Guest Blogger Sue Henry of Sue Henry Talks shares strategies on selling yourself in speaking roles when you can't. 

Have you turned down “free” speaking opportunities because you weren’t allowed to sell from the stage? A creative speaking strategy can help you turn “free” speaking gigs into profitable, brand-building opportunities.

Here are a few of the tips that have helped me sell thousands of dollars in products at events, even when selling from the stage wasn’t an option.

• Compartmentalize your talk with transitions that set yourself up as the expert. For example, my most requested speaking topic is “Social Media Marketing Success in 15 Minutes a Day… for those who aren’t 20-something anymore!”

I divide my talk into segments. Opening, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, Twitter, Closing. Here’s how I breakdown the timing of my presentation:

• 4 minutes: Opening
• 45 minutes: Facebook, LinkedIn & Blogs
• 3 minutes: Twitter
• 6 minutes: The door prize (the secret sauce of the presentation)
• 2 minutes: The Closing

As I transition from one topic to the next, I say in a somewhat frustrated tone, “I have so much more to share about this but because of time, (I tap my watch), we need to move on”.  I then go into the next topic. I repeat this process until the door prize section.

Using this method provides an easy transition from one topic to the next while planting the subconscious thought in your audience that you know so much more than you’re able to share at this time. You aren’t holding back – time is! You’ll set yourself up as a credible expert AND demonstrate that your products offer much more than the little bit of information you’ve given from the stage.

• Have a door prize of one of your products/packages. Describe in glowing details what the person is winning and the benefits the package offers (not features of the package) and then drumroll…. Draw the name!  Have the product in your hand so they can see it. Create energy within your audience!

• Get them to follow you to the back of the room. NEVER take questions from the stage!  Here’s what to say as the last line of your close: “I’m sure some of you have questions. If you meet me in the back of the room (or wherever your products are located) and I’ll be happy to answer them.”

Stand next to your product table and position yourself so that the people waiting in line are standing next to your products. This creates curiosity and easy access resulting in “spontaneous” sales. The more people who pick up your products, the more products you’ll sell!  Offer to autograph!  When others see you autographing products, it inspires them to buy the product so they can get it personalized, too.  This creates validation for some people who are having trouble deciding if they want to buy.

• Have someone else behind the table processing orders and handing out the products. Your role is to be the speaker, not the order-taker. You’ve spent all this time building your credibility – continue to build rapport and relationships by engaging with the people who took the time to come back and talk with you.

If you don’t have someone who can travel with you in this role, ask the planner of the event who they would recommend to help you. If you have “fans” in the audience that you already have a relationship with, ask them for help in advance. Offer to pay them or see if they’d like to barter for products.

Your job isn’t to lead the horse to water. Your job is to make the horse thirsty! By implementing these 4 tips into your speaking engagements, you’ll find that your audience will thirst for more information and you can quench their thirst!

Sue Henry Workshop and Training Diva - seminars that do more than teach and inspire, they deliver results and profits!   

A new guest Blog from Traffic Resources International President, Dan Wegner, enjoy.

Using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn are great ways to "shout out" to the world around you. With a little know-how you can reach out to nearly ONE BILLION USERS! That's the approximate total users of all the social networks combined.

Facebook is my favorite because of it's 500 million users and the amount of time the average user spends on it every month (see the facebook stats page). Properly using Facebook requires some planning for those of us who use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family. Without adequate planning it may be difficult to keep your private life private. Thankfully, Facebook offers at least two ways to reach out without allowing everyone in your audience to know what you ate for breakfast. Facebook Pages allow you to create a public face to your audience while Facebook Groups are a nice way to share outside your inner circle.

Twitter is perfect for the fast-paced among us. There are ways to look like you're always go-go-go even when you're not - like TRI's Twit-O-Matic. So whether you're on the bleeding edge or not, you can make a big splash with 140 characters and Twitter.

YouTube puts all the power of modern communications at your fingertips. $100 can make you famous but $1000 (well-spent) can make you a superstar! But don't forget to craft your message well, learn some audio and video basics - then go hog-wild!

LinkedIn simply isn't optional and if done right can pay off in spades! And while LinkedIn doesn't have a brand like Google, it has a bright future. LinkedIn has hired a lot of brain-power away from Google in the last year and it's really starting to show.

To really make any of these work for you, you need to commit to content creation, whether it's articles, blogs, video or podcasts. Then simply use the above tools to push your content out to the masses.

If you fear all that content creation will put you on the fast track to a repetitive motion injury, check out my next email in this series, Speak Louder #2:Making A One-Time Splash!

