In this issue you will find:
• How To Rule Your Results in 2014
• How To Prevent Social Media Overwhelm, but still make it work for you.
• Marketing Doesn’t Need To Be As Hard As It Seems. (Setting things up the right way)
• Your Own Action Plan For Success.
• Ruling Your Day Instead Of Letting It Rule You.
Not sure what all this is about? Click Here
Can you believe it, 2014 is already here! Last year Jim, a small business owner, declared to his staff that 2013 was going to be an amazing year at their company Christmas party. Full of excitement, his staff agreed. The problem is, it is now 2014 and 2013 was no different in growth as it was in 2012. Why is that?
Well, it could have been a lot of things. It could have been because Jim wasn’t focused in his efforts, it could have been because he wasn’t managing his staff effectively. Or it could be because he has hired a business consultant that was only after Jim’s money and wasted 8 months out of the year with a bunch of fluff and no results. It could have been a lot of things…
If you feel like you did not get the results you were going after last year, then just like Jim, you must take a hard look at what you did and did not do and figure out what should have been done differently.
Which is why you are reading Rule Your Results! This is what I am going to help you with each and every month. So let’s make this year truly different by getting crazy awesome results that will have people wishing they were you.
To get things going, I am giving you a downloadable PDF. This is your Yearly Review that you need to go through if you want to pinpoint what you need to be doing differently than last year.
“Look At What Everyone Else Is Doing And Do The Opposite!”
This is some pretty good advice. There are TONS of people online saying they can help you with this and that… The point is, if only a select few are getting amazing results, the general population is not getting good advice. They are too busy copy everyone around them with their marketing strategies, getting distracted with Social Media, jumping from one thing to the next… Never getting real results.
Even if you have fallen into that trap, THIS IS NOT YOU! This year is going to be different… And very focused.
So download the PDF HERE and go through and honestly answer the questions. This isn’t a test and only you will see your answers. So do yourself and favor and be really honest. You will thank yourself next year as you are Ruling Your Results! 🙂
You might also want to check out these 20 questions that will help you out as well in the The Secret To Staying On Track & Growing Your Business.
How To Prevent Social Media Overwhelm, but still make it work for you.
Last year I wrote a blog post titled When Social Media Becomes Overwhelming. I was very shocked at the response, especially when my blog post was re-posted on a very popular social media site. Many agreed that social
media was wearing them out, but felt they had to keep doing things the way they were told so eventually they would see the results.
Let me tell you… The majority of what is being taught on Social Media is CRAP! And I will prove it to you in just a second….
I have made many social media “experts” mad because I was against automation in Social Media. I am one that feels like if you are going to be on Social Media, you should actually show up and be “Social”. But, many disagree and continue to automate their Social Media efforts by automatically posting updates multiple times and hour everyday. And most of the postings are just links to blog posts they have never read. That has never made sense to me. Especially on a personal branding level. Why would you want to be endorsing stuff that could be crap? Which is completely their choice and it’s yours too.
If you relate to what I just said, then you are NOT alone. When you try to do too many things, you spread yourself too thin and you are less effective. Meaning, you don’t get the results you should be getting. I really have been amazed by just how many do feel overwhelmed by Social Media. And also been amazed by how many I am seeing that are decided to say goodbye to some Social platforms. So to start to Rule your social realm, instead of being ruled by it, here are some very simple actions steps that you can take right now:
• Instead of focusing on 8 + social accounts, narrow down your focus to 3. I know some people are going to massively disagree, but oh well. They are not you! And you need to do what works for you. When you narrow your focus and learn the culture of each platform, you can really start to grow your following on those platforms. Take some time to decide which platforms you will focus on.
Hint: Which platforms are your target audience most likely hanging out on the most?
If you are still struggling to swallow the ideas of narrowing your social efforts, please know there are many successful entrepreneurs in all kinds of industries that have decided to not have a Facebook business page, not even a personal profile! Wow! I’m not saying don’t use Facebook. My point is, you CAN be successful by doing the opposite of what the masses are doing. Here are a few tips to help you out:
• Use the tools available to you. Personally, my #1 favorite Social tool is Sprout Social. Sprout Social allows me to manage all my accounts without having login to each account everyday to post updates. It also has some cool added features like, RSS, Analytics, scheduling, & more. You can check it out here. (Affiliate link)
• Grow, Groom & Give to your tribe. So often on Social Media, we make our posts all about us. We need to make our posts centered around our target audience. They need to know we care and they need to know we are real people. But we really need to focus on bettering the lives of our tribe. So before you start posting random links to blog posts on Twitter, ask yourself: “Does this add any value to my Tribe? Or is it just making noise?”…
• Use Social Media to strategically & effectively express your brand. Everything you say and don’t say, do and don’t do is all forming an opinion about you in the mind’s of your followers, fans, subscribers, etc. So make what you post content that helps form the right opinion about you. You Are Your Brand!
