Cindy Ratzlaff

Bestselling author, award winning brand marketing and social media pro, Cindy Ratzlaff, creates sales driving campaigns for authors, books and publishers.

How To Create A Marketing Calendar | Business Strategy

By Cindy Ratzlaff

Every small business, entrepreneurs, author or brand needs to plan their marketing in advance in order to budget their resources. But what if you don’t have experience creating a strategic, goal-oriented year-long marketing plan? No problem. You can use the tips and tools listed below to map out your strategy for the coming year and take advantage of the natural promotional cycles built into every business niche.

Create a Marketing Calendar Like a Pro

Creating a marketing calendar puts a brand or product front and center so the marketing efforts reach the ideal customer or client. A marketing calendar provides a blueprint for a product launch, helping you develop brand awareness and increase visibility and cement your position as a thought leader in your niche.

Time spent creating a detailed marketing calendar directly correlates to your launch rate of success.

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10 Social Profiles Every Author Needs

By Cindy Ratzlaff

Every author needs a platform, a way to connect with readers and let them know when their next book is ready to be purchase. So what is a platform? A platform is simply the reliable ways in which an author can connect with fans and encourage them to buy books.

Bestselling authors have a history of bestsellers, creating a kind of literary celebrity. That’s a platform. Some authors have national television shows, magazine columns or are regulars on nationally syndicated radio. These are platforms too. An author might have a commitment from Staples or IBM to buy books and give them to employees. That’s a kind of platform, too.

Until recently, the average author was out of luck if they didn’t have a platform. That was before social media and the power it has to excite, engage, build community and create media for authors.

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8 Simple Ideas for Free or Low-Cost Publicity

By Cindy Ratzlaff

Every business owner knows the value of PR. It helps your ideal customer understand what you do and find you when they want your service or product. But most business owners don’t have a background in public relations nor do they have the budget for a professional PR agency.

The good news is you don’t need to break the bank to garner good publicity for your business.  If you’re willing to commit a little time and ingenuity, you can promote your company effectively and build your reputation as a business leader.

Here are eight simple steps you can take, on your own, to promote your business, book or service.

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15 Simple Mostly Free Facebook Marketing Tips to Try Today

By Cindy Ratzlaff

With more than 1 billion people on Facebook, the sheer volume of potential clients and customers makes this platform worth your marketing efforts. But building a following and making sure they see what you post has become a bigger challenge as Facebook continues to tweak the algorithm in favor of advertising and big brands. But do not abandon the platform just yet.

Here are a few nifty, mostly free, tips and tricks to help your content attract, engage and retain a fan base so that when you have something to sell them, they’re still listening. For more ideas on the specific how-to aspects of content marketing on Facebook, you can employ most of the ideas in 8 Ways to Get Your Posts Seen in the News Stream easily.

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4 Free Tools To Turn Quotes into Content for Social Media

By Cindy Ratzlaff

Garnering a Share from fans, friends, subscribers and followers is the new top goal in social media. Like takes a back seat; you still want likes but your brand needs shares in order to create the kind of viral visibility that was once known as word of mouth promotion. Facebook values shares as a more reliable indicator of a deeper relationship with your followers than just a like.

Facebook rewards brands for posting pictures by giving those posts higher EdgeRank.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that social media users love inspirational or educational quotes. Your brand can benefit from the quote craze, garnering exponentially more likes and shares than the tip or quote alone simply by creating an attractive poster for the quote. By poster, I simply mean placing the quote on a nice background or block of color to create a pleasing that others will find desirable to share.

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Binders Full of Women | Top 18 Women For Business Advice

By Cindy Ratzlaff

Every entrepreneur should have binders full of women (and men) who are resources, teachers, strategists, leaders, contacts and potential partners. Social media provides the digital version of a binder through Facebook Interest Lists and Twitter Lists. G+ has circles and Pinterest Boards. We’ve got Evernote to capture and save links, sites and notes and digital contact lists on our mobile devices that act as simple Customer Relations Management, or CRM, tools.

The resources, education and support I’ve gleaned from my Binders Full of Women = priceless.

Here’s a peek inside just one of my personal “binder,” my Top 18 Top Women to Follow for Business Advice. Each of these women share their expertise, advice, resources and opinions so freely that you’ll feel like you’re getting a mini-MBA just by adding them to your stream. These are in no particular order and every one is provides such valuable information, guidance and inspiration, I recommend you take time to visit their websites and see if what they talk about will help you grow your business.

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Money and Entrepreneurs | Setting Your Prices

By Cindy Ratzlaff

by Cindy Ratzlaff

Entrepreneurs are people who have a great concept or product and a passion to bring it to market. But they may not be trained in all the areas necessary to survive and thrive in the start-up phase of a business. Not many people come to their own business with experience in sales, marketing, human resources, web design and development, supply chain management, graphic design, copy writing, creating a content marketing calendar and accounting.

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Turning Likes into Leads and Leads into Customers

By Cindy Ratzlaff

The promise of social media as the top of a profitable funnel can be the shiny object of marketing tools. Converting “Likes” to leads, however, requires a strategic use of social media rather than thinking of social media simply as a broadcasting tool.

A conversion focused social media strategy should bring a lead into the marketing funnel, capture the lead, create the opportunity and incentives to convert the lead (through either a sale or a partnership or a request for further information), engage that new partner/client and motivate the partner/client to transform into a brand evangelizer by providing them with the tools and incentives to recreate the cycle.

Social Media is a massive permission based marketing opportunity for entrepreneurs.

Social media platforms are where a large pool of potential clients spend their discretionary time. Developing a brand messaging strategy to engage with these potential customers requires understanding the language spoken on each social platform and integrating the social campaign with off-line campaign.

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YouTube Adds Easy InVideo Branding | Entrepreneurial Toolkit

By Cindy Ratzlaff

*Editor’s Note: The video you feature must be hosted on YouTube.

YouTube quietly added a new feature to the platform that will help small businesses, cash strapped start-ups, entrepreneurs, authors, speakers and coaches promote their brands, in just a few simple steps, across all of their YouTube videos.

InVideo Programming allows users to insert a branded logo or even another video into the corner of all currently uploaded videos on an individual’s YouTube Channel, all at once.

Branding With a Logo or Video

Imagine that as a small business owner you are creating short informational videos and posting them to YouTube. Next you share them through e-mail or through Facebook and even your business website* (your video must be hosted on YouTube, even if it’s featured on your website).  Now with InVideo Programming, you’ll be able to embed another video into the corner of your informational video–say an announcement about a big launch, sale or special event–and ever consumer facing touch point for the original informational video now becomes an invitation to view the special announcement video in just one click.

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5 Entrepreneurial Voices for Personal Brand Marketing

By Cindy Ratzlaff

Finding your brand voice or your entrepreneurial message is a fundamental building block for growing a successful, profitable and sustainable revenue stream for your business.

Understanding and implementing strong, clear messages is easier when you have identified your entrepreneurial voice. There are several different voices with which a business can communicate and choosing one can help you get from the idea stage to the starting line. You’ll add additional voices and messages as your company, product or service matures, but since the start is the most challenging hurdle in any entrepreneur’s business life cycle, let’s examine some options that will get you to go.

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