Archive for Action
SEO Page and Site Optimization with Wordpress – Part Three
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Well I owe this post to those who have been following my SEO and Wordpress site optimization. As stated in SEO Page Level Optimization I do not use the All-In-One SEO Pack anymore. I use the plugin called Platinum SEO Pack. It offers everything that the All-In-One does but it has even more. The neat thing about it is if you’ve already got your All-In-One configured, when installing this you will have an option to import all the All-In-One settings!
* Optimized Post and Page Titles for search engines
* Generates all SEO relevant META tags automatically
* Helps you avoid duplicate content
* Lets you override any title and set any META description and META keywords, for any post or page
* Compatible with most other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.However you may have to disable All in One SEO pack
* You don’t have to fear changing permalinks. If you are not satisfied with the current permalink, change it through Settings–>Permalinks in your admin panel, without worrying about loss of Page rank or google penalty.Platinum SEO plugin will take care of issuing a 301 redirect to the new location.This is a new essential feature, not present in All in one SEO
* Add meta description and meta keywords tags to Wordpress Categories and Wordpress Tag pages.
* Add index, noindex, follow or nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir meta tags to any post/page. These options are not available in All in one SEO Pack.Find out why this option to set post/page level HTML meta robots tag useful?
You can download or install from this location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/platinum-seo-pack/
Thanks for reading my series. I will provide the links below if you missed one of them. The thing I would like to add about optimizing Wordpress for SEO is SEO in general is ALWAYS changing. You have to stay on top of it. By implementing the plugins and using the features of them you should greatly advance your SEO rankings.
SEO Page Level Optimization
SEO Page and Site Optimization with Wordpress – Part One
SEO Page and Site Optimization with Wordpress – Part Two
Enjoy!
Recipe For Successful Branding
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We all know that blogging and other marketing campaigns can really help us build up the buzz behind our brand. We know our goals are also similar in that we want to get people talking and spreading the story about our products and services. But it is going to take more than just blogging and marketing to make this kind of effort pay off. There are three main ingredients that help build and establish our number one goal for personal branding, Trust! We want to establish the kind of trust that will create a positive reaction in our clients and customers. The products and services that we offer need to have:
Quality
While branding builds the recognition for your product, that product or service must have superior quality needed to evoke strong positive emotions in your customers. Your brand cannot gain positive brand recognition if your products and services are don’t offer the kind of quality needed to elicit strong trust in your customers and clients.
Excellent Service
We recognize that customer service is everything in business and know it has been for a long time. When building a strong personal brand, customer service can increase word-of-mouth advertising. So this, in turn, boosts referrals and helps your brand to grow even that much more. Even in businesses that have no product or service that is sold directly, like blogging for a living, remember that customer service still is extremely important. The bottom line is that people will trust the authority of your blog if the posts are written with authority and integrity. A way that you can also build authority and integrity is with timely and well thought out responses to comments from the readers of your blog.
Value
And finally comes value. Value is a growing buzz word with customers and clients these days. If your product or service comes at a price, you have to make sure your buyers get the value they are after. Value should not mean cheap. It should mean quality for the price point. Even the information that you provide for free should have tremendous value. The information you share and provide needs to be accurate, informative, or entertaining. You want your readers to feel like they have gained some insight and have not wasted their time by visiting and reading. If they like the value, whether it is for free or purchasing a product and service from you, they will visit and buy from you once again.
Personal branding builds on all these important and key ingredients in a successful business and puts them in a package that your customers and clients can readily identify with. When you offer rock solid service, impressive quality and value, your products and services will begin to speak loudly. So later down the line when you have new products or services, they will be much more likely to have strong footing in the marketplace solely because of the brand you have built. This personal branding thus enables you to build on your previous successes and allows you to grow your customer and client base. Once this strong personal brand it set up, launching new offerings will become much more effective.
If you’ve found this post helpfull, can you please share it with your Facebook and Twitter followers.
SEO Page Level Optimization
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Many people are confused by what SEO is. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In most cases, optimizing for Google is the way to go. So how do you optimize. Well there are 3 different types of optimization that you can use. The first which I will discuss below is Page optimization. The second is site optimization, and finally, off site optimization.
