Posts Tagged ‘Business’
Content Marketing Is A Scam!
When we don’t fully understand something, or we fear the thing, we give it a name to justify our rational towards it. There is no secret to content marketing, or content, it is just that, content…. with a message, and most of it is geared to selling something. As much as we all say, “I don’t like selling”, that’s what we do every day, in our conversations, and in our blog content, we’re either selling ideas, or products and services, but we are always selling. We all want conversion on some level, whether it’s views, traffic to a site, or for someone to buy what you’re selling.
Whatever it is you’re sharing, on your blog, on social networks, you are selling, you’re marketing….you either want click’s on your shared content, or they’re going to be asked to buy something on the other side. So let’s knock off the fancy names and just tell the story, stop hiding behind something to help you have a clear conscience. Most people hate being sold, so we change the game, we give selling a new name, content marketing. You’re not fooling anyone, you’ve just created a new revenue stream of lies.
Whatever content you’re going to share, tell the story, tell it well, believe in it, own it, but don’t make it something it’s not. Content marketing is a scam.
The Future Of Business – Is Now Being Taught By Mainstream
Remember back in 1994 when the big boom happened, and then the big bust! A funny thing has been happening lately, and it appears to be picking up speed, especially in the main stream. Now this may seem like old news, or you might even think, well DUH! I wrote a long while back I wrote a 2 part article that, everyone will eventually be an affiliate marketer of something, and part 2 is here – the future of business is an online business, and it’s easier than ever for anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection to beat the big guys. If you haven’t considered starting an online business, ask yourself one thing, how long will you be working at your current job (if not self-employed), even if you are forced into retirement, you’re probably going to need to continue generating revenue somehow.
Let’s say you’re 50 an older, what will you do if you suddenly find yourself out of work? This isn’t fear mongering, it’s real, and it’s becoming more and more common each passing day, are you prepared, is it even on your radar.
This morning I received an email from a firm pimping a series of eCommerce Tutorials to build an online store, this is the list in the email:
– Build a product catalog
– Create a shopping cart
– Manage product options
– Add checkout
– Learn about payments
– Compare gateways
– Learn about shipping
– Learn about hosting
Anyway, you get the idea. I would suggest these are not the items most people want to know how to do when just getting started, at least they shouldn’t be. Mostly because, and I’m generalizing so don’t get all out joint. Most people struggle more with what business to start, and want some kind of assurance the thing will make money and succeed. But those topics may help you, they aren’t the place to start in my humble opinion.
I like to do my grocery shopping early in the day, like 6AM early…not because I like mornings, but I like it when the store is dead slow : ) I happen to go down the magazine isle, I noticed a rag with big bold letters, and it said,”Step By Step – How To Setup An Online Business 2014″, this is a mainstream well know magazine to boot! Yes I opened it up and started to review it. Now, considering that I make my living online, I’m often curious about how mainstream views this Internet online business thingy, and I was also curious about what they were teaching. I don’t have the time and frankly I’m not convinced you sit here and read it all if I wrote it, but let’s just cover some points anyway.
The magazine broke it down into four areas, Planning, Building, Selling, and Marketing. I’m not going to go into details, there’s just far too many topics to cover for a blog post.
PLANNING
The Planning sub-section heading was, Start The Right Business and had 13 sub-topics from going into business to finding money. I have to admit I was surprised how much they covered, and how much I actually have used over the years teaching clients and in my workshops. One area that caught my attention was called, “Why An Internet Business”. You probably have your own reason’s but, the biggest reason is, you can reach billions of buyers from your bedroom, or wherever you want to work from.
BUILDING
This also had 13 sub-sections from finding a home for your business to creating an app for your business, the main heading was titled, “Create The Right Website”. This section was mostly about the technical stuff, should you use WordPress, where to host your site, good web design, registering domain names, getting your site written, video & sound, and creating an app for mobile devices.
SELLING
Maximise Your Sales is the main Title for some 14 sub-sections. How to set up on eBay to making money from your own Amazon shop.
MARKETING
The sub Title, “Find New Customers”, I’ll admit everyone wants to know the answer, but most don’t want to do the work. This topic has 24 sub-sections, I told you there was lots of work, from an introduction to marketing to making your business thrive.
MY POINT
The reason I mention these two situations is because a new NORMAL has revealed itself, the second industrial age is now real, the second industrial age is you doing business online, we’re talking about it more, it’s being written about in almost all the mainstream magazines, and it has been taught online forever, the business landscape has changed! For years you have seen magazines convincing you to go into business for yourself (Bricks & Mortar), today, it’s about going into business for yourself online (Clicks & Pages). Where are you in this journey? If you need more information, the first thing to do is, sign-up for my Future Of Business updates on the right side bar, then take some time to read my blog, I’ve shared about this and much more.
