But the lessons in here literally transformed my life and the lives of those closest to me, so in spite of my purely selfish and egoic reasons… here it is! I really wrote this from the heart so I hope you get as much benefit from it as possible.

—————————-

As a business owner, you are constantly facing different challenges in your business.  You have sales targets, monthly and quarterly goals, deals to close, strategies to plan, relationships to nurture, a team to lead… the list goes on.

There’s no doubt about it: much is asked of you as an Entrepreneur.

So it makes sense for you to operate efficiently and effectively. And yet that rarely happens.

Have you ever felt like you’re constantly at war with yourself, literally standing in the way of your own progress?

Do you:

• Procrastinate or delay to implement your brilliant ideas?
• Get scared when the going gets good, fearing that it won’t last or that something’s bound to go wrong eventually?
• Worry about trivial matters rather than getting the most important tasks done?
• Talk to yourself in a judgemental, harsh manner?
• Compare yourself to others and conclude you’re a loser?
• Hate to do marketing and sales-related tasks( even though you know they are top priorities)?
• Resolve to change your ways for good, only to revert back to your old ways a few days later?

You may have even attempted to address those issues by working on yourself, through activities like personal development and business seminars or home study courses. You might have networked like crazy or hired a coach, did some affirmations and mapped out your goals.

I did those too and they produced great results – for a short while.

What was REALLY happening inside me was…

I got scared when things were going “too well” so I kept sabotaging my progress.

Whenever I tried to change my behaviors to produce  specific results I wanted, I engaged in self-sabotage as soon as I made considerable progress. This went on and on for years.

Eventually I concluded: Something was seriously wrong with me – after all I’ve tried everything.

One day it dawned on me that I had been setting the same goals for years because I never really achieved many of them. That did it. Something had to be done – quick.

I decided to really confront myself to settle the matter once and for all. I asked myself:

What thoughts do I think when I get scared to move forward?

What exactly am I avoiding when I revert to my comfort zone, and why?

The answers were sobering. I realized that all along, my belief was this:

“I will never find fulfilment in achieving any of my goals, so why bother? Success only leads to disappointment.”

Where did this come from?

You see, 10 years or so ago I was the ultimate achiever. Every single goal I set, I achieved. Whatever I wanted, I made it all happen.

However, almost always, whenever I achieved a goal, I felt empty. I thought I was going to be happy. I thought I was going to feel fulfilled. But every time I “arrived” all I could think of was, “Is that it??! This is what I worked so hard for?” I was deeply hurt and disappointed. Success was so overrated.

So you see, I was trying to cure my self-sabotage “from the outside in” – that is, I was trying to force myself to behave a certain way, even though my beliefs were not congruent with my behavior. Of course, that never worked, because in order to create lasting change, I had to get rid of the programming that says, “no goal is worth achieving because they will only bring disappointments.”

This realization left me feeling like a huge blockage inside my head just popped out and all of a sudden rush of energy flowed freely where it once was.

From there it was just a case of re-programming my mind.

I was able to redefine what achievement and holistic success truly meant for me NOW (and not in the context of what happened in the past).

Since then, I’ve been able to let go of my inner conflicts and struggles. The war was over. I was set free!

Yes folks, shit literally happens (and it will keep happening!) until a shift happens inside that head of yours.

How About You?

I’m sharing this with you because I can imagine that almost every entrepreneur has their own version of this story.

What’s your story? (feel free to share it on the comments section below )

You probably have “issues” that you’d been struggling to cope with for years, even decades. Perhaps you feel like you’ve tried everything, but you seem to be a hopeless case.

And you conclude that…

Something’s definitely wrong with you.

Or is there?

An Invitation

I invite you to go deep within yourself and try to unearth the deep-seated beliefs you may have that are holding you (and your business!) back.

Focus your attention on a specific issue you have and try to uncover the beliefs behind it. Ask yourself:

What thoughts do I believe when I display the behavior I want to change?

What needs am I trying to fulfil whenever I do what I say I wouldn’t do anymore?

What am I avoiding whenever I refuse to change for the better?

Be honest with yourself.

If you find this process too difficult, tomorrow I will release a list of The Top Limiting Beliefs that get in your way as an Entrepreneur. I will give example beliefs that could help you become more aware of what’s really going on inside your head. So watch out for it!

Meanwhile if you found this helpful, feel free to:

• share it with those who could benefit from reading it.
• share your story with us via the comments section. I really would love to know about your experiences!

No related posts.

In fact, if we had to liken him to a mainstream pop culture icon such as Scott Stratten did for Chris Brogan when he called him Boba Fett, we’d have to say that Chris Garrett is without a doubt a modern day Charles Dickens. Don’t believe me? Check out a transcript of one of our Skype conversations:

[09/06/2010 12:48:42] Chris Garrett: angels should sing when people look at it [...] and milk not sour in its presence.

Yep.

