Our self-image and our habits tend to go together. What’s cool about this is that if you change one, you will automatically change the other. Originally, the word “habit” meant a garment, yep that means that habits are like clothes.

You know what i’ve found out over the past few months of my personal journey in life?

Our habits are literally like garments that are worn by our personalities.

Our habits are not accidental. You may realize this fact, but some people don’t. I personally didn’t realize it until I was reading Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz(Amazon link). The reasons that we have habits is the same reason that we have the clothes that are currently in our drawers, they fit us. They are in congruence with who we are and have become a part of our unique personality.

When we consciously and deliberately take the time to develop new and better habits, our self-image tends to outgrow the old habits we had and tends to grow into a new pattern of habits.

Many people confuse habits with addictions, which is completely understandable. However, an addiction is something that you feel compelled to, and it’s also something that causes severe withdrawal symptoms. I’m not here to speak about addiction though, as that’s not my cup of tea. The only thing I feel “addicted” to is life and personal development, but I feel that those addictions are beneficial

Habits are something that I have been constantly working on developing over the past few months/years and I feel that I can help shed some light on the subject of developing good habits. What makes me qualified to help you with this? Well, personally I’ve done a few 90 day challenges to change my health and grow my business.  I’m someone who’s done it and has had some great results from doing it.

So what are habits?

Habits are merely reactions and responses that we have learned to perform automatically without having to “think” or “decide” to do. An example of this is with juggling. When I juggle, my hands don’t “decide” where to go to catch the ball. The reaction is something that is automatic now, because I have been juggling for over 14 years. PS- you can learn how to juggle in a video course I put together. My hands merely know where to go because I have developed the habit of juggling. I have programmed the muscle memory in my brain to know where my hands should be in order to catch the ball. The same is true when dancers are dancing, it’s become a habit and your feet merely go to where they’ve been programmed to go during dances.

Our attitudes, emotions and beliefs are something that also tend to become habitual. This can be a good thing if you actively choose to create good habits for each of these, but they can also become negatives for your life. Over the course of our lives, we have “learned” that certain attitudes, ways of feeling and ways of thinking were “appropriate” for certain situations. An example of this is to think about the last few parties that you were at. Think about this, do you tend to sit on a couch and strike up a conversation with someone, or are you someone who runs around and hangs out with everyone? I tend to be a person who wanders and notice that I do this at all social gatherings that I go to. I’m not someone to just sit there and that’s become a part of my habits. We tend to think, feel and act the same way when we are put in familiar situations. Think about yourself with this example, do you tend to do the same things over and over again? My bet is that you do.

A cool thing about our habits..

We can modify, change or even reverse our habits by making a conscious decision and practicing or “acting out” the new habits we want to develop and program new responses into our lives.

Here are a few affirmations that you can start saying to yourself to acquire the “happiness habit”: Taken from Psycho-Cybernetics

• I will be as cheerful as possible.
• I will try to feel and act a little more friendly toward other people.
• I am going to be a little less critical and a little more tolerant of other people, their faults, failings and mistakes. I will place the best possible interpretation upon their actions.
• Insofar as possible, I am going to act as if success were inevitable, and I already am the sort of personality I want to be. I will practice “acting like” and “feeling like” this new personality.
• I will not let my own opinion color facts in a pessimistic or negative way.
• I will practice smiling at least three times during the day.
• Regardless of what happens, I will react as calmly and as intelligently as possible.
• I will ignore completely and close my mind to all those pessimistic and negative “facts” which I can do nothing to change.

Simple? Yes! The thing about habits is that they take 21 days to acquire and make a part of who you are. You can easily acquire the habit of happiness if you make a conscious effort to do so. You can get started today!

Also, if you are interested in learning more about the happiness habit, there is a course available called “The 11 Forgotten Laws” that will help you with acquiring more happiness.

Tools mentioned in the video:

Online Countdown Tool
Apimac Timer for Mac users

I’ve been working a lot with Webanatics.com and building up this company and I’d like to create a short little video to let you know about a productivity secret that I have been using in order to finish up a ton of work in 24 hours a day. I have figured out a way to condense a lot of work into a short period of time. Let’s face it, we’re all fairly lazy and would rather have some free time to relax rather than trying to work 24 hours in a day.

I’ve got a little quote that has led me to this and has helped improve my productivity dramatically.

“Focused Attention Leads To Success” -Chris Hughes

You may be aware of this, but you may not be. A lot of the time when we are doing something, our attention is all over the place. We are not taking the time to focus on one thing at a time and are often focusing on 2 or 3 things if not more. We’re not taking the time to take our brain and all of our focus and put it on one thing. We’re not focusing on the present moment and not focusing on what we are doing at this time.

