Tuesday, January 28, 2014

What are Your Goals for the Next 30 Days? & You Can't Do Everything First.

Greetings!

Three key ingredients to a successful business include having a focus, prioritizing what is important and taking action. Without these, you will keep spinning your wheels. This month's newsletter discusses how to achieve greater success by focusing on the action steps required to take your business from where it is now to where you want it to be in the future.

Speaking of priorities, November is a great month for an annual goals review. We take a look back at the objectives that were set for 2012 and see what worked, what didn't and why. From there, we shift our focus to the overall organizational and personal goals for 2013.

Warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season!

Best,
Diane

Diane Yochelson
Peak Impact, LLC
diane@peakimpact.us www.peakimpact.us 301-525-5516
What are Your Goals for the Next 30 Days?

Entrepreneurial Hats Today's small business owner often wears a number of different hats. How many of you act as the CEO, the general manager, the accountant, the salesperson, the computer technician, the secretary, the receptionist, etc.? Sound familiar?

Many entrepreneurs try to chase too many targets at once and end up overwhelmed rather than focusing on their business. They spend all their energy carrying out daily tasks leaving little time for the most important part of their day - their own business!

To avoid this, spend some time focusing on your business and decide which strategies will be most helpful in developing your own marketing plan. In order to grow and succeed in your business, you first need to have a crystal clear idea of what you want to do and where you want to go. In other words, have you defined your objectives? And more importantly, have you put them in writing?    
      
Writing your objectives on a weekly basis and being very specific in each area of your business can give you the opportunity to create strategic alliances with other entrepreneurs, triple your database, increase your revenue, and maybe even leave time for writing that book you've always talked about.

You can make your big dreams a reality!

When you write your objectives on a weekly or monthly basis, it makes you actually work on them and act faster. If you are not specific and just say, "I will have money, or I will have more clients," then yes, these things will come, but the question is "when"? You don't have any deadline to accomplish them by! But, if you decide that by December 30th you will have 6 new clients, you will then do something in order to get those clients, instead of praying or waiting to see if this will happen.

At a recent networking event, I asked some of the participants, "What are your goals for the next 30 days?" Some answered without hesitation, while others had to think about it. And one person responded, "Thanks for reminding me that I need to work on my goals, I had actually forgotten about it."

I found that the best way to incorporate time for your objectives and marketing plan is to set up an appointment with yourself. And whatever happens, even if there is a client emergency, never cancel this appointment.

It is critical that once a month or once a week you schedule an hour or two working on your business, focusing on: strategies to get more clients, new products or services to offer, special campaigns to make more sales and writing articles for your newsletter, newspapers, or ezine directories to promote your business. The more links you get, the more traffic you will receive on your website. Do you have a newsletter? This is the easiest and cheapest way to communicate on a regular basis with your clients and prospects in order to promote and grow your business. This can be another objective for the next 30 days.

Take the time to plan strategies that will help grow your business. Consider yourself as your most important client. Do for yourself what you do for your clients. Your business needs all your attention, all your energy, and all your dedication. Your future and your success depend upon it

You Can't Do Everything First

Prioritizing Goals Trying to decide which of 15 or 20 options to pursue can be frustrating, especially if all of them appear to be good choices.

Let's take an example that we often see on the Internet. How many eBooks have you bought within the last six months? Of that number, how many of them tell you how to market or to make money online?

If a book is any good, you'll be impressed; you'll say, "Yeah, I can do this." But then, after a few days, you'll read another really great sales letter, and feel that you really, really need the knowledge in this new offering. Then, you'll buy yet another eBook, and you'll again be impressed: "Yeah, I can REALLY do THIS."

This cycle is being repeated over and over every day all around the Internet.

This may have happened to you. I've done it. Lots of people have.

So there you sit with perhaps dozens of books, all good, dozens or even hundreds of affiliate offerings, some excellent, and page after page of website ideas, all interesting.

In fact, you've got so many options that you may not know what to do first.

If all your options are good, then it doesn't really matter which one you choose first. Throw a dart if you have to, but move. Make a decision. Get yourself into motion.

For many people, getting into motion means you'll be stepping into unfamiliar territory, doing things you've never done before. So what? At least it's interesting and exciting. But never terrifying!

If you think starting your very first business is terrifying, you need to think again.

Wrestling a grizzly bear is terrifying. Falling from an airplane without a parachute is terrifying.

But starting a business? Nah ... that's not scary; it's just unfamiliar.

And right there we have the main reason most people lock up when they face a long list of options. It's unfamiliar ground, so they think they don't know how to choose.

Here's a strategy for taking the terror out of decision making. Take that long list of options. Perhaps there are 15 items on it, and you've never done any of them before.

Once you've examined all the items on the list, do this: Decide if all the items are REALLY about equal. If there are any that clearly don't measure up, cross those off. You'll still be left with lots of choices.

Let's say you're left with only 10 items on your list.

Take out a new sheet of paper.

Write item number one on it, the first item from your original list.

Okay, that's it. That's your new list of options - just one item.

We've already agreed that all the choices are more or less equal.

So now you've got your action agenda. One item. No more indecision.

Now just go do it.

And those other 9 items? They'll be there waiting when you get done with the first task.

See how easy decision-making can be?