Search engines use things called bots that search your html for links, pictures, and text. It indexes the text and stores other pieces of information. It uses various algorithms to determine what value a site has. There are many determining factors that come into play here. Today I will talk about page optimization.
Bots like ordered structure. They like it when pages provide them information about the topics and structure of the page. Here are the elements that Google looks for and some examples from a previous post.
1. Title Tags
This is an area in a web page where the text is placed that shows the title of the website on the very top of the web browser window. Search engines use title tags to make a link in search results. The form I use is having the title of the post with a separation bar and then the name of the blog or url.
<title>Psychology of Personal Branding | ChrisKilber.com</title>
2. Meta tag description
A Meta Tag Description is a section of web page markup that provides the basic description about the website. Pay close attention to what meta data get put into this tag. It play an important role in determining page ranking and indexing. The contents of your description tag is what you will usually see on the search engine results on Google.
<meta name="description" content="There are a lot of psychological factors in play that cause people to be “Attracted” to you. Come read what they are to better understand how to use them." />
I’ve even heard that overriding the contents of meta description and changing it to a call of action will result in more people clicking it. I plan on doing an experiment to test this theory out. Look for something soon about this.
3. Meta Tag Keywords
Meta Tag Keywords play a similar role as the description tags to emphasize the terms that describe what the page is about.
<meta name="keywords" content="Personal Branding, Action, Content, How To, Leadership, Marketing, Psychology" />
4. Keyword Density
A specific percentage of keywords that are used on a web page are referred to as keyword density. A keyword’s density must be between 2% to 8 % for page ranking that is considered good. This technique is the heart and soul of Search Engine Optimization.
5. URL Structure
If you want your website to rank high then the URL structure that you use needs to be related to the context of the website. You should be able to read a url and figure out what the page is about. For example:
http://www.chriskilber.com/psychology-of-personal-branding/
See below: I will reveal exactly how I accomplish the above items.
_______________________
- In my next posts will be how I get the best page optimization through the use of several plugins that actually overlap into site optimization. You may be surprised as to how I do it. Hint (I don’t use All-In-One SEO Pack).
- If you are using the default WordPress setup then it’s probable that your blog has been banned from many ping services because of ping spamming. I have a plug-in that stops this.
- The slugs used by your permalinks may be flawed, even using %postname%. I’ll show you how to solve it.
- Are you ALWAYS filling out <alt> tags with your images? If not your missing out on a lot. I have a plugin that will automatically do that for you if you forget.
- And finally, how you can use your followers comments to generate more traffic. This plugin is a gold mine.
Till later this week…
Have a remarkable day!
Psychology of Personal Branding
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Personal Branding
We’ve all heard about Personal Branding. It is your unique selling proposition that will differentiate you from all others. The great thing about Personal Branding is that you don’t have to pretend to be someone your not. In fact, it doesn’t have to perfect either. You will attract people as long as you are genuine in your message.
Psychology
There are a lot of psychological factors in play that cause people to be “Attracted” to you. I don’t mean strictly physical appearance here, though that can have a factor. If you can figure out what these psychological factors are and feature or accent your strong points and identify where you can improve in the others, you will be able to separate yourself from all the others. This may take a bit of introspection on your part. The number one reason people are attracted to someone else is that they feel that they are just like them for a host of reasons. They are looking to try to identify themselves with others.
Characteristics
What makes people identify themselves with others is different for everyone. It can be a combination of many things. It can be, and not limited to, age, gender, physical characteristics, experience, vocabulary, exuberance, and presence. It can differ from day to day as well. It depends on each person’s frame of mind. So no matter what your brand or what your strengths or weakness are, there will be someone who will connect with you, start following you, and start studying what you are doing. In a nutshell, you can’t be everything to everybody, nor should you try. You just need to be YOU. However, there are things that you should try to do though that will attract more than just a narrow band of people.
