Blogging For Businesses

Blogging, for some people, has a bad reputation. Critics think it's just for hipsters or digital nomads. They think it's just a fad.

But blogging can help any business. Here's how and why.

Done correctly, a blog prints money.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the lifeblood of any blog. It is how you get Google to put your page high up the rankings when people search for things.

Google makes billions of dollars from ads, companies paying them to put their site first for certain keywords (what people type into Google). But you can get up the ranking for free.

Online shops and static pages find it hard to rank highly on Google. This is where your blog comes in. It can shoot your site up the rankings list and attract many more leads by targeting profitable keywords.

Keywords are the most basic part of SEO. By using the phrases or words people search for in your blog posts, Google will know that if it sends people to your post it will help people solve their problem.

Research keywords, I have guide here[link], and target high traffic, low competition ones.

Updating your blog consistently will help it rank higher on Google. Google gives each site an authority score for keywords. It trusts sites update frequently and recently over those that might be years out of date.

New blog posts every week will help boost your sites authority and help you climb the ranking list.

Authority is also boosted by well written, researched and lengthy blog posts. Producing those types of articles is called content marketing, attracting leads with the content you produce. A blog is the best place to start with content marketing.

You must build trust with your audience. Keep them coming back by giving them valuable content. It's hard to sell something to a first-time visitor. By making them come back to your site you have a greater chance on converting that lead into a sale.

It takes around 8 interactions before a sale is made. More touchpoint, such as reading a blog post, signing up for a newsletter, watching one of your videos, you have with a customer the better.

Blogs also allow you to show you personality. People like buying from other people. Use your blog to show off the human side of your business.

Blogs are also a great way to engage with leads. Let people comment on your posts and then reply to them. It's a great way to build trust.

Blogs also tell you what people are interested in. The traffic on certain posts tells you what people are looking for. Now you can go and provide them with that.

Blog posts can also go viral. People share content they find interesting or useful. Giving them that type of content expands your audience.

It may sound tough, but I've got some advice on how you implement and achieve all these things here.

I've created a step-by-step guide to making money online! It is a completely FREE guide that any beginner can follow along: Click here to discover all steps.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10186111

The Biggest Problem I See with Affiliate Marketing

How to Use 'Voice of Customer' Tools for Your Business

Listen to Your Audience to Meet Consumer Expectations

Do you truly understand your customers? I'm not talking about creating personas, doing keyword research and looking at your demographics (although that's important too)!

I'm referring to listening to what your audience actually wants and needs to improve the customer experience.

First, let's look at what Voice of Customer (VoC) means.

This is a research process that captures what your audience is saying, and how that relates to your brand. Businesses do this by gathering consumer feedback, whether that's a survey, focus group or online reviews.

Voice of Customer tools can help you:

Explore and evaluate new products and services

Improve consumer engagement and retention

Uncover negative brand feedback

So, how can you use Voice of Customer tools to better your business? Here are 4 ways:

1. Surveys

You can send surveys to certain segments or after a person has bought your product or service.

Here's an example of a company who listened and responded to what people wanted: 1-800 Contacts, the world's largest contact lens provider. They used surveys to gather consumer expectations with a company called Qualtrics.

One respondent jokingly asked the company to send him a candy bar and guess what? They did! This led to them implementing a program where they give gifts to people.

As a result, they increased their order rate by 3.8 percent and grew their NPS 13 points in just three months. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a management tool that is used to measure the loyalty of your customers; learn more here.

There are numerous survey tools out there, from Survey Monkey to VWO, so you can find the right format for your needs.

To get the best response rate, be sure to:

Keep it brief. People don't want to answer 50 questions about their experience. Limit your survey to about five questions, and let respondents know that it will only take a few minutes of their time.

Give them something. Offer a discount coupon, change to win a price or a gift to show your appreciation (if possible).

Remind them how important it is. Thank people for taking the time and tell them that you're using their feedback to improve your processes.

Here are some great questions to ask that should elicit some useful responses:

How can we improve your customer experience?

