Posts from — November 2009

If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll remember that I promised you a blog post giving you more details about the software that I found to take the place of Windows Movie Maker. I’ve been using the VideoPad Video Editing Software by NCH Software. This software is free and it doesn’t take up much space on your hard drive. It only works on PCs (sorry Mac friends!). It is totally awesome! I can actually get my whole project done without the software crashing (which is more than I can say for Windows Movie Maker). Now I know my computer doesn’t have a whole lot of memory on it, so that could have been why Movie Maker kept crashing on me. Anyway, that’s my two cents on video editing software. NCH has a whole suite of free software you can try. You can expect to see some screenshots and tutorials coming from me in the near future! Have a great day!

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As many of you may know, I’m expecting a new baby in February. So as I’m sure you can imagine, especially if you are a parent, I won’t have nearly as much time to blog as I did before I had a newborn baby in the family. With that being said, I’d love to have a few guest bloggers between February and April to give me time to recuperate and get my schedule adjusted to having a new baby. If you write about business related topics or social media, I’d love to have you here on my blog. If this interests you, mention your interest in the comment section as well as a way for me to contact you. Ideally, I’d like to hear from you before December 31, 2009 so I can plan when your blog post will appear. I’ll be posting more details as we get closer to that date.

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to listen to Felicia Slattery teach a teleseminar about promotional tools that you can use right now to grow your business.

In this video, I share my opinion of the teleseminar I attended.

If you’d like to learn more from Felicia, be sure to visit Communication Transformation (yes this is an affiliate link) today for more details.

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If you’ve fallen in love with twitter, you’ll really like sokule. Sokule has everything that twitter has, plus a lot of things it doesn’t. You can actually earn money with sokule. Listen to the interview below for more information.

Interview With Jane Mark About Sokule

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While many of us who start our own businesses or who become solo professionals value our independence, we quickly find more value in having people at our side to give us extra strength, visibility and insight in the market. And so we get out there both in person and online to network and build relationships.

It’s great to meet new people and learn what they do, and it’s even more exciting when you can find a great deal of synergy between your goals and theirs. This is when you can start to explore referral partnerships or strategic alliances.

These are collaborations you can create with other entrepreneurs, professional service providers or small businesses owners that can open up a whole pipeline of new business for the both of you and strengthen your respective brands.

Partners can help you:

Build more customer trust and loyalty. The more resources you are able to share, the more completely you can serve your market. This will help you be seen as a go-to resource and allow you to transition from mere service provider to trusted advisor.

Break into new markets more easily. Building awareness of your products and services in a new market takes time and money, but you can shortcut some of the process by leveraging the trust and credibility of your referral partner. If you provide copywriting services for financial advisory firms, for example, you can offer the same services to insurance agents by partnering with someone who already serves that market but with a non-competitive offering.

Get a new perspective. If you have trouble navigating your new client’s bureaucracy, or just want to bounce ideas off of someone who knows the players, you can turn to your referral partner for important insight and feedback.

Become a stronger competitor. You can take the referral relationship a step further by partnering to create a bundled solution for your market. By connecting your products or services together, you can provide a more complete answer to your target market’s needs, saving them time and energy in gathering all the elements themselves, and giving you an edge over competitors who offer just one piece of the puzzle.

Allow you to think big. Sometimes you don’t see the full potential of what you can create in your business until you see what others are doing, how you overlap, what their strengths are, and where you can take the relationship further. That’s when the fun really begins. In working together, you might discover new products to create or new expansion opportunities that you would never have thought of tackling on your own.

Partnerships are most powerful when all the parties benefit. It’s about being open and sharing, and knowing that when we help others, we also help ourselves. For a great example of this, visit www.SmartNetworkingNow.com to see the power of partnerships in action.

When you’re there, you can learn more about Liz Lynch and her book “Smart Networking: Attract a Following In Person and Online” – a must read for anybody looking to build relationships authentically and strategically – and sign up to receive a gift package of Liz’s 11 Smart Networking Tips and additional bonus gifts from her partners (including yours truly!).

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