Successful Blog

Extend Yourself

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Skywalk
Grand Canyon Skywalk

All of the good stuff happens in the little moments where you just say to yourself, “heck with it, I’m going for it.” When you extend yourself beyond what you thought was possible.

You’ll never see what the Grand Canyon looks like from an eagle’s perspective unless you have the guts to step out onto the Skywalk.

And you’ll never know if you can run a successful business unless you decide, and take that first step.

The first step seems intimidating, but there are ways to start building momentum that don’t involve tightrope-walking across the canyon (even Wallenda carried a pole for balance). This is not an exhortation to quit your day job and recklessly hang out a shingle.

This is a call to action. Any action that takes you in the direction of your goal.

If your goal is to start a business of your own, there are many “first steps” you can take. The Small Business Administration offers these 20 Questions to Ask Before You Start a Business. That’s a good, thought-provoking starting point.

Extend Yourself Toward Starting Your Own Business

  • Consider embarking as a “lean startup,” as described by Eric Ries. Go out fast with the minimum viable product and iterate from there.
  • Post your concept on a crowdfunding site like Kickstarter. Get your supporters on board before you get too far down the road, and gauge interest in your idea.
  • Assess your key strengths (for example, using Strengths Based Leadership principles). This might give you insight if your struggling to decide among several different business ideas that inspire you.
  • Interview someone who is running a business like the one you want to start. Find out how they started out, what their roadblocks were, and what they learned along the way. Find small business owners to connect with at a site like AMEX Open Forum, and start building relationships.
  • Sit yourself down and bust out an actual business plan for your concept. Nothing takes off the rose-colored glasses like getting down to brass tacks. Who is your ideal customer? Exactly how will you reach them? What is your pricing structure? Do you need financing? Harvard Business Review offers an article called “How to Write a Great Business Plan,” along with lots of other resources.

It’s time to stop talking about starting your business, and start doing something. Get out of your comfort zone, extend yourself, and take that first step.

We’re here for you!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo courtesy of Leonardo Stabile, via Flickr CC.

As a Boss, How Should You Lead By Example?

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abossBeing a strong leader for your employees has many benefits.

You’ll have improved employee morale, which will lead to increased productivity and lower turnover. You’ll also have employees who are more dedicated to the company, and who will help you find ways to make it grow.

Here are a few ways you can be a strong leader for your workforce:

Take responsibility

If you make a mistake and blame it on one of your managers or employees, you’ll lose credibility immediately.

Instead, admit it when you’ve messed up.

Admitting your mistakes and explaining what you’re going to do to avoid making them in the future boosts your employees’ trust in you. It also encourages them to do the same, and an environment in which everyone is honest about their mistakes makes learning from them and growing much easier.

Be Inspirational

The atmosphere in any company begins with the boss.

If you want your workers to be motivated and passionate about what your company does, you need to set the example with an inspirational attitude.

Show your passion for how your company helps its customers, and your excitement over a media mention or trade show sponsorship.

Your attitude will infect your employees — for good or bad.

Pitch In

A boss who insists on employee overtime, then takes off early to hit the golf course, will lose employee respect, very quickly.

If your company is facing a challenge and there’s hard work ahead, pitch in and help.

You’ll show your employees that you expect everyone, no matter their position, to be a part of the team. You’ll also earn their respect by showing them you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty.

Don’t Withhold Praise

Some bosses feel that the only time they need to give their workers feedback is when a correction is necessary. But this attitude can create a feeling of resentment among your workforce, which can affect productivity.

An employee who feels like a valued member of the team will work harder to help the company achieve its goals. So be sure to recognize all workers who do a good job, and don’t save praise just for your best and brightest.

Foster a Collaborative Environment

Just because an employee isn’t part of your management team doesn’t mean he or she doesn’t have good ideas for helping your company grow. Encouraging an environment of collaboration, and listening to your workers when they come to you with an idea, can boost morale and productivity.

You’ll also be encouraging workers to collaborate with each other in order to solve issues and get big projects done. Providing constructive feedback on their efforts can further boost employee confidence and keep everyone working together to help you meet your business goals.

Being a leader doesn’t just mean telling everyone else what to do.

By showing your employees you value their input and aren’t afraid to do the hard work alongside them, you’ll earn their respect, and encourage them to work even harder for you in the future.

As a boss, what kind of grade would you give yourself at the end of the day?

Photo credit: Forbes.com

About the Author: Freelance blogger Angie Mansfield covers a variety of subjects for small business owners. From business growth to marketing to online reputation management, her work will give you tips to keep your business running smoothly.

Leading Your Business Through The Google Landscape

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By Georgina Stamp

As the leader of an online business there are many responsibilities that you carry upon your shoulders; one of these is ensuring that your business survives each and every hurdle that Google has to throw at it. Most of these obstacles come in the form of changes to the way in which Google works and how it views and verifies the authority of websites. In order to efficiently lead your business through Google’s changes you need only follow these straightforward steps.

1. Your Website

Your main priority during Google’s updates should be the functionality of your website; ensuring that it’s clean, easy to use with plenty of unique content that’s appropriate for your target audience.

