Does it feel like your business is missing the mark? Get back on track with these 7 ninja tips. Let me know what you think! Subscribe and hit me up via email. Let's talk :-)

1. Put learning aside for a minute. Start doing. Doing is the ultimate teacher. So you end up learning and accomplishing things at the same time. So many of us get caught up in “learning mode”. As a result, it’s easy to spend all your time trying to figure out the best way to do something, instead of just doing it.
2. Stop striving. Start being. All of us have an idol or a mentor. You’re not your idol. Whoever inspires you does so because they are being themselves. If you truly want to follow in their footsteps, then do what they really do. If your idol or mentor is someone worth following, they don’t simply copy someone else. They do their own thing. I promise you…whatever you love or admire about your mentor is their authenticity. Their originality is undeniable, isn’t it? They didn’t get that from anywhere but within themselves. It’s a way more ballsy and scary thing way to go, but it’s worth it. If you want to model someone that’s truly successful, start by being yourself. It’s the only thing that actually wins. It’s why they win. And it’s how you can win.
3. Don’t question yourself. Yes, you will make mistakes by simply taking action. You will crash and burn. The sooner you get that over with, the sooner you will find out what you’re made of and where you can truly excel. But none of this happens if you question yourself. Dive in head first. Take the blows that come your way…and yes, they’re coming your way. When you come out the other side, you have what no book or course or lecture or conference will ever be able to give you. You’ll have wisdom and self-confidence. This is a “how to get shit done” prerequisite.
4. Don’t take on other people’s goals. Living someone else’s vision is a sure way to feel like hell every day. It’s easy to see a celebrity or successful internet guru and think their life must be awesome. The truth is you don’t know them and have no idea what their life is like. Set your own goals, without reference to anyone else. It’s fine to want fame, a Lamborghini or a big house (or whatever), but where did that goal come from? Why do you have that goal to begin with? Does your goal serve you? Or does it serve some false, idealized version of life that you picked up somewhere along the way? It’s helpful to take a minute and make sure you’re not just doing something because you saw someone else do it.
5. Enjoy the  journey. When you enjoy yourself and are having a blast, it’s so much easier to be effective. It’s so much easier to put in the hours and do the work necessary to excel when you’re having a lot of fun in the process. How do you know if you’re on track? You should feel fantastic about where you’re going, but you should also feel fantastic about where you are…right now. The journey itself should be a blast. If you’re pushing prosperity into the future and saying things like “as soon as I get…this or that…then I’ll be where I want to be”, then you’re not enjoying the journey. If you’re not enjoying the journey, it means you’re grinding your gears and you’re on your way to burning out. This is the universe telling you it’s time to switch things up.
6. Make goals that matter. Spend time working toward a goal that will really mean something to you when it’s accomplished. All too often we think getting more Twitter followers or a bigger email list will make our business more successful, but it doesn’t work that way. Not really. I’ve seen people obsessing about their Klout score and spending loads of time learning CSS just so they can make their website look a certain way. So many things can either be outsourced or forgotten altogether. Be careful of your time, because it’s flat out the most valuable asset you have.
7. Minimize. Of all the things on your “to do” list, there are 3 that will actually help grow your business, and the rest is just busy work. I promise; it’s actually this simple. Forget about everything else until those three things are done. The funny thing about busy work is that it will take up your entire day, but it doesn’t pay you anything. Yet this is where most of us focus. And ironically, by relegating this kind of work to the back burner you end up finding out which of these tasks even need to be addressed at all. It’s amazing how few things end up being important when it’s all said and done. If you have a “to do” list a mile long like I do, identify 3 high level things at the beginning of the day, and simply do that. It takes a little bit of faith here, but if you’re growing your business and forcing yourself to only work on tasks that build your business, the stuff that’s a waste of time simply disappears on it’s own.

