Archive for Leadership
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.
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.
Others Moccasins
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My friend Steve has a post over on his blog called No Comparison… that got me thinking quite a bit. Truth be told, just about all of Steve’s posts do. He has a gift of “waxing poetic” as they say, in a very understandable and genuine way.
In the post Steve tells us of someone he knows that is going through financial difficulties. He eventually tells the person about a financial loss he had incurred at one time dwarfing theirs. He doesn’t go into exact detail as to what happened or what was said other than at the end there was hope for this person. Hope.
So no matter what our human frailties, what our shortcomings, what we may think we are lacking, most of us have walked down a few paths that many may not have. We have walked in others moccasins, so to speak. You see we all do have experience and vision that we are able to convey to others. Not all of it is going to be something we are proud of. But as Steve points out, It won’t be your frailty that will be exposed, it will be our authenticity.
Thank you once again Steve.
Questions:
1. What have you gone through that could help someone?
2. What types of relationships could you foster by being authentic?
3. Could you incorporate this into your online business?
4. What would your business do if you worked with a lot authentic people?
Have a great and safe New Year.
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.
Tim Ferris Interview
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I just got done listening to a webinar featuring Tim Ferris. Tim is coming out with a new and expanded version of his book, “The 4 Hour Work Week”. There are more than 100 pages of new, cutting-edge content in the new version. It will be debuting tomorrow, Tuesday, Dec. 15th.
One of the things that Tim spoke about is that the most effective person who makes decisions actually make very few decisions. He said that the questions the most effective people ask themselves when confronted with an issue is that they determine whether it is a one time occurrence or repeatable. If it is repeatable, then they can formulate a policy that will handle the situation in the future. If it is a one time occurrence, depending on availability, it can be delegated or outsourced.
Tim is heads above the rest when it comes to utilizing existing knowledge and if he doesn’t know it, finding someone who does. I’ve already pre-ordered and it will get sent tomorrow. If you haven’t read the original, shame on you. It has launched more people into their businesses of their own than any other single thing withing the last 2 years. You can pick it up for 41% discount below. Enjoy.
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?
House on Marketing
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House
Hey, do you all know the character on the FOX network’s show called House? Hugh Laurie plays an eccentric, grumpy, though poignant, and articulate, doctor lacking in bedside manner. In talking to friends and other people, I’ve found that either you like his character or you hate him. He has a condescending and somewhat biting style that pierces and cuts to the chase. But is his demeanor really brash? I like to think he’s saying what others are thinking. In the end, he always is the one who diagnoses the ailment and saves the day or should I say patient? Does it matter how he accomplished his goal, to save a life?
Being Honest
How’s this related to marketing? Well we all have first of all have to be honest with our potential customers, affiliates, and others about our products and most importantly, the chances of success when joining our network marketing organizations. Are the promises of 25,000 dollars a month realistic? Are the fist-full’s of cash and Lamborghinis realistic? Is it really turn key and does it only require a limited amount of knowledge? Does it grow itself without any human interaction? Is the marketing really provided by someone else?
Promises and Reality
We all know the promises and even after years in the business, we are still somewhat seeking the ‘Holy Grail’, so to speak. There are even examples of diamonds in the rough of those who have had their dreams realized. But as Dr. House would say:
1. Your prospects really don’t care what you have to say, really!
2. When you’re selling an Network opportunity, the product is secondary!
3. Logic does not win the day when it comes to motivating someone to enter your business.
4. People listen to and respond to hearing negative things.
5. Most people are highly skeptical about the industry.
6. 97% of everyone who starts an online business fails.
Just Tell the Truth
So just as Dr. House can save the day, what or how can you save the day or bottom line when it comes to attracting prospects as your customer or affiliate? Being honest can go far. Choosing the correct marketing style and tactics can go far. Implementing strategies that speak to the items Dr. House espoused above will go far. We don’t need to be as brash as Dr. House when explaining the honest realities of our industry, but we do need to address them. By doing so we can attract prospects with our honesty, and additionally weed out the meek tire kickers by making them aware of the work involved with having your own online business. I think Dr. House would make it big in the network marketing industry.
Made My Day
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My Twitter Account
Yesterday I was looking at my twitter account and ran across these two tweets. It made me feel great. I have the ability to drive a lot of traffic but rarely are they ever to a page or site that says to purchase anything. They are simply posts that help inform, educate, show how-to, help to make decisions, and to motivate. They offer value. Of course not everything that gets tweeted is advertising or spam, there are a lot of great quotes and links to breaking news. Sad to say though is that the majority of it is just that, advertising and spam. People just don’t understand that people don’t want to get sold to. They still have the old school mentality and are using Twitter as a advertising portal. They don’t get that when people are put into situations where they are being sold to, their natural tendency is to run away.
