Self employed? Help us make Huffs List work for you. http://ping.fm/FL1O4

Good blog on new FTC rules: http://ping.fm/LeZqx

Blog: how should we sell Huffs Listings on value versus price http://ping.fm/wRHgO

Huffs Listings: Price or Value. That is the question.

In our League of Extraordinary Salesmen class, our instructor and master salesman Hugh Liddle has asked us novice salespeople to list the three things about our product or service that are of value to our customers.

For most customers price by itself is not the key factor when a purchase is being considered. This is because most customers compare the entire marketing offering and do not simply make their purchase decision based solely on a product’s price. In essence when a purchase situation arises price is only one of several variables customers evaluate when they mentally assess a product’s overall value. KnowThis.com

According to Tessa Stowe, in 4 Secrets to Selling Value Versus Price, learning and applying her secrets will guarantee that your prospects will see the value in your products and services so that price is no longer the issue. Secret #1: Forget about selling and trying to get your prospect to buy your products and services. Secret #2: Have your prospect tell you the value (instead of you tell them). Secret Number #3: Have valuable conversations. Secret #4: Add your value to their value.

Wow! This is good stuff. Easy if I were communicating face-to-face with my customers. Much more difficult in the impersonal morass of the Internet. So how do I foster an online environment where independent businesspeople and solopreneur prospects tell me what the value is to them for having an optimized doorway to their entire online presence? That's a mouth full.

I face the following challenges on www.huffslist.com:

1. How does one create value for just another online business listing service?
2. How does one differentiate a Huffs Listing from social media?
3. How do we overcome the fact that this is a fledgling business directory and doesn't yet have over 1 million listings (which, by the way, is our goal)?
4. How does one make it imperative that, as an independent businessperson, if you want more visibility on the web, you need a Huffs Listing.
   

As a first step, I need to gather information. Would you please take a couple of minutes and complete the following questionnaire. Go to Questionnaire

Thanks bunches,

Linda

Huffs List welcomes Collins Management Services, partnering with clients to achieve and sustain high impact business results http://ping.fm/tnJfl

Customer service that makes us memorable

In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth. In the late 1940s, Dr. Joseph M. Juran inaccurately attributed the 80/20 Rule to Pareto, calling it Pareto's Principle. Dr. Juran's observation of the "vital few and trivial many", the principle that 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results, became known as Pareto's Principle or the 80/20 Rule.

In 20th century corporate sales, gurus applied this to doing business where 80% of your business comes from repeat customers and 20% comes from new. Today, you could almost re-phrase it even further as 80% of your business comes through referrals from satisfied customers and 20% comes from off-the-shelf new customers. Whittling it all down, this means that truly satisfied customers are your greatest source for new business.

So when you have an online business and someone actually finds you in this morass of the Internet and becomes your customer, the big question is how do you turn this customer into a 'satisfied' customer who will refer your products and services to their friends and associates? The answer? You need to give them customer service that makes you memorable.

In a League of Extraordinary Salesmen class, we sales novices brainstormed this very question. Words were brought up, such as follow-up, ask them what they need, be punctual, answer their questions, smile and be friendly (difficult to do in an online environment), serve, create a partnership, give referrals to them, give details, find your commonality, send articles, be available, and communicate. What these all have in common is communication. You need to communicate with your customer.

Now I have to say that I'm thoroughly human and, looking for the Golden Fleece, have signed up to find out how to make money. Now these guys COMMUNICATE. I'm not sure how effective it is, but I'm deluged with emails: "I'm throwing you a lifeline!", "UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!", "Exciting announcement of November Promotions", "Fall Asleep, Wake Up Rich!", "Some great stuff....", "Important (from my lawyer)", or even "I have THE survival kit you need!" And this is just a portion of my November's emails. The one thing all of these have in common is that they want to show you how to spend money to make money. Wow!

You must first capture your customer's attention. To do this, you have to separate your communications from the riff-raff. The best way is to have your communications be two way. 40% of successful selling today is building rapport with your prospect. So build rapport with your online customers. Following are some simple rules:

• Communicate, communicate, communicate.
• Always make your communications worthwhile.
• Share with them how you want to better serve them.
  
• Let them know how much you value them.
  
• Send professional looking emails.
  
• Apply the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid).
  
• Never ask for money.

