Social media is all about engaging with people whether it be clients, friends, or relatives. As Li Evans of Serengeti Communications explains, “Everybody likes to share, and they like to share a story.”

She goes on to tell WebProNews that businesses are just now grasping how they can use social media. If they create valuable content, she says people will share it, which will expand their reach.

Contrary to some beliefs, effective social media marketing is a lot more than simply having a Facebook page. Evans says businesses need to, first of all, understand where their audience is. Although Facebook and Twitter have exploded in popularity, it doesn’t mean that your audience is there. If this is the case, these platforms will not be effective for your business.

It could be that message boards and forums are where your audience is. Although these areas have been around since before the term social media was even coined, Evans believes they are still very powerful, have a large reach, and rank in search engines. Other effective platforms include ratings and review services and location-based sites.

Secondly, businesses need to understand what their resources are. It is important to realize what you are capable of doing before you jump in. Otherwise, you could quickly get overwhelmed, which could lead to failure.

Thirdly, businesses have to listen to what their audience is saying. Just as businesses need to understand their resources before embracing social, they need to do a lot of listening too. If not, Evans says it could be compared to petting a shark. Businesses should know what is acceptable and what is not before they embark on a social media campaign.

Once a business applies these 3 steps, she says it can build a social media strategy.

The term “marketing” gets used a lot and, sometimes, it’s used rather loosely in search and social media circles.

“Not all, but a lot of the search industry tends to be kind of search geeks who are trying to figure out what marketing is,” says Bill Leake of Apogee Results, formerly Apogee Search.

To make a long-term difference in customers, he believes effective marketing is key. Factors such as determining what the customer wants to do, how you can make it happen, and how you can transfer business objectives into strategies that can be implemented, are all instrumental aspects of marketing. He goes on to say that search is just one area of marketing that is important, but it works best when used with the other aspects.

Some people focus heavily on search, since it is easily measured. Other challenges of marketing could result from all the departments in companies and, particularly, within marketing itself. Due to the lack of communication these departments create, many opportunities are missed.

As online marketing increases in awareness, there is also the danger of neglecting offline channels. Online marketing is very valuable for businesses involved largely in the consumer space and B2B. On the other hand, online isn’t as valuable when reaching enterprise level companies and government agencies. Essentially, Leake says businesses need to market wherever their customers are, whether it be online, offline, or both.

He also discusses the recent re-brand his company made and the reason for it. As noted earlier, Apogee Results was formerly known as Apogee Search. Leake explains that the company began doing a lot of social media and didn’t want consumers to think they were limited to search. After tossing around many ideas, the company decided on Apogee Results to let others know that it could return measurable results no matter what it was marketing.

“Being good on social media really has a lot to do with being good in relationships and conversation.”

I made this statement in a presentation really and have been pondering it ever since. While there are a lot of great techniques for increasing the effectiveness in your use of blogging or social media – much of it does really come down to relational skills.

This video explores some of the similarities between being the type of person people are attracted to talking to in ‘real life’ and being the type of person people want to interact with on blogs and other types of social media including:

• Being interesting and interested
• Being engaging
• Having something unique to say
• Taking initiative and not just being passive

Notes: See the full sized video here. Video shot on a Panasonic Lumix DMC GF1 (aff) – here’s why I use that camera.

Transcript of Video

I’ve had this video transcribed below for those who prefer to get it that way. The transcription provided by The Transcription People.

Last week I was at a conference speaking about social media – half way through I made a statement off-the-cuff that being good in social media or in blogging was really just about being good in life and good in relationships.

Social media is, as its name suggests, the social interaction that one person has with another person or a group of people. It’s a communal activity and, as a result, a lot of the things that apply to just being good at relationships apply to social media as well.

This morning I was thinking about what makes someone attractive in terms of conversation and what makes someone good at being in relationships. I was thinking about when you go to a party and you come away from that party either having had really good conversations with people or really bad ones and I’m beginning to think about some of the dynamics that make a someone the life of the party, someone who is, that draws others to them at a party because a lot of those same characteristics actually fit within the social media space as well.

Now, I’m not saying that you need to be an extrovert to be good at social media, but some of the things about good party-goers actually do apply.

Something Interesting to Say

I was thinking back to some of the parties that I’ve been to recently and the people that I’m drawn to at parties are people who are, one, they’ve got something interesting to say. They have experiences or they have a knowledge or they have just the ability to be able to talk about interesting things. Sure, it’s fun sometimes to talk about rubbish and to have a bit of fun with that but, really, I come home from parties thinking about the good conversations that I’ve had that have actually been interesting, that have been about things that I perhaps didn’t know before.

