Everyone talks about it….but as a home business owner, do you REALLY need a blog to promote your business online?

Blogging is one way to establish your presence on the Internet and show the world who you are and what you do. Google and other search engines love frequently updated content, which is what a well-managed home business blog will consistently provide.

The question is, though, do you HAVE to have a blog to be successful online with your home based business?

Here are the facts:

• you can promote your business online just using social media and sending people to a company replicated sales page

• you can do the same with a small 3-4 page traditional website that has a little information about your offer and an opt-in

So knowing this, why would you need to start a blog? Blogs take more work than traditional websites.

• a blog needs fresh content every week (3-4 new posts if possible)

• a blog need a little maintenance, attention to updates, etc.

• all in all, traditional websites are easier – just publish and forget for the most part

Let’s look at three different ways you can promote your business online, as well as establish trust and credibility for your personal brand.

Using a Company Replicated Site

This is the simplest option – everything is done for you, it is usually a professionally designed presentation designed to sell, and often includes some form of opt-in to help capture leads who want more information.

The downside is that the company owns this site. Even if it is customizable, it is basically the same website everyone else has. What sets you apart? If you depend on it as your “home base” online, what do you have if you choose to move on to a different opportunity sometime in the future?

Using a Static Website

For having your own personalized site that is truly yours, this is the simplest and most low-maintenance option. It can be small, 3-4 pages, with content designed to entice prospects to opt-in for more details. A “static website” is just a traditional site with content that rarely changes. This is in contrast to blogs, which ideally have fresh content posted weekly.

The downside – maintaining a traditional website requires hiring someone, or learning how to use Dreamweaver or one of the free publishing programs like KompoZer, along some knowledge of HTML.

Setting Up a WordPress Blog

To promote your business online, I’m talking about a blog on your own domain, not the free type like they offer at wordpress.com. The software to run your own self-hosted blog is found at wordpress.org.

Disadvantages of a blog include higher maintenance than other options, but look at the advantages!

• you own it and nobody can take it away from you or tell you what you can and cannot do with it

• it is user friendly with a simple interface for publishing content

• you can get just the right look with one of thousands of available themes (I recommend premium themes that you pay for over the free ones)

• they are search engine friendly and with the right plugins you can easily rank in search engines for your content

• free WordPress plugins make it really simple to promote through social media, and do just about anything else you want, easily

Bottom line – use a WordPress blog as your home base and online marketing hub. Use social media and advertising to drive traffic to it. Promote your business online by having an opt-in form in place to build your list and create a community of fans and followers who can be your future customers and business associates!

Check out “The Eldon Beard Show” on the Home Business Radio Network – this week on one of my shows, I will be going into greater detail about whether a blog is really your best option to promote your business online.

Home business marketing – everything you do to promote your home business, both online and offine – can become quite confusing and stressful.

Even if you are working a business model that comes with a simple step-by-step marketing plan, it is human nature to want to explore as many other options as possible. Just about everyone desires to build their business as quickly as they can.

So, let’s say you have a network marketing business. You know that the business is pretty simple – prospecting, presenting, and enrolling those who catch the vision and want to work with you.

Most likely, your opportunity has a basic training routine that teaches you a simple system for finding leads and building up your business. So is that enough?

Think about all the home business marketing techniques you can use to grow your income even faster!

• online advertising

• social media prospecting

• article marketing

• blogging

• press releases

• message boards and forums

Not to mention all the neat tools, e-courses, DVD sets, MLM training programs, and everything else out there that seems to offer great hope for helping you attract hundreds more MLM prospects fairly easily.

Home business marketing can become very overwhelming because of all these options. There are lots of ways to find more prospects, and all of these methods can work.

The problem is, if you take on too much, you can end up scattered and not accomplishing much at all. I am writing this today because I was once in this situation.

I am a student of home business marketing, especially the online aspect of it. I have tried, tested, and adapted many different approaches for attracting visitors to my blogs and websites over time. I’ve found myself becoming overwhelmed and losing ground when I took on too much at once.