Google analyses each page of your site and estimates whether it is useful for a user so key aspects include content that is exclusive to your website and text that is not stuffed with search terms that you would like to rank for. With a strong focus on content, you should look at adding a blog/guides section where you can add content on a regular basis for the benefit of your visitors. This is something that search engines value greatly.

Creating an optimised, user-friendly website is the first step towards leading your business through the Google landscape.

2. Website Links

A link to your website on an external site is the equivalent of a recommendation in the eyes of Google; this means that the more links that you place on authoritative, quality websites that are both relevant to your site and that post regularly, the better your own site will appear to be.

This strategy is essential if you want your online business to survive Google’s updates and changes as a lot of organic traffic to your website is dependent upon where Google ranks you – and this depends partly on how many “recommendations” you have received from high quality websites.

In the past, websites were able to accrue backlinks from all sorts of websites with little attention to quality or relevance but Google has put a stop to this and even punished some with penalties.

3. Social Media

Another method of leading your company into a brighter future is through the use of social media; Google includes social media as another tool by which they can judge your reputation and your authority.

It’s essential that you build a following, post unique content frequently and interact with your audience on the various social channels.

The best social channels for you to utilise include Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn; when using the first three of these social channels we recommend that you attempt to communicate with both your audience and relevant authoritative figures.

It’s also important to keep an eye on your social metrics – the aim is to acquire more followers, likes or be in more social circles than vice versa. Not only will this look good to the individuals that may be interested in what you’re sharing, but it’ll also increase the likelihood of Google noticing an increase in your reputation.

By following these simple steps you can stop fearing changes from Google and start taking advantage of organic traffic for your online business.

Author’s Bio: Georgina Stamp is a dedicated member of the team at Marble Hill Partners and spends a lot of her time assessing individuals with leadership qualities.

Finding Sponsors Who Will Send You to SOBCon

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You’ve probably heard about companies sponsoring individuals to attend conferences. In some subject areas, it’s considered common practice. In other fields, it’s practically unheard of. Sponsor relationships come in all sizes. When I heard legendary former Texas Governor Ann Richards speak, her national tour was sponsored by a pharmaceutical company.

There are several guides out there to finding corporate sponsors to send you to a conference. My recommendation: Want to get Sponsored? You’d Better Be Sponsorable by Peter Shankman. He covered how to create an effective pitch statement and an example of providing value to your sponsor through blogging and other promotion.

But what if you could work with local business? How would your approach need to be different?

Why Local Companies Are a Better Bet for Sponsors

Your local community is full of businesses capable of affording at least partial sponsorships. Your local network is probably where you have your strongest connections. You may know more local business leaders than you do national corporate leaders. You can help a local business more directly than you can most national companies.

What’s in it for them?

Local businesses are less interested in you mentioning them in blog posts or promoting them at a distant event. Find a way to share the knowledge you’ll be gaining with your sponsor or to gain attention for your sponsor in the local community.

You might share what you learned with them by doing a presentation to some of their staff. Maybe a consultation with their team. Maybe you can do a presentation to a group or local association on their behalf, extending that sponsorship into the community. For example, in a small city, I’m betting your local sponsor would be happy to bring you as a guest speaker to their Rotary meeting. Maybe you can talk to a local entrepreneurs meetup, as a guest of your sponsor.

Sit down in person with the potential sponsor, and talk through what they need and what you can offer. Find a way to benefit both of you. There is no short cut. You have to dedicate the time to find the right exchange of value.

Thanks to SOBCon alum Todd Jordan for helping to refine these ideas.

Why Would you NOT Self-Publish a Book?

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By Angela England

Self-publishing is all the rage. I’ve been writing eBooks since before they were cool (aka pre-Kindle) and can testify to their power to transform a blog or business for the better. However, in the last five years I’ve seen truly horrible books being produced that did the author, and their business, no good whatsoever.

You might think it’s odd that someone who just launched a course walking people through the process of how to produce a book would warn people away. But let’s be clear, shall we? Writing a book, like running a blog or owning a business, is not for everyone. Some people should not publish a book – especially self-publish a book.

1. You want to get rich quick.

Did you know, the average self-published author only sells between 200 and 250 copies of their book? And traditional print may not be the answer, either – only about 20% ever see any royalty payments, if indeed your contract has royalty structure in place instead of one of the ever-more-common work-for-hire contracts that gives you an upfront payment only with no long-term revenue potential. The bottom line is, whether you go the traditional print route or the self-publishing route, you cannot be average.

The average author doesn’t sell enough copies to make it worth their while. The average author pays next year’s bills with next year’s books, creating a cycle of constantly searching for the next project and next contract, because last year’s book isn’t producing any extra income yet.

Self-publishing is, like most things worth doing, a bigger gamble with a far bigger reward than the safe mediocrity of punching someone else’s time clock.

2. Your book is too broad and not well-focused.

Publishing houses tend to like books that will appeal to a general audience. Broader titles are easier to get into bookstores and easier to get off the shelves as well. But self-published titles that are too broad and have no focus won’t be picked up by bookstores and libraries right away (if at all), so who will buy them? Well, unless you have thousands of rabid fans ready to invest in anything you tell them to, no one. Or at least not many.