Interesting but also Interested

So, these people are interesting but they’re also interested. They’re people who are not only willing and able to talk about themselves or to be able to talk about life from their own perspective but they’re actually interested in what others think, in what you think. They look you in the eye, they ask you questions and then they listen to what you’ve got to say and then what they have to say builds upon what you’ve said.

They actually show you that they’ve listened to you and are able to build upon that and that’s what a, that’s when a good conversation happens is, it’s not just when two people talk in monologues and then don’t interact with what each other have said; it’s actually something that builds, that gains momentum and that takes listening, it takes being interested as well.

They’re entertaining, quite often, they’re willing to be a bit playful and perhaps have a joke at themselves, at you and in a friendly kind of way.

They’re engaging, they ask questions.

They’re personal, they don’t just talk as if they’re talking to strangers in a room, a crowd of people. They actually look you in the eye, they actually will share something of themselves in a personal kind of way and add to the conversation in that way.

They’re inclusive, and this is one of the things that I think really is applicable to social media is that these types of people, they quite often will not only be talking to you but they’ll be engaging others around you in the party. They’ll be making introductions, they’ll be making, they’ll be connecting other people together and in a way that actually sets those two people up for a conversation, by introducing two people and pointing out some common interests and facilitating conversations not just between them and one other person but they almost create a community around themselves at parties.

And this is one of the things that I think is particularly applicable to the social media space is that, not only can you have a great conversation with an individual, but you can actually create a community and introduce your readers, your followers to one another.
I’m seeing this happen at the moment through the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge that’s being run by SITS Girls. There’s this community happening there and, sure, I’m a part of it – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog’s going on – I wrote that, I’m trying to participate in that, but there’s this whole thing happening almost without me participating at all and it’s really a powerful thing to see a community build up around something that you’ve created.

These type of people, they take initiative. They don’t just let conversations happen and then chime in where they want; they actually drive the conversation forward. They’re taking initiative and thinking about what else they could say, what questions they could ask. They’re not passive in that way. And sometimes they’re actually quite surprising in the directions that they’ll take in a conversation. It’s often those conversations that end up in a completely different place that I think about as being good conversations. They’re not just predictable, they’re unique. They’ve got something unique to say and they’re quite willing to go and explore those types of angles to the conversation.

These people, they’re not arrogant, they’re not aloof and they’re not boring, they’re not passive; they’re actually taking initiative, they’re interesting and they’re interested. They’re the type of people I’m interested in chatting to at parties and also in social media. I’d be interested to hear about some of the characteristics that you find attractive in, both in real life but also in the social media space. If you’d like to leave a comment, we can interact around those in comments below.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to be the Life of the Social Media Party

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On Sunday I preached a sermon at my local church. I used to do this weekly when I worked as a minister years ago – but it’s been a while since I had to do it (funnily enough I find it a lot more nerve wracking getting up in front of a couple of hundred people to speak than writing a post for tens of thousands!).

As I was preparing for preaching last week it struck me how similar my ‘workflow’ for it was to putting together a blog post (although a blog post is usually a lot quicker in my experience).

This video identifies some of the stages I went through last week that are similar to how I go about writing many blog posts.

Notes: See the full sized video here. Video shot on a Panasonic Lumix DMC GF1 (aff) – here’s why I use that camera.

Video Transcript

I’ve had this video transcribed below for those who prefer to get it that way. The transcription provided by The Transcription People.

Hi. This is Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to another video post. Over the last week or two I’ve been doing something that’s a little bit out of the ordinary for me, but something that I used to do all the time. Those of you who know me and have been reading ProBlogger for a while who’ve read the book will know that I used to work in churches as a Minister and as part of being a Minister I was delivering Sermons every week or two to a few hundred people in a church. Whilst things are a little different now in that I’m speaking to a lot more and I’m writing using text rather than voice, there’s some similarities that I’ve noticed this week in preparing a Sermon, a one off Sermon, to the way that I write blog posts and so I thought I’d share some of the process that I go through in creating a Sermon which I think transfers fairly well over to writing a blog post or preparing a video post.

Selecting a Topic

The first thing that I noticed I was doing last week was just selecting a topic. Actually that was a bit easier for me with this Sermon that I was, I was preaching in the last day or two, because I was given the topic.