Peak Impact, LLC
Do you like what you have read?


Peak Impact LLC  
Bethesda, MD 20814
   
Phone: 301-525-5516  
Visit our website at: www.peakimpact.us

Monday, January 27, 2014

How to create an Ad on Linkedin Advertising.


Linkedin Advertising



Linkedin Advertising – A Winner Every Time For B2B Companies

Advertising on Linkedin can produce exceptional returns for little cost.
If you are a b2b company and you are not advertising on Linkedin – you are ignoring a 22 carat gold income stream.
Linkedin advertising works because it is targeted. In fact, Linkedin allows you to define your precise audience with total accuracy.
You can choose your audience by age, gender, seniority, job title, job function, industry, geography and company size. You can target your audience by company name.
It takes time to learn the secrets of Linkedin advertising but by constant testing we know what works and what doesn’t.
We can create a killer Linkedin advertising campaign in the blink of an eye and we guarantee that our campaigns will produce results that are more than twice as good as Linkedin’s anticipated click through rate!
Please visit the Linkedin Learning Academy for more information about advertising on Linkedin.
For a free Linkedin advertising consultation, please contact Elspeth Brown on 0800 612 9890 in the UK or 1-800 400 3831 in the US or Canada.

Friday, January 24, 2014

¿Nuestros hijos pagan en su infancia nuestras inclinaciones politicas?

Una vez más son los hijos los que estan pagando las inclinaciones politicas de sus padres, o depende del lugar donde nacieron y la historia como se esta desarrollando, segun el articulo anterior en mi blog podemos evidenciar que durante el regimen de Mahmud Ahmadineyad, prohibieron la venta de la Barbie en Iran, por ser una mala influencia a los valores musulmanes, pero a decir verdad estaban detras de la gran popularidad en ventas que tenia la Barbie. Lo que realmente les interesaba era que el dinero producto de petróleo se quedase en Iran y no saliera del pais, por compras de juguetes extrajenros. De la misma manera el Presidente Hugo Chavez Frias lo hizo en Venezuela sacando a la venta un muñeco de si mismo, para reivindicar su revolución bolivariana, en ambos casos se evidencia el claro fracaso en ventas, pero todo se hace para apoyar con el merchandising o en pocas palabras haciendo marketing de sus propias ideas e inclinaciones políticas.  Para perpetuar sus políticas cierran tiendas si estan vendiendo una muñeca que es lider en ventas, asi no promueven el crecimiento sostenido de la economia comercial de un pais en pleno crecimiento.
Yo soy apolítico y no me inclino por hacer ni un solo mal comportamiento encontra de nuestros niños, mucho menos todo lo que se refiera a juegos infantiles y por supuesto en su educación, son nuestra generación de relevo, son el futuro, y ellos tienen el derecho de jugar con los juguetes que a ellos mas les gustan, no importando si son de A o de B creación o de forma de pensar, o inclinación política.
Los hijos deben jugar, disfrutar y tener la libertad de escoger sin que nadie les lave el cerebro desde pequeños, y menos les prohiban jugar con una muñeca por ser de una corriente politica u otra. Dejemos de una vez por todas crecer a los niños sin color politico, proporcionándole una educación universal y excelente, asi cuando ellos sean adultos (18 años), ellos determinen su propio futuro y no sean mas un reflejo de lo que nosotros queremos. Podemos aconsejarles pero nunca forzarles a que hagan lo que a nosotros queremos, ellos sino mas adelante nos lo reclamaran.

Alex Rojas Riva

Barbie, prohibida en Irán por ser una mala influencia.

Qué!
www.que.es

Barbie, prohibida en Irán por ser una mala influencia.

Ya no hay muñecas Barbie en Irán. La policía moral iraní las está retirando de las tiendas, bajo el argumento de que son un reflejo de la cultura occidental y un peligro para los valores islámicos. Los comerciantes que no acaten la medida se enfrentan a que su establecimento sea cerrado por la Policia. Hace diez años, el país lanzó una muñeca con la que pretendía transmitir valores musulmanes y contrarestar la popularidad de Barbie, pero fracasó.

Community Manager: Consejos para elegir curso.

Qué!

www.que.es

Community Manager: Consejos para elegir curso


Convertirse en Community Manager parece una de las salidas doradas de al crisis. Las ofertas de trabajo crecen y, con ellas, las de cursos de formación de todas las características y precios. Pero no es oro todo lo que reluce. ¿Qué debemos tener en cuenta a la hora de elegir?


