Whether you’re promoting your workshops, seminars or other real or virtual events organized by you or your business, using Linkedin Events feature is a great way to maximize your results. By using the Events app in Linkedin, you can drive traffic to your events and get more people to sign up.

Generally speaking, if you’re an expert in your field, hosting your own seminars and workshops is a great way to multiply your marketing efforts. You can host free tele-seminars where people call in to listen in to your presentation, or an interview. Tele-seminars are great lead generators. The same applies to webinars, which are a bit complicated to set up, but provide you with added features and benefits. Both of these free events are great ways to create information products.

Before you can create events on Linkedin, you must log in to Linkedin and add the Linkedin Events application, found in the Linkedin Application Directory. Follow the simple instructions and make sure you select the option to Display on my profile which will show the Events on your profile. Then you’ll be ready to create your first Linkedin Events page!

Once you’ve created the Linkedin Events page, it’s time to promote it to your Linkedin connections. In this video you can learn how you can share the link to the Events page via Facebook and Twitter. Also, there are three ways to tell your Linkedin connections about this new Events page. However, I recommend using the Create Message in your Linkedin inbox to create and send a marketing message to your connections.

Remember, you can only send a message to up to 50 recipients at a time, so if you want to send it to 500 connections you will have to (re)create and send at least 10 separate messages. For this purpose I recommend creating a separate text document with your subject line and the message content, and then using that document as a template for your Linkedin messages.

I hope you’ll enjoy the video and if you have questions please leave a comment here.

The term information product is typically associated with educational e-books (of either Kindle, simple PDF, or e-pub variety), audio recordings, or digital video recordings, and, in most cases, a combination of all of the above. Essentially, and info product is some sort of intellectual property content, stored in a digital format suitable for selling on the Internet.

Why to Create Information Products?

If you’re a solo professional, run a small business, or a consulting practice, you’re an expert in your field and you have knowledge you could put into an information product. In your own business you can make only so much per hour, and there are only so many hours you’re willing to commit to working in your business. If you really want to start making money “while you sleep” you should seriously consider creating information products and selling them online.

How to Create Information Products

There are a few simple ways of how to make products to sell on line.

1. Adobe PDF e-books: The easiest to create, from a technical point of view, is an e-book in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. Today, most word processing applications, such as MS Word, have the ability to save your written document in PDF format. This can be anything from a 1-page checklist, 20-page special report or a 100-page booklet, or longer.
2. Audio Recordings:
   • Every computer sold these days has the ability to record audio. So, once you’ve written your e-book, you can simply read it into the computer and your have another version of your info product!
   • Another source of audio recordings can be a tele-seminar you can host. Typically you host a free tele-seminar as a lead-generation tool, but you can also sell tickets to the tele-seminar to double your efforts: you make money selling the tickets to the live event (which you then record), and then you have the recording to sell to anyone who either couldn’t make it to the live event, or it wasn’t practical for them to attend the live event because of a time-zone difference, e.g. if you’re based in Canada, and some of your audience is in Australia. You can invite industry-recognized experts and interview them, either as a two-way conversation with no audience or a live tele-seminar.
3. Video Recordings:
   • Using a web cam you can record a video of yourself talking about a subject of your expertise. If you can also mix in slides from a PowerPoint presentation, but to do this you will have to have some video-editing software, such as iMovie, available for the Mac. To take video to the next level, you can hire a videographer to record a live seminar or workshop that you host. Make sure you make enough money selling the tickets, so that your video recording and editing costs don’t eat too much of your profits. To keep your costs low, consider hiring a student from a local visual arts college. You really don’t need broadcast-quality video for your information product, because it will most likely be watched on a computer screen.
   • Another option for creating video is screen capture video. Using programs such as Camtasia (available for both Mac and PC), or a less capable but still OK for most uses Voila!

The easiest way I found of creating info products is having a tele-seminar. You invite one or two fellow experts on a subject and you interview them. Most conference call service providers will allow you to record the whole thing, and then you can download it to your computer as an mp3 file, and, presto!, you have your 1st info-product.

