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This 5 Step Personal Development Plan Made Me a Better Entrepreneur

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By John Boitnott

Expanding your skill set or cultivating better health can only boost your business.

Entrepreneurs tend to focus the bulk of their energy on developing and tracking a business plan. This is essential to success for any startup. But when you focus on long term goals for the business, it’s easy to forget about something just as important – developing an action plan for yourself personally.

Following a path of self-improvement can help a business owner build new skills and improve old ones. When you focus on goal setting and learning more about yourself, it can have positive effects on your business as well. By cultivating healthy personal habits like exercise and stress reduction, or work habits like time management or continuing education, your business grows as well in measurable ways.

It’s time to create a personal development plan that will help your company’s bottom line. Here are five steps to try:

1. Identify characteristics and values that reflect personal and professional goals.

When starting this personal growth process, don’t obsess over what successful people do or try to tackle every element of your personal or professional life. I start by brainstorming and writing down any goals or values I have for myself. Remember, set goals about you as an individual, not profit margins or conversion rates.

Once you have a wide range of big goals listed, select no more than two for this step. You can select one personal goal and one related to the business, or two personal goals or values. These development needs should provide plenty of work over the course of a quarter or a year, depending on the size of your goal or the level of focus you can commit.

Here are some examples of personal development goals that entrepreneurs and other professionals I know incorporated into their lives.

  • The designer who found an online course on programming and design to help him expand his skills. He convinced his CEO to pay for the course. He used the skills he learned to benefit the startup.
  • The CEO who reads five business books each quarter. She wants to gain knowledge and make better decisions that she can apply to her company and life. She wants better time management and improved employee relationships.
  • The executive coach who keeps a daily journal to review and reflect on actions and decisions.
  • My meditation practice and yoga routine helps me increase focus, productivity, and patience.

2. Assess what needs to improve with the help of a professional.

If you’re having trouble identifying what you should change, or just personal development planning in general, you may want to consider speaking with a mentor, coach, or advisor. Not only will they be able to see things from a more objective standpoint, but they also can leverage their experience and knowledge to guide you on your individual development plan.

Getting this advice before creating the personal development plan can facilitate writing and launching it. Without an external perspective, you may struggle to go in the right direction.

3. Draft a written personal development plan.

An entrepreneur is their business. Therefore, craft a personal development plan with the same approach and dedication that goes into a traditional business plan or career development. Include short term goals, timeframes, tactics, resources, end-goals, and metrics to test success.

This provides an ideal framework for filling in specific aspects about you that align with your personal development goals. Each personal development goal should have a purpose, tactics, SWOT analysis, desired outcome, and set of resources. It should have a realistic timeline for achievement based on the entrepreneur’s goals, schedule and responsibilities.

4. Execute each personal development goal.

Think of each goal like a marketing campaign or a work project. It may help motivate you more. While your actual plan provides a clear roadmap for the personal development journey, writing down the purpose of the goal, message, benefits, and results can be inspirational.

It’s the difference between following a recipe and tasting it along the way to invoke the senses. This approach can create an emotional connection to the goal, which can add an extra layer of motivation. Creating a campaign around each goal also is an opportunity to make it fun rather than seem like work.

5. Review your personal development plan on a quarterly basis.

Review your goals, values and achievements on a quarterly basis. It’s enough time to see changes, but not so long that you lose sight of these goals. Take stock of how you and your business have changed, as well as places where you’d still like to make improvements.

Record the findings for reflection. The process, strategic plan, and campaign can also inform the approach for the next personal development goal on the list.

Personal and professional development can both be a lifelong process. Trying to reach your full potential in both areas simultaneously could become a defining competitive advantage that’s well worth the investment.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By John Boitnott

Sourced from Inc.

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11 Signs You’re Not Managing Your Calendar Effectively

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By John Rampton

Time to admit there’s a better way to stay on top of your appointments.

If you’re like most entrepreneurs, your calendar is jam-packed. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s been managed effectively. In fact, it may merely be a cluttered mess that’s setting you up for failure. But how can you tell? As the founder of Calendar, an app that helps business owners manage their time better, I’ve studied over 200 million calendar meetings and formulated these 11 signs you’re not managing yours effectively.

1. You’re known for saying, “There just isn’t enough time.”

Has it been brought to your attention that you frequently complain there isn’t enough time to get everything done? Let’s not sugarcoat this — that’s a lie. As author H. Jackson Brown Jr. correctly said, “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.”

Instead of whining, do something about it by making time. How you go about this is different for everyone. The first place to start is by conducting a time audit. For example, you may notice that you over- or underestimate how long it takes you to complete a task, or that you’re spending too much time on unproductive activities like checking social media.

2. Punctuality isn’t your strong suit.

I have a friend who is always late. It’s almost his mantra. And while it’s something that we joke about, the fact of the matter is that being tardy is one of the worst habits you can possess both personally and professionally. Lateness is rude and disrespectful and will eventually harm your reputation and fracture relationships. Not to mention that scrambling and rushing from one thing to the next has to be stressful,

As with feeling short on available hours, a quick time audit can help you root out this unfortunate tendency and offer better insight into daily rituals like the commute to and from work. Also, get into the habit of leaving buffers between appointments and meetings and start taking into account travel time so that you can leave punctually.

3. You don’t know the last time you reviewed your calendar.

At minimum, you should at least glance through your calendar every evening and first thing in the morning. That may sound exacting, but preparation will always breed confidence. You’ll begin to be where you have to be on time. The reason I look over my calendar in the a.m. is to make sure everything is still in order. For instance, a conference call with a client could have been rescheduled while I was asleep.

Checking beforehand will save you time and keep you organized. You’ll use extra time slots for preparation for something else. Scheduling and rescheduling are only possible if you use the right tools. Consider scheduling software, such as intelligent calendars, that will keep you on top of your game. Carve out the time to review your calendar every week and month will keep you organized and on top of your intentions.

4. It’s homogenous.

What do I mean by this? If your calendar isn’t color-coded, then every one of your entries is the same color. That may not sound like a big deal, but you want to know exactly where to look when you open it. Confusion is not going to catapult you toward higher productivity.