So, to avoid confusion and inertia that is a natural result of being overwhelmed, here is what I learned and recommend to you.

1) Master the basic fundamentals of building your business first – it does little good to attract more prospects if you aren’t able to follow up and present your opportunity effectively. It’s easy to avoid the fundamentals and spend time looking for “faster and more efficient” ways to prospect. Beware of this.

2) Once you have the fundamentals down and are sponsoring people and making some money, pick an area where you want to branch out. For example, you might choose to study and master the art of Facebook marketing. Begin getting some leads this way and sponsoring them, then if you have time, choose another technique and repeat.

I emphasize mastering the basic fundamentals of your business first because so many home business owners make a big mistake.

They jump into many different promotional methods, particularly online, and end up not gaining a whole lot from all of it. This is because they never get mastery of the basics that are essential for success in the first place.

Home business marketing doesn’t have to be difficult – just master the basic fundamentals first, then branch out and learn how to do everything you do well before you move to something else.

I recently found some great ideas for promoting your home based business offline.

Even with the outstanding potential for making connections and promoting your products and services online, there are still many advantages to offline promotion.

Some of these ideas will work best for traditional direct selling opportunities, others are excellent for network marketing businesses as well.

I have a lot of these, so I’ll spread them out among 3-4 posts rather than creating one huge article. Pick your favorites and comment below to share you experiences!

1. Take a snack sized sandwich bag and make a little packet that you can hand out to people you run into everywhere – include your business card, opportunity flyer, current specials if that applies, samples if you have them, etc.

2. Make up some flyers with your contact information (phone, email, website) and include details about any specials you’re offering. Contact local apartments, mobile home parks, housing developments, etc. and see if you can leave brochures in their office or distribute them by placing on residents’ doors. Offer the people in the office a gift or discount on products they order from you.

3. Get in touch with bridal supply stores, catering services, formal wear rental centers, etc. See if they will let you leave your business cards & brochures about the wonderful (Your Company’s Name) Bridal Gift Registry that they can give to customers. Offer them a free gift or discounts for helping you out.

4. Look for local daycare centers and leave a few cards, brochures, and perhaps discount offers there. Excellent place to find potential work at home moms.

5. Many churches hold a Spring and Fall Festival! Contact them and see what it costs to get a booth or table. The cost is often very reasonable and you can meet a lot of people. It’s a good idea to do a contest type drawing at these events. You can capture contact information and follow up with them later!

6. Join your local chamber of commerce and get involved! They frequently have events and functions that you can participate in.

7. Do you have a local college or university? Many students are looking for ways to make extra money, and a business they can work around their challenging schedule is very appealing. Most campuses have bulletin boards and other areas where you can post ads and leave brochures.

8. See if you have a local area “Welcome to the Neighborhood” type group. They often hand out packets with local business promotions and even samples. Include yours!

9. Contact the human resources department at local hospitals. Many hand out packets filled with goodies for new moms!

10. Check with local radio stations, they have contests and promotions and are always looking for sponsors and freebies.

11. Do you have a bingo hall in your area? They are always looking for people to donate prizes, and this is a big deal in some areas.

12. Get in touch with your local Chamber of Commerce and inquire about job fairs held in your local area. Rent a booth or table and tell people about your business opportunity.

13. Call local colleges and universities and see when their next job or employment fair is. A booth is often cheap at these events and you can get a lot of prospects this way.

14. Target your local gyms and health clubs! You can get a table for $30 or less in most cases. Make sure you have several products out, plenty of catalogs, business cards and brochures.

15. Find others in your area who are in a home business and network. Find out what events and promotional opportunities they participate in. They can often tell you about strategies and venues that would otherwise be difficult to find.

More to come!

Have you thought about the value of time when it comes to building your network marketing or direct sales home business?

