How To Add Value To Your Business With A Challenge #entrepreneurship #business

Online challenges are a great way to engage with your audience, and add readership to your blog. And people love them!

Why do challenges work so well on a blog?

They make it possible for you not only to create something useful and beneficial for your audience on a particular topic, but it creates more engagement, usually every day throughout the challenge.

What Does A Challenge Do?

Most challenges provide a solution over the course of the challenge to a problem. And this is the very heart for having a blog. Helping people solve a problem or helping them to make their life easier. So, you're not doing a one-post solution, but a very in-depth one that can extend anywhere from a week to a month.

And most bloggers running a challenge are seeking a solution to the same problem they have, so it's encouraging for your challenge audience to know you are going through the same things at the same time as they, so you're not only providing them a solution, but for you too.

Build Your Authority

Basically, it becomes a personal testimonial from you and in the process creates the sense that you're an authority in that niche or at least have a solution to that problem as you have personally experienced it yourself.

Running something that long and on a daily basis creates, as you could imagine, a flood of comments and questions - all useful information for you to further engage with those taking the challenge. In the process, you also find out a lot more about your audience.

4 Steps To Creating A Challenge

Step 1: The Call-to-Action

You must have a clear goal in mind as far as what you want the participants in your challenge to do. Maybe you want to grow your email list, or it could be to buy a product or service you are promoting.

Step 2: Creating Change

The whole point of a challenge is by the end of it to have changed something. Keep in mind that it takes on average 21 days to instill a new habit, which could be the end result of the change.

Step 3: Mapping Out The Route

Think of your challenge as a road trip. You have your starting point and ending point. Now all you have to do is map out the daily "route" participants will take to get to the end. The easiest way to do this is to create a mini-map for each day of the challenge.

Step 4: Implementing The Challenge

On your blog, post each day's topic. In your Facebook group, talk on a more personal level about specifics of the challenge you are experiencing as you go through it with them.

Online challenges are a great way to engage with your audience and add readership to your website. When people are engaged and interacting with your business it helps drive sales and profits.










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How Can I Generate More Traffic To My Website #marketing #startup

It's the question asked by every new online entrepreneur and every seasoned online entrepreneur, "How can I generate more traffic to my website?". But you don't just want traffic. You want to get more web traffic that is targeted and wants more than your free stuff. You want to catch the attention of people who really want what you're offering and will buy what you're offering.

Plan the Right Content

Check to see what content is most popular on your website. The create more of that type of content. If you don't have much content so far, study the content material that your audience looks at from your competition and create similar content. Don't copy, but do deliver to your audience the type of content that they want.

Learn Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is important to learn when it comes to getting more traffic to your website. It enables potential customers to find your website by using the search engines. For instance, using keywords in headings, anchor text, titles, subject lines, meta descriptions and alt text for images that are related to your content, you'll move further up the search engine results.

Advertise Your Content

Just like you would advertise one of your most valuable products or services, you need to promote your content. The good news is, using paid traffic to your website does not have to be costly. As an example, Facebook Ads make it possible to directly target your audience in a very cost-effective way.

Create Targeted Freebies

Create freebies that are targeted toward a need that your audience has. If you can solve one problem for them, create that freebie. Then offer that freebie in exchange for a prospect's email address. When you have their email address you can message them with links to your website whenever you want.

Use Different Types Of Content

Don't just use written text for on your website. Search engines like a mixture of content. Mix it up and use text, illustrations or photos, online video and audio to make the ways you provide information to your audience complete.

Facebook Groups

A Facebook group is essentially a community where people with similar interests can interact with you and each other. Facebook groups bring in more website traffic because once you gain trust, make friends, and gain followers, you can promote your business effectively in these groups.

Study Your Analytics

The analytics you can gather from your website are very important because it can tell you what content is getting traffic to your website so that you know what to create more of.

Everybody likes 'free'. If you're a website owner, you probably want more free, targeted traffic from Google and other search engines, rather than having to pay for it.








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Does Facebook Stop Or Start Your Business? #entrepreneur #success

Facebook is wonderful for staying in touch with family members, good friends and your favorite hobbies and interests. It's one of the main ways Facebook is used. But, when it comes to business, is Facebook a disruption?

It's not unusual to hear business owners say that they get "sucked in" to their Facebook newsfeed and end up scrolling through Facebook rather than working.

However, instead of viewing Facebook as a diversion to your business, you can make it work for you so that it becomes a valuable resource instead of a place to lose time and get sidetracked.