Chris approached Easisell to have his flagship offering (Authority Blogger) redesigned. He felt that after a hiatus of focusing on other projects, AB needed to be “brought back to life”. We agreed – see below.

Before

It was lacking a certain... je ne sais quoi...

After

We had to agree on the layout and the font first, but once we had those in place the rest came pretty quickly.

A wee mini logo that will be used on smaller materials like banner adverts

The final poetic justice to this chapter of Señor Garrett's career.

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable project! Click the image below for a higher resolution.

Progression Board for Authority Blogger

No related posts.

Traffic and conversion are the two main things you need to get right when you are actively marketing your business online, so it helps if you configure your blog to have functionalities designed to help enhance these areas.

(If you don’t have a business blog yet, head on over to watch our free videos here about why you need a business blog.)

If you have a business blog already, take a look at the following plug-ins and install the ones your blog is lacking.

Plug-ins that Help Boost Traffic

All in One SEO Pack – Optimizes your WordPress blog so that Search Engines are more likely to find your page, get indexed and therefore benefit from more traffic from the Search engines  (Search Engine Optimization).

Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger - How would you like it if every time you post something to your blog, several other websites are notified? Well that’s what “pinging” is. Services are only pinged when a new post is created (not when an existing post is edited).

SEO Friendly Images - automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. It describes your image to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match, giving you more chance of pulling traffic using the images you use.

Twitter Tools – creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

SEO Slugs – SEO Slugs plugin strips common words like “what”, “you” or “can” ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from a post slugs to improve SEO by making it more search engine friendly.

Subscribe To Comments – enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries. The plugin includes a full-featured subscription manager that your commenters can use to adjust what notifications they receive. The result: some commenters end up coming back to your blog.

SEO Smart Links –can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.  It also lets you set it up so that certain links are nofollow and open links in new window. Bottomline, it provides automatic SEO benefits for your site.
WP-Post Views - Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. Great to use as a social proof-boosting element.
Google XML Sitemaps -  generates a special XML sitemap which helps search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to index your blog more efficiently.

FD Feedburner Plugin – Redirects the main feed and optionally the comments feed to Feedburner.com. It does this seamlessly without the need to modify templates, setup new hidden feeds, modify .htaccess files, or asking users to migrate to a new feed.

Ping.fm - Integrates with Ping.fm’s Custom URL feature to collect pings and post them to your blog. By default, status updates are posted to a sidebar widget and blog/micro-blog entries become full-blown WordPress posts. Many other options are configurable at the settings page.

RSS Footer – Allows you to add a line of content to the end of your RSS feed articles. Great to use for your Calls to Actions!

SexyBookmarks – adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts. Social bookmarking can help boost your traffic.

Plug-ins that Boost Engagement

CommentLuv – When someone comments on your blog, this plugin shows a link to the last post from that person’s blog. So what? Well, it rewards your readers who also happen to be bloggers, and it also encourage more comments from other bloggers (which is really helpful, because if you established great relationships with other bloggers they could promote you to their tribes).

Disqus Comment System –  makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.
Smart Youtube – lets you insert YouTube videos in posts, comments and RSS feeds with ease and full customization.
podPress – gives you everything you need in one easy plugin to use WordPress for Podcasting.

Popular Posts - Displays a highly configurable list of the most popular posts in your blog. This gives you an insight as to what topics are hitting your readers’ spots. You just need to write more about those topics to boost further engagement.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin - At the end of each blog post you publish, this plug-in adds a list of related blog entries. Very useful as it encourages your readers to read another article related to what they just finished reading, thus boosting page views!

Amazon S3 for WordPress – Allows you to retrieves objects stored in Amazon S3 and post them in WordPress.

Subscribe To Comments – Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry that they commented on.

Audio Player – a highly configurable but simple mp3 player for all your audio needs. You can customize the player’s color scheme to match your blog theme, have it automatically show track information and more. Great if you plan to post a lot of audio interviews, music, or any audio file.

Wapple Architect - Mobile marketing is the new frontier. Nowadays there are 5 Billion mobile phone users but there are only 1.7 Billion internet users. This plug-in makes your blog mobile phone-friendly!

WP-Super Cache – Helps your site load faster and protects your server from massive traffic surges.

Plug-ins That Make Your Blog Look Better

Fancybox WordPress - Acts like a JQuery Lightbox but looks 100 times sexier and adds additional functionality rarely found elsewhere. A definite must for displaying images and hyperlinks on your blog.

MaxBlogPress Favicon – Easily add favicon to your blog without editing any wordpress files. Adjust your settings here.

Plug-ins for Monitoring / Measurement

Blog Stats by W3Counter – Display stats for your blog on the dashboard and add the tracking code to your site with a widget.

Google Analytics for WordPress – This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics with extra search engines and automatic clickout and download tracking to your WordPress blog.

Pretty Link – Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet but using your own domain name. Useful for tracking affiliate links.

Post Views Summary - A dashboard plugin that shows the most and least visited posts and pages.

