29/06/2010
Feeling gratitude
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it ~ Kim Willis
27/06/2010
Instead of thinking about where you are
Instead of thinking about where you are, think about where you want to be. It takes twenty years of hard work to become an overnight success ~ Diana Rankin
Strategy is a style of thinking
Strategy is a style of thinking, a conscious and deliberate process, an intensive implementation system, the science of insuring future success ~ Pete Johnson
25/06/2010
It's amazing
It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world everyday always just exactly fits the newspaper ~ Kim Willis, Brisbane, Australia
24/06/2010
Är din strategi för användandet av social media, verkligen en strategi?
E-handelsindustrin är full av potential idag. Detta är förståeligt eftersom användandet av social media har växt snabba än införandet av televisionen. Med detta i minne, så flockas små internet företag runt social media. Det är till och med så att en rapport säger att småföretagens användande av social media har dubblerats sedan 2009. Här är några anledningar:
Tyvärr är detta resonemanget/logiska grunden som små internet företagare använder sig av när de ska börja med social media. Problemet med ett ”alla andra gör det” tillvägagångssätt, är att detta typiskt nog leder till en farlig social närvaro.
Låter det bekant? Om så är fallet, är det möjligt att din strategi för social media inte är en strategi alls egentligen. Istället liknar det mer en blandning av olika taktiker som är ihop slängda för att ge sken av att det är en strategi. Men vad är skillnaden egentligen.
En strategi är en omfattande plan för att uppnå ett långsiktigt mål. En taktik, å andra sidan, är en specifik handling inom en strategi ämnad att hjälpa till att nå det utsedda målet.
Nu när du känner till skillnaden, så följer här en steg för steg guide så att du kan försäkra dig om att dina insatser tillsist formar en faktisk strategi:
1.Lägg upp vilka mål du vill uppnå med social media
Vad vill du att ditt företag skall uppnå med social media i slutänden? Några idéer bör inkludera: Varumärkesmedvetenhet, genomtänkt ledarskap, möjligheter för nätverkande och fördelarna med sökmotoroptimering (search engine optimisation SEO) . Medan det är lockande att inkludera alla ovan punkter i din strategi, är det nödvändigt att du väljer endast en av punkterna och håller dig till den – andra positiva resultat kommer att sammanfalla med din växande sociala närvaro.
2.Välj rätt kanaler för att uppfylla dina mål
Nästa steg är att ha ett holistiskt tillvägagångssätt och integrera olika sociala medie kanaler för att uppnå dina uppsatta mål. Detta betyder att du behöver noggrant välja vilka taktiker du ska använda dig av under din kampanj – du kan inte vara överallt hela tiden, så välj de kanaler som du tror är bäst för dig för att kunna nå fram till ditt uppsatta mål.
Här är några aspekter på olika social taktiker som hjälp att vägleda dig när du ska koppla ihop olika taktiker.
En blogg:
En annan integral del av en strategi är att skapa en tidsram för att uppnå ditt mål. Genom att sätta månatliga, kvartalsvisa riktmärken, kan du på ett objektivt sätt spåra dina framsteg. Nyckeln för att genomföra detta på lättaste sätt är att etablera mindre mål inom varje taktiskt steg som i sin tur kan mätas mot din uppsatta tidsrams tidsfrist för slutförande.
För att ge ett exempel på detta: du kan rita upp riktmärken som inbegriper att du etablerar 5 nya relationer genom din blogg, samt lägger upp 8 artiklar på din blogg innan slutet av Juli. Innan slutet av Augusti skulle du kunna sätta upp följande riktlinjer: gästblogga hos 3 av dina nya relationer och lägg upp 2 utbildningsvideor på YouTube. Antalet kan förståss variera, men nu förstår du principen, eller hur?
När du tänker ut olika nya riktlinjer, så är det tillrådligt att du också ägnar viss tid åt att verkställa din redan uttänkta strategi. Allt för många små internetföretagare lanserar stora social kampanjer, som resulterar i att de är försvunna efter ca 6 veckor. Som all annan strategi, så tar social media sin tid, så var säker på att du är beredd på en långsiktig investering innan du hoppar i bassängen!
4. Sätt samman dina mätmetoder för att mäta dina framsteg
För att kunna konstruera en legitim strategi, måste du etablera en mätmetod för att kunna mäta dina framsteg. Det lättaste sättet att göra detta på är att skapa nyckeltal eller KPI’s för vart och ett av dina taktiker. Några KPI’s inkluderar: hur många Twitter följare man har, hur många YouTube besök du har, hur många som prenumererar på din blog och tillväxtplaner för varje mätmetod.
Det är lätt att falla i en fälla och sätta upp godtyckliga nummer för dina KPI’s. Att ha 500 följare på Twitter låter fint, men vad betyder det egentligen? Istället är det bättre att basera dina KPI’s på dina objektiv, så kanske det är mer realistiskt att sätta en KPI baserad på 50 inflytelserika Twitter följare och är mer i linje med en klart uttänkt mål.
Hur det än är, så var noga med att kartlägga dina resultat mot dina mätmetoder för att se hur det går i vart och ett av dina ”kanaler”. Detta kommer att hjälpa dig att göra riktiga justeringar under tiden som du är på väg mot ditt mål.
5. Distribuera, mät, justera
Hela meningen med att sätta upp mål och riktlinjer är nödvändigt för att försäkra sig om att den strategi är på rätt kurs. Om du överstiger dina KPI i en av kanalerna, och ligger efter i en annan kanal, så har du tillfälle att utvärdera ditt utförande och kunna göra ändringar om nödvändigt.
Det är helt ok att ändra kurs om man märker att den ursprungliga planen inte fungerar – för det fina med en riktigt uttänkt strategi är ju att man ska kunna göra ändringar utefter vägen för att bättre kunna uppnå framgång med social media.
Detta är en femstegs plan för att legitimisera dina insatser med social media. Om du inte har gått igenom denna process eller du har identifierat dig med ”alla andra gör det” mentaliteten, så kan jag nästan slå vad om att din strategi vad gäller social media inte är någon egentlig strategi ändå.
Som tur är, så är detta medium snabbföränderligt, och din online business kan snabbt fokusera om, för att maximera de förmåner som social media har att erbjuda.
- Social media är en kostnadseffektiv väg för att etablera relationer med sina kunder
- Social media underlättar och är en suverän källa för att få feed-back och konkurrenskraft
- Fans/följare av varumärkta sociala media sidor kommer mer sannolikt att handla från det företaget och rekommendera det till vänner och familj
- Alla andra gör det
Tyvärr är detta resonemanget/logiska grunden som små internet företagare använder sig av när de ska börja med social media. Problemet med ett ”alla andra gör det” tillvägagångssätt, är att detta typiskt nog leder till en farlig social närvaro.
Låter det bekant? Om så är fallet, är det möjligt att din strategi för social media inte är en strategi alls egentligen. Istället liknar det mer en blandning av olika taktiker som är ihop slängda för att ge sken av att det är en strategi. Men vad är skillnaden egentligen.
En strategi är en omfattande plan för att uppnå ett långsiktigt mål. En taktik, å andra sidan, är en specifik handling inom en strategi ämnad att hjälpa till att nå det utsedda målet.
Nu när du känner till skillnaden, så följer här en steg för steg guide så att du kan försäkra dig om att dina insatser tillsist formar en faktisk strategi:
1.Lägg upp vilka mål du vill uppnå med social media
Vad vill du att ditt företag skall uppnå med social media i slutänden? Några idéer bör inkludera: Varumärkesmedvetenhet, genomtänkt ledarskap, möjligheter för nätverkande och fördelarna med sökmotoroptimering (search engine optimisation SEO) . Medan det är lockande att inkludera alla ovan punkter i din strategi, är det nödvändigt att du väljer endast en av punkterna och håller dig till den – andra positiva resultat kommer att sammanfalla med din växande sociala närvaro.
2.Välj rätt kanaler för att uppfylla dina mål
Nästa steg är att ha ett holistiskt tillvägagångssätt och integrera olika sociala medie kanaler för att uppnå dina uppsatta mål. Detta betyder att du behöver noggrant välja vilka taktiker du ska använda dig av under din kampanj – du kan inte vara överallt hela tiden, så välj de kanaler som du tror är bäst för dig för att kunna nå fram till ditt uppsatta mål.
Här är några aspekter på olika social taktiker som hjälp att vägleda dig när du ska koppla ihop olika taktiker.
En blogg:
- Fungerar som ditt primära utlopp för att erbjuda färskt och relevant innehåll till din definierade publik
- Lägger fundamentet för ett jämnt spridande av unikt innehåll under veckan
- Etablerar ”ett ansikte” utåt för ditt varumärke genom att du lägger till fotografier och personlig information
- Underlättar en interaktiv gemenskap med inlägg på väggar, diskussions forum, idolfoton och liknande
- Ger en chans att expandera ett socialt nätverk och hitta influenser i specifika industrier
- Tillåter användare att dela ditt innehåll, inkluderande bloggposter, artiklar etc
- Tillhandahåller ett ställe för att bygga upp din trovärdighet och dela företagsinformation
- Tillhandahåller ett ställe där man kan gå med i olika relevanta grupper och gå samman med andra likasinnade
- Tillåter dig att återanvända kundvideor, produkthandledningsmaterial,, personliga omdömen (testimonials), etc.
- Tillhandahåller ett sätt att kommentera andra’s videoinlägg och nå ut till de med lika intressen
En annan integral del av en strategi är att skapa en tidsram för att uppnå ditt mål. Genom att sätta månatliga, kvartalsvisa riktmärken, kan du på ett objektivt sätt spåra dina framsteg. Nyckeln för att genomföra detta på lättaste sätt är att etablera mindre mål inom varje taktiskt steg som i sin tur kan mätas mot din uppsatta tidsrams tidsfrist för slutförande.
För att ge ett exempel på detta: du kan rita upp riktmärken som inbegriper att du etablerar 5 nya relationer genom din blogg, samt lägger upp 8 artiklar på din blogg innan slutet av Juli. Innan slutet av Augusti skulle du kunna sätta upp följande riktlinjer: gästblogga hos 3 av dina nya relationer och lägg upp 2 utbildningsvideor på YouTube. Antalet kan förståss variera, men nu förstår du principen, eller hur?
När du tänker ut olika nya riktlinjer, så är det tillrådligt att du också ägnar viss tid åt att verkställa din redan uttänkta strategi. Allt för många små internetföretagare lanserar stora social kampanjer, som resulterar i att de är försvunna efter ca 6 veckor. Som all annan strategi, så tar social media sin tid, så var säker på att du är beredd på en långsiktig investering innan du hoppar i bassängen!
4. Sätt samman dina mätmetoder för att mäta dina framsteg
För att kunna konstruera en legitim strategi, måste du etablera en mätmetod för att kunna mäta dina framsteg. Det lättaste sättet att göra detta på är att skapa nyckeltal eller KPI’s för vart och ett av dina taktiker. Några KPI’s inkluderar: hur många Twitter följare man har, hur många YouTube besök du har, hur många som prenumererar på din blog och tillväxtplaner för varje mätmetod.
Det är lätt att falla i en fälla och sätta upp godtyckliga nummer för dina KPI’s. Att ha 500 följare på Twitter låter fint, men vad betyder det egentligen? Istället är det bättre att basera dina KPI’s på dina objektiv, så kanske det är mer realistiskt att sätta en KPI baserad på 50 inflytelserika Twitter följare och är mer i linje med en klart uttänkt mål.
Hur det än är, så var noga med att kartlägga dina resultat mot dina mätmetoder för att se hur det går i vart och ett av dina ”kanaler”. Detta kommer att hjälpa dig att göra riktiga justeringar under tiden som du är på väg mot ditt mål.
5. Distribuera, mät, justera
Hela meningen med att sätta upp mål och riktlinjer är nödvändigt för att försäkra sig om att den strategi är på rätt kurs. Om du överstiger dina KPI i en av kanalerna, och ligger efter i en annan kanal, så har du tillfälle att utvärdera ditt utförande och kunna göra ändringar om nödvändigt.
Det är helt ok att ändra kurs om man märker att den ursprungliga planen inte fungerar – för det fina med en riktigt uttänkt strategi är ju att man ska kunna göra ändringar utefter vägen för att bättre kunna uppnå framgång med social media.