In return, ask your customers to communicate with you by letting you know how they use your products and services. Ask them to tell you how you can improve your customer service to them. Make sure that, when they do reply, acknowledge their reply and state how valuable it is to you. Once you have built rapport with them, go ahead and ask them to help you by giving references by:

• Blogging about your product and services.
• Mentioning your products and services in their social media postings.
  
• Letting their friends know that they, too, can rely on you.
  

Huffs List welcomes Jonathan Wilkins of JWconsulting, offering marketing communications services. http://ping.fm/2qGQE

Starting 13-week sales training class: The League of Extraordinary Salespeople with Hugh Liddle, Red Cap http://ping.fm/gCFHD

Huffs List welcomes Michael Brandt of Marketing Resources LTD offering sales & marketing and marketing communication services http://ping.fm/F1MfQ

Speakers - now promote all of your speaking engagements on Huffs List

Speakers now have the ability to publish a complete list of their appearances in one calendar on HuffsList.com.

A number of sites, such as Meet-Up.com, are awesome for promoting scheduled events and speakers. Huffs List, on the other hand, offers professional speakers the ability to publish all of their speaking engagements in one place — personal appearances, seminars, podcasts, and webinars.

The Huffs List Calendar includes a ton of great information about these personal appearances, including the type of event, topic, dates and time details, description, a list of speakers (if more than the professional), web site link, location, and a list of keywords. Viewers find specific events using the calendar's nifty search facility.

What's more, all of the appearances are listed on the professional's personal Huffs Listing, which is a fully search-optimized web page that is all about the professional — a portal to their entire presence on the Internet — their key services and products, bio, web sites, social links, literature, articles, and links to products for sale.

Huffs List welcomes Elvi Bjorkquist of the Elvi Design Group, providing imaginative design that adds ROI. http://ping.fm/I4u8i

Consultant, freelancer, solopreneur? Expand your client exposure. Find expertise. Your resource. Your success. http://ping.fm/mjLyn

Bloggers 101 Haiku, BMG, Social Media Boot Camp

My tongue-in-cheek whittling down of a presentation given by Doyle Albee on Increasing Reader Engagement Across Corporate Blogs to the Boulder Marketing Group (BMG) Social Media Boot Camp:

Bloggers 101 Haiku
Find related blogs,
Join streams and be not stupid,
Comment, comment, comm....

This was an awesome boot camp, covering a broad range of topics in and around social media, such as how Qwest takes customer service to Twitter, the future of PR, how companies have moved beyond the buzz, a panel on social media for small to mid size companies, corporate blogging, and using a branded online community in your social media strategy.

Furthermore....

Thanks to Thomas Krasomil, read these two blog posts on the topic of the U.S. Air Force's excellent flowchart for responding to blog posts:

http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2009/01/air-forces-rules-of-engagement-online-that-is/

http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2009/03/air-forces-rules-of-engagement-round-two/

I ask. Why consolidate all the bits n pieces into 1 perfect landing page that can be a complete the portal to your business? http://ping.fm/YZpFO

Create the perfect landing page, a complete portal to your business. Let clients find you. Huffs List http://ping.fm/09cIT

Huffs List offers very sophisticated landing pages that are a comprehensive portal to your business world. http://ping.fm/XT8GK

Huffs List is a business directory that makes it easy for customers locate and match to you simply by searching for their sought-after key services, products, and locations. However, Huffs Listings offer much, much more than the typical online business directory! Use your Huffs Listing for:

1. One consolidated page from where prospective clients will download your literature, follow links to your web sites and all of your sample web sites, read articles that you've written, view photos of your work, watch your YouTube videos, and follow links to where your products are for sale.
2. Low-cost business advertising. At just $107 per year, Huffs List is the most cost-effective, easily-searched, online business directory available anywhere.
3. One comprehensive link to include in emails to your prospective customers.
4. A search-optimized Internet presence that is all about you and includes ALL of the links to your world.
5. A comprehensive landing page for any social network where you only have one Internet link.
6. A qualified page ranking backlink to all of your web sites, articles, and products for sale.
7. And most important! Huffs Listings are easy to set up and manage.

Act Now!

Why be listed on Huffs List

I would like to personally invite you to check out the many benefits of being listed on Huffs List.com.

A Huffs Listing is a complete portal to your world — your key services and products, bio, websites, social links, literature, articles, and links to products for sale. So while you take care of business, Huffs List makes it convenient for customers to locate and learn about you simply by searching for their sought-after key services, products, and location.

