers, it’s tough to be noticed.

Even when your tweet is seen, it may not be enough to receive more than a passing glance.

So, how do you get noticed? How can you stand out from the millions of others tweeting today? We’ve got three tricks to share that will help you and your tweets garner more attention…..

Grab it Free: The 7 Minute Blog Strategy Workbook

What do you want from your blog? Are you wanting to grow your list of subscribers, or get noticed by the masses, or make it to the front page of Technorati?

Whatever goals you have with your blog, you need “The 7 Minute Blog Strategy Workbook.” This 18 page workbook is written by Stanford Smith and we guarantee it will get you thinking about blogging in a very different way.

As Stanford points out, you cannot run a successful blog without a strategy. If you want a blog that is more than just a record of your passing thoughts, you absolutely must have a strategy plan. Stanford’s workbook will get you well on your way.

Our favorite part of the workbook…….

Goo.gl – A New URL Shortener from Google

Previously only available to users of the Google toolbar, the new URL shortening system is now open to the public. Google has created a webpage at Goo.gl where you can take a very long website address and shorten it.

Similar to programs like Bit.ly and TinyURL, Goo.gl not only shortens the URL for you, but it also integrates into your Google account with analytics. You can easily view how many people have clicked the shortened link and also see from where they came…….

Six Ways to Get More Blog Comments

Ever wonder why some blogs get lots of comments from their readers and other blogs do not?

Have you ever wondered why your blog posts are not getting more comments?

We recently surveyed blog readers and asked them what would cause them to read a blog post but not leave a comment. Many of their answers surprised even us.

Here’s the top six responses……

Security and Your Blog – Three Things You Can Do Right Now

Blog hacks are on the rise. While there is no such thing as fool-proof security for your blog, there are a couple of things you can do right now to make it more difficult for someone to get into your blog.

Taking a few minutes right now to make these fixes may save you hours of work in the future. Losing your blog’s content when a hacker accesses your site can be near disaster for most bloggers.

Before you become a victim, read through these 3 quick steps you can do today to help secure your blog.