Angela Treat Lyon

Archive for the ‘Your Biz Success’ Category

Here are links to a couple of  resources I think you might want to see:

PAGE MODO: They call it “the easiest way to customize and design your Facebook Page” – looks pretty easy – and since everyone is saying “you must have a FB biz page…” maybe it will help you with yours.

MAD MIMI: I think it’s a rather unfortunate name, but regardless – here’s what they say about it:

“Mad Mimi is a simple, intelligent and powerful email marketing utility that anyone can use. Mad Mimi makes email marketing easy for the creator, and easier on the eyes for the receiver.

“With ground-breaking technology, Mad Mimi is the simplest way to create branded, well-designed newsletters and promotions. Sign up free today and get started with simple, lovely email marketing.”

My first hit was that it couldn’t possibly be a US-based site, as no one here in his right mind would offer ‘lovely email marketing’ – ! -

But once I checked it out, it looks really great – especially if you’re just getting started and don’t want to pay 1shopping cart’s basic 59 bucks.
madmimi.com (yup – that’s my referral link)

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Did you know that you can get royalty-free music as background music for your videos? Then you don’t have to worry about copyright infringement.

Here are a couple of good music sources: http://MusicBakery.com or  http://Pond5.com

Or, you can get one of the many talented people on http://fiverr.com to help create your music for you for 5 bucks! They will play, sing or write a new tune for you – they’re an awesome resource. I use them a lot.

TIP: For your audios, I suggest you get a 30-second intro/outro tune you use as your signature music, and have that in every one of your recordings – play the first 5 seconds loud, then taper off to zero sound at its end as you get into the speaking content. It will help your branding to have your own distinctive sound.

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Do you know the sure sign of an amateur graphic designer or copy writer?

It’s when they create lengthy text in a document that is center-justified. Lengthy means over 55 characters wide, and longer than 5 to 10 lines. Here’s an example of center-justified text:

The only text that should be centered is 1. a short quote on a page, like this:

2. a short advertisement, or 3. the text of a formal invitation (like the example above).

Even newsletter, newspaper, magazine and online advertisements are more easily read when left-justified.

Look at this Facebook ad on the left as an example.

The image is on the left so your eye starts with it, then ends up on  the text.

Good! And the text is aligned-left and easy to read. Another good.

So…why is it so much easier to read left-justified over center-justifed text?

Because the way we read in English demands that we read from left to right.

When the lines in your text are justified left (all aligned with the left side of the page, like most of the text on this page), your eye has an easy time of it – it knows where to start each sentence automatically, and can glide to the left and pick up the next sentence easily. Even if the right side of the page is jagged (like this one).

But if your text is center-justified,
your eye has to search out the beginning of each sentence,
because each new line starts
in a different location.
Very, very tiring
after reading a whole page of it.

After a while, people won’t read your articles or entries any more because they know they’ll get eyeball exhaustion. You don’t want that to happen!

So only use center-justified text if it is a 1 to 5-line entry that has up to 55 characters left to right, and no more.

Use left-justified for anything else. Your readers will thank you for being a pro, and for how easy you’ve made it to read your copy.

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Maybe you didn’t know this, but many women are often not taken seriously because of the volume and tone of their voices.

Around 37% of someone’s decision whether to like you and trust you immediately comes from the tone of your voice – not the words!

Inspirational speaker and singer, Rachael Jayne Groover says, “Any woman who wants to make a difference doing what she loves must have a solid awareness of what the tone of her voice is really saying to others.”

Rachael Jayne has dedicated most of her life to understanding the power of a woman’s voice and how to express that so she can be seen and heard in a clear, powerful, AND feminine way.

In the 2nd video in her complimentary video course Rachael Jayne teaches a profound set of practices that will increase your personal presence and vocal power, so you can walk into any room and attract the attention you want.

Just practice one of the exercises she shares in this video and it will make a huge difference to how you are being perceived.

She also helps you to determine your current level of personal presence and magnetism, and how to increase that so you can have a more positive impact on others.

Watch #2 video NOW!

And of course, this video course is complimentary, and not only helps women increase their vocal power and presence, but helps them use the 6 fundamental skills of Feminine Leadership.  It’s an amazing series of videos. Check it out!

You might also want to check out my interview with her on The Daring Dreamers showcase at IDareYouRadio.com: HERE.

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In internet marketing, we see conformity all the time – one guy comes up with a “formula that works,” and all of a sudden, everyone and his left brother has similarsqueeze pages, opt-in boxes, videos, fancy freebie-giveaways, and so on. It all looks the same after a while!

Well, I object. I like it simple. SIMPLE. So I don’t teach you to make forty freebie videos, fancy websites with fancy graphics or complex opt-in systems. I say make it simple.

Please don’t think that in order to be successful online, you have to create 3 to 5 freebie videos with all kinds of great advice on them, and end up with a super-duper, long, expensive course you promote.

Let the ones who really love to do that do that. If you don’t love to do that, don’t.

Do what YOU love to do. Whether it’s

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to subscriber Paul Buelens, who just sent me an article that talks about bit.ly links affecting your email deliverability because of spammers using bit.ly.