Detta är en femstegs plan för att legitimisera dina insatser med social media. Om du inte har gått igenom denna process eller du har identifierat dig med ”alla andra gör det” mentaliteten, så kan jag nästan slå vad om att din strategi vad gäller social media inte är någon egentlig strategi ändå.
Som tur är, så är detta medium snabbföränderligt, och din online business kan snabbt fokusera om, för att maximera de förmåner som social media har att erbjuda.
Hur hanterar man annonser på internet
Annonseringen på internet ökar kraftigt i vår snabbt föränderliga värld av idag. Och om vi vill medge det eller ej så spenderar marknadsförare nästan ingenting nu för tiden samt vill använda sig av de lägsta priserna eller helst ingen kostnad alls när de söker alternativa effektiva vägar för att föra ut sitt budskap. Om ditt största intresse är fokuserat på de trafikkällor som finns för marknadsföring på internet, så är denna artikel något som du ska läsa.
Trafikkällorna för att marknadsföra sig på internet kan sättas i samband med nätverkande marknadsföring på internet. Målen för att främja webbsidor och tjäna pengar på internet är liktydiga. Därmed blir följande användbart för att vidare förstå detta ämne.
När du ska välja de rätta trafikkällorna på internet, ska du se till att de stöds av en webbusiness som inriktar sig mer på kvalité än kvantitet. Detta är något av de viktigaste punkterna som marknadsförare oftast inte förstår.
De rätta källorna på internet måste också stödja sig på kloka budgetbeslut. För att spendera pengar måste du också generera pengar, och det skulle vara till stor fördel om pengarna som spenderas är värda den spridningseffekt som man förväntar sig att uppnå.
Det är också viktigt att kontrollera om den trafikkällan du valt är klientorienterad eller inte. Goda annonsföretag som fungerar effektivt, sätter alltid klienten främst. När annonsföretagen investerar i sina klienter får de klienternas lojalitet.
Men, eftersom internet utvecklas i ett högt tempo, och marknaden likaså, är det nödvändigt att du hela tiden omvärdera vad dina trafikkällor gör med sina portaler på internet. De måste vara flexibla, dynamiska och innovativa för att kunna mäta sig med den konstanta förändringen som sker.
Trafikkällorna för att marknadsföra sig på internet kan sättas i samband med nätverkande marknadsföring på internet. Målen för att främja webbsidor och tjäna pengar på internet är liktydiga. Därmed blir följande användbart för att vidare förstå detta ämne.
När du ska välja de rätta trafikkällorna på internet, ska du se till att de stöds av en webbusiness som inriktar sig mer på kvalité än kvantitet. Detta är något av de viktigaste punkterna som marknadsförare oftast inte förstår.
De rätta källorna på internet måste också stödja sig på kloka budgetbeslut. För att spendera pengar måste du också generera pengar, och det skulle vara till stor fördel om pengarna som spenderas är värda den spridningseffekt som man förväntar sig att uppnå.
Det är också viktigt att kontrollera om den trafikkällan du valt är klientorienterad eller inte. Goda annonsföretag som fungerar effektivt, sätter alltid klienten främst. När annonsföretagen investerar i sina klienter får de klienternas lojalitet.
Men, eftersom internet utvecklas i ett högt tempo, och marknaden likaså, är det nödvändigt att du hela tiden omvärdera vad dina trafikkällor gör med sina portaler på internet. De måste vara flexibla, dynamiska och innovativa för att kunna mäta sig med den konstanta förändringen som sker.
Time
Imagine there is a bank that deposits 86 400 dollars into your bank account every morning.
Nothing’s wrong, the deposits are legitimate and correctly made by an enormously rich beneficiary. But the bank doesn’t transfer the money from one day to another. Every night the money which you haven’t used that day is removed from your account. What would you do under such circumstances?
Of course you would use all the money put in your account daily, day after day wouldn’t you?. The great thing is that we all have such an account! But it is not money that is put into that account – the name of the account is TIME.
Every day you get 86 400 seconds. Every night all the time you haven’t used is removed forever. Nothing is transferred and you can’t use it in advance. Every day a new account is started on your behalf.
Every night unused time disappears. If you don’t use today’s deposit, the only one to blame is you yourself. There is no way back. You can't overdraft your account for tomorrow! You have to live in the “present” and use today’s deposit. Invest your time as wisely as you can so you gain the most in return in regard to health, happiness, success, wealth and wisdom.
Time passes. Make the best of your day TODAY!
To be able to understand the value of a YEAR – ask a student who missed their exams
To be able to understand the value of a MONTH, ask a pregnant woman who is overdue
To understand the value of a WEEK, ask the editor of a weekly magazine
To understand the value of an HOUR, ask the newly in love who are waiting to meet
To be able to understand the value of a MINUTE, ask the man who missed his flight
To be able to understand the value of a SECOND, ask the person who just avoided having a terrible car accident
To be able to understand the value of a MILLISECOND, ask the person who made it to second place at the Olympics.
Value every moment, time doesn’t wait for anyone.
Yesterday is history
Tomorrow is a mystery
Today is a gift
Nothing’s wrong, the deposits are legitimate and correctly made by an enormously rich beneficiary. But the bank doesn’t transfer the money from one day to another. Every night the money which you haven’t used that day is removed from your account. What would you do under such circumstances?
Of course you would use all the money put in your account daily, day after day wouldn’t you?. The great thing is that we all have such an account! But it is not money that is put into that account – the name of the account is TIME.
Every day you get 86 400 seconds. Every night all the time you haven’t used is removed forever. Nothing is transferred and you can’t use it in advance. Every day a new account is started on your behalf.
Every night unused time disappears. If you don’t use today’s deposit, the only one to blame is you yourself. There is no way back. You can't overdraft your account for tomorrow! You have to live in the “present” and use today’s deposit. Invest your time as wisely as you can so you gain the most in return in regard to health, happiness, success, wealth and wisdom.
Time passes. Make the best of your day TODAY!
To be able to understand the value of a YEAR – ask a student who missed their exams
To be able to understand the value of a MONTH, ask a pregnant woman who is overdue
To understand the value of a WEEK, ask the editor of a weekly magazine
To understand the value of an HOUR, ask the newly in love who are waiting to meet
To be able to understand the value of a MINUTE, ask the man who missed his flight
To be able to understand the value of a SECOND, ask the person who just avoided having a terrible car accident
To be able to understand the value of a MILLISECOND, ask the person who made it to second place at the Olympics.
Value every moment, time doesn’t wait for anyone.
Yesterday is history
Tomorrow is a mystery
Today is a gift
TID
Tänk dig att det finns en bank som varje morgon sätter in 86 400 kronor på ditt konto.
Tänk dig att det finns en bank som varje morgon sätter in 86 400 kronor på ditt konto. Det är inget fel. Insättningarna är lagliga och korrekt gjorda av en otroligt rik välgörare. Men banken överför inte pengarna till nästa dag. Varenda natt blir alla pengar som du inte använt den dagen borttagna från ditt konto. Vad skulle du göra i ett sådant tillfälle?
Självklart hade du använt alla pengarna den dagen de sattes in på ditt konto, dag efter dag. Och det roliga är att alla har vi ett sådant konto! Men det är inte pengar som sätts in på ditt konto eftersom namnet på kontot
är TID.Varje dag blir du utrustad med 86 400 sekunder. Varje natt försvinner all den tid du inte utnyttjat. Ingenting blir överfört till nästa dag och du kan aldrig använda något i förskott. Varenda dag startas ett nytt konto för
dig.
Varenda natt försvinner obrukad tid. Om du inte nyttjar dagens insättning. Så är det enbart ditt fel. Det finns ingen väg tillbaka.
Du kan inte övertrassera kontot i morgon! Du måste leva i nuet och förbruka dagens insättning. Investera tiden smart så att du får bästa möjliga avkastning i form av hälsa, lycka och framgång.
Tiden går. Gör det bästa av dagen idag!
För att förstå värdet av ett ÅR, fråga en student som missade examen.
För att förstå värdet av en MÅNAD, fråga en gravid kvinna som gått över tiden.
För att förstå värdet av en VECKA, fråga redaktören på en veckotidning.
För att förstå värdet av en TIMME, fråga de nyförälskade som väntar på att träffas.
För att förstå värdet av en MINUT, fråga han som kom för sent till flyget.
För att förstå värdet av en SEKUND, fråga han som precis lyckats undkomma en bilolycka.
För att förstå värdet av en MILLISEKUND, fråga han som kom tvåa i OS.
Värdesätt vartenda ögonblick och värdesätt det ändå mer när du delar det med en person som betyder mycket för dig, så mycket att du just delar din tid med denna person. Och tänk på att tiden inte väntar på någon.
Gårdagen är historia.
Morgondagen är ett mysterium.
Dagen idag är en gåva.
Det är därför den kallas för nuet.
Vänner är riktigt värdefulla juveler. De får dig att le och de önskar att du ska lyckas. De lyssnar på dig, de smickrar dig och de vill dela sina tankar med dig.
23/06/2010
10 Tips to Simplify Social Media uses:
Social media activities carried out on a large scale on regular basis need a structured workflow in order to avoid confusion and cumbersome tracking. The steps to simplify social media not only help you to optimize your time but also increase efficiency.
Social media simplifying can be accomplished by identifying the right widgets that provide you a quicker access to most of your SM sites at a click (these will be available as html codes which you have to include in your web page for the widget to be accessible in the form of a button or tool tip) or by using software tools by which you can automate your SM activities.
A few tips for social media simplification using few of the Freely available tools:
1. Hootsuite: For twitter social media promotion, schedule your tweets in such a way that they appear on the top during the high peak time. While using Hootsuite, select the most appropriate time of the day according to the time zone of your users, as Hootsuite is devised to cope any time difference that comes your way of promotion.
2. Dlvr.it:
Tweak your feed contents as and when there are new updates so that your users don't miss out on them and your competitors don't count on the same. Dlvr.it helps you with this task and makes your job easy with its superb sharing ability.
3. Hellotxt:
It can be used in smart ways to have your social media expand in big volumes. Connecting to your users via SMS and emails is a great way of social media aggregation.
4. LaterBro: If you have a majority of your user base on the social media of facebook and twitter, displaying ads targeting them would be fetching. LaterBro allows you to use your twitter or facebook accounts conveniently to register and get going by scheduling and saving your valuable time.
5. Ping.fm:
Sign up free with ping.fm so that you can at once ping social media from anywhere to seamlessly. Ping.fm has many features integrated into it like Google Buzz and other social media simplify tools like RSS feed. Apart from these, there is a long list of social bookmarking sites to go.
6. TweetDeck: Maintaining a social media dashboard gives you a greater control over the networking activities. Tweetdeck is one tool that is free to download and helps you to connect to your users across facebook, twitter, myspace, LinkedIn, foursquare, etc from a common ground. So, download that yellow crow button and you are just set to move on.
7. Futuretweets:
Reminding your users about pending action is a great way to keep things on track, but there may be times when you cannot supervise things yourself. At times like those, let your social media solve the issues of your unavailability by itself. Whether you are on a planned vacation or in the middle of an immediate contingency, you can use Futuretweets to do the regular and recurring updating or sending reminders to you and your users.
8. SocialOomph:
Previously known as Tweetlater, Socialoomph gives the power of scheduling, key word tracking, auto-messaging etc. for your twitter and facebook accounts. And it’s obviously one of the greatest free tools available online. Just create a free account and add your twitter account/s.
9. Twuffer:
Having an evergreen active status on twitter boosts your visibility. With Twuffer, keep yourself eternally active and responsive by scheduling post dated tweets so that you don’t miss out on any tiny activity anymore.
10. Share Buttons:
Get the coolest sharing button like “Add This" widget on your blog or important web pages with high traffic so that users can quickly book mark your pages on their active social media sites. This will NOT only save your readers’ time but also will increase your content publicity.
It takes just a little alertness and thoughtfulness to use the existing social media ‘simplify tools’ to your advantage. Any day, smart work scores over hard and laborious work.
Use these Social Media Simplify tools and you are sure to set fire to your visibility and brand recognition on these social platforms. So, keep networking … Socially!!!
Written by Syed. Visit Syed "the social media guru" here
Social media simplifying can be accomplished by identifying the right widgets that provide you a quicker access to most of your SM sites at a click (these will be available as html codes which you have to include in your web page for the widget to be accessible in the form of a button or tool tip) or by using software tools by which you can automate your SM activities.