The easiest way to start focusing your attention and to get more done for me is 20 minute work intervals.

What’s this mean?

Well, basically I have a tool on my MacBook Pro called the Apimac Timer and if you are on a Windows PC you can go to the Online Timer. What these are going to do is allow you to set a timer for doing your work. I always set mine for 20 minutes and then it rings after the 20 minutes is up.

So what I do is set the timer for 20 minutes, hit go and then I go directly to work with no distractions. I turn off my cell phone or put it on vibrate, I close out the tabs on Google Chrome that I am not doing, I log off of Twitter and Facebook and I focus my attention on doing the task at hand.

What will this do for me?

This allows me to create content that dominates. The content that I create is so focused and so on point to the message that I am trying to deliver that it improves my performance and makes me more money. Does that sound like something that you would like?

If you are struggling with creating blog posts it’s probably because you are distracted a lot of the time. Let’s face it, our generation was raised on Internet ADD and we tend to try to multi-task with everything that we do. This often leads to dis-jointed ideas and a lack of focus and clarity in the work that we deliver. This is bad for us because our audience then feels that we didn’t care when we put together our work and that we don’t work hard, while in reality we are working hard but are just distracted.

By focusing for the 20 or 30 minutes, you’ll probably notice a difference in the content you create and it will often take less time to get this content put together.

I want you to try this..

On the next blog post you write, close out everything that is not congruent with finishing the blog post that you are writing. Set the timer for whatever you are comfortable with and go to work! Do this and test it out to see what happens and whether it helps you or not. It may help you, but it also might not work for you. It’s up to YOU to try it out and see what happens. I’m curious as to find out whether this will help you or not.

Please try it out and leave your comments below on whether it helped you out or not. I’m curious to see what happens when something I do helps others

Real Estate is one thing that people always say appreciates in value. As a business owner, you realize that the land that your business is on is worth a certain amount of money as well as the physical building that your business is in is worth a certain amount of money. The reason that you know this is that you have invested money in buying the land as well as the building so that your business can survive and thrive.

The problem with buying real estate is that it is often expensive, very expensive. As a business owner, you are typically trying to keep your costs down and your profits up and if you are to be building your business and investing in your business, you can not possibly have the time to dabble in real estate, right?

WRONG!

I’d like to introduce you to something that I like to call virtual real estate. What is virtual real estate?

In simple terms, it is something that you own; such as a domain name, blog or a website that provides income for your business whether you are working or not. If you currently have an e-commerce store set up for your business, you already own some virtual real estate and may not have even been aware of it. Having an e-commerce store is just like having your store open 24/7 except you don’t need to be working in order to make sales. Cha-ching, I know you can hear the cash register ringing now. If you don’t have an e-commerce store set up yet, you need to get on the ball and hire someone to create a site for you.
photo credit: David Boyle

Creating virtual assets is one of the greatest things you can invest your money in as a business owner, whether it’s buying a domain name and creating a blog that has adsense ads placed on it so that you are generating income from Google, or if you are using your website to sell affiliate products or products from your store, this is a very important thing to have.

A blog is an essential piece of virtual real estate that you must invest in. The reason for this is quite simple. Google loves fresh content, they love new things that are uploaded to the web and things that are relevant to what people are looking for. Blogs allow your business to post content that is relevant to your audience.

For example, if you are a chiropractor who is looking to gather more clients through the Internet, you need to be posting content that people are looking for online and base blog posts on what people are actively looking for. Why does this work? It builds trust and establishes you as a leader in the eyes of the person looking on Google for your services. Let’s take an example here. I’m currently living in Buffalo, NY so i’d type in “Buffalo, NY Chiropractor” if I was to be looking for a chiropractor in the area. This is what would show up:

Alright, so you see that there are a ton of results that show up. As a prospective customer, I realize that I’d like to get to know a little bit about the chiropractor I am going to see before I go into the office. I’d typically click on a few of the top results and check out their websites. Depending on how professional the web site looks I make a judgment right off the bat about this chiropractor. (We say we’re not judgmental, but we all are and people buy you with their eyes)

If there is a blog that I can visit on one of these results, I will typically look up what types of articles are on their blog and whether or not they have an article listed about the problem I currently have. Maybe it’s a sore neck from a car accident. Does this chiropractor have information for me explaining how chiropractic care could help fix my sore neck? If not I feel like checking out the next chiropractors site to see if they can help make my neck feel better. Remember people like free content and a blog often addresses a problem and provides a solution for the reader.

