Tag: online marketing

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The Importance of Continued Learning in Life and Business

There is one thing that is certain in life, and that is change. You can always bet that something will change throughout your life, big or small. While change may be scary and uncomfortable to most, there is also a beautiful and different side. The chance to learn and gain something new, an opportunity you should always take no matter what.

 

Reasons to keep learning for a lifetime:

 

To Increase Your Confidence and Motivation

A lot of anxiety or fear stems from a lack of knowledge. If you strive to learn something new as often as possible about your niche and the world at large, you will empower yourself to do better, thus making you believe in yourself, and boosting your confidence while giving you the knowledge to be successful.

 

To Keep Up with Your Competition

Do you remember when Netflix used to mail DVDs to your house before there were streaming companies? If you don’t know, that’s okay too because Netflix did precisely what they were supposed to do to power through their industry and be the leader. Netflix saw a change in technologies and tried to understand and learn new ways to improve its business model.

 

They now lead their industry by streaming movies and television shows straight to your T.V. and skipping the mailbox altogether. They would become the next Blockbuster, whom Netflix and Redbox destroyed with their mail-in service if they didn’t. Something Blockbuster adopted a little too late and ultimately had to shut down.

 

To Fully Understand Your Potential

Learning unlocks skills and resources about yourself that you would have never discovered if you didn’t make an effort to do so in the first place.

 

To Run A Realistic and Successful Online Business

To be successful and keep up with an online business, you must continue learning new technologies, software services, and social media platforms. If not, you will undoubtedly stay behind the crowd and won’t get any foot traffic you may be used to with a brick and mortar store. Even brick and mortar stores have to keep up with social media and techniques as more and more people stay indoors or work from home.

 

To Create the Job or Life You Want

There are so many different paths, careers, or choices to make in life that it is impossible to know them all. You will discover this and unlock worlds, ideas, values, and inspiration you never knew existed when you learn—giving you the knowledge and more choices to live the way you want.

 

In the end, education, knowledge, and experiences are fun and rewarding. They, together with practice, are vital for growth, understanding, and compassion for the world. Education and learning provide no consequences if you want to accomplish your dreams and be more productive. Keep reading, experimenting, and jump out of your comfort zone to learn and gain more knowledge.

Are You Being Realistic About Your Goals?

 

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Top 7 Productivity Tools to Try

If you haven’t started automating some part of your business yet, then you are already behind. Tools and technology make business more accessible and ultimately increase your productivity so you can earn more money or crush more goals. Technology keeps you organized and consistent, allowing you to keep up with your competition.

 

Give these seven tools a try today to increase your business productivity:

 

#1:Trello

Trello is an online, cloud-based project management system that allows you to work anywhere with an internet connection. Create message boards, lists, cards and organize or delegate tasks to different team members.

 

#2:Dropbox

Cloud-based software that allows you to save and share files from any location. Dropbox is an excellent option for businesses that need to share, transfer, or save large files like video production.

 

#3:Zapier

Connect all your different applications to automate your workflow instantly. This application moves information from different social media platforms, email applications, and more. Choose your medium and trigger and watch Zapier do the work for you. For example, anytime someone signs up for your Facebook event, you can tell Zapier to send them a message automatically.

 

#4:Wave

Every business requires accounting, and that’s precisely what the Wave app makes a little bit easier. Create professional invoices, track your business expenses, incoming revenue, pay employees and instantly generate essential business reports.

 

#5:Evernote

Evernote is more than just a notepad. It saves your text, images, files, to-do lists, and more all in the same place to keep track of new business ideas or important events and information.

 

#6:Pushbullet

If you feel like you are juggling with too many devices, smartphone, tablet, desktop, and laptop, then Pushbullet is right for you. It connects all your devices making them easier to use and seem as though you only have one. Get notifications, check your emails, send links, text messages, or files, chat with friends, family, or co-workers all from one device.

 

#7:Todoist

Keep all your to-do lists, and never forget an appointment or important assignment again with Todoist. Todoist provides features that allow you to easily organize and prioritize your most important tasks, from creating the family budget or weekly grocery list to updating important business routines and strategies or instantly share your lists or delegate tasks to your team.

 Tools and Tips to Help You Automate Email Marketing

Don’t be behind anything longer. Find the right tools and technology for your business to be more productive. Start by adding just one of these productivity tools to your daily routine. Remember, technology will only go as far as you allow it. Learn how to use it right and give it time to see the rewards and benefits.

