One of the goals I set for the year was to get my old newsletter going again. I created an ad tips newsletter 2 ½ years ago and stopped sending it around two years ago. I was not happy with the way the newsletter was going, but I didn’t know how to make it the way I wanted so I stopped sending it.

While thinking about the goals I have and how well I’m doing with them so far, I had a vision about that newsletter. I decided to change the content for that newsletter so it was more in line with my business. So I did just that. I sent an email to the list and told them what my plan was.

I created my newsletter today and I’m looking forward to the response I receive when that post goes out on Wednesday. The content will be VA and business tips and I’m very excited about it. I love to help business owners and I love sharing tips to help them and that’s what this newsletter will be all about. So if you’re interested in receiving this newsletter, click here and look for the sign up box on the right side of the screen.

I’m excited to see how this week goes with the changes I’ve made. I just know things will be wonderful. So here’s to a great week!

Once you’ve decided on your business goals for the year you need to put a marketing plan into action. It doesn’t matter if your coach looking for new clients, a direct sales rep looking for more customers or a speaker looking for new gigs, marketing is the way you’ll achieve those goals.

The first thing to do is look at all of your options when it comes to the tools you use to market your business.

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. Facebook fan page
4. LinkedIn
5. LinkedIn groups
6. Forums
7. Article marketing
8. Banner and button ads
9. Blog posts
10. Newsletters

All of these options are considered marketing tools if you use them properly. When I use properly I mean you must use them in a way that will build trust and encourage people to visit your site and buy from you. For example, if you use Twitter only to market your business, it’s not going to work and you won’t grow. However, if you use it for both conversations, helping others, posting tips, and marketing your business you’ll gain the trust and more than likely you’ll increase your profits.

To make these tools work for you, there needs to be a plan in place so you know what to do each day and week to reach your goals. You need to put on paper what you plan is and then schedule it on your calendar for each day so you don’t forget what needs to happen. The best thing to do is use a Google calendar so you can set email and popup reminders for each tasks.

You need to utilize your time and if possible outsource a few of these tasks to a Virtual Assistant or Ghostwriter so everything is achievable. Here are some tips to help you accomplish a marketing plan.

Each one of these tools will help you achieve your marketing goals and grow your business. But, you need to remember the only way that will happen is if you continually work them so your goal is achieved. If you only make posts on Twitter once every couple of weeks or you only submit an article once every few months it’s not going to happen. It’s important that you work these tools daily or weekly.

Creating a marketing goal will help you achieve the goals you set for your business. When you don’t have a marketing plan in place you will have no idea what you need to do and when because you won’t have it written down. Your marketing plan needs to go with your business goals and you need to keep them in the same place.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful Virtual Assistant business. She enjoys helping her clients reach their goals through the tasks she offers. If you’re ready to create your marketing plan and put it to work for you, click here to visit her site.

With the New Year a lot of people sit down and prepare resolutions. I don’t like resolutions because they don’t feel like goals. When I sit down to do this task I write goals for both me personally and my business. I want to achieve success with my business and I have found it doesn’t happen without goals in place.

Here are some tips for creating business goals you’ll be able to work and reach.

1. You’ll need a piece of paper, a notebook, or your computer so you can jot down everything that comes to mind.

2. To get started with your goals, you need to brainstorm. Write down everything you’d like to accomplish in the New Year. It’s a good practice to write everything that comes to mind no matter if you think it’s stupid or not achievable.

3. Once this list is complete, it’s time to review it to see what you want to do this year and what should wait until next year. You’ll need to redo your list placing things in two categories. One category is for the New Year and the other is for future years.

4. Next you’ll need to take the New Year list and put it in order so you know what you want to accomplish and in what order.

5. Now you’ll need to put deadlines for each goal. It’s important you give yourself plenty of time to achieve your goals. There’s nothing worse than setting a goal and not giving yourself enough time to complete it. It’s discouraging to say the least.

6. Once your deadlines are in place it’s time to break down each goal. It’s easier to achieve a daily or weekly goal than it is to work with a monthly, quarterly, or yearly goal. The smaller the goal is the easier it is to achieve.

7. If you set weekly goals it’s a good idea to break them down into days so you know each day what needs to happen to achieve it. Now remember your goal may not need to be broken down any further and that’s ok if it doesn’t. The important thing is to try if you can.

8. Now that you have your yearly goals broken down into daily and weekly goals you need to rewrite it and make it readable. If you hand wrote your goals you should type them out so there is no question as to what you meant.

Business goals help you achieve more and grow. When you don’t know what you want out of your business, you’re not going to see the growth and that may cause you to stop working your business. Setting goals doesn’t take as long as you may thing. The best thing to do is just sit down and do it.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful Virtual Assistant business and she’s the owner of WAHM-Articles.com. She enjoys helping her clients reach success through the tasks she offers. If you’re ready to outsource tasks so you can reach your goals, click here to visit her site.