This video shows you how I create the graphics I use. Honestly…I’m not a graphic designer, and I barely know how to use Photoshop. These graphics are totally custom and really easy to make actually. Here’s how I do it…

By the way, if you are reading this post somewhere other than my site, and you don’t see the video, you’ll need to click here to see the video. Peace out :-)

I have some notes to share with you as well as a video today. I also use the words “whilst” and “y’all”, just for fun. Hope you dig it! If you have any questions, please hit me up in the contact form. It’s my pleasure to help however I can :-)

Here are a few principles to consider:

1. Consistency
2. Calls to action
3. Relevancy and Contribution
4. Fun (yay!)

Here is a brief outline of each:

Consistency

This is a situation where a lot of us drop the ball. I say “us”, because I’m included 100%. What I’ve found is that best results come from consistency. I work with small business owners. If you’re reading this, you’re most likely a Realtor, a chiropractor, an attorney or other small business owner or professional. As such, we don’t have unlimited time to write a blog. It needs to be efficient, and it needs to produce a result.

One thing that may stress you out is the time commitment of blogging. Don’t sweat it. It doesn’t have to be this huge project that takes all day. An hour or two per week is plenty to get results over time. Share some ideas once per week. Every Wednesday for example. No need to overthink it or turn it into a big project. If you do that, you’ll never do it.

Instead, do something that fits into your schedule. Do it consistently, and before long you’ll notice that people come to expect and look forward to your posts. This is a key element to getting results. Consistent publishing leads to consistent lead gen.

Calls to Action

When clients ask me to critique their site, they’re often looking to get more leads coming in. When I swing out to the site, I find that they’re not asking people to sign up for their email list. There are very few calls to action, and they’re not very compelling at that. This isn’t a very good combo.

If you want more inquiries or people signing up for your email list, you’re gonna have to ask. I’ve had a lot of clients express an expectation for visitors to hunt down their contact page out of appreciation for the awesome content and ideas they share on their blog. Some will. Most won’t.

Here is a video with some notes on how I place calls to action on my site (if you’re reading this in a feed reader, you may need to click here to see the video):

Relevancy and Contribution

A couple of the frustrations I come across whilst talking with you are lack of leads and low quality leads. In other words, you’re not getting the response rate you want from your blog, and the leads you do get are not responsive or uninterested in what you do professionally. Relevancy and a focus on contribution really go a long way to help here.

By relevancy, I mean your content (both your calls to action and your blog posts) need to speak directly to the most pressing needs of your readers. A small business blog is a different animal than most others. You’re looking to produce a pretty specific result. This is marketing.

I see a LOT of small business blogs miss a lot of opportunities in this area. They spend a lot of time writing for search engines for example. Everything is really optimized and keyword rich. But the content isn’t solving any pressing problem. Your readers could care less how search optimized your site is. SEO is fine, but the one and only thing it will do is bring you visitors. You can have all the visitors in the world, but it means nothing if your blog doesn’t convert. This is why I write for people, not search engines. I know a lot of y’all disagree with me on this point, but I’d rather get less traffic and 40% conversion rates any day of the week, as opposed to a high number of visitors and very little engagement.

What’s funny is that when you write for people instead of search engines, people like your site better. They visit it often and tell their friends. Traffic is never the issue. Relevancy and contribution are what really matters. Follow these steps:

1. Identify your ideal prospect
2. Learn their biggest frustrations
3. Use your blog to solve their problems
4. Use your blog as a means of “giving back”. Share ideas and solutions with your readers. Give away too much. Give em stuff you could actually be charging for.

If you combine these steps with effective calls to action, it’s a pretty unbeatable combination!

Fun (once again…Yay!)

One of the biggest missed opportunities in the whole small business blogging world is lack of fun. Have some dang fun! Your blog doesn’t have to be perfect. Write short posts, long posts, video, pictures, podcasts…whatever the heck you want. Whatever is simple and fun for you. Yes, you may need to learn a thing or two, but simply pick up some tactics as you go and employ them. Obsessing over whether you’re doing it “right” or not (I come across this mentality all the time) is only going to keep you from taking action.

People know when it’s forced. People know when you’re doing something just because you think you’re supposed to be doing it, not because you really want to. And that’s not fun for anyone. Something funny…people think when you share ideas with them, but they ACT when they’re emotionally engaged. You can have the most badass, super-optimized rock star blog in the world, with half a million visitors every day, but if you’re not having fun and helping people solve their problems, it’s unlikely you’ll see impressive lead generation.

If you’re inclined to think you don’t really want to blog..that the truth is you really ARE doing it just because you think you’re supposed to, then that’s cool. There’s no rule you need to write a blog. It’s just a really effective and leveraged way to share ideas with people.