How you color code is totally up to you. However, you should be aware of some psychology, e.g. grey represents balance, which makes it an excellent choice for meetings, while blue triggers a relaxation response that’s ideal for less-taxing tasks.

Another option would be to use chakra color-coding. Thinking chakra is a method in which each color is associated with the  body’s energy points. Though I don’t personally use this approach often, specific colors do mean things to me, and carrying that over to my calendar keeps me motivated.

5. You accept all time requests.

You have to be selective when it comes to requests for your time, and the most natural solution is to say “no” more often. I know this can be awkward for some people, and you don’t want to let others down, but your time is your most valuable resource. Accepting every invite or stopping what you’re doing every time to help someone else out will lessen time spent on your own priorities. Only say “yes” when you have the availability or it’s something that you’re genuinely excited for. If not, politely turn down the request.

6. Scheduling conflicts are the norm.

You just got invited to a friend’s birthday dinner. Without consulting your calendar, you accepted the invite. Then, the day before the party, you received a reminder about a client meeting that night and have to make a last-minute decision that’s going to tick someone off.

Scheduling conflicts are unacceptable. They do nothing except add more stress and anxiety to your life and jeopardize your relationships. Before accepting an invite, make sure that you have nothing else in your calendar. If you have a blank space, then schedule it and block it, and remember those aforementioned buffers between appointments so that you leave plenty of time to get from Point A to B.

7. You’re full of excuses.

Florence Nightingale once said, “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.” I love that quote. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. If you aren’t getting work done or running late, you aren’t managing your calendar effectively. In short, stop with the excuses. No one wants to hear them. Instead, get your calendar in order and make the most of the time that you do have.

8. Indecisiveness, procrastination and perfectionism is the rule.

These three terms might seem unrelated at first glance, but each can reveal the roadblocks to your success. For example, do you spend an excessive amount of time choosing between options A and B? Maybe you put off working on a task until the last minute and you obsess over your work being perfect.

Ask yourself if you’re indecisive. Are you putting off what you have to do via procrastination or suffering from perfectionism? Each of these symptoms can throw you’re entire calendar out of whack. You may have set aside two hours to get something done, but it takes you four. As a result, those two extra hours carry over to your next item.

It takes some practice and self-discipline to break these bad habits. Sticking to the allotted time you’ve given to a specific task in your calendar is a start. And once you get started, your brain doesn’t want to leave the work unfinished thanks to the Zeigarnik Effect. Plus, you can always go back and revise your work when you have the availability.

9. Your relationships are in peril.

Do you feel that your personal and professional relationships are strained because of your tardiness or unreliability? That may be an indication that you’re not correctly managing your calendar. For example, you may overcommit, leading to scheduling conflicts, or be known for running late because you scheduled back-to-back meetings. When your calendar is in order, you will immediately see a reduction in these inconveniences and begin to demonstrate that you are reliable and respectful of other people’s time.

10. Email is your primary scheduling tool.

If you’re still using email as your primary tool to schedule appointments, then it’s time to find a better alternative. As opposed to responding to lengthy email threads, use automated scheduling software that only shows others when you’re available. If a specific time is already booked, then the software won’t allow anyone to schedule an appointment with you.

11. You’re burnt to a crisp.

Finally, a finely tuned calendar will save you from burning out. If you are not organized, it puts your health in jeopardy, making it more likely that you’ll forget your goals, diminishing your work performance. While managing your calendar won’t solve all of these problems, it’s an effective way to alleviate burn out. The main reason you’ll want to work on the goal of a balanced calendar is that by using this tool, all other goals can be realized. You’ll maintain a healthy work-life balance and take breaks when you need them.

Feature Image Credit: Image credit: Paul Bradbury | Getty Images 

By John Rampton

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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10 Social Media Tactics to Drive Traffic to Your Website

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By Boni Satani

Are you in search of some great social media tactics? Do you want to drive exceptional traffic to your business website? Here we share with you some useful social media tips to convert your visitors to leads.

Let us first understand social media and traffic.

Social Media and Traffic:

The social media world is home to more than 3.4 billion active users. Social media is said to be the primary source for generating eCommerce traffic. Social media leads ahead of the traditional media in driving traffic to your website. They bring in ample of opportunities to gain the business visitors and convert into leads.

How do you strike a conversation? How can you increase the visibility of your social media posts? How to engage your audiences? How to generate leads through constant digital engagement?

In this post, we’ll show you how.

Strategies to Boost Website Traffic:

For a relevant and persuasive social media marketing strategy, here are some must-have strategies to boost website traffic for your online store.

1. Optimize Your Social Media Profiles:

Social media profiles play a crucial role in brand building and recognition. A good social media profile can drive a good amount of traffic to your website. Optimizing your social media profiles are as important as optimizing your website’s SEO. Ensure your social media biographies include relevant keywords. Also, make sure you do not miss any information while filling your profile details.

Your website SEO will rank good if you add its links in your social media profile biographies. Also, this is an essential rule for good SEO on your website.

Thus, social media profiles can be a great asset to brand awareness. For an optimized website, a streamlined social media profile with the right set of keywords and information is a must.

2. Engage with Your Target Audience Consistently:

Social media helps you connect to your target audience directly. You can interact with your audience, get feedback in real-time, and better your customer experience. Consistent engagement with your audience can boost traffic to your social media profile and website. This also improves the opinion of audiences in the company’s perspective.

One of the most vital aspects of social media management is to keep your audience consistently engaged. Digital engagement with your audience is a seamless process and should not be combined with self-promotion. For a successful audience engagement with your brand or website, you need to consider several points in mind:

  • Social media is not a one-way strategy. It is more of a two-way street
  • Do not ignore your audience. Keep them engaged. Or else you might lose them in the process
  • Only 11% of customers receive replies from online brands
  • Nearly 34% of customers prefer social media for customer care

One of the social media marketing strategies is managing your social media inboxes regularly.
Once, you learn the art of using social media management tools, you can stay at the top of the social game. Lead through your single-stream inbox with social events, and a niche content in your social feeds. Gaining your audience’s visibility will take time, but you need to put efforts to drive traffic continuously.