Your Business Page

The general agreement is that your business page on Facebook needs to be split from your personal one. If you find Facebook a disruption when you're using it for business, stop non-business communications on your business page, like online games or surveys that have nothing to do with your business.

Don't Go Over The Top

Like any building of business and getting clients, Facebook takes time. Facebook may take a shorter period than some of the older methods but it still needs to be done gradually and carefully. You won't attract clients if you only use Facebook to saturate them with special offers for your products and services.

Make It Interesting

Facebook is the sort of place where reputations can be made or destroyed. Think through what you post before you post it and be sure you deliver on your promises. You want people to want to click the "Like" button and return to your page, so make it interesting. You can have freebies, engaging content, links to interesting websites, and so on. Make sure you keep your page updated so fans and visitors don't lose interest.

Facebook Groups

Joining groups that are related to your business interests is a good way to use Facebook's connected online community to promote your business. You can encourage others to join, too, and create your own group. Facebook groups are free to set up and provide an excellent place to connect with people in your industry and potential customers.

Advertising

You can make use of Facebook's numerous applications (apps) to promote your business. Facebook has apps that make it possible for you to send messages to clients and prospects, like an email account (the "Inbox" app). Facebook also provides Platform, which allows you to modify your own apps which you can use yourself and even sell to others.

The majority of business owners who use social media to advertise their business claim Facebook is the best, most productive advertising service on all social media networks. The good news is that you can run a Facebook ad campaign for as little as $5.







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How To Create Engaging Video Content #entrepreneurship

Marketing methods appear and disappear over the years, and so do their levels of effectiveness. One strategy to building your business that doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon is video. By next year it's estimated that video will account for at least 80% of worldwide internet traffic.

But there's more to video content than watching funny cat videos. To create engaging video content that your audience genuinely want to watch requires a number of key elements if you're going to get the best out of this powerful marketing technique.

Know Your Target Audience

Before you start thinking about your video content, you need to really understand who your target audience is. You can't say "all married men" or "all moms" or "all dads" or "all" anything. You need to narrow down your target market so that you have an audience that is genuinely receptive to what you share with them.

Know Your Objectives

As well as knowing your audience, you need to know your objectives. What is the point of the video content that you're creating Even if your main reason might be to sell your product and make money, you need to look at the reason from the audience's point of view. So, you may be doing it to make money, but you're also doing it to educate, talk about, interact with, and stimulate your audience on your subject matter.

Record in Batches

It's important to get good video content onto your YouTube channel on a regular basis. YouTube is a great video platform to develop an audience and share information. It has more than 1 billion users, nearly 1/3 of all people on the internet.

But it can sound really challenging to develop a video every week, edit it, and post it. But, you don't have to do it that way. As an alternative, record your videos in batches, rather than one bu one. You can put them together for an entire segment of content more easily that way.

Keep It Short and Sweet

Keeping your video to two minutes or less is important because they're more likely to be watched all the way to the end. More than 3 or 4 minutes may be too much, but certainly not longer than 10 minutes on more complicated information. Keep each video focused on one point. This will make it even easier to publish consistently and frequently, because you don't have to spend that much time on each video.

You simply have to have some online video presence to succeed in business these days.







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7 Key Emotions That Make Customers Buy From You #business

The buying behaviour of customers is connected their emotions. People buy with their emotions and then justify that decision with logic. Your website and online sales pages need to use the right words to stir up emotion in your readers.

There are 7 key types of emotional factors that make customers buy products and services. Once you understand these emotions, and then relate to your products and services in a way that makes your prospects feel those emotions, it will get them to take action.

Anger

It might seem odd to want your potential customers to be angry. But, you can stimulate anger in your sales duplicate by making them angry about what is happening to them with regards to their problem. You can then focus the anger they feel toward the situation to drive them to buy your solutions.

Fear

Evoking fear gets results. There are a number of ways to stimulate feelings of fear. One of them is fear of missing out. Place emphasis on the risk of not buying your offer. For instance, the price is going to increase, or you're only making it possible for 10 customers to buy the product or service.

Disgust

You want your audience to feel disgusted about the problem and not the solution. You can guide them toward your solution and the information you provide to lift the disgust and make a big difference in their lives.

Contempt

Generally, this is reserved for political ads. Using contempt in your descriptions and marketing can cause some controversy. But, sometimes controversy can be a popular element that gets people talking.

Joy

When you sell joy, you'll want to focus on the benefits of your products as much as you can. Focus on not only the product's benefits now but also on the joy your buyer will feel later.