The Minister of the church that I go to said, “Darren I want you to speak about work and faith and how they intersect together”.

Selecting a topic can be one of the biggest problems for bloggers, just trying to work out what to write about on a day by day basis. I, what I do is have a folder on my desktop on my computer which just has lots of different text files which have, have titles or main points that I might write. Really what, what those text files are is just identifying big problems that my reads might have. So whether it be my blogging readers on ProBlogger, how to start a blog, how to get traffic, how to monetise a blog, the big sort of picture problems that people have.

On my photography blog it’s, it’s more about how to choose a camera, what lens you might want to add to that camera, how you might hold that camera, how to compose a picture. These are sort of big picture topics that I write about and I identify.

Refining the Topic – Break it Down into Smaller Problems

Then it’s about refining the topic and beginning to think about what you can say in it, and for me this is about breaking the topic down into smaller problems that people might have, and so in the Sermon that I was writing about this week which was on the topic of work and faith, I began to identify some of the key problems that people might have in that area, you know, when their, their work and the choices that they are, are making in their work, clash with their values for instance. Thinking about those sorts of issues within the larger topic, and the same thing’s true when I write a blog post. I try and break it down and identify, you know, maybe two or three or four problems that people have when it comes to that larger problem, larger topic, and what I find is that if you can identify two or three problems, small problems that a reader might have is that you then have your points that you can then work through in the post.

Identify What People Already Know

After that what I then try and do is actually try and work what does my reader already know. A lot of people skip this type of thing but I think it’s really important to acknowledge what your readers already know, because then you can build upon that. They may already know it because you’ve written about it previously and then you can link back to that so that you can build a little a, extra depth into your post, but then, then you can then identify what they don’t know.

Put the ‘Bones’ into Place – Your Main Points

Then what I do in the preparation of a Sermon is start to put the bones into place, I then look at it almost like a skeleton, I try and put some main points in place. It may not be very exciting points at this point, it may not be interesting yet, but they’re main points that I want to make through the preaching of that Sermon or the writing of that blog post. So as I’m writing a blog post I try and break it down into four or five points that I might to communicate over that post.

Flesh it Out – Add Interest and Depth

Once I’ve got that skeleton in place, once the bones are there, you then flesh out and this where it gets fun, this is where you can add illustrations, this is where you can add metaphors or analogies or you can tell a story, this is where you can use pictures so for me this is the part in the creation of a Sermon where I’m, I’m thinking about my PowerPoint and how I can make it visually interesting.

This is where I’m thinking about, you know, bring in Bible verses or quotes from people, this is where you’re fleshing it out, you’re adding muscle, you’re adding depth to your sermon or your blog post. For me as I write blog posts I’m looking at what other people are writing in this area and trying to add quotes, or I’m trying to find a famous person’s quote, or I’m trying to add a photo. This is where you’re trying to make it interesting. Quite often bloggers just communicate their main points but they don’t actually go to the trouble of making it intriguing, making it enjoyable for your readers to, to read.

Refine, Focus and Cull

Once you’ve started to add that depth, what I usually find, particularly when I’m preaching a Sermon is that I usually have too much stuff. Yesterday I preached the Sermon, I had 22 minutes to speak. Once I got the bones and then added flesh to it, I had 45 minutes worth of content, so this is where I began to practice it, I began to actually verbalise it and I began to refine and cull it. This is where I started to remove some of the things that I’d added to add interest because they were actually distracting from the main points and they were making it too long.

So as I’m writing a blog post quite often I do a similar thing. I start to add content to it and then I get to a point where I’m about to publish and then I, I read through it with quite critical mind and look for things that I can take out, things that might be distracting from the main point, things that might be making the post too long. You want to be useful with your posts but you don’t want to actually go over the top with it.

So then you’re at a point that you’re able to deliver it and hopefully if you’ve been practising it, if you’ve refined it you’re able to do that, you know, in a good way on your Sermon and hopefully as your blog post, you’ll have something that people not only can learn from but they also find interesting and intriguing to read. I hope that gives you a bit of insight into how I go about it. That’s the type of blog that I write, I write how to contents so that probably applies a little bit more to that type of content than some other types, but I’d be interested to hear about the processes that you go through in, in the creation of a blog.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How Preparing A Sermon is Similar to Writing Blog Posts

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A Guest post by Celestine Chua from The Personal Excellence Blog.

Ever wondered what are the traits of the top, successful and excellent bloggers?