A few tips for social media simplification using few of the Freely available tools:
1. Hootsuite: For twitter social media promotion, schedule your tweets in such a way that they appear on the top during the high peak time. While using Hootsuite, select the most appropriate time of the day according to the time zone of your users, as Hootsuite is devised to cope any time difference that comes your way of promotion.
2. Dlvr.it:
Tweak your feed contents as and when there are new updates so that your users don't miss out on them and your competitors don't count on the same. Dlvr.it helps you with this task and makes your job easy with its superb sharing ability.
3. Hellotxt:
It can be used in smart ways to have your social media expand in big volumes. Connecting to your users via SMS and emails is a great way of social media aggregation.
4. LaterBro: If you have a majority of your user base on the social media of facebook and twitter, displaying ads targeting them would be fetching. LaterBro allows you to use your twitter or facebook accounts conveniently to register and get going by scheduling and saving your valuable time.
5. Ping.fm:
Sign up free with ping.fm so that you can at once ping social media from anywhere to seamlessly. Ping.fm has many features integrated into it like Google Buzz and other social media simplify tools like RSS feed. Apart from these, there is a long list of social bookmarking sites to go.
6. TweetDeck: Maintaining a social media dashboard gives you a greater control over the networking activities. Tweetdeck is one tool that is free to download and helps you to connect to your users across facebook, twitter, myspace, LinkedIn, foursquare, etc from a common ground. So, download that yellow crow button and you are just set to move on.
7. Futuretweets:
Reminding your users about pending action is a great way to keep things on track, but there may be times when you cannot supervise things yourself. At times like those, let your social media solve the issues of your unavailability by itself. Whether you are on a planned vacation or in the middle of an immediate contingency, you can use Futuretweets to do the regular and recurring updating or sending reminders to you and your users.
8. SocialOomph:
Previously known as Tweetlater, Socialoomph gives the power of scheduling, key word tracking, auto-messaging etc. for your twitter and facebook accounts. And it’s obviously one of the greatest free tools available online. Just create a free account and add your twitter account/s.
9. Twuffer:
Having an evergreen active status on twitter boosts your visibility. With Twuffer, keep yourself eternally active and responsive by scheduling post dated tweets so that you don’t miss out on any tiny activity anymore.
10. Share Buttons:
Get the coolest sharing button like “Add This" widget on your blog or important web pages with high traffic so that users can quickly book mark your pages on their active social media sites. This will NOT only save your readers’ time but also will increase your content publicity.
It takes just a little alertness and thoughtfulness to use the existing social media ‘simplify tools’ to your advantage. Any day, smart work scores over hard and laborious work.
Use these Social Media Simplify tools and you are sure to set fire to your visibility and brand recognition on these social platforms. So, keep networking … Socially!!!
Written by Syed. Visit Syed "the social media guru" here
There are 4 things you can never recover:
There are 4 things you can never recover: The stone..after the throw. The word..after it's said. The occasion..after it's missed. The time..after it's gone ~ Unknown
Man cannot discover new oceans...
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Andre Gide
Obstacles are frightful things...
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
Only those who risk going too far
Only those who risk going too far - can possibly find out how far they can go." ~ T.S. Eliot
Why an online business?
If you are tired of the rat race and thinking about starting an online business there are a few things you should consider before making the leap into entrepreneurship. There are a lot of people that are under the impression that they can become online millionaires overnight since they are opening up their online business to the world.
While it is possible to break out of the daily grind and become financially independent with an online business, you must remember that setting up and running an online business takes effort, commitment and perseverance.
It takes just as much energy and effort to run an online business as it does to run a brick and mortar business and it requires online business planning and the skills necessary to carry out your goals and objectives. Let’s take a look at some of the things you should consider when starting an online business.
Entrepreneurial Traits
When it comes to starting an online business it is important to assess your business planning skills and personal attributes that are necessary for building a successful online business. The traits of an entrepreneur are much different than the traits of a person who works for someone else.
If you are a self starter, tend to maintain a positive way of thinking, and can commit to the end goal then you are well on your way to succeeding with an online business.
You must also have the ability to solve problems as they come up and not be easily discouraged with obstacles that will inevitably crop up.
Remaining consistent and disciplined every step of the way will help you to take the online tools of the trade and use them to create a strategic business and marketing plan. The business and marketing plan will be the compass that guides your online business to success.
Business Planning
Creating a business plan will be the lifeline to running a successful online business. Although some of the online business tools make it easier to set up a business as opposed to the offline world, you still have to have specific goals outlined in your business plan and stick to each one with a vengeance.
The business plan will be your blueprint to success and will help you to set short term and long term goals that will ensure your success every step of the way. By having a business plan in front of you it is also easier to see where your strengths and weaknesses are so you can come up with strategies for dealing with obstacles and problems that will come up along the way on your road to success.
A business plan will also demonstrate to others that you are serious about succeeding with your online business and help you to secure financing or attract investors should you decider to pursue this route. Your business plan will include a vision of what you plan to achieve with your online business, a clearly outlined business profile, demographics, and a cash flow statement. The initial plan will serve as a blueprint which you can update as your business takes off and grows.
Marketing Plan
The marketing plan will clearly define your strategies for reaching your target audience. To write an effective marketing plan you must get to know your market and their reason for purchasing your product or service. Researching your market requires a significant investment of your time however; this will come back to you tenfold because you will know exactly who your audience is, what they are searching for, and how they think.
Knowing your market will help you describe the data in detail for your marketing plan and help you identify who your best prospects are and why. If you know your market well you can create a successful marketing plan that will help you to achieve your business goals and objectives.
Just like the business plan, you should continually revisit the marketing plan so you can keep in touch with your goals and objectives as well as make any necessary changes as your online business grows.
Without careful planning you cannot build a successful online business on a wobbly foundation. A lot of online businesses fail through misconception on the part of the business owner that you simply set up a website, do a little advertising, and then watch the sales roll in. Nothing could be farther from the truth!
Although some of the tools that are offered online make setting up a business more cost effective, in a lot of ways starting an online business is no different than running a successful business offline. It takes a significant investment of time, steady steps that are measurable, and a lot of perseverance.
I have compiled valuable resources, tips and tools that I will be sharing with you when you subscribe to my newsletter and receive your free report. My goal is to guide you through the mountain of information available to everyone looking for business opportunities online, and allow you to perform a thorough due diligence.
Respectfully Dedicated To Your Success!
Written by: Derek Bayer
While it is possible to break out of the daily grind and become financially independent with an online business, you must remember that setting up and running an online business takes effort, commitment and perseverance.
It takes just as much energy and effort to run an online business as it does to run a brick and mortar business and it requires online business planning and the skills necessary to carry out your goals and objectives. Let’s take a look at some of the things you should consider when starting an online business.
Entrepreneurial Traits
When it comes to starting an online business it is important to assess your business planning skills and personal attributes that are necessary for building a successful online business. The traits of an entrepreneur are much different than the traits of a person who works for someone else.
If you are a self starter, tend to maintain a positive way of thinking, and can commit to the end goal then you are well on your way to succeeding with an online business.
You must also have the ability to solve problems as they come up and not be easily discouraged with obstacles that will inevitably crop up.
Remaining consistent and disciplined every step of the way will help you to take the online tools of the trade and use them to create a strategic business and marketing plan. The business and marketing plan will be the compass that guides your online business to success.
Business Planning
Creating a business plan will be the lifeline to running a successful online business. Although some of the online business tools make it easier to set up a business as opposed to the offline world, you still have to have specific goals outlined in your business plan and stick to each one with a vengeance.
The business plan will be your blueprint to success and will help you to set short term and long term goals that will ensure your success every step of the way. By having a business plan in front of you it is also easier to see where your strengths and weaknesses are so you can come up with strategies for dealing with obstacles and problems that will come up along the way on your road to success.
A business plan will also demonstrate to others that you are serious about succeeding with your online business and help you to secure financing or attract investors should you decider to pursue this route. Your business plan will include a vision of what you plan to achieve with your online business, a clearly outlined business profile, demographics, and a cash flow statement. The initial plan will serve as a blueprint which you can update as your business takes off and grows.
Marketing Plan
The marketing plan will clearly define your strategies for reaching your target audience. To write an effective marketing plan you must get to know your market and their reason for purchasing your product or service. Researching your market requires a significant investment of your time however; this will come back to you tenfold because you will know exactly who your audience is, what they are searching for, and how they think.
Knowing your market will help you describe the data in detail for your marketing plan and help you identify who your best prospects are and why. If you know your market well you can create a successful marketing plan that will help you to achieve your business goals and objectives.
Just like the business plan, you should continually revisit the marketing plan so you can keep in touch with your goals and objectives as well as make any necessary changes as your online business grows.
Without careful planning you cannot build a successful online business on a wobbly foundation. A lot of online businesses fail through misconception on the part of the business owner that you simply set up a website, do a little advertising, and then watch the sales roll in. Nothing could be farther from the truth!
Although some of the tools that are offered online make setting up a business more cost effective, in a lot of ways starting an online business is no different than running a successful business offline. It takes a significant investment of time, steady steps that are measurable, and a lot of perseverance.
I have compiled valuable resources, tips and tools that I will be sharing with you when you subscribe to my newsletter and receive your free report. My goal is to guide you through the mountain of information available to everyone looking for business opportunities online, and allow you to perform a thorough due diligence.
Respectfully Dedicated To Your Success!
Written by: Derek Bayer
Fantastic photo exhibition
Steve McCurry has been appointed as one of the worlds most prominent photographers. He was the one who took the fantastic portrait of an Afghan girl that we have seen on the cover of National Geographic. That photo and many more are now been shown at the exhibition Retrospective at the the Birmingham Museum and Art gallery in the UK. Check out here
Get yourself an effective and inspiring goal achievement system
visionboard.tv is an effective and inspiring goal achievement system finally available to you on the Internet. You will find it extremely user friendly. It truly helps you establish, visualize and actually reach your most important goals and desired outcomes. It even allows you to effortlessly share your goals and dreams with important people in your life!
22/06/2010
12 Ways to Make Your Blog Posts more Credible
Today’s educated readers want information from a credible, trusted source, says researcher and writer Michael Low. When you convince them you are that source, they will believe and read what you have to say.
Here are twelve ways to make your blog posts more credible:
After taking your new computer monitor out of the box the first thing you will notice is a small bag containing three cords. One cord is blue, one is red, and the other black. Take the blue cord and plug the USB end into your computer, plug the other end (color coded orange) into the left side of the monitor in the port labeled “audio in”. And so on.
Michael Low is a writer, researcher and entrepreneur. He’s also the writer of a free ebook titled How To Write Articles People Want to Read
Here are twelve ways to make your blog posts more credible:
1. Use rich, vivid detail.
When you use rich, vivid language, words that paint vivid pictures in your reader’s mind, she tends to believe what you are saying because she can see it for herself. After all, seeing, as they say, is believing!2. Use scientific or technical language.
I know this goes against the grain of what most people suggest. But depending on the type of article you are writing, it might be appropriate to use scientific or technical terminology that demonstrates (without over doing it) your grasp — and thus, your authority — on the topic.3. Use sequencing or process description.
In some cases, it may be appropriate to describe the steps involved in achieving an outcome. A list of numbered steps would be a good example of this. Or even a simple description in a single paragraph such as:After taking your new computer monitor out of the box the first thing you will notice is a small bag containing three cords. One cord is blue, one is red, and the other black. Take the blue cord and plug the USB end into your computer, plug the other end (color coded orange) into the left side of the monitor in the port labeled “audio in”. And so on.
4. Use charts, diagrams and graphs.
There’s a saying in selling (where credibility is paramount) that “nothing sells like a demonstration”. The saying holds true in building the credibility for your article content too. If the content of your article lends itself to demonstration via a chart, graph or diagram you should use it.5. Use a photograph depicting the article topic in action.
This may not always be possible. But have you noticed how the news media use intriguing photos to pull you into the article by attracting your attention? Photos can be as equally powerful when used in your articles to add credibility to your message.6. Use awards, certificates or qualifications.
Have you any special certificates or awards for achievement that support your credibility as an author or that support the message you are writing about? If so, use them in your articles. The majority of the masses still regard qualifications as a measure of a persons knowledge and trustworthy-ness.7. Use testimonials and endorsements.
