If there is one thing that will save you time, stress, and blank moments, it’s planning your content in advance. With a simple calendar you can plan and schedule topics in advance – before you’re in a panic about what to write.

But with a few planning tools you can really do a great job of content planning. Here are the tools I recommend.

Calendar in Word Format – I use the landscape layout, one month per page. Yes, I could keep it on my computer, but I tend to plan in restaurants and on the road. So having a paper calendar with me helps the planning process.

Holiday & Events Calendar – Need an idea for what to promote or write about? This calendar has a lot of obscure celebrations and holidays that will tweak your thinking.

Monthly Planning Pack – Alice Seba and her team provide an excellent planning tool. It includes a content plan checklist and instructions for using the monthly planning worksheet. And if you’re a mindmap user, she includes one of those as well, to illustrate the process.

Now that you have the tools, here is the process I recommend:

1. Block off your own holidays first. These are family birthdays, national holidays (if your family takes them off you want to be available, too), vacation time, business trips.  You don’t want to be writing or posting on any of those days, so you now know when you need to “write ahead.”
2. Using the holiday calendar, block those holidays you want to “celebrate” with your readers and subscribers. So you may have a Valentine’s Day customer appreciation sale, a Fourth of July giveaway, a special discount for Mothers’ Day, etc.
3. Plan promotions of your products and the events that you want to promote.
4. Start writing!

You’ll notice that it’s a lot easier to fill your content machine when you know what to write about – and your planning process has just handed that to you on a silver platter.

Every year starts the same – with lots of optimism and resolutions to change things in your life. And guess what – everyone else is thinking the same thing! That’s why this is a great time of year to profit while you’re making changes.

According to a government survey the top ten most popular New Year’s Resolutions are:

• Drink Less Alcohol
• Eat Healthy Food
• Get a Better Education
• Get a Better Job
• Get Fit
• Lose Weight
• Manage Debt
• Manage Stress
• Quit Smoking
• Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
• Save Money
• Take a Trip
• Volunteer to Help Others

And if you ask them, most people will tell you they have chosen at least three or four from this list!

So how do you take advantage of these resolutions? Here’s a simple 5-step plan to start your year off with a bang:

1. Research keywords for topics related to the resolutions that most interest you. You’re looking for keyword phrases that are searched several thousand times per month and for which there are domain names to match. Buy a domain.

2. Install a blog on your keyword-rich domain.

3. Publish one blog post per day, using related keywords in the article.

One huge shortcut to getting blog posts is to use PLR (Private Label Rights) article packs. By choosing articles that are well-written you can easily rephrase a portion of the article to make it unique to your blog.

4. Use social media to start a discussion on the resolution you are working on. Naturally you’ll want to share your daily article on the topic, as well as encourage others to comment on the article.

If you’re working personally on the resolution you have chosen, you can easily include your personal experiences, as well as encourage others to do the same. The sense of community will actually encourage people to better stick with their resolution, while it helps you, too!

5. Add monetization to your blog in the form of affiliate links, product reviews, ads, and other methods for generating revenue. Since this is a topic a lot of people are interested in, you will likely have visitors who are looking for solutions to their challenges. Provide those solutions for them and profit when you do.

A New Years Resolution blog is not just a one-time effort. It’s something you can profit from year-round. By adding a list-building mechanism to the blog, you can build a list of people who are eagerly waiting to hear more from you on this topic that interests them.

And of course, you can “re-launch” your Resolution blog next New Year’s Day!

I’ve known guest blogger Dan Janal, an expert in Public Relations (PR), for over 10 years from the National Speakers’ Association and the online marketing world. I think you’ll find his 2012 predictions quite interesting.

I’ve added my perspective on his predictions as the first comment. Why not add your opinion as well!

I’ve been correctly predicting Internet marketing trends since 1994 when I wrote one of the first books on Internet Marketing. I’ve been right before so there’s no reason to think I won’t be right again. You can bet the farm on most of these trends and get even money on the others.

1. Mobile marketing will take off in ways you never imagined.

2. People will be saying, “Visit my app,” in addition to – or instead of – “Visit my website.” The app will be the brochure, website and starting point of interactivity.

3. Small businesses on Main Street will have apps that provide basic info and coupons – even if they don’t have a website.

4. Doctors, dentists and other appointment-based businesses will rely on text messages and other mobile communications to confirm appointments so they don’t lose money on no shows.

5. Your prospects will think all types of written or spoken intellectual property – ezines, books, articles, webinars, teleseminars – ought to be free.

6. You will think that all information ought to be free – except your information, of course.

7. It will be harder and harder to convince people to pay for intellectual property that is available online. They will pay for customized services specifically for them. Start planning your services menu accordingly.

8. Entrepreneurs will finally heed Michael Gerber’s mantra to work on the business, not in the business. But they will take action by HIRING outside professionals who can do the work for them instead of waiting to do the work themselves. Productivity and profits will increase while procrastination will decrease.

9. This phrase will be on everyone’s lips and t-shirts: “If you get something for free, then you aren’t the customer. You are the product.” I didn’t make this up. I wish I did. Think about it. We aren’t Google’s customer, or Facebook’s customer. We are the products they are selling to advertisers. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being considered an “eyeballs.”

10. Spam will invade social media sites in overt and covert ways, making visits to those sites less enjoyable.

11. There will be more people showing you how to sell speaking services than there will be companies who can hire speakers. Okay, that one was low.
What are your predictions?