One of the biggest mistakes I see self-published authors make is a failure to think about the book creatively. A self-published title needs to stand out. It needs to capture someone’s attention at a glance.

A brilliant example of this is Small Army Strategy by Srinivas Rao. I love the promise and premise that’s built into the title, and it certainly is different from a typical marketing book. It has to be, because do we really need another, “How to Market Your Business” book?

Don’t be bland. The benefit of self-publishing is the ability to have creative control. So don’t mimic the generality of mass-produced when you don’t have to.

3. You aren’t willing to invest in your book like a publishing house would.

Some authors just want to write and forget about it, then open a magic box from the publishing house 6 months later with their book inside. Fine – then you should be pitching legacy publishing houses for any of your titles, because self-publishing means YOU are the publishing house.

That means producing professional, high-quality graphic designs for the cover art and book layout. That means professionally formatted manuscripts that render correctly in every format you plan to offer (Kindle, Nook, etc.), with reader-friendly features like an Active Table of Contents where possible. It means professional-level editing as well. All of those things are probably going to cost you money, and you should gladly pay it.

When I took my self-published book on-air for a news segment in December, I had both it, and my first traditionally published book, side-by-side. And you know what the difference was when it came to quality? Nothing. Unless you looked at the front matter and made note of the publisher’s name, you would never know that was one Penguin and one was me. Only self-publish if you are willing to do the same with your book.

There are so many brilliant ideas yet to be brought into the world. Every day, I’m talking with amazing people who have breath-taking stories and incredible voices, and I can’t wait until those books exist in the world. But no brilliant idea should be overlooked because of an awful book production given today’s technology. If you take the time to self-publish a book, do it right and make it as outstanding as you are.

Are you considering publishing something this year?

Author’s Bio: Angela England is a mother of five living in rural Oklahoma but more, she’s also a problogger, speaker, and author of several books including Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less) and Getting Prepared. Her most recent projects are helping people transform their blogs and business by publishing amazing books and producing multiple books this year under the Untrained Housewife brand.

10 Tool Tweaks The Cool Kids Use

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Cool kid marketing tricks

Remember your cool friend in high school who was the first to figure out how to twist up black rubber bracelets?

The 2014 version, for me, is that marketing colleague who had her new Google+ cover optimized the day after Google changed things up. Some people always seem to be one step ahead with the ninja tricks.

Here are some useful, simple tricks I’ve added to my marketing repertoire:

  1. How to mention your friends by their first name only on Facebook – When you start to type the name of one of your friends, Facebook autocompletes for you. Sometimes this results in awkward sentence structure. To avoid that situation, after it autocompletes, highlight the whole name and hit delete. It will use only the first name.
  2. How to post shareable photos on Twitter – The best way to post photos on Twitter is to use Twitter’s camera icon and upload an image directly. If you share from Instagram to Twitter, it will no longer show the image inline (it shows up as a link).
  3. How to set up your name & title in a Google Hangout – After you’ve joined the Hangout, click the icon on the far left that looks like a lunchbox. That will open the Hangout Toolbox, with the “Lower Third” tool, and you can then complete your Name and Title (and logo if you wish).
  4. How to use the Rapportive Gmail plugin – If you use Gmail’s web interface, you can add the Rapportive browser plugin, which shows you the photo and social feeds for people you email (particularly useful in a sales scenario, since you can often see recent posts and job title). Just go to your browser’s extensions or plugins area and download it for free.
  5. How to add a hashtag column in Hootsuite – Monitor the conversation surrounding a particular hashtag easily. In Hootsuite, click Add Stream, select a profile, and type your hashtag in the Search box. Click Add Stream, and you’re good to go.
  6. How to do a specialty Google search – You don’t have to limit yourself to straight Google searches from the search box. Google’s special search operators page shows how you can narrow it down.
  7. How to add a watermark logo to your YouTube videos – Go to your Video Manager, then Channel Settings. Click InVideo Programming, and then Add Watermark. It will appear in the upper right corner, and will be clickable to subscribe to your channel!
  8. How to annotate your Google Analytics – This is so handy to keep track of important events in your business that may have impacted your traffic. (For example, if you attend a conference or release a new product.) In your analytics, on the main page, you’ll see a tiny triangle in the bottom center of the graph area. Click it to open the annotations, and click “create new annotation” to add your note.
  9. How to make the price tag show up on Pinterest pins – If you sell products in your business, and you’re using Pinterest, you should include the price in your pin descriptions. When you include a dollar sign with the price in your pin description, Pinterest will automatically add the price tag ribbon across the top left corner.
  10. How to delete LinkedIn endorsements you don’t want – Every once in a while, someone will endorse you for something you might not want appearing on your LinkedIn Profile. Click edit profile, and then click the edit icon in the Skills & Endorsements section. Click Manage Endorsements. Uncheck the box next to the endorsement(s) you wish to hide. Don’t forget to click Save, and then Done Editing to retain the changes.
Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee