Coach Cassandra Rae | SimplyFearless.com » marketing

Learn how to get FREE publicity for your biz!

Cassandra Rae — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:08:52 +0000

Do you hate marketing? Are you running your business without a PR plan? Does the sound of media coverage both excite and frighten you?

Excellent! Because our next Self Marketing meeting is perfect for you. We are featuring Erika Taylor Montgomery the founder of Three Girls Media & Marketing an award-winning boutique PR firm and she is going to rock your socks off! I know her personally and she is both a dynamic speaker and full of helpful information you can use right now to grow your business. I am always amazed at how openly and generously she shares her wisdom and expertise. She holds nothing back so bring all of your marketing, PR, and media questions.

Erika Taylor Montgomery is going to break it all down for us. She is going to cover:

FREE online resources to help you get and monitor press coverage
5 ways to maximize press coverage once you get it
The difference between a Media Advisory & Press Release and their core components, and
Low-cost distribution channels

You will walk away from this presentation ready to tap into the power of the press. The media is always looking for a good story. So why not make that story about you?

Now I know some of you are saying to yourself, “But I’m not ready for press yet.” And that is exactly why you need to be at this presentation. Empower yourself with knowledge and allow Erika to help you prepare for more success. The bottom line is…

PEOPLE CAN’T HIRE YOU IF THEY DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU
Featuring Erika Taylor Montgomery of Three Girls Media & Marketing

Saturday, October 9, 2010, 9:30 to 11:30 am

Informal networking including light continental breakfast
Introductions ~ be prepared to deliver your 30 second introduction to the entire group
Featured presentation
Brainstorming Sessions

Center for Spiritual Living
1195 Clark Street, San Jose, Ca 95130

Pre-register for $15 {$20 at the door}

Erika Taylor Montgomery

Erika Taylor Montgomery, CEO/Chief Publicist and Founder of Three Girls Media & Marketing Inc., enjoyed an 18-year broadcasting career in the San Francisco Bay Area before transitioning to Public Relations. In 2005, Taylor Montgomery launched Three Girls Media & Marketing Inc., the only PR firm in the nation to literally guarantee editorial media coverage to its clients.

Taylor Montgomery is also a sought-after public speaker and published author, providing invaluable insider know-how into working with the media, and how business owners can best utilize the press to promote their companies.

Following her award-winning broadcasting career, and prior to beginning Three Girls, Erika worked as Director of Media Relations for a prestigious Silicon Valley PR firm, and for the California State Legislature as a Press Secretary. While managing Three Girls, she also hosted the nationally acclaimed radio show, “PR 101 Radio: Marketing Advice for Business.”

Can you believe there is a lot more awesome stuff to read about Erika Taylor Montgomery? Click here to read the rest of her bio but not before you register for our next meeting!

Biz Blogging Best Practices by Gather Your Crowd

Cassandra Rae — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:07:05 +0000

Cassandra Rae & Cherie Del Carlo

Hi there ~

I am at Chrystal Bougon’s Lunch & Learn on How to Bring More Bliss to Your Blog featuring the fabulous ladies of Gather Your Crowd. Woohoo!

Congratulations to Carla who just welcomed her second baby into her family. We miss you and totally understand that your place is at home for today. That’s so cool how we got to Skype you in for the presentation. You are one dedicated lady!

Here are my notes from the presentation:

Social media is word of mouth on steroids!

What’s in a brand?

Your name
Your identity
Engage with peeps

Cherie showed us her infographic, which is a really big picture that shows all of their on-line presences and how they tie together. It’s really cool to see on one page with your entire on-line plan is. Your overall social media plan can feel overwhelming, but to narrow it down to one page makes it feel so manageable.

Carry your brand across all profiles {i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.} so graphically they look the same

Why should you blog?

Share your passion – the web is dying for original content!
Let yourself shine!
Connect with people
Marketing through relationships

You do not have to be an excellent writer. As long as you’re funny, you can blog!

Your blog posts do not have to be long. A good length for a blog post is 500 words.

You can also use your blog for:

Microblogging like Twitter
Share videos
Post Photos

Search Engine Optimization tips:

Buy your domain for 2 years or more
Add privacy policy/terms of use
Use target key words in your title, url, filenames
Sprinkle in your key words in your articles {like 5 or 6}
Use good meta-tags {high level description of your blog that you drop in behind the scenes}
Post frequently
Hyperlink to other sites when you blog about them
Use tags
Use reputable host provider for fast page upload

Give people the incentive to take action.