Would you recommend our service or product and why or why not?

What did you like/dislike about your experience?

Would you buy our product or service again?

2. Interviews

Usually done in-person or on the phone, the interview process lets you talk one-on-one or to a group of people about your product or service. This method gained popularity after it was popularized in a book called The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

Discovering consumer expectations this way has a higher cost, but it can provide amazing insight and impress your consumers with a more personal type of interaction.

Not sure? Here's an example from Febreze. Originally, P&G tried to sell their scented sprays by claiming it fixed smells in your home, with dismal results. The problem was that most people don't know or don't think that their homes smell, so why would they need Febreze?

So P&G hired a research company to interview people on how they used the product. They heard that those who sprayed Febreze did it to freshen a room as part of their house-cleaning routine, not to cover up odours.

As a result, the company positioned Febreze as a product to enhance your existing routine. Within two months, sales of the product doubled.

3. Your Website

Most marketers look at their site data to gain insights around things like how many people visited in a given time period, what their most popular landing pages are and which keywords people are using to find them.

However, by taking analytics to the next level and capturing behaviour, you can learn even more about what your audience is doing. From where they're scrolling to on a given page to heat maps that show which content they're interacting with, there are many tools that can show you what your visitors want and need from you.

Hotjar uses heat maps to understand the users of some of the world's biggest brands.

4. Social Media

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram can be valuable places to collect data on your visitors and fans.

By observing what your audience is doing, engaging with people who interact with your brand and starting conversations, you can learn so much about the people who are interested in your brand.

Also, social media now serves as a customer service platform; rather than write a letter or an email to a business, people now turn to social media to give praise or to complain.

As tempting as it may be to delete negative comments or ignore them in the hopes they'll soon be buried, don't! As Bill Gates said: "Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."

For many entrepreneurs and business owners, the online marketing scene can very confusing and overwhelming. All that marketing terminology that's constantly being thrown out there on a daily basis is enough to make one pull the covers over their head and hope it all just goes away.

This blog article explores how to create landing pages that will help boost your marketing efforts. Read more.

Consumer expectations are higher than ever, and it's critical to understand the people who are potentially buying what you're selling.

By using the right Voice of Customer tools, you can be sure to give your audience exactly what they want, when and how they want it.

Does your business use VoC tools to help gather vital customer data?

Susan Friesen, founder of the award-winning web development and digital marketing firm eVision Media, is a Web Specialist, Business & Marketing Consultant, and Social Media Advisor. She works with entrepreneurs who struggle with having the lack of knowledge, skill and support needed to create their online business presence.

As a result of working with Susan and her team, clients feel confident and relieved knowing their online marketing is in trustworthy and caring hands so they can focus on building their business with peace of mind at having a perfect support system in place to guide them every step of the way.

Visit http://www.ultimatewebsiteguide.ca and download your FREE "Ultimate Guide to Improving Your Website's Profitability - 10 Critical Questions You Must Ask to Get Maximum Results"

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10187629

How to Make Passive Income Online

How To Build Multiple Streams Of Passive Income

Passive income, also known as recurring income, is a popular term right now, and it includes a wide range of income streams from rental properties, membership services, book or eBook sales, and more. The phrase "passive income" can be inaccurate because there's nothing passive about creating a passive income stream.

Recurring income is simply an income stream where you don't trade your time for a specific amount of money. It's not time or project based. It also takes work to maintain a passive income stream so it continues to make you money.

You must proactively build and maintain a passive income stream if you want it to continue to earn money for you for a long period of time. The more work and attention you give to income streams, the more money it will make you.

Membership Website

A membership website is a good way to develop a unique community around the products that you provide. Exclusivity sells, and this is no different with a paid membership area on your website for members to network, get unique content, and exclusive access to you.

Subscriptions

If you're an info-product creator, subscriptions are an excellent way to build passive income streams. You can sell subscriptions to your content where people subscribing gain access to regularly released content for as long as their subscription is available. It is much easier to keep regular customers with a subscription-based business model.