If you say it it’s hearsay. If someone else says it it’s probably true. So use testimonials or endorsements in your articles, especially from a recognized source. If it’s written about in the New York Times or if someone famous backs it up, mention it in your article.8. Use a logical flow of information, especially logical argument.
Start your article with a strong point your reader will agree with, then carefully walk the reader through a series of “facts” or flow of information that leads them to the conclusion you want them to accept. In this way, you can build a bridge from the things your reader already believes to the things you want them to accept and trust.9. Use personal stories or anecdotes.
It’s pretty hard to argue with a true story about something that happened to you or someone you know (or even someone famous). If you have stories or anecdotes relevant to the point you want to make in your article, use them.10. Use case studies — especially examples from the lives of people your reader can relate to.
If there’s a good documented case study of the point you want to make, use it in your article. Bring out the detail of the people and places involved and your argument becomes even stronger.11. Use meaningful specifics, not vague generalities.
There’s a certain attractive quality in the specific. The more specific facts and details you use the more people feel what you’re saying is accurate. For example, avoid using phrases like: “Many years ago”. Instead say, “On the 26th May, 2005, a week after my Dad’s birthday …”12. Use examples to illustrate your point.
Even in conversation it helps if you give your listener examples of what you are saying to help him or her understand your message. It’s no different in writing articles. If you want to see the true power of examples as a “communication improver,” try deliberately explaining yourself through examples in the next conversation you have with someone at home or at the office.Michael Low is a writer, researcher and entrepreneur. He’s also the writer of a free ebook titled How To Write Articles People Want to Read
21/06/2010
One's mind, once stretched by a new idea...
One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
20/06/2010
Do not lose hold of your dreams or asprirations.
“Do not lose hold of your dreams or asprirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
Bite off more than you can chew?
Share
"I have always admired the ability to bite off more than one can chew and then chew it" - William DeMille
"I have always admired the ability to bite off more than one can chew and then chew it" - William DeMille
Some people are at the top of the ladder
Share
Some people are at the top of the ladder, some are in the middle, still more are at the bottom, and a whole lot more don't even know there is a ladder ~ Robert H. Schuller
Some people are at the top of the ladder, some are in the middle, still more are at the bottom, and a whole lot more don't even know there is a ladder ~ Robert H. Schuller
Dealing with internet adverstising
Internet advertising is rapidly growing in our fast-paced world today. And whether we admit it or not, more and more marketers spends nearly nothing and yet vividly demands to utilize the most low-cost and no-cost effective traffic sources available online. If your major interest focuses on Internet online marketing traffic source, then this article must be for you.
Another important thing to point is to check whether the traffic source chosen is client-oriented or not. It can be well-traced that those advertising companies functioning effectively until of this day has always this track record of keeping their clients first. Investing times on clients means gaining loyalty in the advertising world.
Internet online marketing traffic source is as well related to network marketing online. Its goals of promoting websites and making money on the Internet are synonymous. Hence, the following may be found useful for further understanding about this topic.
In choosing the right source of traffic online, see to it that it supports a web business stressing more on the quality rather than the quantity. This is one of those neglected points that marketers fail to understand.
The right web source online must also depend upon wise budgeting. There actually is a good point out of the lines that in spending money, you also have to make money but it would be of a great advantage if the money being spent is worth the spill.
Another important thing to point is to check whether the traffic source chosen is client-oriented or not. It can be well-traced that those advertising companies functioning effectively until of this day has always this track record of keeping their clients first. Investing times on clients means gaining loyalty in the advertising world.
However, because the Internet evolves, the market evolves, it is a need that you constantly re-evaluate what your marketing traffic source is doing along the portals of the web. It must also be flexible, dynamic and innovative enough to cope up the demands of constant change.
Written by: Shian Mc Collough
19/06/2010
It is not what you do that matters ...
Share
It is not what you do that matters, it is what you don't do that
really matters at the end of the day ~ Anonymous
It is not what you do that matters, it is what you don't do that
really matters at the end of the day ~ Anonymous
18/06/2010
Is your social media strategy really a strategy?
The ecommerce industry is aflutter with social media buzz. This is understandable – social media usage has grown faster than the adoption of television. With this in mind, many small online businesses are flocking to social media – in fact, one report states that utilization of social media by small businesses has doubled since 2009. Here’s a few reasons why:
Unfortunately this is the rationale many small online business owners use when entering the social space. But the problem with an “everyone else is doing it” approach is it typically leads to a haphazard social presence.
Sound familiar? If so, it’s quite possible that your social media strategy isn’t a strategy at all. Instead, it’s more of a mix of tactics thrown together under the guise of a strategy. But what’s the difference?
A strategy is a comprehensive plan meant to achieve a long-term objective. A tactic, on the other hand, is a specific action within a strategy intended to help reach the designated goal.
Now that you know the distinction, here’s a step by step guide to ensure your social media efforts form an actual strategy:
1. Set your social media objectives.
What do you ultimately want your business to achieve from social media? Some ideas include: brand awareness, thought leadership, networking opportunities and SEO benefits. While it’s tempting to set your strategic objective to “all of the above,” you need to pick one and stick with it – other positive results will coincide with your growing social presence.
2. Choose the right channels to meet your objectives.
Next, take a holistic approach of integrating various social media channels to achieve your set objective. This means that you need to carefully select which tactics to use within your campaign – you can’t be everywhere at once, so choose the channels that will best help reach your goal.
Here’s some aspects of various social tactics to help guide your pairings:
Blog:
3. Establish a timeline for completion.
Another integral part of any strategy is creating a timeline to reach your goal. By setting monthly or quarterly benchmarks, you can objectively gauge your progress. The key to this step is establishing smaller goals within each tactic for measurement against your deadline.
Going back to our thought leadership example, you could set benchmarks of establishing 5 blog relationships and posting 8 articles on your blog by the end of July. And by the end of August you could set a benchmark of making 3 guest blog appearances and posting 2 educational videos on YouTube. Of course the numbers will vary on a case by case basis, but you get the idea.
While creating your benchmarks, it’s advised to dedicate a certain amount of time to executing your strategy. Far too many small online business owners strongly launch a social campaign, only to drop off the face of the earth 6 weeks later. Just like any strategy, social media takes time, so make sure you’re ready to make the long-term investment before diving in the pool.
4. Put together your metrics.
To provide a legitimate strategy, you must establish metrics to gauge your progress. The easiest way to do so is creating key performance indicators, or KPIs, for each of your tactics. Some KPIs include: number of Twitter followers, number of YouTube views, number of blog subscribers and growth patterns for each metric.
It’s easy to fall into a trap of setting arbitrary numbers for your KPIs. Hitting 500 Twitter followers sounds nice, but what does that really mean? Instead, it’s best to base your KPIs on your objectives, so perhaps setting a KPI of adding 50 influential Twitter followers is better aligned with a thought leadership goal.
Whatever the case, be sure to track results against your metrics to see how you’re performing in each of your channels – this will allow you to make proper adjustments.
5. Deploy, measure, adjust.
The entire point of setting objectives and benchmarking them is to make sure that your strategy stays on course. If you’re exceeding your KPIs in one channel and are way behind in another, you have an opportunity to evaluate your execution and make alterations as necessary.
It’s okay to shift course if things aren’t working as planned – the beauty of a true strategy is that you can make changes along the way to better achieve social media success.
And there you have it – a five step plan to legitimize your social media efforts! If you haven’t gone through this process or you identified with the “everybody else is doing it” mentality, it’s a good bet that your social media strategy isn’t really a strategy after all.
Fortunately, in this ever-evolving medium, your online business can quickly adjust to better maximize the bountiful benefits social media has to offer.
Happy selling!
Author: Matt Winn, Marketing Associate, Volusion
- Social media is a cost-effective way to establish relationships with customers.
- Social media serves as a great source of open feedback and competitor intelligence.
- Fans/Followers of branded social media pages are more likely to buy from that company and recommend it to friends and family.
- Everyone else is doing it.
Unfortunately this is the rationale many small online business owners use when entering the social space. But the problem with an “everyone else is doing it” approach is it typically leads to a haphazard social presence.
Sound familiar? If so, it’s quite possible that your social media strategy isn’t a strategy at all. Instead, it’s more of a mix of tactics thrown together under the guise of a strategy. But what’s the difference?
A strategy is a comprehensive plan meant to achieve a long-term objective. A tactic, on the other hand, is a specific action within a strategy intended to help reach the designated goal.
Now that you know the distinction, here’s a step by step guide to ensure your social media efforts form an actual strategy:
1. Set your social media objectives.
What do you ultimately want your business to achieve from social media? Some ideas include: brand awareness, thought leadership, networking opportunities and SEO benefits. While it’s tempting to set your strategic objective to “all of the above,” you need to pick one and stick with it – other positive results will coincide with your growing social presence.
2. Choose the right channels to meet your objectives.
Next, take a holistic approach of integrating various social media channels to achieve your set objective. This means that you need to carefully select which tactics to use within your campaign – you can’t be everywhere at once, so choose the channels that will best help reach your goal.
Here’s some aspects of various social tactics to help guide your pairings:
Blog:
- Serves as premier outlet for offering fresh content that’s pertinent to your defined audience
- Lays foundation for spreading unique content across the week
- Establishes a “face” for your brand via addition of photos and personal information
- Facilitates an interactive community with wall posts, discussion boards, fan photos and likes
- Presents chance to expand social network and find influencers in specific industries
- Lets users share your content, including blog posts, articles, etc.
- Provides location to establish business credibility and share business information
- Offers place to join relevant groups and make connections with other thought leaders
- Allows for repurposing of customer videos, product tutorials, testimonials, etc.
- Supplies vehicle to comment on others’ videos and reach out to those with similar interests
3. Establish a timeline for completion.
Another integral part of any strategy is creating a timeline to reach your goal. By setting monthly or quarterly benchmarks, you can objectively gauge your progress. The key to this step is establishing smaller goals within each tactic for measurement against your deadline.
Going back to our thought leadership example, you could set benchmarks of establishing 5 blog relationships and posting 8 articles on your blog by the end of July. And by the end of August you could set a benchmark of making 3 guest blog appearances and posting 2 educational videos on YouTube. Of course the numbers will vary on a case by case basis, but you get the idea.
While creating your benchmarks, it’s advised to dedicate a certain amount of time to executing your strategy. Far too many small online business owners strongly launch a social campaign, only to drop off the face of the earth 6 weeks later. Just like any strategy, social media takes time, so make sure you’re ready to make the long-term investment before diving in the pool.
4. Put together your metrics.
To provide a legitimate strategy, you must establish metrics to gauge your progress. The easiest way to do so is creating key performance indicators, or KPIs, for each of your tactics. Some KPIs include: number of Twitter followers, number of YouTube views, number of blog subscribers and growth patterns for each metric.
It’s easy to fall into a trap of setting arbitrary numbers for your KPIs. Hitting 500 Twitter followers sounds nice, but what does that really mean? Instead, it’s best to base your KPIs on your objectives, so perhaps setting a KPI of adding 50 influential Twitter followers is better aligned with a thought leadership goal.
Whatever the case, be sure to track results against your metrics to see how you’re performing in each of your channels – this will allow you to make proper adjustments.
5. Deploy, measure, adjust.
The entire point of setting objectives and benchmarking them is to make sure that your strategy stays on course. If you’re exceeding your KPIs in one channel and are way behind in another, you have an opportunity to evaluate your execution and make alterations as necessary.
It’s okay to shift course if things aren’t working as planned – the beauty of a true strategy is that you can make changes along the way to better achieve social media success.
And there you have it – a five step plan to legitimize your social media efforts! If you haven’t gone through this process or you identified with the “everybody else is doing it” mentality, it’s a good bet that your social media strategy isn’t really a strategy after all.
Fortunately, in this ever-evolving medium, your online business can quickly adjust to better maximize the bountiful benefits social media has to offer.
Happy selling!
Author: Matt Winn, Marketing Associate, Volusion
Time is free, but it's priceless.
“Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it." ~ Harvey MacKay
17/06/2010
How to Craft a Blog Post – 10 Crucial Points to Pause
It hits you like a TON of BRICKS! It’s an idea for that KILLER blog post that is just bound to bring you all the traffic that you’ve ever dreamed of.
With the idea fresh in your mind you sit down at your keyboard and BANG it out – desperate to hit publish as quickly as you can for fear that someone else will beat you to the PUNCH!
