Use online video to improve conversion.

Regarding my business, I know it’s more difficult and more expensive to acquire a new client today. And our existing clients expect more than they did a year ago.

Over the past several Mondays Dan has been talking about how each of those of us who are business owners need to playing a new ball game, and in a sense playing it defiantly.

Part of the new ball game, as he noted last week, involves greater flexibility, agility, and speed. And these are have-to’s. Or else.

It’s understanding that we are truly moving at breakneck speed into a new time, a new economy, and we have to change fast. By the way, it’s more than just about survival or maintaining or growing our business; it’s also related to our understanding that very few of our competitors will do what we’re doing…in some circles they call that establishing a competitive advantage.

How much time and money are you investing to get better? To learn more? To truly become an expert in your field? To become “unconsciously conscious” in at least one area?

Do you share anything about yourself with your prospects and customers or clients? How much of your personal life (outside of your business life) do they know about you? How much of what you’re interested in do they know about?

Question 1: In one or more areas of your life (my focus was my businesses) that you say are very or critically important to you, are you where you want to be?

Question 2: If not, why not?

So comes the question: where’s your focus? On what you’ve done in the past, no matter how great the accomplishment? Or on the “What’s Next?”

The Tour de France is now underway. As you’re probably aware, the race covers almost all 3 weeks over all types of terrain. With Lance Armstrong’s winning 7 consecutive races (and back for a try at his 8th) a number of Americans have found interest in the race.

While the race itself is interesting (at least to me), there are several business lessons we can all learn.

With the explosive growth of social media, you want to ensure you “brand” yourself as much as possible.

Two resources you need to check out:

Facebook Personal URL’s

On June 13th, Facebook began to let its users register personalized, or vanity url’s. Before then, the url you provided to friends, associates, and others was, in my opinion, difficult to use. I certainly couldn’t remember mine.

Now if you go to www.Facebook.com/jonkeel you’ll find my Facebook home page.

But don’t delay; the rush is definitely on. Go ahead and login to your Facebook account; the option to register your personalized vanity url will be (at least it was in my account) on your home page.

Use Namechk to See If Your Personalized Or Desired Username Is Available

I just found out about this site late last week.  You can quickly find out if your desired username or vanity url is available at dozens of Social Networking or Social Bookmarking sites.

To access this tool, go to www.Namechk.com

Bonus Question:

Are you building your Twitter followers in an organized manner? A month ago I had maybe 75 Twitter followers. Now it’s over 3,000 and growing.

Why am I building my followers?

I never really thought about it until I was with a very successful online marketing friend of mine 4 weeks ago; he’s effectively built his followers to almost 100,000; he told me that everytime he posts some kind of offer (hard or soft) he gets 1% of his followers to take an action. With his numbers that’s 1,000.

It’s not something I’m spending a lot of time on, but I’m planning on testing results as my followers grow.

Another “tool” you should be exploring for your business.