Plug-ins for Stress-free Maintenance

Akismet – checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.

WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database.

Login Lockdown – Keeps hackers out by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from any given IP range.

Scissors – enhances WordPress’ handling of images by introducing cropping, resizing, rotating, and watermarking functionality.

Redirection – Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors.

Really Simple CAPTCHA - Really Simple CAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA module intended to be called from other plugins. It is originally created for the Contact Form 7 plugin mentioned above.

Related posts:

1. Business Blogs: The Complete Buyer’s Guide (Checklist Included!)
2. Why You’re Killing Your Business By Not Having a Business Blog (10 Proofs You Must See)
3. The Ultimate Mass Control 2.0 & Traffic Geyser Reviews (Introduction)

How to Use Social Media Marketing Tools Strategically To Really Establish Your Expertise, Generate Leads, Create a Strong Credible Brand, and Bag Clients without hard selling

Video Transcript:

You’ve heard about it all now. Marketing your business online is all the rage, that Social Media is a cost-effective way to promote your business.

You’ve heard about thousands of successful small businesses & solo entrepreneurs who are leveraging Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and LinkedIn to market their businesses – even though they have no marketing or advertising budget.

And you’ve also heard about how you should be blogging.

But somehow… you still don’t  have a blog.

If it’s because you’re unsure WHY exactly you should and you need some compelling reasons to commit to it, then you’re in the right place.

Because in this video I will give 10 Compelling, concrete reasons demonstrating in no uncertain terms why you are literally KILLING your business by still not having a business blog.

A business blog is a type of website that you can leverage as a communication platform with your prospects/customers. (Imagine you are publishing a newspaper or a magazine about topics relevant to your business. But instead of printing it, you just publish online.) You can blog about anything that will give value to your target audience in a way that builds engagement, trust and credibility. You can publish news, tips, descriptions of events, graphics or videos. Your blog can combine text, images, videos, photographs, audio files and links to other websites and other related media.

Proof #1 : Shopping online is a daily part of many people’s lives nowadays.

There are 1.7 Billion internet users all over the world.

In Europe alone there are 418 Million, and in North America there are almost 253 Million internet users.

If most people are now buying what they need online, wouldn’t it make sense for your business to also be marketing online?

I mean, how would you like a slice of that 1.7 Billion pie?

If you’re still not marketing online, you’re leaving money on the table.

Proof #2:  The fact is that marketing as you know it is now dead.

Marketing as you know it is now dead because consumers are JADED and cynical nowadays.

Because people HATE being sold to.

Because people are banner-blind or ad-blind.

Because consumers are conditioned to turn off all the noise. So businesses are now experiencing that TV ads or billboards or cold calling don’t cut it anymore.

What used to work  in Marketing doesn’t work as well anymore, AND they cost a lot.

Nowadays millions of businesses with zero marketing budgets are thriving using the internet :

• They are building relationships and creating engagement with their target audience.
• They are reaching millions of people all over the world with very little cost.
• Their messages go viral because it gets passed on from one targeted reader to another.

The best thing about blogs is that they are interactive, and it is this interactive nature of blogs that gives you an edge to really engage with your audience (and get them to buy).

Proof #3: Companies that Blog enjoy as much as 60% lower cost-per-lead

In a survey conducted by Hubspot, it was revealed that Businesses  spending 50% or more of their Marketing budget on Internet Marketing activities spent 60% less per lead than businesses that spend 50% or more of their marketing budget on Traditional channels.

(Based on 231 business owners or professionals familiar with their marketing strategy)

As you can see here, the average cost per lead is $332 for businesses who are still using mostly Traditional marketing methods

Whereas those who are using internet marketing have an average cost per lead of ONLY $134.

That’s a whopping 60% cheaper cost-per-lead!

Proof #4: Social Media & Blogs are the fastest growing category in lead generation budgets

In the same survey, it was confirmed that Social Media & Blogs are the fastest growing category in lead generation budgets and they continue to be ranked as the lowest cost lead generation channel.

Social Media & Blogs have directly generated leads that translated into customers. They are NOT just for brand awareness

It doesn’t even matter if you are in the Business to Business or Business to Consumer arena.

The findings are clear (and this is Proof #5): Companies who DO blog acquire considerably MORE leads compared to companies that are not blogging.

How much more leads? Well, as much as 67% more leads for B2B  and as much as 88% more leads for B2C companies!

What would you do with 67% to 88% more leads?

Proof #6: Blogging is deemed the most important internet marketing tool by many businesses

You’ve probably heard how Social Media is all the rage for a while now when it comes to marketing on a shoestring budget.

In reality, blogging is really a form of social media but look here:

When respondents were asked how important these services are to their business, Company blogs were consistently given the highest ratings!

Proof #7: Blogging works for both B2B and B2C companies

57% of B2C Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from blogging.

43% of B2B Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from blogging.

68% of B2C Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from Facebook.

