How to Overcome Fear

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Tony Robbins- Financial Freedom

5 Ways to Ensure Blogging Failure and How to Avoid Them

The vast majority of blogs are business failures. It’s harsh, but it’s true.

Why do these blogs fail?

It’s because they make the same mistakes over, and over. Sadly, many of these mistakes are based on misconceptions taught to them by blogging “gurus”.

These 5 tactics aren’t “mistakes.” They’re slow and deliberate strategies to make sure you can never build a business out of your blog, and you’ve probably been taught to think that they will actually help.

Read on to learn the secrets of blogging failure you need to avoid.

1. Prioritize social media over email

Without a doubt, one of the easiest ways to doom your blog is to put social media first. Here’s why:

• The average Facebook post currently makes its way to just 6.15 percent of your audience. Meanwhile, according to Mailchimp, the average email gets opened by more than 20 percent of your audience. And that’s not even apples to oranges, because I’m pretty sure nearly 100 percent of your audience will at least see your email subject line.
• The average click through rate on Twitter is 1.64 percent, and that was back in 2012. If you have more than 10k followers, you can expect that click through rate to drop to 0.45 percent. Meanwhile, the average email has a click rate of about 3.5 percent according to the Mailchimp study mentioned earlier.
• Email allows you segment your audience by their behavior and only send messages that are relevant to the recipient. This isn’t possible on social networks.
• Social media sites are built around bite-size, visual pieces of content, not blog posts. In fact, a recent study found that there is “effectively no correlation between social shares and people actually reading.” Sharing and reading are two very different activities, and a blog post that gets shared often isn’t necessarily going to get read by anybody.
• Average conversion rates are only 0.71 percent on social networks. The average conversion rate through email is 3.19 percent. That’s almost five times higher.

For all of these reasons, it’s a dramatic waste of time and energy to put social media ahead of email as a way to stay in touch with your audience.

Social networks are terrible as a customer retention tool, and they shouldn’t be used for that purpose. Social media isn’t for retention. It’s for exposure.

While there’s certainly nothing wrong with asking visitors to Like your Facebook page or follow your Twitter account, these calls to action should always take second place to email.

Take Jeff’s sidebar as an example. At the very top, you see an offer to sign up for updates and get his free eBook. Below that, you see a link to the webinar he’s hosting with Alex Pirouz, then a link to the post he wrote about setting up a blog, a call to action to buy his book, and a search bar.

Finally, after all that, you see a call to action to follow his social accounts.

Meanwhile, in the left sidebar, you see social networks being used for their proper purpose: as sharing tools. This helps get the word out so that more people can actually find out about his blog. But those visitors probably won’t be worth very much unless they sign up for email updates.

That’s the important distinction.

2. Choose a “niche” (instead of a USP)

This is one of the best ways to ensure blogging obscurity, bonus points because everybody seems to make this mistake.

Before you jump down my throat, I’m not saying you shouldn’t choose a niche. I am saying that “niche” puts all the emphasis on the wrong thing, and it can cloud your judgment. Niche comes second, if at all.

What comes first is your unique selling proposition.

If you’re already selling a product, I’m sure you know that it needs to have a USP, something that separates it from the competition. A USP doesn’t make your product “better” or “cheaper” than the competition. It makes it different in a specific way that is appealing a particular kind of consumer.

I’m asking you to do the same thing for your blog.

See, most bloggers choose a “subject” or a “niche” and start blogging about that. Then they start asking themselves how they can be “better” than the other bloggers in their “niche.” This gets problematic fast, and not just because “better” is such a vague term.