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Get Your Goals into Your Calendar

Accomplishing your goals requires action. Stop waiting for the perfect time. You can create the perfect time. Pick a time relatively soon and realistic to your goal needs and put that goal into your calendar.

 

This means you need to:

  • Pick a start date and time for your ultimate goal
  • Set proper and realistic deadlines
  • Fully understand the tasks needed to reach your goal
  • Then schedule times and deadlines for each task required to reach your ultimate goal.

 

Adding your goals to your calendar forms a sense of commitment and re-establishes your sense of purpose or direction. It develops healthy routines and habits that inspire you to stay on track and keep you working towards your goals. It’s a great way to create instant motivation. When you can see it, you are more likely to want to get it done.

 

Essential Things to Keep in Mind When Goal Setting:

  • What is the end or ultimate goal?
  • How much time do you need? Have you timed yourself doing these tasks before? What if you don’t get as much sleep?
  • Are there things that could protentional go wrong or get in your way?
  • Who needs to do it? Can you complete each task or do some things that require help from others?
  • Group similar tasks and utilize technology to work more productively and save you time.
  • Get the most crucial items out of your way but keep in mind that little tasks add up over time.
  • Once you set a time, stick to it and don’t permit yourself to change it.

 

These are important questions and tips to keep in mind so you can pick the right deadline for your goal. You don’t want to create the opposite reaction and turn your goal into a nightmare because you took on too much work too fast. Slower is better than rushing it and pushing out shoddy quality work or products.

 

Research shows that more time is better for creativity anyways; however, just like too little time can have the opposite reaction, so can too much time. You must be realistic and take the time to evaluate. On the other hand, get going. Don’t wait or sabotage yourself any longer.

What Methods Work Best to Ensure You Make Your Goals?

The most productive and successful people utilize their calendar any moment they can.

Overall, the number one tip to achieving your goals and improving your time management skill and productivity is setting deadlines, adding them to your calendar, and then sticking to them. The more you schedule, the more you will achieve.

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How to Outsource to Save You More Time

Stop doing everything yourself. Outsource your work before it’s too late. To be successful, you need to save your time and energy for what you do best. If accounting, customer service, marketing, or technology isn’t your thing outsourcing the work by finding an online freelancer is a great option to save you more time and frustration.

Positive Attitude

The following are a few areas to outsource in your life and business to save you more time:

 

  • Making hotel reservations or booking meetings and other appointments.
  • Social media, email, and other marketing projects and tasks.
  • Laundry, cleaning, and other housework or maintenance.
  • Content writing, administrative or human resource tasks such as payroll.
  • Customer service and support.
  • Shopping and dry cleaning.
  • Other repetitive, time-consuming, and frustrating tasks.

 

What to outsource depends on what you need the most, what you can afford, and what goals you are looking to accomplish. Ask yourself this one simple question to get started: “What takes up most of my time?” Then decide from there if it something someone else could be doing for you instead.

 

Depending on your needs, there are many different platforms to choose from online to hire independent contractors to do various tasks from content writing, social media marketing, answering phone calls from customers, sending out emails on your behalf, or even delivering your groceries other materials.

 

The following are a few popular choices:

  • upwork.com – Post your job and let freelancers come to you with Upwork. Their freelancers offer many different services, including development and IT, sales and marketing, finance, accounting, administrative or customer support, etc. Whatever it may be, they likely have the freelancer for you.

 

  • fiverr.com – Graphic design, video, and animation, voice overs or content writing are just a few of the many different categories of freelancers you can find on Fiverr. For just five dollars a service, you can outsource just about any project on this platform.

 

  • getfriday.com – This is the best online marketplace to find virtual assistance that can perform repetitive, mundane, or time-consuming tasks for you and your business. If you need help with market research, bookkeeping, web, or IT services, you can also find that here with their Business Support Services.

 

  • instacart.com – With Instacart, you can pay a monthly or delivery fee per order to get your groceries, prescriptions, alcohol, or other similar items delivered. This application has partnered with many popular stores, including Publix, Costco, CVS Pharmacy, and more.

 

As you can see, depending on your needs, you can find a freelancer to do the job for you. Doing everything and not outsourcing only decreases your productivity. While we often joke about business owners working 24/7, the truth is that you do not have to work all the time to be successful as a business owner.

