This is the third year in a row that we are offering this epic roundup of the best tools, apps, and plugins for entrepreneurs.
Each Tuesday, in my free online classroom, The Front Row, members submit the tools and apps that help them run their businesses more efficiently.
We've taken those submissions and organized them by category and purpose. We've also made note of the tools we use and love.
Did we leave out one of your favorites? Let us know in the comments.
2020 is literally right around the corner. New year and new decade! Before you pop that champagne, take time to prepare your business for the end of the year.
I know I know. Yuck. But it’s important, and doesn’t have to be all that bad. End-of-year prep makes tax time easier, makes sure all your financial info for the current year is accurate and up to date, and lets you start the next year out on the right foot. So your business keeps earning and you stress less in the year to come.
That sounds pretty good, right?
Here are five steps you can take now to prepare your business for the end of the year.
Getting your bookkeeping organized for the year that’s ending will help you rest easy at night. You’ll know that all your numbers for the year add up, and that the information on your year-end financial statements is correct.
One of the easiest ways to take care of your bookkeeping is to sign up for a remote bookkeeping solution. My secret weapon is Bench. They take care of my bookkeeping year round.
Go back and make sure that every transaction you’ve recorded for the year is correctly categorized. If you made a categorization error in February, and then kept repeating that error, it could have a major impact by the end of the year.
For example— say you’ve been incorrectly categorizing credit card processing fees for your biz as part of your overhead. That could give you a fluctuating monthly overhead expense; if use it to make financial projections for the new year, and your numbers will be off. Fixing the problem now will save you trouble once the books are closed.
If you use the double entry method of bookkeeping, it’s essential that all your credits and debits match up. Otherwise, some accounts may actually hold less value than your books say.
You can do this at the same time you’re double checking your transaction categories. Make sure that each time an account is credited, another account is debited the same amount—and vice versa.
When you reconcile your bank accounts, you make sure your bank statements match up with your books. It’s how you ensure your books reflect reality—the real, tangible cash you have to work with.
Reconciling bank accounts isn’t complicated, but there are steps you need to follow to do it accurately. Bench has a helpful guide to bank reconciliation for your business.
Especially if this is your first time filing taxes for your business, it’s wise to enlist the help of a CPA. They can double check your books and make sure everything adds up, so your tax filing is accurate. What’s more, they may be able to identify tax deductions you’ve overlooked. That means your business will save more money in the new year. Close the books on Dec. 31st.
On the last day of the year, close the books. That means adding up all your numbers for the year, making sure everything is balanced, and preparing year-end financial statements. You’ll use those statements to file your tax return.
If you have a bookkeeper, they’ll close the books for you. They’ll also complete other preparation steps, like checking transaction categories and balancing the books. Again, I don’t really worry about this because Bench does it for me.
If you’re claiming itemized deductions on your tax return, you need to make sure that each tax deduction is backed up by documentation. In the event that you’re audited, you’ll need those receipts to support your claims. If you can’t prove that your deductions were valid, the IRS can penalize you. #NotFun
Make sure you hold on to the following:
Receipts
Cash register tapes
Deposit information (cash and credit sales)
Invoices
Canceled checks or other proof of payment/electronic funds transferred
Credit card receipts
Bank statements
Petty cash slips for small cash payments
Accounts payable and receivable
Payroll records
Tax filings
Previous tax returns
W2 and 1099 forms
Any other documentary evidence that supports an item of income, deduction, or credit shown on your tax return
Receipts for business purchases are one of the most common types of business records. You should hold on to every receipt for at least three years. That’s the length of the statute of limitations—the amount of time the IRS has to audit you.
On every receipt you keep, be sure to list:
The date
What you paid for
What the purchase was
If you’re writing off a business meal, be sure to list on the receipt who attended the meal, and the business-related topics you discussed.
Guess what...a shoebox is not a filing cabinet.
If you’re forced at the end of the year to sort through all your receipts and put them in order, it’s time to switch to a new system.
Going paperless cuts down on clutter and helps make sure nothing slips through the cracks. Apps like Expensify allow you to photograph and categorize your receipts, then upload them to the cloud—where they’ll be organized by type, and protected from hazards like sudden gusts of wind. Or you can just use Evernote, which is one of my favorite apps of all time.
When you’re self-employed, it’s up to you to figure out how much you owe in taxes, and pay it to the IRS.
That may sound like a big responsibility. But don’t worry: A few shortcuts can help.
This is the part where I have to tell you about Profit First, which is actually a book by Mike Michalowicz. His system has completely changed my business, for the better.
Finances really aren’t my strong suit, but I’m a systems girl. And his system is very straight-forward, even for the most financially illiterate (like me!). In short, you routinely move money each quarter into separate bank accounts...most importantly, taxes/profits/and operating expenses. Kind of how your grandmother or great grandmother used to take the paycheck and put the mortgage in one envelope, money for groceries in another, utilities in another, and so on. What was left over was left over. In the Profit First system, this guarantees that you actually see a profit because you are moving it to your profit account. He also spells out how to figure out what percentage of what goes where.
But generally speaking, if you aren’t using the Profit First System, you want to follow the 30 % rule. You want to be prepared to pay about 30% of your gross income to the IRS as taxes. If you’re going back retroactively to put together money for tax payments, get together 30% of your income for the year. (This is when it’s handy to have year-end financial statements—so you can easily see how much you earned for the year.)
Next year, save yourself the hassle of sorting out taxes retroactively: Set them aside as you earn.
There are three methods for setting aside taxes as you earn income: Per-payment, monthly, and yearly.
Per-payment works well if you invoice clients. Every time a client pays you, take 30% and set it aside for taxes.
Monthly is best if your business goes through a lot of transactions every month—for instance, if you run a bustling ecommerce business. In that case, each month, set aside 30% of your gross income.
The yearly approach only makes sense if your business is small, you earn income infrequently, and you don’t need to make estimated quarterly payments. If your business is still in its side hustle phase, it may be okay to go back and set aside cash at the end of the year. Still, there’s no reason you can’t start using the monthly or per-payment method now—it’ll establish good habits for later on, when your business grows and your income is higher.