Your Voice
In your writing, your video, and communications you need to sound confident and sure of yourself. People are attracted to confidence, plain and simple. You need to be honest. If you need to write about a concept that you are not totally unsure of, let your readers know. By being honest and admitting some of your shortcomings people will feel an attraction because they know they are not perfect as well. You can divulge these with a pact to learn more about them and a promise then to write about what you learned. This will provide your readers with a sense of belonging while you discover together.
Where To Go From Here
Personal branding isn’t something that occurs right from the get go. It is something that evolves. You will need to take the time to learn to write better. We all do. What’s the best way? By writing of course. You also will need to read the writing of others, especially successful writers and bloggers. Try and see how they frame their ideas and concepts. Try and isolate how they involve their readers and try to start incorporating those concepts into your own writing. I know I tend to write more in an expository manner and it can become a little dry at times. So these little tips, which actually aren’t so little, will provide you with the means to create a Personal Brand that will shine above the rest.
Here Comes the Sun – Stopping Stress In Your Life
Posted by: | CommentsHere comes the sun…
Here comes the sun…
Here comes the sun and I say,
It’s all right…
Well those are the lyrics of one of my favorite Beatles songs, Here Comes the Sun. Even without the many studies by scientists everywhere I could have told you that the sun is indeed a great thing. Some of you know one of the things I enjoy the most is the outdoors. Being outdoors, many times at dawn, I am witness to many animals and birds starting their days. The birds start chirping and chasing each other, the squirrels start hoping around, and the rest of the animals start their daily ritual. If your like me, and have been “stuck in side your four walls”, other Paul McCartney lyrics with the Wings, you really do miss a lot of time to get outdoors. You need to take time and get outside and excape your cubicle walls, especially in the winter to get your needed dose of vitamin D. Don’t believe me? Look at the study here.
The best-known benefit of sunlight is its ability to boost the body’s vitamin D supply; most cases of vitamin D deficiency are due to lack of outdoor sun exposure. At least 1,000 different genes governing virtually every tissue in the body are now thought to be regulated by 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25[OH]D), the active form of the vitamin, including several involved in calcium metabolism and neuromuscular and immune system functioning.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2290997/
Not only is it great to get out and get some fresh air but the sun helps you more than you will know. Go on, get outside and go for a walk in the sun. It will help reduce the stress in your life.
New Motivate Wordpress Plugin
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I know I know, Some of you hear the famous voice of Louis Armstrong singing Hello Dolly when you read the default message you find on all Wordpress installations in the Dashboards. Unfortunately, not all of us hear good ole Louis. I hear Carol Channing! Maybe all of you don’t know who she is but she did a release of the song as well.
So as a New Years gift to all, I am releasing a plugin called Motivate! So instead of seeing various lyrics of the song, Hello Dolly, you will see a random quote that will Motivate you.
Find it over at my Tribeware Site.
Get Away – Stopping Stress In Your Life
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So I’m continuing my series on how to reduce stress in your life. So today I’m writing about “Getting Away”. I love getting away. In fact, shh… don’t tell anyone, but I still sneak out to go on country drives on small county roads close to my house, all by myself. I get to go slow and enjoy the nature. It usually about a twenty mile drive. You see, I’m literally only one minute from being out in the country. Also, I’m only 5 minutes away from a state park where I can walk down to a cool waterfall. That’s what I enjoy doing to relax.
Now I know there are many people who plan on relaxing. They work their butts off for fifty weeks a year and think the two weeks will replenish them. Many also work themselves into stressful situations planning for those two weeks. Planning is a good thing, especially if you do it early enough, but last minute planning creates stress. If you do create a checklist well enough in advance, you can manage to take a task at a time and complete it. If you do start feeling stress working on the tasks or if you did wait till the last minute, take a break. Get away. Close your eyes. Take a big breath. Take a relaxing drive or a walk in the park. If you put it in perspective, you’ll wonder why you were in a stressful situation to begin with. Remember, most stress is brought on by yourself and is based on a premise that something will occur that is unpleasant. Nine times out of ten, it won’t occur. Why? You planned.
New Media Business Opps
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Chris Brogan has a simple but powerful message to small business people, in this case a Realtor.