Dan Janal helps small businesses get publicity so they can sell more products. My clients get terrific results from my coaching, consulting, done-for-you services and do-it-yourself tools. For info, go to PRLeadsPlus or call me at 952-380-1554.

There aren’t many days left in the year – and most of those are already committed. So here are a few ideas to help speed your year end planning:

What to write about on your blog – I really like these ideas. They’re easy to write about and quick – and don’t require any research on your part. In fact, you’ll probably see some on my site right here!

Update your Twitter profile – there have been some great enhancements to the look and feel of Twitter. And it won’t take much to take advantage of these. Social media is becoming increasingly important to our marketing (yes, I admit it) so it’s in your best interest to look good online.

Create a mobile version of your blog – like social media, mobile marketing is becoming increasingly important. Have you gone to your blog on your smart phone? How’s that working for you? You can easily follow this simple process to create a special mobile version.

Those three things should give you a quick facelift and provide a good start for the New Year. So treat your online business to some year end actions and reap the profits next year.

What else can you think of that you need to do here at the end of the year? Add your comments and ideas below.

Marketing a product or service online is a combination of many factors: marketing tactics, technology, and strategy. That’s why many people run into issues when it comes to building an email list. What technology do you need? How many lists do you need to build? How do you use your lists? Let’s look at each of these areas individually.

The Technology To Build An Email List

In order to build a list you need an autoresponder service. There are many quality services available so it’s just a matter of finding a service that is easy to use and affordable.

Once you have contracted with the service you will set up a list. This list has basic settings that will carry over to all of the messages in that list – the person who the email is from, the from email address, etc. You will also enter general information such as that required by various laws to ensure you are sending legitimate emails only to people who want to hear from you.

The autoresponder service is also where you get the code you need to create the optin form on your web page.

The Number of Lists To Create

Generally you will want two lists for each product, plus a general subscriber list. So the number of lists you have can multiply quickly.

If you’re selling a product and have an optin page, you’ll want to create a list of those people who opt in for your free offer. Then you’ll need a list of buyers for that product as well. You can even set it up so that when someone buys they are removed from the optin list, so they no longer receive your sales messages.

Your general list is one that you broadcast to. That is, you send the same email to everyone at the same time. You may set this up as a separate list – or you may merely check the boxes of your other lists to broadcast to all of them simultaneously.

How to Use Your Email Lists

Your autoresponder service is set up to do several things for you: manage new subscribers, remove those who unsubscribe, generate the code for your forms, and automatcially send emails on the schedule you designate.  This last function is extremely valuable.

As an example, when someone opts in to your free offer, you can send them messages daily for the first ten days, then weekly thereafter – all with the intent of showing the value of your paid offer.

When someone buys your product, not only do you remove them from the optin sequence automatically, but you now send them an automated series of messages designed to help them use their new product. Plus, you will recommend related products over time that will enhance their use of your product.

When you create specific lists for each purpose, as outlined in this article, you’ll find you are able to target your audience more specifically and provide the information they need and want. It makes your list building efforts easier and more effective.

For recommendations on specific services and resources for building your list, visit JeanetteRecommends.com

It just happened again. I was listening to a webinar – about 20 minutes into it and checking a few things in the background as I listened (you do know that everyone multi-tasks on a webinar, right?)  So I sign up for an offer and a small window pops up with the standard Aweber “you need to confirm your email so watch for it” message. I close the window.

And boom! My entire browser closes! Yes, for SOME reason, the standard aweber confirmation window resizes your browser – your ENTIRE browser – to make it look like a little popup in the upper left corner of your screen. The first instinct is to close that irritating popup.

So please – if you use aweber as your autoresponder service (I do for some of my optin pages), do NOT use their default confirmation page. Instead, create a custom landing page of your own. Technically you should have a custom landing page for each autoresponder sequence. If you do a lot of work with aweber, then at least create your OWN custom landing page where you can send all of your messages.

Money-making tip: Any time you send someone somewhere after they optin, it should either be to a sales page or to a custom confirmation that that has an offer on it. At least go over and pick up an affiliate banner and add it to the page! Otherwise, you’re just giving away money – and irritating your subscribers at the same time by having that default confirmation window.

So I’m shopping for holiday gifts and adding a few things to my wishlist at Amazon, when I notice I can use their Wishlist plugin on Firefox to add ANYthing from ANY site to my wishlist.

My first thought: How generous of them to share their wishlist space with other vendors.

After all, it makes it easy for me to keep track of all the things I want for myself as well as those things I’m shopping for for others. It’s all in one place.

My second thought: Brilliant! They are building a list of what people WANT and where they FOUND it. Talk about getting some great market intelligence. And they didn’t even have to pay any researchers to get the information!

I suspect when I go to buy the items on my wishlist I may find that some of them just “happen” to be available on Amazon. 

Now how can you adapt this to YOUR Online Business? What if you could have insight into what people are buying?

One easy way comes to mind: TheClickBankStore.com

Here you can search by keyword, see the best sellers, see the movers and shakers. It’s a great resource that you may have overlooked. And it provides you with the same type of data that Amazon is tracking – what people want and what they are buying.

So the next time you see a good idea in practice from a large online retailer, ask yourself – how can I apply this to MY business?

Seen any other brilliant tactics lately? Share them here…