Social networking is becoming a very effective way to communicate with your customers and your prospects. Social networking can include anything from blogs writing articles, being on Facebook using Twitter etc…
There are literally thousands of business people using social networking today and taking advantage of the benefits of being able to build their brand quickly and globally, and yet being able to develop their business locally. By becoming the expert in you’re particular business category you can create an enormous amount of attraction in the marketplace, so that people locally, start to become aware of you and you become top of mind when you’re services are required. Social networking, creates an amazing environment, where you can create new types of customers, building credibility and reputation in an ever expanding audience, and also being able to communicate regularly with existing customers building relationships very cost effectively.
Many social networking sites are available to business people to access. The choice is huge in the marketplace, so that today it can be very, very confusing to the novice.
As a professional business person, it is important that you look at a number of strategies using social media. One of the most effective strategies is to harness the power of Facebook, Twitter, you’re website, the concept of blogging, as well as using You Tube to create a whole new method to branding yourself in the marketplace. The power of social networking, creates a great new way to leverage your time and you’re resources so that you as a professional can get on with looking after clients and generating income on a more consistent basis.
Over the next few posts, we will be looking and how you can use Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and your website to create a very powerful brand in the marketplace. We have started and will continue to talk about blogging, which is a very powerful strategy to grow your business brand. Shortly, we will look at Facebook and Twitter and how you can drive traffic to your website, to your events, and to your business in general, where new customers will be happy to connect with you and purchase your goods or services now and in the future.
Should you get involved in social networking? Let me know what you think, I look forward to hearing from you.
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Recently I posted five suggestions on how to be a successful blogger. The second of these characteristics was creating the need to be disciplined, so that you would have a consistent and profitable blog.
Success in all things requires practice, practice and more practice…
It is often said that those who are very successful follow the 1000 hour rule. this rule states that If you want to be very good, or exceptional at anything, you need to discipline yourself to practice that thing (perfectly), for a 1000 hours. At the end of a 1000 hours you will have a proficiency that very few people will attain. WHY? Because most people wouldn’t knowingly devote 1000 hours to any task to create success for themselves.
There are plenty of things that we have devoted over a 1000 hours to UNKNOWINGLY and we enjoy the benefits of these tasks: Poor work habits; Poor personal habits; Overeating; Under-exercising; Under committing; Under promising; under delivering…. I gotta stop, I’m starting to depress myself!
Look at it this way, the guys who fly in the Blue Angels don’t get to pull stunts like the one above without KNOWING what they are doing… that takes discipline and practice. Now I know most of us are never going to get up into a jet and get to do 3G turns and ‘Under-Over’ maneuvers like this one, but you know what, we can still create an awesome and powerful blog that is going to build your brand successfully and help you make lots of money.
I can tell you quite honestly, I’m not good at this either and writing a blog takes me a lot of time (my CIO/muse always complains about how long I take to write a blog post), but I have noticed that each time that a write a post, it gets a little easier. Personally, I think that my business is worth the effort, do you think that YOURS is…?
Now, honestly, if you truly feel that you can’t do this… that’s OK, because there is always the opportunity you may be able to enlist the support of others in your business to help write content or you can hire a ‘Ghostwriter’.
But if you are going to give this a shot, then put a little time aside, even one hour a week… that’s enough to get you started. You will be astounded at how quickly your posts will add up and how your branding will improve in the marketplace. I’m always astonished at who actually reads my posts… it feels great.
See you all soon when we will cover starting to get traffic to your blog…
Recently I posted five suggestions on how to be a successful blogger. The first of these characteristics was being resourceful on finding new ideas so that you can have a captivating and interesting blog.
One of the hardest things to do as a blogger (besides creating regular posts), is creating posts that are captivating, interesting and useful so that your regular visitors, as well as your new visitors keep coming back. Often it can be difficult to make your blog unique and appealing.
Here are a few suggestions which I hope will be useful to you in making your blog positively outstanding:
1. Check out other blogs in your niche. Often people will post information that is quite good and their idea can spark a follow on idea, or even give you an idea that no one has written about that could be very useful to your audience.
2. Read newspaper articles or magazines around your industry or area of interest, often general stories will allow you to come up with 2 or 3 specific ideas on a topic which you could post about.