A Huffs Listing gives you:
- A portal through which customers connect with YOU, learn all about you and your business, link through to your website(s) and social media, read your articles, download your literature, and link to your products for sale.
- A search-friendly web page that advertises you and your business by your key services and products.
- A search optimized web page that promotes you through search engine indexing by your business, name, and key business categories.

PAY and GO LIVE only when you are ready
Setting up your listing is free. However, a Huffs Listing is designed to totally leverage your advertising dollars. First try out your listing by GOING LIVE for just $1 for a whole month. Then, for a low $26.80 per quarter, promote your business and take advantage of our great all-inclusive benefits.

MAKE MONEY, TOO!
Earn money by helping Huffs List grow! Register to be a referring affiliate partner. Huffs List is a revenue share web site. After the first introductory month, we pay 30% percent of all earned revenue as commission to YOU for every paid subscriber that you introduce to our web site.

Haiku for tweetaholics: Tweetabulous me, one forty is just enough, to impart great thoughts

Haiku for Tweetaholics: glued to Twitter I, one forty just enough to, shrink wrap total me

Huffs List welcomes Janet Buckner, quotes all major CO insurance carriers, personal service http://ping.fm/7kO10

Matching Professional Services to Company Needs

We officially launched Huffs List on 9/9/09 and 9:09 AM EST. As of 3:30, the announcement was picked up by 77 online publications. Marilyn Kroner of Kroner Communications, our PR contact, distributed the announcement over PRNewswire and will handle editorial followup.

New, easy-to-use resource provides professional contacts for most business disciplines

Firestone, Colo. - September 9, 2009 - Website developer, KKf Marketing LLC, today announced the launch of its new site, Huffs List™, a web resource offering a convenient and easy alternative to locating and learning about top professionals for jobs, situations and projects. HuffsList.com was developed specifically for companies looking for outside resources during these challenging economic times.

Read entire announcement

Huffs List welcomes Hugh Liddle of Red Cap Sales Training.

Huffs List welcomes Greg Olson of Ubiquity Group.

Find businesses by location: metropolitan area or state or country

In this period of business belt tightening, when you have a job, situation, or project that requires outside professional help, use Huffs List to find the right resources.

Your time is important. Huffs List offers a convenient, easily searched business directory where you locate and compare professionals for your jobs, situations, and projects. Find all types of businesses by the services offered, products, location, and name. Once found, Huffs List lets you explore the complete portals to these businesses.

Location Filters

On Huffs List, when a Location Filter is set on either the Huffs List home page or the Key Services pages, the Types of Business links are only live when one or more businesses provide the requested services in that location.

As an added subscriber benefit, Featured Today advertisements include only businesses that provide services in the specified location.

Metropolitan Areas

State location results include all Metropolitan Areas from that state. The same applies to country locations.

In business for yourself?

Promote yourself by your services, leverage your advertising dollars, and gain exposure.

A Huffs Listing is a complete portal to your world – your key services and products, bio, websites, social links, literature, articles, and links to products for sale. While you are taking care of business, Huffs List makes it convenient for customers to locate and learn about you simply by searching for their sought-after key services, products, and location.

Check it out.

Social Media links on Huffs List

You now have the ability to link to your Social Media accounts for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook from your Huffs Listing. Just add your user identification username for each in the Follow Me on Social Media form found under My Listing (Links/Social Media).



Twitter: Add your Twitter address without the @.

Facebook: Under Facebook's Account Settings, you must assign a Username. Use this Username for the Facebook link on Huffs List.

LinkedIn: Your LinkedIn Public Profile URL address usually starts with http://www.linkedin.com/in/. Use everything after the /in/ as your Username. NOTE: If your profile does not include /in/ but includes /pub/ in the link, you have an older account and need to either update it to the newer /in/ username or list your LinkedIn account under your web site links.

GREAT IDEA: Because your Huffs Listing is the portal to your entire Internet presence, use the link to your Huffs Listing for all of your Social Media links to a website. We include this link to your listing after GREAT IDEA. You can also find it under Share Your Listing (left nav bar).

For example: Link to Linda's Huffs Listing

Convenient, easily searched resource to locate and compare top professionals for jobs, situations, projects. http://ping.fm/SrCPF

Huffs Listings are portals to your business world - key services, bio, websites, social, lit, articles, links to products. http://ping.fm/SB2B8

Huffs List welcomes Larry Brummond of The Wright Touch. http://ping.fm/ZBslS

Haiku for Tweet writers: Oh great Tweeter muse. How can so many posts be so simple yet smart?

