Posts Tagged ‘Google’
Your Passion Is In Front Of You – You're Just Not Paying Attention
There are 30,600,000 (million) references on Google for ” How To Find Your Passion”. Hard to believe there are that many experts on the topic, are you one of them…I’m not. I was thinking about this while taking a shower this morning, I know…I won’t go there. Gary Vaynerchuck said in his address at the BIG Omaha Conference, that he hated the question of, ” How do I find my passion?” the most because he didn’t have a simple answer. Maybe what I’m about to share will help you Gary, it appears to have helped me figure out my passion I’m just getting out of the starting gate. If you think this article is on track please send it to Gary Vaynerchuck and let him know I have found the motherload. 🙂
I had to stop and think for a moment, if we are creatures of habit and we tend to gravitate to things we love like events, books, movies and people, why is it so hard to figure out? I’ll take me for example to help you look at your own desire to find your passion. If you were to look in my home you would get an idea of who I am and what my family likes to do. Since we are talking about me I’ll leave the rest of my family out of it. Let’s start in my office, lets look around a bit, hmmm….lots of tech books, Business Plan Books, IT Strategic Planning, tons of sports (stats) books, Home Business, training books from my Radio & Television days and boxes of all the software I have purchased over the years.
Let’s go down to my rec room, there you will find a set of drums, two guitars…yep I’m a musician (drummer, singer) and so are my two boy’s including there Mom. In our Family room we have very little, it’s the hall of shame, all our wedding pictures and random family pics line the walls, also, the TV, WII, PS2 and the like are in there plus a small book shelf of Christian reading material.
Now you’re probably getting the picture of what I (we) are about, if I was to just use that inventory as a snap shot of what I gravitate to when I’m downtown shopping I would suggest to you I have a passion for Family, Music, Christianity, Technology and Business. As you can see there are a few things I could consider my passion, but the one that gets me more than anything is Technology & Business, it’s the first thing I look for when I’m at a magazine rack or just thinking about business & marketing, how should I position my business (passion). If you were to spend any amount of time with me you would learn that I love people, I love to help others be better than they are. If you could just see how you could be, what you were designed and meant to be, know your role in this EPIC you were born in to, your passion would become obvious.
It’s a simple process I think, but if you look closely at where you spend your time & money, what you like shows up early. Take inventory of what you tend to buy most often, what you spend your time on when relaxing because it interests you, you will most likely find that is the very thing passionate about! Try it on for size and see if you could write about it, talk about it for hours on end on video or just tell it’s story…desire can not be planted in you, you have to find it within yourself and that is the thing Gary says you can monetize. Your passion is in front of you, your just not paying attention.
Please pass this along if you feel it’s of value and leave your comments. Send it to Gary Vaynerchuck to, (I don’t know his e-mail address) I would love help him with his dilemma of answering this question. I’m either on to something here or I’m just plain wrong, you decide.
Many Blessings, Owen
Twitter's Internal Google
The phenomenon called Social Media has taken the world by storm, primarily one social network called Twitter is getting the lion’s share of the press as of this writing. Are these social networks working for you? I suspect many of you use FaceBook for catching up with old school buddies but are you using it for business purposes? If you are a professional you are probably using LinkedIn to network, research projects and or your next career move. The most responsive of the networks in my opinion is Twitter and it is a primary business tool for many organizations. No matter which one you use each of us has a motive for using these networks for various purposes.
One of the best tools I have discovered is in Twitter’s search capabilities, it is far reaching and a very powerful tool for doing research within your Twitter following. I’m not referring to the Find People mechanism in your Account, I’m referring to search.twitter.com.
Play with it and decide how you might maximize this tool for your business, will it be market research, curiosity to see who is saying what about you in their updates. No matter the use it can be one of your secret weapons in your social media tool kit.
It may not replace Google anytime soon but you can see how it could be used as such in the future.
Until next time.
What's Your Social Media Plan?
Like a Business Plan or an I.T. Strategic Plan you should know why you are using Social Media Networks. Most businesses are oblivious to this marketing phenomenon and really don’t understand it’s value. The challenge is that when someone asks what it is, they talk like it’s a bunch of friends getting together for coffee and chatting it up. It’s more than a water cooler. In my opinion, FaceBook has cornered the market on catching up with old school buddies but it really hasn’t figured out how to be more than a playground for old friends on recess. Just my point of view, you may feel different about it.
If you think you have to have a large business to enter into the Social Media arena, your dead wrong, all you need to do is build a plan, then you will experience it’s true value. Despite what you may think, it’s not about advertising, positioning and jockeying for the #1 spot on Twitter Grader, that isn’t the goal. Google does this already but doesn’t tell you their secrets on how they control who gets ranked the highest. If you don’t plan the use of this new marketing environment you will waste time and wonder what happened, you’ll wonder if it wasn’t a distraction from you current goals and objectives. You will eventually use those tools as one way to measure your standing but you will be planting a banyan tree so don’t expect an immediate return on your investment.
So what’s am I talking about?
