Alright, shutterbugs and e-commerce enthusiasts, it’s time to focus on the art of product photography!
We’re about to dive into the world of pixels, lighting, and composition that’ll make your products look sexier than a supermodel eating a cheeseburger. (Now that’s an image that’ll sell!)
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When you have a small business and decide to take it online, it is a good idea to have a plan in place first. A website can accomplish a number of things and the first thing you need to decide is exactly what you want yours to accomplish. This should be decided before you even start because it can affect what type of web design or what kind of website you get and even who you choose as your host, as well as many other things.
For instance, are you going to use your website just as an online advertisement, or as a place customers can come to buy? If it’s the latter, you will need business hosting with a shopping cart and several ways for the customer to pay. Not all shopping carts accept credit cards, but many potential customers prefer to pay that way. You need to make sure your shopping cart is suitable for your needs.
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Your digital marketing plan for your website should allow you to get the email addresses of people interested in your product or service, you can then market to them via email. This is worth the time and effort it takes because those leads are considered ‘hot’ or at least ‘warm’. That is, they are interested in what you have to offer, so are more likely to buy.
That said, you don’t want to continually shove your offerings at them. First of all you should send them a welcome email – you can set this up to be done automatically. Then you can send them even more information than was on your website in the next email. After that, you can send them more information and a link to purchase the product.
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According to the Pro’s at SEO Perth Pro, SEO is now a focus of most online businesses as they compete to have their content shown on top of the search engine results and work towards converting the visitors to paying customers.
Here are some necessities for successful Search Engine Optimization:
The name of your blog is, in itself, an opportunity to make it SEO friendly. Blogs that have very long or even extremely short titles are near useless. Blog titles should effectively convey to the reader what will be discussed and simultaneously entice them into reading the post.
Ask yourself these simple questions to help you come up with a good title:
A good, descriptive yet short, title focused on a particular theme will cause an increase in organic traffic. For example, a travel website has a “Must Visit Destinations 2018” blog that discusses the best places, as suggested by travelers, on their website.
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No matter how skilled or experienced any psychologist is, if you hire one to help you overcome a psychological issue you are having, they can only really be effective if you help them to help you. By that, we mean that unless you open up, and be completely honest, the support and advice they give you, may not be 100% relevant.
This is akin to you going to see your own doctor with a sharp pain in your stomach but telling that you are merely experiencing some indigestion. Doctors are not mind readers, and although they help to fix one’s mind, nor are psychologists, so in both cases you must be truthful in order to receive the best possible advice, and the most appropriate treatment.
Now, it is understandable that some people will be reticent to open up a psychologist, given that they may only have just hired them. Speaking to what is effectively a stranger, especially about matters which are extremely personal, such as our emotions and feelings, does not come naturally to every one of us.
So, to help anyone who reads this to be more open and honest with their psychologist or any other health professional for that matter, here are some simple guidelines to make it easier for you.
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Search Engine Optimisation is all about making your website rank high in the search result for a specific term, so that you get more traffic. According to SEO Perth, there are many elements of SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – that may be difficult for the beginner to understand. But there are also simple principles that anyone can do.
So you have an online business and you are thinking of engaging a professional digital agency such as Slinky, or you have a website that is supposed to help your small business get more customers, but nothing seems to be happening. What can you do to get the traffic that is going to convert into customers? In some cases Google adwords can mean great success. Adwords, or pay per click (ppc) ads as they are sometimes called are basically paid ads that are placed on the search engine results pages (SERPS).
Where to find adwords samples
You will no doubt see them if you surf on the Internet because Google places an ‘ad’ sign right next to the heading text. This alerts surfers to the fact that if they click on the link it will take them to a page that sells something. Not all websites are commercial ones or try to get people to purchase goods or sign up. Many are, but not all have Google ads to lead you to them.
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In Personal Development for Smart People (see my book review here), Steve Pavlina lists the three core principles of personal development as Truth, Love and Power.
When you combine the principles, you get the secondary principles of personal development; Truth combined with Love gives you Oneness, Love and Power combine to give you Courage and Truth with Power gives you Authority. All together, the six principles combine to give you the seventh core principle of personal development: Intelligence.
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“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”
Japanese proverb
If you have a vision of what you want to achieve, it’s essential to create an action plan of how and when you’re going to do it. This is the time to set specific goals, assign timelines and watch as quantifiable results begin to manifest.
You’ll break down each action item into manageable tasks, to guard against overwhelm. And when you meet each of your own self-imposed deadlines, plan to give yourself a special reward. This will help you follow through and stay committed.
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Life Coaches Blog has been quiet for a while, but starting tomorrow I’m pleased to introduce guest blogger Carey Powell of Fearless Coaching who has a great series of articles lined up for the next few weeks.