Many in network marketing and direct sales are building an income for their future while working a full-time job as well as managing family and other responsibilities.

Planning and setting aside time for home business activities is important, because in our busy lives it’s quite easy to put things off until later, or wait to take action at a “better time”.

I found this short video last night which puts an interesting perspective on the value of time and how quickly it can slip past us if we’re not careful.

Take a look and see what you think.

It’s not that I didn’t understand the value of time before I watched it, it’s just that this presentation makes it kind of sink in. I immediately thought about my own personal time management and how critical it is to stay on top of our most valuable asset – our time.

Here are some tips I use to help manage my own home business and network marketing activities. How you do it may be different. Please comment below and share with us how you make managing your time easier and more effective.

Here is what I do each week.

1) At the beginning of each week, I make a list (overview) of what I need to accomplish. This can include basic tasks such as “x number of followup calls to prospects” as well as activities like writing blog posts and articles to promote my business.

2) I look at my week ahead and plan the time slots I’ll be using to do these things. That will include morning, afternoon, evening, and weekend time where I will plan to work in my primary business activities around other responsibilities. Most weeks, these time slots are pretty consistent so this step is usually pretty simple.

3) I allocate tasks to the times when I am most effective doing them. For example, I typically blog in the early morning, when it’s quiet and I can have uninterrupted time. I will plan prospect calls mostly in the evening, when people are home from work. Other things fall in between wherever they fit best.

I know this sounds rather simple and basic, and it is! What helps me maximize the value of time here, though, is the PLANNING process I do. At one time, I would carry a list of things I needed to do for my business in my head, and when I could pick up some spare minutes during the week, I’d do something.

Just carrying my list of things I needed to do in my head didn’t work out very well. The reason? Tendency to procrastinate, get interrupted, just about any excuse you can think of. This is why I strongly encourage people I work with to decide what times they want to set aside for their business, and write out an action plan for that time.

I know we’re all busy, and sometime the best plan will have to be changed because “stuff” happens. To maximize the value of time that you do have, though, a plan and focus is essential. What are your thoughts?

Today’s home business tip is about how you present yourself to prospects and potential customers. There is a lot of training and teaching on how to “posture” yourself for success, but there is something here to think about.

Are you being authentic and genuine as you go about promoting your home business to others? Are your potential customers and prospects seeing the “real you”, or someone you are pretending to be? Because building a home based business requires you to interact and work with other people, being yourself is the best advantage you can have over your competition. Too many people try to copy how the home business “superstars” act and talk, and often rather awkwardly at that.

Let’s take network marketers as an example. Network marketing is a people business. The life and growth of your business depends on attracting people who are seeking opportunity, sponsoring them into your business, and working with them as a team.

You want to know the truth? Your prospects out there aren’t as focused on judging you by how much you appear to make or how successful you appear to be. These things might be interesting, for sure, but people are looking to work with people who are sincere, passionate, and real.

It’s important to be yourself and establish your own credibility and authority from the beginning. You may not be making much money yet, nor be an expert on all things MLM, but you do have a lot to offer. If you are excited and committed to your business, right away you have something of value to others – your support and encouragement to new team members who join you.

There is no-one like you. You will attract people to your business that I can’t. I will sign people up that you won’t. The reason is our differences – what makes us unique also enables us to attract others by being ourselves. Being genuine. My approach and style will resonate with some people, and yours will be more appealing to others. But through it all, other people can tell if we are being real, or pretending.

This is especially important if you are using social networking sites like Facebook to make friends and build relationships. Honestly, it’s pretty easy to spot people who are living out the “fake it till you make it” philosophy. On the Internet and in social networking communities, it’s easy enough to pretend you are an expert. You can pretend that you are making lots of money and sponsoring people right and left, but ultimately people can just sense if you aren’t being real.

Just be yourself. Be committed, enthusiastic, and happy about whatever you do, and people will want to work with you! No pretending or faking it necessary. It’s great (and advisable) to work hard to learn the success secrets of the superstars, but the key to making this work is to take those secrets and apply them in YOUR own style and manner.