If you currently only have a static web page , you are missing out on the SEO benefits for your web site as well as the opportunity to let me know how chiropractic care can make my neck feel better. The problem with static web pages is that the content isn’t updated and this doesn’t give the search engines the opportunity to spider for new content. This is a huge missed opportunity for all businesses that currently have a site set up, but have ignored it for the past year or more.

Have you been doing this with your website?

It’s perfectly okay if you have been doing this and have a web site that has been the same for the past year. That’s how the web used to function and there has just been a slight adaption over the past 2-3 years that you may not have been alerted by from your web developer or IT guy. (They’re often busy playing with computers and stuff)

However, I’m here to let you know that you need to create a blog for your business if you are to continue doing business in this day and age as well as reap the benefits from this.

Investing in virtual real estate is something that will pay off for you as long as you take the time to find the right person or team for the job and communicate with them about what you want.

This has been something that has been intriguing to me lately. Maybe it’s because I have been really challenging my own reality and improving myself in various aspects of my life. One of the biggest things that I’ve been doing lately is doing things that I used to be uncomfortable or scared to do.

Some of these things include business meetings, content creation, approaching business partners and even dating. Yes, I have been testing myself with dating too. I think it’s fun and it’s a great way to challenge myself to become better and meet some great girls.

I’ve got a question for you.
photo credit: edenpictures

Do you think that the most successful businessmen on the planet never had to face any fears? Do you think a rock star never had “butterflies” in their stomach before a concert? Of course they did they are human, just like you and me but the one thing they did differently than others is they FACED their fears and conquered them.

I see this everywhere I go, but not necessarily with rockstars and famous business people(I don’t personally know many of them yet). I see it with my friends, acquaintances and even classmates.

I experience it in my life, and I’m sure that you experience it in your life. If not, you are in luck! I personally still am scared to do certain things and i’m assuming that you have similar experiences in your life so I’m going to provide some ways that I have personally improved myself by facing my fears.

One major thing for me when I first got started branding myself and becoming an Internet Marketer was creating videos. I was flat out scared to create videos. I didn’t know what to start with, what to say, who to talk to, who would even care, and what kind of qualifications I had as a young dude to teach anyone anything. You may be in a similar spot as I once was, you could be sitting in your chair right now wishing that you could create a video and upload it to YouTube but something is holding you back.

What are you waiting for?

photo credit: Riebart

What’s holding you back? Is it the fact that you don’t quite look the way you want to? Is it the fact that you are only a 22 year old college student? Is it because you don’t know what to say? When you step back and really think about it, life is all about stepping out of your comfort zone. If you want to grow as a person, you NEED to step out of your comfort zone.

Step out of your comfort zone

This is in my opinion the only way that you can become the person that you know you deserve to become. If you never step out of your comfort zone, you aren’t ever going to grow. The first steps you need to do is identify where you are trying to get. After you identify where you are trying to get, create a plan of action on how you can get there.

If you are scared to create videos like with the example above, then go out and buy a Kodak zi8 or a Flip and create a 30 second video! You can even use the script of “Hi my name is _______ and I’d just like to say thank you for becoming my Facebook/YouTube friend.” TADA!!! You’ve got your first video up! (This is a great way to meet you contacts on facebook if you tell them a little bit about yourself in this video and tell them that you’d love to learn more about them.)

It’s the simple steps that will create long-term success for you. If it’s something else that you are trying to accomplish, break it down into a few steps that you can do. Do one of these steps, and then you are one step closer to becoming WHO you want to BE.

Just Do It

photo credit: Incase.

Here is just one simple step to stepping out of your comfort zone. In my opinion, facing your fears is one of the single greatest things that you can do in order to improve your life. Think about it this way;

“If you do what you‘ve always done, you‘ll get what you always got.” -Mark Twain

It’s up to you whether you are going to make the change. It’s not up to me or up to this blog post. It’s up to you taking action on this and really getting uncomfortable so that you can truly grow to be the person you want to be.

What are some personal experiences that you have had that have improved your life by stepping out of your comfort zone? Have you done anything that you were completely scared of that has improved your life dramatically? Do you have any tips for anyone looking to improve their life? Please leave your responses below so that we can turn this into a helpful tool for everyone looking to improve themselves and step out of their comfort zone.

One thing that I have personally been fascinated with over the past 2 years is the power of leverage. I’d like to start this post out with a quote for you.

