OK, Here’s my favorite Acronym of them all.  Years ago, when I studied Engineering, the word SYSTEM was a word I associated with pages of procedures and Worklflow diagrams.  To the average person it was quite boring.  To me however, I saw Systems as extraordinarily critical for Success with nearly everything.

In the human body we have a Circulatory System and a Respiratory System,  If the heart muscle weakens or a lobe of the lung collapses, our bodies will go into breakdown mode.  Similarly, we have essential branches in business that operate on effective Systems.

Systems allow companies to expand and multiply. They allow individuals to be more creative.  Some of us even have Systems on how we get out of the bed in the morning and eventually get out the door.  That System may involve, brushing the teeth, washing face, drinking coffee, and maybe meditating on the day.

Now as I speak with clients, I hone the value of Systems by using this acronym.  Save Your Self Time Energy Money Energy and Sanity.

Where else in your own life and business, can you use Systems?

Do you have Social Media Overwhelm? Seems that every week there is a new social media site – Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Linked In… How do you keep up?  Are they all really necessary for me?  Do I need to compete on all these sites?  Are these sites more for kids or do I need to be on them?

These are questions that I get asked often. For most business owners who I engage with in conversation or coaching, they are overwhelmed by the idea that they now HAVE to use Twitter or Facebook.  What they see is an extraordinary amount of content being shot in their retinas and ears drums.  They are afraid that the excess time it takes and amount content might take away from their current lifestyle and family.  Even worse, I’ve also polled some entrepreneurs who are afraid that deep down it could impact their health.

How do they proceed, they ask me?  We’ll there is no need to be afraid of Social Media if you enter it with the right frame of mind and incorporate some basic planning.

Here are the steps that I give my clients.  I may update this post if I think of something else.

1. Ask yourself, what’s my end result of using these sites?  Clarify your intention.

2. Identify who your customer is.  What’s their age range?  Where else do they shop off line and online?  For an idea of demographics and geographics, check out results of either yourself or your customers on either quantcast.com, compete.com or Google Insights.

3. Ask your customers which Social Media sites they use regulary ? Very simply, give them a survey to fill out.

4. Then see if your competitor’s customers are using hose sites to connect with your competitor.  That will gives them an idea of which Social Media sites to look at.

For a list of possible Social Media sites, go to the aggregator Friendfeed and scroll down the list.  More than likely, you’re only interested in a handful of these site such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.  If you are in Europe or Asia, there may be more popular platforms local to you.

5. Systematize your Social Media experience.  As you plan your week, set up 30 to 50 minute focus sessions where you specifically set time to either set up your profile and market yourself.  I recommend using a count-down time.  When the clock gets down to 5 minutes, know that you have 5 minutes to complete and that’s it.  Review Parkinson’s law.  The more time you have, the more time you take.

6. Write a procedure or checklist of what you’ll be doing during those focus sessions.  It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just do your best to be consistent with the time each week.  I also recommend setting up a document with the basic answers to what goes into a profile, such as hobbies and interests…  You can transfer this material to other Social Media sites of interest.

7. Continuously look at ways to Simplify your experience.  What and who can you leverage?  Perhaps you can outsource part of the process.  I’ll cover some simplification strategies in my next post.

Most importantly, learn to relax and have fun with the process.  The more you make it a chore, the less enjoyable your weekly social media experience and focus sessions will be.

If you want support or outsourcing recommendations, book a 20 minute session with me here at Process to Profit.  I’ll be glad to give you a head start.

You may have heard the phrase “Running With Scissors”.  Just visualize the experience of running with scissors, and you might “Eeek”.  If you fall, you can get bruised or worse.  In the context of this post, it means “being on the edge”.  Running with Scissors can be healthy for your business as long as you do it consciously and not unconsciously.

It could be making a unique offer to your clients and offering them a group coaching package.  If this is playing your edge and you haven’t done this before, make sure that you manage that promise.  Having great Customer Service is the most important element of your business when it comes to maintaining loyal customers.  If you did this consciously, you would make sure that the systems and time blocks are in place to respond to them.

It comes down to planning.  Plan a few strategies in advance. What happens if they buy? What happens if they don’t buy?  Do you have a second offer?
Don’t over plan as that can take you from being in action and meeting your deliverability date.

Do you have a Dashboard for your Internet business? A Dashboard on your car tells you how fast you going, how much gas is in your tank, if there is an engine problem, and how many total miles you have driven.

When you are designing an online marketing system, it’s important that you are able to track your traffic conversion and growth and have this on your marketing dashboard. I personally have a number of tools and spreadsheets that I share with my clients when I help them design their marketing dashboard.

One of the easiest and Free tools that you should have on your dashboard is Google Analytics. Google has optimized this product immensely this past year.

Google Analytics

1. helps you find the pages and links on your website that visitors click on the most.
2. tells you which site your visitor logged on before visiting your site.
3. provides visitor segmentation. You will know how many new and returning users there are to your site.
You will have geographical information of the visitor including their country, stat, city and zip code. Wow!

All of these features open the door to targeted advertising by niche and location. It will tell you whether to focus your attention on SEO or Social Media advertising like Facebook and Twitter.

To get started, create a Google Analytics account and put a custom snippet of code on your website. You will now be able to track how much time people have spent on the various pages of your website.

Total investment = 10 minutes to install

Then 10 to 15 minutes minutes every few days, perhaps twice a week to analyze the data and to make decisions that will drive your marketing campaign forward.