How You Can Beat 97% Of The Pack: When I was seventeen I remember doing a program called Discovery. I think I was the only teenager who paid for half the fee and begged and pleaded their parents to let them go. Basically, it was a course which taught a lot of life skills from motivation to how to deal with conflict... kind of like an Anthony Robbins for teenagers. Anyway, I remember them doing this exercise at the course where they talked about how when a plane flies from Sydney to New York, it is off course for about 97% of the flight. Read more...



Conducting Effective Career Aspiration Discussions with Employees: One of the key steps to having impactful talent management and development solutions is to ensure that the talent within the organization is aware of what is being done to manage and develop them; as well, it is vital that company leaders are aware of the employee's individual career aspirations. This can be accomplished through a Career Aspiration discussion. Read more...



Online Brand Protection: Don't Get Crazy: Previously we discussed some of the issues surrounding the protection of your online brand. It is true that there are people out there who intend to misuse and abuse brand associations that others worked hard to create, and there are steps to take to limit them. After all, hard work should be protected, and there's no reason to let someone trash your brand just because you didn't consider every single eventuality. Read more...



Target Audience: Who Is Your Ideal Client?: Your target audience consists of the people and businesses that are most likely to need and want what you have to sell. Before you create a marketing plan for your business, it is critical that you define your target audience and create an ideal client profile so you can attract this audience with your marketing. Once you have identified your target audience and ideal clients you will find it so much easier to design your marketing plan around their identity and their needs.
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The End Of Dumb Affiliate Marketing: One of the saddest things that I witness day after day is affiliate marketers who really struggle to make sales. They send out email after email, promotion after promotion, yet often make very few sales. This is not only sad, it's also needless "practice bleeding." Making affiliate sales is easy when you know the secret. It's even very scientific and does have fairly predictable results. Read more...



Chickens Banging On The Golden Goose Success Door: As human beings we are not hapless victims, some of us are just chicken. We have no excuse other than, we are just chicken.. Why? Because we are given methods by which we can design the course of our lives. And we can use this knowledge to help others, whom are so deep in despair, that they can not see or feel anything that might help them out from where they are. Part of The Good News is this: With higher knowledge comes the wisdom and the practice to use it. Read more...



Do You Know the Difference Between an Investment Advisor and a Broker?: As an fee-only investment advisor I come across clients from all walks of life. Lately I have noticed something in common with many of these investors. Many do not know the difference between an investment advisor and a broker who manages and/or makes securities recommendations for their clients' investment portfolios. With the almost unprecedented volatility in the securities markets, you cannot afford to dig your head in the sand when it comes to whom is managing your assets. Read more...



Creativity Gone Wild: Beware of Punctuation Marks and Special Keyboard Characters in Business Names: Recently I tried to order a documentary DVD called “Young at Heart” from a wholesale publishing site. Typing in the title of the DVD in the site search engine brought up nothing. This puzzled me, because the movie had been shown in theaters and won several awards. And it wasn’t brand new. Scratching my head, I went away and tried again a month later. It still didn’t show up in the database. Then somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I had a dim memory that there was an “@” sign in the title. Read more...



Focus On Your Strengths: Last year, I took over a small second office next to the one I have now. I've had it painted and recarpeted. But setting it up and getting my current office painted / recarpeted seems overwhelming. I know. I know. I've got to make the time to plan out how I want it to all look, what I want to get out of it, where I want what, etc. because my current office just feels too congested. But I find it overwhelming. Read more...



Everything You Need To Know To Get Your Idea On The Web: If you want to get online and are wondering, "How can I get my idea live on the Web in the form of a website?" you have three choices: hire a Web vendor such as a Web designer to make it for you, use an online template-based turnkey service or make it yourself from scratch. This article is specifically for the Web novice that simply needs a place to begin. Read more...



Business Turnaround: Reorganize Your Company and Focus on Its Profitable Areas: After you have determined the root cause of your company's problems, you must now reorganize to make your company profitable. All companies have strengths and weaknesses, and it would be wise to recognize which areas are assets to you and which need improvement.
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Social Media Management - Watching the Chick-fil-A Cows: Many What can you do as a small- or medium-sized business owner to increase your reach with your customers? One smart idea is to look at what the big guys are doing. One company that is maximizing its marketing efforts online and offline is Chick-fil-A, the second largest chicken-based fast-food restaurant in the United States. Read more...



Top Ten Startup MistakesThat Almost Always Lead to Business Failure: Many startup ideas fail to ever be launched and many, many fail within the first year or two. In most cases, the failure has nothing to do with the business idea, but how the business side is handled. The business of entrepreneurship is business first, then operations (what your business actually does). The Top Ten startup mistakes that lead to ultimate failure are:
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Use the Charm of Contrast for a Great Company Slogan or Advertising Tag Line: At the bottom of page 1 of my local small-town paper, the following headline for our hometown hospital caught my attention, " Nationally Ranked. Locally Loved." I read it a few times and smiled. This headline has so much going for it. It's a perfect illustration of how to use contrast effectively in an advertising slogan or tag line. Read more...



Learn to Avoid Basic SEO and Internet Marketing Mistakes: Frankly, the biggest search engine optimization mistake you can make is not doing any SEO at all. It's amazing how many people believe "if you build it, they will come." Marketing coaching makes one thing clear. Just putting a site up on the Internet won't get you the traffic you want or need. By the same token, building a site and then thinking about SEO after the fact is a bad plan too. SEO needs to be at the heart of your Web plans from day one, and it's a job that's never "finished." Read more...



Business Turnaround: An Overview of How to Best Enhance Your Company's Finances: A successful business turnaround requires the owner to take certain steps to become a profitable enterprise. By taking the following actions, you can reorganize your company and produce positive cash flow. Read more...



LISTEN UP LEADERS: The Frontline Makes Your Bottom Line: It happens all the time: A full-page ad is placed in a major monthly publication. The ad touts the service excellence of their product. Catchy phrases. Great promises. Major dollars are spent to create an implied image in the mind of the consumer. And it can vanish in a heartbeat if promises made are not promises kept-if the derived image cancels out the implied image.
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Does Your Web Site Pass the Title Tag Test?: You know those words in the top bar of the browser when you're on a website? You may not have noticed them before now, but you'll want to pay attention to what shows there for your site from now on. Those words are from the page's title meta tag, a part of the code that makes up the page. And while the title tag is just one small part of the code, it plays a really big role. Read more...



Why I Admire Bob the Builder: Today I want to talk about why I admire Bob the Builder. Until recently, I never thought much about Bob the Builder. But over the holidays, I spent some time watching different shows with my 3 year old son. He just loves the Wizard of Oz... and seeing Dorothy, the BAD witch, the good witch, the tin man, the scarecrow, the lion and the munchkins. It's an amazing film and I'll talk about the messages in it on another day. Read more...



Ten Tips for Quality Video SEO Results: Within one year of its launch, YouTube became the fourth most popular website in the world, and is currently a multi-million dollar enterprise. This fact alone should explain the utter relevance and power of video content to the modern Web. Widespread broadband internet access, increasingly capable video recording hardware and editing software, and high-capacity data storage have conspired to convert the web from predominantly text-based to an increasingly audio-visual phenomenon. Read more...