Monday, 14 October 2013
6 foolproof ways to accelerate traffic to your blog
jeff bullas of jeffbullas.com
There are many tactics that you can pursue but some have more value than others. If there were six that should be on your “must do” do list then here they are.
1. Build an email list
Do this from day one by offering a free ebook or premium content that readers can only get by entering their name and email.
2. Grow a targeted Twitter following
Twitter is the best platform to build a focused list of followers. It’s simplicity and unfiltered stream ensures your tweets with your content linked and embedded will provide visible attention.
3. Increase your Facebook likes
Facebook cannot be ignored and ensuring you have a large group that have liked your page can be one of your top two social networks that will drive significant traffic.
4. Build your blog and content for search engines
Search engines are the biggest traffic source for my blog. This will not happen from day one as it will take time to get Google’s attention. Don’t ignore doing this from day one as it requires persistence and will take time.
Start today.
5. Create and publish awesome content
This may not be obvious to some but if you create contagious content that solves people problems and adds value to their lives you will collect fanatical fans. They will link to your blog and they will share it.
Write, create and publish the best liquid content you can. This will then flow across the web and build brand awareness.
6. Include prominent social media sharing buttons
You have written, produced and published content that rocks. But if you make it hard for people to share on the social web then it will still be great but invisible.
Make it prominent and easy to share with a couple of clicks.
10 Ways to Generate More Leads for your business
Wanna have a successful and profitable business? Then you need leads… and lots of them.
Nothing happens without a lead. No sales, no revenue, no profit, no nothin’.
Below are 10 ways to generate MORE leads without spending a bundle.
But before we get to the list, there are a couple of lead generation ground rules you should be clear about. Without understanding these, you can end up wasting a lot of time and money.
Ground Rule #1: Build a Value Machine for the Long Term
WARNING: This is boring, far from sexy, and nothing even close to resembling a silver bullet lead generating solution. And THAT’S why it’s so effective
Don’t ignore it now or you run the risk of being sorry later.
We’ll start off with the lead generation technique that most people will not have the discipline or patience to pursue. That is creating a REAL value machine for your market. This could be a blog you post to daily, or a video series you create daily… or something else.
Sounds simple, but it’s far from easy. I dare you, try it and you’ll see. Write a 100% value blog post every day for a month. This is work from top to bottom. That’s why it’s so effective, in my opinion. Because the majority of your competition is most likely lazy. Use that to your advantage—I am and I like the results.
Sometimes, however, you need leads yesterday so that you can put food on the table today. In that case, speed is what works, and we’ll get to that in a few moments. However, even if that’s the case, ALWAYS have a long term lead generation system running along side your short term campaigns.
Build your asset before you need it.
Ground Rule #2: Understand That the Money is Not in the List
It appears that one of my lists currently has little to no “money” hiding in it. That’s because I filled it with freebie seekers instead of potential buyers. I built a list before I had something to sell. If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t bother. Learn from my mistake. You build lists NOT to get leads, but to get buyers.
Unless you’re just lonely, you don’t want to be generating just any lead… you want to be generating leads that turn into buyers. It’s easy to build a list of people that just want free stuff. Those are not the kinds of leads you’re looking for.
Consider this: cast your lead generating net as wide as possible. But as quickly as you can, like on the “thank you” page, make it clear that you’re SELLING. You’ll totally scare away the folks who are only looking for a free lunch. As long as you provide value WHILE you sell, the true potential buyers will stick with you.
You are running a business, not a charity. So make that clear (unless of course you ARE running a charity), otherwise when you DO try to sell, it will be jarring because it will be totally inconsistent with what came before.
Ground Rule #3: You Don’t Have Time to Wait Around for a Relationship
People buy because they want things. They buy because they’re yearning for the perceived benefits of what you provide. Yes a relationship helps. But you can’t pay your bills or pay your expenses with relationships. So ask them to buy FAST.
Isn’t that why you’re in business? Don’t make excuses for it. Just sell.
OK, so let’s jump in to 10 ways to get you more leads:
1. Viral Video Works
Create a viral video and post it to Youtube®, or better yet, to both Youtube® and your own site. (if it goes viral, trust me, you’ll be happy you put it on your own site once all the link love starts coming.)