As SMOKE rises from your keyboard you complete your post, quickly add a title to it and proudly hit PUBLISH!
Visions of an avalanche of visitors, incoming links and comments swirl before you.
But then…
Reality hits you like a SLAP in the face. There are few visitors, no comments and no links. It’s not a KILLER post – it’s DEAD.
Ever had that experience?
I have – many many times over.
Today I want to start a series of posts that will walk you through an alternative workflow for constructing a blog post – one that takes…. time.
If there’s one lesson that I’ve learnt about writing for the web it’s that a key element to writing successful blog posts is that in most cases they take time to CREATE.
I emphasize ‘create’ because I think too often as bloggers we ‘PUNCH’ out content as though we’re in a race or under some kind of deadline. It’s almost like we’re on a production line at times – unfortunately the posts we write often reflect this.
In this series I want to suggest an alternative approach – the crafting (or creation) of content.
This process is a more thoughtful process that is about crafting words and ideas – shaping posts into content that take readers on a journey.
To kick off this series I want to suggest 10 points to pause at when writing a post on your blog. I’ll include a link to each post that follows in this series as I update them.
Instead of rushing through a post – I find that if I pause at these key moments my post rises to a new level of quality and posts tend to get more traction with readers. They don’t guarantee the perfect post – but they certainly take you a step closer to a good one.
1.Choosing a Topic – take a little extra time defining your topic and the post will flow better and you’ll develop something that matters to readers.
2.Crafting Your Post’s Title – perhaps the most crucial part of actually getting readers to start reading your post when they see it in an RSS reader or search engine results page.
3.The Opening Line – first impressions matter. Once you’ve got someone past your post’s title your opening line draws them deeper into your post.
4.Your ‘point/s’ (making your posts matter) - a post needs to have a point. If it’s just an intriguing title and opening you’ll get people to read – but if the post doesn’t ‘matter’ to them it’ll never get traction.
5.Call to Action – driving readers to do something cements a post in their mind and helps them to apply it and helps you to make a deeper connection with them.
6.Adding Depth – before publishing your post – ask yourself how you could add depth to it and make it even more useful and memorable to readers?
7.Quality Control and Polishing of Posts – small mistakes can be barriers to engagement for some readers. Spending time fixing errors and making a post ‘look’ good can take it to the next level.
8.Timing of Publishing Your Post – timing can be everything – strategic timing of posts can ensure the right people see it at the right time.
9.Post Promotion – having hit publish – don’t just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Giving it a few strategic ‘nudges’ can increase the exposure it gets exponentially.
10.Conversation – often the real action happens once your post is published and being interacted with by readers and other bloggers. Taking time to dialogue can be very fruitful.
Taking extra time at each of these 10 points looks different for me in every post that I do – but I believe that every extra moment spent of these tasks pays off.
Some times the pause I take in one step will be momentary while in others it could take hours or even days to get it just right. Sometimes the above process happens quite automatically and other times I need to force myself to stop and ponder something like a title or the timing of a post.
Each of the 10 points above have much more that could be said about them so over the weeks I’ll be tackling each in turn in the hope that we can have some good discussion and sharing of ideas around them. I’ll link to each of them from within the list above as I release the posts.
For each point I hope to give some insight into how I tackle them and will share a few practical tips and examples of what I’ve done that has worked (and not worked). Don’t expect posts each day on this series – like all good things – this will take us some time!
Written by: Darren Rouse
With the idea fresh in your mind you sit down at your keyboard and BANG it out – desperate to hit publish as quickly as you can for fear that someone else will beat you to the PUNCH!
As SMOKE rises from your keyboard you complete your post, quickly add a title to it and proudly hit PUBLISH!
Visions of an avalanche of visitors, incoming links and comments swirl before you.
But then…
Reality hits you like a SLAP in the face. There are few visitors, no comments and no links. It’s not a KILLER post – it’s DEAD.
Ever had that experience?
I have – many many times over.
Today I want to start a series of posts that will walk you through an alternative workflow for constructing a blog post – one that takes…. time.
If there’s one lesson that I’ve learnt about writing for the web it’s that a key element to writing successful blog posts is that in most cases they take time to CREATE.
I emphasize ‘create’ because I think too often as bloggers we ‘PUNCH’ out content as though we’re in a race or under some kind of deadline. It’s almost like we’re on a production line at times – unfortunately the posts we write often reflect this.
In this series I want to suggest an alternative approach – the crafting (or creation) of content.
This process is a more thoughtful process that is about crafting words and ideas – shaping posts into content that take readers on a journey.
To kick off this series I want to suggest 10 points to pause at when writing a post on your blog. I’ll include a link to each post that follows in this series as I update them.
Instead of rushing through a post – I find that if I pause at these key moments my post rises to a new level of quality and posts tend to get more traction with readers. They don’t guarantee the perfect post – but they certainly take you a step closer to a good one.
1.Choosing a Topic – take a little extra time defining your topic and the post will flow better and you’ll develop something that matters to readers.
2.Crafting Your Post’s Title – perhaps the most crucial part of actually getting readers to start reading your post when they see it in an RSS reader or search engine results page.
3.The Opening Line – first impressions matter. Once you’ve got someone past your post’s title your opening line draws them deeper into your post.
4.Your ‘point/s’ (making your posts matter) - a post needs to have a point. If it’s just an intriguing title and opening you’ll get people to read – but if the post doesn’t ‘matter’ to them it’ll never get traction.
5.Call to Action – driving readers to do something cements a post in their mind and helps them to apply it and helps you to make a deeper connection with them.
6.Adding Depth – before publishing your post – ask yourself how you could add depth to it and make it even more useful and memorable to readers?
7.Quality Control and Polishing of Posts – small mistakes can be barriers to engagement for some readers. Spending time fixing errors and making a post ‘look’ good can take it to the next level.
8.Timing of Publishing Your Post – timing can be everything – strategic timing of posts can ensure the right people see it at the right time.
9.Post Promotion – having hit publish – don’t just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Giving it a few strategic ‘nudges’ can increase the exposure it gets exponentially.
10.Conversation – often the real action happens once your post is published and being interacted with by readers and other bloggers. Taking time to dialogue can be very fruitful.
Taking extra time at each of these 10 points looks different for me in every post that I do – but I believe that every extra moment spent of these tasks pays off.
Some times the pause I take in one step will be momentary while in others it could take hours or even days to get it just right. Sometimes the above process happens quite automatically and other times I need to force myself to stop and ponder something like a title or the timing of a post.
Each of the 10 points above have much more that could be said about them so over the weeks I’ll be tackling each in turn in the hope that we can have some good discussion and sharing of ideas around them. I’ll link to each of them from within the list above as I release the posts.
For each point I hope to give some insight into how I tackle them and will share a few practical tips and examples of what I’ve done that has worked (and not worked). Don’t expect posts each day on this series – like all good things – this will take us some time!
Written by: Darren Rouse
12 Tips for Calls to Action:
So how do you effectively use Calls to Action on your blog?
Let me say that the following Call to Action Tips come out of my own experience of experimenting with this type of thing. I’m by no means a copy writing expert (although am about to start some training in it) and would love to learn from your own experiences of Calls to Action so please do feel free to share you own experience in comments below.
1. Know what Action you want Readers to take
Sounds almost too basic to include in these tips but I think it’s really important to be clear about what you’re trying to achieve with your blog post. This really builds on the last post in this series which talked about making your posts matter and identifying purposes for posts. What’s the purpose of your post? What do you want readers to do as a result of reading the post? Answer these questions before writing your call to action and you’ll be in a great position to write an effective one.
2. One Call to Action Per Post
Early in my own experiments with Calls to Action I wrote a post that was linked to by the uber blog Slashdot. It sent more traffic to my blog than I’d ever seen before and so I decided to update the post with some calls to action. Problem was that I stuffed so many of them into the post that no one did any of them. I asked for comments, pointed to my RSS feed and newsletter, asked for people to link to the post… etc. I find that I have a lot more luck with just one call to action per post – it gives people a simple next step rather than overwhelming them with choices.
3. Make it a Win/Win Call to Action
There’s nothing wrong with benefiting from the actions that your readers take on your blog. Don’t be afraid to ask things of them – but do make sure that what you ask of them will have an upside not only for you but for them.
4. Make the Action Simple and Achievable
I was recently asked by a reader to look at a competition that they were running on their blog and to give my opinion on why no one had entered it. Upon looking at the competition it became clear that while the prize was great and the blog did have readers – that the requirements to entry were too complicated. The blogger was asking readers to leave a 500 word comment, write a post on their own blog linking to their competition AND subscribe to his RSS feed (and to prove it take a screen shot of the subscription confirmation page). Ask your readers to jump through too many hoops to do the thing you want them to do and you’ll get significantly less of them to take that action.
5. In Post Calls to Action Work Best
Positioning is everything in many aspects of your blog and calls to action are no exception. In the same way that click through on ads increase when you put ads near or in content – responses to calls to action will work significantly better for you within posts than if you slap them on your sidebar. This doesn’t mean you can’t have an invitation to action in your sidebar (almost every blog I know does this with RSS subscription invitations for example) however in post invitations will generally work best.
6. Express Clearly what you Want People to do
This really builds upon the ’simple and achievable action’ point that I’ve made above but comes down to the way you communicate the desired action to readers. In the same way that I’ve suggested taking extra time to craft post titles and opening lines it is important to pause and consider the words that you use in your call to action. If your call to action isn’t a simple thing (and sometimes it is unavoidable) consider outlining what you want readers to do in ’steps’ or a list of points. This is what I do on my Group Writing Projects and I find it works quite well.
7. Multiple Calls to the Same Action Can Work
While it’s best if you keep the number of actions you call for to a minimum (preferably 1 per post) this doesn’t mean you can’t invite readers to take that action more than once in the post. The most logical place for a call to action is at the end of the post – after all it is where readers stop reading and start thinking about what to do next. However I find that adding a call to action earlier in the post can increase the likelihood that people will take the action. This works for two main reasons – firstly you are sowing the seed of the action in their mind early and secondly some people will never make it to the end of your post but may actually take the action early on. For example – in this post I’ve already invited comments twice – and I’ll do it once more at the end of the post.
8. Draw the Eye to Calls to Action
Why do we make titles bigger and more eye catching on blog posts but leave our invitations to action as plain text languishing at the bottom of our posts? As with any important part to a post it is important that your readers see calls to action. You can ensure this happens in a number of ways including putting a heading above them, using an image near them, making the call to action a striking image itself, using text formatting (bold, italics, capitals), using colored backgrounds and borders around the calls to action etc.
9. Lead your readers to the Action
Your post itself needs to lead people to the action. The call and the topic of the post should strongly relate to one another and you should give reasons why the action would benefit readers. One technique that is worth using with some calls to action (particularly bigger ones) is to paint a picture of what life would be like after the action is taken (or what it’d be like if it is not taken).
10. Give an Incentive
Some calls to action will have an incentive to the reader built into them – but at times you might want to add extra incentive. This can be especially effective if you’re promoting an affiliate product and want to give your readers extra value by offering a bonus.
11. Mix Up Calls to Action from Post to Post
Readers can become a little blind (or numb) to calls to action over time if your calls are always the same (either given in the same way or asking them to do the same thing). Mix things up from post to post. Also don’t feel you need to have a call to action in every post. If you’re constantly asking your readers to do things you could burn them out.
12. Don’t Hard Sell But Call with Confidence
Using Calls to Action can be a bit of a balancing act at times. In talking to bloggers I find that they usually struggle with them in one of two ways. Either they feel awkward asking readers to do anything OR they SELL SELL SELL and lack subtlety. Somewhere between these two extremes is the place you need to dwell. The place you position yourself along the spectrum will differ from blog to blog and probably based upon your personality. Some bloggers get away with the hard sell better than others – the key is to experiment, listen to your readership and how they respond and to try to strike a balance between the two extremes.
Written by: Darren Rouse
Let me say that the following Call to Action Tips come out of my own experience of experimenting with this type of thing. I’m by no means a copy writing expert (although am about to start some training in it) and would love to learn from your own experiences of Calls to Action so please do feel free to share you own experience in comments below.