• Integrate your Social Media with your blog and email marketing. To be real honest with you, I really messed this up when it came to email marketing. I have always integrated Social Media with my blog, but I really sucked at the email part of things. This is something I really regret now! Personally, I think it is easier to make money from email campaigns then what most of doing on Social Media. They are two different platforms with two different expectations. So do yourself a favor and use Social Media to grow your list. I will be talking more about this in greater detail in a future Rule Your Results Newsletter.
These are some good starting points. So be sure to implement them and don’t let yourself get stressed out about Social Media. Make it work for you, not against you. 🙂
Marketing Doesn’t Need To Be As Hard As It Seems. (Setting things up the right way)
Dave is a business owner that knew what he was passionate about, but didn’t know how to monetize it. He spend months which turned into years taking every “guru’s” training on any and all marketing topics. This led to starting a LOT of tasks and strategies, but never finishing them. After years of this, it lead to his own “great depression”. It took a while to snap him out of this.
It’s a shame, we tend to complicate our marketing so easily. It’s not entirely our faults though… Due to so much teachings, trainings and courses available to you, it is really hard to stay focused and keep things simple.
But, if you want to Rule Your Results, you must keep things simple. Overcomplicated things only results in chaos and very limited results.
As you read above about keeping your Social Media simple, I am going to say the same about all your marketing. It’s really important that things don’t get overcomplicated. With all the talk about Blogging, Social Media, Video Sales Letters, Email Marketing, Shopping Carts, SEO, and the list goes on and on… No wonder things get complicated!
In this issue of Rule Your Results, I want to give you an approach of how things should be set up and then you can decided what marketing methods you feel would be best for your business model.
You need three things:
1. A Traffic Engine.
2. A Leads Engine.
3. A Revenue Engine.
Now I get there are more moving parts than this, but we are keeping it simple. When you strip away everything, it comes down to these three things. Without them, your business is dead.
Let’s start with your Traffic Engine. Traffic is you bloodline to your business. Without traffic, no one is walking through your doors, and no one is coming to your web site.
We are going to focus on online traffic. So how can you get traffic? You have multiple options…
When you are first starting out, you only have:
– Social Media.
– SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
– PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising)
If you already have a list, then yes, you can drive traffic through email. But we are not there yet. So in order to get traffic to your leads engine, which we will talk about in our next issue of Rule Your Results, you must decide on what the best methods of traffic is for you.
Here are a few pros and cons to think about….
Social Media:
Pros: It can be a great tool to get to know your target market, build report, and keep your message in front of them. It can bring traffic to your blog posts and landing pages.
Cons: Despite how some people act, Social Media is not a selling platform. People don’t want to hear about your super cool offers. It does take time to built that report and trust where people will even want to click on what you are posting. (I will add, if you are going to use something like Facebook’s advertising platform, you can get away with making sales much easier, rather than constantly posting updates about your product)
SEO:
Pros: It’s free traffic in the means of money. Once you get ranked under a certain keyword phrase, you can get lots of traffic. And who doesn’t like free traffic?!
Cons: It’s not free when it comes to your time. You still need to devote a lot of time researching, optimizing your site, building link backs, etc. With Google continually changing their algorithms, it can be really hard to stay on top.
PPC:
Pros: Instant targeted traffic to your site!
Cons: This can become costly if you don’t know what you are doing. It does require some “know how” to get a better deal for your costs per clicks. And if you don’t have an advertising budget, well, you’re in trouble!
In my personal opinion, this is how I would (and currently) do things.
I still take the time to optimize my web sites and blog posts. I don’t spend much time at all trying to link build and those other SEO strategies. I also make it easy for people to share my blog posts via Social Media. Which does have an SEO benefit these days.
I am always close to social media and I do things in a way that works for me. I love it and have no plans on stopping.