Let’s assume you have a business plan and you actually sat down and built an I.T. Strategic Plan, which one does the Social Media Strategy fit into? Truthfully? It doesn’t fit into either, it should be in your Marketing Strategy, unless you’ve decided to build your own Social Network, build a team to run it and build the infrastructure to support it, only then should it go into your business plan as a way to promote and develop brand. I’ll also assume you have a good understanding of the fore mentioned plans, if not, go study them before you start down this trail.
Building a large following is not as hard as it may seem, it does requires time & effort, it also requires a carefully crafted message to ensure you obtain reach that will generate activity and eventually revenue. So, your vision should be more about how you will use it rather than making it an entity all it’s own, where will it fit in the marketing strategy and what resources will it require, how big will it be and who on your team knows anything about it? Do you need to hire a consultant to help you incorporate Social Media into your marketing efforts? The questions are many and there many of us that can guide you to a sound plan in using the likes of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the great many others.
First Steps:
1.) Review your Business Plan
2.) Review your I.T. Plan if you have one
3.) Build a team to work with a consultant
4.) Hire an outside consultant to walk you through the need for Social Media Marketing
Wading into the Social Media Environment doesn’t have to be difficult, get help and build your plan. Until next time, be good, if you can’t be good, be yourself 🙂
8 Ways To Increase Your Traffic
I’ve been watching the traffic for my Blog increase at an astounding rate over the past few months, and it happened in a very subtle way. I want to share what I did with you because I want you to succeed in driving traffic, which I hope, will allow you to make money through your Blog too. I make no promises as your results will most likely be different than mine, why, because you are not me.You will use the following eight ways in the way that only you can use them, because, you think differently than I do. I don’t use all Eight Ways so that should give you hope. Let’s get started and see if I can get you to think like me.
Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate these words into a successful merging you will need another word. Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful would always include the importance of generating traffic. My site is no different. So, we all know that in the core of it all next to the LIST (but that’s another report), traffic is the most essential thing to a successful internet based business company. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken care of, it’s time to generate traffic.
If you already have a site and you think you’re not getting enough traffic that you’re supposed to be getting, then its time to consider your options. If you are contending in these very competitive businesses, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday.
Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been before you opened the doors to your site.
Some of these hot tips require an investment so be sure to read the fine print before committing to any pay for services. So, to help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are eight ways to increase your traffic.
8 Ways To Increase Your Traffic
1.) Invest in good advertising with search engines
Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top surefire way to increase your traffic. You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site’s feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits.
2.) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites
With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.
3.) Use Viral Marketing
Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs, if there is, low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite productive; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people. Youtube is the mainstream delivery of video content these days. There are others but YouTube is #1 as of this writing. Online Web Radio & Television has come into mainstream as well.
4.) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content
Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.
5.) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site
Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link. You can also outsource your article writing if you don’t have time or feel your not creative enough.I recommend you use article services but the best is building relationships with other high traffic sites that will link back to your articles on your site.
6.) Join forums and form online communities
Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you’ve found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.
7.) Offer Newsletters.
If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.
8.) Social Media Networks
Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, you can also create your own Social Media Network but that’s another article. I’ve been writing about some of these networks on my Blog so be sure to visit. http://blog.owengreaves.com
I’m personally sold on Social Media Networks and I use Twitter as my primary network and be sure to follow me @owengreaves . Also read my article on how to get 1,000 followers in 10 days. Ten Days To A Thousand, I actually got 1,400 followers in 14 days but your results may vary depending on how much time you have to invest in developing your network. There are others who who got more in shorter spans of time but that’s not the point. Oh and these Networks I mentioned are FREE!
What do you want for Christmas, make more money?
Here I sit, it’s December 21st a few days before Christmas and I keep hoping somethings gonna be different, the snow is here for Christmas and that hasn’t happen in ten years! Now that’s different 🙂
If you’re like me you’ll find yourself thinking of simple ways to make money on the Internet without investing any money. It can be done, sure, just look at all those Internet Marketers that say they are making $40,000+ a month wihout spending a dime and here’s how I did it, just buy my course for $$$$$! Ok, I’m a skeptic, the problem isn’t that it can’t be done, the problem is….Who can you trust? Are they legitimate Internet Marketer’s or Internet Scammers? Ah the dilemma, how does one know for sure; With over 253 million related links to Make Money Online on Google which ones are for real?
Yep, it boggles the mind doesn’t it. All I want for Christmas is to make more money but I don’t know who to trust in the Internet Marketing scene. Are you struggling with the same question or are you buying and buying, spending and spending good money after bad on information and products that don’t tell something you don’t already know?
I’m not pointing fingers, I’m just sayin what the hell is a person to do with all these claims. Buyer beware I guess. So, if you are a successful Internet Marketer making large sums of money, why don’t you share with us how the average person can discern if your the real deal or not?
I triple dog dare ya!
There ya have it, my Christmas wish for 2008, who can I trust to be my Mentor as an Internet Marketer? This should be interesting…..please do share what you want for Christmas?
Merry Christmas everyone!