It really does work. This is my livelihood. It works. But just like any tool, you get out what you put in. Just because you have an office doesn’t mean people are gonna visit. Just because you have a phone doesn’t mean people are gonna call. These are simply the tools of our trade. A blog is a publishing tool. Your prospects are on the web, looking for content. This is your opportunity to get in front of them, be cool to them and get a conversation started.

If you are having fun with your blog, contributing relevant content that solves people’s problems and offering compelling calls to action as I outline in the video above, it’s nearly impossible for you to not start seeing high quality leads come in every day from your site.

It can take a minute to get the pieces put together. That’s true. It’s true that marketing and the internet has changed quite a bit over the last few years. Shoot me an email if you have questions. I’m happy to help!

That was a call to action. Get it? No seriously, send me an email! There’s a contact form right here :-)

Yep. Your blog security sucks. This series of posts will fix it.

Step one: lock your WordPress blog down against 99% of the malicious attacks out there in one fell swoop. It’s simple. It’s free. And you can set this sucker up in just a few minutes.

The most common form of attack out there is the brute force attack. Little college kids with nothing better to do write programs that will pound your login page with login attempts until they find one that works. After they’re logged in…well, you know what happens then. So let’s take a couple steps to help ensure that doesn’t happen.

When attempting to hack an account, you of course need to nail down both user name AND password. So first of all, use a solid password for god’s sake. Guys, I work on your websites every day so I KNOW what kind of passwords you’re using, and it’s pretty rare for me to see a good one :-)

Password rules:

1. Alphanumeric – have your password contain both letters and numbers.
2. Combine upper and lower case – use at least one upper case letter in your password.
3. Use symbols – if you really want to screw with anyone trying to crack your password, throw in a symbol or two. You know… *$%()#. That kind of stuff.
4. Change it periodically, and OMG…don’t use the exact same password for all your accounts.
5. If you’re installing a new version of WordPress, choose an admin name other than “admin”. Nearly all WordPress logins have the user name “admin”, so selecting a different user name from the beginning is definitely a smart choice.

Yes this is the actual picture the hacker used. Fun!

I remember my first blog. I poured my heart into that thing. Never really made much money but I met cool people from all over the world, and it was a lot of fun.

I logged on the check comments one fine morning, and I was confused by what I found. There were no comments. None. There were also no articles. In fact, there was no website at all.

There was however a big ass picture of Darth Vader.

I sat there staring at Darth for a bit. I was in disbelief. My website was gone. Where the heck was it? I remember looking over my shoulder and around the room in confusion, as if that was going to shed some light on the matter.

The reality was clear. I had been hacked. Big time.

Let’s be real. This is a pretty extreme case. Most hacks are far less extreme. I had a friend check her site one day to find various obscene words placed randomly throughout her site. At least she still had her website :)

Here’s the thing: security is usually the last thing we want to think about when it comes to running a website or blog. Especially when you’re a busy business owner.

But it’s absolutely crucial. And the truth is that protecting your blog is actually pretty simple.

Over the next few articles here, I’m going to lay out a few very simple and effective ways you can prevent 99.9% of the attacks you’re bound to experience.

This is an important series of posts! Make sure you’re subscribed, so you don’t miss any of these. You need to know that if you’re running a website these days, it will be attacked. It’s not a matter of if…it’s only a matter of when.

Don’t let Darth Vader take over your website! I will show you the way. May the force be with you.

Here are the articles in the series:

• http://www.dangeroustactics.com/login-lockdown-blog-security-series/
• I will post the new articles here as they are published :-)

Install and run these two plugins (very simple, very free), and they can do a lot to speed up your database, make your site run faster, etc. Good stuff! I figured the simplest thing to do was show them to you in action, so here’s a quick video for you.

If you have any questions, let me know!

As always, if you’re reading in email or a feedreader, you may need to visit the site to watch the video. Thanks :-)

If content is not king, what is?

The success of your website isn’t entirely about “creating good content”. Let’s be clear. Content is a necessity. It needs to be:

1. Relevant (something your readers need or want to hear about)
2. Valuable (helps solve a pressing problem)
3. Unique (can’t find the exact same thing a million other places)

But let’s be honest. There are a lot of websites out there that possess the holy grail of “great content”. Yet they still have failed to reach their audience. They have failed to engage anyone on a high level. They have failed to generate a significant number of subscribers. They have failed to earn sufficient revenue.