Dipping into your tax savings is a major no-no. You don’t want to come up short at the end of the year, unable to pay your taxes. The best way to keep your tax withholdings separate from the rest of your income is to create a separate savings account. That way, you’ll know exactly how much you have—and you’ll be less tempted to spend it.
*Yawn*...fight the urge to nod off. “Tax reforms” may not be the most thrilling pair of words in the English language, but they’re important.
That’s because, every year, the IRS makes changes to tax laws. That could mean you’re no longer eligible for certain tax deductions, or the deadlines for filing certain forms have changed.
For instance: The most recent major change to taxes was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, in 2018. It set a new tax rate for C corporations—so if your business was incorporated, you’d end up owing less than you may have planned. It introduced a new deduction for so-called “pass through entities”—so if you ran a sole proprietorship or single-member LLC, you had a new way to write off expenses. And it made changes to which deductions businesses could claim across the board.
These changes are important to stay on top of. Every year, the IRS puts out Publication 5318. It tells businesses what kinds of changes to tax law they can expect in the coming year. Make sure you read it when it’s published.
You may want to hire a CPA to file your taxes. It’s their job to stay on top of the latest changes in tax law, and make sure you’re in compliance.
I’ve been using the same local firm for years and have developed a relationship with them so I’m sticking with them. But Bench just added tax/accounting services, too. Your bookkeepers will work one-on-one with tax professionals to get your taxes filed and 100% compliant with the current year’s tax laws.
So you don’t need to bring your books to a CPA, and explain how your business works. Since your Bench team produces all your financial statements throughout the year, and has hands-on knowledge about your expenses, they can work with professional tax filers to make sure your return is prepared accurately, and taking advantage of write-offs.
Ooh lah lah. Sexy, right?
This New Year’s Eve, make a resolution to run your business more smoothly and effectively than you did the year before. Here are a few simple steps you can take to make it happen:
Don’t let the word “audit” scare you. An internal audit looks at your accounting processes and operations, and makes sure that everything is running as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.
Taking time to review your standard practices—how and when you record transactions on the books, how you store your business records, your invoicing cycle—can highlight ways to improve. That could mean entering sales on the books nightly, instead of weekly. Or, it could mean putting a whole new accounting system in place. Either way, your business will benefit.
If you haven’t been disciplined about preparing financial reports, now is the time to start. Make sure that, by the end of January, you’ve got an income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet for the month. Then rinse and repeat: Your aim is to have accurate, up to date financial reports for every month of the year.
These taxes won’t only make it easier to file your taxes at the end of the year. You’ll have all the information you need to make informed business plans—like deciding how to reinvest income, or where to reduce expenses. That could mean more profit for your business in the long run.
When you create a financial forecast, you look at how your business has performed in the past, then project that performance into the future. It helps you prepare for events to come, and see where your business will end up depending on which business moves you make.
Once you’ve created a financial forecast, you can refer to it throughout the year to help you make business decisions. For instance, a forecast can help you identify your busy and slow seasons, and how investments in your business will pay off. That could affect everything from your operating hours during certain times of the year, to whether you take out a loan to expand your business.
This guide to financial forecasting is straightforward, and includes examples you can use to create your own forecasts.
By taking five straightforward steps at the end of the year, you can make sure next year goes smoothly.
You definitely want to wrap up the previous year’s accounting neatly, and make sure everything adds up and makes sense. Then you’re ready to file your taxes, or have somebody, or a service like Bench, do it for you. I’m a huge fan of outsourcing, and creating systems in our businesses, (which is why I created Front Row CEO (launching in January).) Financial stuff doesn’t interest me, it gives me a headache, and it’s definitely one of those things I’d rather hand over to an expert.
Did I miss any year-end tasks? Let me know in the comments below.
*Some of the links in this article are affiliate links. That means that I get some sort of small reward for you sharing with you if you end up purchasing. I only recommend products and services that I personally use and love.
I have come to love Black Friday. No, not the “real life” Black Friday, where people stampede through doors at 4am hoping to grab a big screen TV. No no no no no. Not at all.
I like the ONLINE Black Friday.
If you are like I am, you spend a lot of your business dollars on online tools and services. So we might as well get the best deals possible, right?
I’ve spent the last several weeks compiling a list of the best Black Friday deals for online entrepreneurs.
I’ll be updating this list all the way through Cyber Monday (December 2), so make sure to bookmark this post and check back regularly.
Many of these links are affiliate links, which means that I will receive some sort of small reward for telling you about the product. But as always, I don’t recommend anything I don’t love, or use myself.
Haute Stock’s Black Friday Deal
HAUTE STOCK: I have loved Haute Stock since back in the day when they were “Haute Chocolate”. (This sale will begin on Friday, November 29th at 6am Eastern). Haute Stock is a membership site that provides gorgeous graphics for your sales and marketing. Membership looks like this:
New images added weekly — new photos are added to the library every Monday so you can keep your visuals looking fresh!
Seasonal images — Haute Stock adds new seasonal and holiday photos every year and they are the perfect addition to your seasonal marketing campaigns.
Pre-made social media quote graphics — for those days when you need something to post, you can Haute Stock’s done-for-you quotes. With new quotes released every month, there is always something to post!
Exclusive graphics packs — unlock patterns, textures, and icons to make stand-out graphics for your brand.
Unlimited downloads — download and keep any number of images you find on Haute Stock so you always have those photos available!
Kajabi rocks
Kajabi: Although Kajabi is not offering a Black Friday deal this year, they have quietly announced a couple of cool new goodies for new “Kajabians”.
First of all, Kajabi is a true all-in-one-business platform where I basically have my whole business. Here are all the things you can do with Kajabi:
Websites
Landing pages
Courses
Membership Sites
Communities (forums)
Webinars
Pipelines (this is my favorite thing about Kajabi..need a freebie and funnel to go with it? Scheduling a summit? Just press a button (literally), and the whole pipeline, from optin page, to thank you page, and everything in between, is done for you.