Dr. Joyce Knudsen
It appears Joyce had a lot more to say than she could in a tweet so she had to have two. I’ll bet my tweets stood out like a sore thumb. I get a lot of the same types of responses on my Facebook page as well. I treat it the same way.
As contradictory as this sounds, online marketing is a people business. It’s about nurturing relationships. About helping and educating people that you’ve come to know. It’s about sharing your personalities and nuances with each other. It’s empathy and understanding. Selling is never about the product. It’s about relationships.
Thank you so much Joyce!
Joyce is an Image Consultant Trainer and Joyce can be found on twitter @drJoyce_knudsen and her blog, The Image Maker, Inc.
Content Syndication News
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Providing Phenomenal Value
I’ve been a bit derelict in my duty and have been a bit sparse on my posts. I have been working on some projects related to this blog and you should start seeing some more concrete content and some action items that you’ll be able to implement. What’s the purpose? Well it’s to drive a lot more traffic to your blog. In fact, I’m sure of it that you’ll be getting more traffic. You’ll be able to start converting sales in your funnels and building your lists. “That’s a bold statement there Chris”, I can hear you saying. Why am I saying this? I’ve had some concrete examples that I implemented earlier this week and have had some fantastic results. As you know I’m big on leadership and one of the tenets that I’ve taken to heart over the last 6 months is to provide value to others. Phenomenal value. Not only do I want to provide content that educates, informs, shows how to, helps people make decisions, and motivate them, I also want to make sure what I provide them is something that is efficient and has solid reasons to why I do things the way I do. IN my mind, If I can’t, then I’m not doing my job.
Sign Up to Learn More
This post contains some nomenclature that not everyone is accustomed to. If you sign up for my 101 Traffic Generating ideas on the right hand side of this page you will learn about what exactly I’m talking about and how it can catapult your traffic.
Great News For You!
One of the things that I did earlier this week and am excited to share with you was to implement a strategy with a customized web site I built to help with content syndication. It integrates with bit.ly and some other twitter tools. It’s about 95% ready for prime time and you will be hearing more about it in the near future. On Monday morning I went through a cycle of what would occur if I had a content syndication group or tribe. This would be a small group of 5 people. I syndicated 4 other people’s last blog post. I created a flood of tweets that was syndicated to my twitter followers. As I write, the 4 different blog posts received 394 hits, 323 hits, 233 hits, and 170 hits. These were distinctly because of my efforts. The statistics were tracked by bit.ly. They averaged around 280 hits each. So lets do the math. If you write 2 posts a week and have one of your tribe members syndicate it. That would be 2 x 280 = 560 unique hits to your blog. Well you wouldn’t have just one tribe member do it, you would have 3 more. So the number of hits to your blog would be 4 x 560 = 2240 a week. Then 4 weeks x 2240 = 8960 hits a month. What is also exciting about this is it should only take about 1 hour per week per tribe member. The time it took me to drive the traffic mentioned above was about 80 minutes. If you have time for 10 or 20, why not? So with 10 it could be 20K visitors a month. 20 could be 40K visitors a month. What it comes down to is you just need to create quality content for others to syndicate and syndicate theirs. There will be more to come on this for sure.
Proof of Concept
Secondly, because I have tangible proof of this working I had some people start calling me a expert in the area and it is something that really excites me, I decided to specialize in it. It really does cover many things across many applications and social media sites and using social media in general. There are best practices and strategies that can help you optimize your experiences and results. These are things that I provide in my training package in depth and will be covering fairly well in my 101 Traffic Strategy series that you can sign up for.
Focus on Content Syndication
So I will be covering the same types of things that I have in the past but you can start expecting more dealing with content syndication. I also will be giving away a sealed copy of Jonathan Budd’s “Top Producer Mastermind Formula” retailing at around $500 smackers after I receive 303 opt-ins. I’ll figure out a way to randomly draw a subscriber. It could be you. And one more thing. Shoot me an email at chris.1.blog@gmail.com telling me about 10 people you told about my blog and how you told them to sign up for the 101 Traffic Strategies. If you do so, I will shoot out a blast of traffic your way. Make sure to give me the url of your blog.
Have a remarkable evening.
What’s Your Motivation?