I have. Since I started my blog, The Personal Excellence Blog, in 2008, I have studied top bloggers extensively. I read many articles on how to build a great blog. I listened to different bloggers say their piece. Through personal experimentation, I learned what works and what doesn’t work, and integrated them as blogging habits. It has given me great results. After a lot of hard work in the past 1.5 years, The Personal Excellence Blog has grown into an well trusted and established resource on how to achieve excellence in life.  It has 3,500 subscribers, 5,000 readers a day, 110,000 page views a month, over 160 articles, a bundle of free ebooks and has been featured on CNN and AsiaOne.

While there’s still quite a way before my blog reaches the ranks of A-List blogs like ProBlogger, Zen Habits and Seth Godin’s blog, somehow I’m not daunted by what’s ahead. If the past 1.5 years have taught me anything, it’s that the top bloggers of excellence have 8 consistent habits – 8 habits, which, when we practice duly, are guaranteed to bring you results. It’s not a miracle, it’s not luck, nor is it an abnormality. By living in line with these 8 habits, you become a highly excellent blogger as well.

1) Deliver their best value in every article

As a highly excellent blogger, you don’t write articles with a little value or some value. No, you aim to deliver your utmost value every time you write. Never do you write for the sake of writing or post for the sake of updating.  You make sure every word counts for something.

When I write my articles, whether it’s for my blog or it’s a guest post like this one, I put my best foot forward. My previous guest posts on Problogger took me a few days to write (with breaks in between). One of the commenters said I was “taking this guest post thing too seriously”, probably referring to the effort that was put in. That guest post in question was 3,000 words long (longer than most guest posts at Problogger), filled with step-by-step tips, links out to relevant resources and deep personal sharing. (Actually, this guest post is 3,000+ words long as well.)

I beg to differ. Have you ever thought about why you blog? Like really. Beyond reasons like to earn money or to have an alternate career. Why do you blog over the 1,001 possible things you can be doing? What do you strive to achieve? I blog because I see it as the fastest and most effective way to reach out to millions out there and help them achieve their highest potential. It’s more than just blogging to me – it is my life purpose and personal mission. For every article written, there is someone who is genuinely looking for it to solve a problem he/she is facing. Every article I write is an opportunity to touch others’ lives. If it takes X number of words to deliver a message, I’ll write X number of words. If it takes X number of hours, I’ll spend X number of hours. There is no compromising on the quality.

Of course, not every blogger sees blogging as their “calling”, and you certainly don’t have to see blogging as a calling to succeed. There is no right or wrong reason. You just need to be absolutely clear of why you blog. Then live true to it. Make every article you write delivers top value to your readers.

There is no fixed format that dictates valuable content. It can be long or short; it can be in list, essay or story form; it can have text, images, video or a combination of them; it can be entertainment value, educational value or both. I’ve read articles of different permutations that deliver value all the same. If your article improves someone’s life after he/she reads it, then it has value.

Some questions to ask yourself as you write are:

• What is the specific reader group I’m writing to?
• Why would they need help in this?
• What’s keeping them in this situation?
• What and how can I write to help them?
• How can I write in a manner that’s relevant no matter when and where they are reading?

If I don’t have anything substantial to say or add to the topic (sometimes it happens), then I don’t write about it. The internet has enough junk; it doesn’t need us to contribute to it. What the internet really needs is real content with real value. And doing so pays off. Readers recognize you as the “real deal” and they go to you for advice on your niche. Because I set such a strict quality filter, my readers can expect a certain standard in what I write at my blog and my guest posts. They quickly become loyal readers, even though there are hundreds of personal development blogs out there.

How about you? Do you write value-laden content? Who is the reader you are writing the next article for? What is the problem you are solving for him/her? If someone with this problem is reading your article, will it help them out of their situation? How is it going to benefit them?

More resources to help you write top value:

• How to Create Compelling Content [Free Report]
• How to Get in Tune with Your Readers Needs and Produce Compelling Content
• How to Craft a Blog Post
• Writing Good Content
• How to Write Excellent Blog Content
• How to Eliminate the Echo Chamber and Add to the Conversation

2) Work harder than anyone else

Do you drive? Great if you do; if you don’t, just imagine for the next 5 minutes that you do drive. Let’s say you are driving on a normal, flat road. You press the accelerator for a few seconds, then as you reach a good speed, you stop accelerating. There’s no need to since the car is already moving at a steady pace. All you need to do is steer.