33% of B2B Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from Facebook.

51%  of B2C Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from Twitter.

38% of B2B Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from Twitter.

Here’s the kicker: You can’t really leverage Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIN to its full potentials for your biz if you don’t have a business Blog!

Proof #8: Companies that blog acquire customers from blogging

Now let’s compare the effectiveness of the top social media platforms: Twitter, LinkedIN, Facebook and Business Blogging.

Check out which channel is generating more leads and more sales : Blogging!

46% of the businesses surveyed acquired a customer from Blogging.

44% of the businesses surveyed acquired a customer from Facebook.

While 41% of the businesses surveyed acquired a customer from Twitter and LinkedIn respectively.

Business Blogging really does generate leads and sales

This doesn’t mean you should just BLOG and not bother with the other platforms. You need to use all of them for maximum customer acquisition

But as I said before, You can’t really leverage Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIN to its full potentials for your biz IF you DO NOT have a business Blog!

Proof #9: There are 434% More Indexed Pages for Companies that Blog

OK let me explain what that means if you are unfamiliar with search engines and how they work…

So you understand that on your website there are several pages. When you create a page, it doesn’t automatically mean the search engines will INDEX that page. Getting “Indexed” is like getting registered. It’s like when a child gets born, they need to get a birth certificate. Until they do, they don’t actually appear on public records. It’s exactly like that.

But what this really translates to is that the more indexed pages your website has, the more chances of it getting traffic from the search engines.

And when you blog, (and you blog regularly) the natural tendency is to have more indexed pages. It’s really simple WHY that is.

Companies that blog generate content which leads to more indexed pages which attracts more attention from internet users and also leads to more traffic from the search engines which translates to more traffic in general.

And more traffic generally means more leads, and more leads means more sales.

Proof #10: 97% more inbound links for companies that blog

And you probably also know that one of the best ways to get more FREE traffic is by building links to your site. Generally, the more inbound links your site gets, the more traffic you will enjoy.

Well it’s been shown that Blogging attracts more links- that 97% more inbound links for companies that blog!

Conclusion

Blogging  will help more and more people see your offers and allow you to interact with your target prospects, which then translates to a high likelihood of increased sales.

YES, YOU NEED TO BLOG – NOW.

Traditional Marketing is becoming less & less effective and they’re more expensive, too.

Shift your focus more on internet marketing – specifically, inbound marketing.

The sooner you shift, the more ROI you will reap – faster!

But before you go and hire a Blog Designer, WAIT!

I dont want you to go thinking Blogging is the end all and be all of internet marketing.

The truth is, there are inherent challenges in business blogging.

And there are many businesses who have tried and failed to make their business blog work for them. I don’t want you to do the same.

So click below to see a free series of video presentations:

How to Use Social Media Marketing Tools Strategically To Really Establish Your Expertise, Generate Leads, Create a Strong Credible Brand, and Bag Clients without hard selling

Related posts:

1. WordPress Plug-ins To Turn Your Business Blog into a Traffic-Puling, Lead Generation Machine
2. Business Blogs: The Complete Buyer’s Guide (Checklist Included!)
3. Using Social Media to Market Your Business

We’ve asked this before and the answers we receive almost always sound like this:

A barber would say, “cutting hair.”

A website developer would say “creating websites.”

A restaurateur would say, “preparing delicious food.”

A coach would say, “helping people be better, brighter and happier.”

While these answers are partially true, it’s also a fact that one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a small business owner is to think like this.

So what’s the correct answer? The correct answer is – your main role in your business is MARKETING your business, and the sooner you really get this, the sooner the cash will flow.

There are a lot of highly skilled, well-meaning “experts” (or “Technicians”) that really know their stuff. They’ve spent a lot of time training and educating themselves in their field of expertise. One day, thinking they could make a business out of their skills, they set up shop, believing that if they only do their job right, the customers would flood in.

Of course this is rarely a successful strategy. Many of these experts will end up closing down their business precisely because they were still thinking like experts.

To be an entrepreneur, you need to wear a different hat. (This actually reminds me of Michael Gerber, author of E-Myth, who described the above scenario as a case of “a technician having an entrepreneurial seizure”)

On the other hand, there are restaurateurs who serve food that tastes like cardboard and yet one could hardly find an empty chair in their restaurants. There are businesses that sell weird, useless things but people wait excitedly in line to buy their stuff.

The fact is, you can be a lousy provider of goods and services, but great marketing can compensate for it all. Just look at McDonald’s!

Don’t get us wrong. We aren’t advocating that you provide lousy offers – we’re merely demonstrating how marketing is truly the lifeblood of ANY business, and so it is critical for you as the business owner to really identify yourself as a marketer first and foremost.

So drill this in your head for best results: marketing is your main business.

I invite you to re-evaluate how you are managing your business and ask yourself how you’re currently spending your time, and what high ROI activities can you do more of in order to bring in the moolah (that’s money, baby!).