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Charisma. You know it when you see it, but what is charisma and how can you become more charismatic?
In the How To Be Charismatic series, I explore different people and facets of charisma as I attempt to answer the question: just what is it that makes charismatic people charismatic?
Many of us would agree that Bruce Lee was one of the most intense and charismatic figures in the history of cinema. But just how was he charismatic and what can we learn from him to be more charismatic ourselves?
The following video is a 25 minute interview with the Little Dragon. It was thought lost for a couple of decades until found miraculously preserved in the 1990s. Done in December 1971, when Bruce was riding on the success of his first film, we get a rare glimpse into what it must have been like to talk with the legend face-to-face.
You can find clues to Bruce’s inner and outer game of charisma by watching the video.
1) Mid-tempo speed of speaking.
A frequent characteristic of charisma that I keep reading about is a measured pace of speaking – speak too fast (a problem I have) and you appear insecure. Speak too slowly and you bore people.
2) A wide range of gestures that punctuate his speech.
Something you’d expect from a great martial artist; he’s comfortable with his hands and he uses them to emphasize what he says.
3) Use of pauses in his speech.
Bruce likes to use well-timed pauses in his speech to…add emphasis and…build anticipation. Great technique.
4) A variety of changing facial expressions.
I was once taught that charisma comes out of variety; a variety of gestures, body postures, voice tonality, tempo and facial expressions. It’s obvious that Lee has a wide variety of facial expressions; note how he changes from smiling to serious, joking to intense in a heartbeat.
5) A variety of vocal tonality.
Listen to how he slows down, and punctuates certain words in-between or just explode into a new sentence – done together with his gestures.
1) Passionate
He loves the martial arts so much it comes through in everything he says.
2) Knowledgeable
Bruce gives the interviewer Pierre Burton a rich glimpse into the world of martial arts, even giving a little demo of Tai Chi Chuan when Pierre asks about it. He remembers his line from the TV show Longstreet and gives Pierre a short but intense performance.
3) Open
Bruce doesn’t pull any punches (hee hee) and gives Pierre his open and direct opinions; even on why he felt The Warrior wouldn’t be made because of racism (it was eventually made as Kung Fu, starring a Caucasian David Carradine).
Bruce Lee on Charisma
What did Bruce Lee himself have to say about being charismatic?
When I did The Green Hornet television series back in 1965, I looked around and I saw a lot of human beings. And as I looked at myself, I was the only robot there. I was not being myself. I was trying to accumulate external security, external technique – the way to move my arm and soon on – but I was never asking: ‘What would Bruce Lee have done if’ – the word if – ‘such a thing had happened to me?’ When I look around, I always learn something, and that is, to always be yourself and to express yourself. To have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate him. That seems to me to be the prevalent thing happening here in Hong Kong. They always copy a person’s mannerisms, but they never see beyond that. They never start at the very source, the very root of their own being, and ask the question: ‘How can I be me?’
Just what is an actor? Is he not the sum total of all that he is – his level of understanding, his capability to captivate the audience because he is real in the expression of his personal feelings toward what was required in the scene? You can spot such artists from ordinary ones like that. The Americans have a word for it, it’s called charisma. What you see on the screen is the sum total of his level of understanding, his taste, his educational background, his intensity, etc.
Most people only live for their image. That is why where some have a self, a starting point, most people have a void. Because they are so busy projecting themselves as ‘this’ or ‘that,’ they end up wasting and dissipating all their energy in projection and conjuring up of facade, rather than centering their energy on expanding and broadening their potential or expressing and relaying this unified energy for efficient communication. When another human being sees a self-actualizing person walk past, he cannot help but say: ‘Hey now, there is someone real!’
Bruce asserts that the secret to charisma isn’t in copying other people, but in honestly expressing oneself to one’s highest potential. He believes that a solid inner game will provide a solid outer game. This call to be authentic also echoes British Professor Richard Wiseman’s attribute of charismatic people; that they are impervious to the influences of other charismatic people.
I’d make a guess that if Bruce was asked about how to be more charismatic; he’d tell us to be ourselves as best as we can, develop our fullest potentials and express ourselves honestly.
See anything I missed out? And who else do you think is charismatic that we should take a good look at?
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Alvin’s Note: Our dear fellow Life Coach, and passionate personal development extraordinaire, Paiboon Busayarak, has embarked on a 3-month initiation into Buddhist monkhood in his native Thailand. He just sent me this post via email sharing the conversations he’s had with his teacher. The words are his, the grammar tweaking is mine 😉 Enjoy!)
Read MoreNot by hate is hate defeated;
Hate is quenched by love.
This is the eternal law.Dhammapada 5