To keep you organized create a graph that includes:

All the places you exist on-line
Schedule of publishing
Takes on your topic

Think like your reader. 2 questions to answer:

Who do you want to read your blog?
Who’s reading your blog?

Set up an RSS feed reader and watch blogs you like. Blog a response to someone else’s blog post and include a link to it to inspire the connection.

Acknowledge peeps who comment on your blog!

Create a mission statement for your blog. What is your mantra? How does it tie in to your personality?

Schedule your blog post for high peak hours. Don’t post on Friday night at 7pm! Weekday mornings in between 7am and 9am are very popular hours – everyone’s checking email :~) If you’re writing at a non-peak hour, then schedule it to publish during a high peak hour.

Your categories should show what your blog/business is about.

Syndicate your blog posts. One wordpress plugin Gather Your Crowd likes is “links alpha”. Keep in mind that every platform is different with different crowds. Use them accordingly. When posting on Twitter and deciding whether to push it through to Facebook, then ask yourself, “Does this make sense on Facebook?” My favorite way to syndicate blog posts to Facebook is the app Networked Blogs. *LOVE IT*

People want to connect, help out, and win stuff. Woohoo! Run a contest to encourage virality. Virality is not a science. It’s an art.

There’s a human side to your backlinks – create meaningful relationships through thoughtful comments :~)

Listen to your peeps. What are they saying about you? Answer! Answer! Answer!

There’s no such thing as bad PR.

Clyde Learner with ITComputing just told me about WPTouch – a plugin that changes the view for peeps checking out your blog on an iPhone. He also told me about bit.ly and how you can monitor how many peeps are clicking through your links. You can also share your link straight to Twitter. Suh-weet!

Gather Your Crowd can help you build a custom Facebook landing page. Woohoo! This is so important to do, folks. And Facebook does not make it easy. Hire Gather Your Crowd to do it for you.

Welp, that’s it from today’s presentation. Leave me a comment to let me know your favorite tip or share a new one with all of us.

Rock it out, Peeps ~
Cassandra

Coach Cassandra Rae, founder & life coach
SimplyFearless.com
408.730.5546

Video: Solopreneurs stop marketing now! Start sharing & inviting

Cassandra Rae — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:29:12 +0000

Oh the dreaded sales pitch!

Cassandra Rae — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:48:11 +0000

Oh my gosh I had the most amazing and scary experience this week. I role-played the “sales pitch convo.” My coach acted as if she was a potential client and I got to share about my upcoming program with her. I was so scared, but I didn’t have that long to think about the fear. The idea simply came up in the session and one second I’m sharing my process and the next I’m talking to a potential client.

And isn’t that how it goes in life too? You strike up a conversation with someone at a party or at the book store and all of a sudden you realize you are talking to the perfect candidate for your product or service. Here’s the opportunity. Do you take it? What do you say? How do you talk about it without being pushy?

Yeah, it was one of those moments.

And it was fabulous!

I learned that when I don’t have the time to over-think it I actually know what to say. I got to experience my own joy, excitement, and energy around the topic of Calling. It was amazing. Yes, there were parts that were fuzzy – as my coach was kind enough to tell me honestly and gently – but, overall the experienced showed me that I’m on the right track. I actually know what I’m talking about. What a relief!

I’m so grateful for my coach who gave me this opportunity to stretch my comfort zone and practice sharing my message with potential clients. Now I feel more sure of myself even though I don’t have all the pieces in place yet. Woohoo!

Today is Simply Fearless Friday! Blog about one thing you’ve done this past week that’s stretched your comfort zone and then come back here to share the link directly to your blog post. Facing your fears is an absolute must when you are building the business of your dreams. But, you do not have to do it alone. Share your story and I promise to swing on by and leave you a comment. I’d love to connect with you.

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Video: come see me live!

Cassandra Rae — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:56:03 +0000

http://selfmarketing.us

My Twexperience on Twitter

Michelle Ward — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:00:20 +0000

Print by Angela Hogan; you can purchase it here.

If my husband Luke didn’t find me, he might have married his iPhone. If I didn’t find Luke, I might have married Twitter.