Diana Garcia Bujarrabal - Qué.es 24 de octubre de 2013




Hasta hace poco tiempo, ser 'Community Manager' se consideraba una actividad menor, pasajera, casi para adolescentes. Sin embargo, empresas y medios de comunicación se toman cada vez más en serio la gestión de su imagen en las redes sociales y el perfil del 'community' se ha profesionalizado.
No es para menos. Según una completa infografía publicada por Offerpop las ofertas de trabajo relacionadas con redes sociales han crecido más de un 1300 por ciento en Linked In en los últimos tres años. Y una simple búsqueda en las plataformas de empleo más populares en España corrobora que la tendencia sigue: al menos en este área hay ofertas de trabajo. Eso sí, según la misma infografía más del 40 por ciento de los puestos ofrecidos reclamaban perfiles senior.
Ante estas cifras no es de extrañar que muchos parados en España traten de reconvertirse al universo 2.0 y formarse para ser Community Managers. ¿Pero cómo elegir? "La actual situación de crisis, unida un sector con un crecimiento real fomenta la aparición de ofertas formativas poco cualificadas, lo que lleva a una mezcla de ofertas buenas y otras no tanto que, en muchas ocasiones, resulta complicado diferenciar", explica Juan Merodio, experto en marketing 2.0 y redes sociales. Gaby Castellanos, CEO de socialphilia, no es nada entusiasta. Para ella, a menudo "se le está vendiendo a la gente que va a estudiar un curso y ponerse a trabajar, y eso tampoco es verdad". Asimismo, alerta de que hay que ser precavido. "En España es vergonzoso, se producen cientos de estafas. Masters que se cobran a precio de oro y no enseñan nada".
CÓMO ELEGIR UN CURSO
Les pedimos a Juan Merodio y a Gaby Castellanos que nos den algunas recomendaciones para orientarnos en el maremagnun de las ofertas de formación. Cursos a distancia, presenciales, intensivos o de todo un año, títulos de 'Master', ofertas gratuitas o a muy bajo precio y aquéllas que se imparten por miles de euros. ¿Por dónde empezamos?
  • Formación previa: Gaby Castellanos recuerda que el Community es una pieza más en una estrategia de comunicación, por ello es conveniente tener una formación previa en Comunciación, Publicidad o, al menos en Programación, dependiendo de la especialización posterior. "Esto es como una profesión cualquiera, y uno no se hace cirujano o periodista en quince días", apunta.

  • Compara con el extranjero: "Yo recomiendo, si se puede estudiar en Estados Unidos, que es donde comenzó todo", apunta Castellanos. Y recuerda que muchas instituciones ofrecen becas que pueden ayudar a la hora de dar el salto.

  • Comprobar quién lo imparte: es importante que sea una entidad de prestigio. Según Merodio hay que comprobar "cuál es su historia" y no solo eso, sino también "si están especializados en este sector", dice. En este sentido Castellanos recuerda que ella misma denunció en su blog un Master de 6.000 euros en la UCM que, según ella, no ofrecía unso mínimos estándares.

  • Analizar el contenido del plan: no todos los alumnos tienen las mimas necesidades de formación, así que Merodio recomienda revisar bien los palnes de estudio.
  • Los profesores: según Merodio son quienes "realmente aportan el valor del curso, ya que la información está toda en Internet". Es importante que cuenten con una experiencia profesional acreditada. Y, por acreditada, recuerda Castellanos, no se puede contar solo el número de 'followers'. "Hay quienes tienen muchos 'huevitos' entre sus followers, o nombres fake, los seguidores se compran". Así es que lo recomensable es cerciorarse de que, efectivamente, se hala de ellos en el secto, se les entrevista, son referencia.

  • El precio: Es muy importante, dadas las diferencias que hay. Eso sí, Merodio recomienda que no sea el principal motivo de peso en la decisión. 

  • Trabajar, trabajar y trabajar: Para Gaby Castellanos ésta es sin duda la clave. "Es la mejor forma de aprender".

  • Aptitudes personales: Merodio puntualiza además que quizás no todo el mundo es apto para embarcarse en esta profesión, sino que hacen falta ciertas aptitudes. "Para Community Manager en sí es importante ser una persona con empatía, pero realmente dentro de las nuevas ofertas de trabajo digitales hay muchos perfiles e irán surgiendo nuevos puestos complementarios al del Community".

Afecta el monoxido de carbono a los seres humanos.

Según el articulo anterior puedo concluir que si afecta, recordándoles que nosotros los seres humanos comemos pescado y estos estan afectados por el dióxido de carbono o monóxido de carbono, son 2300 millones de toneladas de CO2, en que se incrementó las emisiones en los mares. Esto perjudica a los seres humanos en su alimentación, a parte de estar expuesto al aumento de emisiones de CO2 en las grandes urbes o megatropolis, o grandes centros urbanos, como ciudades, lo que traería como consecuencia los mismos efectos de reducción de habilidades para oír, oler, moverse y hasta nuestra propia sobrevivencia. Tenemos que hacer algo al respecto, nuestros hijos estan expuestos a estos peligros y estan creciendo en estos momentos sufriendo consecuencias que mas tarde no sabremos como curarlas o sanarlas.
Alex Rojas Riva.

El carbono, cada vez más letal para algunos peces.

 Qué!
www.que.es
 
El dióxido de carbono (CO2) se ha vuelta letal para algunas especies marinas. El aumento de emisiones en los mares, unas 2300 millones de toneladas al año, transforma el sistema nervioso de los peces, efectando sus habilidades para oír, oler, moverse y sobrevivir, según un estudio científico de "Nature".

Thursday, January 23, 2014

How to Interview for a Digital Marketing Role





How to Interview for a Digital Marketing Role


interview-imageAs head of a specialist marketing, analytics and digital recruitment agency, I’ve seen more than my fair share of candidates looking for Digital opportunities. Whether it’s SEO jobs, PPC jobs or careers working within social media; I’ve seen the good and the bad – candidates that really know what they’re doing and people that submit applications that show a complete lack of knowledge. So how do you spot a candidate who knows their Ad Rank from their PageRank, and how do you weed out an applicant who thinks Google is something you wear when you’re swimming or that Stumble is something you do when you’ve had a few too many drinks.
As a leading Digital recruiter, it’s my job to sort the good from the bad, ensuring that clients only interview candidates that are suitable and have relevant skills. So here are some tips if you don’t know much about digital marketing but need to interview digital candidates to join your company?