Outsource the graphic design for your brand identity: http://ping.fm/OcNvE

Tweetabulous. Now link to where your products are sold from your Huffs Listing on http://ping.fm/vD9WA

Another Great Huffs List Feature

In addition to the already insane number of portals to your business world that your Huffs Listing gives you, I've now added PRODUCTS FOR SALE.

YES! You can list your products for sale and link them to where they are sold whether it's on Amazon, CD Now, or even your own web site. Add your own product photo or link to an image on another web site. My goal is to make this process as easy as possible for you.

Try it out. www.HuffsList.com

Setting up a listing is free. You just pay a small subscription fee to GO LIVE.

On My Account (the password protected member’s home page), you should definitely complete the following sections:

• Your Services (These translate into your keywords and keyword phrase through which prospective clients find you.)


• Your business Logo or a Photo of you


• All of your Links to your web sites and you Social Media (These links are counted as backlinks to where they are pointing.)


• An in depth About Me (Describe in sound bites who you are, your experience, your accolades, your education, and professional affiliations.)


• Your Metro Areas serviced (Clients can find you by where you are located: metropolitan area, state, and country.)


• Articles (You can post articles and/or link to individual blog postings. The links are counted as backlinks to the site where they are located.)


• And FINALLY, Products for Sale (Use a photo and title/description to link to where customers can buy your products.

Huffs List welcomes Dymond Reagor Colville, LLP, Douglas Griess, Legal Services http://ping.fm/UCgXp

Huffs List welcomes Impact Marketing Communications, Cindy Skerjanec, Marketing Communications, Sales and Marketing http://ping.fm/eSxhY

Haiku for Tweet writers: Oh tweet writer block. Sitting, sweating, fingers poised. How do I write wow?

HAIKU FOR TODAY: Wow! We Tweet-exist, joyous living in moment, and time it takes all.

Tweetomanics - Once born, your thoughts need retweeting to stay alive.

RT @tweetmeme Have a smile today. The Power of The Unexpected http://bit.ly/B80mR

Branding and Brand Identity on Huffs List

"People engaged in branding seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique. A brand is therefore one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace. The art of creating and maintaining a brand is called brand management." Wikipedia

Service providers on HuffsList.com who focus on the various aspects of branding, brand identity, and brand management for clients:

True Vine Marketing Communications, Rich Carvill, Marketing Communications

MBCST- Marketing and Business Concepts, Dan Hellman, Marketing Communications, Sales and Marketing

The Market Creation Group, Mark Mitton, Marketing Communications

StratDV, Joe Stephens, Graphic Design, Marketing Communications, Sales and Marketing, Web Site Services, Writer and Editor

Stewartstudio Graphic Design, Graphic Design, Marketing Communications, Trade Show Services

How to Analyze Your Audience

"If you want your targeted audience to read or hear your recommendations, then remember and act upon them, express yourself in a vernacular that reflects your audience’s life experiences" - Rita Braun

Find this and other articles about writing for your audience by Rita Braun of Braun & Associates at Huffs List Articles

New Look, New Feel, New Vibes

We did it. Thanks to graphically- and message-minded Sheryl Dawson, we revamped Huffs List. WOW! Does it look nice. Easy to read. Easy to get around. Fabulous improvements. Thanks Sheryl.

Mucho thanks also go to Rita Braun for her in-depth editing of the Member Account area. As she succinctly puts it in her blog on editing, "It is the only way to keep you fit, in the case of your content, the only way to help prevent the yelping of Holy Crap!??! in some distant forest of readers or listeners." Thanks Rita.

It is so nice to be on the receiving end of expert help. My ultimate goal will be achieved when talented professionals like Sheryl and Rita are discovered simply because they are listed on Huffs List.

Great Example of a Good Huffs Listing

Take a look at Spot-On Marketing's listing. It includes all of the important elements that lets prospective customers know all about Sheryl Dawson's Spot-On Marketing business, including:

- a comprehensive list of services
- great links, including an online portfolio, a video that Sheryl wrote and produced, and her Twitter address
- a complete list of the metropolitan areas in which Sheryl does business
- pdf copies of literature that Sheryl has written and produced
- photos of projects that Sheryl has completed

Sheryl's only missing an About Me, yet clearly makes up for it by including her very creative online portfolio and sales sheet for web design services.

