Lynn Bardowski's Blog, page 4
September 10, 2013
Lynn Bardowski Talks VISIONISTAS IN PINK with Consumption Conversations
September 2, 2013
Show Us Your Shoes – Visionistas in Pink Celebrates Women, Passion and Power
August 23, 2013
Dear Small Biz Owner, Your Facebook Friends May Be Hiding You, And Here’s Why
Dear Small Biz Owner, Your Facebook Friends Are Hiding You, And Here’s Why
August 8, 2013
How Do You Handle The Summer Slump?
Welcome to August, synonymous with the summer slump. The weather is hot and sticky and half your customers are probably on vacation. As a small biz owner, keeping your business (and your profits) consistent can be a challenge. What’s a Million Dollar Party Girl to do? Reinvent, innovate and turn a hot summer into a hot selling season, of course!
Here’s how I get it done:
Reinvent
Women are the queens of reinvention. Give your marketing strategy the same priority that you give your hair color. Change it up to give your biz a fresh look. What works during the busy times might not working during the lean times. Your summer marketing makeover should include attending networking events (where your ideal client is hanging out) and at least one biz conference to stimulate your ideas and strategize with like-minded people.
If you’re a direct-seller who can’t get anyone to “book a party”, stop asking people to book a party. That’s so 2000. Find out what your clients are interested in, and do that. How about a Happy Hour, Beach Party, Ladies Night Out, Wine Tasting, Focus Group, Sample Sale, New Line Preview or Exclusive VIP Customer Event? Actually, any small biz owner can build customer loyalty and gain new business during the summer with a VIP Customer event. Think outside the box and whatever you do, make sure there’s air conditioning.
Use social media to engage and connect with customers even when they are on vacation. For example, ask your customers to share a picture of themselves and your product on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter while they're away for a fun summer contest. I got tagged on a picture of a 9-month-old “reading” my book, Success Secrets of a Million Dollar Party Girl, with the caption, “Start ‘em young”. Smart mom, smart baby, smart marketing.
Innovate
Don’t sweat it. Embrace the obstacle and turn it into your biggest opportunity. Here are a few HOT ideas:
Offer a “hot deal” on the hottest day of the week. Example: Customers who shop on the hottest day of the week get 10% off or a bonus gift with purchase. They’ll be running in to shop on a 95 degree day! Create a buzz by posting the weather updates on your social media sites with headlines like, “5 Day Forecast calls for a chance of savings".
Create a "hot date". If you’re a direct seller, bring wrapped presents (use red wrapping paper – it’s hotter!) to your party marked with dates you want to work. Anyone who books your hot date, gets a hot gift.
Have a hot “Ladies Night” event to connect with your clients and encourage them to bring friends. If you "wine" it, they will come. Engage customers with prize drawings for wearing red, serve red sangria and give out red swag bags to attendees. You get the idea. Team up with other vendors and service providers like a chair masseuse to increase your reach.
Have a hot online sale/contest via a Twitter party or Facebook event. Post and tag the names of shoppers, and winners, to get the party started. If no one has shopped in the first hour, tag your sister.
Use social media the right away. If your posts are salesy (buy from me!) and more frequent than once a week, that’s called spam. Add the social to your social media. We want to see your wedding picture from 1985, not get a sales pitch about your biz. You can be innovative, and more social, with your biz posts by taking fun pics of customers using your product, highlights of biz events or your dog eating your brochure. I’d “like” that.
At the end of the day, your business is what you make it. You can buy into the “summer slump” excuse, or you can put on your red flip-flops and get out there to make something happen. Keep cool!
Lynn Bardowski is an award-winning entrepreneur, radio host and best selling author of Success Secrets of a Million Dollar Party Girl. She speaks to global audiences about entrepreneurship, vision and branding and is a resource for press, media and bloggers. Like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter. You may republish this article in full, as long as you list this paragraph and provide a link.
August 1, 2013
Why Women Leave Money On The Table, And Other Truths I Learned From Tory Johnson
Tory Johnson brought her spark, and a little hustle, to a PartyLite conference I attended last week in Minneapolis, MN. As Tory took the stage, she shared how she overcame fear and failure to turn her passion into profit. Her message for the 2,000+ entrepreneurs in the audience was to connect with your why, stop making excuses and ask for help when you need it.
Here are 3 Truths About Women I Learned from Tory Johnson:
Women leave money on the table: Tory shared a case study she did with women and men to find out why women earn less. In the study, both women and men were told they were being paid between $5 – $12 for participating in a focus group. They were all paid $5. The men immediately asked for more, wondering where the other $7.00 was. The women took the $5, saying things like, “That's Ok.” When asked why they didn’t ask for more, the women shared that they felt bad asking for more money and didn’t want to make a fuss. We’re not earning as much as men simply because speaking up to ask for more is not in our DNA. Teaching women how to speak up, ask and negotiate for what they are worth can change that.