1. Know what Action you want Readers to take
Sounds almost too basic to include in these tips but I think it’s really important to be clear about what you’re trying to achieve with your blog post. This really builds on the last post in this series which talked about making your posts matter and identifying purposes for posts. What’s the purpose of your post? What do you want readers to do as a result of reading the post? Answer these questions before writing your call to action and you’ll be in a great position to write an effective one.
2. One Call to Action Per Post
Early in my own experiments with Calls to Action I wrote a post that was linked to by the uber blog Slashdot. It sent more traffic to my blog than I’d ever seen before and so I decided to update the post with some calls to action. Problem was that I stuffed so many of them into the post that no one did any of them. I asked for comments, pointed to my RSS feed and newsletter, asked for people to link to the post… etc. I find that I have a lot more luck with just one call to action per post – it gives people a simple next step rather than overwhelming them with choices.
3. Make it a Win/Win Call to Action
There’s nothing wrong with benefiting from the actions that your readers take on your blog. Don’t be afraid to ask things of them – but do make sure that what you ask of them will have an upside not only for you but for them.
4. Make the Action Simple and Achievable
I was recently asked by a reader to look at a competition that they were running on their blog and to give my opinion on why no one had entered it. Upon looking at the competition it became clear that while the prize was great and the blog did have readers – that the requirements to entry were too complicated. The blogger was asking readers to leave a 500 word comment, write a post on their own blog linking to their competition AND subscribe to his RSS feed (and to prove it take a screen shot of the subscription confirmation page). Ask your readers to jump through too many hoops to do the thing you want them to do and you’ll get significantly less of them to take that action.
5. In Post Calls to Action Work Best
Positioning is everything in many aspects of your blog and calls to action are no exception. In the same way that click through on ads increase when you put ads near or in content – responses to calls to action will work significantly better for you within posts than if you slap them on your sidebar. This doesn’t mean you can’t have an invitation to action in your sidebar (almost every blog I know does this with RSS subscription invitations for example) however in post invitations will generally work best.
6. Express Clearly what you Want People to do
This really builds upon the ’simple and achievable action’ point that I’ve made above but comes down to the way you communicate the desired action to readers. In the same way that I’ve suggested taking extra time to craft post titles and opening lines it is important to pause and consider the words that you use in your call to action. If your call to action isn’t a simple thing (and sometimes it is unavoidable) consider outlining what you want readers to do in ’steps’ or a list of points. This is what I do on my Group Writing Projects and I find it works quite well.
7. Multiple Calls to the Same Action Can Work
While it’s best if you keep the number of actions you call for to a minimum (preferably 1 per post) this doesn’t mean you can’t invite readers to take that action more than once in the post. The most logical place for a call to action is at the end of the post – after all it is where readers stop reading and start thinking about what to do next. However I find that adding a call to action earlier in the post can increase the likelihood that people will take the action. This works for two main reasons – firstly you are sowing the seed of the action in their mind early and secondly some people will never make it to the end of your post but may actually take the action early on. For example – in this post I’ve already invited comments twice – and I’ll do it once more at the end of the post.
8. Draw the Eye to Calls to Action
Why do we make titles bigger and more eye catching on blog posts but leave our invitations to action as plain text languishing at the bottom of our posts? As with any important part to a post it is important that your readers see calls to action. You can ensure this happens in a number of ways including putting a heading above them, using an image near them, making the call to action a striking image itself, using text formatting (bold, italics, capitals), using colored backgrounds and borders around the calls to action etc.
9. Lead your readers to the Action
Your post itself needs to lead people to the action. The call and the topic of the post should strongly relate to one another and you should give reasons why the action would benefit readers. One technique that is worth using with some calls to action (particularly bigger ones) is to paint a picture of what life would be like after the action is taken (or what it’d be like if it is not taken).
10. Give an Incentive
Some calls to action will have an incentive to the reader built into them – but at times you might want to add extra incentive. This can be especially effective if you’re promoting an affiliate product and want to give your readers extra value by offering a bonus.
11. Mix Up Calls to Action from Post to Post
Readers can become a little blind (or numb) to calls to action over time if your calls are always the same (either given in the same way or asking them to do the same thing). Mix things up from post to post. Also don’t feel you need to have a call to action in every post. If you’re constantly asking your readers to do things you could burn them out.
12. Don’t Hard Sell But Call with Confidence
Using Calls to Action can be a bit of a balancing act at times. In talking to bloggers I find that they usually struggle with them in one of two ways. Either they feel awkward asking readers to do anything OR they SELL SELL SELL and lack subtlety. Somewhere between these two extremes is the place you need to dwell. The place you position yourself along the spectrum will differ from blog to blog and probably based upon your personality. Some bloggers get away with the hard sell better than others – the key is to experiment, listen to your readership and how they respond and to try to strike a balance between the two extremes.
Written by: Darren Rouse
The Problem of Passivity on Blogs
I still remember early in my blogging expressing my frustration to another blogger. At the time my main concern was that while I was getting a lot of visitors, so few of them left a comment.
He responded to me with a question that was like a SMACK to the side of the head with a BRICK – it was so simple yet stupidly I’d never thought of it. He said:
“Do you ever ask for comments?”
He went on to explain to me a ’secret’ that copywriters have known for ages – ‘Call to Action‘ – if you don’t call your readers to action they are far less likely to take it:
If you want people to comment, invite them to do it.
If you want people to subscribe, don’t assume that they’ll think to do it themselves, ask them to. If
If you want people to buy something – give them a way to do it.
If you want people to come back tomorrow, give them some motivation to do so and show them how to remind themselves.
If you want a vote on Digg or StumbleUpon – ask.
Call me ‘Captain Obvious’ – but so few of us bloggers have mastered the ‘Call to Action’ in their blogging that it is no wonder that so many of us struggle with passive audiences.
Written by: Darren Rowse
He responded to me with a question that was like a SMACK to the side of the head with a BRICK – it was so simple yet stupidly I’d never thought of it. He said:
“Do you ever ask for comments?”
He went on to explain to me a ’secret’ that copywriters have known for ages – ‘Call to Action‘ – if you don’t call your readers to action they are far less likely to take it:
If you want people to comment, invite them to do it.
If you want people to subscribe, don’t assume that they’ll think to do it themselves, ask them to. If
If you want people to buy something – give them a way to do it.
If you want people to come back tomorrow, give them some motivation to do so and show them how to remind themselves.
If you want a vote on Digg or StumbleUpon – ask.
Call me ‘Captain Obvious’ – but so few of us bloggers have mastered the ‘Call to Action’ in their blogging that it is no wonder that so many of us struggle with passive audiences.
Written by: Darren Rowse
Calls to Action – 12 Tips To SNAP Readers Out of Passivity
The vast majority of visitors to your blog are paralyzed by passivity.
They never comment, they don’t vote in polls, they won’t subscribe to your feed or newsletters, they won’t buy the affiliate products that you recommend, they won’t email a friend about your blog, they won’t vote for you in social bookmarking sites and most of them will never come back.
Image by Aaron Jacobs
Depressed? You’re not alone.
Some days it gets me down that readers can be so passive too.
In this post (a part of our crafting blog posts series) I’m going to share how using Calls to Action can significantly increase the interactivity on your blog. I’d also love to hear what you have to say on the topic.
Written by: Darren Rowse
They never comment, they don’t vote in polls, they won’t subscribe to your feed or newsletters, they won’t buy the affiliate products that you recommend, they won’t email a friend about your blog, they won’t vote for you in social bookmarking sites and most of them will never come back.
Image by Aaron Jacobs
Depressed? You’re not alone.
Some days it gets me down that readers can be so passive too.
In this post (a part of our crafting blog posts series) I’m going to share how using Calls to Action can significantly increase the interactivity on your blog. I’d also love to hear what you have to say on the topic.
Written by: Darren Rowse
You have to "Be" before you can "Do"...
“You have to ‘Be’ before you can ‘Do’ and ‘Do’ before you can ‘Have’.” ~ Zig Ziglar
Experience
"It has been said that a person may have ten years of experience, or one year of experience repeated ten times." -Unknown
How to find great keyword tools
One needs to choose those keywords that are frequently searched for and which is in high demand, but not being already used by many other websites and competitors, and thus has low competition. There are a number of keyword research tools that can help you find them.
Apart from the Wordtracker which was already discussed in an other article, we have some more equally important research tools like the Overture, Google AdWords Keyword and Guidebeam.
Overture’s http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ keyword suggestion tool is free and much quicker to use than Wordtracker. It works more like the Wordtracker but doesn’t tell you how many websites are targeting each keyword phrase. For example if you type ‘Computer’, the Overture search suggestion tool will tell you that during the last month the word ‘Computer’ was searched, say for example 459550 times at http://Overture.Com. Similarly ‘computer game’ was searched 302210 times. Also, given one word it will tell you all relevant combinations of that word, which are based on actual searches done by people. If the word you keyed in is not a common search term then you will not get any results. It means that very few people have actually searched for that word during the last month.
Even Google Keyword Tool generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends. Features of this tool include:
1. Sorting the results of your desired keyword search by popularity, past performance history within the AdWords system, cost, and predicted ad position.
2. Easy keyword manipulation where you can select a few keywords here and there or add them all at once.
3. Searches for keywords present even in any webpage URL specified by your search. It can also expand your keyword search even further to include those pages that are linked to or from the original URL page.
4. More keyword results are generated based on regularly updated usage statistics database. This helps you to get new keywords or phrases.
Guidebeam http://www.guidebeam.com/ is an interesting resource. Type in a phrase and it will suggest a large number of related searches. The numbers generated against each phrase are Guidebeam’s estimation of how relevant that phrase is.
These softwares are useful for researching how people search the web and then optimizing your own web pages so that more people find your web site.
Good luck searching!
A guide: What to Tweet on Twitter
Twitter is an excellent tool that can be used to help your business. I covered how to get followers for your in a previous post. So now that you’ve got some followers, what should you be tweeting? Read on to find out.
What To Tweet.
When you first start on Twitter, it can be hard to know what to tweet about. I knew this was a dilemma for me when I first started. Some people do constant updates of what they are doing, while others spam whatever it is they are trying to market. Obviously I don’t recommend spamming when it comes to Twitter or anything else for that matter. But you want to promote you or your business at some point otherwise you won’t get any traffic from twitter.
Just because you’re in the network marketing business, that doesn’t mean you have to tweet about network marketing exclusively. You will come across as being one dimensional and it will be obvious to everyone that you’re only on Twitter to promote your business. Instead you should tweet about and link to interesting articles, blog posts, videos and even photos you’ve come across. I’m not saying you shouldn’t tweet about network marketing at all, because you should to a degree. But you don’t want to tweet about network marketing and your business and nothing else. You need to mix it up with other generic content that would interest you or other people such as news, gossip, something funny, or something informative. Because they are using Twitter, they will probably also be interested in content about Twitter or other forms of Social media.
In addition to these generic tweets, blend in some promotional tweets. The ratio of regular content to promotional content should not exceed 5:1. In other words you should only do one tweet about promotional content (content that promotes you or your opportunity) per 5 tweets about regular content (interesting articles you’ve come across etc)
The two best types of promotional tweets are either tweets that link to a post on your blog or tweets that link to a webinar. You can also tweet a link to your landing page, but this is more aggressive so caution is advised. If you want to tweet to a landing page, only do it once per day.
Obviously you don’t want to just tweet a link with no text. You need to include some text that tells your followers what they will find if they click on the link. I guess you’re basically creating a headline for the link, so make it catchy so people will want to click on the link.
When To Tweet.
There’s no point doing all these tweets if no one is online to read them. Here are the best times to tweet.
Weekdays are the best days of the week, particularly Tuesday & Wednesday.
Sunday is the worst day to tweet (but the best day to follow). So if you want to take a break from tweeting, then Sunday would be the day to do it.
Afternoon is the best time of day to tweet, from about noon to 3pm.
Night time is also very good for tweeting (approx. 8pm – 11pm)Mornings aren’t as good but are still worthwhile.
You never know when your followers are going to be online so you might as well tweet 7 days a week. It doesn’t take up too much time so there’s no real reason not to. If you are strapped for time, you can also outsource this work as it’s pretty straight forward to do.