3. This one is a little obvious, but one that very few people actually do… ask your audience, your friends, your co-workers what they would like to see you write, regarding a particular topic or idea.
4. Let others write posts for you, there will always be someone who you know or work with that loves the blog that you have created. Even though this step requires a bit of trust on your part, having others write and post to the blog (other than comments), takes and enormous amount of pressure off you, and allows you to be more creative yourself.
These are only a few ideas and I hope that they will be helpful, but the best advice I can give you is practice, practice, practice…
See you soon when I write about discipline and creating a blog plan… Cheers.
I have only just a minute. Only sixty seconds in it. Forced upon me, can’t refuse it. Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it. But it’s up to me to use it. I must suffer if I lose it. Give account if I abuse it, Just a tiny little minute but eternity is in it… Anon
I came upon this poem 23 years ago, and it has been an interesting signpost for me to measure my own time usage, and boy o’ boy, have I wasted a lot of it, as we all have. Over the next few posts there are going to be some perspectives on time that you will find valuable… enjoy them… I intend to add value to YOUR time investment.
We waste it… we gift it… we give it away… we sacrifice it… but ultimately we place little importance to it until it is too late.
Time in reality is the thing that was given to us as a true gift by our parents. their need to procreated (on purpose or by accident), created us and everybody else on the planet. The time we have is so precious that it is the only commodity that we own which cannot be bought, begged for, borrowed, or stolen.
We can steal another persons time, and we that can allow that to happen to us, but it cannot and doesn’t replenish our own allotment of time… in fact if we waste another persons time we are also wasting our own. Here, I am going to share some ways on how to leverage our time and make the most of it and let the opportunity we have together create better time usage, and less time wastage.
For this week, the first thing I’d like to ask you to do is STOP, PAUSE, TAKE A MOMENT…. and reflect on how YOU use your time. A phrase I use a lot and I make no apology for the fact that you may get sick of it as time goes by, is this…..
“For many things in our lives and our businesses, if we want to accelerate the processes, go faster and speed things up… often we need to SLOW DOWN, to get the best value and create the best result”.
….. talk to you on the next post.
If you want to drive large volumes of traffic to your website, you will need to be serious about having a blog. When you set up your blog you will need to develop certain qualities to ensure your success.
If you want to be a successful blogger, have a look at these 5 suggestions. These are the characteristics that I’m developing for myself and these are a good start for your success as well.
1. To create a successful blog you need to be resourceful and look for lots of ideas that are relevant to your industry. It’s important to create a blog that is captivating, interesting and useful so that your regular visitors as well as your new visitors keep coming back. Try and find ways of making your blog as unique and appealing to your visitors. Think about their needs and interests and find ways to engage them. Do a little research and identify what your visitors might like to see on your blog that would be of interest to them.
2. If you are serious about your blog, you need to be disciplined. You might not be aware of this, but you will need to create content for your blog on a regular basis. This means that you may need to invest some time writing content for your blog, which will require some effort. You won’t be able to generate traffic to your blog or your website if you aren’t prepared to spend some time writing your content. If you feel you can’t write, then you may be able to enlist the support of others in your business to help write content or you can hire a ‘Ghostwriter’. Either way some effort and resources will be needed to create your blog content.
3. You will need to start looking for ways to drive traffic to the blog or to your website. A great way to do this is to exchange traffic with other blogs and websites in the same target market as you. This is a particularly effective way to generate traffic if you select websites and blogs that have high traffic and popularity rankings. This will help to increase your blog and website traffic.
4. To be a successful blogger you will also need to look for all the possible opportunities to make money from your blog. There are a number of ways in which you can make money from your blog. You can sell your own products and services, you can sell someone elses products as an affiliate or you can sell some advertising space. If your blog starts to generate high volumes of traffic, you can start make money with your blog.
5. Never give up. It takes time and effort to grow significant traffic to your blog or website so that you can start making some money from your efforts. It is essential that you are consistent with your blogging efforts. I said it before, I’ll say it again…..never give up..
If you develop and apply these five characteristics detailed above, you can grow into a successful blogger that can generate high volumes of traffic and develop a source of online profits for your business.