Here’s why:

• Who is going to promote you? Usually, it’s other bloggers. If “niche” is the first thing on your mind, you’re going to spend most of your efforts convincing other bloggers in your niche to promote you. But those people are your competitors. On the other hand, if “USP” is the first thing on your mind, you’re going to think about potential customers and ask yourself where those people are spending their time. You’ll quickly realize that they are spending their time in many places besides other “niche” blogs. In fact, some bloggers are potential customers themselves.
• Who are you writing for? With “niche” on your mind, you’ll usually end up writing for other experts. You need to be able to impress the other niche bloggers, after all, or they aren’t going to promote you. In contrast, with “USP” on your mind, you’re going to write for the people that matter: your potential customers.
• How will you come up with new ideas? Niches are limiting. New ideas usually come from some combination of insights from several different subjects. If the subject of your blog is too narrow, you will have a very difficult time coming up with new ideas.
• How will you avoid boredom? No matter how obsessive people are about a subject, the human brain craves novelty. If you don’t mix up your subject matter at least a little, you will bore your readers. More importantly, you or your writers will get bored, and it will show in the quality of your work. If you want to “niche down,” focus on a tighter group of people, not a tighter subject matter.
• A USP means you don’t have to be “better” than the other bloggers in your niche. It simply means that you are more attractive to a specific kind of reader with a specific set of needs.

Jeff’s blog is successful because he writes for bloggers, instead of writing about blogging. See the difference?

3. Assume building more links is always the solution

If you’re determined to fail, try to solve all of your problems by building more links.

You’ve probably heard before that “links are the most important ranking factor” that Google uses to rank web pages. So, if you build more links, your rankings go up, and you get more visitors. Right?

Not necessarily.

I’m sure you already know that overzealous link building can get you penalized by a Google employee or hit by an algorithm update like Penguin.

What you might not have considered is this. Google’s position on links has always been that “any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”

More importantly, from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines: “Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?” If the answer is no, you’re pushing the limits.

In short, you shouldn’t build links unless it makes sense for reasons outside of SEO.

But there’s actually another reason why you shouldn’t place so much emphasis on building links.

Links aren’t the “most important” ranking factor.

Why? For the simple reason that there is no single “most important” ranking factor.

Look at the search results for any query. They’re never going to be arranged from the page with the most links to the page with the least, or even by some related metric like Moz’s Page Authority. There are hundreds of other ranking factors at work, and which one matters the “most” is always going to depend on context.

Let me put it this way. If your Moz Domain Authority is at 25 and you aren’t getting at least 5,000 unique search visitors per month, you’re probably placing too much emphasis on links. It’s time to diversify your subjects, stop chasing competitive search terms, focus on building a repeat audience, and start publishing more often.

4. Chase the news

Sometimes the best way to doom your blog is to copy the successful strategy of mainstream publications and start reporting the news. It works for them, right? Most of them aren’t even breaking a story. They’re just regurgitating something they found in a press release or read in another mainstream publication.

Here’s the problem. Your blog isn’t the New York Times.

Big publications can get away with regurgitating the news because they have established credibility and massive audiences. The good ones also occasionally break a story here or there before anybody else.

As a small time blogger, it’s a very bad idea to simply report the news. There’s no reason for readers to take it from you when they can hear it from a major news source.

The only way this can work is if you actually do some real investigative journalism and break a story of your own.

In general, people don’t subscribe to small time blogs because they report the news. They typically follow a blog because it offers something useful or entertaining, preferably both.

If you do discuss the news, it should be in that context. You need to offer a unique spin on it that will make it useful or entertaining in a way that fits your USP.

5. Try to be BuzzFeed (instead of learning from their example)

You’ve probably read at least one blog post titled something like “How to Copy BuzzFeed and Crash Your Server With Traffic that Resembles a Small Scale DoS Attack.” Some of these posts are pretty good, too. But trying to do exactly what BuzzFeed does is a very bad idea.

Here’s why.