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Small Business
I went to a Tea Party meeting last April to observe and chat with a few folks. This was no large gathering in a large city but a small one with just a few hundred folks in a town of about 5000 people. I spoke with many people I did not know, and I ended up actually speaking to the whole crowd after being prompted by many with whom I spoke to on the sidelines. I mainly talked with many folks from truck drivers, retired veterans, moms, small business owners and conversed about a familiar theme that is near and dear to me, small businesses and their impact and contribution to this great nation we live in. On my Facebook profile I proudly proclaim that it will be entrepreneurial spirit, not government intrusion that will revive our economy. This folks is the heart of small businesses. Small business employs over 75 per cent of the United States workforce. Anything that harms small business in my opinion, harms America.
What I Said
I did not speak about how the current administration is taxing or is planning to tax. I reminded them that it is the Washington politicians of both stripes that are reaching into our wallets. This has not been something that just happened. It has been incrementally occurring for over the last 95 years. The news media is portraying it as a battle between the parties, but for most of us it’s Government overreaching their bounds and getting involved in issues that are not ever discussed in the constitution and using that to fund their own constituencies for one reason or another. It is done by politicians to get re-elected and to have power. I’ve seen right through this for many years. The second oldest profession is being a politician and I actually think there’s not much difference between the first and second.
Leader or Politician
Now there is a line between what constitutes being a leader and being a politician. A leader by definition has to serve their followers and constituencies. I suppose a politician can do that. But one thing that is sorely missed in all of this is what their motive is. If the motive of a leader or politician is to be in charge, make the organization or government run smoothly, make a profit, build a respected company or department, get elected, and to win that might sound good. But to truly define leadership we need to completely understand one thing, motive. How was it the person got into a position where they could be called a leader by the definition used above? Did they inherit it? Was it simply appointed to them? Was it funded by interest groups? If it wasn’t earned on the merit of truly serving others then I would hesitate at calling them a leader. Leadership is also not the one who promised the most. If the leadership was arrived at by taking from someone and giving to another, it is not true leadership.
Motivation
A leader’s motivation is not how far they have advanced their position or power, but how far they have advanced others. That’s the bottom line. If a person takes away from someone intentionally, they are not a leader. A leader strives to add value to others. The value you add to others is teaching them skills, providing opportunity, giving them insight and perspective, and having faith in them. I know this may sound like a politician but the difference lies with their motivation. You can add value to others by not having to take resources from others to give them. A real leader provides inspiration, values, strength, solutions, character, and does not waver in them. There may be politicians whose motives are those of a true leader, but I find it rare to find one. Remember, a true leaders motivation is not to advance their own position or power, but to advance others.
New Consequential Strangers
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A Few Years Ago
Many years ago, maybe more, a few years after I was in college anyways, I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in about 5 years. I had met him when I was in high school, knew who he was but never got to know personally till my summer before college started. I remember that it was right around the time I had read the book called Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.
Cybernetics
This 1960’s classic had at the time, a large impact on my life and even before college started I was earning some pretty good money, well more than I’ve ever had up to that time. It gave me perspective and at the time I was able to easily convey and teach some of the principals in the book. This individual didn’t know I had learned most of this from a book but I did talk about the concepts in it and after five years after I spent time with him, he told me how what I talked about had changed his life. He said he changed his life around, got focused, got rid of some of the demons that held him back, things were going good, and now had a chance to thank me. There was one problem…. Ah… what did I tell him five years ago? Even as I write I’m not sure. But I’m sure it was along the lines of that there are always going to be things that no matter how much influence you might have you have, you really have no control over.
Letting Go
Now this certainly sounds defeating, but what he then told me is that once he knew he had no control he learned to let it go. He learned to control his stress. He didn’t get mad at things. He made a conscience decision to ENJOY life, and at the time he was happy, optimistic about his future, and looked forward to tackling anything that got in his way. I eventually fell into back into the trap of the 40-40 plan (40 hours a week for 40 years), and commenced to go to college. I was re-conditioned to what we are taught where getting a good education, then job, would make us happy. I later found I would like to learn the lesson back from him but I haven’t seen him in 30 years. I suspect he took what he had learned from me and took action. If I only would have…
Today
Fast forward to today, now even though he was just one person I knew those many years ago, we had made differences in each others lives. His experience with me at the time, to me, was inconsequential. He was just another person I met, spent a little time with, and we then went our own ways. I really have no idea whatever became of him, nor me to him. Back in those days we where limited by the number of people we could meet. Of course this is much more in a larger city than a rural city but you were limited by the physical ability to personally meet. Enter the age of the internet. We are going to have the possibility of not only meeting people from our own local locations but globally as well. You have the ability to meet new people who you can influence with your knowledge and experience and likewise with theirs.
Questions
So the only questions are how many new people are you going to meet online? How many are you going to influence? How many are going to influence you? Are you going to share something life changing with them? Who’s the next consequential meeting going to be with? What is the message you want to share?