It is simple in that all he is saying is if I were a Realtor I would:
I’d write a blog about the location where I was selling. I’d take tons of pictures and post them on the blog. I’d shoot walking tour videos all the time with a Flip camera and post them. I’d shoot interview videos with people from my community. I’d host meetups and tweetups for local residents, inviting people who are house hunting. I’d find various niche communities (developers, stonemasons, parents) and start community platforms for them on Ning. I’d empower as many local businesses onto the Net as I could, and help them get successful. I’d encourage as many people in my community to join Twitter as possible, and I’d bundle them into a list.
Great Advise Chris!
So if your reading this right now, if I were a gambling man, I would bet that you are also an entrepreneur or are contemplating being one. I’ll guess you also know about Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, and other Internet sites useful to business.
There is one thing I can almost guarantee, is there are local businesses that for one reason or another recognize that social media is viable for expansion of their businesses. In fact, it can be much much more effective than printed advertising. In some cases they may already have some type of local networking going on right now and all that would be required is to plug in the social media portion. But they may not know exactly how to implement it.
What I’m driving at is it could be YOU that shows your local businesses how to go about doing this. Show and teach them about attraction marketing. Show them that VALUE means a lot to people. Teach them that Personal Branding will separate them from their competition. Teach them how to blog, how to set up newsletters, how to tweet, how to set up a Business Fan page. You see if they already have an advertising budget, all you have to do is say, “How would you like to learn how to cut your advertising budget almost in half and eventually double your business.” Make sure you have a business plan to be able to present to them, make it a fair price, and you will get customers. You can make money on the training and coaching, on potential products related to internet business, and the business model will not be much different from business to business. So once you get it under your belt, it will be easy! So for 2010, what say you? How many businesses will you help?
Exercise – Stopping Stress Your Life
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The first thing that comes to mind with ways to minimize stress is exercise, plain and simple. So the number one excuse is time. So whats the best way. Well I’ve been doing some research on someone named Tabata. Dr. Izumi Tabata is a former researcher at Japan’s National Institute of Fitness and Sports. In a study he found that someone training in HIT (High Intensity Training) vs some LIT (Low Intensity Training) that the time it took for the HIT to achieve more benefits than the LIT subjects was a factor of 72 to 1. That is not a typo. This was preformed over 8 days. This found that 8 days of HIT lasting only 280 seconds elevated both GLUT-4 and the maximal glucose transport activity to that of the people preforming the LIT.
A HIT cycle consists of doing high intensity exercise for 20 seconds and resting 10 then repeating it. The workouts I’m now doing last 6 simple minutes. If that type of exercise isn’t for you, going hiking, or rowing, palates, and yoga can also accomplish the same thing, but will require much much more time. I plan on alternating between the two on off days and resting on Sunday.
So as the new year is coming, if you want to learn more about Tabita training check out http://www.squidoo.com/tabatatraining. I’ve been an advocate of using Kettlebell training and Tabita Training fits hand and glove with Kettlebells. You can find out more about Kettlebell training at www.DragonDoor.com. Remember, it will reduce stress in your life and give you much more energy!
Till next time.
Just Say No – Stopping Stress In Your Life
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Well I’m continuing my series on reducing or stopping the stress in your life. Today, I’m talking about saying, NO. I remember an old movie back in the 70’s called “Silent Movie“. It was made in 1976 by Mel Brooks. It was a silent movie except there was one spoken word in the whole movie by of all people Marcel Marceau. He said “NO!”.
I’m saying this because for some reason we are almost conditioned to always say yes, OK, or ya. After all, you want to go along to get along. You don’t want to appear inferior, do you. So when someone asks you if you can do something, the obvious response is typically, OK. You can always find a way to squeeze it into your schedule somehow, right? Well you may be a superman or superwomen but squeezing too many things into your schedule becomes downright stressful.
You need to learn to say NO. You need to simply say you don’t have the capacity to take on an extra chore. You need to prioritize each of the things you are asked to do, sometimes self imposed as well, and ask yourself if there are more important things to do. So when declining an offer you need to make sure you are firm. If necessary, let the person making the request know that you can’t fit it into your schedule. If you start to feel guilty, offer to do something else or to take on the task later in the week once your week is a little less hectic.