Webinars

Although webinars are not a passive income source, having said that, you can record a webinar and then sell access to it. This can make you money given that the content remains relevant. It can be stand-alone or be part of a course, subscription, or even in a bundle with several of your products.

Courses

There are several ways to develop a course to go alongside another product you have or as a stand-alone product. There are a number of websites out there for course creation, or you can choose to host your course on your own site. You may also prefer to email a course to customers.

Sponsorships and Ads

Sponsorships and ads are often overlooked examples of passive income streams. You can sell advertising spots on your website in set spaces either on your main page or in the sidebars. Also, you can sell sponsorships for individual posts or categories on your blog. If you have a podcast, you can have sponsors for each episode of your podcast.

Creating a membership website is a great way to set up recurring, passive income. You build the website and create the content once, and you receive recurring weekly, monthly or quarterly payments. For an easy to follow guide, download my free checklist, How To Start A Membership Website, at https://jonallo.com/membership

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9973231

3 Facebook Marketing Tips and Trends

7 Ways to Simplify Social Media

How To Build Trust With Your Audience

Trust Must Be Earned

The one thing that will determine how quickly a level of trust is built within the online digital world is how someone interacts with their audience. Engaging your readers will be a huge part of building up the level of trust that converts and satisfies over into a long-term relationship.

Let's take a look at the building blocks of trust and how to gain and maintain a trusting and long-lasting relationship with your viewers.

Now you may think that this is not such a big deal but the truth is that it's a huge ingredient of making conversions and growing your business.

In this article we'll cover the following topics:

1. Introduction to the power of trust in your business
2. How to create a root of trust with your viewers
3. Create repeat and long-term customers
4. Applying trust in your business

Introduction to the Power of Trust in Your Business

You probably know that Amazon is the world's largest internet company by revenue. What do you think has helped them the most in their rise to the top? Could it be that it's because they've invested millions into their brand through site development and advertising, or is there something else that puts them head and shoulders above the rest?

I say, and I think you'll agree that Amazon is trusted and has the power of trust! They have worked hard and long to build up trust with their customers by free shipping, customer reviews, returns, and more. They've done one thing after another to build up a reputation of trust within the e-commerce world and therefore are one of the worlds most trusted businesses in the world.

You can create a "root of trust" with your viewers by being strong in:

The Three Pillars Of Trust Within Internet Marketing

1. Brand

You and what you're representing your logo, and colors.

2. Ambassador

Vouching for the Brand by the words that you use, engaging the readers, and your reputation through answering questions and comments.

3. Website

A good user experience, pleasing to the eyes, orderly, not filled with ads trying to sell or multiple pop-ups.

• Lots of quality helpful content showing variety, including "how to" articles along with related educational content and even tutorial videos.
• Reviews of competing related products done in an appealing way that informs the reader and holds their interest, and might offer a better solution.
• Have a nice photo of yourself on the website home page and/or on the about page.
• Engaging the readers in a timely professional manner when they ask or answer a question, or when they leave a comment.

How to lose trust and business

Have you ever been on a website that promotes products or a program, that seems to be really fine, but you start looking for the contact page or a support email address and couldn't find a way to contact the seller? Sure there may be a Q&A section with about 5 basic questions with answers but no feel of a live person anywhere. What if I need customer support

At least a few times I have clicked on a website and there was poor grammar, broken English, or misspelled words on the page. This is a turnoff for many users who will click away and land on another website.

In all of the above situations, I click off of the site and onto another one because I've lost confidence or trust in the site owner. I decide to find another site to make my purchase on, a more trustworthy place in my view, for me to spend my money.

How You Can Create A Root of Trust

The best way to create that element of trust is to help the viewer and offer value in all 3 pillars of trust, Brand, Ambassador, and Website and go beyond what is expected. Adding consistent, helpful, and quality content to your website, videos and email will go a long way towards building viewer comfort and trust.