Sadness

You can use sadness in several ways. For example, this is used with fundraising for pets. They show you pictures of a lot of sad pets and then, of course, you have to get out your credit card to help those animals.You can use sadness by showing the sadness of people before they bought your product or used your service.

Surprise

It's challenging to use surprise in copy-writing but surprise can get the attention of your audience, which will help keep them engaged. One way to surprise people is to deliver more on what you promised. By doing this, they'll recommend you to others because it was something that they were not expecting.

Using the right words makes all the difference in how your readers feel as they read your content.








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Is Your Website Content Sending Your Visitors To Sleep? #entrepreneur

One of the most important aspects on your website, apart from of your product or service, is the content that you use on your website. All things considered, you can have the best product ever created but if your website content material is boring and nobody can understand how your products will benefit them, nobody will buy anything from you.

When you have the good copy-writing skills you can set yourself apart from the competition and make a genuine difference to your profits. Here's how your copy can keep your audience interested, alert and ready to buy!

Create Audience Personas

Creating audience personas helps you to provide the right information on who you're writing for. You can create more than one audience persona too. In fact, you should plan the audience personas you create to their buying journey, as well as by targeting the various audiences who need your product.

Know Your Products

Analyze the benefits your product or service delivers to your audience. If you're unsure, ask the people who have bought or tried them. It may help you to write a list of features, then alongside each feature write down the benefit of it for your audience so that your content only stresses the benefits.

Use AIDA

This popular marketing principle (an acronym of Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) can easily be used to develop an amazing content marketing strategy that gets results for any type of product or service.

Awareness
This is the where your audience is learning about the product, service, or problem. Your task at this stage is to supply content articles, adverts, webinars, podcasts, landing pages, and other informative content freely on your website, and via download of a white paper or other freebie in exchange for their email address.
Interest
Now your audience has an interest in the product. Ideally, they have signed up for your email list or visited to your website. You'll now need to provide web content, email marketing content, newsletters, social media content, and more targeted content so that you can turn their interest into desire.
Desire
You can build desire by being more specific regarding the benefits of your offerings. Fully explain how your product or service solves the problems of your audience with informative checklists, reports, e-books to help you persuade your audience to make a purchase.
Action
Regardless of how good the rest of your copy is, without a clear call to action your audience may not act. Cause your audience to react by making a purchase. Case studies, testimonials, factual data, and even courses can work to persuade your audience to finally make a purchasing decision.
When you write and manage your content correctly, it will make your life easier and your business grow.






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How Do I Grow My Email List? #success

The main concern for every business, regardless of whether they are online or offline, is to continually build a list of emails addresses. Email marketing is still one of the most effective marketing strategies that has ever been created. The people on your email list are your past, present and future customers.

But those people need a reason to become one of your subscribers. Here are some proven tactics to help you grow your email list.

Content Upgrades

A content upgrade is offering additional information, for free, that goes with the content your audience is currently reading on your website. It could be a checklist, eBook, report, video or anything that requires an email address to obtain access.

Put Up A Content 'Gate'

If you already provide a great amount of free content and have a high number of repeat visitors who aren't on your list yet, add a pop-up form that gates your content. Again, the access to more content can only be gained by the submission of an email address.

Giveaways and Discounts

You can grow your email list by offering rewards to your current list members. Offer a free gift or discount on their next purchase in relation to the number of referrals they provide. This type of offer can also be passed down to any new member signing up for email updates.

Make Your Email Opt-In Form Obvious

Put your sign-up forms on every page of your website and make the buttons large and attractive.Don't be scared about asking people to sign up for your email list. Keep in mind that you are offering your audience an incredible amount of content for free to help them with their problems.

Use Action Words on Your Opt-In Forms

If your email opt-in form reads "sign up" or "submit," you need to modify them right now. Create with some better action words to get your audience to act. Tell them what to do, why they need to do it, and how it will solve their problem.

Don't Ask For Too Much Info

If you ask for too much information from your audience to sign up for your email list, that may turn them off. It obviously depends on your specific audience more than the standard practice but, in general, all you really need is a name and an email address. You can gather more information from then once they have joined your list.

Email marketing can achieve awesome results for the smart marketer. On average, a prospect needs to see your messages 7 to 8 times before they trust you enough to buy something.





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Don't Do The Tasks You Hate #life

One way to get stop putting off the tasks you know have to be done in your online business, but can't face doing them, is to simply outsource them. It will also make your business more productive.

Most digital marketing and online business tasks can be outsourced today. So, the first clue you have that you should outsource something is when you hate doing it yourself.

But there is more to outsourcing than that.

Does It Make Sense On A Financial Basis?