What we’ve shared here may require a radical change in the way you see things. But if you want your business to really thrive, you must make the shift. (We should know – we made the same mistake – and we’re actually in the marketing business!)

If this post served you in any way, I invite you to:

1. Tweet this link or share it in Facebook.
2. Leave a comment below and share your thoughts and experiences. I would like to know how you feel about marketing as your main role, in particular. I know there are a lot of purpose-led entrepreneurs out there who are really struggling to make peace with the concept of marketing (as if it’s such a DIRTY word) – are you one of them?

In a future post, I plan to share my experiences and thoughts about the most common limiting beliefs we entrepreneurs have that are centered around marketing (and how to burst them once and for all!). Is this something you’d be interested in?

By the way, speaking of marketing your business, we’re currently in the process of launching blog packages specifically designed for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs in mind. If you’re one of those businesses who are still NOT blogging and actively marketing online, then you are literally killing your business for not doing so.

———————–—-

Did you like this article as much as I enjoyed writing it for you? Please hook up with me on Twitter here, or friend me up in Facebook here. I would love it if you could introduce yourself

Related posts:

1. Why You’re Killing Your Business By Not Having a Business Blog (10 Proofs You Must See)
2. The Top 10 Ways to Fail in Any Startup Business

You’re probably a business start up, or it just dawned on you how you’re practically killing your business for still not having a business blog. You realize how you need to start promoting your business online, and how it’s absolutely crucial to your internet marketing efforts to have a business blog.

Before you go and hire someone, here’s a handy list of things that business blogs must have in order for you to turn it into a traffic-pulling, list-building, awesome marketing tool.

Here are the things your business blog must have or must be (ideally) in order to really help you get leads, make sales and bag new clients:

(As a kind of blanket disclosure, we’ll be putting a lot of links to services in here and you should assume that they’re affiliate links.)

1. Hosted in your own domain

Because you’re establishing a business blog, don’t set one up under a domain you do not own, like:

• www.easisell.blogspot.com
• www.easisell.typepad.com

This is a big mistake that a lot of home-based businesses do. A blog is a business asset that you’ll be building for the long term. If you put it on a domain you don’t own, and if that domain goes down, your blog will go down along with it. Do you really want to take that risk? You need to be in control of your business assets.

Plus, if it’s on a domain you don’t own, you will not be able to customise your blog. You will not be able to brand it and truly make it your own. It will look exactly like millions of other blogs out there.

If you still don’t have a domain for your business, we’ve found Namecheap to be the best value for money when it comes to buying domains.

However, if you’ve already bought a domain for your business, you don’t really need to buy another domain (unless you want to). You can easily set up a blog on a subdomain of your existing domain. But of course, if you want your blog to have a separate domain of its own for branding purposes, you can do that, too.

As for hosting your blog, your web developer should be able to provide this for you as well as setting up and configuring the blog for you.

2. Professionally Designed / Credible-Looking

Ideally, have a blog designed for your business from scratch. This makes your blog look unique, professional and therefore adds credibility. Take this route especially if you are targeting affluent markets, or if you are in a niche or industry where uniqueness, luxury and creativity are expected.

Do not make the mistake of getting a blog done for you and set up while only considering the set up costs. You really need to choose an appropriate blog suited to your business needs.

For example, if you’re a high-end Interior Designer, or a Photo Studio, or Real Estate agent, you will make more impact if you showcase your goods using images and videos heavily on your blog. So having specific functionalities like a gallery view or a lightbox will be beneficial.

Be prepared to accept that a fully customised blog with advanced features and functionalities could take weeks to create, though. And if you hire a reputable designer/developer, it could cost anywhere between $5000 to $20,000 (depending on the complexity of your requirements).

If that price is outside your budget range, don’t worry, you have some options. What you can get is a non- or semi-customised Premium WordPress Theme, and just focus on publishing great high-quality content and then just upgrade your blog later on when the money starts rolling in. For start ups this actually may be the better route.

If you’re going down this route, choose from high quality Premium Themes with a fully customised header as much as you can. Pick a theme that is uncluttered, with elements that make it very easy on the eye and easy to read. Pick a design so that your viewers can easily locate the information they could be looking for. You really want your visitors to get drawn to the content of your blog posts, so get rid of any element that could take away their attention from that (although it wouldn’t really hurt to display banners ads or text ads linked to your own offers on the sidebar).

The most important thing about your blog’s design is the user experience. So don’t prioritize “pretty” over usability. Trust me, although a super fancy and beautiful website is really nice to have, what is most important is the quality of experience your website gives to its visitors.

So don’t overly obsess about how amazing the blog could LOOK – as long as visitors know how to easily find what they are looking for, and as long as you provide extremely valuable information, establish credibility and create engagement, your investments will surely pay off.

Source: State of Inbound Marketing Report - http://bit.ly/aewfHr

3. Listbuilding Elements

One of the most important feature your business blog must have is the list building element.

Building your list will transform your business into a sustainable business, because it will enable you to generate leads and communicate with those leads over and over again.

Over time, as you build trust and credibility and build relationship by providing so much value to them, they will eventually trust you and buy from you or buy products your recommend.

When you get a business blog, make sure you get one that has a customised opt-in section (either on the sidebar or a pop-up opt-in, just like in www.easisell.com/blog) with a proven high-converting design and copy. You will need to create a freebie to give away in exchange for the prospect’s name and email, so get started putting together a freebie now (make one that really rocks, like our Digital Marketing E-guide). It’s been shown that you’ll have more people subscribe to your list if there’s a visual representation of your freebie. So as much as possible, hire a graphic designer to create an illustration of what it is you are giving away.

You will also need an autoresponder linked to your opt-in and set it up so that it automatically sends an email to your subscribers notifying them every time you post a new blog post. On top of these updates, you also want to build a relationship with your subscribers by sending them valuable tips, videos or content about once to twice a week.  The autoresponder we use and highly recommend is AWeber, due to its ease of use and reliability.

3. Integrated with Social Media

The best way to leverage your blog is to drive traffic to it using the best Social Media platforms for business: Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIN.

You will need to learn how to use these social media platforms, and then you must integrate these platforms with your Business blog.

Make it so that your blog enables readers to connect with you on Facebook /Twitter/LinkedIn/YouTube directly from your blog.

The more people you connect with using these platforms, the more traffic you will build up over time.

Also, get a blog with Social Media sharing enabled. This simply means having a blog set up so that they are literally one-button click away from sharing your content with their social networks.

Of course, have the RSS feed set up and configured so that it’s extremely easy to subscribe to your blog, too.

4. Search Engine Optimized

Search Engine Optimization for blogs involves configuring certain elements of your blog (Onpage SEO) and building links to your blog (Off Page SEO) using Social Media marketing tactics so that it could attract more traffic from the search engines.

One of the main things that will truly help is conducting Keyword Research so that you know what keywords your target market are typing in the Search Engines when they are looking for offers like yours. Once you have these keywords, you could then create your blog’s content around these keywords, to increase the likelihood for your blog posts to appear on the top of the search engines for those highly-searched-for keywords.

If you have a well-researched keyword list, and you use them as basis for deciding what to write about, your blog could have increased chances to attract more perpetual traffic at no cost.

5. Plug-ins That Help Drive Traffic, Increase Engagement, & Make Your Life Easier are Installed and Properly Configured

A Plug-in is a tool that adds a specific functionality to your blog, and you simply install it as an “add on”.

There are plug ins that help you get more traffic; there are ones that make it easier for your viewers to share your links to their friends/colleagues; There are Plug ins that help you build your list; there are plug ins that help boost the level of engagement with your audience; etc.

There are many plug ins available that you can add to your blog – and most of them are free.

However, many business blogs don’t have business-boosting plug-ins installed mainly because business owners hardly have any time to read up and keep up to date with these things.

But, by not using the best plug ins, you are leaving so much money on the table, because your blog could attract more traffic IF it has plug-ins that are configured properly to boost your blog’s traffic-pulling ability, engagement and conversion.

Source: State of Inbound Marketing Report - http://bit.ly/aewfHr

6. Elements That Measure Your Blog’s KPIs

If you are going to blog, treat it like any other marketing campaign – measure its effectiveness and your ROI.

Questions you might want to ask every month to measure your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are:

• Is your traffic growing?
• Are you getting new links? If so, from where?
• What Social Media Platform is driving the most traffic to your blog? (and are they converting?)
• Which Blog posts seem to be getting a lot of attention/ the least attention?
• How many leads has the blog generated so far? And is the number of leads increasing? (i.e., is your subscriber number growing? How fast?)

You can use Statcounter or Google Analytics to gain intelligence about the effectiveness of your internet marketing efforts. From this you will be able to make informed decisions on how to best move forward.

If SEO and Social Media are going to be the major traffic strategy you’re going to utilize, I recommend you complement Google Analytics by using Market Samurai to track your links, your search engine rankings, and to reverse engineer your top competitors’ SEO strategies, etc.

Download Your Checklist

To download your Blog Buyer’s Guide Checklist click here.

How to Succeed with Your Business Blog

Of course, having an awesome-looking, kick-ass business blog set up and configured for you with is just the beginning. The real work begins when your web developer hand over your blog to you.

The success of your blog will really depend on you – the quality of your content, the frequency of your posts, the level of engagement you’re able to create with your audience, the amount of traffic it gets, and the effectiveness of your sales funnel.

So once you have it set up, you will then need to learn and implement:

• How to write attention-grabbing blog titles (Titles are VERY important)
• How to create engaging, remarkable content that gets passed on
• How to drive traffic to your blog using SEO
• How to drive traffic to your blog/offers using Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN)
• How to do Video Marketing
• How to get more and more subscribers
• How to build a solid relationship with your subscribers
• How to convert your leads into buyers in a more streamlined fashion

If you’re feeling overwhelmed already, it is totally understandable.