Automations
Checkout Cart
And since I’m sure I’ve left something out, just look at this. It shows you everything Kajabi does.
And for all new “Kajabians”, they are offering unlimited phone support AND after 90 days, Kajabi will assign your own Kajabi expert who will work with you, via phone suppor t to help you make the most out of Kajabi.
And I’m going to sweeten the deal. If you sign up for Kajabi here, my team and I will work with you, via Zoom calls, to migrate to Kajabi, set everything up, and get things working smoothly for you.
And Kajabi ALWAYS offers 24/7 chat support. No matter how great a platform is, if you can’t figure out how to use it, who cares, right?
TEACHABLE: Not everyone wants to put everything under one roof. So while Kajabi is always my first choice, Teachable is perfect for the person who just wants a gorgeous, simple-to-use platform to create online courses. If that’s you, Teachable is perfect. And their Black Friday deal is fantastic. (It’s only for new Teachable users, though.) Check it out here.
APPSUMO: Let me just confess right now. I’m an Appsumo junky. If you aren’t an Appsumo user, my apologies for introducing you to this addictive site. Appsumo is a purveyor of discounted bright and shiny business tools. You can get extremely good deals here on just about anything and everything that relates to online business. So make sure to click here and get alerted when they announce what is sure to be a bunch of deals worth gobbling about.
Don’t be stressed!!! My friend Anthony Korahais is a master in Qigong and Tai Chi and is offering this amazing free course Relieving Holiday Stress with Qigong -- CLICK HERE (It’s normally $67!)
What's the catch?
Anthony says “the catch is that you must solemnly swear to use these tools to create more kindness and open-heartedness in 2020.
Okay..fine. You don't HAVE to swear an oath. But I truly hope that you will use these tools, even if just for 2 minutes a day!
All of the lessons are short and sweet so you can jump around and pick whatever feels exciting.
And I think you'll agree that these tools are PRACTICAL.
You have until December 31st, but why wait when you could be using one of these tools 5 minutes from now?”
Lou Bortone is a video/YouTube expert. Recently he visited my group, Front Row VIP and presented a virtual video workshop and it rocked! When I saw this offer in my inbox, I knew I wanted to share it with you. Lou is awesome!
Bench is not having a Black Friday special (that I know of), but since I probably won’t be sending out a round-up like this again before the new year, I wanted to make sure and tell you about this amazing company. They are an online bookkeeping company based in Canada. It’s no exaggeration to say that this service has completely changed my business. Handling the financial stuff has never been my forte. But now, I actually LOVE logging in a looking at all of the beautiful reports inside of Bench. At any time I can log in and see exactly the state of my business. Every penny has been accounted for. Tax time is now a breeze.
And if your accounting is a tangled mess right now, they will go in and bring everything up to date. Then you can start fresh. I recommend this service to everyone. And I can’t think of a better thing to do for yourself and your business as we head into a new year (and new decade!)
MySocialBook is cool! You can print out your whole year of photos from Facebook, or Instagram. I used to do this every year, and then I forgot about, until I received a text today re: their Black Friday Promotion: For 40% off use code: TXT40PBF - Go to http://www.emotv.io/CmX6GH
Udemy has thousands of courses about every topic under the sun. Right now and through December 5th, they have courses for as little as $9.99.
I LOVE this software. It used to be called Brandquiz.io. Now it’s called involve.me. It creates gorgeous, interactive forms (like Typeform), landing pages, calculators, surveys, quizzes and even payments. This is a great deal.
Several of my clients use Dubsado. It’s a super robust platform that is perfect for agencies. They are offering a great deal right now. There’s a free trial, too.
Have you found any Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals I need to know about? Tell me in the comments!
If you are like every other entrepreneur on the planet, sometimes you find yourself bogged down doing work you know you shouldn’t be doing but you justify it because you tell yourself…
…it’s easier if you do it yourself. By the time you had to explain it to someone, you’d already be done.
Or maybe you don’t even know where to find someone to do that particular task and even if you did, you’d rather not spend that money.
But here’s the truth; there’s a very skilled labor force out there that is not only ready to work with you, but also incredibly affordable.
If you’ve been at this online business thing for a while, you’ve likely already heard of Fiverr.com or Upwork.com.
If not, let me be the bearer of life-changing news…
Fiverr.com is a place where freelancers offer their services (called “gigs”), some for as little as five dollars (hence, the name). You can’t believe the wide range of services offered there!
Upwork is a similar platform, but usually a bit pricier.
I’ve been using both services since 2013, and I’ve compiled a list of my favorite freelancers for you.
I have worked with each of these freelancers (except for those indicated) and can recommend them enthusiastically but obviously, I am not making any guarantees.
DANIELABENDROTH: I’ve hired Daniel many time to edit my podcasts and he’s done a great job.
VUKJOVANOVIC23: Hired once for podcast editing and he did a great job.
bill_mehner recorded a podcast intro for me and did excellent work. Ver professional and polished.
Articulateasian: Hired him to record a professional intro for a podcast. Very good work.
Johnnystone created a podcast intro for me. Great work.
Kiffinyjean is the first voiceover artist I ever hired. Great work
PaulKStadden can do anything voice! I hired him to do 3 commercials for my podcast and they were great. He will actually write the commercial, record it, add music, everything. His background is in radio where he used to write and produce commercials!
Karinavoitenko created a custom content calendar for me to share with my community. It was less than $20 and truly excellent quality.
Soulriter: Wrote an original jingle for my podcast. While I haven’t used it yet, you gotta admit, it’s pretty groovy.
Rapper_man created an amazing original rap song for my husband’s 50th birthday and made a video to go with it. He was fantastic
Jcattoor composed original background music for my Social Media Summer Camp I paid $5.50 but it looks like the price as gone up a lot since then!
eighth_studio created a professional video promo for one of my courses. I never used it, but I think it’s cute, albeit a little corny and too long.
Royaljatt created a fun video bumper for one of my courses.
