On Track Tips | Small Business | Marketing | Branding | Social Media | SEO

Nikol Murphy is the go-to expert when you need to know how to stage a live event online. She is cofounder of Triangle Google Plus HIRL, one of the most active real-life hangouts anywhere. Food stores can use live events to teach cooking classes. Companies can use live events to train employees. Writers can turn live events into kick-off parties for the next best-seller. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination. Nikol shares suggestions for getting started with hosting live events.

Stephan Hovnanian is an expert with email marketing and has a proven track record with helping his clients increase their leads, nurture client relations, and retain valuable subscribers. Email marketing delivers a high return-on-investment or ROI, partly because Email is an inexpensive marketing channel with a low amount of investment needed for entry. When done right, you can create long-lasting, intimate relationships with your audience through their inboxes, which may lead to high conversion rates and loyal followers.

Peg Fitzpatrick and I talk strategy for having a presence on multiple platforms at the same time. A business owner doesn't need to be and shouldn't be on all platforms, but should choose the platforms that make sense for his/her business. Peg and I discuss the different platforms. She shares her thoughts on the importance of organization, scheduling your work and sticking to it, and also shares tools she uses.

Ronnie Bincer - In today’s customer-centric market, businesses have to focus on forging a trust-based, mutually beneficial relationship with their customers. The only way this can happen is if these companies connect or emotionally resonate with their audience. This is what sets video marketing apart. Ronnie summed it up perfectly, “video is an emotional tool. It helps create emotional connection with the audience, differently than other methods. So any business that can utilize emotion will benefit from video marketing.”

Michael Nelson, a small business coach and strategic digital marketing consultant, helps organizations set their goals, create plans to reach those goals, and design systems to measure success. When you’re building a business, you need a plan and a strategy. He helps us simplify this process of online strategy development.

Randy explains the difference between AdSense and AdWords - they are “two sides of the same coin”. AdSense is an ad-publishing program, and AdWords is an ad-selling program. With AdSense, your site becomes a money-maker by displaying targeted ads that generate revenue when visitors click through. It is possible to make $80,000/year of this type of passive income, but it takes about 10,000 visitors/day to sustain this income level and Randy has several sites that all perform differently.

You find yourself sitting at your computer, staring at the screen dreading the task at hand. You know you need to write a post, create a piece of content for your website, but blogging's definitely not your strong suit. What can you do to keep your site fresh and inviting? Mike Allton is comes to our rescue and shows us how to easily create content that your customers are searching for. You've also got to get unstuck from the epic post mentality and there are lots of ways to create content without having to write a post.

Christine and I tackle the questions "I have a social media following, but how do I convert my contacts into clients? What am I doing wrong?" Christine talks about the scenario of the business owner who gets some followers, and then gets stuck either finding potential clients, spending too much time on social media, or trying to get their connections to convert.