Brand

You can create your own logo at Dafont dot com. or you can also have a logo created at fiverr dot-com, or upwork dot-com, etc. Get a nice logo with 3-4 nice brand colors (Color.adobe. dot-com)

Go to Color.adobe dot-com, and Click on Explore to choose your color theme from thousands of available options. Save the selected colors, then Click on Create.

Ambassador of your brand

Write helpful content that isn't a sales pitch. Focus on quality helpful content and not on making a sale. Describe the product in depth giving all of the information in a helpful manner and go beyond what is expected by the reader.

Create value by telling a relatable story

If possible create a personal story of how you came to believe in and use the product.

Engage with your audience on social media forums, commenting on relatable conversations and by answering questions, comments, and email.

Website

• Create a thoughtful user experience.
• The visitor should get where you want them to be in 3 clicks or less.
• Think out the user experience and also check your site Google Analytics which will show the visitor behavior, what they clicked, how long they stayed on a page and where they went from there, and more. See the funnel which shows where people are visiting on your website.
• Reduce ads on your website - keep the user experience friendly and don't be trying to sell but build up a trust instead.
• Easy to find information.

Creating Repeat and Long-Term Customers

Keep in contact with your customers with regular messaging every few days or so. Send them the latest post or relevant news flash to remain a positive source for them and ask them if they have any questions, or if you can get some feedback from them. This will build trust and can be of great value to your reader and yourself also.

A nice customer list or niche related email list is a must to build with your regular, quality content, videos, and tutorials. These email lists can be the main source from which many sales and repeat business come from.

It's always a good idea to read the email that's being sent as if you were the receiver of it before sending it off. Another must for email marketing is to use an Autoresponder like Aweber or Mailchimp so that you can write as many messages as needed and set the autoresponder to send each one on a specific day and time.

Applying Trust in Your Business

Email - Create a valuable offer to get visitors to sign up to your list. Create a series of nice helpful emails and send them out regularly and repeat the process, staying positive in the person's mind. It's a good idea to use a "spillover" type of email series where you can let the reader know at the end of each message what the following message will be about, or link back to a previous contact.

Ask for engagement within the first two emails, what they think or if the reader has any questions or at least a "Please hit reply if you received this message". This will help build a relationship and trust.

Engagement

• Always take time to respond to comments with at least a "thank you for visiting and commenting".
• Reach out through social media forums and fish with your comments and URL as bait and hook.
• Ask for engagement within your content, "what do you think about that?" "leave a comment if... ".

Product recommendations

• Tell them why you recommend a product or service and give a thorough explanation. Doing a full review of the product is best leading up to your expert recommendation.
• Tell a relatable personal story if possible, ex: why and how you became aware of and purchased the product. Or tell about the fine results that you are getting while using the product.
• Pain points - Relay the need for the product by describing what it's like without it. Draw a picture with words and show how much better and painless it would be if the reader had the use of this product.

My name is Pete and if you would like to learn about making money in your own online business, making your own websites, increasing site traffic, writing content-rich articles, it would be a great idea to take advantage of an absolutely FREE opportunity 10 FREE Certification Course Lessons and get 2 FREE WordPress websites to create, step by step, your own sites. There is No Card Required - Nothing To Lose. Come see for yourself and Sign Up >>> [http://www.NewCareerat40.com]

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9981982

How To Do Facebook Messenger Marketing

How to Create an Effective Campaign in Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing can be used by startups to explore new techniques and also by individual to broaden their business. While creating a new effective campaign, we have to build strategies and by analyzing the performance we can improve them for better conversions. In this guide we'll look at some of the most important tips to keep in mind before launching campaigns:

The most important is to understand the psychology of your buyer persona and desirability of your product or service before designing online marketing strategy and campaign.

As an advertiser one need to know what specific strategy they should use to reach out to their target audience and market. After simplifying goals, you must keep your target audience in mind, this will raise your audience interest. Your keyword should be used in the content included on the landing page in the ads so that we don't mislead our audience. We can use various options to know about our campaign or ads by using eye-catching image and also we can use video to convey our message. Just make sure that the image contains less than 20% text as per Facebook's advertising policy. For increasing reach and business growth on social media platforms such as Twitter, which helps to improve visibility and people can find your social media account.