Saidulemarketer created a custom coded email template in ConvertKit for me.
Mhhann provided high quality transcription
Theexecutive great work
Jamesdalton will proved a 1000 quotable tweets for your niche for $5
Virtues turned me into a Simpsons character which I use as my profile pic on my messenger bot.
This amazing gentleman created this special custom video for my Taco Tuesday posts in my Facebook Group.
Squeezeboxhero created the most hilarious singing telegram for a friend of mine who was sick
This one is from 2013. I had just discovered Fiverr and was clearly out of control. Dog rings bell with my logo nearby. Here it is. If you’d like one, looks like the dog is still busy ringing people’s bells. Hire him here.
Grammargal is a great book editor and proofreader
lyubomyr Did a superb formatting my book for Kindle and for print.
Really cool portrait art (would make a great gift for a client)
Debra Boggs wrote my resume when I applied to be a professor.
Nata created a slide deck for an important presentation. Since then, I’ve referred people to her but I think her rate is higher now than it used to be.
Avadhesh is a Kajabi expert. I have not worked with, but several of my clients have, and I refer him often.
Obviously, I’ve just scratched the surface here.
When you go to do search for your own freelancers on Fiverr and Upwork, filter by the variables that are most important to you: language, ratings, rate, etc. I always look for the most highly rated freelancers who also have a lot of reviews.
If you have a freelancer you’d like to share with me and my readers, please put it in the comments below.
I’ll be updating this list as I find more freelancers I love, so make sure and subscribe to the updates below.
This is an incredible new app that would be useful for any website, but I think is particularly phenomenal for membership sites. That’s because it allows you to share announcements with your members in a few very slick ways.
This is what Beamer looks like on the sales page for my membership site.
This is what Beamer looks like INSIDE the membership site.
The biggest challenge with membership sites is that members start off with good intentions but they never get to the majority of your content. After a few months of getting billed by you, but having not consumed any of your content, they cancel. With Beamer, each time a member comes to the membership site, they will see exciting announcements. You can bring their attention to something new you’ve got going on or maybe feature content that’s been in the membership site for a while that they may have missed.
One of the most powerful features that Beamer offers is push notifications. When someone lands on your page/site, they will see this pop up:
If your member allows notifications, then each time you publish something new to your Beamers, they will receive a notification!
Members can also leave you feedback on each notification:
The analytics are super detailed and informative:
If you’d like to learn about more about Beamer, I created this review and tutorial video:
Are you using Beamer? Put a link to your site in the comments below…I’d love to see how you are using it! If you aren’t using Beamer yet, they have a 14 day free trial here.
Got a podcast or Alexa flash briefing skill? Wonder how to repurpose your audio content for people who don’t have an Echo device or don’t listen to podcasts?
In this article, you’ll discover how to repurpose your audio content to reach a wider audience.
Sharing and repurposing your Alexa flash briefings and podcasts across other channels are wonderful ways to reach people who might not yet even be aware of your broadcasts.
One way to do this is to upload the audio to Headliner. Among other things, this free web-based app allows you to upload audio to create audiograms. Audiograms are technically videos, but they present like a graphic with an animated audio wave as an overlay. The app will even transcribe the audio into text and overlay it on the graphic as well.
To create an audiogram, go to Headliner and start a new project. For this example, select Audiogram Wizard to create a video from a flash briefing. If you want to make a video from a podcast episode that’s longer than 10 minutes, select Full Episode instead.
On the next page, click Choose File and navigate to your flash briefing file, or drag and drop your audio.
Once the audio is successfully uploaded, click Next.
On the next page, you have the option to edit the start and end of your clip. When you’re done, click Next.
Now choose an aspect ratio and then click Next. Square is best for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
The next step is to select your wave type, wave position, and wave color. Then click Add Background Image and navigate to your image file. When you’re finished, click Create Project.
After your audio is imported into Headliner, make sure the audio transcription is switched on for captions. When you’re done editing the transcription, click Export.
In the Export pop-up window, type in your email address so you’ll receive an email when the video is done. Because flash briefings are short (10 minutes or less), these exports usually only take 2-3 minutes. With podcast audio, the process will take a little longer.
After you click Export, you’ll see a message that your video is being generated. When it’s finished, you’ll see a download link in a pop-up at the top right of the page.
When you click the link to download your video, you’ll see options to download the file as an MP4 (video file) and get a link to share the audiogram. Now you have a piece of content that you can share across multiple platforms.
One way to share your audiogram is to send it out via a Messenger bot like ManyChat.
ManyChat is a visual bot builder for Facebook Messenger with broadcasts, analytics, scheduled posting, and many other features. To deliver your bot to subscribers, you’ll first need to set up a growth tool.
Inside the Growth Tools area, you can customize a number of different overlays, widgets, and pop-ups to encourage people to engage with you via Messenger and join your subscriber list. Select Growth Tools on the left and then click the + New Growth Tool button in the top right.
You now see a list of widget types and growth tools. Select the Messenger Ref URL growth tool. This tool will give you a link you can place anywhere (social media, email, printed on a business card, etc.) and it takes users directly into Facebook Messenger.
Name this widget so you can easily identify it and then click Edit.
On the next page, name your opt-in message and click Edit Flow.
Now compose your message. When you’re finished, click + Add Button.
Type in a name for the button and click Done.
Next, click Go To Flow Builder in the top-right corner. This opens ManyChat’s visual editor, which is a bit like a mind map.
Click the option button next to your call-to-action button and then click Send Message.
Now compose your message. You can personalize your message by clicking the curly brackets icon and adding emojis.
When you’re finished, open the Broadcasting tab on the left side of the page. This tab is where you can deliver broadcast messages to your Messenger bot subscribers. In many ways, it’s similar to sending a broadcast email from your email service provider.
Click + New Broadcast in the upper-right corner of the page.
Now compose your message and add your buttons. For this example, you’re sharing the audiogram for your Alexa flash briefing, so add buttons for Listen Now, Listen on Alexa, and Leave Review.