 

3. Post Consistently:

Every social media user desires to achieve accountability of a good list of followers. Posting regularly on your social media can help you develop an excellent social media marketing strategy. Posting frequency and the number of followers and likes you gain depends on certain factors like:

  • Region/Time zone
  • Target Audience
  • Days in a week
  • Content
  • Hashtags
  • Profile bios

According to stats, different social media have different posting frequency.

  • For Twitter, the minimum posting frequency is 15 tweets daily
  • For Facebook, the minimum posting frequency is one post daily
  • For Instagram, the minimum posting frequency is 1-2 posts weekly

For this, you must measure the best frequency with your audience. You can also monitor the posting frequencies of other brands and your competitors. This helps you define your frequency to increase social media engagement.

4. Create Viral Content like Memes:

The term “viral” is pretty much related to social media. Anything you find unique, enticing or relatable has the potential to drive more traffic. Viral contents are quintessential if you want to increase your site traffic. However, it is not an easy deal at all. Remember, not all your posts can be viral. For content to be viral, it is essential that:

  • People have a willingness to share your content
  • People spread your message to reach the maximum audience

Some instances of viral content are the most lively example.

  • Memes:

We all dig into content that contains humor or hilarious memes. All of us are enjoying them and welcoming them. Some are funny videos, gifs, or images with secure messages or funny captions. You can easily incorporate these memes to your brands or products. Make sure you use it for fun and publicity. Stay away from any sensitive issues that may get in the way of your brand identity or that may stir controversy.

  • Content that Appeals to Human Senses:

The viral recipe or food videos are taking over social media by a storm. These drooling videos and visuals make us want more. These viral videos have something in common. They are appealing to human senses, and things that make them more indulging are

  • Sight (videos with vibrant colors and effects)
  • Hearing (upbeat music)
  • Smell (imagining the scent or aroma of spices)
  • Taste (mouthwatering recipes)
  • Touch (when your mouth touches these mouthwatering food)

5. Focus on Sharing Visual Content:

As per the factual figures, visual content can get you more likes and shares than the ordinary content. Invest time in creating visuals that speak volumes about you, your brand, and your niche products. Make sure your visuals are too unique to get unnoticed. Later, focus on sharing the same with your target audience.

The main idea of creating visual content is to obtain social media visibility. To create the out of the box visuals, here are some key points to include:

  • HD photography
  • Vibrant colors
  • Well-designed layouts
  • Well-planned visuals that deliver to the point information
  • Visuals that tell stories
  • Visuals focusing on services and products

6. Post Actively and When your Audience is Active:

The key to increasing your follower count is consistent posting. For these businesses have to be proactive in their social media game. To increase the visibility of your profile, focus on regular publishing. Once you see a spark in your social media traffic, do not be lazy to post. It is a continuous effort that you need to make to shine in this challenging world.

To maintain a publishing schedule, you can use social media management tools available online. You can also use social media planner or calendar to optimize your publishing activity. These tools help you post regularly considering the location, time zone, and necessary factors. Take out the metrics of how much you post typically on each social site, and what is the time you publish your post?

Following these, you can see substantial growth in your social media traffic.

6. Run Q&A Polls and Social Media Contests:

Social media contests and polls are interesting and exciting ways to engage your audience. Such activities also help you improve the communication gap between you and your target audience. Running quizzes, polls, and contests can indulge your audience in sharing, talking, liking, and following. This also makes them aware of your brand, website, and products.

Here are some powerful tips on how to host such activities.

Instagram:

Instagram has powerful and interactive features that help you connect with your audience. Go live on your social media, create polls in your story and use hashtags. You can use hashtags, or ask them to follow or tag your profiles. However, more importantly, create links that link to your site. Remember, we discussed why backlinks are an important part of your social media strategy.

Twitter:

The Twitter poll is an interactive feature on Twitter that helps you conduct polls. This helps you interact with your audiences and know their opinions and thought process. Another exciting and engaging feature is Twitter Q&A.

These features encourage your community to connect with you. More importantly, they build brand awareness and promote your products.

7. Research Your Competitors Thoroughly:

An actual marketing strategy is understanding how well your competitors are performing. The same holds for any social media marketing strategy. You can leverage the online tools to get insights and performance metrics of how your competitors. The social media competitive analysis helps you deeply analyze your traffic. They help you gather ideas and key performance metrics of your opponent’s social posts.

Social media is a challenging world to live in. Before plunging into posting sessions, get in-depth insights of your competitors. This gives you a clear vision of how you can build your social family. Do not imitate your competitors; instead, understand their strategies to create your own. This helps you analyze your competitor’s moves, such as:

  • Most engaging social media channels
  • Successful post in a day
  • Types of content published
  • Strategies to engage more traffic
  • How often they indulge in activities like polls and quizzes

8. Participate in Social Groups:

Join active community groups where you find high chances of getting your target audience. You can find people with the same interests and identify their inclination towards your products. You can join these groups on Facebook, YouTube, Whatsapp, LikedIn, and Pinterest. These groups can help you potentially drive traffic to your site.

Jot down what interests, characteristics, and personalities, your target market is comprised of. For instance, if you are a retailer of sports shoes, your target audience should be sportsperson and youth. So, it would help if you found online groups which have the same audience. Join such groups as an individual and then promote yourself as an influencer. This way you can improve your products and introduce them to your online store.

This is a smart way to become an influencer and promote your products and business on a larger scale.

9. Get Inspiration from Influencers:

The social media influencers are creating a significant impact in this digital world. Influencers are often referred to as “online celebs”. They have a huge followers count and immense popularity on social media. They have the power to influence the way their followers think. They have a big network of followers through their channels like social media, blogs, YouTube, etc.

You must identify the top social media influencershttps://blog.wishpond.com/post/115675437703/guide-to-influencer-marketing to boost your sales. The key to building this strategy is to find the right influencer to endorse your brand and products. And then focus on establishing a good relationship.

Conclusion:

Patience and persistence is the key to staying alive in the social media world.

Social media marketing strategies are great, but they take time to come into effect. These proven strategies are sure to reap benefits in the long term. Being customer-centric is the only key for a successful social media marketing campaign. Remember, social media is a game changer only if you use it the right way.