The Ultimate Boost in Productivity: Automation and Outsourcing

 

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Learn to Say No to Be More Productive

Fear of conflict, disappointment, social awkwardness, or dealing with any negative consequences is a few of many reasons why many people can’t say no.

However, saying no more often can lead to more productivity and isn’t as scary as you may think once you get started.

 

Here are four ways to learn how to say no to live a more productive life:

eliminate, delegate, automate

Take Control of Your Life

Instead of saying no, directly offer a different time or day that better suits your schedule. However, only offer this if it’s something that will provide you benefit or something you can genuinely offer. Helping people is great for your health and growth, but just because you are busy doesn’t mean it is valuable to your goals. Remember, you’re not selfish to take care of yourself first. You are the only one who can provide or offer your time. Don’t allow other people to control you.

 

Provide an Alternative

The best way to say no to anyone is by suggesting who will do a better job. This way, you don’t need to feel any pressure saying no. You can simply explain why you are not best for the job and who will be better—giving the other person good reasons to move on without you feeling guilty or pressured to do the job.

 

Look at It from A Different Perspective

Saying no is also saying yes to another opportunity and vice versa. If you keep saying yes to opportunities you don’t want to do, you also say no to things that you would enjoy or get value from. While helping people is healthy and beneficial to the world, it can’t overshadow your dreams and aspirations twenty-four seven. If you skip your self-care, you will not provide value to them either-even if they think you will be better for the task.

 

Be Honest and Clear

Overall, the best policy is honesty. If you can’t do something because you don’t have the time or have other important things to get done, explain it to them. Even if you have no reason other than you don’t want to, they will appreciate the honesty and won’t take up your time in the future asking again. It’s essential always to be yourself, even if there is a little awkwardness in between. It only saves you time and frustration in the long run.

Avoid Burnout: Reassess Your Goals

Saying no can seem harsh and uncomfortable at first, but you won’t want to stop once you get started. Just because you are saying no now doesn’t mean you can’t come back later either. If you’d like to get more stuff done, try saying “no” more often.

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How to Use the Right Tools and Technology for Your Business

Around 77% of all small businesses in American use technology for personal and professional purposes. There is no surprise or shock to this as technology provides many incredible and different benefits.

 

As a small business, you should always take advantage of tools and technology for the following reasons:

 

  • To earn twice the revenue or more.
  • To save time, energy, and other resources.
  • To have more energy, momentum, and focus on producing higher quality work.
  • Provides you the opportunity to improve or be the leader in your industry.
  • Ensures proper communication between your customers, you, and your business team or both depending on your company’s size.
  • To make your life and business more manageable, more organized, and productive.

 

This is only a shortlist of the many benefits that technology can bring to your business. However, to reap these rewards, you must find the right tools and technology for your business and needs. Just because a tip works for everyone else doesn’t mean it will benefit you too.

 

The following are a few things to keep in mind when using and choosing the right tools and technology for your business:

 

Be Mindful of Your Pain Points or Frustrations

What areas of your business provide you the most pain and discomfort? When having trouble organizing all your projects, customer information, or delegating tasks, for example, project management systems such as Trello or Basecamp, will keep you and your team on track.

 

What Is Taking Up All Your Time

Are there tasks that need three hours or more of your focus at a time? Accounting and other administrative tasks are the first spots to look at in this case. These tasks are often time-consuming and require a lot of concentration and understand to get done correctly. QuickBooks helps keep track of your inventory, invoices, projects, customers, bills, and more.

 Benefits of Creating Processes and Systems

Be Aware of Your Workspace and Workplace Requirements

While there are many tools and technology that can benefit you, they may not be best suited for your workspace or environment.

 

What Are Your Weaknesses and Strengths?

Your lack of skills can be made up for with proper use of technology—freeing you from stress, frustration, or taking away your time trying to learn something you don’t want to or care to know. Just because you own or run a business doesn’t mean you have to be a mastermind or an expert at every and all skills.

 

Ask Your Customers or Employers

The best information to help is directly from the source. Your customers and employers want to use technology that makes their life easier too. Opening up this line of communication also shows your audience that you care and want to provide value.

 

As you can see, tools and technology can increase your productivity and provide many benefits. Find your weaknesses, pain points, and frustrations, and let technology do the work for you.

 

 

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Yes! You Can Automate That

Automation can simplify your life and provide you more time to focus on the things that truly matter to you. It leads to better communication, higher productivity, and overall success in your business and life. The secrete to gaining more free time or time to accomplish more tasks is automation.

 

Here are five things you can automate in your business and at home:

 

#1: Grocery Shopping

Companies like Shipt, Instacart, and Cornershop by Uber have created a business model to shop and deliver your groceries for you. Grocery shopping can take hours and sometimes be stressful. Let others do it for you. Pick the items you want and the time you wish to deliver, and you’re all set.

shopping

#2: Inventory Management

Keeping up with inventory is costly and time-consuming, even if you have a small business or just buying groceries at home. Setting up a proper inventory management system right away is crucial. Software like NetSuite and Shopify will do this for you after the initial setup.

 

To combat this at home, create laminated lists for each category and mark the items off as soon as you throw them away. This way, you know exactly which items to buy again when you create your next grocery order on Shipt.

 

#3: Budget and Expense Management

Keeping track of everything on paper isn’t needed anymore, and in fact, you are only opening yourself up for mistakes if you insist on staying old school for everything. Accounting software such as Wave Accounting or QuickBooks provides the tools you need to set up a budget, generate sales or other business reports or pay your bills or taxes on time in an instant.

 

#4: Task Delegation or Chore Assignments

Trello, Basecamp, and other project management systems are an easy way to streamline your task delegation. These systems have many different tools and widgets that make it fast and easy to communicate and send or share resources to different or the same people. Chorebuster.net is another excellent resource that automatically assigns, schedules, and sends printable chore lists to the whole family.

 

#5: Contact Forms, Autoresponders, or Other Online Marketing Materials

Pop-up forms or other plugins should be downloaded to your websites or blogs to make email collection almost automatic. If someone has a question, contact forms are a great way to keep it organized too. Other programs like Zapier can help automate your social media campaigns by scheduling the posts for you.

Free and Low-Cost Automation Tools You Can Implement Today

Thankfully as technology advances, your life gets easier with automation, so you can spend your energy and time where it’s needed. One reason you want to work for yourself is to gain free time. You might as well set yourself up to achieve time freedom.

 

 

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The Importance Of “Why”

Before you start any business or goal in life, you should get to know and truly understand your “why” first. Knowing why you’re doing anything in life is a crucial step as it can easily make or break your business or goal before you even get started. When you know why you want to do something, you can better understand the actions and resources needed to get there.

 

Your why is the determination, focus, inspiration, and motivation you need to keep working towards your goals each and every day. As uncomfortable as it may feel to accept your daily actions are the direct results of what you want in life and have already achieved.

 

If you don’t achieve something even if you want it, it’s likely because you didn’t take the necessary action to get there. Your “why” to get there either wasn’t clear enough, or you simply weren’t true to yourself.

 

The following tips and tricks help discover your true “why” and how to use it to your advantage:

 

List Your Values and Aspirations

Start by listing your values and aspirations for all areas of life. List the most important thing you would like to achieve. The first value or aspiration that comes to mind is likely the one that you value the most.

 

Are There Consequences to Not Getting There?

Ask, “What will happen if I never do it?” Take notice of your emotions and write down precisely what you are thinking and feeling. Then evaluate what you wrote down—your true why is likely within these words.

 

Be Sure It’s for The Right Reasons

Why do you want to achieve what you want in your life? Whether it’s money, fame, or happiness, make sure it aligns with you, your values, and your morals; no one else’s. Even if everyone else is doing it, it may not be for you, and that’s okay.

 

Passion Doesn’t Always Equal Business Success

While this may be hard to hear, it can also be a great and beautiful thing. Just because you love something or are very passionate about it doesn’t mean it can be a viable business opportunity. You must make this realization before you get started and fail. Use it as a hobby and a great way to de-stress instead.

 

Be Aware: Money Won’t Ever Be Enough

While money unlocks some freedoms and can reduce stress, money by itself won’t be enough. If you didn’t need money, would you still want to do it? If the answer is no, then start somewhere else.

the purpose

As you can see, your “why” is what empowers you to get things done. Your “why” helps you become successful. If it’s not realistic, you likely won’t get there no matter why you do what you do.

 

 

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Nope: Productivity and Being Busy Are Not the Same

The main idea of productivity is always to work smarter, not harder. Just because you are active, working hard, and doing stuff does not mean you have used your time wisely enough to be productive. Unfortunately, a myth equates being “busy” to being highly productive, while not being “busy” equals laziness.

linkedin laptop

However, the most productive people can easily seem lazy with this mindset when they got all their work done already and get to take the rest of the day off.  Remember, the formula for productivity is your output over your input. If your input significantly outweighs the output, you need to adjust and fix your to-do list.

 

Here are a few tips that many successful entrepreneurs follow to be more productive and less busy throughout their day:

 

They Remove Absolutely Any and All Distractions

When it is time to work, take responsibility and remove the distractions you know will disrupt you. Get rid of distracting music. Don’t work where people are walking around and talking. Keep your workspace clean and organized. When distractions are removed, you can stay focused, concentrate and create momentum to get your work done faster.

 

They Create Many To-Do Lists and Know How To Prioritize

Start each morning with a to-do list to tackle each thing you need to get done. If you need to reach out to a customer and also complete a big assignment for the day, then you need two separate to-do lists. Don’t allow yourself to go with the flow, or you will find yourself doing pointless tasks throughout the day. Successful people prioritize their to-do lists and stay on track by sticking to them.

 Steps to Develop Your Overall Content Marketing Plan

They Take Time To Evaluate Their Work, Efforts, And Company Mission

It’s essential always to schedule time throughout your day to evaluate your actions and compare them to your goals. You could be busy all day yet only wasting your time and resources when that time would be better suited doing something else more important.

 

Take five or ten minutes every now and then to make sure you are still on your to-do list and that the goals you need to get done relate to your company mission or ultimate goals. Simply ask yourself, “Did the tasks I do today chip away at any of my goals or get me closer to where I want to be?” If yes, then keep going. If not, adjust your to-do list.

 

They Work in Batches

Working in batches means putting similar tasks together and get them done at the same time. This means less time is required to go back and forth between different tasks, and to keep the concentration and momentum you need to get done fast.

 

They Automate Repetitive Tasks

Finally, productive people automate repetitive tasks using technology, hiring a virtual assistant, or creating templates to make their work that much faster. Create templates for emails, repetitive tasks, accounting, inventory management, and customer management software to keep track of mundane and tedious tasks.

Don’t put out more effort only to achieve no rewards. Compare your efforts daily to your mission to ensure your productivity matches your intentions to live a more successful life.

 

 

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What is Business Continuity Planning?

To build resilience into your business, you’ll need to understand that your business continuity plan will provide the resilience necessary to overcome setbacks and disruptions in essence. Business continuity planning consists of examining your business for weaknesses based on known threats that may affect your ability to do business on any given day.

 

You’ll have to go through your processes, systems and examine what you do each day along with the resources you use (human and otherwise) to help you mitigate problems and issues. Business continuity planning includes:

 

  • Determining and listing possible types of distributions – You need to set up a plan for every eventuality that you can think up. Illness, lousy weather, destroyed technology, government regulations, and so forth are already known issues. Listing them out will help you figure out what you’re going to do for each of them automatically.

 

  • Studying your workflows – Part of the process includes having standardized workflows to identify bottlenecks and note the software and other resources you regularly use so that you can develop a plan if something within that system and process goes wrong. For example, if you outsource blog writing to one person and uploading the posts to another person, you can eliminate the problem of relying only on one person for everything.

 

  • Establishing key performance indicators – As you study your processes and workflow, you can also establish a few important indicators to track that can signal a problem or lead to a solution.

 

  • Setting up benchmarking – One key to overcoming a setback is to live by your data more than your gut. A combo of the gut with data is always better than just doing things without any idea of the metrics. For example, if you set up an emergency budget for your business that allows you to keep going during hard times, what is the number you need to meet? Do you know what your break-even point is?

 

  • Including redundancies – As you set up your processes and systems and examine your workflows, you can identify areas to create redundancies. For example, instead of using only one server space for your website, you can set up two, which will enable you to switch if one goes down quickly.

 

  • Developing plans – Using all the information you derive from a thorough study of your business and enabling you to keep going during hard times, you can use that information to develop concrete plans that you simply implement during a hard time instead of creating it from scratch.

 

When it comes to crisis management, having a plan in place before anything happens is essential. A proper continuity plan will include actual plans in place for the things you know will occur, such as illness, whether governmental or other issues. While you cannot plan for everything, any of these ideas can be adapted to unknown emergencies when needed. The act of planning and putting in place this plan will make your business more resilient and even eliminate many of the pitfalls that cause more than half of all businesses to fail in their first three years.