For the Listen Now button, add the link to the video you created with the Headliner app. This link will take users directly to the audiogram you created for your briefing.
For the Listen on Alexa button, add a link to your skill in the Alexa Skills store so people can subscribe to your flash briefing there.
Finally, for the Leave Review button, include the link that will take people to the review page on Amazon.com. The more reviews you have for your flash briefing skill, the more visible your skill will be in the Alexa Skills store, and the higher your skill will rise in search overall.
After you set this up once, it’s easy to duplicate the broadcast each day, switching out only the link to your audiogram and any relevant text in your message.
Here are some additional places to share your audiogram:
Upload it as a video natively to LinkedIn and Facebook.
Use it as your creative in a Facebook ad.
Upload it to YouTube (since technically it’s a video).
If your audiogram is a minute or less, upload it to Instagram.
You can upload your flash briefing or podcast audio to Temi and get inexpensive transcripts to convert it into blog posts.
Embed links to these posts on a show notes page that’s designated specifically for your flash briefing or podcast. Not only is this a wonderful way to drive traffic back to your website, but also your content is no longer ephemeral. All past episodes can live here in a library. It will give your listeners a place to ask questions, give feedback, and explore any resources you’ve mentioned in an episode.
As the adoption of Echo devices and Alexa flash briefings grows, so too will your Alexa audience. You want to make it easy for people who become aware of your briefings via the tactics above to find and subscribe directly to your briefing when they own a device. These tips will help.
Use Keywords
Alexa flash briefing skills are searchable in the Amazon store and the Alexa Skills store. To get found by listeners, it’s imperative to pay attention to keywords. You’re allowed 30 keywords and it’s recommended that you use all 30. This will require some testing, so you’ll likely want to rotate your keywords monthly.
If you’re unsure what your keywords are, you can use Google Keyword Planner as an approximation for what people are searching for on Amazon. You can also search for the top skills in your niche, and use the titles of those skills in your keywords.
Publish Consistently
The most important factor in having a successful flash briefing skill is consistency. While this is true for everything in marketing, it’s particularly true for flash briefings.
Because it appears that most people are listening to this short content (10 minutes or less) daily, your briefing becomes part of their daily routine. If you only upload once a week, or even less frequently, your listeners will hear the same audio each time they tune in, or they’ll get an error message and then stop listening.
This doesn’t mean that you have to actually record each day. You can batch record and upload for scheduling.
More articles about Alexa Flash Briefings:
Alexa Flash Breifings and Your Business
How To Set Up Alexa Flash Breifings: A Guide For Marketers
If you'd like to make sure you never miss these briefings, you have a couple of options:
Let my bot deliver them to you daily: http://bit.ly/flashbriefingbot
Add the briefing to your Alexa Echo or your Alexa Dot ("Alexa, add The Front Row Entrepreneur Flash Briefing" http://bit.ly/FrontRowFlash).
What do you think? Do you have an effective way to promote or repurpose your flash briefing skill that isn’t listed here? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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I was so blown away by the results I was getting for my business and with my audience growth. What we are starting to understand about the way people are consuming voice is that they are making these briefings part of their day. Most people are able to commit to content that is 10 mins or less because they are listening during those transitional moments....drinking their coffee on their way out the door, fixing the kids lunches, getting dresses in the morning. No other piece of content could reach this audience.
What is a flash briefing?
A flash briefing is an audio clip, 10 minutes or less, that you upload to Amazon. People subscribe to your flash briefing by enabling it in their Alexa skills app or on amazon.com.After that, they hear your briefing when they give the command, "Alexa, play my flash briefing."
Setting up a flash briefing only takes about 20 to 30 minutes if you use a platform that allows you to bypass having to code. The platform I recommend is called Soundup. and if you go to soundupnow.com and use the code frontrow, you’ll get a nice discount, but it’s very affordable even without the discount.
You don’t have to have an Alexa device in order to create a flash briefing. All you need is a computer, and a microphone. After you set up your briefing, you never have to do it again. One important thing to remember here is to use all 30 keywords that Amazon allows you to use when you set up your briefing. Your briefing is searchable from Amazon.com, which in and of itself is mind-blowing, so keep this in mind when you name your briefing and with those keywords.
If you aren’t sure what keywords to use, you can use Google Keyword Planner for an approximation. Here’s a ninja tip for you: find top briefings in your niche and use the title of their briefing as one of your keywords. I recommend rotating your keywords monthly until you find the ones that are working well for you. Amazon does give you an analytics dashboard so you can always see how many listeners you have on any given day week or month.
I’ve had my briefing, the Front Row Entrepreneur Flash Briefing for about a year now and based on what I’ve seen I do believe that voice is here to stay and that now is the time to jump in.
As of April 2018, Amazon reported that there are 50000 Alexa skills and while that’s a lot, if you think about it, it’s not really a lot. What if i said there were 50k websites in the world? or 50k podcasts? To me, this sounds like a number that validates briefings as a viable means of content distribution and as a marketing channel, but tells me that this is probably the perfect time to jump in because I have a chance of getting found before that 50K number turns into 50 million.
60% of Amazon Prime members already own a smart speaker and there are more than 100 million Amazon prime members. That’s 60 million people right there and 30% of non prime members own a smart speaker. I don’t know what that number is, but you can be sure it’s a lot.
The holidays are just around the corner, and I guess the number of people who own smart speakers is going to increase exponentially. I'm willing to bet that these devices will become as ubiquitous as televisions in every american household and soon enough, across the globe.
BMW just announced that they are incorporating Alexa into their dashboard. You may already buy products through your Amazon Echo. I know I do. I’ll find myself in the middle of a recipe, realize I need organic Tahini or preserved lemons or some other inconvenient item, and will just shout it out to Alexa and two days later it’s at my doorstep.
I’m no Nostradamus but let me just put this out there. If you currently have an Amazon affiliate account, meaning, you can share links to products and get a commission, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time that we will be able to do the same thing through our flash briefings. And I’m sure that won’t be the end out how we will be able to directly monetize our briefings. They bottom line is that you need to be paying attention to this trend. The possibilities for marketers and businesses are mind-blowing.