Darn it. I loved being able to see how many people actually click on my links and where they come from.

Anyone got a shortener you recommend?

Tinyurl.com and Snipurl.com are OK – are there any others out there that you personally use to shorten your links, track your clicks and see where the clicks came from?

Feel free to add your comment / suggestion here.

PDFS & PLAIN TEXT APPS
People ask me all the time how I create pdfs. I use InDesign, myself, because I create ebooks and print books for people, but it’s an expensive application most people don’t need.

I had thought it was pretty common knowledge that you can save a Word doc to print and choose save as pdf and make one that way. There are freebie pdf-makers online if you google ‘how to make pdfs’.

I learned recently that at openoffice.com there are resources for pdf-making there. They also have a plain-text doc application, which is important to use if you’re writing web copy (if you use Word to pre-write your copy, the underlying code in Word corrupts your website html code and you get those nasty black diamond-shaped symbols where punctuation would be).

FREE AUTO-RESPONDER
I also found out about a free service (they also have for-fee upgrades) you can use if you’re just starting out and can’t swing 1shoppingcart.com or even aweber.com’s services.

You may have already heard of it before, but I had not: MailChimp.com. You can email up to 12,000 people at once and set up a slew of auto-responders for free. A very, very good deal.

I’ve been going through it to see how easy and simple it is – simple is my keyword – and it is, indeed, very simple. Easy…well, maybe an 8 out of 10. They have very good video tutorials,  but I was annoyed that the tutorial was one of those dark window things imposed over the page I was working on so I couldn’t hit pause and do as she did in the video. So I opened a new window in which to watch the tutorial, and that worked great.

So if you need an auto-responder and you’re just starting out and don’t want to pay those the wazoo, it’s a very good way to go.

A word of caution: be crystal clear that you need to set it up in a clear, organized fashion. Because your list will grow over time, and if you have this list and that list connected to this site and that product, when one day you want to move your list to a bigger-capacity service, it’s going to be an absolute nightmare that takes ten times the time and energy you would have spent if you were well-organized.

Granted, by then you’ll probably have people who can do that for you, but you’re still paying them for the time!

Hate to tell ya – “FREE” just simply…isn’t.

Play with this: let’s just pretend you make 100 bucks an hour.

Now add up all the hours you spend reading or watching freebie stuff (that say pretty much the same thing in different ways) in one week. Go on, just guesstimate it right here. No one’s looking but you!

Be prepared to be very shocked! Because if you watch just 4 hours’ free videos a week, you’ve ‘spent’ 400 bucks’ worth of time you could have used to do what you’re good at and for which you could have charged money!

Instead, you were spending it looking for freebies. You thought you were saving money. But you were spending it, instead. Ouch.

And here’s a kicker…you and I both know that the time you spend doing ‘free’ stuff online every week is in reality a whole lot more than 4 hours, isn’t it?

What to do? Take the info you got from ONE freebie. Take that time you’d have spent looking for more info online, and use it to IMPLEMENT what that one freebie has shown you!

Then do another one, and another one, and do it again – until you’ve gotten some tangible results! Little step by little step, you’ll get where you want to go.

Want real success? Quit it with the freebies, and stick with one expert you know, like and respect, whose stuff you like. And spend your time DOing what they suggest.

This is something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while – and yesterday someone asked me about it, so I guess it’s time to talk about it.

Maybe you notice that, 1. I use bit.ly links. And that 2. I sometimes tell you about other people’s offers – books, marketing advice, products – that I think you could use.

Well, why would telling you about other people’s stuff  not be OK?

I tell you about it because I know that I can’t possiblly coach you all! And some of the things you need for your progress to success is beyond my capabilities, or maybe it’s stuff I have no desire to teach. So I tell you about other people’s prodcuts and services to you to make sure you have access to what you need for your practice and your business success.

Now, here’s what’s different Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I worked with “Anne,” a transformational energy coach who uses EFT and other tools for shifting consciousness.

(Perk your ears up – you’ll relate to this if you’re a coach of some sort.)

In a soft, weak little voice, Anne told me that she felt helpless, unfocused, tired all the time, and always angry at herself for not doing enough…but didn’t know what to do or how to resolve that. She said, “I feel inauthentic, wimpy and powerless.”

I’ve mentioned using Archetypes before to you – here’s how I used hers to help her.

(Curious about using Archetypes to help with your money and marketing? Go here: arche-money-marketing-I and arche-money-marketing-II)

Anne’s main Archetype is “Alchemist,” the visionary, catalyst, healer, transformer. The one who helps people make their dreams come true. I used that to help her see her way out, because she had misplaced her connection to her own Beingness.

An alchemist is all about possibility. As a coach, you’re a transformer – can you feel that? Can you see how you evoke change in people, just by the way you speak and act?

But Anne had forgotten to do that for herself! Consequently she ended up feeling constricted, discouraged and disconnected, because she wasn’t living her inner truth.

I asked her this: “If you were really all about possibility, openings, magic, and making a powerful difference in surprising or even mysterious ways, what would that be like for you?”

She contemplated for a minute, and when she replied, all of a sudden, she was      Read the rest of this entry »