Women use their family as an excuse: Have you ever thought or said, “I can’t (fill in the blank with any goal or dream) because of my family?" Tory’s response drew an applause from the audience: “My family is the reason I work my ass off.” For many women entrepreneurs, family is the reason they left a corporate job to fulfill a dream of building a business from home. Women can easily work 40 – 60 hours a week to make someone else’s dream come true, but when it comes to their own dreams they hold back, blaming family as the reason why they can’t commit to achieving their goals. After all, our families need us, don’t they? Turns out we teach our kids more lessons when we dream bigger, and empower them to think and do for themselves. If you want more for your family, show them the value of hard work, persistence and determination. Your children will follow your lead.
Women play the blame game: In my best selling book, Success Secrets of a Million Dollar Party Girl, I share my personal story of failure so I totally related to the "blame game." Failure gave me PLOM disease, Poor Little Old Me. Like Tory, I crept into my “loser world” and grabbed a pint of ice-cream (or a glass of wine) to whine my way to sleep. My failure was surely due to the economy, lack of support, the products and the people. Heck, let’s throw the weather in there, too. Tory’s recommendation is to look in the mirror. The answer to your failure will be looking right back at you. Reflect on what went wrong and what you can do differently to get a different result. Then get back to work.
Lynn Bardowski is an award-winning entrepreneur, radio host and best selling author of Success Secrets of a Million Dollar Party Girl. She speaks to global audiences about entrepreneurship, vision and branding and is a resource for press, media and bloggers. Like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter. You may republish this article in full, as long as you list this paragraph and provide a link.
July 17, 2013
The Best Tips Are In the Ladies Room, And Other Advice To Get The Most Out Of A Conference Experience
Summer time is conference time. Congratulations! You invested time and money in your number one asset - you! For women entrepreneurs, business conferences are a chance to develop friendships, learn, grow and have a blast while leaving the kids, laundry and dishes at home. We get a few days away to clear our heads and not only feel, but dress, like a full-time lady CEO. The biz mojo that sometimes gets lost in the fog of summertime play and laziness comes back, and we return energized and ready to conquer the world.
Here are 5 tips to make the most of your conference experience:
1. Build your business before you pack. Have you ever heard the saying, use it or lose it? Make the most of your investment by having 4 weeks of biz appointments and events set up when you return. Your motivation, energy and know-how will be at its peak in the first 4 weeks after the conference and will build momentum for the rest of the year…if you use it.
2. Use social media to make valued connections before you leave. Find out who the movers and shakers are on the attendance list and reach out ahead of time to introduce yourself via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Invite people you want to connect with to meet for coffee, or a cocktail, to brainstorm ideas. Follow the hotel and keynote speakers on Twitter and download city apps to stay in the know. Use the event hashtag to get the party started.
3. The Best Tips Are In The Ladies Room. Be mindful that everywhere you go, even lounging at the hotel pool or waiting in line in the bathroom, there is an opportunity to make a connection that can lead to a new idea, or customer. Bring biz cards, catalogs and a few product samples. Thanks to smart phones and iPads, you can take your business with you everywhere you go. Turn the always-predictable long line in the ladies room into an opportunity to learn something new. Ask your “line mates” for a specific biz tip (How do you get more ____), then jot it down on the notes section (include the contact information of your new friend) of your iPhone. Return the favor with a follow-up thank you and let the person know how their idea impacted your business. You’ll inspire each other to do more.
4. Leave the mommy-look at home. My Mom always told me, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have”. As an entrepreneur, you are the boss, and the brand. Thanks to discount stores like TJ Maxx, you can look like a CEO at a conference without breaking the bank, especially if your wardrobe is more casual when you are at home in mommy mode. Stand out in the crowd with solid sheath dresses in bold colors like yellow, blue or purple and/or pencil skirts with a bright top. They both look good on women of all shapes and sizes. Bring a sweater in case the conference rooms are cold, an umbrella in case it rains, ballet flats for city walking and some costume jewelry to bling out your style. And, don’t forget a bathing suit for the pool! Jeans and sneakers can stay home with the kids.
5. Be prepared for a not-so-perfect home when you return. Every year I’d fly home from a conference with new goals and dreams ready to achieve, and every year I’d walk in the door and be greeted with drama. The house wasn’t cleaned. Instructions weren’t followed. Plants were dead. My mojo went from a 10 to a 1 in about five minutes. I’ve learned that, that’s life. Men parent differently and are not going to do the same job you would. Hey, at least the kids had fun doing all the things you would never let them do. Celebrate that and move on. Stressing over the little things will only compound your frustration and derail your dreams. Take time on the plane, before you’re hit with reality, to make a to-do list of 3 action steps you can start on right away that will support your goals. Then wake up the next morning and get started!
Lynn Bardowski is an award-winning entrepreneur, radio host and best selling author of Success Secrets of a Million Dollar Party Girl. She speaks to global audiences about entrepreneurship, vision and branding and is a resource for press, media and bloggers. Like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter. You may republish this article in full, as long as you list this paragraph and provide a link.
July 11, 2013
Get Your Facebook Followers to Engage
by Diane Bertolin
Many businesses try to compete with one another on the size of their Facebook followings. Everyone knows, though, that competing on numbers isn’t as important as competing on quality. A business with a small but engaged following almost always has it better than a business that has a large, but uncaring one. The more your Facebook followers interact with you, the more likely they are to convert.
Followers who don’t care enough to interact are usually unlikely to cross the line and actually buy.
Increasing your Facebook engagement is important for another reason – Facebook’s new EdgeRank algorithm only shows Facebook members the kind of posts that they are most likely to want to see. If a follower has commented on one of your posts before, EdgeRank assumes that you are important to them. People who never comment on your posts will likely have EdgeRank block your posts from their Newsfeed.
Rather than simply measuring your Facebook success by how many followers you have, you could measure how well each of your posts manages to get user engagement. Measuring user interaction is a very useful way to see how well you’re doing on Facebook.
The question is, though, how do you get your following to engage more?
Try to truly understand your followers
If you don’t really know why your followers like what they like, you don’t understand them well enough. You need to do whatever it takes to understand your audience – take psychology classes if you have to. A more palatable way would be to simply conduct polls or ask lots of thoughtful questions on Facebook to help gain some understanding.
What does a thoughtful question look like? If your company sells stationery online, for instance, you could ask your followers about what item of stationery they really coveted when they were little children – was it a special pen or high quality paper? People love talking about their childhood.
Be concise
Research indicates that short posts do much better than long ones. Different research reports come up with different numbers. Most of them, though, place the most popular length at around 80 characters. Extremely short posts have people thinking that they can quickly come in, make comment and head out.
Use imagery
One important reason why people respond better to short Facebook posts is that they often look at them on their phones. Since reading on tiny phone screens is hard, they give up if they see a long post. There’s another way to engage your mobile customers – you could use plenty of pictures. Pictures are a great way to get people to post comments. It’s easy to take in the gist of a picture and to say something. When you have to read something to comment, it takes a lot more brain work.
Diane Bertolin is a certified Social Media Specialist. She works with companies of all sizes to improve their online presence and ranking with search engines. She takes a holistic approach to your Social Media Management by recognizing that your company's search optimization, public relations and branding strategy are all part of your social media management strategy. Find her online at Collective Publishing Company, Inc.
July 2, 2013
Celebrating Independent Women Entrepreneurs Throughout History
History books are thick with pages about the founding fathers who blazed new trails to the free world, leading to our independence on July 4, 1776. I remember learning about the early innovators and entrepreneurs including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John D Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, but where are the stories about women entrepreneurs in our history books? Young girls need to learn that an entrepreneur named Coco Chanel was creating a fashion empire in France in the late 1800's, and that Amelia Earhart was not only an aviator, but an author and entrepreneur. Earhart created her own line of casual clothing that was sold in department stores in the late 1920's.
Here are some of the women in history who inspired me, leading to my independence as a woman entrepreneur. I’ll be thinking of them when I watch the bright glare of the fireworks light up the night sky.
Rock your vision, and get your creative juices flowing, with these 5 inspired summer reads by women entrepreneurs. Together, we'll rewrite the history books.
Gutsy: How Women Leaders Make Change - Sylvia LaFair
Success Secrets of a Million Dollar Party Girl - Lynn Bardowski
Shark Tales: How I turned $1,000 into a billon dollar business - Barbara Corcoran
Spark & Hustle: Launch and grow your small business now - Tory Johnson
What if? and Why not? - Jen Groover
Lynn Bardowski is an award-winning entrepreneur, radio host and best selling author of Success Secrets of a Million Dollar Party Girl. She speaks to global audiences about entrepreneurship, vision and branding and is a resource for press, media and bloggers. Like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter. You may republish this article in full, as long as you list this paragraph and provide a link.
Celebrating Independent Women Throughout History
The history books are thick with volumes about the founding fathers who blazed new trails to the free world, leading to our independence on July 4, 1776. Ben Franklin’s innovations led the way for Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and more, but where are the women entrepreneurs in the history books?
Here are some of the women in history who inspired me, leading to my independence as a woman entrepreneur. I’ll be thinking of them when I watch the bright glare of the fireworks light up the night sky.
Celebrate YOUR independence with these 5 inspired summer reads:
Gutsy: How Women Leaders Make Change - Sylvia LaFair
Success Secrets of a Million Dollar Party Girl - Lynn Bardowski
Shark Tales: How I turned $1,000 into a billon dollar business - Barbara Corcoran
Spark & Hustle: Launch and grow your small business now - Tory Johnson
What if? and Why not? - Jen Groover
Lynn Bardowski is an award-winning entrepreneur, radio host and best selling author of Success Secrets of a Million Dollar Party Girl. She speaks to global audiences about entrepreneurship, vision and branding and is a resource for press, media and bloggers. Like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter. You may republish this article in full, as long as you list this paragraph and provide a link.
