Did you know you can earn money simply by recommending items to purchase to your family and friends? ​
Soon I'll be launching the 6 Step Program AF Your Life: Affiliate Focus Your Life and Make Money. I'm testing and launching at the same time. Why? Because only by working the program can we determine if affiliate marketing really can make money. All of my research to-date says "hell yeah" and I'm figuring it out. This 6 Step Program is the "how to" guide. 

If you'd like to be part of my newest venture, contact me. It's a customized, personalized program based on you, your life and your everyday activities. Or keep checking this blog: eta launch date March 2023. 
​
If you've already done the research and you're ready to get started--here's the link: Creator University: the Ultimate Guide for Associates and Influencers! 

Oh, and many of the links throughout this site are affiliate links and as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. (See how easy that was? It's part of the AF program.)

I look forward to sharing more. 

Loquaciously, 
Lindee 

Here is my 31-page Personal-Business Life-Marketing Plan WITH Online Reputation Analysis; because that’s where business starts, online, with you: your reputation.
 
So, who are you online? What is your online reputation? More specifically, who do the online authorities think (determined via algorithm) you are? Google, Facebook, Amazon? Because your professional success depends on how you are personally found online.
 
It took 12-hours (using a template I crafted before) to put this Online Reputation Analysis together. It took another hour to go through it and create a Marketing Plan based on solid data and accurate information. From here, I know exactly what marketing tactics to implement next. It’s great having a plan!
 
If you’d like help creating your own Personal-Business Life-Marketing Plan with Online Reputation Analysis, contact me on LinkedIn.
 
As a guideline,
after a FREE 15-minute conversation about your life and business, I’ll create for you:
 
An Online Reputation Analysis (pdf report w/suggestions for improvement) for $99
 
A Customized Personal-Business Life-Marketing Plan based on your goals, $99 more
​
Free tarot and angel card reading by this corporate gypsy; just ask.  ;) 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do online, and so do you.
Go incognito on Google and get started. Or contact me.
 
Lindee Brauer
Corporate Gypsy
#LoquaciousLindee 

Want to understand net neutrality? Let the King explain it to you. It all comes down to MBPS: Making Burgers Per Second. Watch Whopper Neutrality on youtube. 

Still don't get it? Try this explanation from Time.com...
“Net neutrality ensures equal access to online content regardless of who is providing or requesting information,” Florian Schaub, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in internet privacy, wrote in a paper recently published in the academic journal Media and Communication.

The Business Insider explains it this way...
"Think of it like Google ads. When you type in a search on Google, the top links are all from advertisers who pay Google to put their messages up top. Getting rid of net neutrality means Verizon or Comcast could similarly choose which content to promote based on their own self-interests."

What it all means is that we as consumers will change how we search, NOT just skipping past the first 2-3 ads, but perhaps skipping over the first 2-3 pages. Time will tell. And as for business owners? I predict marketing output will rise as we seek to engage our customers but our customer engagement will go down because of social media overwhelm! 

Here are 4 suggestions. Focus on your message and be:

1. Valuable
   
2. Clever
   
3. Bold
   
4. Socially Active

Meet your customers where they are--on your news feeds--and enjoy the conversation! Stay up-to-date with c/net and support the 22 Attorneys General challenging the FCC with keeping the internet neutral!    

#loquaciouslindee 

​
​“Time is the currency of social media.”
Social Media Examiner
 
And then some! Yes, the social media platforms are free but the time it takes to learn how to use them—and then use them, your time—is not!! Every day, as I train social media topics across the country, the main question I’m asked is, how do you squeeze it all in?! The short answer is, you don’t.
 
And if you are truly having a conversation with your audience, then expect to spend MORE time online. The more you learn about social media, the more you “do” social media, the more people there will be to talk back to you.
 
The good news is—your people are talking back to you! Some companies feel they are screaming into the void. So, celebrate the people who take the time to interact on your social pages.
 
Here are my 4 favorite functional tools designed to save you time as you interact with your audience online.
 
Here we go:
 
1. Toggl.com—a time management tool that allows you to track and understand your online habits. If you’re like me, you can fall into your computer, emerging hours later to the realization you’ve got nothing done!! Stop the madness and monitor your time investment. Use the free version of either desktop or app program and track your tasks. Set-up takes only minutes as your task list build itself with your activity. Remember to track separately the time you spend on each social network. Pull a report at the end of each week and month to track your time investment—and prove to the boss there’s a conversation happening online.
 
2. Canva.com—for the graphically challenged! Like me. I always wondered where those professional, eye-catching online graphics came from. And then I found Canva and started creating them on my own. Using the free online and app versions is easy, but consider spending the $15/month fee for the upgrade and easy resizing options. You’ll also expand the background, photo, and clipart selections in the easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface. Take your time; have fun. Use their handy templates to get your creative juices flowing. Download all graphics to your computer for easy storage and use my next tool to help get your graphic posted across all the social platforms.
 
3. Pushbullet—share easily between your computer and phone and team members! Once you create a graphic on Canva and download it to your computer, you can upload that graphic to Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, and your blog. But if you want to post in on Instagram or Twittter, use the tool Pusbbullet to quickly and easily forward the graphic from your computer to your phone. Share the graphic photo or video from the Pushbullet phone app directly to the platform desired. I often link my Instagram and Facebook pages to save time posting across both platforms at once. For those needing to post on many platforms at once, check-out tool 4. Pushbullet is also a great tool for collaborating and sharing links, photos, videos, and text easily between team members.
 
