With all the social media hoop-la lately there seems to be much less of a focus on blogs and blogging for business. Even this past weekend as I attended Podcamp Toronto many of the sessions were on Social Media, Twitter, Facebook and Building Online Communities.

Now I’m not against social media at all but I am still very partial to building a community on MY website. That’s why I think blogging is still a largely important task for many business owners promoting something online.

Why Should I Blog?

With that being said, blogging for the sake of blogging is a mistake. You must know why you are blogging. I’ve worked with clients who’ve set up websites and blogs that have hundreds of pages with no results. The reason being is they never really understood why they were blogging in the first place.

In order to make more sense of why someone should blog, let’s look at some of the ways you can make money blogging:

- Sell a physical product.
- Sell a service.
- Sell an information product.
- Sell a product as an affiliate (physical or digital).
- Sell advertising.

That’s about all I can think of at the moment.

Not only is it important that you know how you are going to make money with your blog but you need to know how you will call your readers to take action.

Let me give you and example by using my own blog here at Marketers Mojo. My goal is to help my readers make an income doing what they love and in turn make myself a full time income through affiliate marketing. Now to do that I know I need to do my keyword research, write relevant posts, provide useful information and then lead my readers on to the next step.

In my case the next step is going to be either:
1. Sign up for my email list (or one of my number of email lists).
2. Click to buy a product I recommend.
3. (Coming Soon) Sign up for a webinar I’m offering.

With that information in mind I craft my posts around useful, helpful business products that help online business owners have a less stressful business. Then I link over to am appropriate free email list, product review, post or product website directly to send my readers on to the next step.

It’s not an overly complicated plan but it is a plan. Actually simple plans are usually the best. All I’m saying is that you must have a plan with your blog. What do you plan to achieve. And then you must believe in that plan and go after it.

Blogging to me is a conversation and every day I love connecting with people. It’s always a thrill to know that something I write or offered inspired or helped someone else in their business. Think about your reasons for blogging and then make them happen and I’m sure you’ll get the same rewarding feeling out of the blogging you do for your business.

p.s. Now that I’ve provided you with some useful info and food for thought I would like to invite you to find out more about blogging by getting the free report and weekly tips on ‘Beginner’s Blogging’. It’s all here:
http://www.marketersmojo.com/freebies/beginners-guides/blogging

In the early days of my business I was about 80% percent delusional about how to run a business. I really thought that I just needed to work really hard, believe in the business and everything (ie. THE MONEY) would work itself out. Problem was I had no clue how to really manage my cash flow.

There was no plan. I just got the money, had a spark of an idea and flew with it. My first ‘real’ business was a soapmaking business. I got into that business based on the fact that my hobby was soapmaking and I loved it. I thought that was enough: Some money to get started (borrowed from my parents) and a love of soapmaking.

That’s all you need, right?

Business & Money Management Starts With a Plan

You hear from any business development adviser that you need a business plan. It’s true. But your business plan really doesn’t have to be 30 or 100 pages. It just needs to be clear. You need to know how you are going to make money, how much money, how much you need to survive and how it’s all going to balance out.

You don’t hear many blogs talking about online business tips and advice around money and managing your business money and I wonder why. (or maybe I’m just not finding the right business/money blogs – if you know of any good ones comment and let me know, k?!)

I’m thinking it’s for one of two reasons:
1. People who are great at money management come by it so easily it seems like a no-brainer to them.
2. The people who are terrible at it are keeping their mouths shut because they don’t want other people to know.

I know I fit more into category #2 than category #1. But since I opened up the floodgates in this post I’m ready to just be totally open and honest about my previously lacking money management skills. As Dr.Phil says “you can’t fix what you won’t acknowledge”!

So we know that money is important in business and making sure you run your business in a positive cash flow is a basic business principal that’s often overlooked.

How do you manage you money in business?

Well here are my tips that I’ve learned from being seriously out of control to moving back into control of my money:

- watch your money like a hawk (I use lots of spreadsheets)
- be obsessed with making a profit! (don’t always work for FREE!)
- don’t justify ‘another money making course’ when you can’t afford it
- cut out the time wasters (which are money takers)
- cut out expenses you don’t really need

I’ll be talking more about money on my blog because I think it’s truly important.

What do you think? Is money management hard or easy for you? Any tips on how to keep your business budget in check and profits on the rise?

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Last week I dumped my Facebook account. Deactivated it.

It’s funny how people think anyone marketing online must have Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, etc accounts. When I attended Podcamp Toronto this weekend a couple of people commented directly to me about Facebook:

Someone said:
“I doubt there’s anyone here without a Facebook Account”
I said:
“I don’t have one”

Someone else said:
“You have got to be on Facebook, so many from your market are on there!”
I said:
“No I don’t”

Before I go any further I want to make it clear that I’m not AGAINST using Facebook for marketing. I wouldn’t tell you it won’t work for you and I can’t really say it hasn’t worked for me because I didn’t really try. But for me, for right now it’s the wrong choice and here’s why:

1. My Facebook account was initially just for family and friends. Then recently I thought I’d try adding business contacts and then it just seemed really weird. So instead of spending time I don’t have fixing it I opted out.