But, if you’re like Luke, you’re bound to be asking right now, “Twitter is stupid!” OK, that’s not a question, but I can see that you’re confused. You might want to better communicate by saying, “What’s so special about Twitter?” You can keep the whininess in your voice if you’d like. I get it.

Well, I’ll tell you what’s so special about Twitter, besides the fact that Punky Brewster, MC Hammer, & Wil Wheaton are on it. Forget them. This is about you. You posting links that you want to share with others, and getting links that would be of value to you. You connecting with not only your friends and “people you don’t know” (that’s what your friend The Whiner would say), but your friends, potential clients, experts in your field (or other fields), your peers, etc. You taking 140 characters and making them mean something, forming a connection to both others as well as creating a more well-rounded picture of yourself.

My Coach (@intandem) said it best: “Use it to get others to know, like & trust you; you get to know, like & trust others. I tweet on a mixture of personal, business and marketing topics so ppl can get a 360 view of me. Also offer answers to be helpful.” Wil Wheaton also sums it up by saying:

Twitter didn’t have to be about What are you doing? but could be about What’s on your mind right now? It was, as the saying goes, a light bulb moment for me, and I started using Twitter for off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts that didn’t warrant their own post here on my blog.

In order to both give & receive some value out of this weird thing, I make sure to tweet about:

my personal stuff (“Feeling really overwhelmed by all the things I “have” to do. Seems like a big, fat, juicy, oily, cheesy, crunchy list is in order”)
links that I find personally interesting (“Anyone have over $100 to hear Carol Brady sing?: http://tinyurl.com/57nmtn“)
links that I find professionally interesting (“My word for 2009 is FOCUS. What’s yours? http://is.gd/f0r6“)
responding to other’s tweets (“@sweetblogomine What’s sriracha? Sounds like someone that wears fancy pants would eat that.”)
promoting my blog (“My 30th Year, reflected upon on my 31st birthday: http://is.gd/fRzX One of my most personal posts, for sure”)
promoting my business (“Updated my site! You can now find packages & pricing (Services), an updated landing & FAQ page, & a new Testimonials page! http://is.gd/becg“)
retweeting other’s tweets that I find interesting (“RT @problogger Post by @Jimconnolly about affects of highly photoshopping avatars: http://tinyurl.com/97xhxv – via @LyricalVenus“)

Here are some Twitter Basics & Tips that I got from my friend who got me to join:

If you want to put a short link in your post, you can make it small through is.gd. I have it on my toolbar, so I just click it when I’m on a page, and it makes a very short link to that page.
To search for types of people you might want to follow, you can use:
- Twellow
- Mr Tweet
- Twitter Grader (enter your own name & it’ll bring up people like you on the bottom of the page. You can also use the Twitter Elite in the site to find The Big Guys)
- Twitter Search (you can also use this to check your own name & see if you’ve missed any @s as well as using it to find specific search terms)
I also found these posts to be helpful:
- Twitter Tips – Tools for your Tweets
- Twitter Tips for 35 Twitter Users
- Ten Top Twitter Tips
- Twictionary – a dictionary for Twitter (although in all honesty, you just have to know what “@”, “RT”, “#”, “tweet”, & “follow” mean/do)

Just know this: Whatever you do, do not answer the question, “What are you doing?”, which is what Twitter asks above the box that you post your tweet in (yes, your 140-character Twitter post is called a “tweet”). Nobody cares unless you’re someplace, or doing something, awesome. There is nothing worse that a profile whose tweets consist of “Eating a turkey sandwich”, “Watching Baywatch” and “Going to bed. Night twiends!” The only thing that’s worse is a profile of an obvious spammer, who only tweets links to www.makemoneyquickyoulazyschmuck.com. Twitter is really there to connect with other people, & if I don’t see any @s or any links or any questions I would think you’re just there to promote yourself (=spam) or hear yourself “talk”.

Now that you’re a twexpert (see how this affects you? It’s a disease) please make sure that you follow me, and leave me a comment below (or @ me if you got the hang of things) so that I can make sure that I follow ya back!

May the tweet be with you!*

*That was for Luke. I figured a Star Wars quote would stop him from making fun of Twitter again. It’s also a dis back to him because Star Wars is for nerds. Thankfully, he likes when I make fun of him.