To take it to the next level, you can hire a transcriptionist to transcribe the spoken words into a text document, which you can further enhance by editing, adding your affiliate links to services/products mentioned in the interview. There, you have your second info-product.

How to Sell Your Information Products Online

Next, what you need to do is have a shopping cart plugin installed on your WordPress blog. If you don’t have a WordPress-based web site try this shopping cart software. Using your own shopping cart gives you the most flexibility, but requires some technical knowledge.

For payment processing I recommend PayPal. It’s been around a long time, is part of the big eBay group, and works world-wide. Good thing about PayPal is that it doesn’t cost anything unless you make a sale: there are no monthly fees or setup costs. All they take is a small percentage per each transaction, e.g $2.50-$3.20 per $100 sale, depending on your monthly volume.

Once you have your product created and loaded up to your site, it’s time to promote it. Write blog posts about it on your own site; looks for guest blogging opportunities; post to social media sites such as Linkedin, facebook, etc.

One of the best ways to make more sales is to recruit other people to sell it for you: your affiliate network. To create an affiliate program on your WordPress-based blog site I recommend this easy WP affiliate plugin. There are others, but this one is really affordable, and works well. If your web site is not running on WordPress try this affiliate software.

I knew that title will intrigue you, please feel free to comment.

These days we all rarely receive anything other than bills and junk mail in our mail boxes, so if you take the time to send a real greeting card to your clients, business partners and suppliers, you will stand out from the crowd.

Actually, it’s more like, you’ll be the only one there, no crowd :-)

I personally use an online service called SendOutCards, which gives me the flexibility of creating a single greeting card and then selecting a group of people to receive it. Groups such as: clients, suppliers, friends, family, etc.

SendOutCards prints, addresses, personalizes and sends real postcards, greeting cards, gifts, etc. through the postal system. This is not an e-card service.

SOC also allows me to enclose a gift with my greeting card, such as Starbucks or Tim Hortons gift cards, books, cookies, etc.

I also had them digitize my own handwriting and signatures into a font, so my cards look like they were handwritten. How cool is that!

The system is getting better and better. Now they also offer printing of calendars, posters, even business cards.

Are you using Linkedin’s relatively new feature called “Companies”?

You should create a Linkedin company page, even if you don’t have an incorporated business.

One of the advantages of having a company page on Linkedin is that you can create a services/products page, such as this one.

Once you’ve created a product page, you should invite your clients and contact on Linkedin to recommend your product or service.

This kind of recommendation is somewhat easier to get since all it takes is two clicks of a mouse, and writing a comment is optional, so your clients and contacts don’t have to spend time writing an endorsement.

Having a Linkedin company page also works well if you’re trying to separate your business from your own personal profile, and for building a brand.

To learn more about effective use of Linkedin for business, check out my Linkedin to the Max seminar. On this page you’ll also see how I use Linkedin’s feature to show how many recommendations my service page has received.

Linkedin, the free online business networking site used by more than 100 million users world wide, is becoming the place to be if you’re looking to grow your business with social media. Chances are you already have an account, but you may not know how to use Linkedin to generate leads and grow your business.

I’ve been using Linkedin for over 3 years now, and have figured out an easy and effective way to use it to generate about 20% of new business by investing just 10 minutes a day.

Since September 2010 I’ve been hosting a series of hands-on seminars on how to use Linkedin for business, which I call taking Linkedin to the Max! The next session is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 6, 10am-12:30pm. Start the “new business year” the right way and invest in the marketing of your business.

In 2-1/2 hours I will share with you the tips and tricks on how you, too, can use this free online resource to grow your business. Many business owners, just like you, have attended one of the 10 previous sessions of this workshop and recommend it to their connections on Linkedin. Check out their recommendations here.

Many more testimonials can be found on my blog.

It’s a small investment on your part and it’s going to work for you or you get your tuition back, no fuss. (I have yet to receive a refund request…)

Register on line or if you prefer to pay by cheque call 905-844-4247 or toll-free 1-877-ibiz-269 to reserve your seat (reg. bus. hours please)

I hope you can make it,

Boris Mahovac R.G.D.
e-Marketing Coach, Web Developer and Speaker

P.S.
Free bonus educational audio CD is included with your ticket.