4. Hootsuite—a social network dashboard management program. Instead of logging into three separate social media networks, imagine you could log into one dashboard and check them all. You can—and for free!! Hootsuite is one of the simplest tools available for monitoring the activity of your newsfeeds. But you can monitor so much more than that, newsfeeds, posts, mention, and hashtags. And if that wasn’t enough, you can also simultaneously post messages across all your social networks and once!!
 
Would you want to do that? The short answer is: sure. The likelihood someone saw your info across all the platforms is pretty small, so do it. In a perfect world, you’d write separate messages for each of your social networks as each has its own culture, language and nuances, but let Hootsuite save you time until you can find that time. Use Hootsuite daily to join the online conversation. The paid version will give you multiple streams and robust analytics.  
 
Use these 4 time-saving social marketing tools weekly and watch your online audience grow.
 
#loquaciouslindee

Make your website the hub of your online campaigns. 

The first website page is dated back to 1991. Technology has come a long way in the last 25+ years , but it's probably safe to say that our websites contain years of accumulated information. David Scott, author of the book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, says the internet is a city and our websites are the storefronts of the city.

The question is: Is your website an accurate representation of your business today? Or is your website a throwback to the past decade? 

Your website must be both user and search engine friendly. That means you must write words and language used by your target market as well as words and language recognized by the search engines.

You can use this handy tool powered by HubSpot to evaluate the effectiveness of your current site: website.grader.com. 

Evaluate your website based on: 
1. Performance
2. Responsiveness
3. Search Engine Optimization
4. Security

Website.grader.com even offers helpful suggestions to get your web score up to 100. 

Make sure your website reflects the true nature of your business. Use google analytics to measure traffic to your site, link to your social sites to your website, and blog regularly. 

​Have fun! #LoquaciousLindee 

​ What’s going on in social media today?
 
That’s the million dollar question, and here’s the thing. That million dollar question is being asked a million times a day on the internet. Did I say a million? I meant a billion. I base that on the milestone set by Facebook in September 2015: one billion people logged on to Facebook in one day.  
 
With that many people logging on the internet daily (and that was just Facebook), asking the million dollar question, you know something is going on. There has, no doubt, been a new innovation, novelty, or tool that’s caught on like wildfire; it’s only purpose to amuse and amaze us. Some new meme has gone viral and a new prodigy discovered. Keeping up with what’s trending is a full-time job!
 
In the headlines today? Facebook, in an effort to compete with SnapChat, has bought Masquerade. I confess, I’ve never heard of Masquerade. But as a SnapChat enthusiast, I’m interested in knowing more.
 
Described as a “silly selfie-altering tool,” Masquerade allows you to switch faces with friends in photos, or overlay celebrity faces like Leonardo DiCaprio and President Obama. The app lets you play with your pictures. It’s the next cool tool with over 15 million sign-ups in the first three months.
 
That is what happened today. And even though Facebook hasn’t disclosed how much they paid for Masquerade, based on the fact they offered to buy SnapChat for $3 billion, you know Facebook paid more than a mere million dollars.
 
What's going on is social media today? A million dollar question, asked, and answered.  

​#loquaciouslindee

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, (are we there yet?) Snap Chat, Vine, Slideshare, and the list goes on and on and on. Who possibly has time to be on all the social media channels? If you do, you’re probably a “marketing professional,” someone tasked with helping companies get their message out. If so, chances are, you’re on social media channels more than forty hours a week. But that’s not the norm.

Most people select one channel of two, based on their own preferred communication style. They’ll choose Twitter over Facebook, Instagram over Pinterest; or visa versa. But have you ever wondered WHY?

Your job, as a marketer, is not to be on ALL of the social media channels. Your job is to choose a channel that best matches you! Then, get out there. Start talking, and let the people come to you!

Stop “targeting” your audience and start “sharing” your story. From your own unique perspective, and that includes your choice of social media channel.

Not everyone needs a blog. Not everyone needs to micro-blog.  Some people prefer pictures to editorial. (Proof positive: Instagram, now with 300 million users.)

Start asking yourself, which channel most appeals to me? (Hint: which social media platform do you spend most of your time on? Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn?) Start there. You’re already a part of the community. Are you talking? If you’re not posting fresh content, are you liking, commenting, or sharing others’ content? What’s your reputation among your online peers? When they see your static icon roll by, do they tune in and read your post, or do they let it flow through their feed? What’s your online cred (credibility)?

Each social media platform has a slightly different function and therefore audience. We keep hearing stories of teenagers leaving Facebook in droves, but where’s the proof? Oh yes, they’ve embraced Instagram and its 100% visual picture feed, but they’re still using Facebook to talk to their friends.

Which channel do you prefer? Facebook or Instagram? Begin by telling your story there.

For those of you preferring a more “professional” audience, consider LinkedIn and perhaps Google+. For those of you looking for a high-tech audience, choose Google+ and Twitter. For a fashionable, creative crowd, pick Instagram, and/or Pinterest. Facebook and Youtube—the two top social media channels—are always a good option.

The social media channel you choose is an extension of you; your megaphone; your one-million-watt amp!  

Get clear on what you want to say, and say it.

Conversation started.  

#loquaciouslindee     


For more info on talking to Millennials, read 4 Ways to Market to Millennials 

I laugh when people question the validity or longevity of social media. Like your cell phones, social media is here to stay, get used to it, and learn how to use it. 

Get the facts here at Social Media Examiner, the experts in what's current and relevant. Their 2014 Social Media Industry Report is bound to convince you to join the online conversation. Dowload their free report, share the charts and stats with your boss or board of directors, and get the online party started. 

Better brand visibility, increased customer satisfaction, and more leads and sales are awaiting you. 

​#loquacioiuslindee