We are going to focus on using our flash briefings to build an audience and covert our audience into customers. The number one thing I’ve learned with flash briefings is that like with content creation, we must be consistent. When I first started, I was publishing my briefing once a week. Then one day, a listener left me a review and said that the content was good, but that she had to listen to the same thing every day until I published the new one the following week. This was a real eye opener.
When you set up your briefing, you either tell Amazon you will publish daily or weekly. If you say you will publish weekly, then your listeners will hear the same thing for a week. After a week, if you don't publish anything new, Alexa will tell your listeners, "There is no new content" or something to that effect.
What I recommend is setting up your briefing for weekly publishing, but publish every day. This way, if you miss a day, your listeners won't get an error message. I know you are thinking, “No way, I am not going to record a flash briefing every day.” Don't worry, you don't have to. Like with podcasts, you can batch record your content and schedule them in advance and because flash briefings are so short, you can knock off probably a months worth of content in no time at all.
I do actually record every day, or at least Monday to Friday, but that's because my flash briefing is news. It's all about the latest news in online marketing and online business. I do take the weekends off, however, and based on the limited amount of research that is out there right now, it appears that listeners aren't as tuned in on the weekends.
But while we're on the subject, I have to say that incorporating this into my morning routine has been by itself one of the best decisions I've every made. Outside of the fantastic ROI of my time and energy, this has become a very important cornerstone of my day.
I get up at 5:08 ever morning and get to my 6am yoga class about 20 minutes early. I write my morning pages, and the minute I get home, I walk to my office in the back of my house, and record my flash briefing. Before my day has even begun I have created something. If nothing else goes right all day long, I know I've created a piece of content that has helped someone, somewhere because I'm reporting the news. I've also learned new things in a way I wasn't learning before because I'm reading an article about the latest changes in Twitter or Facebook Ads or whatever. Then I have to condense it and interpret it for my audience. I have to truly understand what I am talking about. My own knowledge base has increased so much by doing this that by itself, even before all the new email subscribers and listeners and members of my Facebook group, and new customers, I would say it's been worth it.
If you don't want to do daily, Soundup allows you to upload all of your batched content. You put the publishing date and it that's it. The actual process of creating the briefing couldn't be simpler. it's rally the easiest content I create all day long. I use Zencastr but you can really use anything that allows you to record audio. Like GarageBand or Audacity, which is free then upload the briefing to Soundup and that's absolutely it.
Having a short musical intro and outro is great for brand recognition and it adds a certain level of legitimacy and professionalism. Let your listeners know how to contact you and make it interactive. I often ask people to tweet at me or tag me on Instagram. It's a thrill to see it in action. I always drive people to my Facebook group and because one of the questions I ask members when they fill out the application form is how did you hear about this group, I can see all the people who are coming straight from the briefing. Even more exciting are the number of people who are joining my paid VIP community because of the briefing.
Since this is a self contained thing, you don't necessarily have to tie this to your existing brand. In fact, you don't even have to tie this into your existing business. Maybe you are a huge fan of growing orchids. You have so many tips about growing orchids you could go on forever. Start a flash briefing called Daily Orchid Tips then spend a Saturday afternoon creating 30 one minute tips about growing orchids. Maybe in each recording you mention a link to your favorite orchid growing medium, is that even a thing, I don't know, your favorite orchid dirt. You send people to a simple landing page where you have the show notes and maybe an affiliate link to that dirt.
Let's say you are a realtor, and you do want to tie your briefing in with your existing business. I would create a briefing that focuses on your town. So if you live in Minneapolis, maybe it's just called the Minneapolis minute. You can highlight events happening each day, talk about civic news, favorite restaurants. Maybe at the end of each briefing you mention that this Minneapolis Minute is brought to you by Sarah Johnson, Minneapolis's favorite realtor and you also have a show notes page. When people come to that page, they see links to the resources you mentioned, but also a picture of you with your contact info. But you will be using the briefing to build authority as Minneapolis expert, “the go to person” for information about Minneapolis.
If you are a financial advisor, or a money person, stock tips or investing tips would be fantastic. Coaches can create tips based on whatever your SME is. Is your audience made up of parents of young kids? How about a story telling app? I really can't think of any business or industry that can't create a flash briefing. It may not be that you are going after an audience of thousands. Maybe you create a flash briefing that is for internal use only for a select group.
If you are a marketer who works directly with clients, can you imagine the response when you head into your pitch meeting to discuss all the things you can offer them and then plug in your echo and say, Alexa, play my flash briefing and they hear the sample flash briefing you set up that features their company. They will fall out of their chair and start throwing money at you then you can set up their flash briefing in your Soundup account and then you can easily systemize the process by either getting the client to email you a batch of recordings each month or you can record with them on location. The point is, the margins on this are great for you, with your only relay overhead being your time and even that can be minimized. Your clients will be delighted, too. Again, now is the time for this because your competitors haven't thought of this yet.
Now you have a flash briefing, now what? How do you get listeners?
Unfortunately Amazon isn't going to market your briefing for you. Here are some things you can do:
Create a bitly link to your skill in the amazon Alexa skill store. The link that you are given by default is long and cumberson. Creating a short link is not just easier to manage, but allows you to track clicks.
Link your skill to your email signature.
Post regularly on reddit.com and quora.com , answering questions in your niche, with occasional mentions of your flash briefing skill.
Talk about your flash briefing using Twitter’s audio livestreaming feature and on all of your livestreams.
Let your email subscribers know about your briefing. If you send out a regular newsletter, make sure to mention it each time.
You can upload the audio of your briefing to temi.com and get very inexpensive transcripts to convert your briefings into blog posts.then you post it on Medium.
Post information about your skill on your social channels and on each of the pages of your website that get the most traffic.
Create business cards exclusively for your flash briefing skill. put a bitly link on the card or even a qr code.
Sharing and repurposing your flash briefings across other channels is a wonderful way to reach people who might not yet even be aware that flash briefings exist.