Remember, the future of business is online!
The Shameless Plug Or Sharing
We really do like to promote ourselves, oh sure we say we don’t like to talk about ourselves, or pump what we do and who we might be in the pecking order. We do want people to know what we do and how well we’ve done it, we merely disguise it as a shameless plug, well we jest that at it. If you ask a person what they do, they’ll most likely tell you their job title, not what they actually do, we want to know some of the tasks, to give us an idea of how complicated your work may be. How important you might be in the hierarchy.
But if I were to ask you what you hated or didn’t like about your job, you could probably go on forever. I can assess you faster by hearing how passionate you are about who you work with or what you like and don’t like about the work you are paid to do.
When you venture to self-employment, you can no longer tell that story, you have to speak about how great your product or service is, how it will solve a particular problem. You have to plug your business all the time, sometimes we give a shameless plug, its an opportunist thing. I might say, have you read the most popular posts on my blog, hoping you might come and check the most popular blog posts I have in a list. That list makes it easy for you to see the most popular, and then the next…you should check it out, it’s on the right side bar. While you’re at it, sign up for my updates, they’ll be delivered to your inbox, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
It’s subtle, it’s effective, and it’s easy. The shameless plug is far better than sending, or spamming every social network, or inbox of people you have never had a connection with, they never opted-in. The shameless plug is no longer called that by name, today it’s called sharing right?
Open & Free Business Model – Identifying Revenue Streams
One of my favorite sessions in my workshops is helping entrepreneurs and business owners identify revenue streams, online and off. There’s a lot of work that goes into this before you can actually execute, there are some things you should think about before nailing down your top three profit center’s. This is a very high level approach, but you’ll get the idea.
– Pick the highest margin, low-investment streams (low hanging fruit)
This one speaks for itself, you should almost always spend your time here, your highest margin product’s and services, you’ll be happy because the cash-flow will be there.
– Advertise your chosen stream to your captive audience.
Knowing where your customers are, which social network do they most frequent, and why do they use that chosen social network more than others.
– Collect money, deliver goods, and keep customers happy.
Taken right off this blog tag line, Create. Differentiate. Deliver. Get paid for what you’ve made or done, make sure you deliver on time or earlier, and do everything you can to look after those who buy from you. And if they’re true fans, do something extra special.
Some ideas on revenue streams:
1.) Donation Drives
2.) Advertising products & services for other people
3.) Selling products & services based on your unique content.
4.) Selling products & services almost completely unrelated to your unique content.
Write down your ideas under each heading, pick your top three ideas and flush them out further.
It’s also important to know your break even point on each product & service you decide to sell.
The Future Of Business – Who’s In Charge?
For years I’ve shared with you about where business is going, and how it is changing, I’ve tried to plant idea’s into your noggin, with the hopes of giving you some insight, or….foresight of what’s to come, and what to do about it. Everything is changing so fast it’s hard to keep up, and yet, so many are doing what they’ve always done, and many don’t understand why business is still changing. We want things static, we want things in their place, we love our comfort zone, I think that’s how the theory of Pavlov’s dog came to be. With that in mind, a short story.
There was a man who owned a dog, the dog always sat on the porch, and it howled constantly. The neighbor complained about the constant howling and barking, the owner said, the dog howls because it’s laying on a nail. The neighbor says, “why doesn’t get off the nail, go lay down somewhere else?”. The dog owner says,”I guess it doesn’t hurt enough”.
Today the business owners are the dogs sitting on nails, they want to get off the nail, but they are afraid because they know they aren’t really in charge. They believe if they get of the nail (change) they’ll lose business, worse yet, they’ll have to close the business. This belief isn’t really true, but it’s a real emotion. So who’s in charge?
The answer to the question of, who’s in charge is simple, it should be obvious. It’s your customers.
The future of business, and the future of your business will always have the same boss, those who come to your business, visit your site, and buy your product or service. You, were never in charge, you merely ran the business, and provided what customers wanted. When you change the way you think, stop worrying about how to use Social Media, and looking for short cuts, you can get to the heart of the matter. The questions you should be asking, if you don’t know is, not how to use Social Media, but why your customers are using it, and which one’s are they using. At the very least, start there, the rest will come out of the data you’ve collected, if the rest is still not coming, you’re still asking the wrong questions, and maybe in the wrong place.
If you want your business to survive in the future, ask yourself who’s really in charge.