When this happens, the next step is closing up shop. No one can write “great content” forever without any reciprocation. It’s time to move on and try something new.

If you have good content and ideas to share on your blog, but you’ve failed to get the results you’d like so far, there’s a reason for it. That reason might be your blog itself.

If Content isn’t King, What is?

Let’s get it straight. Content isn’t king. You are king. Content is simply your messenger. Content is just one element of your empire. And it’s an important one. Really important. But it doesn’t get the job done by itself. There’s another element I wanted to mention today, and that’s design.

There’s an idea that great ideas will find their own way. An idea with merit and value will surely be welcomed with open arms by it’s ideal audience. If you put out something of extraordinary value, surely people will buy in. Right?

In other words…if you build it, they will come. Isn’t that the way it works?

Well, you know the answer to that don’t you? But just to make sure I’ll let the cat out of the bag. The answer is no. They usually don’t come. People don’t usually see real value even if you try to beat them over the head with it. It’s not how people work.

We’re too busy. We’re too distracted. Our bullshit meter is on high alert 24/7, so even when we hear something great, it takes a real feat to truly get our attention.

What’s the solution?

The role of design

Just like content, design isn’t the end all and be all of marketing success. But just like content, it is an essential part of the equation.

Whether it makes sense or not, whether we’re liable to admit it or not, we respond to packaging. We judge books by their cover. We really, really do. We know instinctively that it may not be fair, but it’s an effective way to filter out some of the noise in our lives. If it doesn’t look awesome, it’s probably not.

Bottom line: value does NOT speak for itself. It’s in dire need of some awesome packaging. *Especially* if it’s a truly awesome product. All the more reason to spend the time and money to really package it well!

When it comes to your website or blog, your design is your packaging. Spend some time on it. Make it yours. Test colors and layouts and ideas. Your design is JUST as important as your content. This doesn’t mean it needs to be over the top. It doesn’t need to be gaudy or even expensive. It just needs to work.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, people respond to aesthetics. It’s just how it is. I’ve noticed a few things in my own business, and I apply these to client projects all the time:

• The placement of an opt-in form can make a huge difference in how well it converts. Take an identical opt-in form and put it in a different place on the same page, and watch a completely different result take place.
• Changing the color of a headline can change out well an entire page converts. Whether you’re going for clicks, subscribers or whatever, people respond differently to different colors.
• Typography matters. Font types and especially font sizes can dramatically affect how long someone stays on your site.

These are just a few examples. Even on very simple-looking sites, a lot of thought and experience goes into an effective design.

I read an article on Copyblogger today and gives some great tips on web design, and I recommend checking that out as well.

Careful now...there are a lot of metrics out there to distract you. PageRank and other silliness can cost you hundreds of hours. Let's be careful about how we spend out time!!

Beautiful. I have to share an article I just read with you today, because search engine optimization (SEO) remains a high concern for many of you. How do I know? Because I talk with you by email ;) I recently asked all my subscribers what they’d like to hear about, and SEO is a big one.

Let’s be clear…SEO is one of the most misunderstood topics out there. A lot of small business owners are spending way too much time on this, instead of running their actual business. So my goal today is to give you a bit of insight into what matters when it comes to SEO…and what really doesn’t matter at all :-)

What do you REALLY want?

Here’s the thing: even though “improving SEO” and “getting more traffic” are some of the most common requests I get when it comes to optimizing someone’s website or blog, after a short conversation I almost ALWAYS find out that you don’t really care about SEO or driving traffic at all. What you really want is more leads, more sales, better conversions, etc.

But isn’t SEO an essential component to running an awesome, profitable small business website? Yes, it’s part of the equation, and there are a few simple things you can do to really drive home results when it comes to SEO. But it’s not nearly as complicated as many of us make it out to be! Good news, right?

Why PageRank doesn’t matter

I just read a great article on why pagerank doesn’t matter. This article, from the official Google Webmaster blog, really drives the point home. For years now, everyone has been focusing on PageRank. The idea is that the higher your PageRank, the higher your search rankings.

According to SEOQuake, this blog has a PageRank of 4, which I suppose is respectable for a blog which has only been up for about a year or so. But do you know when I found out I had a PR 4? Just now, when I decided to write an article on PageRank. I suppose this makes me a bad webmaster ;)

Why should we not worry about PageRank? Well, firstly because Google itself describes PageRank this way:

Why bother with a number that’s at best three steps removed from your actual goal, when you could instead directly measure what you want to achieve? Finding metrics that are directly related to your business goals allows you to spend your time furthering those goals.