Now, let’s say you are at the bottom of a very, very steep and long mountain slope. What do you do? Do you accelerate for a few seconds then stop accelerating? No! You’re just going to stay stuck at the bottom of the mountain. Maybe you’ll move up a few centimeters, then you’ll immediately go back down when you stop accelerating. What do you do then to get up the slope? You keep pressing the accelerator, adding more power each second. Even though you may be stuck at first, it’s a matter of time before you overcome friction and gravity and drive up the slope. And as you add more power, you will move further up.

Turning your blog into a top blog is just like driving up a steep slope. You don’t just create the blog and expect others to come flocking in. You have to work hard to write powerful content, to earn readers’ trust and to get readership. I’m a big believer of hard work – Results don’t come if you don’t work hard. If you read The Dip (by Seth Godin) before, you would know there’s always a dip that comes with achieving big goals. To get past the dip and get what you want, you have to persevere and work harder (and of course, smarter) than anyone else to earn it. All top bloggers today worked extremely hard when they first started, and even when they achieve success, they continue to work hard to achieve greater heights.

3) Practice what they preach

“Example isn’t another way to teach, it is the only way to teach” – Albert Einstein

When you are a highly excellent blogger, you lead by example. As a blogger, you are (indirectly or directly) a role model to your readers, and what you say or do influences people, more so than you imagine. Your readers look up to you for advice and guidance. It’s important you don’t just talk the talk. You have to walk the talk as well.There is nothing more powerful than being living proof of your results.

Running a blog called The Personal Excellence Blog is more than just writing articles about how to achieve excellence. It’s about living in excellence every moment. I’m extremely passionate about achieving excellence. From striving to be the best in what I do, to understanding what it takes to be the best and live our best life, to helping others achieve excellence for themselves. Our readers look toward us as a testament of what’s possible for themselves – possibilities of what can be achieved, boundaries that can be removed, limits that can be broken. Hence, while I normally push hard toward my goals, I push even harder for my readers. I don’t try to teach my readers how to solve a particular problem until I have resolved it in my life, first and foremost, just like I don’t try to advice them how to achieve a certain result if I have not first achieved it. If we want others to listen to us, we need to practice what we preach first and be living proof that what we preach works.

4) Don’t write to please

“So you have some enemies… good, that means you stood up for something!” – Winston Churchill

You blog to drive a message. You don’t write to please the world. You know that no matter what you write, there will always be people who will disagree with what you say. As Timothy Ferris puts it, “10% of people will find a way to take anything personally. Expect it.” If you stand for something, you will have haters.

Average bloggers try to please people with their writings. They over-analyze what readers will want to hear and they write to be accepted. But as a highly excellent blogger, you don’t do that. You don’t shy away from writing controversial topics, but you don’t write about controversial stuff for the sake of stirring controversy either. You write about what you believe in. You stand by what you say even when others disagree. At the same time, you are also not afraid to admit when you are wrong.

I have written stuff before which others disagree. Things like life philosophies, relationships, specific advice, etc. I listen and I take the feedback accordingly when there is merit, but I don’t change for the sake of conformance. Every reader is different – if you change yourself to fit every reader who disagrees, you become just an average and you lose your voice amongst the masses. There’s enough sheep in the world – we don’t need more sheep, we need more leaders.

Find your voice by discovering your inner self. Deal to deal with critics (Read: 8 Helpful Ways To Deal With Critical People). Don’t change your views or what/how you write to please others. Try to please everyone, and you end up standing for nothing.

5) Keep things real

I see 2 types of bloggers out there – there are the bloggers who are genuine. They keep their writings real and are down-to-earth. These are the bloggers like Darren Rowse and Leo Babauta. I have deep respect and admiration for them. Then there are the hyped-up bloggers who have a penchant for portraying themselves as bigger than they are, overhype what they write and make over-exaggerated claims about what they are selling. I don’t know how you feel about them, but I avoid them like the plague.

Readers are smart. Perhaps you might entice them with big claims and bold words at the beginning. However, just like motivational seminars that fail to deliver results beyond the short-term, readers will realize in the long-term you have nothing real to offer. They see past the marketing fluff and turn to the bloggers who keep things real and deliver what they promise on.

As a highly excellent blogger, you don’t exaggerate, you don’t lie, you don’t overclaim nor overpromise. I see this as respecting your readers. You say things the way they appear; you portray facts as they are and let the facts speak for themselves. You are truthful and honest. You keep things real. Your readers appreciate this honesty, and they stick with you as a result.