2. I just don’t see the point of building up all this traffic OFF-SITE. I mean, I’m working on building up the traffic to my website. Why would I spend time and effort getting people to Facebook only to then drive them to my site. Right now in my business I need to do what I know is going to drive my return on investment and I really see no way to track that with Facebook.

3. All the invitations, games and distractions are just annoying. I mean Facebook is not a business platform, so there’s a big mix of people on there to play and people on there for business. I just would much rather spend my effort marketing to people who I know are actually interested in business stuff. Makes sense to me.

4. I don’t like letting people seeing so much personal info. I know they’ve made some changes to this but I still see people sharing photos and I can then look a whole photo album of someone I don’t know. I also found out that even though I deactivated my account it’s still there. All I have to do is log back in and it’s ‘reactivated’. To me that seems like a violation of privacy but I’m sure I must have agreed to it when I signed up and check that I agreed to the terms and conditions (which nobody reads, right?)

I disagree that I need to be on Facebook because there’s something like 400 million people on there. Without proper target marketing that’s kind of like saying I’m selling to the entire world because I have a website. It seems to me that I’ll get much more attention and have much more control by driving people to my own website, not Facebook, and so that’s what I’m doing for now.

In the future I’m sure I’ll test out Facebook again but for now I’m working on what I know works to bring me highly targeted visitors, opt-ins and sales. Right now that’s blogging, search engine optimization, article marketing, email marketing and video marketing.

I think it’s really important not to just do something because everyone else says you should.

The only person who can really decide what’s right for your business is you.

p.s. I’d love your feedback here. Think about this for a minute: WHY do you log in to Facebook as often as you do?? Is it to find answers to problems (business-oriented) or is it to just kind of catch up with friends? (fun-oriented)

p.s. Get on the Marketers Mojo Email list for post updates and great info on how to love your business and love your life. You’ll also get an instant download of the special report ‘Market From The HEART‘. Your private information is always safe. Enter your name and email below to get on the list:

So I just spent the weekend at Podcamp Toronto 2010. It’s a completely free two day event with multiple thirty minute sessions running at the same time.

About Podcamp

Podcamp is called an ‘unconference’ where everyone who wants to gets to speak. You basically sign up for a session and do it. I may do one next year if I get brave enough. With 900 people in attendance this year that’s sure to grow next year it’s certainly a large group of people to reach if you do a presentation (although there are usually about 40-80 people in any one session I think).

On Saturday night after podcamp there was a social event at a local pub. It included a talent stage, FREE BEER and Free Food. I have to say how awesome it was to go to an event, pay nothing to get in and then get free drinks and free dinner (oh and there was free coffee during the day) – nice!

Thanks to Jay Moonah who I believe was a podcamp organizer for sharing his guitar (at least I think it was his) with anyone who felt like getting up on stage. Yep, did you guess? I decided to brave the stage and sing a song – I picked ‘Last Kiss’. In case you missed my performance, Pearl Jam does it a *little* bit better :

Who Is a ‘Podcamp’ For

Podcamp is definitely for anyone looking to know more about using online media, both social and digital, to promote or grow a business. It seems to me that most of the topics are given by people who work for corporations rather than solopreneurs working from home.

Even though it’s not always from the perspective of the ‘work at home’ business owner I still found a lot of the information useful. So podcamp, in my opinion, would be for solopreneurs, small business owners and also employees who want to expand their podcasting, internet and social media skills.

The Pod People

I’m still too shy to go around snapping photos of people I have yet to meet or have just met. I did meet lots of great people there.

Sharon, Pam and I were joking about being ‘pod’ people.

From left to right:
Pamela, Imie, Me, Sharon, Ruth

…and a big thanks to Leona (Vice-President of SMG, one of the podcast sponsors) for snapping the above pic .

At the pub I had fun meeting lots of people including Jenn, Andrea and Ryan.

Room For Improvement

Now I definitely don’t want to complain but I thought it might be helpful if I added some constructive feedback here. I heard one Podcamp guest saying since she’s so new to podcasting she would have liked to see a session that walked beginners through how to do it.

She was suggesting something like: “Ok, got the audio – now what do I do with it?” (by the way, I share that info in my own free mini-course here: http://www.marketersmojo.com/freebies/beginners-guides/podcasting)

I personally would love to see more presentations from those who are work from home business owners. Solopreneurs who are making it happen and making a living from home. That would definitely be inspiring to me.

Summing It Up

I think the organizers did a wonderful job. I also attended Podcamp Toronto 2009. Last year the rooms were really crowded but this year there was plenty of room at any event you wanted to attend as long as you showed up on time. I think this had to do with some bigger rooms and more event choices.

There were lots of great presentations and everyone was friendly.

So thank you very much Podcamp Toronto 2010 Organizers and Sponsors for a great event!

p.s. Check out the event sponsors here: http://2010.podcamptoronto.com/sponsors/