SEO Positions

You know how important SEO is, but do you know what it’s all about. Even if you do, how can you quickly work out whether or not your candidate knows what they’re talking about? You don’t want to spend hours in an interview grilling a candidate on the granular detail of SEO, but there are a few ways that you can quickly analyse the person that you’re interviewing and encourage them to give you the relevant detail that you need to know:

Ask Them about Their Experience

Anyone can set themselves up as an SEO professional. If you don’t know what you’re looking for then it is easy even be fooled by someone that is saying all of the wrong things in the right way. It can be like listening to someone talking in a foreign language to a digital novice and if they are saying it with enough confidence even the worst SEO advice can sound plausible. That’s the trouble with SEO. There is no definitive right answer to best practise, because Google offers such little clarity on their search algorithms.
To help separate the beginners from the experienced professionals you should ask about their experience. Who have they worked for? What results have they achieved? Can they show you examples of their work? Can they log into Google Analytics and talk you through the data?

Ask Them about Their Strategy

SEO strategies should vary from website to website and from company to company. One strategy does not fit all! A good answer from a candidate about SEO strategy should relate to your company’s market and strategy… If your candidate sounds like they’re reeling off a generic answer then alarm bells should be ringing. When they respond to this question, a good candidate will be mentioning specifics and talking about your company.

Look Out For Warnings

You don’t have to understand the intricacies of search engine optimisation to know when someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about. You should be concerned if:
    - They’re talking about developing a strong presence by submitting your site to directories.
    - They’re talking about spending a lot of time commenting on existing blog posts.
    - They’re talking about keyword density.
If they sound like they’re putting quantity over quality and emphasising how many links they plan to get, then you can almost certainly cross them off your list.
Oh, and you should be even more concerned if they start telling you how you should include deliberate spelling mistakes to capture users that type the wrong thing into Google. This handy little feature ensures that you definitely don’t need to worry about that (which is why the very first result is so very concerning):

Ask Them to Analyse Your Website

It’s great that your candidate wants to get your business noticed, improve your rankings and make sure that people are finding your website, but hopefully they’re not just focused on what’s happening off-site.
Someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing might start by talking about building links and opening social media accounts, but before time is spent on off-site optimisation your website needs to be working properly. You need to ensure that your website is optimised, that it’s converting visitors into sales or enquiries and that there are no glaring UX errors. No SEO professional should launch straight into off-site optimisation without a thought about where they’re sending people. Bonus points should be given to any candidate that starts to analyse your website before they’re asked to!
A good candidate shouldn’t be worried about offending you by critiquing your website – they’ll need to do it once they’ve got the job – but if you’re worried about them tearing your site to shreds, then why not ask them to critique your main competitor’s website?

PPC Positions

Ask Them about Their Experience

Can your candidate give you examples of previous PPC campaigns? They should certainly be able to, unless they’re a complete beginner. Ask them to talk you through some of their previous campaigns and to discuss with you how successful those campaigns were, and why. Conversely, you should also ask them about a campaign that didn’t go well and what they learnt from that experience?
Ideally they’ll show you campaigns that they’ve run, and will be able to talk you through the details. Do they have graphs to show you? Can they log in and let you enjoy a supervised look through their Adwords account? Interview-image-3

Ask Them about Running a Successful Campaign

To run a successful campaign you don’t just need to pick out a few keywords, link to your website and hope for the best. Good campaigns are responsive and relevant, and are carefully managed. Look out for candidates that talk about:
    - Creating relevant landing pages.
    - Responding to world events and special occasions.
    - Optimising your website by making sure that the people that click through can find relevant and informative information, to encourage conversions.
Your candidate should know that PPC marketing doesn’t stop once the advert is live, or once a certain click-through rate has been achieved.

Tell Them about Your Goals

Tell your candidate what you hope to achieve by running PPC campaigns. Who do you want to target? What do you want them to do? What is your budget? Use the interview as an opportunity to help your candidate to understand your requirements, and make sure that they tell you how they’ll help you to reach your goals.

Ask Them about Google’s Quality Score

Someone that understands Google Adwords should be able to explain Google’s Quality Score, and its effect on Ad Rank. In simple terms a high Quality Score is given when a keyword links to a relevant advertising message and has a high click-through rate, and when visitors that click the advert are taken to a relevant landing page.
A good quality score will boost the Ad Rank, which influences the position that an advert appears in. In an ideal world, your candidate would be able to log in to Google Analytics and show you examples of Quality Scores that they’ve achieved. Interview-image-4

Discuss Your Competitors

A good candidate should at least have looked at what your competitors are doing before they attend your interview. Can they explain why your competitor is running their campaign the way they are, and what your competitor is achieving?
Ideally your candidate will also be able to pick fault with your competitor’s campaign, and explain how you could do better.