• “Virality” is overrated. After analyzing a billion events on Twitter, Microsoft Research and Stanford University failed to find a single tweet that broke out of the “subcritical” regime. In other words, even the most popular tweets can’t really be considered “viral” in the sense that, on average, each person successfully shares the content with more than one friend. Instead, the most successful tweets made their way to an influential “node” in the network. In other words, it’s more about reaching influential people than it is about creating something intrinsically viral. Think “poisoning the waterhole,” not “viral pandemic.”
• While curated content can help expand your reach, it’s very transparent that you played no role in creating the content. If you don’t provide any value of your own, audiences will go straight to the source. You can’t beat sites like BuzzFeed or Reddit at curating viral content.
• While almost any good blog has some appeal to mainstream audiences, focusing too much on mainstream appeal will land you an audience that has no interest in buying from you. Don’t neglect your core audience.
• Pure entertainment is a poor motivator to subscribe to a blog. There are simply too many sites with too much entertaining content. Between Cracked, YouTube, BuzzFeed, Hulu, and Reddit, most consumers have more than enough content to keep themselves entertained. Unless you have it in you to be a professional entertainer, you can’t compete with entertainment sites.

You can learn a lot from BuzzFeed about how to get clicks and shares, but outright copying BuzzFeed is a bad idea. Your USP comes first.

Put it to work

I’m probably safe in assuming that you’re not reading this because you want to guarantee your blog fails. So let’s recap what you can actually put to use:

1. Put email before social media. Email is the best channel to stay in touch with your audience. Social “subscribers” are close to useless.
2. Define a USP, not a “niche.” Put another way, write for your ideal customers, and promote yourself where your ideal customers spend their time. Don’t write for niche experts and try to convince your competitors to promote you.
3. There’s more to the search engines than links. Diversifying, choosing less competitive subjects, and publishing more often can do just as much to improve your search traffic.
4. Write “evergreen content” that stands the test of time, as opposed to regurgitating the news. When you do discuss current events, it’s best if you add your own unique spin, draw interesting connections, or break your own stories.
5. It’s more important to provide actionable advice than it is to be entertaining. While your content will perform better if it is entertaining, entertainment should be used as a garnish or a spice, not as the main course.

Use these insights to become a genuine blogging success.

Guest Author: Pratik Dholakiya is the Co-Founder & VP of Marketing of a digital marketing agency, E2M & a creative design firm, OnlyDesign. He’s passionate about startup marketing, entrepreneurship & all things inbound marketing.

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10 Questions to Ask Before Quitting Your Job to Start a Business

Giving up the security of a full-time job to start your own business is a risky, often stressful move. "The biggest reason people don't end up quitting is the fear of uncertainty. They don't know what might happen and they don't want to give up the security that they already have," says Sean Ogle, who quit a job in finance to live in Thailand and run a virtual search engine optimization and Web consultancy.

How do you know when the time is right to make the leap? Here are 10 questions to ask before you quit your job.

Are you just miserable in your current job?
Some people who think they want to be entrepreneurs are just unhappy in their current roles, says Pamela Slim, the Mesa, Ariz.-based author of Escape from Cubicle Nation (Penguin, 2010). Developing a thorough business plan can help you avoid any impulsive decisions. "In addition to wanting to quit, you have to have a viable business idea and an effective marketing and operations plan," she says. As you work on your plan, she advises, keep your job and income as long as possible.

What will your new day-to-day routine be like?
Instant freedom can be dangerous. Ogle recommends developing a daily schedule to follow, just as you did in your 9-to-5 job. "When you now have all of this free time it gets really easy to say, 'Oh, I'll do that later'," he says. The week after quitting his job, Ogle started going to the gym at the same time he would have arrived at his old office each morning. And after the gym, he worked the same hours that he did for his former employer.

How will you raise money to keep the business going? 
Lack of capital is one of the main hurdles to entrepreneurship. Rather than figuring out cash flow as you go along, it's best to come up with realistic projections as part of your business plan before deciding whether you can afford to leave your job. Your business may not be profitable for three to five years, so it's important to be realistic about how you'll support yourself financially, says Sharon Lechter, author ofThree Feet From Gold: Turn Your Obstacles Into Opportunities (Sterling Publishing, 2009) and a financial literacy expert in Phoenix. Anticipating your financial needs "allows you to focus your energy on building your new business rather than worrying how you are going to pay the bills," she says.