In case of Google AdWords always remember to include negative keyword targeting, it helps to deliver your ads efficiently and effectively, this drives better quality traffic and leads to your landing pages and improves your quality score. Don't ignore your mobile user allow mobile specific "call-to-action" to speak directly to your mobile users, this will result in higher conversion rates and a positive user experience. Performing conversion tracking allows optimization of the data and also gives you direct insight into the ROI for your campaign.

To create a successful campaign on Google, keyword planner is an effective tool, which is useful for building strong keyword list and helps you to get your PPC campaign off to a running start; it is a tool for generating keyword ideas and bid estimating which can help you to plan your market strategy. Display Planner is easy to use and provides a more straightforward user interface than the Google Display Network Ad Planner; it also provides ideas based on your website's landing page or categories that are of interest to the audience, It also offers the option to "Upload a Plan", which allows you to get more ideas on an existing plan.

When you are planning to do SEO for your website you will need tools to analyze measure and improve the performance. While working on SEO projects, I have come across many SEO tools which can be helpful to improve your website performance.

The most effective way for creating a campaign is to do A/B testing, which allows you to run short test and help to determine that the ads are working properly or not, from this advertiser knows which campaign is efficient for more conversions.

Digital Marketing is a progressive field. Companies are increasingly shifting from traditional marketing to digital marketing, using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google AdWords. The digital marketing industry is booming and there is a huge demand in the Marketing field.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9974656

The Three Key Pillars To Content Marketing

What Is An Online Sales Funnel?

What is a Funnel and How Do They Work?

When the word funnel is mentioned I usually visualize a car with the hood opened and an oil funnel in the picture. I'm not the only one, I know because a number of people have asked me to explain what a marketing funnel is. The subject gets many confused and a bit discouraged but it need not be so.

A marketing funnel is really very simple and some make it more complicated than it needs to be. Actually, the best and most successful funnels have only 3 steps and are very simple. The more steps that are added leave a better chance that the viewer will not finish the process designed to get them to a certain end result.

The end result, or goal, of the funnel, can be a number of things including a sale, an opt-in, a phone call, a sign-up, or lead. These are called conversions and are the end result of the funnel.

A website is a funnel even if someone doesn't understand just what a marketing funnel is. Someone sets up their site with the intentions of drawing traffic to their site for a specific purpose, let's say to purchase a product. They might see an advertisement ad on another site and click on it to get to the someone's site. The visitor reads some of the website content and clicks to go to the next step or to make a purchase.

That's typical of a sales funnel and sounds really simple, right? There are said to be over 2 billion viewers online and any website owner would love to get as much of that traffic coming to their site as possible.

Through various outreach campaigns on social media sites and forums, articles written, podcast, videos made, or a webinar, the site owner draws traffic into the funnel that travels through the website page and a percentage will click to proceed and the rest will move onto something else.

That is how simple a funnel is and as mentioned, the end result or goal can be to get an email address, get the visitor to click something, or to make a purchase, each is considered a conversion.

There are funnels that have more steps depending on what the design of the funnel is for the visitor but the fewer steps get better results.

How do they work?

Think of yourself as a tour guide leading visitors onto and through your website and leading them where you would like them to go and to do what you would like them to do. The site owner tries to direct them to click here or go there and see a great product that will enrich their lives in one way or another.

So website owners are like tour guides on their own websites and it's best that they understand drawing viewers into a funnel, their website, and being a tour guide leading them to the goal, or point of conversion with every page.

The Components and Tools Needed for a Funnel

The very first thing needed for a funnel is an idea. An idea could be for a video, a blog post, podcast, audiobook, a presentation, a free offer, or a webinar.

Another thing that's needed is a desired goal or end result, whether it be a sign-up, a sale or something else. Then figure out how to get the desired end results starting from the idea.

Figure out what you want your site visitors to do. What's the purpose of the site? Determine what your funnels end result is and then you can design the pathway toward the end result.