This is the gist of today’s home business tip – don’t try to copy and be someone you aren’t. Find out what the leaders and stars do, apply good success techniques that you learn, but be yourself and put the best of YOU out there. That’s what makes it all happen.

One of the first things you need to know and understand, to ensure maximum success in your home based business, is WHY you’re building your business. What is motivating you to do this?

It might be a desire for extra income to help with household expenses, money to create a college fund for your kids, or maybe a strong desire to become fully independent and free from your regular job.

Whatever your reason for starting your home business, this is really important. Without a clear vision of WHY you’re building your business, it will be harder to sustain the enthusiasm and consistent effort required to make money and achieve success.

Once you have your WHY clearly in mind, be sure to write it down. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is very important. A lot of people say it, and I know it may be hard to understand why, but something about writing your WHY down helps to make it more clear and meaningful. It should be written down, and kept in a place where you can go back and reflect on it from time to time.

Here are a few things to help you along as you define your WHY, along with actions you need to plan. Take some time with this in the beginning and make sure you have an emotional connection to it. It must really mean a lot to you in order to be a real motivator to action.

Write down your WHY (full time income, financial independence, whatever it is for you). Once you have that, drill down and make it very focused and meaningful. Get down to where the emotion is. Is your desire to provide a better home for your family? To stay home with your children? To help others in need? To pursue a special interest or passion that you’ve always dreamed of?

Whatever it is, make sure the final result is something you feel strongly about. Something that means a LOT to you. Something that drives you and helps you spring out of bed in the morning looking forward to the day.

Once you have your WHY well defined, put a date on it. Set a general timetable for achieving it. This can be, realistically, 3-5 years of sustained and focused effort. Maybe less, depending on your circumstances and special skills.

Next, identify any obstacles that might slow you down or hinder your progress. Be prepared for them and be ready to blow past them. Anticipate some of these obstacles and be prepared, mentally, to kick them aside if you encounter them.

Create a plan of action that will realistically get you where you want to be (if you are in network marketing, your upline team should help with this).

Be a willing student – and apply what you learn. You will have training available, and help from upline mentors who are already where you want to be – listen and learn from them.

Getting your WHY down first, then formulating a realistic action plan, then working your plan consistently – this is the key to success.

There is a lot of coaching and training out there that teaches basic principles of how to achieve home business success. This type of teaching is generic, and applies to whatever type of home business you choose.

It’s interesting to study how different authors and speakers get their point across, because one might convey a thought or principle in a way that has great impact when you hear it, while another may make essentially the same point but it just doesn’t resonate with you.

There are five principles for home business success that are pretty common in all the teaching and training that I’ve seen. I believe that getting these five in line sets the stage and lays the foundation for your future prosperity.

Carefully Define Your Goals

This goes without saying – if you don’t have a  strong “why”, along with written goals that clearly define your business objective, it will be all that much harder to achieve home business success. I’m not talking about vague desires, like “I want to make a lot of money“, but rather very specific statements of what you’re shooting for. By the end of May, 2012, I want to be earning a net income of $5000 per month with my home business.

Create Your Action Plan

We’ve all seen people who seem to just go out and start “doing stuff”, and somehow manage to make money from home. There are those rare gifted individuals who seem to fly by the seat of their pants and make it. The reality is, though, that they had a plan even if it was only in their head. Most of us need more organization than that, so a clear action plan, a road map of how you’re going to achieve your home business goals, is a must.

Be Diligent and Enforce Priorities

Life is very busy and there are always reasons and excuses to get sidetracked away from the essential actions required for your home business success. If you don’t establish your priorities and stick to them, it will be very easy to procrastinate and do things that aren’t productive. Things that won’t make money for you. Set priorities for your action plan and stick to them.