We at Easisell recognize the challenges that businesses face when they first start marketing online. That’s why we are in the process of putting together some blog packages that meet the needs of small businesses and solo entrepreneurs.

Unlike other blog developers though, we won”t just stop at providing well-designed blog packages with all the ideal functionalities and elements, but we will also arm you with the basics of what you need to know about list building, traffic generation, Social Media, and of course, lead conversion!

To access more educational resources about how to really use Social Media Marketing and Business Blogging to generate leads for your business, click here.

Feel free to forward this blog post to business owners you know who still aren’t blogging. Share it on your Facebook profile, Tweet it or forward the link (Thank you!).

Related posts:

1. Why You’re Killing Your Business By Not Having a Business Blog (10 Proofs You Must See)
2. WordPress Plug-ins To Turn Your Business Blog into a Traffic-Puling, Lead Generation Machine
3. The Business Value of Blogging

If you’re not productive in today’s world, you’re going to be buried by the competition

Check out this impromptu video I made on Rescue Time, illustrating the basic features, why it’s working for us and how it would work for YOU!

To try out Rescue Time free of charge click here. (affiliate link).

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1. How to Manage Your Self (And Massively Boost Your Productivity)
2. How to Use SavorChat to Boost Your Social Media Branding & Productivity

Do you spend a lot of your time running around like a headless chicken, trying to “put out fires”?

Well, I have.

And I admit, I still do… sometimes.

Which then led me to ponder, “How do the super successful people always seem to get so much done?” It can’t be that they have more time – everyone has 24 hours in a day.

So how do they do it?

Ironically, the most successful people are successful not because they do more things but because they do less things.

Elimination, as I’ve learned, was the secret.

I first experienced the power of elimination a few years ago when I read The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. From that book I learned about focusing our resources (time, energy, money) on things that truly made a difference, and how to eliminate the rest.

At first we only implemented two things on our business:

• Made a rule to check our emails only 2x a day, 3x at the most (before that we were checking our inbox about 10 times – per hour )
• Outsourced or automated routine/repetitive/admin tasks, technical tasks, and low skill jobs, so we can focus on our most important tasks.

These two things alone increased our effectiveness and productivity massively.

It forced us to deal only with things that really made a direct impact on the bottomline.

Elimination minimised distractions. We were getting the most important things ticked off our list (rather than getting lots of trivial, unimportant ones done), we had more time to spend with those we care about and although our overheads increased, so did our profits.

And you know what? It’s so simple that you can produce the same results in your business.

So how do you carry out this elimination process?

Step One: Identify Where Your Time Is Actually Going

The first step, as always, is awareness.

Ask yourself this question:

“I currently spend most of my working time on ________.”

The answer to this will help show where you are putting your time that you can delegate, and can therefore eliminate from your to do list (or at least, do less of).

These could be admin tasks like proofreading and editing blog posts you’ve already written, or checking your friends’ Facebook pages or Twitter updates (don’t pass it off as a marketing activity, if it’s your social friends you’re chin wagging with). They could also be tasks that are not your core competency, so you’re better off outsourcing them like website design/maintenance, technical tasks, managing pay per click campaigns, editing and uploading videos, etc.

(by the way, if you’re struggling to answer where your time goes, you might want to use www.RescueTime.com – it’s a tool that records what sites you visit and what applications you use, and sends you a nifty report! Kinda like an invisible supervisor that keeps your productivity in check!)

Step Two: Identify Your Profit Bottlenecks

Next, ask yourself where you have profitability blocks in your business. Not sure what those are? Then answer this question:

“My business would make more money if I focus on doing more of _______.”

I trust that you know what the answer is, but if you’re struggling for ideas…

Think of High-ROI tasks. These are high-value tasks, or tasks that, if they get done, will directly affect your cashflow.

For example, you can spend more time marketing or strategizing.

You can spend more time developing products and programs to establish more sources of income.

You can spend more time raising your website’s conversion or writing customer-pulling content or more compelling sales copy.

You can spend more time nurturing relationships with key players in your industry or niche.

As a business owner, your main function really is Marketing. So I recommend you spend most of your time doing marketing tasks. Here are top marketing tasks I can think of that applies to any business attempting to market online:

• Attend educational live events about Digital Marketing strategies, for example.
• Meet with your business coach or mastermind marketing group.
• Build your list and write your email marketing follow ups / broadcasts.
• Observe the marketing strategies of the market leaders in your niche.
• Network with other businesses that target your same market (They are your best potential Joint Venture partners).
• Test your campaigns to improve your conversion rates.
• Create traffic-pulling content.
• Write sales copy
• Monitor/measure your marketing campaigns results.
• Train your employees so they can take more and more responsibilities.

Get the drift?