Have you factored in possible unforeseen costs?
When Jody Dyer launched Blackbird Tees, an apparel company in Richmond, Va., she was surprised by the many expenses her business plan hadn't anticipated. We spent "thousands of dollars experimenting with different fabric styles and inks, messing up screens, destroying shirts, making the wrong color choices," says Dyer, who sells her products on Etsy. "At the time, those errors were financially crippling." Rather than going out of business, Dyer fell back on freelance copywriting gigs to make ends meet. "Supplementing your income through freelance or part-time work can alleviate some of that strain," she says.

Are you willing to take on multiple roles?
Starting a business means you'll be wearing many hats. "One day you are the tech person, one day you are the salesperson, one day you are the cleaning person," says Shobha Tummala, founder of an eponymous chain of beauty salons in New York City. "You can't have an ego." So before leaving your job, you need to decide if you will be happy performing a variety of functions, from marketing to maintenance. 

What are your strengths and weaknesses?
As you consider the multiple roles, be honest with yourself about what you're best at and where you need to improve, Tummala advises. Perhaps you need to beef up your programming skills or understanding of finance--or find a partner with a complementary skill set. If you don't have a way to overcome your weaknesses, it may be best to stay in your current role. 

Who are your future customers--and competitors?While you may not be able to thoroughly test the market potential for your business concept, you should at least understand who your likely customers are and what kind of competition you would face. If you're not quite sure, consider pursuing your idea part-time, suggests Ellen Rohr, president of Bare Bones Biz, a small-business consultancy in Rogersville, Mo. "You can test your plan and adjust it in a soft launch before you sink too much into an unprofitable venture."

Is your support network on board?
To help ease the transition, you should share your entrepreneurial plans with family members and see if they support the tradeoffs involved in starting a business. Be quite explicit about the risks, Slim says. "When one person goes into business, everyone in the family unit is affected." If your partner and other members of your support network are reluctant to back your idea, you may want to rethink quitting your current job.

Do you have a backup option?
Developing a plan B before going off on your own will help you avoid getting blindsided. Is there something you can do part-time if you need to temporarily bring in money, or will you need to seek new full-time employment and put your plans on hold? To keep your options open, stay in contact with recruiters, previous employers and other networking contacts.

How will you avoid burning bridges? 
If you decide to quit, remember that your employer could be helpful to you as you launch your new venture. Rather than resign abruptly, figure out a way to leave in good standing. Give plenty of notice to help your employer handle the transition. And be open about your future entrepreneurial plans, Ogle says. "Usually [companies] will understand it, and even offer to help out however they can." Employers can assist by giving you flexible time off or retaining your services as a consultant.

ALINA DIZIK 

Alina Dizik is a freelance journalist and writer based in New York City. Her work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, iVillage, Moremagazine, The Knot, BusinessWeek and the Financial Times.

Read The Original Article At Entrepreneur

How to Use a Blog as the Cornerstone of Your Content Marketing

Content Marketing seems to be the buzzword thrown around a lot by businesses today. Everywhere you turn, experts state that you must use content to build your brand.

Well, that is great and all, but how do you actually accomplish this mighty goal with the blog as the cornerstone of your content marketing?

That is where this post comes in. We want to tell you how to implement a content marketing strategy with your blog that can make an impact in your business.

Top to bottom content marketing

Content marketing doesn’t start with content… it needs a plan.

1. Have a strategy

One of the biggest challenges most content marketers have is that they just start creating content.

That does not work. You must understand the value of the content you are creating. Every piece of content should be getting your business closer to your stated goals.

For example, if you created a blog and your aim is to add one client per month, then you need to determine how many blog posts you need to post per month to achieve this goal.

An easy way to do this is to work backwards. What percentage of your prospects become clients? Next, determine how many leads or email subscriptions you receive from each blog post.

Based on those numbers you can then set your target blog post count per month. As time goes by you can adjust the numbers to match your conversion rates or to increase the number of clients obtained.

Take the idea above of adding one new client per month. If your close ratio is 1 out of 10, then you need your blog to produce 10 leads per month. If each post produces three leads, then you will need at least one post per month to succeed.