Social Media Positions

If you don’t have Twitter talent, you’re not a Facebook fanatic and you admit that Pinterest leaves you feeling perplexed then how do you find the right person to manage your social network presence? You don’t just want someone that enjoys sending pictures of their cat to their Aunt once a week; you need someone that isn’t fazed by long lists of notifications and won’t panic when they’re asked to manage this: Interview-image-5
Your social presence is your company’s voice. Someone filling a social media position needs to be your customer service representative, answering customer queries and dealing with complaints, and they’ll need to write in your company tone of voice, with an approachable personality. They need to be able to have a little fun, but they’ve also got to paint your company in a good light. After all, it’s entirely possible for the wrong person to destroy your brand’s image in just one 140-character Tweet:
Interview-image-6
So, how do you find the perfect person? How do you ensure that you can find someone that can keep up to date with current affairs, manage multiple accounts, keep customers happy and spend their time building your brand rather than knocking it to the ground? Here are a few tips:

Ease Them In

A good interview starts with a relaxed conversation, to help your candidate settle in and feel comfortable. A few days before your interview, pick out a top trending hashtag on Twitter and see what it’s about. As you chat to your candidate, bring it up as a topic of conversation. Hopefully, if they follow social media trends, they’ll know what you’re talking about!

Ask Which Brands Inspire Them

Anyone with an interest in social media should be able to give an example of at least one company that is doing it right. It’s also worth asking if they have examples of companies that are managing their social accounts in the completely wrong way. Hopefully, they’ll be able to think outside the box. Few social media success stories are bigger than Innocent Drinks’, so you might hear about them a lot, but perhaps the best candidate knows of another company that seems to know what it’s doing? Interview-image-7

Ask Them to Clarify Their Role

A candidate at the interview stage will have read in your job advertisement what it is that you expect of them, but you should use their interview as an opportunity to ask what they think they should be doing. Look out for positive buzzwords like ‘responsive’ or ‘reactive’, showing that they don’t just plan to schedule posts a month in advance and that they plan to be keep on top of the latest industry news.
Check that they understand the importance of being a community manager – they’re there to encourage interaction, to get people talking and to promote your brand, not just to shout at your customers. Nothing is worse than a social media account that is filled with promotion and sales talk.

Ask Them How They’ll Deal with Complaints

Your chosen candidate should feel confident enough to turn a complaint around in the public eye rather than hiding it from view. If your customers realise that you’re deleting negative comments then social networks give them a chance to group together and send forth a wave of negative publicity that could damage your brand. Instead, addressing an issue publicly and coming up with a resolution that your customer is happy with can portray your company in a very positive light.

Check That They Know Their Twitter from Their Facebook

It’s vital that your chosen candidate knows their Twitter from their Facebook and their Facebook from their Google+, and their Google+ from their Pinterest and their Pinterest from their Linkedin…you get the idea. There are dozens of social networks available for your company to utilise, but a good candidate will know that not all of them are the same. They should vary their strategy from network to network, and might even suggest which ones are vital for your business and which ones aren’t. After all, it’s better to have a strong and positive presence on the networks most relevant to your company than to have a weaker presence spread across them all.
You don’t need to be a digital marketing expert to hire someone to fill one of these roles, but whatever your level of experience you can use a few simple questions to sort the experts from the rookies.
Do you have any tips of your own to add? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Author

This blog was written by Stephen Thompson, Managing Director of Forward Role; a leading Digital, Marketing, Creative and Analytical recruitment business based in Manchester, England.

Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant? Eat like a bee!.



Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant? Eat like a bee!

Honeybee (Apis mellifera) landing on a milk th...
© 2007 Fir0002/Flagstaffotos, GNU Free Documentation License
In Rules for Revolutionaries, Guy Kawasaki advises you to eat like a bird and poop like an elephant. By that, he means that you should be a voracious consumer of information (according to him, hummingbirds eat 50% of their body weight in food a day) and you should spread your knowledge as liberally as possible (much like the way an elephant poops a lot. He explains how this helps you see the connections between ideas and create value, and he gives a number of examples of opportunities he found when he did and opportunities he missed when he didn’t.
Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services
Guy Kawasaki
The vivid advice made me think of eating like a bee, an analogy I like more. Bees collect nectar from lots of different flowers, pollinating them along the way. (Some even intentionally gather pollen!) Even by itself, this pollination already serves the ecosystem. Bees take the nectar, digest it, and structure it into beautifully ordered hexagons that hold lots of energy. They do this along with lots of other bees in a highly social activity.
And of course one can make all sorts of puns regarding bees and the International Business Machines corporation, of which I am part. Indeed, I, bee, am.
So how do these thoughts translate into real life?
I love reading. Being close to one of the largest public library systems in the world means that there’s a never-ending rotation of books through our bookshelves. I read tons of books about business, management, leadership, marketing, consulting, entrepreneurship, personal finance, productivity, self-development, relationships, creativity, and writing. I also occasionally throw in books about history, sewing, psychology, mathematics, science, popular culture, and fiction recommended by friends. And then there’s the occasional piece of mental junk food (Regency romances and the like). I read lots of blog posts, too – they’re an excellent way to get different insights and fresh perspectives.
I also love writing, putting together diagrams and presentations, and exploring other ways to explain things. That’s either elephant-pooping or pollinating and making honey, depending on which analogy you prefer. ;)
This has been working out really well for me. The more I learn, the more I share. The more I share, the more I learn.
Some people have told me that they don’t blog because they don’t know if they have anything interesting to share. A bee picks up pollen in the course of its everyday work. It does not stop to ask the next flower if this pollen is interesting enough or worth sharing. It simply shares and lets the world work the rest of the magic.
What are you picking up while you’re learning, and what can you share with others

Que pasa si conectas Google+ con tus otros perfiles de las demás Redes Sociales.