The key is to ensure you are spending your time working on things that are generating the most income. The more time you spend doing things that are of very little consequence to your business, the less effective you are going to be!

We encourage you to answer these questions NOW to really identify what bottlenecks exist in your business, what distractions you’re allowing to affect your productivity and what high-ROI tasks you can do more of.

If you want to step it up a bit, once you’re already good at focusing on the most important tasks in your business, you can then turn your attention to looking for ways to streamline the process of how you are doing these tasks so that you can do them in less time and with less resources.

Don’t be surprised if you get plenty of A-HA moments.

OK now go turn those To Do’s into Tada’s today.  ;)

Related posts:

1. What Business Are You In? (And Why It’s Often Not What You Think!)

Photo courtesy of ÇP over at Flickr

I was browsing through the Third Tribe today (affiliate link – brilliant membership site) and I stumbled upon a recording of Chris Brogan talking about what it means to be an effective writer.

I could go on to talk about what he said, but I guess I’d rather ask you this question:

Why does Chris Brogan write in the first place?

Could it be that he simply loves it? Sure. Could it be that it has a massive impact on his bottom line at the end of each month? You had better believe it.

At some point in his career, Chris recognized that writing as much as he did and as on-point as he did worked to explode the influence he had on his audience and that by building a personal brand he was actually growing his businesses.

As a result of this, he is now able to generate thousands of dollars a month in revenue from his online ventures.

If you’re a social media fanatic like myself who can’t stay away from Facebook and Twitter, you’ve probably heard business experts like Gary Vaynerchuk talk about how personal branding is the now and the future of business.

If you have your own business (or you have ambitions to start your own business in the future) then you need to give this personal brand thing some serious thought.

How does Personal Branding work to give you more business?

Would you pay more attention to a faceless corporate email, or a Facebook friend who has spoken to you on more than one occasion?

There’s your answer. People don’t want to be shouted at; they want to be included in the sales process. They want to be acknowledged and heard and understood.

Your reputation goes a long way to determining the success of your business both now and in the future. The sooner you start crafting this, the quicker it will grow.

When you build your personal brand, what you’re essentially doing is becoming synonymous with your own values i.e. you are getting popular for all the right reasons.

Perhaps you want to be known for brilliant customer service or expert know-how. Whatever it is you think will benefit your business, you need to be driving a consistent message that props up those values.

If you do it right, people will remember you in their times of need.

Get the picture? Go and start branding yourself now!

Personal Branding Mini Action Plan

This is by no means a comprehensive marketing plan. What this hopefully do is give you a good framework of how to build your personal brand quickly and effectively.

1. Figure out what you stand for: Comic genius? Attention to detail? Trustworthiness? This will be your personality unless you decide to rebrand.
2. Get a blog: We all agree that having a message is extremely important. What’s just as important is having a place where people can engage with you about that message. There are many free blog platforms out there, but I say get it right the first time around by installing a private blog and you’ll have far fewer problems down the road as you grow your readership. Check out Free WordPress Site which is a service I’m launching soon with my business partners where you will be able to get a private blog installed free of charge (installation can cost as much as $1,000 dollars or more).
3. Set up your social media profiles: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. These are the most popular places to get started. There are many other social sites out there that you can tap into but before you create 101 profiles, you should know your audience and where they prefer hanging out so that you don’t waste your time.
4. Subscribe to the blogs and resources that will keep you up-to-date with what goes on in your industry: Yes, you need to be pushing a consistent message but your content doesn’t need to get old. Make sure you stay up to date with whatever it is that you do and people will come back to you to learn more.
5. Drive your message consistently and constantly… and you will be rewarded!

Remember – your reputation goes a long way to determining the success of your business both now and in the future. The sooner you start crafting this, the quicker it will grow.

————
Resources:

Follow Chris Brogan. Visit Third Tribe Marketing. Follow Gary Vaynerchuk. Visit Free WordPress Site. Follow me, Clement Yeung.

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1. Business Unusual #followfriday Recommendations Week 1

Now before you jump to conclusions like I did – there’s a really HUGE chance you could benefit from using this free service.

Cloud storage services aren’t anything new, but where others fail, Dropbox excels.

Watch this video to find out why Dropbox rocks.

The key in this video (in case you missed it) is global synchronization over all of his computers via a folder on the hard disk – PC’s and Mac’s alike.

This is huge. This means you don’t have to log into a browser window and download the files manually. You can also put files into a “public folder” which you can then share with others.

If you’re someone that uses more than one computer to work from, and moreso if you’re used to lugging around portable storage devices, then I urge you to try this out.

I store everything from movies and photos, to business documents such as invoices, artwork and spreadsheets.

The link above is my personal link for the service – when you sign up you’ll get one of your own too, that you can use to invite other people. I don’t benefit financially from this in any way.

Each time someone you invite joins the service, you get an additional 250mb of storage. Pretty neat right?

Let us know how you find it in the comments below – people deserve to know from you how cool this is!

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