Finding Content To Tweet
The two main sources I use for sourcing content are Google Alerts and StuffToTweet.com. Google Alerts basically alerts you about content relating to specific keywords that you want to search for. Google Alerts is good because you can choose the topic that you want to receive content on. Also, it is sent straight to your email, so you don’t have to go looking for it. Go to www.google.com/alerts and type in something that you want to receive content about. So if you wanted to be alerted to content relating to Ferrari, you would put “Ferrari” in the search box and you would receive all the articles, videos, blog posts etc that relate to Ferrari. Below the search box, choose “comprehensive” so you get a mix of media formats and also select to receive the content “once a day”.
www.StuffToTweet.com is also great because it is exactly what you are looking for. As the name suggests, the website shows stuff that would be good to tweet. It shows what’s popular so you don’t have to worry about whether other people will like it or not. Simply go to www.StuffToTweet.com and it’s all there for you to see on one page. It show’s you what’s popular on Digg, Youtube, Mashable, Del.icio.us and even what’s popular on Twitter right now.
To these two sources I mix in any news, gossips or videos that I’ve come across and found interesting. Then if you want, you can mix in some tweets about what you’re up to.
Tweet In Blocks
One tweet on its own is going to have almost no effect as it’s going to get lost amongst the tweets of other people. What you can do to combat this is to tweet in blocks. In other words, you make multiple tweets in a short space of time so that your tweets get noticed more. You should tweet in blocks of 5 – 10 spaced 30 – 60 seconds apart. Every 5 or 6 tweets, do a promotional tweet that links to your blog, webinar or landing page. If you do it this way, people won’t think you’re on Twitter just to sell something because you’re also contributing all these tweets about interesting content.
Taking what was learnt from the When To Tweet section, we can now schedule when to do the blocks of tweets. Do a block of 5 – 10 tweets every morning, afternoon and night and make sure to include a promotional tweet in each block.
Like I said before, you never know when your followers are going to be online, so you might as well be tweeting 7 days a week, but if you want to have a day off, Sunday would be the best day. You could even use Sunday to prepare the week’s tweets in a notepad or word file. Personally, I have a Word template that I use to prepare the day’s tweets which I fill with fresh content everyday (or at least I try to).
Summary
Tweeting on Twitter to promote your BUSINESS doesn’t have to be hard. As shown, you can basically borrow other people’s content and tweet about it to generate interest in what you have to offer. It doesn’t get any easier than that. Mix in some promotional tweets and the leads will start flowing. Keep in mind that you have to have a decent following (2000+) before you will get meaningful results. But keep at it and be consistent and Twitter can be a very powerful way to promote you or your BUSINESS.
What To Tweet.
When you first start on Twitter, it can be hard to know what to tweet about. I knew this was a dilemma for me when I first started. Some people do constant updates of what they are doing, while others spam whatever it is they are trying to market. Obviously I don’t recommend spamming when it comes to Twitter or anything else for that matter. But you want to promote you or your business at some point otherwise you won’t get any traffic from twitter.
Just because you’re in the network marketing business, that doesn’t mean you have to tweet about network marketing exclusively. You will come across as being one dimensional and it will be obvious to everyone that you’re only on Twitter to promote your business. Instead you should tweet about and link to interesting articles, blog posts, videos and even photos you’ve come across. I’m not saying you shouldn’t tweet about network marketing at all, because you should to a degree. But you don’t want to tweet about network marketing and your business and nothing else. You need to mix it up with other generic content that would interest you or other people such as news, gossip, something funny, or something informative. Because they are using Twitter, they will probably also be interested in content about Twitter or other forms of Social media.
In addition to these generic tweets, blend in some promotional tweets. The ratio of regular content to promotional content should not exceed 5:1. In other words you should only do one tweet about promotional content (content that promotes you or your opportunity) per 5 tweets about regular content (interesting articles you’ve come across etc)
The two best types of promotional tweets are either tweets that link to a post on your blog or tweets that link to a webinar. You can also tweet a link to your landing page, but this is more aggressive so caution is advised. If you want to tweet to a landing page, only do it once per day.
Obviously you don’t want to just tweet a link with no text. You need to include some text that tells your followers what they will find if they click on the link. I guess you’re basically creating a headline for the link, so make it catchy so people will want to click on the link.
When To Tweet.
There’s no point doing all these tweets if no one is online to read them. Here are the best times to tweet.
Weekdays are the best days of the week, particularly Tuesday & Wednesday.
Sunday is the worst day to tweet (but the best day to follow). So if you want to take a break from tweeting, then Sunday would be the day to do it.
Afternoon is the best time of day to tweet, from about noon to 3pm.
Night time is also very good for tweeting (approx. 8pm – 11pm)Mornings aren’t as good but are still worthwhile.
You never know when your followers are going to be online so you might as well tweet 7 days a week. It doesn’t take up too much time so there’s no real reason not to. If you are strapped for time, you can also outsource this work as it’s pretty straight forward to do.
Finding Content To Tweet
The two main sources I use for sourcing content are Google Alerts and StuffToTweet.com. Google Alerts basically alerts you about content relating to specific keywords that you want to search for. Google Alerts is good because you can choose the topic that you want to receive content on. Also, it is sent straight to your email, so you don’t have to go looking for it. Go to www.google.com/alerts and type in something that you want to receive content about. So if you wanted to be alerted to content relating to Ferrari, you would put “Ferrari” in the search box and you would receive all the articles, videos, blog posts etc that relate to Ferrari. Below the search box, choose “comprehensive” so you get a mix of media formats and also select to receive the content “once a day”.
www.StuffToTweet.com is also great because it is exactly what you are looking for. As the name suggests, the website shows stuff that would be good to tweet. It shows what’s popular so you don’t have to worry about whether other people will like it or not. Simply go to www.StuffToTweet.com and it’s all there for you to see on one page. It show’s you what’s popular on Digg, Youtube, Mashable, Del.icio.us and even what’s popular on Twitter right now.
To these two sources I mix in any news, gossips or videos that I’ve come across and found interesting. Then if you want, you can mix in some tweets about what you’re up to.
Tweet In Blocks
One tweet on its own is going to have almost no effect as it’s going to get lost amongst the tweets of other people. What you can do to combat this is to tweet in blocks. In other words, you make multiple tweets in a short space of time so that your tweets get noticed more. You should tweet in blocks of 5 – 10 spaced 30 – 60 seconds apart. Every 5 or 6 tweets, do a promotional tweet that links to your blog, webinar or landing page. If you do it this way, people won’t think you’re on Twitter just to sell something because you’re also contributing all these tweets about interesting content.
Taking what was learnt from the When To Tweet section, we can now schedule when to do the blocks of tweets. Do a block of 5 – 10 tweets every morning, afternoon and night and make sure to include a promotional tweet in each block.
Like I said before, you never know when your followers are going to be online, so you might as well be tweeting 7 days a week, but if you want to have a day off, Sunday would be the best day. You could even use Sunday to prepare the week’s tweets in a notepad or word file. Personally, I have a Word template that I use to prepare the day’s tweets which I fill with fresh content everyday (or at least I try to).
Summary
Tweeting on Twitter to promote your BUSINESS doesn’t have to be hard. As shown, you can basically borrow other people’s content and tweet about it to generate interest in what you have to offer. It doesn’t get any easier than that. Mix in some promotional tweets and the leads will start flowing. Keep in mind that you have to have a decent following (2000+) before you will get meaningful results. But keep at it and be consistent and Twitter can be a very powerful way to promote you or your BUSINESS.
16/06/2010
How to acquire a positive mindset
A positive mindset can be very powerful and very influential in your life. It is something that can be acquired by anyone by simply making a decision to think differently. To help change what you believe and how you think, you should investigate the ideas of the people you admire. Expose yourself to motivational and inspirational books and seminars. Although books alone will not transform you into a person with a positive mindset, the information the author shares may suggest a plan that can help you become more positive and optimistic.
A positive mindset is a way of life and lifestyle that sets you apart from people who are negative and miserable, you know what they say about "misery loves company". A positive mindset is not the same as a carefree existence. A person with a positive mindset operates with a plan instead of flying by the seat of his or her pants.Learn to be flexible, exercise taking the opposite point of view contrary to your opinion. Entertain the thought that other people may be right and you may be wrong.
Become the person you want to be when you approach everyday with a positive mindset instead of finding something to complain about. Commit to changing the way you talk by not complaining. Simply put, if you can't say anything positive, don't say anything at all.
Positive affirmations are a popular tool to acquire a positive mindset. Some people advise writing positive affirmations on paper 20 times daily. You can also verbally state positive affirmations (using silent self-talk) or in private (in front of a mirror). There are a few key points to remember when writing affirmations. They are as follows:
Affirmations must be stated in the positive.
(I now only weigh ___ pounds)
Affirmations are more effective when you include your name.
(I, Mary, am a successful entrepreneur)
Affirmations must be in the present tense.
(I, Bob, am now a 6 figure earner)
Affirmations must be very specific.
(I, Elizabeth, generate $15,000 a month)
Adding the word "now" to your affirmation will make it more immediate.
(I , Laura, deserve to have a great relationship now!)
As you focus on acquiring a positive mindset it is important to document your goals and objectives daily. Start a journal with nothing but goals, accomplished objectives and aspirations. As you implement your plans document all your successes in your journal. Gradually you will learn to view the person in the mirror with renewed respect and admiration.
Developing a positive mindset is one of the most powerful and most rewarding life strategies there is. Positive thinking and a powerful attitude toward life is an essential key in life success and having a healthy mind and body. Positive mindset is your key to success in life and in business. At a personal level it will transform your life, your health and renew your passion for life. Professionally, you can use the power of a positive mindset to create success and reach your financial goals.
Positive people can recognize good opportunities and realize their potential. Negative people fail to recognize opportunity when it is presented to them. Positive people expect to succeed and negative people expect to fail. Whether you believe you can or cannot achieve something you are right. So why not believe that you "can".
Having a positive or negative mindset is merely a choice. Choosing to have a positive mindset will allow you to attract amazing opportunities and successes in your life. Choosing to be negative will only attract more negativity and failures in your life. How will you choose to live your life?
Successful business people are not like ordinary people.
Successful business people are not like ordinary people. They have character traits that set them apart. Someone who has these traits will most likely succeed in network marketing where it pays to be confident, be able to sell yourself and ideas to others, create a brand and above all, be persistent, which is the way of the future when it comes to marketing.
Confidence is the key component in a personality trait that leads to success in a marketing business. Without confidence, even those with the best products and plan will fail as they do not exude this necessary mindset that others will subconsciously respond to. Those who succeed in marketing business have an unwavering confidence in their abilities. This is achieved by achieving goals that you set for yourself and personal growth.
Selling yourself is also necessary and will be an easier mindset to have when you have confidence. Your network marketing depends on those who will join your business. You have to let people know what you have to offer when it comes to selling yourself and your business. It is not enough to just say that you are rich and knowledgeable. You have to be able to back it up. You can do this when you establish yourself as an expert in your field.
Once you establish a name for yourself in the business, you have to build a brand. This takes time but means that when people see your business or your name, they will associate it with you. This is an important aspect in a successful network marketing business and will bring leads to you. In order to get to this point, you have to be willing to devote a great deal of your time to your business and on your personal development. This means persistence and executing your business plan.
Persistence is the most important personality trait for anyone to succeed in a business of their own. Giving up should not be an option. The most successful people in network marketing are those who gave 100 percent to their business. You cannot slack off on your business. Nor can you throw in the towel each time something goes wrong. Having your own business involves setbacks - there is no way around that. But if you are determined to make it, you will. Those who fail are quitters. If you have what it takes when it comes to starting a business, such as determination that allows you to shrug off any roadblocks and overcome them, you will not only succeed in your own network marketing business but in any business of your choice and most important, you will succeed in the game of life.
These personality traits are essential to those who are seeking to become successful in network marketing. These traits can be learned and perfected as the business moves along. In order to have what it takes to succeed in any business of your own, you need to be determined and confident so that you can sell yourself and establish your brand.
For any entrepreneur looking to be successful in business you will need to learn how to effectively market your business and attract quality leaders to your network marketing business.
Confidence is the key component in a personality trait that leads to success in a marketing business. Without confidence, even those with the best products and plan will fail as they do not exude this necessary mindset that others will subconsciously respond to. Those who succeed in marketing business have an unwavering confidence in their abilities. This is achieved by achieving goals that you set for yourself and personal growth.
Selling yourself is also necessary and will be an easier mindset to have when you have confidence. Your network marketing depends on those who will join your business. You have to let people know what you have to offer when it comes to selling yourself and your business. It is not enough to just say that you are rich and knowledgeable. You have to be able to back it up. You can do this when you establish yourself as an expert in your field.