2.  Find out what your clients want

Have you ever written a blog post that you thought was just brilliant? Seriously, if it was any better, you would think that it was divinely inspired.

Then you proudly share your work, only to receive a lackluster response. What happened? Likely you wrote your blog post for yourself and not your audience. 

Writing a blog post is different than writing a journal or diary entry. In the later, you get to muse, note down your personal thoughts and observations, as well as dwell on whatever topic takes your fancy.

In a blog post, you need to remember that interaction is the name of the game. This means, you should ask your clients, readers, and prospects what they want to hear about on your blog. Use polling software like Survey Monkey or Gravity Forms to find out what your readers want you to talk about on the blog.

Then you will not have to guess what to discuss. You will know what information your audience craves.

3. Be a resource

You are not blogging to make money. You are blogging to be a resource to your clients and prospects. This means helping them whenever possible.

By providing information on your blog you offer added value to your prospects. This is something they will remember when they need your services.

Creating value can mean anything from providing them with the information they need (education), entertainment, free giveaways, or inspiration. As mentioned in the previous point, find out what your readers want and then deliver on that need.

Some sites like Buzzfeed deliver value by creating interesting lists of memes. Many an hour is wasted reading 15 Game of Thrones Pickup Lines, Cats Who Look Better with Bangs, and other “needed” topics of discussion.

On another note, writing a blog post about content marketing tips could be very valuable to bloggers. (Deep thoughts!)

4. Marketing is 80% of content marketing

Once a blog post is published, the real work begins. While this is the point where most authors think they are done, the truth is that marketing should be 80% of the work you do on a blog post. That way, it has the chance to get the widest possible audience.

How do you market your content then?

First, this is where your social network plays a big part. If you are consistently adding targeted connections to your social networks, you will find that those people will be your target market and the most likely to check out your blog posts.

Have accounts set up on the major social networks. Then make sure to post your content at regular intervals on the social networks relevant to your business. Linked, Google+, and Facebook all have amazing groups where you can begin to develop a rapport with other members. Just remember that if you only post your own content in the group, you will be quickly ignored.  In fact, 80% of your contributions should not be about your own content, but a mixture of information, sharing, and communicating with others.

Furthermore, once you have published content, remember to let your email list know. That way, instead of only sending them offers, you are providing them with valuable information they can use.

Sponsored Ads are another option to promote your content. You can use paid search to help you garner targeted visitors to your content. This works really well with Facebook and Twitter sponsored posts, as well as Google and Bing Pay Per Click ads.

5. Connect with influencers

Since blogging is about gaining influence, you have to accept the fact that in today’s market someone will generally be a stronger blogger in your field than you are. That is OK, because you get the chance to connect with them to see how you can create a mutually beneficial relationship.

Start connecting with influencers in your field. You will be surprised how big a role they will play in your business over the years. People you meet at conferences, can become business partners, or joint venture partners promoting your products.

In today’s fluid online business environment, there are no true competitors. Those people who might be your competitors might well be the ones most likely to share your content to their social network.

This means you need to spend time developing relationships with influencers in your industry. If you are afraid of competitors, then find synergistic partners you can have a mutually beneficial relationship.

Putting together a campaign

Now that you have steps needed to create a great campaign, it is time to take action. Content marketing takes time to work successfully, so do not start a campaign in 6 months after extensive planning. Start a blog today from ideas you already have, learn from your mistakes, and understand how a content marketing strategy can help increase contacts, build relationships and ultimately increase business opportunities. 

Guest author: Richard Barker is the Marketing Manager at Harrison Mann, a UK based Web Design, SEO, PPC and Digital Marketing Agency. Over the past 9 years he has successfully worked with organisations around the world and also built up his own sites, such as Adelto, from scratch. Connect with him on Twitter. 

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How to Grow your Brand on Twitter

With Twitter now eclipsing 200 million active users and on the verge of an IPO, there can no longer be any doubt that Twitter will become a regular feature on the docket of marketing executives. The company Twitter will be on a prolonged offensive to develop its business and monetize its base.  The question then becomes, from a brand’s perspective, how to grow your brand on Twitter?

