Tag: Marketing tools

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A Comprehensive Social Media Influencer Checklist

To make any new process easier, it is good to develop checklists and templates to streamline the process. Even experienced authors and pilots use checklists to ensure they don’t miss a step.

 

Checklist to develop a successful social media influencer campaign:

 

  • Defined Target Audience – Who are they, what do they want? Create an audience persona for each stage of the buying journey, so you know, and you can show the influencer who your audience is.

 

  • Outline Important Key Performance Indicators – Using the information in the blog post about the KPIs to track during your social media influencer campaigns, always set up a new spreadsheet to enable you to track the KPIs exclusively for each campaign.

 

  • Create Clear Influencer Marketing Goals – Your goals will include the specifics of what constitutes success for the campaign. For example, you may have the goal to get more follows, but you need to state exactly what you want. Remember, even if you’re working with someone else, the goals need to be SMART goals.

 

  • Choose The Best Social Media Channel – Do your due diligence to ensure there are enough of your audience on that channel to make it possible for you to reach your goals.

 

  • Choose The Right Influencer Campaign – Don’t just pick anyone. Take the time to get to know the influencer before choosing them to work with. Watch as many of their shows as you can to make sure you vibe.

 

  • Set A Budget – You must set a budget to have a guideline before searching for the right influencer. For example, if you know how much you earn per click, it’ll help you figure out a good budget.

 

  • Identify Your Influencer Type and Size Needs – What type of influence do you want? Make a list of the characteristics you want.

 

  • Influencer Qualities Needed – What do you want the influencer to be like. It’s fine to choose outside of the business model. Even if your product has nothing to do with the issues you care about, if you want to work with only redheads, that’s fine.

 

  • Influencer Outreach – You’ll want to track how you reach out to the influencers so that you can keep track of how it’s working.

 

  • Influencer Vetting – Always check out the influencer before offering them the job because you never know if they’re doing something in their personal life that would be off-putting or even career-ending for you.

 

  • Influencer Contract – Don’t do a single deal with an influencer without a written and signed contract.

 

  • Compensation Package – Spell out and define what the compensation package is for each influencer, and don’t expect it to be the same for every one of them. Tip: Let them tell you their fee. It might be cheaper than you think.

 

  • Influencer Brief and Training – Set up a package that explains your products, offers, and branding to the influencers so that they know everything they can about your product.

 

  • Remember FTC Guidelines – Familiarize yourself with the FTC rules for communicating on social media as a business. It’s important to follow these guidelines whether others do or not.

 

  • Plan, Publish and Promote – Set up a schedule that allows you to plan the campaign, publish it, and promote it simultaneously.

 

  • Track ROI – Nothing is ever done, as they say until the paperwork is done. While paper is not always necessary these days, you still need to do the math and track the return on investment to ensure you are making money the way you think you are.

 

When you use a process to get things done, it’s easier to figure out what went right or wrong so you can do more of what is right and less of what is wrong.

Define Your Influencer Marketing Goals

 

 

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The Do’s and Don’ts to Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is pretty straightforward. First, you want to find the right influencers who already impact an audience that will want and need your products, services, and offers. Even if you have zero sales yet, and no audience of your own yet, using influencers who already promote to an audience who wants what you have will substantially shorten your journey to success.

Start with the Right Influencer and Target Audience

Included below are the top five do’s and don’ts to follow so that you can run a successful influencer marketing campaign and repeat the success over and over again.

 

#1 Don’t: Focus on Follower or Audience Count Only

 

Remember, just because a YouTube star has a million subscribers does not mean they are ready to buy. Not all audiences are equal. Plus, often, a smaller influencer can have more sway over their audience than one that has grown really large. So you may get more results from a niched down small channel than a huge channel with wide appeal.

 

#1 Do: Consider Influencers of all Levels

 

When you try to find the right people to work with to promote your products, offers, and services, don’t just pick the big movers and shakers. Instead, look at smaller influencers that are more intimate with their audience. You may even end up making more sales due to the higher level of engagement many smaller audience influencers have.

 

#2 Don’t: Micromanage Your Influencer

 

When you finally weed through and pick the influencers you want to work with, avoid trying to tret them as employees. Your influencer likely already has a particular way of doing things, and you want them to stay true to themselves and their audience, giving them plenty of freedom. Avoid micromanaging them by giving too many guidelines and rules.

 

#2 Do: Allow for Creative Freedom

 

Creative people like to create. If you stand in their way, they won’t want to work with you, and even if they do, it might not work out and allow them total creative freedom. Of course, you can always include an option for approval to ensure nothing goes wrong, but if you do the research and choose the right people, letting them be themselves will work out best for you. Plus, it’s less work for you!  

 

#3 Don’t: Expect Non-Monetary Work

 

There are plenty of self-named gurus out there who will tell you to try to work with everyone for free, but the truth is, you really do get what you pay for. So instead, reward the influencers you work with according to what’s right and fair. Do not expect them to work for you for free because if you both get value from the partnership, you’ll want to repeat it.

 

#3 Do: Compensate Fairly

 

When you do work out a payment plan for your influencers, make sure you compensate them fairly. As mentioned above, you don’t want to expect them to work for free, but you also want to build a reputation as a great company to work with. So believe it when I tell you that word gets around. Ask them for their fee schedule instead of telling them what you’ll pay. Influencers will be happy with what they ask for, even if it is less than they thought it would be.

 

#4 Don’t: Only Use Instagram

 

It’s tempting to go to the number one social media platform and start using only that for your influencer campaigns, but the truth is, this is a mistake. You don’t even know until you do your research if your audience is on the platform, and if your audience is not there, neither is your influencer.

 

#4 Do: Consider Multiple Platforms

 

Find out what social platforms your ideal audience uses. Find out how many are on those platforms. Then look for the influencers you want to help you promote. Try doing a multi-platform campaign as long as your audience is there, and you’ll get amazing results because the more often you show up in front of your ideal audience, the better.

 

#5 Don’t: Create Deceiving and Generic Content

 

It can feel overwhelming to create all the content you need for your business, but you want to refrain from deceiving and generic content for your influencer campaigns. Remember, you have an influencer who is a creator who can give you amazing ideas on how to promote your product. If they love it, they’re going to be the best person to help you. Each time you promote something, you want the content to be unique and specific for the audience you want to influence.

 

#5: Do: Follow all FTC Guidelines and Plan Content with Your Influencer

 

Remember, when using the internet to communicate, you must follow the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines (and any guidelines in any country where you do business) to have no problems. Also, please work with your influencer to plan the content they will create for you but remember to give them creative freedom.

 

As a content creator, it’s important to stay aware of the dos and don’ts of using influencer marketing. The great thing is when you do engage in influencer marketing, you’re not alone. You have someone who is already an expert at creating content for their audience. Supply an amazing product, service, or offer and let them do the rest within the guidelines. To learn more about the FTC guidelines for social media, you can visit the government website here. (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/11/ftc-releases-advertising-disclosures-guidance-online-influencers)

 

 

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Influencer Marketing Vs. Brand Ambassadors

It can be easy to think influencers and brand ambassadors are the same thing. They promote your products and influence your audience in some way. However, influencer marketing and brand ambassadors are not interchangeable as they have many key differences.

 

Promote Vs. Example

 

Ambassadors promote your products and are seen as the experts on the product. This is made into a full-time position for larger brands where the company provides them the details they need to know to become a master. They are the ones consumers can go to and get almost any question answered.

 

While influencers show your audience by being the example and sharing how and why they use your products or services, they may love your products and understand them quite a bit. Still, for the most part, they don’t have the extensive knowledge brand ambassadors gain when working with one or a few brands.

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Influencers tend to work with many different brands and campaigns over the months and years, making it impossible for them to be a real expert on all the information your brand has to provide.

 

Long-term vs. Short-term

 

As stated above, influencers typically work with more than one brand or company. On the other hand, brand ambassadors only work with your company to master the knowledge and understand how your products and services work.

 

Influencers may recommend your business once or twice while brand ambassadors repeated it daily. They are your brand loyalists or journalists and will find them at the top of the pyramid of influence right above influencers.

 

Audience vs. Experience

 

Brand ambassadors are sought out due to experience and devotion to the product. They are committed to your brand and truly believe in the benefits. They are likely coming to you or directly applying. On the other hand, influencers are contracted due to their audience, engagement rate, or other important conversions you need for your business. They do not have to have tried your product or care too much about it. These conversions give you a clear insight into what kind of return on investment you can expect to see.

 

Their Similarities

 

Both brand ambassadors and influencers want to promote your product and see you succeed. Each can be added to your marketing campaign to drive more engagement, traffic, and brand awareness. However, they both need to sign agreements to protect their rights and promote your product authentically and enthusiastically through unique and creative content.

 

Overall, it is important to understand the difference to choose the right person for your campaign goals. Each offers many similar benefits, but the type of relationship, compensation, and metrics needed will determine who is right for the job.

 

 

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Why Influencer Marketing Works

In 2020, Influencer marketing was worth more than nine billion dollars. It is now expected to grow beyond thirteen billion dollars. Showing you that it is here to stay and only growing stronger. Influencer marketing is a form of worth-of-mouth or online marketing using social media platforms and influencers who share content to promote products or services for companies with similar target audiences.

 

The goal is to influence their audience to increase their conversions, usually in increased sales, traffic, or engagement. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are currently the top three social media platforms used by many influencers and companies worldwide to market their products, services, or ideas.

 

Here are the main reasons why influencer marketing works and why it is so beneficial to your brand:

 

Influencers Build Trust and Establish Creditability

 

Not only can influencers help you find your target audience more easily, but they can also help you connect and engage with them. An influencer has an audience because they have similar interests to them and appreciates their opinion.

 

Meaning the influencer already has established trust and credibility. When they partner with a company, that trust and credibility often transfer over. Without these two factors, you can’t expect to make a sale or increase your conversions. Customers need validity in exchange for their time and revenue.

 

Influencers Create Engagement and Long-Lasting Relationships

 

Along with trust comes needed engagement. What kind of engagement you need is up to you and your business goals? For many, that includes more likes, comments, shares, and clicks to their websites to make a sale and increase their revenue or exposure hopefully. Not only do they increase your engagement rate, the relationship is more personal too. Meaning they can form deeper and stronger relationships, further increasing the trust and loyalty to your brand.

 

Influencers Expose You to Larger and More Loyal Audiences

 

Establishing a relationship with several different influencers allows you to get in front of more people with the same target audience as yours, especially when comparing it to traditional online ads. In addition, your target audience is less likely to skip over it when an influencer is involved as it humanizes your brand.

 

As you can see, if you haven’t added influencers to your marketing strategy yet, then you are likely missing out. In fact, according to a Mediakix survey conducted in 2019, nearly 17% of companies use or will use half of their marketing budget on influencers alone. While that is a small percentage, many companies reported in the same year that they want to significantly increase their influencer budgets to keep up with the current demand for social media content. They believe influencer marketing is paramount to their success now and in the future.

 

 

 

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These Niches Benefit the Most from Influencer Marketing

Any product or service can benefit from influencer marketing. However, some certain niches or genres perform better and see far more success than others. This is likely because the content is easily shareable, visual, consumable, and in high demand.

 

The following are the most popular industries for influencer marketing:

 

Beauty and Fashion

 

This is probably the most obvious niche within influencer marketing as it makes up the bulk of it. Products and services within this niche are built on their ability to make bold, beautiful, and colorful works of art. They are highly shareable and consumable, making them a powerful product to influence. The Instagram platform is a visual social media that is one of the most used for this niche as the niche creates amazing visuals.

 

Gaming

 

Another niche that probably won’t come to you as a surprise. This industry is worth over 130 billion dollars. Those who love gaming thrive for information to learn how to complete their game or compete at the highest level against their rivals. Sharing reviews on the most anticipated game of the year or console or walkthroughs and guides on how to achieve the highest level in competitive play are just a few things audiences crave. You can often find gaming influencers on YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and even Twitter.

 

Health and Fitness

 

Most people want to learn how to be healthy, improve their apparencies or maintain their weight. It is vital to your survival, meaning there is high demand for needed information. Weight loss how-to videos, advertising sportswear, or selling weightless programs are a few great things in this niche that influencers can promote.

 

Food and Travel

 

Mouthwatering dishes, videos on how to bake the perfect cake, how-to guides on traveling the world on a small budget, or simply sharing the meals you’ve tried while traveling to exotic places are just a few examples of content audiences crave within these niches. Many young adults have reported using Instagram as their source of information before they book their travels or YouTube to learn how to cook a new meal.

 

While these are the most common and successful industries in influencer marketing, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a try if your niche didn’t make this list. You can be an innovator and start something new within your industry as long as you use the right tools and resources.

 

Find the right social media platform and influencer, and create the best content with your target audience and business goals in mind. This extensive list shows that influencer marketing will likely benefit your company as long as you can provide visual content that solves a high-demand problem. Influencer marketing thrives on high-quality visuals and in-demand content.

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How Does Consistency Affect Your Bottom Line

You want to be more productive, right? Get more stuff done. Make a lot of progress.

Start to move the bottom line to make your business more profitable. It’s the goal in some way, shape, or form for all of us. And most of us think we have to make some big leaps to get there.

But here’s the big secret. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you focus on consistency and do something to make progress every single day, you’ll greatly increase your chances of success.

Think back on the parable of the turtle and the hare. There’s a lot of truth in that old story and it applies to all areas of your life, including your business.

Yes, you can go all out and get a lot of work done all at once. There’s a time and place for that. For example, you may put long and hard hours in for a week or two to prepare for a new product launch, or when you’re first setting up your website. It shouldn’t be your default strategy. Why? Because you’ll burn out.

Burnout is a serious problem. Most entrepreneurs and small business owners have experienced it and it can take a long time to get over it.

A much better strategy – aside from those brief periods of hustle – is consistency. If you make an effort to get something done every single day, you’ll make a lot of progress in the long run.

Over the course of a year, you will go further and your business will grow more than if you overdo it and then go into a slump because you have no energy for anything else.

Remember, slow and steady wins the race. It’s much easier to motivate yourself to get something done that takes fifteen minutes and to do it every day, than something that takes you hours. It’s much easier to justify not doing something that’s hard or takes a long time.

Instead, keep it easy, make it fun, and get into the habit of doing it each and every day. In the long run, you’ll get a lot more done if you put in half an hour per day, six days a week, than working for two hours once or twice a week.

Habit is one way how consistency can help you grow your business.

But there’s something else that will work in your favor when you start to put in a small bit of effort every day.

You will start to build momentum that will carry you much further than you would have gotten otherwise. More on that in a future blog post.

I encourage you to shift your mindset towards a focus on consistency that will allow you to continue growing, expanding, and most importantly moving the needle in the right direction when it comes to your bottom line.

Do This to Be More Consistent in Life and Business

 

 

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Learn to Laugh More Often

Sometimes you can make yourself feel happier and more successful by simply seeking out more laughter. A daily habit that will pay off big time is simply not taking life or yourself too seriously while finding ways to laugh about funny things even if they’re hard.

 

Developing the habit of laughter simply requires that you give yourself permission to laugh and let go and seek out more humor. Let’s look at several ways you can bring more laughter into your life.

 

  • Spend Time with Funny People – When you really want to feel light, there are likely people in your life that you can make sure you spend time with. When you hang out with funny people, it will rub off on you.

 

  • Try New Experiences Often – One way to bring laughter back into your life is to keep trying new things. When you open your life and mind to new experiences, you also open yourself up to funny things happening to you that are out of the norm of what might happen if you just do the same thing day in and day out.

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  • Watch Your Favorite Funny Go to Sitcom or Movie – Sometimes, you have to pull out the big guns and watch a rerun of something that made you laugh when times were good. Bringing laughter back into your life in any way you can is a healthy habit that pays off for years to come.

 

  • See The Situation from a New Perspective – Everyone sees things from their own perspective and information bubble when you realize that you can become more like a child or a baby or a first-time parent by opening up your world to new ideas and perspectives.

 

  • Go to a Comedy Club Show – Choose the type of humor you like but burst through your comfort zone and go to a comedy show near you. You may not even realize that people still do comedy shows at clubs, and you don’t even have to put up with smoking nowadays if you don’t want to.

 

  • Understand Human Nature – When you know how humans really behave, on average, it’s a lot easier to see what is happening to you through the eyes of experience. When you understand that this is just how things are, it is way funnier than when you think it’s only happening to you.

 

The great thing about bringing more laughter into your life is that it pays off in numerous ways. It will lower the stress you’re experiencing, which will lessen your chances of experiencing stress-related diseases like obesity that lead to serious cardiovascular disease. Not only that, but it’s like you’re also doing a ton of sit-ups to your stomach muscles. It’s a way to get in shape that doesn’t feel like work at all.

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Schedule Your Daily Activities Based on Your Goals

Developing daily habits that drive success sounds complicated, but the truth is, when you break down your actions based on what you want to achieve and then distribute that action realistically into your daily to-do list, success will start to feel almost automatic.

 

Turn Daily Planning into a Habit

 

Every morning first thing, it’s important to take a look at the to-do list that has been created based on the goals you’ve set at other times. Putting the actions, you need to do in order of importance and based on today’s reality is important to help avoid any roadblocks to achieving the goals you’ve set.

 

This type of planning should only take about five minutes and consist of simply opening your scheduling method, whether it’s paper or digital, and double-checking the schedule for any bottlenecks or issues. You can then rearrange things on the fly to ensure ease of success.

 

All To-Do Lists Need to Be Goal-Based

 

If something made it to your to-do list, it needs to be based on the goals you’ve set for yourself. For instance, if you have the goal of losing 50 pounds by a certain date today in your calendar, you might include your daily calorie limit, your daily moving goals, and your hydration goals.

 

If it’s related to a deliverable for work such as getting 10,000 edited words to your book editor by a certain date, then you know simply by looking at the schedule because you’ve set aside the time to devote to the future goal. It’s all on the to-do list.

 

Break It All Down into Small Micro Tasks

 

When you have the deliverable or result that you want described in great detail as part of your SMART goal-setting process, and it is easier to break down each goal into smaller micro-tasks resulting in your to-do list for today.

 

Consider Your Week, Months, and Years as a Whole

 

When you do your daily planning, you’ll also want to schedule weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly planning to help you get a big picture look at all the balls you have in the air. These longer times for planning should be scheduled to ensure that you don’t have bottlenecks and are taking control of the things you have control over.

 

Schedule Everything

 

Remember, you want to automatically schedule the work and actions you need to develop your goals and objectives. But don’t just focus on one aspect of your life.

 

Instead, you want to schedule everything in regarding everything to do with your life, whether it’s time with friends, which will be part of your long-term goals of building strong relationships, or 45 minutes of fast walking because that’s part of your long-term goal to stay healthy – taking the time to schedule every action you will take will assist in building daily habits that lead to success.

 

Have No More Than 3 Daily Priorities

 

While you will schedule everything, even if it’s a nap break, you want to only put up to three things as your daily priority. Setting daily priorities should only happen the week that you’re looking at the schedule and perfecting it. The main reason is you cannot know what a priority will be for next Monday if you don’t know that your spouse will be sick.

 

Try Different Productivity Methods

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Part of creating a schedule and making it work is learning how to be more productive and get things done. Everyone has a sworn-by method. The best thing is to experiment with other methods. Try a new one each 30 days until something sticks with you.

 

Some methods to try include the Pomodoro Technique, Block Scheduling, and the Eisenhower Matrix.

 

Use The Right Planning Tools

 

It doesn’t matter if your chosen planning tools are paper or digital as long as you use the tool and work for you. Try different tools. Some people swear by Google Calendar, and others hate it.

 

Finally, eliminate distractions so that you stick to the schedule you have ended up with each day. Technically if your daily activities are organized first based on your long-term and short-term goals, then each day, the actions you take will be impactful, trackable, and 100 percent within your own control to do or not do.

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Learn The SMART Goal Making Process

Proper goal setting is one of the most important skills you can learn in terms of how much goodness it’ll add to your life. By learning this goal-setting system, you’ll gain a sense of direction so that you can organize your resources in a way that helps you reach your goals.

 

When you craft a SMART goal, the way you phrase the goal helps you focus on what’s important so that you can make decisions about the actions you’re taking in a way that impacts your goal. Not only that, but the goal also provides the motivation you need to take the small daily actions toward success.

 

Example of a SMART Goal: “By Sunday night, I’m going to increase my total weekly word count from 7000 words to 10,000 words a week by adding 427 words a day to my normal daily 1000-word goal.”

 

  • Specific – The goal you set has to be very precise in order to help the person reading the goal understand and become certain about the expected impact or deliverables. Ask yourself questions to get this right, such as: What am I doing, why am I doing it, what do I need to do it right?

 

  • Measurable – As you craft the goal, you also need to use numbers that allow you to judge whether or not you’re reaching your objectives. Numbers like time, range, weight, steps, and so forth all make sense.

 

  • Attainable – Don’t bother setting impossible goals. If you have never walked an hour a day in your life, don’t start with that as your goal. Instead, start with five minutes and then craft a plan to add on a minute a day until you reach your goal of walking an hour a day.

 

  • Relevant – Also, each goal that you make has an overarching objective you’re trying to accomplish. For example, if you’re trying to write a novel writing the words is just one aspect of the novel publishing goal, but it is directly related.

 

  • Timely – Never leave a goal timeline open-ended. Even if you have to adjust the timeframe due to reality, the truth is we all fill up the time we give ourselves. If you give yourself three hours to check the mail, you’re going to take three hours. Tighten up your timelines to create a schedule that includes structured action that is easy to habituate – no motivation needed.

 

As you craft your goals, consider who will do the actions that help you reach the goal and think about what you really want to accomplish. When you do that and create a realistic time frame for it all to be done, you’re more likely actually to achieve the results you want and need.

Better Goal Setting Tips for Maximum Productivity

 

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Daily Habits to Encourage Positive Thinking and Outlook

When you start making the good things you do into habits, suddenly everything you want to change seems easy. Want to lose weight? Just eat 100 fewer calories a day, move an hour a day, and while the change won’t be noticeable or hard to stick to, the results over a long time, such as a year, will be dramatic.

 

  • Start Your Day with Uplifting Music – Even if you think you like listening to negative music to get your anger out, the truth is that it does affect your mind and inform your thoughts. There is a time and place for everything, so first thing in the morning, feed your mind with positive music. It can help to pick one pick me up song that works no matter what to listen to.

 

  • Reframe Roadblocks as Challenges – How you think of things and word things makes a difference in how you react. If you can use positive language to reframe the things that get in your way or threaten to get in your way, you’ll naturally teach yourself how to overcome them.

 

  • Use Positive Words to Frame Your Life – When you are talking about your life, even if something is less than perfect, use positive language to talk about it or think about it. When you do that, it will make you feel more satisfied and happier with your life.

 

  • Ignore Other People’s Drama – Whether it’s work-related, HOA-related, or family-related if the drama isn’t something you have any control over, you want to ignore it. You only have control over one person, yourself, not anyone else. The more you realize and accept that, the less bothered you’ll be about the drama going on in the world.

 

  • Fill Your Mind with Hopeful Thoughts – It’s natural to sometimes go toward the negative, but you can change that by purposefully filling your mind with hopeful thoughts about the world and your own personal life.

 

  • Keep a Gratitude Journal – Each evening, write down three things you are grateful for that happened today. This is going to help you focus on the positive even as you sleep tonight.

Daily Habits to Encourage Positive Thinking and Outlook

  • Tell One Person or Organization Thank You Each Day – It’s one thing to write about your thankfulness in your private journal, but how about letting someone in your life know that they are important to you. People like getting told that they did something good. They’ll remember you.

 

  • Surround Yourself with Other Positive People – While shunning others doesn’t come off as all that positive, the more you surround yourself with those who are also positive, the more you’ll feel positive. It’s really just another version of the whole “birds of a feather” idea, and while it’s a stereotype, it’s mostly true.

 

  • Focus On Mindfulness – One thing that breeds discontent more than almost anything is expectations and living in another time, whether the past or the future. The more you can focus on what you are experiencing right now, the more satisfaction in life you’re going to feel.

 

Nothing here takes more than a few moments of your time each day, but if you tie the behavior to something you do each day, you can turn positive thinking into a habit grounded in reality and fuel your life in a positive direction.