By Boni Satani

Boni Satani is a T Shaped Marketer with a Huge Interest in SEO & Link Building. He is currently the Director of Marketing at Zestard Technologies, overseeing multiple digital marketing campaigns for clients.

Sourced from wishpond

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What Does ‘Marketing Strategy’ Really Mean?

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By Shannon Prage

John Wanamaker, marketing pioneer of the 19th century, is famously quoted to have said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Though this statement was made more than 100 years ago, I believe it still rings true for many business-to-business technology companies.

As the founder and president of a B2B marketing firm, I know that unlike Wanamaker, modern companies have advanced marketing automation and analytics platforms at their fingertips. But these platforms alone can’t build a solid strategy. They need input.

Why Marketing Strategy Matters 

In the quest to automate marketing journeys with artificial intelligence and machine learning, it’s easy to overlook the essential element that defines your product or service’s value to the market.

“Marketing strategy” is a loose term few fully understand. It’s not the same as marketing planning or a go-to-market strategy. Let’s define the terms:

• A marketing strategy details a company’s long-term marketing goals and objectives.

• Marketing planning aims to achieve marketing strategy goals with tactical activities and campaigns.

• A go-to-market strategy is the value proposition launched to potential customers. It’s often attached to a company, product or service launch.

The challenge most companies run into, especially in the B2B technology space, is failing to create marketing strategies that are supported by qualitative and quantitative research.

Anyone can write a marketing strategy, but if it’s lacking a clear value proposition based on customer research and buyer personas, it’s unlikely to move your business forward.

Elements Of An Effective Marketing Strategy

The most successful marketing strategies contain three core elements: deep customer knowledge, distinct branding and messaging, and market analysis.

Let’s dig deeper.

1. Understand your customers.

This sounds simple. You probably already have some idea of who your ideal customers are. But do you really know them?

Assuming, rather than asking questions, is where many marketing organizations run into trouble. Quality customer research takes time and needs to be updated a least once per year.

To truly know your customers, you must understand:

• What they want.

• What pains them.

• Where they’re searching for in a solution.

• How to reach them (i.e., content, social media, email, website, etc.).

These dynamics change, and without proper feedback loops, you could miss out on important shifts and opportunities within the marketplace.

At many of the companies we work with, time and resources get in the way of creating and updating effective buyer personas. If companies have them at all, they’re often a few years old and at the bottom of someone’s priority list to update. The companies we see generating the greatest return on investment commit to refreshing customer research and buyer personas annually.

If you are performing the customer research yourself, this yearly refresh may take the form of a nice sample size of interviews with your newest customers to evaluate and restudy their buying patterns. The findings should be captured and collected in a consistent way and shared across your teams so they can be operationalized.

2. Know your brand and messaging.

Clearly defined brands are remembered. Think of Apple or IBM: Their iconic branding didn’t pop up overnight. It was clearly defined, consistently presented and intelligently refreshed over time.

Once you know who your ideal customer is, you can use that data to build a strong brand and value proposition that attracts the right audience. Your value proposition is directly tied to the benefit(s) you offer customers and what sets you apart from your competitors. We find that studying buying patterns and asking the right questions about value and differentiation can give you direct insight into how a customer values and speaks about what sets you apart. Then the heavy work becomes storyboarding it and integrating it across your brand and messaging.

3. Keep tabs on your market position.

Anyone can say they’re No. 1 in a product or service category, but can they back it up? Making grand proclamations without supporting data can set your organization up for disappointment. To stay relevant:

• Routinely review competitor strategies.

• Compare your positioning to competitors.

• Identify what makes your organization special.

• Focus on your unique differentiators in messaging.

• Copyright key phrases and language that’s essential to your brand.

• Call out competitors that “borrow” your messaging.

How To Execute Your Marketing Strategy 

Once you understand your customers and have clear branding and messaging and a way to track your market position, you’re ready to go to market. A strong go-to-market strategy should:

• Be multifaceted.

• Tell your story.

• Be scalable.

• Focus on customers.

The Bottom Line: Research First — Or Accept Mediocre Results 

Before investing a dime on any marketing program or content creation, get to know your ideal target customer first. Skipping this essential first step will mean throwing thousands of dollars down the drain.

The companies we see achieving the highest returns on marketing investments spend time on intensive customer and market research to fully understand their customers and prospects before creating a single program or advertisement to try to catch their attention.

The research tools and resources exist to generate holistic buyer personas that will empower your marketing team to craft more powerful and effective campaigns and messages.

It’s simple, really: Either invest the extra time and effort on customer and market research upfront or pay the price later in conversations.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Shannon Prager

Shannon Prager is President of Leadit Marketing, a marketing and demand gen agency focused on B2B tech and professional services companies. Read Shannon Prager’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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5 Inbound Lead Generation Strategies (& How to Make Them Work!)

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By Brad Smith    

Outbound marketing is the best way to get leads quickly.

Let’s say you pay for a commercial to run during the Super Bowl. Potential customers see those ads, and then a tiny fraction of them buy your product. It’s simple, right?

The problem is that it’s also an insanely expensive way to put your offer in front of your target audience. While most viewers expect and even enjoy the commercials during the Super Bowl, when it plays again and again interrupting other games or favorite TV shows, it’s just disruptive. Outbound marketing tactics are always disruptive.

But what if, instead of pushing your offer onto people when they haven’t asked for it, you could use valuable content to draw them in, when they want to come to you?

You can: It’s called inbound marketing. Sure, it takes a while to get going, but once you have an engaged audience of potential customers who trust you, generating leads becomes much, much easier—let me explain.

Inbound marketing: What you need to know

Inbound marketing relies on quality content, whether it’s in the form of articles, emails, videos, podcasts, or books. However, the content landscape is getting more and more competitive due to a virtually unlimited amount of quality content out there. In fact, Mark Schaefer argued back in 2014 that content marketing is not a sustainable strategy and that we are in the age of the so-called content shock.

Image via Mark Schaefer

Schaefer predicted that there would inevitably come a point at which producing content that can compete with what’s already out there will simply become too expensive to be a viable marketing strategy.

Take a look at this graph that he used in his post:

Image via Mark Schaefer

If you think about how the content landscape changed in the five years since Schaefer wrote that article, you’ll quickly realize that he did predict the future accurately.