On the video page, make an offer for the NEXT video in exchange for the optin.
Go buy some cheap PPC ads on Facebook®, not promoting your offer, just promoting the video.
People (especially people on Facebook®) like to be entertained, so make sure the content of your video is clearly INFOTAINMENT. Don’t just teach… Teach, sell or pre-sell and entertain.
What you don’t know is if all these leads you’re attracting are going to be buyers. You won’t know that until you try it. (See item #3.) This is business, if you want guarantees, do something else.
2. Leverage Your Real Estate and Don’t Be Lazy
In my opinion, the jury is still out on just how profitable social media is for generating sales, but as for spreading ideas, it can be darn effective.
Give your leads the opportunity to spread your message for you. So on your “thank you page,” put a Facebook® SHARE button (not the Like button which hardly stands out on someone’s Facebook feed). Add in a retweet button and any other social gizmos that your market uses to spread things.
Better yet, if you know what you’re doing with code, make the “Post to Your Wall” pop up immediately. You can pre-fill it with a title, picture, link and message so people on Facebook® can spread it around with a SINGLE click.
You might pay for ONE lead, but that single lead might very well bring you 10 more.
3. Don’t Wait to “Butter ‘em Up” Just SELL Them
Once you’ve leveraged a new lead’s ability to spread your message for you (and hopefully generate more leads), give them a test. Put an offer (hard or soft) in front of them right away.
Again, you don’t want just ANY lead, you want ones that buy. The more of them that buy, the more leads you’ll be able to afford.
4. Don’t Ignore the Simple Stuff
Please make sure you don’t discount simple ways to generate leads that are cheap and or free. For example, do you have an offer in your email signature? If not, get one.
5. Free Junk is Getting Harder to Give Away
I’m sure in the old days, you could offer just about any “freemium” as an enticement for people to join your list. Just saying, “Sign-up for my newsletter” could get some results. But the bar is getting higher, so sending your “Top 5 Tips For XX” just doesn’t carry the same weight it used to.
People have too much junk on their hard drives already. So make the “Free” thing you give away something that actually has inherent value. Some suggestions: software your leads can USE, a definitive resource (101 tips for XX) that they will come back to again and again, something that solves a real point of pain for the people you are trying to attract.
In other words, to get more leads, you should be offering them something that is MORE and BETTER than anything they can get elsewhere.
Raise the bar or you will be left out.
Editor’s note from Derek Halpern: When we launched the Thesis blog, I wrote an in-depth ebook that taught people how to use nonverbal communication online to get leads and subscribers. It converted extremely well for us. The first day we had a 70% opt-in using this page.
6. People Want What They Cannot Have
If there’s one pillar of sales psychology, this is it: people want what they cannot have. So how can you build THAT into your lead generation campaigns? How can you add an element of scarcity?
Perhaps you could create a new “freemium” each and every month. Once the month is gone, that “freemium” disappears and gets turned into a product for sale.
Again, it’s work. But people who are willing to work hard have a built in competitive advantage.
If your funnel is always open to everyone, everywhere, what’s the reason they should contact you TODAY and not 4 years from now? It helps to have a good answer to that question.
7. Detach Yourself from Results and Think Bigger
I’d have to say that most of my lead generation campaigns stink. They don’t produce much. This is a numbers game. So figure out ways to use that fact to your advantage. Instead of doing a single lead generation campaign, why not launch 10? Create one squeeze page with a killer offer on it. Then launch PPC, banner ads, articles, press releases, forum posts, blog comments, SEO, videos, guest blog posts, interviews, etc. Get creative and work hard.
If you’re looking for a quick fix silver bullet way to generate leads, you’re in danger of having your lunch eaten by the entrepreneur who is just willing to do the real work.
If you’re going to win, you need to give yourself enough chances to win. Think bigger.
8. Think 4 Steps Ahead
When opportunities show up at your door, always be asking yourself, “How can I leverage or repurpose this to create 10 times the impact with the same amount of work?” Did you get asked to be interviewed on a blog? Can you secure the non-exclusive rights to turn that interview into a product or a lead generating “freemium” for you? To fully develop the potential of all the opportunities you have, you have to be thinking ahead. It’s a habit that takes time to develop.
Start today.