Hang Out With Positive and Successful People

If you can, join a “mastermind” group of like-minded entrepreneurs. This is a fantastic way to keep yourself charged with fresh enthusiasm and ideas. Just being around, and associating with, motivated and driven home business entrepreneurs can have a very positive effect on your business. Enthusiasm is contagious!

Eliminate Unnecessary Negative Influence

Finally, try to avoid associating with people who are negative or critical. Some people go so far as to suggest you drop your friends who are like this. I don’t encourage dumping a friend – you can always hope your great attitude will rub off on them someday (hopefully!), but I do suggest not hanging out regularly with people who are negative and drag you down. There has to be balance here, just do the best you can.

Home business success is a combination of many things, but these five tips can help you set a solid foundation for making it happen.

Paper clutter is one of those things that plagues many people who work from home. I’m one of those people who tends to have a lot of paper around that I don’t really need anymore, and it just takes up valuable space and becomes a mess over time.

Have you been there, done that? Has the top of your desk or workspace ever been covered with miscellaneous stacks and piles of paper in random fashion? Have you opened drawers only to find unnecessary paper stuffed in there that you have to dig through to find something?

I’ve taken steps to eliminate this problem, and I’d like to share some tips that have helped me overcome my paper clutter problem.

Your home office can be a large room in your house, or maybe even just a corner in your bedroom. Wherever you are, you will have paperwork there to deal with. Depending on what type of business you are running, it can be a little or a lot of paper. What’s true, in either case, is that paper which isn’t well managed will turn into paper clutter no matter how little you have.

I read once that paper clutter is the result of delaying decisions. I would have to agree with that, because I’m one who has that tendency to read something and then put it in a stack to deal with some other time. It’s so easy to think “I’ll get to this later” so you leave it laying around thinking “out of sight, out of mind so I’d better keep it here where I’ll remember“. This is the beginning of the problem.

Take a glance around your home office space. What paper do you see? Do you know why all of it is there? Many times we’ll print out information for reference, and just leave it laying around. A great deal of the paper is simply accumulating to create undesirable clutter, and needs to be processed in one of two ways:

• file it where that you will remember to look for it when you need it, IF you will really need it later

• toss it in the trash if it’s something you don’t really need or just want to save for no special reason

If a piece of paper can be filed away pretty fast, just do it while you have your hands on it. If it represents a reminder to do something you can go ahead and get done, do it and toss the paper. You’ll feel much better for getting the task out of the way and ridding your workspace of one more unnecessary piece of paper clutter.

If the paper is a reminder, or something you need for a task you can only do later, create some sort of “pending” folder where it can stay out of the way until you need it. Set up a reminder in your calendar or scheduler for the date you need to pull it out and act on it.

The real key to getting rid of paper clutter is dealing with it while it’s in your hands. File it or toss it. Avoid procrastinating and putting it in piles to deal with later. This takes a lot of discipline, but it has helped me tremendously.

Creating and publishing a home business blog is great, and for many of your visitors it will be their first impression of you and your business.

So, it’s very important to establish and maintain high standards, in order to present yourself as a true professional that people will want to work with. Many people in MLM, network marketing, and direct sales publish blogs to help create their personal brand and increase their presence online.

I’d like to share seven tips that will help you maximize the impression you leave with your visitors.

Focus on Providing Value

Many people who stop by your home business blog will actually be looking for an opportunity to make money from home. They may be “sponsor shopping” or just looking for general information. This is why it makes sense to provide value for them in your posts.

Write articles or make videos with content that is enlightening or educational. Make your content focus on topics that will interest opportunity seekers and people seeking to find success with their business. Find common topics that your target audience asks about or researches on, and create content about those things.

Post Content on a Regular Schedule

This is important. Especially when you’re first getting established, posting new content just once a week or less leaves the impression that your blog is inactive and not as meaningful perhaps (in the eyes of your visitors).