Sure, in 2014 it was already competitive, but now you have seven-figure companies pouring their vast resources into creating in-depth articles with cutting-edge insights, extensive reports with original research, professionally produced videos and podcasts—you name it.

Now, Schaefer’s final prediction hasn’t come to fruition yet, and content marketing is still a viable strategy. However, if you decide to use inbound marketing to generate leads, you have to go into the arena with your eyes open. You have to become obsessed with producing top-quality content and providing as much value to your audience as humanly possible. And you have to be patient because you won’t break through the noise overnight no matter how great your content is.

That is the only way you will be able to compete with the established players out there.

You’ll also need to understand that inbound marketing is an indirect way of generating leads. You aren’t going to potential customers and pitching your product, you are encouraging them to come to you by offering them free, valuable content.

And when they do come to you, you don’t try to sell to them straight away. You encourage them to take the next step in your sales funnel by subscribing to your email list. And once they are on it, you keep providing value via email newsletters, but now you occasionally mix in sales pitches.

Basically, your aim should be to gain the potential customer’s trust and build a relationship with them. That way, when they are ready to purchase a solution to their problem, your product will be the first thing that comes to their mind.

This approach requires a lot of patience because you have to play the long game—but if you can play that game, it’s worth it.

5 strategies for better inbound lead generation

Let’s take a look at the top five inbound lead generation strategies that you can use to build an engaged audience.

1. Grow your email list

There’s a common misconception among people who aren’t marketers that email is an outdated technology. It’s better to invest in social media, right? Wrong.

According to DMA’s “Marketer Email Tracker 2018” report, in 2017, the average return for each £1 spent on email marketing was £32.28. That’s a pretty crazy ROI if you ask me.

It’s great to have a blog, a YouTube channel, a podcast, or a best-selling book, but the most valuable online marketing asset you can have is an email list.

That is why you need to make sure that you are using all the other inbound marketing methods to draw people to your email list. You can do that by adding opt-in forms to your website and encouraging people to subscribe. You can even make it mutually beneficial by offering something in exchange, like an ebook, video course, or a webinar.

And once you’ve grown that list? Remember that no one wants to be spammed with endless sales pitches, so make sure that your emails add value. One company that does this really well is a male grooming brand Beardbrand.

Image Source

This company sends their subscribers a mix of helpful grooming tips, interesting grooming-related content, and promotional emails. Now, when a subscriber of theirs who enjoys their emails wants to buy, say, beard oil, who will be the first company that comes to his mind? Beardbrand.

So figure out what your subscribers want and give it to them. What problem do they have that you can offer a solution to in the form of an email?

2. Build a high-quality blog

Blogging is a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. For example, when Groove was struggling to attract customers, the company decided to bet everything on content marketing by building a blog.

As Groove’s founder Alex Turnbull recalls:

“We were only a few short months from running out of cash, and things didn’t look good. Our marketing efforts were failing, and nobody was visiting our site or signing up for our product. We were desperate. We were lost. And we were terrified. That was when we decided to finally get serious about content marketing.”

First, they reached out to all the content marketers that they respected and asked them for advice. A few responded. The Groove team was shocked by the feedback they got and realized they were doing it all wrong. They needed to find a unique angle for their blog.

Image via Groove

The team started scouring the Internet trying to understand their target audience—small business owners—better. This wasn’t just passively observing relevant discussions, either. Groove proactively reached out to people and asked if they could pick their brain.

Image via Groove

Eventually, the Groove team realized that people in their target audience were going through the exact same challenges they themselves were struggling with. So Groove decided to share their startup journey and launched a blog called “A SaaS Startup’s Journey to $100,000 in Monthly Revenue.”

Image via Groove

And it resonated with their target audience immediately: 1,000 email subscribers within 24 hours, and 5,000 within a month! Three years later, in 2016, the blog was getting over 250,000 unique visitors per month, and Groove was generating over $5M a year in revenue.

Pay attention to how Groove built this high-quality blog: market research, unique angles, and superior content. That’s what makes a blog a great lead-generation strategy. The Groove blog attracts small business owners, those small business owners join Groove’s email list—over time they start liking and trusting the company and eventually, once they need help desk software, they purchase it from Groove.

Want to do the same with your company’s blog? Analyze the market, find a gap in it, and then fill that niche the best you can.

3. Start a podcast

Podcasts have become an integral part of our daily lives. We listen to them while on the way to work, while doing chores, and while out for a walk.

This is especially true for young people. According to Music Oomph, almost a third of American adults between the ages of 25 and 34 are podcast listeners.

Image via Music Oomph

A podcast can be a great way to generate leads for your business—as long as you can build a large enough audience.

For example, Tropical MBA, a popular business podcast that is focused on location independent entrepreneurship, allows the hosts Ian and Dan promote their membership website and grow the business.

Image Source

They started their podcast back in 2009. At the time, they were running an ecommerce business and were just learning the ropes of location independent entrepreneurship.

Here’s how Dan and Ian explain it:

“Back then we hardly knew anybody growing a location independent business, especially one that had real physical products. It seemed to us that most of the websites and podcasts weren’t run by people with compelling business experience or insights. We wanted to meet others who we felt were legit. So we started sharing our story on a more or less weekly basis. Because of that, many of the episodes were just me and Ian sharing the stuff we were learning directly from our day to day work. That business taught us a lot. It started with—literally—a dream, and ended with a multi-seven-figure exit.”

As their podcast grew, a community of like-minded individuals formed around it, and the hosts leveraged it to launch their membership website, their business conference, and their remote jobs board.

Of course, in 2009 podcasts were a nascent medium. Since then, they have exploded in popularity, so if you launch one now, you are in for an uphill battle that Dan and Ian never faced.

However, what you can learn from them is that they found a unique angle, produced interesting shows, and kept going at it for a decade. With a loyal following, you can promote email sign ups to generate leads and sales for your business.

4. Upload video content to YouTube

Did you know that Youtube is the second biggest search engine in the world? You can leverage this massive platform to generate leads if you can rank for popular search terms related to your field.