Objectives first

The first point of call is to figure out what are the overall business objectives and to understand how social media — and in this case Twitter — will be a contributing factor in the overall strategy.  With these objectives clearly in mind, the next consideration is to figure out what you will be measuring against.  For example, where is it that you want the Twitter users to go (i.e. create a funnel)?  What actions do you want to stimulate (e.g. subscribe to a newsletter)?   Once the objectives and measuring sticks have been identified, then a strategy and implementation plan comes into focus.

Twitter Options

Having established the objectives, the question remains as to how to grow your brand using Twitter.  Below are several typical usages for Twitter.  These are arguably transfers of traditional business functions onto another channel.  Only the first is demonstrably about hitting the top line.

• Sales Channel (e.g. DellOutlet, SteamyDeals [Steam video games]).  Other brands use their Twitter to announce deals or offer coupons within their stream.  Whole Foods is one of the more recent ones to join this bandwagon.  With pure players and/or those with eCommerce sites, this avenue is easy to control and measure.  However, it is a more complex affair in a cross-channel environment.
• PR or Corporate Communications - To broadcast corporate messages, for example press releases and/or shareholder information (e.g. LOrealUSACorp)
• HR Recruitment / Careers - To speak to and hire new recruits (e.g. Nestle USA Careers)
• Customer Service (e.g. JetBlue, NikeSupport,ComcastCares…).  According to an infographic produced by Sentiment Metrics, 30% of top brands now have a dedicated customer service on Twitter.

Unlike on a Facebook page or in LinkedIn Groups or Forums, a brand’s Twitter followers are not a tight knit community. Each person or account has chosen to follow the brand, but does not necessarily interact with other followers.  After all, 80% of all Twitter accounts do not actively tweet.  Moreover, the notion of unfollowing on Twitter is done with little friction.

What counts on Twitter?

Twitter has unique differences to the traditional media channels and we have seen some very original and different ways of using Twitter to help drive the business.  A healthy Twitter account should typically have a combination of the four components below:

• Conversation - Procter & Gamble uses their principal handle with a declared intent to “keep the conversation going.”  Conversation is the part that makes Twitter social.  Accounts that are uniquely one-way broadcasts can quickly become stale or viewed as a kind of spam.
• Content creation and distribution - Twitter can be suitable to distribute content that is being created within the organization.  An example is IBM.  The key is creating valuable content for one’s follower base.
• Curation - Rather than focusing on one’s own content, brands can use Twitter to uncover and dispatch the most relevant news out there.  According to a recent Livefyre study, 93% of respondents said that they used Twitter for social curation.  As Livefyre’s CEO, Jordan Kretchmer, said, “[p]eople are talking about your brand every day. Social curation enables marketers to tap into what people are already saying about your brand on social networks and then use it to promote their products in an effective, authentic way.”
• News - Especially when it’s hot.  The bakery, Albion’s Oven, in London has been using Twitter since 2009 to great effect, announcing when the latest baked items were hot out of the oven.
• Customer Service (e.g. JetBlue, NikeSupport, ComcastCares…).  According to an infographic produced by SentimentMetrics, 30% of top brands now have a dedicated customer service on Twitter.

6 keys to grow your brand on Twitter

Notwithstanding all the above usages, there are several key ways how to grow your brand on Twitter.