Posting good content daily is ideal, but updating your blog at least 3-4 times a week consistently is highly recommended. It’s far better to post regularly than to go on a mass content posting spree for several days and then add nothing new for a month. Frequent and consistent updates also help you get noticed by Google and other search engines that are always looking for fresh new content.

Be Upbeat

Many personal blogs are full of stories about the author’s ups and downs of life. It’s okay to talk about low points in your business ventures from time to time, but always keep an upbeat tone to it. Make the purpose of the post to tell how you overcame discouragement or other things that were dragging you down. Be encouraging and stay upbeat – this will attract more readers and help you get repeat visits as well.

Be Aware of Spelling and Grammar

I know this should go without saying, but I’ve seen many people post to their home business blog and neglect the spelling and a basic grammar check. This is a blog, not a formal literary piece, but still be careful to eliminate spelling errors and write in a professional way. This is your business.

Avoid Having Ads Everywhere

It’s great to make money, but avoid plastering Adsense and other types of ads all over your blog. I’ve seen some blogs where the author was clearly hoping to build their reputation and brand, but they put ads in the header, on the sidebar, and even between parts of the content. In my opinion this looks unprofessional. A few ads on the sidebar are okay, I’m talking about blogs where ads are literally embedded all through the content. Not good for business.

Include Social Media & Share Links

Use a WordPress plugin like Digg Digg to automatically place social media share links beneath each of your posts. This gives your visitors an easy way to share your content if they like it, and helps you gain more visibility.

Create an “About Me” Page

Finally, make sure you have an “About Me” page where you tell your story and let people know who you are. If you create good, helpful content visitors will want to know more about you and this page makes it easy or them. Be sure there is a prominent link to it on your main navigation menu.

I’m sure you’ve heard how important “mental preparation” and attitude is to home business success.

Sometime I think this truth is repeated so often that we tend not take it seriously enough. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but from what I’ve seen, it’s true.

While home business success is based on many different factors (opportunity, product, timing, etc.) there are four things that I believe are always true. If you get a grip on these and master them, your success is virtually assured.

Successful home based business entrepreneurs…

Know and Understand Their Target

Smart entrepreneurs have concrete goals in mind, and focus all their business efforts into achieving those goals. It’s very uncommon for anyone to find real long-term success while working without this focus, or while aiming at a vague target out there someplace in the fog.

For example, “I want to make enough money to quit my job” is a start, but it’s really an unclear target. Let’s say you figure how much money you’ll need to quit your job. Figure in the cost of insurance and other benefits that might be part of your employment package.

Then define your target precisely: “Using all available tools and resources at my disposal, I will be earning a consistent monthly income of at least $10,000 by December 31, 2012. With this level of income, I will be able to resign from my job and work full-time from my home“.

Put in the Time and Effort

This goes without saying, but once you have clearly defined your objectives, you have to figure out what it will take to build the level of income you desire and prepare to do whatever it takes. It won’t be easy, and many people will fight procrastination and all sorts of other obstacles on the path to home business success, but that’s what you have to do. You can create milestones or monthly goals and break the total effort down into smaller and more manageable pieces.

Modify the Game Plan as Needed

This often separates the people who “make it” from the ones who end up getting frustrated and quitting. Work with mentors and people who are successful in your business. Let them help you make a plan. Then, if you feel you’re working hard but not making the progress you should, let them help you do a reality check and make adjustments in the way you’re doing things if needed.

Putting your head down with blinders on, and heading forward with a strong determination, is great. Just keep an eye on your compass and make sure you stay on the right path. This is where consulting with mentors and people who are already where you want to be is priceless.

Remain Students for Life

Anyone who has truly achieved home business success will tell you – ongoing education and personal development is HUGE. As a successful leader and entrepreneur, it’s critical to stay on top of things in our ever evolving and fast-paced world. Keep up to date on your niche and industry. Know your customers and be aware of trends that can affect your business over the long term.

Enjoy life and the rewards you’ve earned, but always stay sharp and open to personal growth.