True Leaders Listen
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One of the most important skills you need as a leader is the ability to listen. The Chinese characters that make up the verb “to listen” tell us something significant about the skill. A King, in order to be a true leader, must listen with ears, eyes, and heart … giving undivided attention to the people.
Are you a good listener?
Helping Small Business To Make Your Business Big
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As online marketers we are constantly made aware of new marketing opportunities that appear to us each and every day. If we indeed are true marketers, we see these opportunities as ones that we could potentially succeed with. We do not limit our own potential. Notwithstanding, as entrepreneurs we recognize our need to be able to be nimble enough to potentially capitalize on these opportunities when they present themselves. We have the need to be able to quickly adapt to these new opportunities, to execute them, and put ourselves in a position to be able to profit from them. So how can we go about putting ourselves in this position?
The thousand dollar sentence in the first paragraph, or million to those who don’t like to be limited, is “We do not limit our potential”. In the course of learning online marketing we may think that we are only working in the realm of the internet, but in actuality, our knowledge is not limited to only the online realm. Let me explain. We recognize our ability to be able to advertise or get our messages out to “targeted” audiences. We recognize that it doesn’t take extremely large budgets to do so. We know that there are alternatives to conventional media and we know them well. We recognize and understand the concept of attraction marketing. These are what we do to build our own businesses. Why couldn’t these same concepts be transferred to traditional brick and mortar small businesses? That is exactly what is happening.
There are thousands upon thousands of businesses that are now starting to use the internet to help their traditional brick and mortar business. This goes far beyond the scope of a website that is simply an electronic brochure that provides a list of services and prices. These are websites that are using social media in the form of Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and blogging. These businesses are involving their customers and potential customers with dialog, a two way interaction. They are putting faces behind their business names and engaging in dialog that informs, educates, and even entertains their customers. They are using Twitter in their customer service. They are using Youtube to demonstrate uses of their products. They are providing articles on Facebook to show how their products and services can benefit their customers. There are dry cleaning businesses that send out notifications via Twitter that people can come and pick up their items. There are pizza parlors letting people know their pizza delivery will be there within one minute via Twitter. There are hardware stores providing people with links to “How-To” instructions along with price lists for specific home repair projects on Facebook. There are businesses letting people know that there are specials going on in their stores on Twitter and Facebook. There are stores that will answer questions about anything that they have expertise with FAQ sections of their stores blog. There are thousands upon thousands of newletters getting sent from businesses providing customers with information about their business, how they interact with the community, and other things that may interest them.
So why couldn’t you be the one that shows your local small businessman how to do this? Yes you. After all, you know these techniques. You may have to learn a little about some of the traditional marketing methods but for the most part, there is not a business around that wouldn’t like to be able to do this. Why can’t you be the one that makes small businesses aware of the potential? Aware of the cost savings? Aware that you can be the one that helps them achieve that goal?
I can see it now. The Sunset Drive In with their own Tuesday and Thursday burger specials with free fries if they sign up for the newsletter. The blog of Bill’s Dry Cleaning offering Twitter notification that their cleaning is done and tips-n-tricks to avoid staining for certain material. Bill also is the king of puns. The Facebook page of Angela, the one who not only gives you a great haircut at her hair styling salon, but a short neck massage that will have you coming back for more. Angela also offers a discount for referrals and for those who are subscribed to her newsletter. You get the picture. This opens up a world of opportunity for yourself if you can cater to these small businesses.
Show them what social media is, how they can interact with their customers, how they can combine some of their traditional marketing with social media, how to make their business stand out from the others, and how they can start letting people get to know ‘them’. Implementing this will not only help you make a profit, but can literally change the lives of those businesses that are now struggling because of the economy. This could change the futures of many of those mutual entrepreneurial family that you are a part of. I’ll leave you with one last item that makes this opportunity much easier to do than you may think it will be. I’ll leave it in a form of a question. How many people within a 10 square mile area of where you are right now, know how to teach and educate these people on the techniques I was just writing about?
Have a remarkable day and help your local small businesses grow.
Photo Credit babymtham
Are You An Initiator or a Reactor?
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Planning is important as a leader. When it comes to planning you are either an initiator or a reactor. Most people now plan using an electronic calendar. The way you should look at your calendar is not, “Will my calendar be full?’ but “Who will fill my calendar?” If we are leaders of others the question should not be, “Will I see people?” but “Who will I see?” I have noticed that it is leaders that tend to initiate, and followers tend to react. Notice the difference between the two.
So you see, it’s leaders who are taking control and setting their priorities. You do not want to become a slave to the calendar and when you do have to interact with it to manage your priorities you need to be the initiator. Use it wisely to set your priorities. Start planning to plan better.
Chip Wilson