One great way to do this is to upload the audio of your flash briefing to the app, Headliner. This is a free app (web based) that among other things, allows you to upload audio to create audiograms. Audiograms are technically videos, but they present like a graphic with an animated audio wave as an overlay. It will even transcribe the audio into text and overlay on the graphic as well.
Now you have a piece of content that you can share across multiple platforms.
Embed these on a show notes page that we discussed earlier. Not only is this a wonderful way to drive traffic back to your website, but your content is no longer ephemeral. All past episodes can live here in a library. It gives a place for your listeners to ask questions, give feedback, and explore any resources you’ve mentioned in an episode.
Upload it as a video, natively to LinkedIn and Facebook.
Use this audiogram as your creative in a Facebook ad.
You can upload this audiogram to YouTube (since technically it is a video). If your briefing is a minute or less, upload it to Instagram. You can even send this out via a messenger bot like, Manychat.
Here are the key points for your regarding starting your own flash briefing:
Use keywords
Publish consistently, whether you batch your recordings or record each day, consistency wins
Give a call to action in each episode.
Consider repurposing your briefing
To market your briefing, share your Bitly link everywhere
If you'd like to enable the Front Row Entrepreneur flash briefing, simply head over the amazon and start typing front row entrepreneur in the search and it will pop up.
Did you know you can hire Jen Lehner Media, LLC to set up your Flash Briefing? Click here to learn more.
My favorite Chrome browser plug-in in the world is called One Tab and you already be using it. Stick with me because I’m going to show you a feature in the app that you may not know about. If you are new to One Tab, it’s a free Chrome browser plug-in that allows you to collapse all of your open tabs into one tab, for future reference.
But that’s just the beginning of the fabulosity! . In the video below, what I show you are some features that allows you to create whole systems with a click of a button. Now, that’s my kind of app!
After you watch the video. let me know in the comments below if you found it helpful. If you aren't already subscribed to my YouTube channel, make sure and do that and you'll never miss one of these tutorials.
Get the guide here>>> http://bit.ly/jenscampguide
Social Media Marketing World 2017 was absolutely incredible! We talked about everything. We talked about live streaming, Facebook ads, blogging, chat bots, artificial intelligence and every social media channel that there is. And I'm excited to give you a rundown of all the most important stuff. And I'm gonna cover all of that with you in this rundown. But what I really want to focus on is Facebook messenger and messaging apps.
(TRANSCRIPT FROM VIDEO ABOVE) The most exciting thing that I took away from Social Media Marketing World 2017 was information about chat bots and Facebook Messenger. Let me explain. First of all, when I talk about Facebook Messenger and chat bots, I'm always going to be talking about it in regard to your business page on Facebook, not your personal profile. So here we are on my Facebook page and I'm going to go into "settings." And what Facebook has had for a while, in their settings that a lot of people didn't know about is that for quite awhile you've been able to set up automated responses. So if someone messages your page, you'd been able to set up an autoresponder. Mine used to say "Hey. This isn't the best way to connect with me. Hop onto my email so I don't miss whatever it is you want to talk to me about." And that served me well for a time. But a whole new world has opened up. Let me explain.
I'm going to go over to a third-party app called ManyChat. Go ahead and purchase it right now. Its about $10 a month; worth every penny when you see what this bad boy does. So as you can see I have 15 subscribers. What does that mean. These are 15 people who have opted in to my messenger, they have messaged my page and engaged with me. There are only 15 because I just started this yesterday.
The next thing I want to show is this. This is a broadcast I sent to everyone who is a subscriber, and I want you to see the "open rates." As you can see, there is a 100% open rate. This is revolutionary. This is what almost made me fall off my chair when I watched this presentation by Molly Pittman who works for Digital Marketer. She showed and explained to us that currently messaging apps have now surpassed social media when you look at the world at large. Like in Asia, most people do everything inside messaging apps. Everything- schedule their doctor's appointments, buy their groceries, interact with their bank accounts; everything. And we're heading in that direction as well. People find it more convenient to be in a messaging app. So we don't have to click away and open up our messy inboxes over on email. So that sort of explains why we're getting these huge open rates. And what this app allows you to do is basically allows you to send out sequences (I'm going to go to "sequences" then "sample sequence." This is something that they've setup). And as you can see, just like with an email service provider like Convertkit, Click Funnels or any of them, you can send out an automated messaging sequence and because its popping up in someone's messenger, they're definitely more likely to engage with you. I want to say right here, right now, that I know people are going to abuse this and this isn't going to be soon enough. Like people are going to abuse this, and we're going to get super annoyed with pitch messages. But I don't know about you but I'm not going to use this for pitches 95% of the time. I'm going to use this to really have some nice, genuine and FUN engagement with my audience.
Now, the thing is, you can only message your people who have messaged your page. So ManyChat has these growth tools that allow you to do some really cool things. So if I click on Facebook comments what I'm telling ManyChat is, I created a post on my Facebook page that ask people to engage. So it says "Hey I need your input. What email service provider do you use?" 22 people responded. And then, when they respond, they get this message: "Hey, thanks for taking the time to comment. I'm doing a little research. Let me know the size of your email list." And I gave them 3 choices A, B and C. And then they would type the answer below. Once they do that inside your messenger, they are now a subscriber. And they're notified accordingly and ManyChat also let's them know they can unsubscribe at any time but that's how they become a subscriber. So this is one way that you can grow your list of subscribers using ManyChat.
The other thing that is really, really exciting involves Facebook advertising inside of Messenger. So you can advertise inside of Messenger but what I like is this. I'm going to go to Ads Manager on Facebook. And I've already set up an ad, and its a little video (which by the way, you can now put video gifs as a video ad inside of Facebook) which says "Message me." And this is what it looks like. There would be a bunch of texts above. "So this is text. This is where my comments go." And its populating over there on the right. So you'll be able to see. This is what the ad looks like which really looks like any other ad you see. The difference is here. You see the button that says "Send Message"? When people click on that, its going to take them into your messenger and then you get to engage with them or have your bot engage with them.