It is plain and simple. Do what’s important for you. Remember, some of the small items you do have, See “Git Er Done – Stopping Stress Your Life“, you should knock off right away. Then by not committing to things that directly benefit you, things should start being less stressful. Tomorrow, I’ll talk about number 3, exercising.
Weekend Recap!
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Hello everyone. I’ve spent the last few days replenishing. I had some relatives in town last Friday evening and we went to an Authentic German restaurant, Gasthof zur Gemutlichkeit. I’ve been to some German restaurants but this was more like we were right in Bavaria. The mugs of beer were in liter sized mugs. There were plenty of glass boots as well. I had to toast so many people over the next two hours! Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!
It was a very festive time there. I remember looking around and there wasn’t anyone who wasn’t having a great time. The restaurant is known for their meter long bratwurst dinners. Yup almost three feet! I didn’t have that but I’ll bet my pork chops were one and a half inches thick. Next time I go I think I’ll bring along a designated driver. Boy did that stout look good. You can click the picture to enlarge the photo.
I also read Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, CRUSH IT! If it isn’t a wake up call for everyone to get into action and live your dream nothing is. One of the first things you learn about Gary is he wraps his passion with his life. Even though he spends countless hours on his business, it’s not really work to him. It’s his life, his passion, and he wakes up every day looking forward to his passion, his work, his business. He says, and I’m paraphrasing here, if you are true to yourself, be it as a baseball fan, a pilot, a mountain biker, skateboarder, wine connoisseur, an interior decorator, stop doing what you hate to do, and start following your passion, you will be able to monetize it and enjoy your life’s work.
The second part of the book is about the action steps necessary to do. If you follow this blog, I’m on the right path. Certainly there are things I wish I could do more of but till I’m in the position of telling my boss to take a hike (coming sooner than you think), I’m spending a lot of time doing a lot of things. I can’t stop learning and still have weekly training. I’m coaching and teaching others. It seems it never ends, but… I really enjoy it. It’s not a hobby, it’s a passion I’m enjoying and eventually my income streams will pick up to the levels I expected. This I’m sure. So if you haven’t got the book yet, I highly recommend it.
I wrote a wordpress plugin to feature syndication of other tribe members. I actually had written some code that accomplished what I wanted but I needed to package it as a plugin and a widget. You can see it over on the right hand side called “Visit My Colleges”. It is a widget that will randomly pull an excerpt of one of the last three blog posts for a given list of colleagues. This will feature a college or tribe member. It does require a gravitar email address so without knowing some of them you will get a default picture sometime.
I expect it to also provide back-links for each tribe member you supply. There is no reason why a group of 25-50 people couldn’t be syndicating their syndication partners in this fashion. It will be configured in the dashboard and you can add as many or few as you want. So everyone who opens the site a different person’s except will be displayed. I use a combination of a gravitar API and a RSS parser in a PHP library called Simple Pie. Ya, its called that!. The plugin is about 98% done and will be available for everyone within 2 weeks. I need to do some regression testing with some other themes to see how it renders. I’m going to have a website for it with some FAQ’s I know will come and some video instructions. It will install just like any other plugin. I’m going to ask for people to register to get it and when they do, I’ll send them a link. I have a few others along the same lines right behind it. Some of the ideas might be “Last Three Tweets”, or “Breaking News”, or “Football Scores…” I’m sure I’ll think of more. Throw some ideas down in the comments.
I’ve always seen the trailers to the movie called ‘The Secret’ and my wife picked it up last week. I finally sat down to watch it. I’ve always been aware of what they call The Secret so there was nothing terribly new or profound that I saw in it.
What I did get out of it is that I sometimes tend to dwell on the bad things that could go wrong. My wife is aware that I have been changing for the better over the last two to three years so giving my 16 year old daughter the keys to my Cadillac has to mean something, right? I used to tend to think that I always ended up having the adverse consequences happen to me, like the tickets I get when I run into the bank to get some change to feed the parking meter because I don’t have any quarters. Or stepping out of my house in the morning when it is still dark outside and find the neighbors dog visited my grass last night. Or getting stuck behind the guy who’s afraid to go to the center of the intersection to wait when having to take a left hand turn. I guess I don’t mind waiting a light or two. When it comes down to it, what the heck am I in such a hurry for anyway. These are supposed to be the times you cherish.