9. Link Bait Works
I’m not talking about the link bait that comes from attacking someone or publishing something sensational. Link bait doesn’t need to be controversial, it just needs to be valuable.
Could you publish something TRULY valuable and timeless for your prospects? Ask yourself this: “What could I create that my prospects would consider in their best interest to spread around to OTHER prospects?”
Again, think four steps ahead… you don’t just want leads, you want sales. So work backwards from the sale: select your offer, consider any things that have to happen to remove obstacles to the sale, create your linkbait, etc.
I recommend this advice because I’ve ignored it more times than my ego would ever allow me to admit.
10. Don’t Let Shiny Objects Take You Away from the Basics
Success comes from executing the basics WELL. Generating leads is not complicated, it takes 3 things:
- a great offer
- putting that offer in front of the right people
- a reason to act now
Rinse and repeat.
About the Author: Jason Leister is the Editor of "The Client Letter," the daily e-letter from ClientsSuck.net, where he helps independent professionals create success.Monday, 23 September 2013
Honesty pays off for homeless man
Honesty pays off for homeless Boston man
"James said a medical condition made it hard for him to work, but God had always looked after him", reports Pia Harold
Donations of more than $110,000 (£67,000) have poured in from across the US for a Boston homeless man who returned a lost bag with $42,000 in it.
Glen James alerted police after he found the backpack containing cash and traveller's cheques last weekend, and the bag's owner was then tracked down.
A complete stranger later started an online fund for Mr James after reading media reports about his honesty.
The man, Ethan Whittington, now plans to meet Mr James to give him the money.
Mr Whittington, who lives in Midlothian, Virginia, said he was so overwhelmed by Mr James' honesty that he decided to start the fund.
"The fact that he's in the situation he is, being homeless, it blew my mind that he would do this,'' Mr Whittington was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
He said his idea of starting donations on a crowdfunding website for Mr James "caught on like wildfire ever since".
"It's brought me a lot of hope. This isn't only about rewarding a great guy. I think it's a statement to everyone in America.
"If we come together and work toward one thing and work together, then we can make it happen."
Meanwhile, Mr James, a former Boston courthouse employee, said that he would not have kept "even a penny" of the money he had found in the backpack - even if he were desperate.
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
A Point of View: Why embracing change is the key to happiness
Imagine three identical boxes. Two are empty and one contains your heart's desire, perhaps love, perhaps a nice cup of tea. A kind, if slightly perverse, person says you can pick one box and own its contents. Let's say you select Box A. The person then shows you Box B is empty. So either Box A - your choice, or Box C - a mystery, contains your happiness. Now, you can change your choice to Box C, or stick with Box A. But what gives you the better chance? Should you change or not?
If you're like me, you won't want to change. Even if things aren't wonderful, but are familiar, I would rather stay with what I know. Why meddle with something for which there is a Latin, and therefore authoritative, term: the status quo. I studied dead languages at school - no chance of sudden changes in grammar or vocabulary there. So I'm aware status quo has roots in the longer phrase "in statu quo res erant ante bellum" - the state in which things were before the war. I feel the implication is that without the status quo there will be chaos. There will be war.
But I am quite change-averse. I began to dislike my first boyfriend when he changed the spot where my coffee jar was kept. The new spot wasn't dangerous - it was just different and therefore wrong. Equally, although he proved to be a truly dreadful boyfriend, once I'd got used to him, his dreadfulness became a part of me. His absence - as I eventually discovered - was a charming relief, but it was also a change and therefore troubling.
Some of my hope should come from the possibilities of positive change, but I ignore this. Because things change by growing older, wearing out, because there is death, I spend a good deal of time fearfully ignoring unavoidable changes so I can still get up in the morning.
So I battle inevitable changes, avoid hopeful changes and when I'm not therefore engaged in pointless combat, I'm pretending change doesn't exist, which is even more pointless and can make me cruel. I may assume the homeless man I see in the street was somehow born homeless, that everyone's state is fixed beyond remedy.
New situations, new people, new languages - we can interpret any of these as an unwelcome, if not threatening, change. Which is bad news for how we police crowds, carry out overseas peace-keeping actions, or treat unfamiliar people. Our overreaction to what can feel like chaos may actually produce real chaos. When change finally overwhelms us we can get so scared we forget other humans are human and behave badly. Why not? We're in chaos.