Often the tasks you dislike doing are regarded (at least by you) to be basic tasks. This may include publishing blog posts, data entry, publishing to social media, and so on. These are tasks that are perfect for outsourcing because they're uninteresting to you and most probably you can earn more revenue by outsourcing it and concentrating on your main money maker.

Are You Qualified To Do It?

Some of the tasks you hate doing are probably because you're not very good at doing them. And, as a business owner you don't have to be good at doing everything. This doesn't mean you're lacking in business skills. It just means that you can't do a very good job doing something you weren't properly trained to do.

A good example is creating graphics or website building. If this isn't the primary purpose of your business, then it probably takes you ten times as long to do it and the final result will not be as good if it is completed by someone skilled in that area.

You Would Rather Be Playing Golf (or Fishing, etc... )

Sometimes you hate doing a task because it's taking away from the things you really want to do. When your business gets to a particular level, it is practical to start outsourcing various jobs so that you can do other things you consider fun to do.

Is Outsourcing Right For Your Business?

The general guideline is that if a piece of work is not your main line of work, then outsourcing it is completely fine. The other thing is, if you can outsource it for less than you can earn from the task then you're ahead of the game too. Of course, you want the person you use outsourcing for to do as well, so pick your outsourcers carefully and pay them a fair wage.

In fact, if you're not outsourcing some tasks, you're doing yourself and your business a disservice.

Outsourcing is one of the most cost-efficient ways to grow your business. It's how the biggest and most profitable businesses in the world generate the wealth and freedom their owners enjoy.







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How To Get Customers To Buy From Your Website #success

Irrespective of your target market, every customer goes through a process when making a decision to buy from your website. Understanding your customer's buying process will help you know what information to give them and when.

You need to guide your audience with the acknowledgment of a problem that they need to solve and how you are the one that can help them solve it.

Basically, there are 3 stages a customer goes through before they buy from your website.

Stage 1: Awareness

This is when a potential customer has identified that they have a need. To find answers, they go online and use a search engine like Google to find what they're looking for.

This is why it's important to focus your website content that provides your target audience with information about the problems that they have. The type of content that is most successful at this stage is educational pieces directly about the problem. This gives you the opportunity to offer more value (like a report, eBook, checklist), free of charge, in return for their email address. Once you have their email address, you can stay in contact with them rather than just hoping that they will return to your website at a later date.

Stage 2: Consideration

At this stage, the customer wants to consider the different options available to them to solve their problem. The content you provide now can consist of comparison charts, webinars, eBooks, podcasts, demo videos, freebies, and even trial options if doable to help reduce risks.

This stage can take some time. A lot of people research their options for several weeks or even months before deciding.

Stage 3: Decision

At this stage, your customer just needs to decide. More often than not your customer will be on your email list at this point, although there are cases where they simply discovered your website and all the information there.

The type of content that you'll want to deliver to them, and where, plays an important part in leading them to choose your solution.

The trick is to ensure that you focus on results and your product at this stage. Give them a reason to choose you. Take away their risk and make them want more by going over the pros and cons. For example,

What makes your option unique?
What other products or alternatives are similar?
What's your return policy and is better than your competitors?
How much does it cost?
How do they deal with issues and problems with your product?
Understanding the 3 stages a customer goes through before they buy from your website helps significantly because it keeps you focused on providing just what they need when they need it.
Internet marketing is a step-by-step process to put the right elements in place so that you get the desired result. An effective sales funnel puts your business on autopilot and consistently converts leads into customers if you structure it the right way.






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How Do You Monetize Your Blog? #blogging

When you have a good amount of blog posts and readers it's time to monetize your blog. Do keep in mind that, first and foremost, your blog should be about sharing your ideas and providing value to your audience, not just about making you some extra money.

Here are 5 ways to start monetizing your blog.

1. Sell Your Own Products or Services

One of the quickest ways to monetize your blog is to sell your own products or services. If your readers know that you deliver useful advice in your blog, they'll be ready to buy more information from you because you're offering a solution to their problem or desires.

You can produce information products like eBooks, reports, tutorial videos, etc. Your readers can download these instantly after purchase. The great thing about information products is that you produce them once, and they can be sold again and again.

2. Sell Affiliate Products

As an affiliate, you sell products or services that have been created by other people. These can be digital information products or physical products that are delivered to the customer's door.

An affiliate earns a percentage of sales off each product that someone buys through their special affiliate link. It's one of the easiest ways to monetize your blog because you don't have to worry about payment systems, product delivery or customer queries as the product owner takes care of all of that.