I've worked Sheryl. She's a very talented professional.

Sheryl, Kudos for a terrific Huffs List job.

Improving Huffs Listing visibility

I have been focused on bringing more visibility and clarity to the listings on Huffs List Directory of Professional Businesspeople. Here are a few suggestions that help optimize the listing's online search engine visibility.

1. Customize your Meta Description to include the highlights of what you offer. Adding your city/state/country also helps your search visibility. You will find the form to do this in My Meta Data. There is a limit of 150 characters, which is the optimal maximum length displayed in search engine results. Without this, your description defaults to a list of your keywords (the services that you provide).

2. Add the metropolitan areas in which you do business. This allows potential customers to filter by metropolitan area and find you. You can do this in My Listing under Metro Areas.

3. Send an email requesting a testimonial to you best customers in My Testimonials. This email includes a link to a landing page where your customer can write a short testimonial for you. These testimonials do not appear on your GO LIVE listing until you have personally approved them. We request that you limit the number of testimonials to one per satisfied customer. Only one testimonial is randomly shown on your GO LIVE listing with a link to more.

Still finding holes.

I run site:huffslist.com on Google and keep getting pages that should not be there. Today, I believe I discovered where the hole is.

On the page where I list what I call subcategories (keywords and phrases), which are under the main professional fields (i.e., accounting, sales and marketing, pet services), I discovered that I was not blocking spiders from following the embedded links to my master query control page. So I was getting pages indexed like this: huffslist.com/CF_LISTING_QUERIES.cfm?searchby=subcategory&scatid=217.

These indexed pages make no sense and really add lots of duplicate pages indexed. I have now added rel="nofollow" to all of these links. Hopefully this will plug up this hole.

The Adventure continues with Technorati

I'm trying to get this new blog listed on Technorati. That's not happening very easily. I first have to claim it, which I thought I did by providing my login to the blog. I then tried to add a 250 character description of the blog, but the form is not working properly and gave me no enter button. I also tried uploading a photo of me, which of course didn't upload. It's the same photo that I used on Facebook, etc.

Is it me? Is it my karma? I guess I'll wait and try again later.

Hopefully HuffsList.com works better and is not so confusing.

The Adventure of Creating Huffs List

Yesterday, I set up and tested the Huffs List site map using the free tool on www.xml-sitemaps.com. The process took me a couple of trials because I had links showing up that did not properly show the page content. My goal is that I have no duplicate links, meta titles and descriptions being indexed by the search engines. I believe that I've finally achieved that goal. YEAH!

So now, each professional individual's listing and each category of services will be indexed, yet indexed only once. I also added the www.xml-sitemaps.com generated site map to the site along with sitemap.xml and ror.xml. And I registered the sitemap.xml with Google.

Furthermore, I repaired an issue with the site's meta data. Duh. I had set up meta titles, descriptions and keywords for all of the support pages (i.e., FAQ, terms and conditions, copyright) and did not have the coding right for the correct meta data to appear on the right page. Everything was defaulting to the main meta data. That's fixed now so each page will be indexed properly.

Now all I have to do is wait for the site to be re-indexed to see the results of my labors.

Welcome to the Huffs List Professionals Directory Blog

WOW! It's new. It's easy to use. Web Visibility!

Are you a professional, consultant, freelancer, and/or expert who is looking to promote yourself online? Millions of searches are done daily for services just like the ones you offer. Huffs List is all about improving your visibility on the web so prospective customers will find you by the services that you provide.

If you have a web site and are not happy with its traffic results, you may already know how expensive and difficult it is to get traffic. Good web visibility - meaning traffic - is all about search engine optimization, which is where Huffs List excels.

HuffsList.com is fully optimized for search engines to promote our advertisers - independent business professionals like you - by their services.

Start HERE!

A Huffs Listing is not:

- A social network where potential customers find you only through friends and groups; and find what services you provide only by first finding you.

A Huffs Listing is:

- A search-friendly web page that advertises you and your business by the services you provide.

- A portal through which viewers connect with YOU, link to your web site(s), find out about you, and even download your literature.

- An inexpensive and effective way to advertise yourself by the services that you provide.

Check our beta site right now. Don't wait. The sooner you sign up, the sooner you will put us to work improving your online visibility.