My #1 Recommendation:

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10000070

The Secrets of Digital Marketing

How to Find Your Business Niche

3 Ways to Help Better Position Your Business for Market Success

Finding your business niche is the first step of defining your brand. If you don't understand how to position your business in the market place or know what you're selling and why, then you won't be able to effectively market your business.

It's important to find your business niche so you can:

• Differentiate yourself from your competitors;

• Optimize your website for the right keywords;

• Have a clear message on all marketing materials;

• Develop new ideas or products that appeal to your target market.

Here are 3 ways to make finding your business niche easier:

1. Narrow your focus.

You've heard the saying "Go big or go home?" Not in this case. To stand out from the competition and attract more visitors to your website, you need to be very specific about what you offer.

For example, business may offer a variety of marketing services. However, they wouldn't get very far if we only used the keyword "marketing services" on their website or put that term on their business cards.

Instead, they promote a number of different services on their website, marketing materials and in the real world such as Brand & Marketing Consulting, Website Development and SEO.

Get focused and you'll find your business niche or niches.

2. Define your target market.

You'll hear this again and again in marketing advice: finding the right audience to target is crucial.

Many business owners make the mistake of trying to be everything to everybody, or launch a website filled with content that doesn't speak clearly to the people they want to reach.

Think about who wants what you're selling. Is it entrepreneurs? HR professionals? Stay at home dads? Tech-savvy millennials?

Once you're come up with your target audience, you can narrow down and define your business niche even more. Plus, you'll be able to craft search engine-optimized content that will engage and inform exactly who you want to be buying your products or services.

3. Know the competition.

It's essential to know what kind of competition you're up against when you're defining your business niche. Start with Google.

Search the keywords people might use to find your business. If you see pages and pages of results and a lot of PPC ads (those are the paid ads that appear to the right and sometimes above the organic results), competition is high for that keyword or keywords.

You'll probably want to narrow down your niche even further, or find another niche to target. For example, if your niche is corporate fitness training but there's a lot of competition, brainstorm some other keywords to optimize your site for - maybe in-office corporate training, executive fitness training and corporate weight training.

The trick is to find the balance between low-competition keywords that have a decent search volume. If you're the only one using a specific keyword but nobody is searching for it, you're not going to get the results you want.

Once you have defined your business niche, you'll be able to market your products or services more effectively.

You'll know your focus, target market and competition, which will make differentiating your brand and defining your unique selling proposition (USP) much simpler.

A good brand strategy takes time, and ideally some professional help to ensure you've got everything you need for a clear, concise and compelling brand message.

Susan Friesen, founder of the award-winning web development and digital marketing firm eVision Media, is a Web Specialist, Business & Marketing Consultant, and Social Media Advisor. She works with entrepreneurs who struggle with having the lack of knowledge, skill and support needed to create their online business presence.

If you are new to Social Media and online marketing or find it overwhelming and confusing, my monthly group coaching program, AMPLIFY! Business Academy http://amplifybusinessacademy.com/ is a perfect way for you to incrementally learn the best strategies and tactics to help you grow your business online.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9988969

Mindset For Entrepreneurship

When you're marketing things, mindset is at least 80% of the game. We could quibble about the number all day, but eventually we'd have to agree: mindset is a big part of marketing.

But what is really meant by this term?

Well, I mean the ways that you think, feel, and act in relation to things in the world. And in that case, mindset is a woefully inept term to describe this idea! However, it's the colloquial word for what I'm talking about. So, bear with me.

By mindset, I mean what most people would describe as your personality and the ways you mentally and physically interact with the world. Most people just think about the states and what it feels like, etc. I think this is really only half the issue. The other half is how that causes you to act. Our thinking, feeling, and behavioral systems are all interconnected into one system: the human being, i.e. you and me.

How does mindset affect Internet marketing?

Internet marketing is one of the few areas of life that is only limited by the amount of work you're willing to put in and the market's response to it. Which is pretty cool; however, this also means that you're your own worst enemy. Therefore, to succeed at Internet marketing, you've got to get your head right.