Hope everyone else had a great weekend and hope your week is remarkable!
Learn Without Memorizing
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Part of being an entrepreneur involves having to where many hats. If you’ve been studying using social media for your marketing there are a lot of things to remember. In the context of having to be as efficient as possible through daily habits, there are many things we have to remember that matter greatly. While no single task involved with it is extremely difficult, having to remember them all can be challenging, especially when literally the next day you may be teaching someone else what you just learned today.
With that I offer you a blog post called How to Learn Without Memorizing written by Scott Young on a Blog site called Think Simple Now. In it he describes a completely different system of learning by connecting ideas together. Scott describes this as creative learning.
What I’d like to advocate in this article is a more creative, spontaneous form of learning than the style you were probably coached for in school. Instead of repeatedly scanning the same information for minimal benefit, invest your time learning in creating connections with the information you are learning. Not only is it a more natural way to learn, it isn’t painfully boring like most memorization tasks are.
He goes on to describe many different strategies that you can implement as well. I find this kind of learning fascinating and will certainly delve more into it. I may even try and use it to try and explain some abstract technical information. Don’t be surprised if you find it in one of my later 101 traffic generation strategies in the near future.
Not only is this post interesting but the whole blog seems to be as well. Again it’s called Think Simple Now.
Have a remarkable day.
Einstein Like Wisdom With Jonathan Budd
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Johnathan Budd over at his blog shares an equation and formula that literally tells us how to achieve success and make your way to the top 3%. I recommend it highly.
Read it here:
Finally… The Answer To Why 80% Will Fail, 17% Will Make A Little Money, And 3% Will Become Financially Free Revealed…
avdngc35×8
How to Market Like a Spartan
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300
One of my favorite movies within the last few years was a movie called 300. It depicted a group of Greek warriors led by 300 Spartans who fought against a Persian army of an almost limitless size. Despite the odds, the Spartans did not flee or surrender, even if it meant their deaths.
What’s In You?
I believe that inside of everyone there is someone who is rooting for the underdog. The movie was also symbolic in that Greece stood as one of the last bastions of freedom and democracy against it’s antithesis, government, represented by Persia’s slavery and tyranny. The Spartans were an example of the power of a patriotic army of freemen who were defending their native soil. The bravery of the Spartans stands today, as a symbol of courage against overwhelming odds.
Qualities
What made the Spartans so brave? Courage? Of course. Resolute Character? More than likely. Boldness? Most certainly. The list could go on. We have dauntlessness, fearlessness, daring, firmness, prepared, seasoned, gallant, heroic, determined, spirited, valiant, purposeful, and stout. But even though they all had these qualities, what and who did they did it for?
Why did they do it?
They did it because it was ingrained into them from when they were able to think on their own. It was their way of life. Their duty was to nurture their way of life surrounded by their families and friends. This meant having to defend themselves against others who would want to take away that life. That very existence, noble indeed.
What about your world?
In the world of online marketing, mostly because the playing field is ever changing, I don’t know if we ever can really NOT be labeled as a NEW marketer. Things are changing all the time. So things you learned last month may not be as applicable or as relevant as they are today.
Take Action!
If you educate yourself to not only learn the application of the new concepts you study, but to understand the reasoning behind them, you stand to educate yourself at a little different level. It is at this level that you can utilize your time at it’s best best efficiency which will result in increased achievement. If you understand the rational and underlying principals in your marketing techniques, it stands that new implementation of new ideas will manifest other ideas and techniques. Ideas and concepts will start to automatically come to you.
Conclusion
To get to that point you are going to have to ingrain learning and self development into your lifestyle. You are going to have to grow. Daily. Unless you had Spartan like parents and were raised in a family that teaches marketing from the get go, the only path you have will be to always be trying to learn something every day. What this entails is being courageous and persistent. This is not unlike the Spartans. You have to learn never to give up. Courage and confidence can be taught and learned. When you mix the two, you will be a Spartan in your own right.