Your business goals are the key to your success. Without goals you won’t know what to do with your business. You must write them down and break them into small, easy to grasp, goals that you know you can achieve. This is what I did to start my New Year with goals.

I wrote my yearly goals down and then broke them down into weekly goals. When I started out doing this, I created a Google Document that had everything in it that I needed to reach each of my weekly goals. One of my documents contained the days I need to do my Twitter posts, the times they need to go out, and what I’m going to post each day. Then I created a document that contains the posts I’m going to make and this meant each category and what the post itself was going to be. Once I did that I was ready to write everything down in my new planner. When all of this was completed I was ready to begin my first week of January.

I’ll tell you what, my first week was a little rough at the beginning, but once I had a couple of days under my belt I realized it was going to work. I was going to be able to make this happen. I feel after a couple of weeks I’m going to start to see the success from my work and that’s going to be the best feeling every. I know this is going to work if I continue to put the work into it. I can do this because God wants to see me succeed.

So how do you write down your goals and then how do you turn those yearly goals to weekly goals? Please make a post in the comments sharing the techniques you use to reach your goals each month.

Ezine Articles is hosting a challenge for it’s authors. The challenge is called 100 articles in 100 days. This means you have 100 days to write and submit 100 articles to their directory. If you keep on top of it, you can do this challenge with ease. If you don’t you may find it difficult to get back on track.

Now, this is my second challenge through Ezine Articles and I was excited when they announced they were going to do it again. The first one I did, I was pretty nervous about it. I was not certain I could do it and I really didn’t understand how it could help me grow my business. I believe it hit me when I submitted my 56th article and it was approved. I checked the stats on my website and was pleasantly surprised to see my traffic had tripled since I started the challenge.

Article marketing gives you an advantage when it comes to your target market. For some reason people seem to trust information they see in print no matter if it’s online or offline. That’s why it’s crucial you use articles for your business.

Your articles must be geared towards your target market. This means it’s not a good idea to write on topics they won’t be interested in or ones that they don’t need. The best way to explain this is to use this example. If you offer baby products, it’s not a good idea to write an article on dog care. While your target market may have a dog, more then likely they’re looking for articles that have to do with babies.

When you continue to write and publish articles in directories, you’ll find that trust will grow. People will begin to trust you in a way that will lead them to purchase from you. They’ll also feel comfortable referring you to their friends and loved ones.

Trust is something people don’t take for granted. It’s something that is built over time. It’s not easy to gain a person’s trust so you must do what you can to make it happen. Once they trust in you, you must be careful to keep it because it won’t take much to lose it.

Articles are important for business owners to have and publish on a regular basis. One of the best ways to keep the articles coming is to have an incentive of some sort. The 100 articles in 100 days article challenge through Ezine Articles is one of the best ways. You’ll have a lot of support when you find other participants on social networking sites like Twitter.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful Ghostwriting business and she is the owner of WAHM-Articles.com. She enjoys helping others succeed with their business through article marketing. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, visit her site at GhostwriterToTheRescue.com

The time you have to work your business is limited when you have a family, so you need to make the most of it. When you are organized, you’ll find you’re more productive and you’ll have more time to do other things. These things can be for your business or for you personally.

Here are some tips for you to follow.

1. A calendar

A calendar is a great way to keep yourself organized. You need to write down appointments and deadlines you have so you don’t forget them. If you get the right planner you can even write your daily to-do lists. This will help you stay organized and you won’t forget anything you need to do.

2. Goals

Setting daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals will help you grow your business. When you write them down and keep them in a visible location you’ll always remember what they are. Daily and weekly goals will help you achieve your monthly and yearly goals. You’ll know exactly what you need to do to achieve the goals when you write everything down.

3. Organize your home

When your home is organized you’ll feel better about working your business. You’ll also spend less time cleaning and more time growing. Including your family in this process and the cleaning process will help you feel better and you won’t be as stressed.

4. Work area

It’s a good idea to have a work area so all of your things are in one place and you won’t have to go to different places to find things. When all of your business related items are in one place you’ll spend less time searching for what you need and more time working your business.

Make sure your desk is clean and organized. Use file folders and a file cabinet to organize the papers and other supplies you need. Use a desk catty to keep your pens, pencils, sticky notes, paper clips, and other items in one location. It’s a good idea to clean your desk once a week so you keep it clean.

Time management is crucial when you’re working a business and running a home. If your children are in sports or other activities, this will mean you have more things to do in your day. If you don’t keep yourself, your family, and your business organized, you’ll have a lot of stress and you may not get all the things done you need to do in a day. Using these four tips will help you keep everything organized and you’ll be on top of your time.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful Virtual Assistant business. Her goal is to help business owners grow through the services she offers. If you’re ready to take your business to the next live, check out her site at www.virtualfreedom4you.com.

I think I must be addicted to blog challenges or maybe I’m beginning to realize how important it is to have regular content on your blog. I would have to say the true answer is the latter of the two, but the first one was funny. LOL

Let me share with you why I feel the way I do about blog challenges.

Blog challenges are like candy to a child. Once you participate in one, you’re hooked and you will want to continue to do them month after month. Now I have found I love to write blog posts, but I have a problem when I don’t have someone there to encourage me to keep going. That’s what a challenge does for me.

As for the content for my blog, I realized about six months ago that the more content I add to my blog, the more traffic I will get to my blog and my sites. The more content I have on my site the more people will want to read what I have to offer.

With that said, I’m participating in the Ultimate Blog Challenge #2. It will run the entire month of October. I hope you enjoy the posts and make sure you leave comments on any of the posts. Feel free to ask questions or make comments.

No matter what you need to do, planning is what you need to do. When you plan, you know what you need to do and you won’t miss something. You won’t forget what you need to do and you’ll know how much time things will take.

I participated in the Hundred Articles in a Hundred Days challenge through Ezine Articles. The challenge was to write and submit 100 articles in 100 days. While I really enjoyed this challenge, I’ve learned a lot along the way.

I learned that you need to plan from the very beginning. You need to check your schedule everyday to make sure you know how you’re doing and if you get behind, you need to decide what you’re going to do to get caught up again. When you’re working with strict deadlines it’s important to stay on track because it could be nearly impossible to get caught up.

I learned all of these things with this challenge. It came down to the wire with these articles and now I have to wait to see if my final article made it through. I submitted it with 2 minutes to spare and my computer stalled. The date on the article is the 9th which was after the deadline. I’ve sent them an email with the hopes they’ll accept it since it came in right at midnight.

If I had to do this all over again, I’d plan much better and I wouldn’t wait until the last minute to write 19 articles. It was way to stressful and hard on everyone. While my family wanted me to reach the deadline it made it hard on them because I wasn’t able to talk to them and spend time with them.

This is why planning is so important. I will definitely plan things better and I will help others do the same thing. I hope you learn from my mistakes and plan everything you need to do. You’ll be glad you did.

It’s a known fact that article marketing will help you grow your business. You’ll get free advertising through the bio and you’ll be come an expert in your field when you continue to publish articles week after week.

When you don’t have a lot to look forward to, it’s hard to get motivated. One way to gain back your motivation is to participate in an article challenge. There are several to choose from, so you’ll want to choose one that will work for you.

You need a challenge, but at the same time you don’t want to participate in one that you know from the beginning you won’t be able to complete. For example if you know you won’t have time to write 50 articles in 50 days, then you shouldn’t participate, but if you know you can write 10 articles in 10 days, then that’s the one you should participate in.

Most times a challenge will have a place you can go for help, encouragement, and motivation. You should participate in this because it will help you continue to make sure you write like you’re supposed to do. Another option is to ask your family members to help you continue on.

If you have a little bit of time before the challenge starts, consider doing some brainstorming for ideas. When you have a list of ideas to write about, it will make it easier to sit down and write. If you have a hard time doing this on your own, ask someone to help you come up with ideas.

During the challenge, you need all the support you can get.. It’s a good idea to publish your articles on your blog and then link the post to your Twitter and Facebook page. After the post, ask for comments and then if you can, comment on the comments made.

Article challenges are a great way to increase the articles you have published in directories, on your blog, and in other areas. The more articles you have online, the better your chances are of your target market reading them. When they read your posts, they’ll continue looking for more of your articles and they’ll look up to you.

Article marketing is a great way to become an expert in your field. Developing this status is hard to do, but it’s easier with article marketing. When you use an article challenge to help you increase your articles and that will help you with your business.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful ghostwriting business. If you need help making your articles or blog posts sound professional, she can help make it happen. Visit her site at www.ghostwritertotherescue.com

Working your business every day is important for the growth you set out to see. Sometimes that’s not possible due to other committments, but you should always try to do everyday.

One of the most difficult times to grow your business is while you’re on vacation. Most times you have down time while you’re on vacation. Down time can be during layovers at the airport, travel time to the location you’re going to, and early morning or evening time when everone is starting to relax.

During these times, you can do things to grow your business. While advertising is a good way to grow, another way is to write articles and blog posts. These take time to do, so what better way to use up your down time then to write. You can save these on your computer, use a notebook, or record them, whatever works for you.

Vacations are a time to relax, but it’s also a good time to take the time to grow your business. Most times while we’re on vacation we have time to clear our brains and do some thinking. When this happens, you should consider taking advantage of it and do the things that you can do to grow your business.