Alex Rojas Riva

Cuando haces la primera conección de tu perfil de google+ con tus otros perfiles de las demas redes sociales, puede que te suceda esto:
Puede que se bloque tu navegador Firefox.
Si estas usando el navegador Firefox, puede que se bloque y te salga un mensaje de Google en donde te dicen que tienes inhabilitado tus cookies de third party en el navegador. Si revisas y te das cuenta que tu no tienes inhabilitado tus cookies de third party, y persiste el problema de que esta bloqueado el navegador Firefox.
Entonces te recomiendan que borres la memoria cache y el historial de tus URL que has visitado ultimamente.
Si haciendo todo lo que te indica Google y el problema persiste, pues no pasa nada. Pasaran un o dos dias y se arreglará solo, ya que cuando conectas muchas redes sociales a google+, el navegador firefox, google y cada una de las redes sociales tiene  que ponerse de acuerdo con sus terminos y condicones de uso, es un problema de ellos y tiene que ver con permisos que se dan entre ellos.
Asi que no te preocupes, esto ya me sucedió a mi el 6/1/2014 y se arreglo sólo. Aunque no lo dude y pensé que me había cargado el navegador firefox, y lo desinstalé y lo volví a instalar, pero el problema de que no desplegaba la ventana del navegador firefox persistía, y a pesar de todo esto, los demas navegadores como internet explorer y google chrome funcionaban bien. Asi que esperé un par de dias y todo se arreglo satisfactoriamente.

Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant.

Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant

Guy Kawasaki’s advice to the SLA 2012 keynote audience is to eat information like a bird (they eat a lot), and poop it out like an elephant. Get it in, analyze it & get it out.  He covered the 10 points of Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions (his new book) guy@alltopcom

As an Apple employee, a venture capitalist and now as a speaker, he has done a great deal of enchanting.  How do you evangelize, influence and enchant people. Highly recommends Influence (as has Ken Haycock for years). His top 10 tips for how to enchant your customers, managers
  1. Achieve likability
    • Have a great smile, not a forced grin; a Duchenne smile uses your eyes and your mouth – you “want crows feet”
    • Accept others for what they are & not try to change them; don’t expect to be liked if you aren’t liking others
    • Default to “yes”; always think of how you can help other people; the upside of being liked far outweighs the downside of being taken advantage
  2. Achieve trustworthiness
  • Amazon.com trusts people not to return e-books in the 7 days that, in fact, they’ve read; in return we trust Amazon.com
  • Zappos.com trusts women not to take advantage of their shipping both ways; in return women trust Zappos
  • Bake, don’t eat
  • Find something you can agree on, even the smallest thing
3. Perfect your product or service – perfect what you do – make it great
  • It is easier to enchant people with great services than with crap
  • Do something DICEE: deep, intelligent, complete, empowering (makes you more creative, more productive), elegant
4 Launch your service
  • Tell a great story, a personal story, not using words like scalable, enterprise, curve-jumping, etc.
  • Plant many seeds;Use salient points; calories vs. miles (if you eat this bag of chips you need to run 25 miles! ); gigabytes vs. # of songs
5.  Overcome resistance to your service
  • Electronic gaming overcame the market’s resistance by calling the games educational toys not games
  • Provide social proofUse a dataset; the facts are there but the market refuses to believe it; Gapminder.com uses datasets to change mindsetsEnchant all the influencers, not just the obvious
6.  Endure
  • Grateful Dead encourages ppl to pirate its music; it has a special place for ppl to “tape” it’s concertsBuild an ecosystem about your industry or serviceInvoke reciprocity. 
  • Read Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robt Cialdini
  • Instead of saying “you are welcome”, say “I know you would do the same for me”, which means “I know you will do the same for me”; as a defaulter to yes and a baker not an eater you also need to enable ppl to pay you back
  • Don’t rely on money;
  • Be a great presenter
  • Customize the introduction to the audience
  • Sell your dream of what your service can solve ppl’s problems
  • Use 10 slides in 20 minutes; in 30 point font
7. Use technology
  • Remove the speed bumps to getting to your company or service
  • Provide value – insights – what to do to make sure a bad thing doesn’t happen to your client
  • Eat information like a bird eats food & poop it out like an elephant: take lots in, digest it and spread it around — get it out there in a meaningful way!

9. Enchant up to your boss
  • Drop everything else when your boss asks
  • Prototype fast; if your boss asks you to do something, whip it up quickly as a prototype; it proves that you’ve dropped everything
  • Deliver bad news early; the moment you know something is wrong, tell them
10. Enchant down to the people who work for you
  • Provide a map (Daniel Pink’s Drive) for ppl;
  • help them develop mastery;
  • Suck it up; don’t ask people to do something you won’t do
ginaposs@gmailcom — if you want the presentation, send an email to Gina.   His site is www.alltop.com

2 comments to Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant

Alex Rojas Riva said:

If I can not be first, at least I'll try, and I will be among the few GAIQ.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Finding Niches With Google Keyword Planner And Google Trends.