3. Google AdSense

There are a variety of advertising networks that you can become a member of to monetizing your blog. Google AdSense is one of the most popular networks. By placing the ads on your blog, you can tempt visitors to click on them. Then each click earns you a share of the profits Google makes. Although a couple of clicks won't earn you much, a high flow of traffic and clicks can really add up to a substantial amount.

4. Sell Advertising Space

Some popular blogs sell advertisement space on their blogs. Advertisers want to place one of their banners on popular blogs that reach their target audience. You get paid based on the traffic numbers you bring in to your blog and the prime space available on your blog.

5. Product Reviews

You can do both paid product reviews as well as unpaid reviews of affiliate products. It's important to be very honest in all reviews, paid or not. Ask your readers for testimonials and aim to get positive reviews on sites like FourSquare and Yelp. This will help to develop your reputation as an expert in your niche and will encourage more people to ask you for reviews.






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What Type Of Content Ranks Best In Today's Search Engines? #business

Every website owner wants their website to rank well on the likes Google, Yahoo and Bing. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is basically the things you can do to your website to push it up the search engine rankings.

If you want your website to appear at the top or near the top of the search results, you need to do certain things that keep the search engines happy. When you tell the internet what your business is about, the search engines will then point visitors to your website that they think will benefit from what you offer.

What Type Of Content Ranks Best?

Ask any SEO expert what type of content ranks best in today's search engines and the answer is always the same. Google wants one thing, and that is quality content.

Google wants to deliver its users with the best possible results.There are two main things that it looks at to identify if the content is good quality.

1. Engagement

How interesting is your content? Are people really reading the whole article or are they pushing the back button the moment they see it? This is the way that Google measures engagement. They want to know how long people are staying around to read your content. If they stay around for several minutes, they know you are providing value.

This is what's called your Bounce Rate. A lower bounce rate can help rankings. If users generally click back, and your website has persistently high bounce rates, this can affect your website rankings in Google.

2. Backlinks

The second thing that Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc, look at is linking behaviour. The search engines know that people link to content material they consider valuable. Content that is regarded useful or interesting more often than not is shared by users. Content that is considered worthless doesn't get shared.

Write Content For Users Not Search Engines

If you produce your website content just so that it can get high rankings, you can get caught up stuffing your content with too many keywords. This then becomes unreadable to the human eye. These type of underhand SEO tactics rarely work and even if they do, the result is only short-term. The search engines will spot this an ignore your website.

Useful content leads to happy users and a low bounce rate, happy users link back and share the content, which leads to more traffic, which leads to better rankings in Google.

Without SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you're just hoping that Google, Yahoo, Bing etc, will somehow stumble across your website, figure out what topics you're writing about, and then hopefully send you lots of traffic that is relevant and targeted.







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How Can I Start A Blog Of My Own? #blog

It's no surprise that you want to start a blog. Blogging remains a marketing method that costs very little to set up and people from all walks of life have created making money blogs.

The issue about writing blog posts is that it's actually not that difficult to do. If you can talk about something with knowledge, you can write a blog post.

Let looks at how you can start a blog of your own.

Pick A Blogging Platform

There are free blogging platforms like Blogger, which is a publishing application from Google. Having said that, this choice doesn't give your own blog domain name and hosting, which is important if you want to be seen as genuine and professional online blogger.

The choice of platform for professional bloggers is WordPress. Although you have to buy your own domain name and hosting, the WordPress blogging software is free and there are plenty of designs and features that you can use to fit your style and niche.

Pick A Niche

You want to choose a well-defined niche. If your niche is very concentrated on a target audience you'll be more focused on the type of content you create as well as being able to monetize it easier.

Know Your Audience

You need to be clear on precisely who your audience are. Who are they, what type of job do they have, how much money do they earn, what do they like to do in their free time? You should be able to really understand what gets their interest.

Persistence Wins

You need to update your blog regularly with fresh content to get the most traffic. Writing is a talent that gets a lot easier and much better the more you do it. If you do it every day, you'll develop a process that automatically gets your creative juices flowing and signals to the brain that it's time to write.

Generate Income From Your Blog

Once you get a reasonable amount of quality content on your blog it's time to think about how do you can generate an income. Start to introduce a few products to sell and don't engulf your readers with too many adverts. A good blend of affiliate products and your own products generally works well.

Don't Give Up

Generating an income by way of a blog is a long-term strategy. You need to be willing to be in it for the long-term. You won't start a blog and make money right away. But you can earn money blogging, or earn more money at your business through blogging. Keep in mind that when to comes to writing blog posts, where there's a will, there's a way. Just don't give up.







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