The Ultimate Blog Party 2014

Hi Everyone and welcome to the LearnEASE blog!  A big thank you to all of you that are joining us from the Ultimate Blog Party #UBP14 - it's nice to "virtually" meet you!

Just a reminder, if you have not registered for the amazing prizes do that RIGHT NOW.  LearnEASE is so proud to be a part of the $200+ Prize Page with prizes valued at over $200 by offering three lucky winners custom FaceBook Business page design services.

This is me: @DiahanaBarnes

Which leads me to telling you a little more about LearnEASE and our services. Founded (by me) in 2006, I am a wife, mom, corporate woman and LearnEASE small business owner.  I love coffee, spending the day at the beach with my family and my iPad Mini!  Unknown to them, I have also been know to use pictures of my kids in my blog posts on occasion.

LearnEASE is a Marketing, IT and Virtual Assistant Services company that supports small businesses "virtually". We offer two main areas of focus:

Marketing Services:  Including FB Page design, website design, Book blog tours, email marketing and more. Our clients include professional Speakers, Trainers, Real Estate agents, Interior Designers, Hair Salons, really any small business looking for a little help...

IT Services:   Antivirus, Firewall, Back up Protection, Cloud Migration and Monitoring. We can protect and back up your data, photos, videos and make them accessible from anywhere!  Our solutions protect Civic Organizations, Restaurants, Ambulance andSales Training Companies, and other small businesses with IT needs.

Our best ideas start with listening to our customers and discovering what they really need and want to be successful. We call it "Customer-first innovation", and it's at the core of everything we do!

Now onto the party!  Thanks for stopping by and let's be sure to connect on Facebook and Twitter!

Let Yourself Shine! Be Yourself

Personality marketing is one of the most powerful kinds of marketing you could employ. Take Oprah for example. Oprah is one of the most powerful women in the world, able to take unknown authors to the top of the New York Time bestseller list just by mentioning them on her show. Her entire business is built around her personality.

People often follow websites not for its content, but because people like the personality behind the website. In many industries, like weight loss for example, success is determined much more by your personality than by anything else.

Most People Aren't Willing to Let it Out

Everyone has a personality. When you're with your friends, you probably say things spontaneously that could come off as hilarious. And you probably aren't afraid to express dissenting opinions.

But online, people tend to tone their personality down. They sound "correct" rather than spontaneous. They err on being right down the middle, rather than risk their audience by expressing an actual opinion.

This can get you so far, but you can't build a truly successful business on it. Most people are afraid that they'll lose their audience if they let their personality out. The opposite is true.

When you withhold your personality, you don't grow your audience. People just won't be that drawn to your work. When you really express your personality, it's true that some people will be polarized away from your work. But those people weren't really your audience anyway.

How to Let Go

Of course, telling someone to just express their personality can be about as useful as telling someone to just "be yourself" in tense social situations. For some people, it just doesn't come that easily. So what can you do?

Take out a journal and a pen. Write your opinion about a topic, as if you were just ranting to yourself or to an imaginary friend in your diary. Talk as if nobody would ever read it. Pour your emotions and inner thoughts into the page.

Once you're done, let it sit for a day, then use that journal entry as the outline or foundation for your post. This can be a very useful technique for circumventing your mind's innate resistance to expressing your personality.

Getting Positive Feedback

Perhaps the best thing about letting your personality out is the positive feedback you get from your audience. People will generally be much more excited about your work when you're pouring your heart into it.

Start letting your personality out to your audience. Then listen to their feedback. Let the excitement from your audience pour over into your own excitement, and use that to bring even more emotion into your personality marketing.

5 Common Business Process Mistakes

Happy New Year!  Is your business ready for a great 2014?  Having great business processes is crucial to business success. That said, if you do it wrong, the creation of business processes can actually hinder your success.

How can you ensure that your business processes actually help rather than hurt you? Make sure you avoid these five mistakes.

Mistake #1: No Overall Model, Only Details

It's common for people to only focus on the details of how to perform specific tasks. Unfortunately, if your business processes don't have an overall model or goal, the details will be disjointed and inappropriately applied by staff.

Every business process should be part of a bigger business model or philosophy. The process is the "how" of running a bigger system. Just having a bunch of "hows" without a "why" is a recipe for disaster.

Mistake #2: The Processes Are Technology Based

Great businesses use technology. Writing businesses for technology is important. That said, if your processes are completely reliant on technology to work, then you're laying a very weak foundation.

Let's say you have an expense tracking process. The process should focus on the step by steps of tracking expenses, rather than the software itself. That way if the software ever fails or if you ever switch to a new system, your employees will know how to perform the actual tasks, rather than just push the right buttons.

Mistake #3: Not Enough Details

Your business process documentation should be detailed enough that a person new to the job could operate the process with a little guidance.

It's common for people who're competent in a task to write documentation for others in a way that could only be done by people who also have competence in that task.

Instead, documentation should be written in a very step by step manner. It should be written for a new trainee, not for someone who's more experienced.

Mistake #4: Documenting Untested Processes

Not everything in your business should be documented. In fact, you should only document a process once it's been proven and refined to its most efficient form.

If you spend time documenting processes that haven't been proven to work yet, you'll spend a lot of time documenting things and then throwing them out.

Documentation should be done to help train people on things that work. Wait until your processes are proven before doing this.

Mistake #5: Neglecting Human Relationships

Finally, remember that processes often involve human beings.

Say you have a process for handling fulfillment when you're shipping a new product. The documentation might cover how you handle order volume, how to get samples from fulfillment and so on. However, the documentation might not include how to actually interface with the people who run your fulfillment house.

The human element in processes is a crucial element. Make sure you're not neglecting it.

These are five of the most common mistakes business people make when they're automating, documenting or designing business processes.  What do you think?

5 Tips On Becoming SuperWoman

I am super woman.  Yes, that sounds very conceited and I swear that is not my intention.  But I get asked a lot by various clients, colleagues, co-workers, friends, family, “How the heck do you get so much done, do you not sleep”?   Well, since I do sleep, and actually I sleep more than most I think - at least nine hours a

night – I decided maybe I should ponder this question and see if I could figure out why.  Maybe, just maybe,  I have some sneaky tips on what makes me so productive. So here is what I came up with:

#1 Get Plenty of Rest 
I know this is not exactly a productivity tip, I’ll get to a few of those too, but I do firmly believe getting enough rest allows for longer periods of concentration and focus. I’m sure there is some deep rooted science proving this too, but for me it’s based on experience. When I’m rested, I am energized, happy, focused and productive.

#2 Eat well and Eat Often
After I had both of my kids I did weight watchers and I have to say I liked it a lot and it taught me some good eating habits.  I’ve carried those with me and I’ve noticed that when I eat healthy and snack at regular intervals, my energy stays up.

#3 Have a Schedule
I follow the same schedule pretty much every day.  Now there are huge blocks of time that are not, “scheduled” since my work is very busy and always changing, but there are cornerstones throughout the day that stay the same.

For me it falls at 8am, 10am, 12pm, 2pm, 5pm, 8pm.  I have specific things I do at these intervals (i.e. check email, log in/post/check social networks, have a snack, check my ToDo list, etc.). This frees my blocks of time up and allows for flexibility in my schedule but still time to get things done.

#4 Make a ToDo list
Prioritize. Stick to It – this is one of my biggest tips.  I do not live out of my email in-boxes (yes I have several).  Every day I make a priority list of what needs to be done and prioritize.  I allow for le-way time for things that do come up in my email and I block out time to get certain things on my list done.  This leads to tip #5:

#5  Block Out Time
Block out specific time on your calendar to get things done.  I cannot tell you how many task/productivity apps I’ve downloaded on my iPad, but there have been a lot, and none work as well as the one I am going to share with you right now.

Now, in case you are hoping I will tell you what the best one is and I am, but don’t get too excited, you might be disappointed.  My biggest productivity application is (drumroll here). Outlook. Yes. Outlook.  Here’s why.  For me I am booked constantly with meetings and calls, so I’ve found that blocking out small chunks of time (15 – 30 minutes) on my calendar throughout the week allows me to get the top priority things done.  This really works well for me, but you definitely have to stick to it and hold yourself accountable.

There you have it, the top 5 things I do to be super woman productive.  What do you do?

How to Have a Healthy Life

One of the best things I love about my business is meeting new people and hearing their stories.  Lately I have been so inspired by my new "virtual" acquaintances that I was drawn to share.  As busy moms and business owners it seems like everyone I know is leading a crazy busy lifestyle and sometimes, among all the work, family, life juggling we forget that a healthy life also means a happy life.

So this week I asked my new friend Bess Blanco to share some of her insights on why she started her blog, "The Intentional Lifestyle" along with some tips and advice about running a business.  Here is what Bess had to say:

What Inspired You to Start "The Intentional Lifestyle"?
"I began The Intentional Lifestyle blog after I embarked on my own healthy lifestyle change with my own family of six.  I discovered as I began to shop & cook healthier for my family, that the help I needed was not to be found - at least not in one place.  I also couldn't find the resources I needed for my own situation - ideas that would work for picky eaters, a tight budget & realistic methods for a busy family.  So I began to hunt, gather, research and apply - and viola!  The Intentional Lifestyle was born!"

Tell us about your Biggest Challenge you faced in your business?
"Having enough TIME - time to work on the business, time to be mom and housewife and all that comes with that, time to serve others, time to goof off!   It has truly been my biggest challenge to find a realistic balance between it all - a challenge that I face and MEET everyday!"

If you could share one bit of advice, what would it be?

Bess Blanco

"Never, ever, ever, give up!'

I once won an award that was titled, "Miss Bounce-back-ability" because of my stubborn ability to "never give up" and come back from challenges!  Having a stubborn spirit in "keeping at it" even in the hard times will take you to success!

Are you looking to learn more about leading a healthy lifestyle?  Bess has recently published a book called, "Fresh Start for Health",  you can also find great recipes, articles, learn more about her and read the blog on the website.

Do you know a great Leading Mom in Business?  Tell us!  We would love to hear from you.

Social Media Marketing for Small Business

Utilizing Social Media to market your business is becoming a popular type of marketing for many small businesses and many are benefiting greatly by developing and following a social media marketing strategy.  By using Social media you can really give your marketing efforts a big boost and it can help you achieve the success you want not only quicker but more efficiently.

So what exactly is the skinny on Social media, and why should you use it as a marketing tool for your small business?  

Social media  networks are communities online, think of it as a “place” online where people gather to communicate  and learn about things that they have in common. It gives them the capability to interact with each other. This can be through blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn forums and any number of online means of communication. Because of the way these networks develop, it often presents some great networking opportunities.  I love this infographic from Social Metrics on "10 Creative Secrets for Social Media Marketing" showing that over 93% of businesses currently leverage social media to gain more customers!



If you are wondering how and why you should use social networking sites to promote your small business, you are not alone. A fairly large numbers of small business owners aren't even sure what or which social media sites to use or how they work.  One benefit to small businesses is the ability to utilize Social media sites to share photo’s and video’s or run an online contest, all which will aid in gaining publicity and if you are on a budget, using social media networking sites is a cost-effective way in obtaining the publicity you are seeking for your products and services from your business website.


It can also be extremely valuable and worth the time and effort to join online forums like those on LinkedIn.  Within these online forums, you can answer and ask questions, learn from others, and use what you learn to develop relevant blog articles.  You can also post comments, promote events, and offer tips or advice.  Surveys and polls are also very popular in gaining the attention of not only your current customers but also potential customers.


The best part of using Social media is that it is a very cost effective means of communicating and interacting with your target market. Most networks are free and it only takes a little bit of time to keep interacting with the members of the network once you have gotten established. From there the growth is somewhat natural. As communities grow, so does the amount of exposure you get. The more exposure you get the more success you will have.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to share your thoughts.

Until Next Time
Diahana

Marketing Ideas for Your Small Business

Recently a client asked me to put together a few strategic marketing ideas for their restaurant business that was aligned to their growth goals.  So this week I thought it might be interesting to share with you some of the ideas we discussed.  Now in this particular situation the client owns a restaurant and I've decided to include that detail since I think it provides a good example, but it could easily be adapted to your own small business goals.

Whenever I start a new project, I always begin with the goal.  In this case, the goal was to create a plan for a attracting new customers (25-40 year old set) who are more cutting edge and using social media.  A lot of this stuff can easily be automated in a cloud-based virtual solution so don't get overwhelmed.  It also should be pointed out that the customer already has a website, Facebook Page and Twitter account, all key components in my mind for an effective and well rounded strategy.  Here are a the ideas we discussed:


Create a Newsletter or Blog

In this case they had a pretty big email list, but no newsletter.  Even if you don't have a list yet, it's easy to build one and a great way to stay in touch with your customers and keep them coming back.  Ideally a newsletter or blog should be done once a week. The 25-40 year old set likes communication to be more personal these days (that’s why they are all “hanging out” on Facebook) so include a recipe “secret”, quote from a happy customer, birthday information, and what's happening in and around town.  All the content you create for your website and newsletter can then be repurposed and used on Facebook and Twitter.

Maximize the use of Facebook

Post any videos you have to your Facebook fan page and ask for comments.  Ask customers that come in to “like” your page.  When people "Like" your Facebook page, they are alerted to your updates via their news feeds.  You can also explore expanding your fan base using Facebook ads.  I would also recommend creating a “hidden” secret in the commercial or video for them to watch for (e.g. "what color is our signature drink”) when they come in the restaurant with the answer their name goes in for a drawing, winners can be posted via twitter, Facebook, on the blog or newsletter, etc.

Create automated updates across all your accounts.  Connect to your Facebook page from your newsletter, you newsletter to your website, from Facebook to twitter.  You get the idea.  All should be tightly integrated so as you update one with the daily specials, birthdays, etc. it can automatically post to all the others.

Maximize the use of Twitter:

Tweet your nightly/weekly specials (if you aren’t already).  Tweet interesting things happening in in and around town, such as  new movies, concerts, interesting happenings.  Become the center of information for the community.  Check and make sure your Twitter handle is on your website, Facebook page, newsletter, displayed in the restaurant menu, put it on the televisions in the bar, etc.

There are some good rules of thumb to use for Twitter that build value, a relationship and a good following.  Here are a few that you can incorporate in addition to sharing your own information about daily specials, birthdays, your blog or newsletter and other relevant information.  Remember many can be streamlined using technology and other resources, you do not have to do all this yourself and it could easily be outsourced to a virtual assistant team.

• Reply to someone else’s tweet
• Re-Tweet good information
• Post inspiration or quote
• Post an “a-ha” resource
• Share a link to another great resource, blog post or website

Develop Email Campaigns

Developing email campaigns is easy and can also be automated, you probably already have the content developed for advertising elsewhere, it just needs to be adapted for email.  Any advertising you are doing in local magazines, tv, radio can be repurposed and sent via email along with a newsletter, blog, recipe of the week, birthday days, specials…you get the idea.

That's it!  I hope you got some good ideas for putting together your own strategic marketing plan, as always we are here to help.  Feel free to share your comments, and I'd love to hear your thoughts...

Until next time,
Diahana