Dan Wegner, CEO/President; Traffic Resources International, LLC

Shuttervoice writes their views on website design trends for 2011, here's the recap:

TOP WEBSITE DESIGN TRENDS FOR 2011:

• Flash OUT; JavaScript IN

• Introductory pages of sites made completely with flash are OUT

• Big texts with matching sets of color are IN for any website with proper navigation in the home page

• Typical notebook type or column like designs are OUT and retro or magazine like design is IN

• As the display are more being widescreen with LCD, TFT & LED monitors, single page designs are IN where anyone can scroll their way to find anything interesting

• Less spacy is IN; using your space wisely (banner ads, reference links) is IN

• Browsers play a vital role in web which is racing to be faster and give more features to the customers within accustomed space, lighter designs are IN so that it takes only a fraction of second to load in any standard server, sloppy designs with huge animation or details are going to be totally OUT

• Gimmick or huge animation is OUT and professional light designs with navigations are IN for 2011.

Click on the pictures in this design quiz at Stylish Home to determine your decorating style. Brace yourself— the quiz promises to "delve into your design soul."

My results said my style preference is:

• An intimate home of modest proportions, a kitchen that reflects your passion…large, sweeping - authentic
• A tailored bedroom rewards a hard day's work.
• Like the painter's brush, your composition is done in living color.
• In the eating area, a sense of rolling hills and vineyards surround this table; a lithe and agreeable cab - no meal required.
• Outside, on cobbled streets, character abounds. Fun, yet cosmopolitan - your style abides.
• I score along the lines of Oprah Winfrey, John Kennedy and Michelle Obama.

Wouldn't have guessed that but the quiz was fun. Check it out for yourself and see what you prefer!

For most of us, the term web analytics is synonymous with the free Google Analytics tool that many small businesses use to track site traffic. 

 If you’re using analytics of any type to gloat (or mourn) over your page views and unique visitors,  you could be missing a powerful opportunity to use web analytics to improve your marketing.

Here are seven ways you can start using web analytics today. Try them to improve your marketing and grow your business:

1. Measure the cost effectiveness of offline advertising
Your business might spend hundreds of dollars on a flier but you are not sure if people will check out the website for more information. Why not include a URL to a tagged landing page that provides more specific information and a link to the main page. Another way is a specific URL with special tags that enables you to more easily track the traffic to the URL.

Either way, you now have a means to see how effective an offline method is and can compare against other marketing efforts.

2. Funnel analysis to know if some visitor segments are leaving
Yahoo! Web Analytics and Google Analytics have different names for this feature, but the purpose is the same in each. A traffic funnel shows where visitors are exiting from a site -- think of it as a map to find the source of a pipe leak. This visual helps website owners understand what offerings should be tweaked to retain visitors and lead to more conversions. It can also show where a pop up page (Did you not find what you were looking for) or a survey would be potentially placed.

3. Use event tracking to count white paper downloads or video plays
Event tracking is a short Javascript code usually added to specific page item that requires visitor interaction to use. The item can be a white paper download, an embedded presentation or an embedded video. The purpose is to help measure visitor interest to a specific offering, be it the number of downloads or video plays.

4. Study real- time analytics to know when visitors are arriving
Real time analytics tools such as Piwik and Woopra can indicate which time of the day traffic arrives to the site. This information can be a more granular way of seeing if the timing of an event triggered more views on a site and potentially more downloads or purchases.

5. Use customer segmentation to know which kinds of customers are responding
New and returning visitors is a standard segmentation, but custom variables based on Javascript code can be added to you site in order to develop more understanding of site visitors. Members of a club who would visit and login to a site would be an example.
The benefit of segmentation is to help identify visitor segments that best match the site goals and develop some answers as to how the segment relates to the business objectives of the site. Measuring only “hits” instead of kinds of visits is not real analysis.

6. Check site functionality to know if your site is performing well
Examining funnel diagrams, bounce rates can indicate a functional problem with the site -- the inability to call up a page, for example. Many analytics tools also consider the OS and browser of visitors -- this helps show if there are problems affecting one browser that could prevent visitors from arriving onto the site. The OS measures can also be effective way to determine if sire traffic is arriving via an iPad or mobile device, an indication of a mobile audience and if developing offering for this audience has potential.

7. Use a Map Overlay to know where your efforts are working
In Google Analytics the map overlay feature can show which regions you traffic is coming from. This may help you understand if a targeted region is yielding interest, or if there are intended regions are not being reached. Other analytics tools offer variations of the map overlay.

There are more potential uses, and even more tools to make the work relatively easy:

There are now applications like Hootsuite, Twitterlyzer and Mailchimp that allow some overlap of analytics data from different properties and make analysis more integrated. The point is to make any business’ online properties a working asset by understanding how visitors are receiving what is being offered and to undertake action that can improve customer experience.