Even if change-avoidance forms a prison, walking outside it can seem appalling. Being without love, or novel interactions, might be awful, but their presence might change us. And when something, or someone we already love is taken, by accident, by bereavement, by changes we can't control - we're not only hurt - their absence changes us. This does nothing to make change attractive.
We may try to control our own superficial alterations - buying the latest iThings, taking risks, not only swimming with sharks, but with sharks we've never met - seeking what's new and then newer. But that's just as rigid a behaviour as my sad clinging to defunct electrical goods, neat solitudes and tales of doom involving shark attacks. Real change will still happen.
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Change was an important idea in President Obama's 2008 election campaign
And every analysis of what makes lucky and happy people lucky and happy demonstrates they adapt fast and well to new situations and people, and so are defended by complex social circles and acclimatised to change. They offer and request help and are free to embrace what's positive in life's inevitable alterations. They don't try to impose stillness on a universe which is in motion. They know real security involves a degree of exposure.
Sadly, most human authorities play to our fears and offer us stasis. They build us, if you like, shark cages for our time in the ever-changing water - consoling little pens which can't protect us when something huge and horrible arrives and we end up like Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws - all at sea. They offer apparently eternal values - eternity being unchanging and therefore reliable - the brotherhood of men, the wisdom of the free market, the evil of outsiders, the true path to heaven, the rewards of obedience. An incumbent government will warn against "changing horses in midstream" and we may accept a dire status quo because of how much worse the alternative might be.
When we are told something threatens "our way of life" that can feel easily, dreadfully true and encourage us to tolerate all manner of prohibitions, oppressions and compulsions. Populations encouraged to fear change may only pursue it when their situation is already savage, perhaps reassured by some of those eternal values. The more savage the situation, the easier it is to offer equally savage solutions.
As individuals and nations, this can keep us from safety and mercy. If that homeless man on the street could never have been like us then he's beyond helping and we can't gain the humility to know we could also be painfully changed, we needn't try to make the world safer as a project to benefit us all. And when we intervene in other countries, we usually cling to familiar, failed templates. We are as inflexible as possible in worryingly fluid situations and quickly scared people face other scared people in self-perpetuating battles between rigid values. Change resistance produces a nightmare, which change denial means we'll pretend has been eternal.
A UN vehicle drives through the Bayyada district of Homs in Syria, in 2012
A relatively unreflective part of my identity once defined the Syrian city of Homs as a holiday destination - I wanted to visit the picturesque ancient quarter. Now it's easy to define Homs as a city that has always been in torment. Its fragile possibilities for positive change disappear. How much easier for a government, for personnel in combat to avoid subtleties, imaginative solutions. Area bombing and civilian casualties - can't we move beyond the old, failed strategies? The best that Homs can hope for shouldn't be to simply slip from one nightmare to another. The international community offering something better, something truly beyond self-interest - that would be a beautiful change.
If we're lucky and our society is relatively stable, our fear of change can still lead us astray. If we get divorced, get married, get ill, if we're in a recession, if we lose our job, if we believe "our way of life" is changing outwith our control, maybe our alarm won't be harnessed by opportunist politicians. Instead, we may simply embrace magical thinking, an old, failed strategy, to wish change away.
During periods of uncertainty what I'll call the mystical industries always prosper. We begin to rely on apparently unchanging good luck charms, access to online tarot readings, hot stock tips. We can end up penning ourselves in expensive cages, while the unavoidable alterations of life - the hurts, the miracles, the gifts, the deaths - will still arise and we'll respond to them wildly or not at all. If we withdraw from reality's true nature - that it changes constantly and so do we - we become lost to ourselves, punished by our troubles and by their ineffective cure.
But what, for example, is the best solution to that three-box problem? Remember we picked Box A of the three. Box B was empty. Now we can stick with A, or change to C. But should we? Yes, we should. Switching from Box A to Box C won't guarantee success, but will massively improve its odds. And yes that is counter-intuitive. Our intuition doesn't like change either, but we can overcome it. Approaching the changing reality of reality with sensible flexibility is the best strategy for happiness. I don't believe it, but it's true. And if I can change my mind, I can change anything else I need to.
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