Questions
What are you learning new today?
Is your education on a different plane?
Do you learn things well enough to be able to teach them?
What’s stopping you?
Can Your Marketing Have a MVP Season?
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I’m a fan
I’ve been a fan of baseball for all of my life. I can also proudly say that I’ve been a Twins fan all my life as well. This year has been an interesting year for the Twins. The manager has thrown over 20 different pitchers on the mound this year and for the most of the year they have had a .500 record.
But…
But as many pitchers as the Twins have used, we are at the end of the season, the Twins have won 9 out of the last 10 games, and they are only 2 games out of first place with only 8 games left to play. And 4 of those games are with the first place Tigers! It is the classic definition of a pennant race. While I don’t watch as much as I once did, I do get to watch one game a week.
Remembering my Grandparents
As I stated above, I’ve been a Twins fan as far back as I can remember. I remember as a kid listening to Halsey Hall and later Herb Carneal to the game with my grandfather, Adam. That’s one of the things I remember most about my grandfather. He seemed to know everything about baseball and especially the Twins. He not only influenced me as his grandson, but my grandmother, Grace, who will be 98 this year. She still watches the Twins and is very opinionated about them. I think she would have made a great baseball manager. I remember asking my grandfather how a team could be 1 ½ games out of first place. Did they play only ½ a game and it counted? He just answered that if a team was 3-0 and a team was 2-0 which one should be in first place and by how much. The formula works this way; Games Behind = ((difference in wins) + (difference in losses)) / 2. Well at that time I didn’t even know what a fraction was but learned the importance of math at an early age.
I played to…
I did play a lot of baseball as a kid and never was stellar at it. I wasn’t bad either. I did learn it took a lot of skill hitting. I was good at hitting when I was hitting against the neighborhood kids in the local sandlots but going against pitchers at the higher levels, that ball came mighty fast. Hitting a baseball thrown at 85 mph is not easy.
Justin Morneau became an MVP
So why all the nostalgia with baseball and my grandfather? Well the skill needed to play at a Major League level is not easy, even for the ones playing there. The Twins have as a first baseman, Justin Morneau. Justin has played for 7 seasons for the Twins. He first came up with the Twins in 2003 toward the end of the year and the next year was slated to play first base for the Twins. But in 2004 he struggled during the year and only after 74 games was sent back down to the minors. He did manage to play the whole year with the Twins the following year, 2005, but only hit .239 with 22 home runs. So he did show some potential but nothing phenomenal or something to write home about. The next year, 2006, the first baseman hit .321 with 34 home runs, 97 runs scored and 130 RBIs. That won him the American League’s Most Valuable Player honors.
How did he do it?
So what happened between 2005 and 2006? Well it’s not so much about what happened between those years as what has happened over the years. Baseball players are not simply handed a baseball glove and a bat and told to go out on the field. Major league teams have batting coaches, pitching coaches, fielding coaches, dieticians, doctors, psychologists, physical therapists, physiologists, coaches, and many people with a lot of baseball experience. It was the combination of the organizations support staff, some experience, and some talent that earned Justin his MVP honors only 2 years after being sent down to the minors.
Did you pay your dues?
So it is with online marketing. There is no way anyone can just simply decide to start online marketing and be successful with it right from the get go. You are going to need a plan, hopefully from someone who has already had success. You are going to need some training, some coaches, a mentor, and hopefully an organization or team that can help you learn the ropes. Without any of this, the odds of success are not very high. I can’t say it won’t happen, just that the odds are against it.
What you need to do!
If you don’t have a coach or mentor, get one. Follow and study those who have proven track records. Don’t fall for the flashy promises of a Lamborghini and Lear jets. Take action. Track what you are doing. Refine. Seek insight if you don’t understand something. Practice. Split Test. Training is tax deductible. Take advantage of it. Learning online marketing is a process. Staying on top of new trends in marketing is a process. You are going to have to take batting practice every day if you want to be able to keep up with the pitches thrown your way. By keeping at it with the major leagues as a goal, there is no reason you can’t have your own MVP season. Play ball.
Chris Kilber