For example, Brian Dean, the SEO expert behind the popular Backlinko blog, built an SEO-focused YouTube channel.

But he admits that when her first launched his channel, he struggled to get any views.

Here are some of the tips Brian shared:

  • Use YouTube’s Search Suggest feature. Simply type in a word or a phrase into the search bar and look at the suggestions. These keywords are great because they are based on what people are actually looking for.
  • Analyze popular videos in your niche. This is great way to identify keywords for YouTube, and then you can optimize your own videos around the same keywords.
  • Identify the best keyword from the keyword list that you created. Look for low-competition keywords. You can do that by typing in a keyword and then checking the number of search results. The higher the number, the more competitive the keyword.

Now, Brian’s YouTube channel has 213,000 subscribers and generates leads for his business (he provides SEO training).

Your aim should be to convert YouTube subscribers to email list subscribers, so provide a link to an opt-in form at the end of your videos and encourage them to subscribe.

Click HERE to read the remainder of the article

By Brad Smith    

Sourced from Business 2 Community

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Freelancer Writers Non-EN

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KAX Media Ltd.

Location – Global

Freelance Role

We are looking for experienced Foreign Language Sports Betting, iGaming and Casino Freelance Writers to produce high quality copy about the things they know about in the betting industry environment.

 

If the betting industry, sports wagering and casino games are new to you then this is not a role you can fill but if you believe you have the suitable experience in these areas and are used to providing well researched and consumable content then there are currently several spaces available on our global roster.

 

Applicants are welcomed for the following languages and all applicants should also be fluent in speaking and writing English –

 

  • Finnish Content
  • Swedish Content
  • Danish Content
  • Norwegian Content
  • German Content
  • Italian Content

 

Your Core Responsibilities:

 

  • Production of circa 10,000 to 30,000 words per month as commissioned by our multilingual commissioning editors.
  • Ideation and pitching of news, strategy and feature content pieces
  • Self-invoicing

 

We Require:

 

  • Demonstratable knowledge and previous experience in content creation for the following areas:

 

Online Sportsbook and Casino

Sports betting and strategy for key Sporting Events

Casino table games

Casino slots

Poker and Card Games

TV Specials Betting

Political Betting

Exchange Betting

& Specialists across the gaming industry in general.

 

– Excellent grammar

– Knowledge of writing for SEO a big advantage

– Experience of writing content in the Sports Betting, iGaming and Casino environment

– Samples of previous work and (or) successful completion of a test case commission.

It is expected that freelancers will provide a suitable bio and (or) photograph to accompany all use of bespoke written content for our various digital platforms; although we do not guarantee to credit all work to an author dependent on the specific use of such content from time to time.

All successful applicants will receive a freelance contract and be paid via structured monthly bank transfer – rates are negotiable dependent on experience and volume of work commissioned. Guaranteed monthly content volume is available for the right candidates.

We welcome your applications in the strictest of confidence.

Click HERE to apply for this job.

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What bartenders think about that AI-powered bar with facial recognition

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By Rachel Kraus

The latest item to qualify in the “the Dystopian Future Is Now” category is a system that aims to help bartenders keep track of their customers with facial recognition and AI.

There’s just one teensy problem: Bartenders are really, really not into it.

The British company DataSparQ announced the launch of the “A.I. Bar” Thursday. It works by using cameras and sensors to place people who come up to the bar in a queue; it’s like a digital “take a number” system, but based on facial recognition.

People can see where they are by viewing themselves on a screen (with a number above their head, depicting their place in line). Bartenders will know who to serve by consulting a tablet that has pictures of all the people, in order of who they should serve first. It’s supposed to also help bartenders keep track of whose ID needs to be checked.

Recently, DataSparQ tested the system at a bar in London. Here’s a video showing how it works.

DataSparQ positions the facial recognition queue system as a win-win. It says customers will have less wait time, and that bars are poised to make more money with faster service. Customers, supposedly, hate waiting for drinks in line. But bartenders think the AI makes a problematic, technological mountain out of a decidedly human molehill.

“I just don’t see what this sort of technology would remotely do to mitigate all of the supposed service delay-based qualms that people have,” Asif Rizvi, a  Brooklyn bartender at The Breakers, said. “At best it’s unnecessary. At worst, it’s yet another harbinger of the impending AI apocalypse.”

Mashable spoke with four bartenders in New York, San Francisco, and Las Vegas about their impressions of the queue system. Here’s what they think about the prospect of gettin’ a little help from an AI friend.

“We know what’s going on”

As a 5-foot-1 woman, there have been times at busy bars when I’ve wondered, “does my bartender even know I’m here?” The short answer is, yes — which is why most of the bartenders I spoke with didn’t see the basic need for this sort of system at all.

“Really good bartenders are really good at their own facial recognition algorithm, which is called common sense,” Rob Ready, the co-owner of the SF bar Piano Fight, said.

Essentially, the problem that this is purporting to solve is that people have trouble getting served in a fair order, in a timely fashion.

“The unspoken presupposition for at least the way they frame it is that bartenders have no idea what they’re doing, and don’t know how to handle this stuff,” Rizvi said. “We know what’s going on. We see it all.”

If the value proposition of the product is to be believed, bartenders, supposedly, have a hard time keeping track of who arrived when, and who needs a drink. According to the bartenders, this is one of the challenges of being a bartender, but not an insurmountable one. In fact, being able to manage this is part of what makes a bartender good at their job.

“The best bartenders are very present, and know what’s going on in their surroundings,” Olivia Hu, the co-owner of Oldtimers in Bushwick, said.

The Breakers, where Rizvi works, is one of those multiple-people-deep, all-the-way-around-the-bar, hot Brooklyn weekend spots. He says that service is challenging, but all bartenders have their patterns and workflow that make them, ya know, qualified for their jobs.

“We’re not computers, obviously, and I guess that’s kind of the point here,” Rizvi said. “But we have a habitual checking of things in certain orders that ultimately will average to everyone getting dealt with evenly.”

In short: Calm down, the bartender will get to you.

“Maybe it could work in a non-tipping culture”

The person this system seems made for is, again, someone who feels like they have problems getting served. But there’s a simple solution to this problem, that doesn’t take money out of the pockets of your hard-working barkeep: tipping.