6) Not afraid to be vulnerable

As a highly excellent blogger, you are not afraid to share things about yourself – things you may not be proud of. You are not interested in creating a veneered image of yourself. It’s about what benefits the readers. If sharing an unglamorous side of you will help improve readers’ lives, you will gladly do so. You open parts of your life as case studies, so others can learn where you may have erred.

The average blogger on the other hand, is concerned about how others think about him/her, and refuses to write about anything that can be seen as an disadvantage to him/her. His/her obsession with safeguarding his/her personal image stops him/her from going all the way to become a highly excellent blogger.

In my blog, I openly share about myself and my life – the upsides and especially the downsides. For example, I have written about times when I was down and out, my past experiences of disappointment (and how I overcame it), heartbreak (and how I moved on) and woes of being single in the modern society. Most people are adverse against sharing their shames, thinking it’ll make them vulnerable and look “weak”. I’m not afraid to write about them because being vulnerable is part of what makes us human. I believe everyone has that side in them – it’s just a matter who is more honest and upfront about it. If you are confident about who you are and what you stand for, there’s nothing to be fearful of.

Subsequently, it is the times when I share my worst experiences that my readers gain the most insights for themselves. Readers take the time to write personal comments and emails sharing in detail how the articles have opened their eyes to similar situations they are going through. If showing my vulnerabilities can help improve even just one person’s life, I say it’s well worth it.

Of course, it’s not about being vulnerable for the sake of being vulnerable. There has to be a point behind writing it. Every time I write about such experiences, I share how I overcame that episode and steps readers can take to work on it too. This way, there are actionable outputs and it doesn’t become just a nice-to-read story. You are more than just a story teller. You weave a message in what you write too.

When you open up more about yourself, that’s when you bond with your readers. People will benefit from your sharing and your real readers appreciate what you do. Mutual respect and trust is built. Whenever I open up about a part of my life, my readers would similarly open up to me too, sharing their personal stories, parts of them which even they admit they don’t share with others.

7) Keep upgrading themselves

As a highly excellent blogger, you don’t rest on your laurels even if you are an authority figure in your niche. You keep upgrading yourself to maintain your expertise. This helps you to continuously innovate and provide expert opinions so you remain as the authority. Problogger is a great example. While Darren runs the biggest blog on blogging, he doesn’t take his success for granted. He’s always seeking readers feedback, improvising on those feedback and writing new content on how to create better blogs.

Upgrading yourself is not just a one-time act – it needs to be an ongoing aspect of your life. How can you do that? My personal tips:

• Subscribe to the feeds of top players in your niche. I subscribe to all A-List personal development blogs so I can learn from the best.
• Set aside time every morning/night to read their new articles. Learn from how they write and what they write about. Get top insights.
• Read the best books out there (in your niche). I borrow mine from the libraries.
• Network with top bloggers (in your niche).
• Openly ask for feedback from readers and fellow bloggers on how you can improve
• Work on those feedback to become better

Transform lives with their writing

This is an extension of Habit #1 (Deliver their best value with every article) but it is important and distinct enough to be an individual habit by itself. As the top, excellent blogger, you write content that has the power to change readers’ lives.

How do you know if your content is changing lives? When your readers start telling you so. Majority of blog comments hover around “Great post! I especially like point XX about YY…” or “Thanks for writing this, it’s very useful”. These are great comments no doubt, but I see them more as courtesy comments. Yes your writings are helpful, yes they are informative, but are the readers going to apply any of the things that are written? Most of the time, probably not. Many forget what they just read and nodded to as soon as they click away.

Powerful content on the other hand, has the ability to change lives and trigger readers to take action immediately. When you get comments from readers on how your writings have transformed them and triggered them to make life changing decisions, that’s saying something. I’ve readers who told me how reading my articles has made them quit jobs they dislike, (re)discover their purpose in life and (re)ignited them to take action on their dreams. Some of the most powerful feedback I’ve ever received includes a reader who found hope from reading my articles (after his brother passed away), and readers who broke up with their partners and/or friends (who are bad matches) after reading my article on “How to know it’s time to move on from a relationship”.

When your content is triggering others to make life-changing decisions, that’s when you evolve to more than just a blogger. You are now a leader and beacon of inspiration and hope to your readers.