How To Find Profitable Niche markets Using Google Trends


How To Find A Niche Market in Just A Few Minutes.


TrafficSalad


How To Find A Niche Market in Just A Few Minutes

This post was inspired from one of the Google+ communities that I belong to. I wanted to share what I know and what I’ve learned on How to Find a Niche Market that’s profitable as well as something that would not be boring me.


The purpose of this article is to present various examples of Niche Marketing Tactics and Case Studies(get my updates on this topic here) that I’ve learned in the past few years. I don’t claim to be a guru in Niche Marketing, and Affiliate marketing, but I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned from others and my own experiences as well working as an SEO and PPC Specialist.

First, What is A Niche Market

By definition, a niche market is a small market segment. There are many advantages of targeting niche markets rather than broad markets but here’s a list of why many people love niche markets or niche marketing:

1. You can quickly develop a website and quickly promote your products and services online.
If you’re able to find “untapped” and “hidden” niche markets, there will be less competition on those niches, allowing you to dominate this niche faster than saturated niches.
2. Targeting Long Tail Keywords in Niche Markets can dramatically improve your traffic and conversions.
These long tail keywords might have less search volume, (traffic is lower than big chunk keywords) but they are easier to rank in the search engines, and they also convert a lot higher than other keywords

Conversion is the single most important metric to measure in your online business.
It shows you if a website visitor converted to your goal. Did they subscribe to your email list? Did they purchase your products and services? These are just some examples of conversion goals that you should constantly measure. No need for fancy tools and paid tools. Google analytics is a Free Tool that you can use to measure goals and conversions on your website.
3. There’s a huge opportunity to become an Authority in Niche Markets.
And authority is the name of the game nowadays. Authority websites are loved by the search engines. It’s one of the reason’s why Google is pushing out Google+, which is their own social network integrated into search results. They want “experts” writing articles on the web, and they want to reward your efforts with more visibility, traffic and exposure.
Depending on the niche market that you’ve chosen, you might find some niche markets are quite competitive. This is the reason, why you need to do proper market and keyword research before you even start buying your domain. A lot of niche marketers fail, because they’ve chosen the wrong market, chosen the wrong keywords, or have chosen both.
Here are Some Niche Market Ideas and Other Examples of Niche Markets

For picking Niche Market Ideas I would go to Amazon’s – Best Selling Products (Updated Every Hour) to Find out what’s hot right now. As of this moment, I’ve noticed that “Waterproof Video Camera’s” and “Image Stabilization Binoculars” are selling like hotcakes.

Amazon's Bestseller'

If these niches interest you, feel free to grab them. :) – Just email and thank me later, when you’ve made your first sale from these niches. :)
I will use “waterproof video cameras” and “image stabilized binoculars” as niche examples below.
Some people also uses pulse.ebay.com for finding hot niches, but I just use Amazon’s best seller’s list most of the time.
How To Find Niche Markets Within Your Expertise
If you haven’t selected a niche market yet, I would recommend going with niches wherein you have some sort of expertise or experience. This can help you a lot, especially when you’re creating articles and writing content.
It’s easy for me to write about market and keyword research because I’ve been doing SEO and PPC for several years, but if you would like me to write about pets or gardening, I won’t be able to create content that would be appealing with my readers.
That is why, I would always go look for niches within my level of experience and expertise.
A great exercise to help you find profitable niches within your expertise is to check the following:

1. Family Business – I assume that there is some sort of informal training between a parent and their children. There could be tons of niche opportunities within the family business. Maybe they haven’t use the internet yet to promote their products and services. Maybe you can create courses and seminars on how to educate other people who would like to learn more about the business.
2. Educational Background – What did you study for in college? university? – As a nurse, my first experience with online marketing is when I’ve shared my knowledge on test taking skills for nursing exams. This was my first taste of success in the world of internet marketing. And the nursing niche has been a money maker for me ever since. Some of the greatest niches are in the *education niches (hint hint)
3. Career Background – Where did you work before? What are your work experiences? I believe that every work has a hidden “niche” potential. You have to be extra sensitive on the needs of other people (client’s and coworkers), and you’ll be able to find some niche market potentials.

And last but not the least, avoid hunches and gut feeling without data.
I’m a PPC Specialist so numbers and data matters a lot to me.
If there’s no demand for the product or service that I’m creating, then I wouldn’t put a lot of time and effort on this niche market.
It’s not unusual that you’ll select niches that you think are profitable but will turn out to be a lemon.
Niche Market Selection is a process, but it can be learned with enough time and practice.
and what I would like to do next, is to help you speed up that learning process.
which brings us to the most important part of Finding Niche Markets

How To Do Market Research And Keyword Research

There is no fixed criteria or formula that determines if a niche market and keyword research would be profitable or not. If there were, then a lot of niche marketers would be rich. But what I’ve learned from many people and what I’ve done for my own niche websites is simple, I can actually summarize it into 3 steps.