PPC has really been my focus for getting quality & targeted traffic. Let’s face it, just like you, I want results NOW! I don’t want to wait a year. So I recommend figuring out your advertising budget. Even if it is only $5 a day on Facebook’s advertising platform, do it! You must sow into your business and you must let people know you are there… quickly!
I am more passionate about this than I used to be, because I know how long other ways can take. And frankly I don’t want to sell you a lie like many others are doing. Yes, you must be diligent in your business. But you also need some kind of budget to advertise. As Rich Schefren has said, without an advertising budget you don’t have a business.
I am really want to encourage you to try to set some kind of advertising budget. Even it if means giving up some coffee, you must have some money to spend on your business. Think of it as sowing into your business… What you reap you will sow! 🙂
So where do I start?
Good question! Personally, I am focusing more on Facebook ads rather than Google Adwords. Besides it giving me a good bang for my buck, I am also focusing on it for this reason…
You have probably heard about how Facebook is purposely not giving your business page the reach it use to. They are doing this to force people to spend money on their advertising platform. This is gotten people very upset and rightly so… But, if you don’t think of it as Facebook ripping you off, but think of it as a place you can get your message out on, the tables can turn. See, there are many saying they will be focusing more on Google+ and other platforms because of this Facebook outrage. I say, that just makes more room for those that are willing to pay to play. We have got to get out of the “free” mentality and be willing to spend some cash. After all, this is business!
Your Action List For Success:
– To get your Traffic engine going, decide on an amount and commit to a monthly advertising budget.
– If you are doing SEO, keep it up. Everything helps if you are doing it the right way.
– Continue your Social Media efforts. You have got to continue to express and expose your brand message to your target audience.
– Take some time to look at ads that show up in Facebook, Google and anywhere else you are seeing ads. Start a swipe file by taking screenshots or copy and pasting text. You want to study what it is about these ads that caught your eye. What types of pictures are they using, what is their sales copy like. This is all very important, because you can have money to spend, but if you don’t know how to write good, compelling copy, you’re still in trouble.
– Unless you already have a sales/landing page setup, you are not going to launch any advertising just yet. Unless you want to play around with Facebook Advertising and send people to your Facebook business page. Which is not a bad thing! 🙂
In the next issue we will talk much more about your Leads Engine and how to set that up.
Want to get this Newletter each Month & start Ruling Your Results?
Sign up here!
I hate spam more than you do!
Ruling Your Day in 2014
(Productivity Tips & Hacks)
If you don’t like how productive you were last year.. or should I say how unproductive you were. You have a fresh slate this year, you can Break The Mold on how you spend your day and what you get done. It’s starts by breaking the mindset that keeps you distracted and using the new mindsets and tools available to you so you can start to Rule Your Day.
I could explain it all here, but that would be repetitive because I have already laid much of this out. So here are the resources you will need to discover how to Rule Your Day!
How To Increase Productivity & Start Ruling Your Day – Part 1
How To Increase Productivity & Start Ruling Your Day – Part 2
Rule Your Day With Time Management Strategies
How To Discover Your Creative Flow, Get More Done & Get Paid Doing It.
Double Your Productivity With The Pomodoro Technique
4 Steps To Being More Productive With Your Time & Effort
Happy Ruling! 🙂
Rule Your Results Tip:
I hope you have enjoyed this first issue of Rule Your Results! Each month I am going to give you a quick tip that I live my life and business by. Proverbs 22:29 says, “Do you see a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.” There is a key principle about being diligent, another meaning of this word in this verse is skillful. Being diligent & skillful in your business is a big key to having a successful business. Many spend all their time looking for get rich quick opportunities, but if you remain diligent and continue to hone your skillsets, you will be able to offer value that can never be taken from you. And the reward is great… You will stand before people of authority, CEOs, business owners, and many more with great influence. Not only will you make more money, but you will be able to influence the influencers! What a trip right?! 🙂
So work hard, hone your skills, stay humble and watch what happens!
Talk to you next month.
Paul Cooley
A Little About Me
Paul Cooley is the found of Rule Your Realm and a consultant, teacher, preacher & soon to be author. He is all about Breaking The Mold to traditional business, branding & life. It’s time to #RuleYourRealm
It’s Time To Break The Mold!
Please feel free to join our Tribe over on Facebook here.