So how do you transform lives with writing? There is no hard and fast rule, but here are some of my tips:

• Write from your heart
• Start with your readers in mind. Put your readers’ needs before all else.
• Do not afraid to share your vulnerabilities (Habit #6)
• Understand the real problems people are facing. Make sure your writing solves the problems.
• Tap into a relevant insight from your life. Share how you overcome a similar problem.

What do you think?

What do you feel is the top habit of an excellent blogger? Do you have other habits to add to the list? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments area

About The Author

Celestine Chua writes at The Personal Excellence Blog, where she shares her best advice on how to achieve personal excellence and live your best life. Get her 113-page ebook The Book of Personal Excellence in your email now by signing up for her newsletter (100% free, unsubscribe whenever you want). Get her RSS feed directly and add her on Twitter @celestinechua.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

8 Habits of Highly Excellent Bloggers

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Conversions mean a lot of different things to different people. The one point of agreement with everyone is that they all want conversions. So, what are you doing to make sure people are converting?

WebProNews recently spoke with Vic Drabicky of Range Online Media about this very matter. As he points out, it is important to, first of all, understand that a conversion is more than a sale. There are multiple other factors involved in the process aside from the actual conversion.

One of those factors is marketing. If the conversion rate is low, it could have something to do with the marketing of it. Drabicky says one of the reasons for bad marketing could be misinterpreting how the marketing budget fits into the marketplace. To avoid this problem, he suggests finding the market demand before determining the budget.

Another factor involved with conversions is past impressions. Drabicky advises users to look outside the conversion and consider elements such as attribution modeling to find out what really is happening.

Lastly, Drabicky emphasizes the importance of good data across all channels. Data can provide helpful insights into areas that need more investment and areas that do not need continued investment.

According to Drabicky, if all the above factors are evaluated, many times conversion rate isn’t the problem at all. More often than not, the real problem is the marketing.

The days of a single parent working are gone. My parents raised a family of five children on $35.00 a week. That was in the 1950-1960′s. My generation is most likely the last generation for the stay at home moms. Very few mothers are able to stay at home and raise their children. With the inflation and economic factors of today, the only way to survive is with two incomes. If you go by the trends of the past, you could wonder what the future holds for us. Will two incomes be enough? It is doubtful so it is best to prepare for the worst and expect the best, or something like that. The best answer to these growing problems is to have multiple streams of income flowing into your finances; rather than an a future of uncertainty.

The wealthy have always known this concept and taken care of creating different avenues of income. The thought is that if one income dries up, another is always there to fall back on in hard times. And if nothing dries up, you just get richer; nothing wrong with that concept! If you are like so many average people in society loss of one income really affects your financial status and it could take you years to recover. Let us not mention that the effects of the loss of income on your stress level and your family.

Having extra income or other sources of income will give you a backup when money starts to become tight! If one resource of revenue stops, you should not feel any difference in your lifestyle. You will need time to reorganize and regroup, any you should be back on the road to normalcy. The importance of extra income and extra sources of income is known to just about everyone.

There are basically two types of extra income-linear and residual.

If you have been looking on the Internet for an extra income source you will read a lot about residual income. So what does it mean? Residual income is the extra income that you receive by working hard and living off the proceeds for many years to come. You are paid over and over for the work you have done.

Linear income, on the other side, is income you earn hourly, weekly, monthly or daily. There is no guarantee that income will be there from one day to the next.

Any individual earns a linear income working in any job or profession. You earn the money for the time spent at that job for any given period of time. Some earn higher income than others. The ones who are not satisfied with this type of income are often the ones who seek out ways to earn residual income in order to secure a retirement income or just something extra for the future. These individuals do not rely on someone else providing for their future.

If you start with just one residual income effort a year, you are doing something for yourself. The Internet provides a variety of programs to help you achieve these goals. Be careful when selecting the right one for you by recognizing the sales pitch from the ones who are giving it to you straight.

Once you have mastered and are earning from the first, select the second and build from there. Before long you might not even need that linear income. Anything is possible.

Nancy brings 33 years small office experience to her online business. She has been involved with customer service, marketing (both online and offline), and office management for a small business. After retiring in 2003, she brought her computer skills and expertise to the online market place in creating an online business that will bring her income for years to come. Her work at home directory featuring only legitimate work at home opportunities can be found at http://hmewrk4u.com. Be sure and visit her blogs listed at the bottom of her directory.

Author: Nancy Kraska
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Hybrid and Electric Cars

This is completely off topic…. but then again it’s not….