Once you establish a name for yourself in the business, you have to build a brand. This takes time but means that when people see your business or your name, they will associate it with you. This is an important aspect in a successful network marketing business and will bring leads to you. In order to get to this point, you have to be willing to devote a great deal of your time to your business and on your personal development. This means persistence and executing your business plan.
Persistence is the most important personality trait for anyone to succeed in a business of their own. Giving up should not be an option. The most successful people in network marketing are those who gave 100 percent to their business. You cannot slack off on your business. Nor can you throw in the towel each time something goes wrong. Having your own business involves setbacks - there is no way around that. But if you are determined to make it, you will. Those who fail are quitters. If you have what it takes when it comes to starting a business, such as determination that allows you to shrug off any roadblocks and overcome them, you will not only succeed in your own network marketing business but in any business of your choice and most important, you will succeed in the game of life.
These personality traits are essential to those who are seeking to become successful in network marketing. These traits can be learned and perfected as the business moves along. In order to have what it takes to succeed in any business of your own, you need to be determined and confident so that you can sell yourself and establish your brand.
For any entrepreneur looking to be successful in business you will need to learn how to effectively market your business and attract quality leaders to your network marketing business.
The elevator to success is out of order
The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs... one step at a time.
Joe Girard
American Sales Trainer, Author, Lecturer
Joe Girard
American Sales Trainer, Author, Lecturer
Success is a journey not a destination
Success is a journey not a destination. The doing is usually more important than the outcome. Not everyone can be Number 1.
Arthur Ashe
1943-1993, African-American Tennis Player
Arthur Ashe
1943-1993, African-American Tennis Player
What is a Conversion for Your Blog?
What is the #1 thing that you want people to do when they arrive on your blog?
Last week at an event about blogging that I attended I asked the above question to 10 bloggers and jotted down their responses:
2 said ‘click on an ad’
2 said ‘buy my product’
1 said ’subscribe to my RSS feed’
1 said ’subscribe to my newsletter’
4 said they didn’t know
There’s no wrong or right answer to the question – every blog will have a different ‘conversion point’ to it – but it’s a great question to ask yourself from time to time.
Your answer will inform numerous aspects of your blogging including:
How you design your blog – your call to the conversion you’re after should be prominent, above the fold and eye catching
What you blog about – your blog posts should, at the very least, relate to your conversion goals and, at best, should lead people to wanting to take the action you’re after.
Your promotional activities – knowing what you want people to do when they arrive on your blog can inform your decisions on where and how to promote your blog.
So what is the number 1 thing that you want people to DO when they arrive on your blog?
Written by: Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.net
Last week at an event about blogging that I attended I asked the above question to 10 bloggers and jotted down their responses:
2 said ‘click on an ad’
2 said ‘buy my product’
1 said ’subscribe to my RSS feed’
1 said ’subscribe to my newsletter’
4 said they didn’t know
There’s no wrong or right answer to the question – every blog will have a different ‘conversion point’ to it – but it’s a great question to ask yourself from time to time.
Your answer will inform numerous aspects of your blogging including:
How you design your blog – your call to the conversion you’re after should be prominent, above the fold and eye catching
What you blog about – your blog posts should, at the very least, relate to your conversion goals and, at best, should lead people to wanting to take the action you’re after.
Your promotional activities – knowing what you want people to do when they arrive on your blog can inform your decisions on where and how to promote your blog.
So what is the number 1 thing that you want people to DO when they arrive on your blog?
Written by: Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.net
15/06/2010
The richest people in the world....
"The richest people in the world build networks. Everyone else is trained to look for work." ~ Robert Kiyosaki
11/06/2010
Marknadsföring online – inte bara för de unga
av Val Taylor och översatt av Anne Bengtson
Om du har varit online under den senaste tiden har du säkert märkt att de unga har tagit över den nätverkande marknadsföringen på internet. De är överallt tillsammans med industriledare, deras framgångshistorier, deras videos, deras stora hem och lyxiga bilar. De föddes med ett ”chip” i munnen och de bemästrar tekniska applikationer!
Det är spännande att notera att de unga av idag förstår sig på något som deras föräldrar aldrig fick lära sig om business. Du, och bara du borde bestämma vad du är värd och ingen annan. Inte företaget som talar om vad du är värd genom den lön du får.
Det tog mig 30 år och faktum att jag fått sparken innan jag förstod detta och jag är säker på att jag inte är ensam med att tro detta. Efter att ha sagt detta, jag, som en småbarnsförälder har också haft möjligheten att använda mig av nätverkande marknadsföring online för att nå framgång. Vilket betyder ”Ni småbarnsföräldrar KAN” också!!
Att driva ett företag och arbeta hemifrån eller att bli en online marknadsförare är INTE bara för de unga. Det passar vem som helst som har begäret och viljan att lyckas. Mot alla odds och trots finanskrisen, hälsofrågor, liten eller ingen pension, kan du fortfarande hinna ikapp genom att använda de grundläggande marknadsföringsfärdigheterna på internet. Alla hinder som ”vi som började sent” står upp emot nu, kan vara det bästa som hänt, eftersom det tvingar oss att tänka i annorlunda banor.
På CNN, Larry King Live har Tony Robbins kallat det ”re-tooling” (byta verktyg) för den nya världsekonomin. Du måste förstå att varken regeringen eller någon annan kommer vilja rädda dig ur en finansiell knipa. Detta är ett paradigmskifte för de som är 40 år gamla och äldre.
Detta skifte sker genom att lära sig något nytt som du kan använda och utveckla till en business som kan hjälpa andra. Energin som du projicerar genom att åtrå att lära dig något nytt och lyckas kommer att bära dig fram till ekonomiska vinster. Din energi kommer att överföras till andra som kommer inse att de också kan nå framgång med marknadsföring på internet.
Läs mer här….
Om du har varit online under den senaste tiden har du säkert märkt att de unga har tagit över den nätverkande marknadsföringen på internet. De är överallt tillsammans med industriledare, deras framgångshistorier, deras videos, deras stora hem och lyxiga bilar. De föddes med ett ”chip” i munnen och de bemästrar tekniska applikationer!
Det är spännande att notera att de unga av idag förstår sig på något som deras föräldrar aldrig fick lära sig om business. Du, och bara du borde bestämma vad du är värd och ingen annan. Inte företaget som talar om vad du är värd genom den lön du får.
Det tog mig 30 år och faktum att jag fått sparken innan jag förstod detta och jag är säker på att jag inte är ensam med att tro detta. Efter att ha sagt detta, jag, som en småbarnsförälder har också haft möjligheten att använda mig av nätverkande marknadsföring online för att nå framgång. Vilket betyder ”Ni småbarnsföräldrar KAN” också!!
Att driva ett företag och arbeta hemifrån eller att bli en online marknadsförare är INTE bara för de unga. Det passar vem som helst som har begäret och viljan att lyckas. Mot alla odds och trots finanskrisen, hälsofrågor, liten eller ingen pension, kan du fortfarande hinna ikapp genom att använda de grundläggande marknadsföringsfärdigheterna på internet. Alla hinder som ”vi som började sent” står upp emot nu, kan vara det bästa som hänt, eftersom det tvingar oss att tänka i annorlunda banor.
På CNN, Larry King Live har Tony Robbins kallat det ”re-tooling” (byta verktyg) för den nya världsekonomin. Du måste förstå att varken regeringen eller någon annan kommer vilja rädda dig ur en finansiell knipa. Detta är ett paradigmskifte för de som är 40 år gamla och äldre.
Detta skifte sker genom att lära sig något nytt som du kan använda och utveckla till en business som kan hjälpa andra. Energin som du projicerar genom att åtrå att lära dig något nytt och lyckas kommer att bära dig fram till ekonomiska vinster. Din energi kommer att överföras till andra som kommer inse att de också kan nå framgång med marknadsföring på internet.
Läs mer här….
10/06/2010
Vad betyder ”att följa någon” på Twitter
Att "följa" (follow) på Twitter kan betyda två saker:
Du kan bestämma dig för att följa (eller ”inte följa”) vilken Twitteranvändare du vill. Eftersom du inte behöver tillstånd eller medgivande, så är Twitter ett mycket öppet kommunikations- och nätverkande verktyg.
- Twitteranvändare vars inlägg du prenumererar på (folk som du följer) och
- Twitteranvändare som prenumererar på de inlägg du publicerar (folk som följer dig, kallade dina följare)
Du kan bestämma dig för att följa (eller ”inte följa”) vilken Twitteranvändare du vill. Eftersom du inte behöver tillstånd eller medgivande, så är Twitter ett mycket öppet kommunikations- och nätverkande verktyg.
09/06/2010
5 tips för att få andra att dela dina Twitterinlägg till sina egna följare
Hur man skriver Twitterinlägg som blir ReTweeted (ReTweeted = återTwittrade)
Twitter kan vara ett utmärkt verktyg för att öka trafiken till din blog, men du kan bara få en begränsad exponering av att publicera Twitterinlägg i ditt eget Twitter flöde. För att verkligen uppnå en mun-till-mun effekt som driver fler besökare till din blog, behöver du skriva Twitterinlägg som är tillräckligt intressanta att folk vill återTwittra dem till sina egna följare och därmed öka din online exponering exponentiellt. Här nedan följer 5 förslag/tips som kan hjälpa dig att skriva Twitterinlägg som blir återTwittrade på ett effektivt sätt.
1. Ge din länk den betydelse den förtjänar
Twitterinlägg får bara vara 140 tecken långa. När någon återTwittrar en av dina Twitterinlägg, får återTwitten den typiska RT förkortningen (som betyder ReTweet) och ditt användarnamn (såsom @arneandersson) hamnar i början av återTwitten. Detta är vad de flesta automatiserade återTwitterverktygen gör. Om din ursprungliga länk ligger i slutet på ditt twitterinlägg och någon reTwittrar ditt ursprungliga inlägg så läggs flera tecken till i återTwitten. Det är då troligt att den ursprungliga länken utgår för att behålla sig inom ramen för den tillåtna Twittergränsen (140 tecken). Med detta i minne, borde du använda dig av en URL förkortare och lägga dina länkar i början av dina Tweets/Twitterinlägg, så att de inte går förlorade när någon ReTwittrar ditt Twitterinlägg.
2. Skriv inlägg som är värdiga att dela med sig av för andra
Dina Twitterinlägg ska bidra med något av värde till konversationen online, vilket betyder att de behöver vara intressanta, informativa, pedagogiska, eller helt enkelt underhållande. Med andra ord, dina Twitterinlägg måste vara vad jag kallar ”värdiga att dela med sig av =delningsvärdiga). Om de inte är det, kommer ingen vilja återTwittra dem.
3. Lär känna din publik – dina följare
Du behöver förstå vilka dina följare är och vilken din målgrupp är, därefter kan du bidra med innehåll som är av intresse för dem och som de med all förmodan kommer att vilja skicka vidare till sina egna följare. Om du inte skriver inlägg som din publik vill ha, kommer de inte att dela med sig till andra och kan till och med helt ignorera dina framtida inlägg eller sluta att följa dig helt och hållet.
4. Var ihärdig
Twitter fungerar precis såsom vanliga konversationer gör – om du är för tyst, blir du bortglömd och folk kommer att leta efter någon annan att konversera med. Se till att du är aktiv på Twitter, dela med dig av andras inlägg, skicka direkta meddelanden, använd dig av @svar, och så vidare så att du stannar kvar på andra användares ”radarskärm” (i.e. Twitterströmmar – Twitter streams).
5. Var konsekvent
Med tiden så kommer dina Twitterföljare att skapa förväntningar på dig baserat på den typ av Twitterinlägg som du har publicerat tidigare. Även om du kan använda Twitter till ovanliga händelser, så är det mer viktigt att du är konsekvent när du bygger ditt varumärke. När folk utvecklar förväntningar på ett varumärke, blir de också samtidigt loyala mot det varumärket, och loyalitet leder till opinionsbildning och mun-till-mun marknadsföring (genom återTwittrar). Precis som ett företag bygger sitt varumärke för att öka sina vinster, så behöver du bygga upp ditt rykte om ditt varumärke online, som i sin tur leder till att dina inlägg blir delade till andra (återTwittrade).
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