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.”-Bill Gates

So what is leverage? Well according to dictionary.com
lev·er·age   [lev-er-ij, lee-ver-] Show IPA noun, verb, -aged, -ag·ing.
–noun
1.the action of a lever.
2.the mechanical advantage or power gained by using a lever.
3.power or ability to act or to influence people, events, decisions, etc.; sway: Being the only industry in town gave the company considerable leverage in its union negotiations.
4.the use of a small initial investment, credit, or borrowed funds to gain a very high return in relation to one’s investment, to control a much larger investment, or to reduce one’s own liability for any loss.

I’m going to focus on the fourth definition of this and how it affects your business! I know, you have to contain your excitement.

There are a few different things that you can focus on with your business. You can focus on leveraging money, leveraging technology, leveraging people, and leveraging time. I’m going to provide you with a few ways that you can do each of these and help you think a little outside the box on how this can be incorporated into your business.

Leveraging Money

One of the best ways to leverage your money is to invest in paid advertising such as Google Adwords and other paid traffic networks like using Facebook Ads. You can leverage your money by turning your money into traffic to your website. The way that this will work to leverage your money is that it allows you to find qualified prospects for your business and put them into your sales funnel. This is a great way to grow your business quickly if you already have the money that’s necessary to buy traffic. This really allows you to leverage your existing content and make more money from it (if you have proper call-to-actions)

Leveraging Technology

Leveraging technology is one of my favorite things to do. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown up using computers and playing around with technology my whole life. In your small business one of the greatest things you can possibly do is start to leverage technology. You can start off doing this by setting up a blog (I give away free blogs at http://whoschrishughes.com/freeblog). You then need to take the time to create a social media presence on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

These three networks are where the majority of people are and the main area’s of concentration for companies that I work with. The reason that I focus on these three networks is simple. They are what is hot right now and what the majority of the people who you will be selling to are currently using weekly if not daily. In my opinion, it’s smart to spend time where your customers/prospects are. The reason for this? Well, you get more people seeing the phenomenal content you create and the value you provide. This builds up trust and leads to more money for your business. I know you like making more money.

You can use Facebook to keep in contact with your customers, use Twitter as a tool for Customer Service and to find out who’s talking about your brand. You can also use YouTube to broadcast videos that educate your customers and share customer testimonial videos to build up social proof for your business. (Social proof will help re-enforce the question of whether a prospect should do business with you. The more social proof you have, the more people respect your company/brand/business.)

If you’d like to learn how your business can start using these tools to grow your business, you should contact me here and let me know what you are trying to accomplish and how I can help you.

Leveraging People

This is something that sounds kind of mean, doesn’t it? I personally thought so when I first saw it written like this. The thing is, leveraging people is not about manipulating or conning people. It’s actually all about finding people who love doing what you have no interest in. It’s pretty cool to me that people love doing the things I dislike. I personally am great at implementing social media strategies for businesses, but I suck at designing websites, graphic design, science stuff, and some random other things.

In my opinion, if I suck at doing something and really don’t enjoy doing it…is there a point in doing it? Psshhh NO! I’d much rather have someone else do it who actually enjoys doing it!

Leveraging Time

“Learn to value yourself, which means; to fight for your happiness.” -Ayn Rand: author of Atlas Shrugged, great book

One of the most common ways that you as a business owner leverage your time is by hiring an employee. This allows you to have someone handle tasks that can be done for less financial value. Your time may be worth $250 an hour and you may be stuck filing papers that you could have done by a college kid for $10 an hour. You could then choose to work that extra hour that you would be filing papers in order to make another $250 during that hour, this still yields you a profit of $240 per hour. You’d have the work that pays you the most done(making you more money), and you’d also have that menial task done. More money while getting more done??? Sign me up!

These are a few possible ways that you can start to incorporate leverage into your business and if you are curious as to where you can find someone to do certain tasks for you for less money. There’s something called outsourcing that I highly recommend you look into. You can head to places like Elance or Craigslist and struggle trying to find someone who can do these tasks, or you can choose to use an established team to handle certain business tasks.

If you’re interested in hiring a team to handle this for you, you can check out the team over at Webanatics.com

What kind of questions do you have on leverage? Is there anything that you are curious or scared about? Is something preventing you from taking the steps to bringing this into your business? If so, I’d love for you to comment below with any questions that you have and I’d be glad to help answer them for you and help you grow your business!

PS- If you have a business but aren’t leveraging the power of blogging yet, you are really missing out. Search engines love blogs more than they like static web pages and you absolutely need to incorporate a blog into your marketing. You can get a free blog at http://whoschrishughes.com/FreeBlog

I’ve been using WordPress for about 2 years now and have learned quite a bit about how everything works and is put together on this platform. Therefore, I thought it might be beneficial to you if I was to share some of my experiences and tools that I use on WordPress.

The reason for this? Well, it’s simple. I want you to use WordPress to build your blog over any other platform because it freakin rocks. It’s simple to use and works terrific. I know you may be scared because there’s all the buttons and it could be a new thing to you. We all know that if something is different, we’re scared to do it because it’s different. I’d like to give you a smooth transition and help get you started on the right track.

My buddy Cory Shanes even wrote up a blog post that explains 10 Reasons why you should swich to WordPress.org and if you are hesitant about using WordPress, go read that right now.

Time for the real fun to begin. I’m going to share with you my favorite WordPress plug-ins and give you a brief description of what it does and why I like it. These plug-ins have helped me in some way or another so I would like them to help you to.

1) All in One SEO Pack

Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. This basically handles all of your SEO for you. If you don’t want to take the time to learn all the in and outs of SEO (which change almost daily), then install this plug-in on your blog and have it done for you.

2) Contact Form 7

Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible. The reason I like this is because it allows for you to put a cool little contact me form on your blog without having to know any serious coding. This is a good thing for you if you aren’t too tech-savvy

3) Digg Digg

All-in-One social vote buttons – Digg, Reddit, dDone, Yahoo Buzz, TweetMeme(twitter), fbshare(facebook), Polladium, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Sphinn, Post comments, Google Buzz, Designbump, Designfloat and Thewebblend. Do you see the cool little Tweet this, Digg this and StumbleUpon buttons at the top of the posts I write? Those are all done through Digg Digg

4) Disqus Comment System

The Disqus comment system basically replaces WordPress’ normal commenting system and makes it look a lot better. In my opinion it adds a level of professionalism and just flat out looks cool. Get this on your blog asap!

5) Google Friend Connect Integration

You know that Google is trying to take over the world, so why not implement their Friend Connect onto your blog? There’s even the option to send out a newsletter from within GFC.

6) MaxBlogPress Favicon

The Favicon plug-in turns that little icon thats on the tab you have open and puts a picture to it. Use this to further brand yourself by adding your picture or business logo to your favicon.

7) Photo Dropper

This tool is great. I love using pictures in my posts and it allows me to use flikr images without breaking any copyright codes and stuff like that. You want to be safe with using images on your blog and my buddy Brendan Wenzel wrote an excellent post about this at Bloggers Need to Stop Stealing and Start Asking

see how it gives the photographer credit. Pretty cool, huh?
photo credit: tinyspark_boom

Pretty Link

Pretty link turns all those nasty long url’s into something short and visually appealing to your reader. It takes something like http://site.com/blahblahblah02391121342232and turns it into something shorter, such as http://site.com/blah (Those aren’t actual links so don’t try to click them )

9) SexyBookmarks

A little in your face with the name, but that’s what it’s supposed to be! It stands out and gets people to share your content. You’ll notice at the bottom of this post there’s a bunch of icons for all of your favorite social networks. SexyBookmarks shows these so that people can share your content anywhere that they want to.

10) Ultimate Google Analytics

Enables Google Analytics on your blog. It has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site. This is a great tool to use if you are tracking things on your blog, which you should be.

11) WordPress-Facebook-Like

Facebook Like’s Impact on SEO read that article and then add this to your blog. Getting people to “Like” your posts will end up helping it’s SEO over time so it’s recommended that you start paying attention to this

12) WP Greet Box

I literally just came across this tool about 2 weeks ago thanks to Ori Bengal and am so glad I came across it. It has a customized greeting for people who come to your blog. For example, when someone clicks on this article through a posting on Twitter, it customizes the article to say something along the lines of “Thanks for coming from Twitter”. You can change this and even post something like “You’re a Blue Bird.”

There’s actual 15 WordPress plug-ins that you should be using. I just needed to keep some a secret

If you’d like to have access to the other 3 and get a FREE Self-Branded WordPress blog as my gift to you, then click the banner below:

I’d love to hear any other plug-ins that you are using that could benefit my readers here. Leave them in the comments below and I MIGHT create another post on other “Should-have” wordpress plug-ins. Only if they’re good though

Most companies are frustrated with the results that they are receiving from their social media presence. You were most likely promised that social media would be a huge asset to your business and it would help take your business to the next level. It may have worked great for some people, but might not have worked so great for others. It takes time, effort and resources before this new media will have an impact on your brand.

If you are reading this, maybe that hasn’t been the case so far. But; on the other hand…maybe it IS a problem?