  • STEP 1. Find a Specific Market with Specific Needs
  • STEP 2. Create the Products or Services that Addresses these specific Needs.
  • STEP 3. Promote and Put the Product in front of them (Website, Traffic, Advertising, Promotion, Etc)

That’s my 3 Step Plan to Dominating Niche Markets.
Of course, there are specific details in each step, but that’s the entire overview.
Let me explain it further with an example.
Let’s say you wanted to create a niche website about losing weight and you have a product that can help people lose weight.
If you try to target “everyone” that “wants to lose weight”, you’ll FAIL, big time.
Why?
Because some people are trying to lose weight by…
Surgery
Exercise
Diet
Magic Pills?
Even if your website ranks for keywords like “lose weight” and “lose fat”, you’ll have High Bounce Rates on your sites and you’ll see that your site’s conversions will suffer.
So the best way to do market research for a niche market is to identify a specific subset of the bigger market.
I usually start with Age Group – What are the ages of people that I’m targeting?
Gender – Are they mostly male, female or both?
Biggest and Specific Problems – What problems do they have that needs solutions?
Other factors – Do they have the capability to buy my products or services? Are there competitors who are willing to advertise their products and services to these demographic market?
Let’s continue with my example.
If I’m going to promote a product on losing weight, I’ll choose female, because I believe they are more interested to losing weight than men.
But we’re not YET done…
I want to target a niche of women who wants to lose weight…
Some ideas that comes into my mind
ladies who wants to lose weight before marriage
girls who wants to lose weight before prom date
women who wants to lose weight after pregnancy
Now depending on your expertise, I’ll most probably choose the niche on women wanting to lose weight after pregnancy. I think they would fit my criteria of urgency and capability to invest in my products and services.

How To Find Niche Keywords and Check if there’s Sufficient Demand (Market) for it

For this part, you’ll need to either Market Samurai or Google Keyword Tool to find the Search Volumes for your Niche Keywords
Remember to use the [Phrase] or [Exact] Match when selecting keywords.
If you choose Broad match, you’ll miss the REAL search volume of these keywords and your keyword analysis might give you inaccurate numbers.
Always remember to choose either Phrase or Exact match when finding keywords for your niche website.
You can also use Google Keyword tool to find Niche keywords, and make sure you still select either [Phrase] or [Exact] Match when finding keywords.
Notice that I’ve selected long tail keywords (keywords that have at least 3 words in it) here. I would then check the SEO Competition of these keywords.
If the SEO Competition doesn’t look too competitive, then you can optimize for that keyword. It would be easier for you to rank keywords that have less competition. This means that you just need a little bit of promotion in order to rank for these terms.
Long tail keywords may have less search volumes, but they are also less competitive, allowing me to rank easier for long tail phrases even if my website is less than 1 year old. It’s also converting a lot higher because these keywords are very specific. You’ll immediately know what information the reader wants.
Usually I choose the keyword with the highest search volume as my “domain name” or “categories”. I don’t disregard any keyword that has search volume of 100 or more. I would also group keywords together that are similar in context and meaning.
This will allow me to combine the search volumes of these keywords giving me more traffic each month, while allowing me to rank faster in the search engines. This strategy has worked well for this site, trafficsalad.org as well as my other niche websites.

How to determine the REAL SEO Competition of your Niche Market

The best niche markets are filled with tons of competition, but you should not worry about this because there are still tons of great angles and hidden opportunities even in the most difficult niches. But you also have to be realistic with your time, expertise, and expectations.
You can definitely go after the harder and competitive niches (internet marketing, losing weight, etc), but you need to be realistic with how much time and resources you are willing to dedicate in order to become an authority in your market.
And the way I determine the Search Engine Optimization difficulty of my niche market is by checking the Top 10 Results of my chosen keywords.
Why? Because the Top 10 results are already ranking for my targeted keyword.
The search engines have rewarded these sites with Top rankings because of the Internal and External Factors these 10 sites have.

The SEO Metrics that I always check includes:

1. Domain Age – The older the domain, the harder the competition. If you are competing with 10+ year old domains and your site is new, forget this keyword because they would be very hard to outrank.
2. Backlinks to the Pages and Domain – Backlinks are still the Biggest reasons why a website ranks in the search engines. But after the Penguin updates, you have to be careful with the type of links you point to your websites. Spammy and low quality links can hurt your website if it triggers a Penguin or Algorithmic penalty.
3. Index Pages, Referring Domain Count, Meta Data Optimization,etc – I also check how many pages does my current competitors have, are the Title and Meta Descriptions optimized, how many referring domains, and some other less important SEO factors.
I use Market Samurai to Check on the SEO Competition for these keywords, but before I was using firefox and semrush extension to check this site metrics one by one.
Going to back our Market Research from the Amazon Bestseller’s list, I’ll check the Search volume for “waterproof video camera” and “image stabilized binoculars”

Niche Market Example 1

WATERPROOF VIDEO CAMERA

Waterproof Video Camera

SEO COMPETITION

SEO Competition Waterproof Video Camera

Niche Market Example 2

IMAGE STABILIZED BINOCULARS

  Image Stabilized Binoculars

SEO COMPETITION

 SEO Competition Image Stabilized
Stay tuned as I share more information about Niche Marketing inside my newsletter series. Simply enter your email and I’ll be sending you more information about niche markets.
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