This is exactly what Dangerous Tactics is about, folks! It’s about nailing down a strategy which produces a direct result for you. Your website can and absolutely SHOULD be a meaningful part of your marketing strategy. And as such, it should have a measurable and predictable impact on your bottom line.

But to make this happen, we need to stop focusing on numbers that don’t mean anything. We need to stop worrying about making Google happy and start focusing on making our customers happy. They’re the ones who pay the bills, not Google.

What DOES matter?

So if trying to improve your PageRank and working endlessly to improve your SEO isn’t the thing, what is? Conversion. Conversion is the key to getting the results you want from your website. I often ask new clients “If your website isn’t making any money, what effect will doubling or tripling your traffic have? Zero times two is zero. Zero times three…still zero.”

Bottom line, first and foremost you need a website that converts. And this is what we do here. You can:

1. Install Google Analytics – It’s free and easy to use. It shows you exactly where you’re traffic is coming from, what content on your site is performing the best, and it’s a great place to get ideas on how to improve. For example, the fact that my confirmation page is one of the top ten most visited pages on my website tells me that a high percentage of visitors are signing up to talk with me via email, which is exactly the focus of this website. Is YOUR website meeting it’s goals? This is the basis of conversion. Set a goal and track your progress. Google Analytics is a great entry level tool for doing this.
2. Use Aweber – I’ve recommended Aweber in the past, and it remains a tool I use to this day. There are a million ways to send email, so why use Aweber? Because they let you track things, follow up with clients, customers and prospects in a very personal and highly effective manner. They tell you exactly how well your email forms are converting, how well your emails are converting, and they make changing and optimizing things a piece of cake.

The Future

K, ready? The internet simply is NOT the same place it was 5 years ago. It’s just not. It’s not even the same place it was 2 years ago. This is a good thing. Gaming the search engines, getting massive loads of traffic and making sales to .05% of your subscriber base was how it worked. Not anymore.

Today it’s about conversion. Most web pages are doing well to get 1-2% conversions, while I focus on creating pages that get 20-40% conversions, minimum. As a small business owner you do not need a lot of traffic. You DO need a high conversion website. This is exactly how to make a great living from even a small amount of traffic.

Importantly, focusing on conversion isn’t “the next big thing”. It’s old school. I would argue conversion is a business fundamental, and it always has been. It’s just that when the internet was a little younger, you could fall out of bed and get a thousand visitors a day. Now you have to fight for that. You have to earn people’s attention, and that’s the way it should be.

As a small business owner, you don’t need to worry about PageRank at all. You can learn everything you need to know about SEO  in a short amount of time. A single one-on-one consult with me will get you squared away in that department in fact. The point is SEO can be very simple if you let it be. Or you can slide down the rabbit hole, never to be seen or heard from again. If you have a business to run, I recommend the former. Focus on making sure your website is converting a high percentage of your visitors into leads and sales. This is a foundation you can count on.

If you have questions about putting any of the ideas in this article to work in your own business, fire me an email or subscribe. It would be a pleasure to talk with you :-)

As always, a little knowledge can go a long way. This post is a short tutorial which shows you how I just deleted over 90,000 spam comments from a clients blog in just about one minute. A massive time saver to say the least :-)

If you happen to be reading this post in a feed reader and cannot see the video, click here.

This is the query I used in the video:

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = ’0′

Feel free to copy and paste it if you like :-) If you have any questions, let me know. It’s my pleasure to help however I can!

Today, we’re doing something a bit different. Derek Halpern has come over from Social Triggers.com, and instead of me doing the critique…he’s going to be critiquing me :-)

If you’re not familiar with Derek, definitely check him out over at his blog Social Triggers and sign up for his newsletter. I’ve been talking with this guy for the past year or so. He’s a straight shooter with great ideas and a lot of expertise to share. In the video below, we do a critique of Dangerous Tactics, and he gives me some fantastic tips on how to get better results with my blog.

The concepts we cover here will absolutely give you some ideas on what you can do with YOUR site as well! Consider it a free consulting call…there are a LOT of great ideas in here. Check it out…