Here are a few tips your business can use…

1. Are You Using The Right Platform?

As you can see above, UnStrapp’d is using YouTube to host the first ever “Reality TV Show For Entrepreneurs“, this was a great platform for them because it’s a reality show for Entrepreneur’s that’s VIDEO and is for people who love video and YouTube….people like myself

There are many platforms to choose from when designing your online marketing campaign. There’s Twitter, Facebook, blogging, LinkedIn and YouTube which are all the biggest and most important. You are probably aware that there are hundreds of social media sites out there, the thing is; you don’t need to blindly sign up for all of these. You should educate yourself on how each platform will work for you and how each network can be used properly to enhance your brand.

Twitter is a quick and easy way for brands to share new blog posts, new products, new services and share updates as well as ideas with their customers. You can also watch trends and listen to what your demographic is talking about. Twitter is always evolving and you need to be constantly updated on the latest changes in order to keep up to date.

When launching a Facebook presence, consider the various platforms within this medium; Pages, Groups and now Communities. Each have different purposes, tools and limitations. Do some research before jumping into any of these.

Blogging can be a powerful tool for any brand and is an ESSENTIAL in our opinion. Daily blog posts improve search engine optimization and provide a constant source of up-to-date information for your consumers. Whether you use Blogger, WordPress or Tumblr, your customers will enjoy reading about your company so long as you make it interesting and current.

Video might seem a little scary, but it’s such a powerful social medium. YouTube is one of the largest sources of search traffic, but most companies fail to include it in their social media plan. Are you making this mistake? Video sites operate as a brand’s personal channel and can be viewed by millions of people. This allows for your customers to put a face to the brand. We recommend having some hired especially for the purpose of creating videos teaching lessons to your customers. Educate the customers and add some fun or humor in there for maximum results.

Each platform has its own purpose and if they are all used simultaneously, your success will be multiplied. The thing about these social networks is that people tend to use their favorite networks. Many people only spend time on Facebook, while others are only on YouTube. As a business, you need to be on all of the major ones in order to reap all the benefits.

2. What does your audience want? (WIIFM

Think about your brand’s demographic.

• Who are they?
• What information do they want to receive?

In traditional marketing, we were raised on manipulating the consumer directly, you know, trying to force the people to want your product even if they don’t want it is NOT the way to go with social media. It’s all about the party!

Think of social media as a big cockatil party. Don’t be the guy who’s throwing his business in someone’s face.
photo credit: _dChris

Think about the message that you are putting off from the position of being a fan/viewer on the network would see. What do they really want to see?  Sometimes it’s behind-the-scenes info, talking to other people in the business and having some FUN.

Discounts and giveaways are a great thing to do, but they shouldn’t be the ONLY thing you do. Consider providing interesting facts on topics that coincide with your brand.

3. Listen To Your Fans/Followers/Friends

There’s nothing worse than a company who has a social media presence but doesn’t pay attention to it’s customers on these networks. You’ve probably experienced it before when you had a problem that you publicly complained about on a social network and you didn’t get a response from the company trying to fix the issue. I know it’s personally happened to me a bunch of times. You may have even @replied to a company directly on twitter and not received a response.

I’ve complained to my college, @BuffaloState and they STILL haven’t replied to any of the questions I’ve asked them. I wonder if they ever really “learned” how to participate on social media. They still just use it like it’s a huge megaphone.

You need to genuinely be interested in what people have to say about your company if you are to succeed in using social media. It’s not too much of a secret, but actually caring about your customers can go a long way. Caring about fixing the negatives is another thing that you can do. If someone has a problem with your product and is publicly commenting about it, try to answer the problem that they have!

I want you to seriously listen to what people are saying about your product or service and then respond to them! If they say something positive about your product then be sure to thank them for spreading the positive energy! If someone is posting negative comments about your product, get to the root of the problem, find out what the real problem is! You are able to ask them what you can improve on and what part of the buying experience was unpleasant for the customer.

There are such things as Social Media Managers who can handle this type of work for you, and if you are interested I can put you in contact with a great team who handles this.

4. Let Your Supporters Speak

Do you want to know what your customers like buying? Do you want to know what they WISH they could be buying? Do you want to know either of these things? Well then, get to work on asking questions and listening to peoples ideas. When it is appropriate, you should implement these ideas that your customers want. Make what they want available to them and they will love you for providing it. The content that you create (or have created) will be better and it will build brand loyalty for you.

5. Be Fun and Have Fun. Business is boring otherwise.

Stop being so uptight, get your panties out of a bunch and start having FUN in your advertising and interactions. I recently saw the commercial for the Swagger Wagon from Toyota, it’s not actually a new car but it’s a new way of looking at owning a mini-van. Check it out and sing it with me now…

Make the experience memorable for your audience and they will remember you and will SHARE YOU.

What do you think? Do you have any other tips that businesses can use to succeed using Social Media? Do you have any examples of companies that have used Social Media properly? Better yet, any companies that REALLY screw up using their Social Media accounts? Share any and all experiences below in the comments

As you may or may not be aware, there’s been this little thing called the World Cup going on. I mean, it’s not too serious. Only the BIGGEST sporting event in the world.

Soccer, Futbol, Football. Whatever you call it, it is HUGE. If you’re from the US like I am it isn’t quite as popular as it is in the rest of the world so the majority of people here aren’t turning into soccer hooligans…maybe that’s the reason the US got beat by Ghana? We should become better hooligans. I know during hockey season Buffalo has hooligans all over the place (I became one this year).

So about that picture…When my dad was in Argentina, he bought me an authentic Argentina jersey and it pretty much solidified me as a fan of Argentina…not to mention that Carlos Tevez and Lionel Messi are crazy good.

So what can I learn from the World Cup?

Well, there are quite a few…one of these could be how supply & demand can make a company profit like never before selling Vuvuzelas, how Nike has gotten their fans involved by creating the “Write the Future” marketing campaign 

or even a message about how working together as a team is essential to victory.

I like that last one, so I’m going to go with that.

What is teamwork?

According to Wikipedia: Teamwork is work performed by a team. The quality of teamwork may be measured by analysing the effectiveness of the collaboration

It’s the team that plays together the best each and every game that will win the cup this year. The same is true in business.

Teamwork is what you’re already doing with the teams YOU are already working with. If you are an Entrepreneur trying to do it without a team(I’ve been there, it’s hard to share ideas), but I’m here to tell you that collaboration is good for Entrepreneur’s.

Steps to building an effective team:

1. Identify Strengths & Weaknesses for each person
2. Focus on these strengths
3. Outsource Weakness
4. Rinse and repeat with the rest of the team

What’s In It For Me?

Well one thing is that it’s going to make you more money and everyone you are working with will show increased productivity. Is that enough?

I’ve got an exercise for you. It’s not anything like doing a crazy workout each day for 90 days, unless you’re into that…I’m crazy and did that over at P90XWithChris.com . Literally, I did that. I’m now turning Insane and doing something similar but for 60 days at WorkoutWithChris.com

Take out a piece of paper; go ahead and step away from the computer and grab a piece of paper and a pen.

Go ahead and do this exercise with your team. All you need to do is have everyone in the meeting write out 4 things that each person on the team does well and 1 thing that the person does EXCEPTIONALLY well. They should write one of these for themselves as well.

An example of this from my personal list:

1. Ideation
2. Learner
3. Activator
4. Maximizer
5. Significance

“Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?” – Benjamin Franklin

That list right there is my top 5 strengths and I explain them more in a post I made, Should I Focus On My Strengths?

With a team of 5 people working together, you will have a list of 25 things that each person is good at. This will increase each person’s confidence and allow for them to see what they are really great at. (Sometimes we find it hard to truly identify our strengths)

Why does this work?

Think about it this way…. if you suck at doing a particular task do you really want to do it? Deep down inside of you, do you really want to do it?

I know that when I’m not good at something, I definitely don’t want to do it. On the other side, when I’m doing something I’m really good at (helping businesses make more money) I’m having a freakin’ blast! I’ve typically got a grin on my face and ideas flow to me faster than a speeding bullet.

If your business has been static, please take the time to do this with your team. If you find that you are spending 80% of your time on things that you flat out suck at, then STOP. Start spending time on what you are good at. Use the Pareto Principle to your advantage. Hire people who are good at what you suck at and start spending your time on the things that YOU and your team are good at. Outsourcing is an option that is great. Use it to your advantage and if you need any help finding a company to outsource through, let me know and I’ll hook you up with a phenomenal team.

I was on the phone earlier today(June 16) with Ori Bengal, @CouchSurfingOri on twitter and I had a serious question to ask him that has to do with one of his specialties and something that I really want to bring into my life…..Travel.

You probably don’t know, but I was asked to go to the Philippines for 3 months to train a team to handle Social Media Marketing and Online Marketing campaigns for businesses. Basically I’ll be training a team on what I am an expert in and then having them handle this for my clients(possibly you ).

I personally think it’s awesome that I can leverage my mind by teaching others the information that I have learned. By teaching people; I also learn more which makes me happier.

This is my first time writing a blog post like this so I’m just going to spit out a bunch of the feelings that I experienced while being on the phone and realizing that I can actually do this. I, Chris Hughes, have the opportunity to live outside of the United States and experience something that I never thought I’d really be able to do…move to a foreign country.

Feelings:

• Excitement
• Kid in a candy shop gut feeling where I can’t stop smiling….I’m guessing this is what it would feel like to be inside of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory
• Nervous
• Anxious
• Confused
• Concerned
• Insignificant
• Scared
• Optimistic

Creating My Life…

it’s feelings like this that really seem to shape our lives, well at least for me that have helped shape my life so far. I love experiencing these feelings as that’s when I really grow as a person…

I honestly can say I am so excited that I am nervous about this point of my life. I’m going to be officially done with my Bachelor’s education and moving onto a new part of my life. I’m also a little nervous about this post because, well..it’s different. It’s out there, it’s not normal marketing stuff as much as it is personal development and life lessons that I have. Oh well, we will see what happens. Maybe you’ll even enjoy this type of post more than you enjoy my marketing stuff… be sure to let me know in the comments after you finish reading.

So a little background on my life right now:

• 22 years old
• taking 4 summer classes from June 1 until August 14th at Buffalo State College
• I’ve been trying to build a business that performs online marketing for businesses as well as consulting on the side. (If you haven’t heard about the benefits of Gen Y Consulting read this) ps- I’m Gen Y
• Living in Buffalo, NY

Now you know a little about what position I am in in my life. You know, confused about what exactly life is supposed to be like, unsure about the future, unsure about what I want to do as a job, what I want to do for a career, what I want to do for fun, and who I want to ultimately be. I’m thinking that living a life like Sir Richard Branson would be an awesome thing to do… but so would living on a beach teaching surf lessons to tourists…well in that case, so would living in the jungle with leading zip-lining trips as my job. At this point in my life, I could maybe even pursue a career teaching yoga classes in the middle of a major city for all I know?

Maybe even hosting leadership camps for businesses and helping people become better at establishing successful teams. The world really is full of opportunities and I don’t know what I’m going to pursue.

Do we ever really know?

I want you to ask yourself this question. Do you really know what you want to be when you grow up?

Even if you are a grown up, what did you want to be as a kid that you put off because you were told it wasn’t going to be a safe choice? I know that most people wanted to be an astronaut, doctor, professional basketball player(this was me), or maybe even a world class juggler. However, society is always trying to force us to do whats safe. I’m not sure if I believe that “doing whats safe”  is the way to go at this part of my life.

This is exactly why I feel like heading to the Philippines is a smart choice for me. It will allow me to pursue one of my dreams and travel to the Philippines, save me money, and be a great business experience.

The reason I’ve written this is because I’ve been reading Linchpin:Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin and I’ve realized that it’s the people who do things differently that create change in businesses and lead to true breakthroughs in their lives. It’s stepping outside of your comfort zone to be unique and truly become a linchpin. I feel like I am ready to become a linchpin.

What do YOU think?

Should I go? Should I stay? Should I wait to move out to California until AFTER I have saved the money to live there? It’s now your turn to participate in this and let me know if you’ve had any travel experiences or if you have any advice for me…. oh…by the way, I’m definitely going to be going to the Philippines. Don’t miss me too much

Setting up a Facebook Event for a special event your business is hosting is a great way to let your customers/fans know that you are hosting an event and get some idea of how many of them are going to show up for the event. I’ve broken this down into 3 steps for you so that you can start doing this for your business today!

Step 1) On your home page on the left side, you’ll notice the “Events” tab. Click it

Step 2) After that, you will get this screen. Click on “+ Create an Event” and you’re on your way to creating an event!

Step 3) The final step…following the instructions and then selecting guests to invite.

Ta-da!!! All done, now you successfully know how to create a Facebook Event.

Possible ideas for using this in your business:

-Chiropractor’s hosting workshops in their office
-Restaurant’s hosting a party or trying to fill their dining rooms for certain holidays
-Small mom & pop shops hosting a certain type of deal on certain products. You could host a certain deal on X products and have the day listed on the Events page to get people walking into your business READY TO BUY!
- Etc, Etc, Etc…

You get the idea. A Facebook Event can be a great way to get your current network into your business for something. Set up a free workshop/seminar that educates your prospects on the benefits of using your product/service and then offer the product at a discount for the attendees. You’re a genius so I know that you can come up with some great ideas to make some more money in your business.

If you’re struggling with ideas, feel free to have a 15 min free consultation with me and we can brainstorm some possible ideas for you. I’m a Generation Y Entrepreneur so I’ve got a brain full of ideas that are waiting for you to pick it. And who knows, maybe some of these ideas will help you so much that you’ll want to Hire Me for more of my idea’s

After the event is finished, be sure to Remove it so that you don’t annoy your customers Thanks to Chuck for the reminder!