1. Integrating.  On the very basic level, it is important that your Twitter account have a well thought through bio, replete with a pertinent link.  Moreover, your Twitter presence should be fully integrated into all other marketing materials, including substantively the home page of your main website.  The Twitter handle (aka username) can also be farmed out throughout events, on business cards and more.
2. Listening.  Twitter is a vibrant space and, considering the volume of tweets, it is likely that there are people talking at anytime about you, your competitors and/or your environment.  By listening intently to existing and potential customers, there are inevitably opportunities that open up, whether in the B2B or B2C space.  I highly encourage C-suite executives to use Twitter just to listen to what is going on in the street, thereby side-stepping the internal hierarchies that can often obscure the truth.  A great example of such behavior is the CEO of O2 in England, Ronan Dunne, who as he says uses his account to “walk the aisles.”
3. Demonstrating expertise.  To the extent Twitter is a micro-blogging service (where blogs are a long form way of highlighting one’s expertise), it can be a good vehicle to establish one’s authority in a certain field.  The key point here is to think of one’s brand as a media or publishing company.  Twitter can be a useful part of the arsenal in creating a sense of authority in a chosen sector.
4. Providing offers.  Twitter can be a way to distribute offers, coupons or straight discounts.  Whether the offers are separated into a dedicated “sales” channel or integrated into the stream of the main account, Twitter’s particularity is the rapid decay of Tweets.  Typically, this makes it an ideal channel for flash sale sites.  However, it can also be applied for other offline stores.  The key is figuring out the association between the tweet and the cash register — and making sure the staff are appropriately trained and equipped.
5. Identifying leads.  The search function is an effective way to find interesting contacts.  Sometimes finding leads can be done the soft route, by answering questions of people in need (relative to your area of expertise).  Otherwise, there are many people asking questions and looking for goods/services.  Fixing up some automated searches (using a client such as HootSuite or Tweetdeck to set up columns) can be an effective way to monitor these requests.  Meanwhile, as of end of August 2013, Twitter has rolled out Lead Generation Cards which can only be used with promoted tweets.  As published in a Mashable article,“[i]n a case study quoted on Twitter’s blog, outdoor gear and apparel company Rock/Creek saw a 4.6% engagement rate and generated more than 1,700 new email contacts in one week by using a Card within a Promoted Tweet.”
6. Creating contests / white papers / webinars.  By formulating exclusive contests on Twitter, one can add names to a mailing list and/or establish new leads.  An alternative might be to offer free white papers or webinars.

Conclusions

The key point in using Twitter to grow your brand is to know what you want to achieve, to set out some measurable goals and then test and learn.  It is essential to find an editorial line that respects the followers, because they can very quickly and easily unsubscribe.  Secondly, it’s important to think of this as a longer-term project, without concerning oneself with immediate results.  Buying followers via any of the quick fix services (eg SocialKik, FanBullet) is not prescribed,even at the beginning.  Thirdly, a Twitter feed must be managed.  If you are in start-up mode, training and guidelines are vital.  Members of a team managing the accounts need to play off each other and are ideally identified in the bio (e.g. for ComcastCares) or are recognized in the individual tweets (e.g. via ^initials).    Finally, Twitter cannot be a standalone.  For example, when creating a Customer Service line via Twitter, there usually needs to be other channels to cater to different audiences.

Parting tips: If you are going to be serious about building your brand on Twitter, here are three guiding principles:

• (a) Consider carefully the objective of the account(s) and allocate the right resources (including people, tools and time)
• (b) Listen, test and learn
• (c) Give before expecting in return

Your thoughts and comments are, as ever, welcome.

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How To Find And Do Work That You Love

So this is the kind of video that makes the hair stand on your back. 

You know the kind of video that doesn't need words to explain it because once you watch it you are just buzzing with inspiration and feel so alive? 

Come on you know that feeling? 

Its the opposite of the feeling when you are in work tearing your hair out, saying to yourself under your breath "I hate my "f......" job", 

The opposite of that trapped feeling that you have when you actually do not have the first idea on how to get out of that the job you hate....

I'll let the video do the talking - if you currently hate your job, the next 17 minutes is going to change your life.

Invest this 17 minutes in yourself and give yourself a chance of having the ultimate future by living your passion - Enjoy!

 

If you liked this video and you would like to learn more about how to find and do work that you love from Scott Dinsmore, you are welcome to click here. 

This is an introduction to Scott's Live Your Passion Course. 

Remember you are 100% in control of your own life and I hope this inspires you to have a great future. If you have any questions or are looking for any advice or help, leave a comment below and I will get back to you with my thoughts.

Warmly,

Micheal.