“It’s the people that don’t take care of the bartenders that tend to get forgotten at the bar,” Daniel Keaveney, a veteran Las Vegas casino bartender who is currently works at the downtown Las Vegas restaurant Esther’s Kitchen, said.

Keaveney stressed that discretion about who gets served is a huge part of a bartender’s job, especially in a place like Las Vegas. Automating the service line simply would not work in a place with a “tipping culture” where high rollers and good tippers expect service, pronto — and where bartenders rely on those tips, too.

Keaveney and the other bartenders acknowledged that tipping culture in Europe, where this product comes from, is very different.

“Maybe it could work in a non-tipping culture,” Keaveney said.

But in a place like Vegas, or even Bushwick, this system would change the way bartenders target tipping customers, especially loyal ones. It is possible, though, that supposedly equitable service orchestrated by AI could provide more tips from happy customers, but the bartenders I spoke to didn’t express that.

Plus, discretion in serving isn’t all about tips.

“It’s a very human interaction”

There’s a sacred relationship between a bartender and a customer, one that is not always necessarily financial. An AI just wouldn’t get that.

“I understand the nuances of serving alcohol,” Hu added. “It’s a very human interaction.”

Bartenders cultivate regulars by actually having conversations. Or bartenders can mete out drinks like justice, awarding the well-behaved, while teaching the assholes a lesson. It’s also up to bartenders to look out for the safety of their patrons. Ultimately, the bartenders believe that an AI system would get in the way of all of that.

“A big part of bars is social interaction,” Ready said. “If you come up to a bar, and you’re a dick to the bartender, then, yeah, it might take them a little bit longer to come serve you the next time around. And that’s good because it teaches people to not be dicks to service industry professionals.”

Bartenders also use a lot of personal judgment when deciding whether or not to hand an intoxicated person another drink. Maybe, eventually, an AI might be able to read that. But right now, a queue system might make cutting someone off way too complicated if they’re insisting on being served because their number is up.

“That is one of the major responsibilities of a bartender, to know when someone might be harming themselves with alcohol,” Hu said. “It’s difficult for a computer to make that call.”

“You’re trying to apply data and tech in a context that is very human,” Ready said. “That’s what doesn’t seem to fit.”

“I’d be creeped out”

DataSparQ said that it interviewed 2,000 people to learn that one of the reasons people leave bars is because they don’t like waiting in lines. But Ready thinks a wait in line is nothing compared to a machine capturing your biometric data and broadcasting it for everyone at the bar to see.

“I wonder if there was a question that said, if you saw yourself in a livestream video behind the bar, and the thing was scanning your face, and recognizing your emotions, where would that fall in the list of reasons to leave that bar?” Ready asked, um, hypothetically. “I’d be creeped out.”

Cities, countries, public, and private spaces are all grappling with whether and how to introduce facial recognition. These bartenders thought a watering hole was not a good place to start.

“There’s a privacy thing within a bar. You’re supposed to feel safe in a bar,” Keaveney said. “Maybe I don’t want to be seen in that bar like that, maybe I’m trying to hide out a little bit.”

To the bartenders, making a service system automated and transparent to customers doesn’t seem worth giving over your precious, biometric data.

“This doesn’t sound like anything more than a glorified take-a-number kind of system, and I don’t see why it has to collect your data in order to do that,” Rizvi said.

“You’re fixing something that’s not really broken”

Mostly, bartenders were flummoxed by how the system would actually help them.

“There’s never a situation where the bar is busy because there’s a ton of people there, and the solution is, ‘someone help these bartenders with facial recognition technology,'” Rizvi said.

First, they questioned how adding the extra step of consulting a tablet would actually make them able to serve more people, as the company claimed in its press release. Wouldn’t having to check a tablet, and match a face to a line item in a tablet, end up taking more time?

“They’re trying to solve a problem by creating a bigger problem,” Ready said.

Next, one of the problems the tech says it aims to solve is people pushing, shoving, and cutting in line. But the bartenders — keen observers of human nature — said that surely customers would find a way to game the system (say, by palling up with whoever’s first in line).

Finally, if someone really is bothered by waiting in line for a drink, they can always just … go to another bar.

“If you’re in a busy bar, there’s going to be a lot of people,” Rizvi said. “If you don’t like that, go to a different bar. There will always will be one.”

Mostly, the bartenders just didn’t see the need for the product in the first place. Yes, bars get busy. But it’s a bartender’s job to manage that, and a customer’s job to trust that person — and treat that person well — in order to keep the bar the functioning, very human place that it is.

“It just feels to me like it’s a fancy use of tech to solve problems that don’t exist,” Ready said.

Or, in Rizvi’s words, “you’re fixing something that’s not really broken.”

Feature Image Credit: Datasparq 

By Rachel Kraus

Sourced from Mashable

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Voice and Tone: An Integral Part of Your Email Marketing Strategy

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Sourced from www.squareup.com

Voice and tone determine what you say to customers, and how to say it. 

Hitting the right voice and tone in emails ensures that you can reach your customers in a meaningful and authentic way. It may seem tricky at first, but we promise it’s easy once you get the basics down.

What is the difference between voice and tone?

Simply put, voice is what you say to your customers (the message) and tone is how you say it (the attitude with which you state your message).

Think of voice as the personality of your email –– how do you want to come across to your customers? Your voice should remain consistent throughout your messaging. To find your voice, think about the values of your company and what message you want to share with your audience.

Tone, on the other hand, is the attitude of what you’re saying in your email. And just like your attitude can change, so can your tone. Your tone can be whimsical, serious, or even funny — if that’s the attitude you’re trying to convey.

Finding your voice and tone

So now that you know what voice and tone are, how do you find them? That’s a great question. It depends on your goals for your email marketing strategy and overall brand.

If you’re new to email marketing and need help settling on your tone and voice, we recommend writing three different emails to express the same message — let’s say to offer a coupon for ten percent off a purchase. Write the email in three different voices to your ideal customer with what you would say to them about this coupon.

Once you’ve written three emails in three different voices, see which one resonates most with you. Which email sounds most like you and represents your brand the most authentically? Have it? Great – that’s your voice.