An hour ago I just launched a new eBook on my photography blog – it’s called Transcending Travel and is a guide to Travel Photography.

Every time I mention my eBooks I am asked for tips on how to put them together. I’ve written a few times before on the topic but thought I’d share a few of the lessons I’ve learned while launching this particular eBook.

1. Partner with good People – collaboration is a powerful thing. While I know a thing or two about photography – I’m no travel photography expert. So when thinking about this book I decided that the best way to produce it would be to find someone with expertise in the field to author it. I chose to work with Mitchell Kanashkevich for two reasons – firstly he’s a travel photographer who knows what he’s doing and secondly, he’d already produced his own eBooks – this showed he was able to stick with a project and also gave me something to look at to judge the quality of his work.
2. The Front Cover is Important – Test it! - in the last week one of the biggest things we’ve had to decide upon is the front cover – in particularly the image on it. We considered 6-7 of them and while I thought I knew which one would work best – I found with a few quick tests that I was wrong. I drew together 3 groups of people to test it and found that the one we’ve gone with works a lot better.
3. Pre Buzz Helps – previously when I’ve launched eBooks on dPS I’ve been in such a frenzy getting them together that I’ve not put a lot of time into pre-launching them. I could still do better on this front with Transcending Travel – however I’ve worked harder at doing some pre launch activities in newsletters, on social media, with some guest posts from Mitchell introducing the topic etc. It seems to have paid off with qutie a few readers eagerly anticipating this launch.
4. Get Help – not only have I involved another author in this eBook but there has been a number of people who’ve helped pull it together. A great Designer, proof reader and a cast of at least another 10 people who’ve bounced ideas around with me for everything from titles to sales pages to sales emails. I pay for designers/proof reader services but the rest is collaboration and friend helping friends – a network is so good to have at a time like this.
5. Bonuses - this launch I’m going for a twin barrel bonus strategy. We’re offering a 25% off discount during launch week but also have partnered with two companies to give readers discounts on products and a third company to offer some prizes. It’ll be interesting to see how they pay off!
6. It’s fun – one of the things I’ve found every time I’ve launched something is that it is a lot of fun. It is great to have a project on the go that you’re working towards and the anticipation in the lead up to a launch as well as finally putting it out there can be a lot of fun. It’s also a little frightening and scary – but overall it’s something I really enjoy doing!

I still have a lot to learn about launching products but am loving the process again.

PS: For more tips and strategies on launching eBooks don’t forget to check out How to Launch the *** out of your eBook as well as The Sticky eBook Formula (both books that have helped me through this process immensely).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What I’m Learning from the Launch of My New eBook

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While it is important to look at data and statistics, are marketers becoming so consumed with these mathematical areas that they are forgetting about intuition and creativity? As Mike Teasdale of Harvest Digital explains to WebProNews, this is, in fact, a growing trend among marketers.

He gives an example in which a marketing director in the UK was asked where he would spend a large sum of money if it were given to him. The marketing director decided that although he didn’t have a lot of data on public relations, he felt PR was the best area the money could be spent.

This example made Teasdale realize how much marketers really do depend on data. However, it is important for marketers to also realize that there are a lot of things happening in other areas, such as social and press. Although it is difficult to measure and obtain data from these areas, they have a powerful impact on marketing.

In other words, Teasdale believes that marketers who are intuitive and creative could essentially be more effective than marketers who are entirely focused on data and statistics. He says,  “My view is, you can optimize your way to a better version of the present, but you won’t find the future.”

Teasdale also believes more creative things should happen online. He even says that Google is somewhat restricted in its marketing efforts due to its position in the market. Since the search giant brings in so much revenue, it is hard for the company to try to anything new or imaginative out of fear of failure. As a result, Teasdale says companies such as Bing could have greater opportunities to be creative since it doesn’t have as much to lose.

What do you think? Are marketers so consumed with data that they are neglecting creativity?

Posted by great scott!

It’s true you can do a lot of work ona site to optimize your rankings, but eventually you’e going to need some links.  While they make small changes all the time, the search algorithms are still based primarily on links. But here’s what you may not consider when you’re devising your link building strategy or working to acquire the links you need: links can accomplish very different things.

Depending on your situation–your site, your link profile, your competition–the kinds of links you need and the things you need them to do for you can vary significantly.  Learning how to determine the kinds of links you should pursue, and what they need to accomplish can save you a ton of time, money, and frustration.  Watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday to learn how to segment your link strategy and focus on areas of weakness.

 

 

 

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