Until you "get your wits about you", it can be very difficult to make Internet marketing work for you. This is why I say that mindset is paramount to your success. You stand in your way far more than other marketers or issues do. "How are you blocking yourself?" is an important question to consider.

How do you do this? How do you "get your wits about you?"

The easiest way to get your thinking right is to get a coach or therapist to help you overcome all of your blocks one at a time in a way tailored specifically to you.

I think this is a great approach if you have the time and the money. Most people do not. A great second option is to look into training programs, audios, videos, courses, classes, eBooks, traditional books, etc.

Definitely, you want to go to a live event or find someone to work with one-on-one first, but if this is not an option, non-live programs can be amazingly helpful.

But regardless of how you approach this, it's all going to be the same basic process: focus on the end goal, make sure it's ideal for you, determine how to best get there, and then make a plan to get there (and overcome blocks as they arise).

Would you like to discover a new program that will help you to find more prosperity in your life? Then, you may be interested in Joshua Howard's new hypnotic program, "Program Your Prosperous Future." It's free with any purchase of Freedom Profits (through my affiliate link). See my review for Freedom Profits here: https://youtu.be/SjPZ7c1fUjM

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10047662

7 Lessons That Will Make You a Better Entrepreneur

Why True Leaders (and Marketers) "Overcommunicate"

When I was in high school, I earned some extra money doing odd jobs for a solicitor's office. Nothing fancy - mail this, drop of that, fill out this form, sweep that floor. Obviously nothing that required a law degree and not much that required a brain.

The money wasn't bad though.

I learned many leadership lessons from that job.

Unfortunately, most of them were hard lessons - more what not to do, instead of what to do.

Some of the lessons were obvious, like how a little kindness goes a long way.

(And I know just how far a little contempt can go, too.)

One lesson was a lot more subtle. It took me years after leaving that place to piece this one together. In that job I knew what I was supposed to do, but I never knew why.

So when a strange situation popped up and I had to show initiative, I blew it.

I had no clue what a good outcome looked like.

Sure, my job mostly involved cleaning coffee cups and emptying garbage cans. But anything more complicated than that, my only hope was to guess at what my boss wanted.

Fast forward a decade or so:

I worked in a large organisation whose leadership were keen talkers. They'd hold town hall meetings, send all-staff emails, record videos, make announcements... and they'd always say the same things.

Every chance they got, they shared their vision.

What they were doing and why.

It should have felt repetitive. Maybe some people felt annoyed.

But no one was confused about what the organisation did. Or how their role supported it.

When something strange popped up, it was easy to figure out what to do. Whatever would best serve the leadership's vision was the right course of action.

Once of Cialdini's influence principles is Authority.

Tell me - which person embodies Authority better?

Someone who jumps from fad to fad, always chasing the next shiny thing?

Or someone who understands their purpose - and can make you understand it, too?

And the best way to convey your purpose - to have your reader feel it in their squishiest places - is to talk clearly and often. Average leaders rarely communicate. Great ones overcommunicate. With enough repetition, the message becomes unforgettable.

This is one of the reasons why marketers say each ad should have One Big Idea. A full-page ad has many words and they all say the same thing. It overcommunicates the Big Idea until it burns in your prospect's mind.

And it's why I like content marketing. You don't write one ad; you write thousands. You don't focus on One Big Idea once - you do so over and over.

Any schmoe can browse Wikipedia and cobble together an article. But who can overcommunicate? Only an Authority can, because it takes deep knowledge and experience to write this way.

Content marketing is tough when you're an amateur.

And it's so fun and powerful when you know your stuff.

Your prospects will pick up on it. They'll absorb your message and elevate you to an Authority in their mind.

From there, they'll trust you enough to become clients.

What messages do I overcommunicate?

Content marketing works.

Your prospects deserve your best voice, knowledge and persuasion skills.

I'm a professional who understands your business better than anyone.

And, of course, you can hire me as a freelancer:

https://battenandking.com/services/

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