Now finally, I'm going to go back to ManyChat and show you some pretty incredible things. So this is a broadcast that I sent. Its just a silly little broadcast that I did to demonstrate ManyChat's capabilities. So it says "Hey [First Name] (because of course you can customize this) I'm recording a tutorial on how to use all the cool new features on Facebook Messenger with ManyChat. If you have a second please reply with the emoji that best describes your day so far. Here's mine, which is a smiley face. So I gave them the option to say "Sorry. No time." And if they click that, then they get this message: "No worries. I completely understand." Or if they the smiley face, they going to get this automated response: "Yay! I'm glad your day is going well." And if they do the poop emoji, then I'm going to say "Uh oh. I hope your day gets better. Anything I can do to help?" No one, I noticed, clicked that.
So let's go ahead and create a broadcast so I can show you a couple of these options. So I can say "What's your favorite social channel?" And then maybe here. So the first button is Facebook (and I can also include a picture there if I want, or a video or an audio to go with that message). Let me just grab something so you can see. If they click that, then I am going to reply with this message. I can either write something, open a website or call a phone number. So I am going to create a message and say "I love Facebook too." Have you seen my latest free training?" Then I can add a file or I can add a video to that free training. Or I can add a PDF or I can put a sales page or take them to a lead page. So many options. I hopefully light bulbs are going off all above your head right now with all the possibilities that are in store for you with ManyChat. Essentially, what ManyChat allows you to do is create your own chat bot. This is just the beginning of this chat bot world that we're entering and I've said it a million times already in this short training but I am super duper excited about it.
The next big topic as you can imagine at Social Media Marketing World was Facebook Ads. In fact, Facebook ads was such a popular topic that Social Media Marketing World had to turn away hundreds of people from each of these sessions because there just wasn't enough space for everybody who wanted to come in and listen. So my takeaway from our session, with Rick Mulready, a Facebook ads expert were that we should experiment using vertical video in our video ads on Facebook because what will happen is when people watch your ad on mobile, which most of them will, it takes up their whole phone screen. So I definitely made a note of that. And he's the one who let us know that you can use animated gifs in a video ad. He also pointed out, which I have overlooked, which I think is a great idea, that you can upload several videos for one ad and create a video carousel. We've always been able to do that with pictures but now we can do it with videos and he said that's a great way to use your video testimonials. So if you're launching a course, and you have 4 or 5 video testimonials you can put that with your ad. I thought that was a great idea.
Then the John Loomer sessions, was phenomenal! John Loomer is also a Facebook Ads expert. I would say he probably goes more deeply into the nitty gritty of Facebook ads than just about anybody else out there. And he basically said the number one reason why our Facebook ads don't do well is usually because of targeting. And he reminded us that we can now create custom emails inside Facebook based on just about anything you can imagine. From people who visit your website or different pages of your website to any kind of specific engagement that they take on our Facebook pages whether they click on an ad or engage in an ad in some way, whether they comment or share or whether they save your ad or page or save a post that you've written and any interaction with any video that you have on your page. Do that now. He also pointed out that launching Facebook ads to a cold audience is not a good long term plan. Obviously our ads do better with a warm audience. And so we have to create those warm audiences especially if we don't have big email lists or a lot of people liking our Facebook page. And so doing these custom audiences is a way of doing warm audiences. Then he pointed out "not all warm audiences are the same." I know in my own advertising, I will post an ad to my warm audience, period. But he says "There are different degrees of warm audiences." So if you're considering people who watch your videos for 10 seconds the same amount of warm as someone who's been on your email list for 2 years, you're wrong. They're completely different. You might want to consider talking to them, or showing them different content. The people who know you really well don't need an introduction to you. But the people who saw your video for 10 seconds, they might need to be introduced to you and your brand.
Livestreaming. This was another one of those topics/sessions that were just jammed pack at Social Media Marketing World. And my takeaways there are a couple of things. Rick Mulready reminded us that Facebook likes it because users like watching live stream. So if people comment and engage with your live stream. It tells Facebook "Hey, this is good content." So they're going to reward you handsomely for that. So remember, when you're streaming to ask people to comment. Give them multiple choice questions and ask them to put the answer in the chat box, really encourage them to engage with you during your live stream.
And then finally, Chalene Johnson. She's a health nut/guru for years. She used to do infomercials and she was part of "Beach Body" and now she's really a marketing expert and she just gave a fantastic, off-the-chain closing keynote. It was full of energy and funny! But what was really great was that she was sharing her experience as an infomercial person and that they launched this infomercial not too long ago for her latest workout video called PIYO, I think. And, it BOMBED. And they had spent well over a million dollars producing it. So she went to the company and said "Hey, let me film this, on my iPhone and do some live streaming and let's see what happens. Well, you know, the rest is history. It sold like crazy. And she was talking about how when she sells anything on live streaming which isn't very often (she's not always selling) but if she's got a program or something she uses what she calls the "infomercial formula." I'm not going to go through every step of her formula here but I will list it down below. But its sort of like 15 or 16 things you want to hit on to sell most effectively if you are promoting something. One thing I really appreciated is when she said "Go slowly when you present your offer." Which really made sense because so many of us rush through our offer because we're uncomfortable in that space of selling. But what she said was a really good point. When you're buying something, and you've stuck around that far into the broadcast to get the offer that means you're considering the offer and if you're considering purchasing something, don't you really want to know all the features and everything that's included? The answer is YES- at least it is for me!
Grab them in the 1st 10 secs of broadcast
Establish your expertise position
Detail the problem
What you figured out
How you figured out solution (like they do on Shark Tank)
The possibility (testimonials)
Why is it unique? Your USP
What, in detail, is this? Go slowly! (Show the course)
Price comparison "You can go to Harvard and spend 200k or you can sign up for this course" or, does it save people time?
Price
Why act now?
Proof of concept (testimonials)
Reduce risk (guarantee)
Call to action
Walk them through the process step by step: "after you click the purchase button, you will be taken to a log in page..."