Now, let’s move to tone. Do you want your emails to feel silly, heartfelt, or maybe even objective in your emails? Again, test out a few different email by taking the email that you wrote to find your voice and now try out a few different tones with that message. How does that feel? Are you presenting your audience with the right attitude?

After you’ve settled on your tone, take note of your voice and tone with a few words that can act as your North Star when you’re writing your email. For instance, perhaps your voice is conversational, and your tone is funny. Write this information down and keep it next to you when you’re writing your marketing emails -— it will help you stay consistent in both voice and tone, which is incredibly important in marketing.

Using voice and tone in email marketing

This brings us to our next point: consistency. Once you’re comfortable (dare we say even excited?) about your voice and tone, it’s important that you stick with it. That’s not to say you can’t crack a joke here and there even if you have gone with a more formal tone, but for the majority of your emails, they should sound the same.

The more consistent you are with voice and tone, the more recognizable your brand will be to customers who receive your email. That consistency helps your email stand out from all of the other messages in their inbox.

Think of it this way: Your audience should be able to tell it’s your email even if they couldn’t see your shop’s name in the email — that’s how distinct you want your voice to be. So whether you’re writing a welcome or happy birthday email, you should let your North Star guide you.

Sourced from www.squareup.com

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How Color Impacts UX

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By Carrie Cousins

Color impacts everything from how a user feels when they interact with a design, to how they use the design, to whether they can fully see and understand it. Quite simply, color is a lot more than a decorative tool; color is central to user experience.

Let’s start with a common example: You’ve just finished a website design for someone. It looks and functions exactly like the wireframe. Everyone on the design team has praised the project. The client hates it, but they can’t explain why.

The culprit might be color. Different colors can evoke such strong emotions that people have sharp reactions to them. It’s part personal preference, part psychological, and even part social norms. Understanding these tendencies and user preferences can greatly impact user experience.

Here’s what you need to know.

User Expectations and Preferences

User experience starts with the type of user your website or app is designed for. Basic demographics such as gender or region where a user lives can impact their perception of your design based on color. (You can read more about color and cultural considerations here.)

One of the most interesting impacts from color on UX is linked to gender. Studies have shown that men and women tend to like and dislike certain types of color.

swatch

Men tend to interact more with websites that have darker design schemes and more saturated colors, such as the design for VLNC Studio, above.

Women tend to prefer to interact with websites that have lighter design schemes and more muted color palettes, such as Tally, below.

Some men have a sharp reaction to websites using distinctly feminine colors such as pastel pinks, purples, and yellows.

More women tend to be put off by websites with harsh color schemes such as dark background with fully saturated red accents.

Mid-tone palettes are the most generally appealing to everyone.

swatch

Color Associations and Meanings

While it’s not an exact science, colors have fairly distinct emotional associations. Note that some colors can fall into categories of extremes. These associations tend to work with other design elements to create an overall vibe.

When a user sees a certain color or combination of colors, it creates an immediate response in the brain.

  • Red: Power, danger, love/passion, hunger
  • Yellow: Energy, happiness, light, warmth
  • Orange: Creativity, determination, stimulation, encouragement
  • Green: Nature, growth, harmony, freshness
  • Blue: Confidence, trust, serenity, calmness
  • Purple: Magic, royalty, ambition, independence

Establishing Brand Recognition

swatch

You expect design elements for Coca-Cola to be red. The color is so synonymous with the brand that it’s referred to as “Coke red.” Change the color and the brand is confusing. You don’t recognize it right away. The user is jarred and doesn’t quite react in the expected fashion. The drink might even seem to taste different.

All of those feelings come from changing the color. You might have felt yourself say “what?” when you saw the first image with green Coca-Cola branding.

swatch

It impacted the user experience you would have with the brand moving forward.

Color is an important element in branding because it creates that distinct connected between a user and a design. Color tells users what the brand is about. It tells users about the thing they are about to engage with.

Change that color, or use something off brand, and the user experience suffers because website visitors are suddenly confused or uncertain about the brand they thought they knew.

User Patterns Connect to Color

Have you noticed how many websites use red or orange buttons?

There’s a reason for that.

Bright colored buttons that contrast with the background of a website – red and orange often stand out from either light or dark backgrounds. Can help users find, understand, and want to engage with click- or tappable elements because they visually, and immediately, know what their expectation of that element is.

A key part of user experience is providing easy opportunities for users to interact that they enjoy and understand.

swatch

Cruise uses a ghost-style button with red text and a red hover state. It’s a different spin on traditional solid-color buttons, but there’s little question as to how to interact with it. Color draws users to the button.

bluez

Net Bluez uses a bright orange button for the most important element in the navigation menu. Notice how that element tends to jump off the screen begging to be clicked.

Increasing Conversion Rates

Challenge yourself in the design process to A/B Test button color. You’ll likely find that one color has a distinctly higher conversion rate than the other. (And it might not be the color you expect.)

Conversion rates tend to increase when the color of buttons or links is in stark contrast to the rest of the design. So, while you want to use a brand palette, picking a contrast color is key to generating conversions that contribute to overall user experience.

Look at the website below for a minute. Which color button is most likely to make you click? (The original color is blue.)

swatch

Providing Accessibility to All Users

Finally, color impacts UX in a way that’s not emotional or rooted in psychology. It’s much more practical than that.

Color impacts user experience because it can make a design accessible or not.

In order for everyone to understand a design fully, and engage with content, they must be able to see and read it with ease. Using color palettes and contrast ratios that fall in line with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) can ensure that every user can understand your color choices.

Use a color-blind filter, such as those in the comparisons below, to help simulate what other users might see when they look at your website. How could that impact usability?

swatch
swatch

Conclusion

Think of color as a tool to help users better interact and experience the content on your website. It impacts user experience on an emotional and usability level.

The key to figuring out if color is impacting UX in the right way is through user testing. A/B color tests can be a valuable tool.

By Carrie Cousins

Carrie Cousins is a freelance writer with more than 10 years of experience in the communications industry, including writing for print and online publications, and design and editing. You can connect with Carrie on Twitter @carriecousins. More articles by Carrie Cousins

Sourced from WebDesignDepot

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