The SOS of Awareness

The SOS of Awareness
Reading a blog post looking at how awareness and personal development work together.
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Flexibility is the name of the game

Check out this website I found at feedproxy.google.com

Be flexible in your life at work and at home.

End of an era for early websites

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Technology is really moving along at an alarming rate. New technology some becomes old technology.

How far can you go?

How far do you think you can go? What are your limits? You may think you’re operating at your limits with what you’ve got to deal with on a daily basis. However, I beg to differ; we can all achieve more than we are currently achieving. We are all guilty of operating in our comfort zone. Your comfort zone is that area in your life where you are just ‘ticking along’ without to much trouble. It could be likened to a stroll in the park; there may be some of you that do stretch yourself out of your comfort zone into your stretch zone and occasionally into your panic zone just for good measure. Those of you who occasionally enjoy the occasional trip into these outer zones I’ll leave you to enjoy your experiences while I concentrate on those who are struggling to find the outer edge of their comfort zone.

You may remember studying the adventures of Christopher Columbus at school and his discovery of the Americas. He was a person who loved to venture out of his comfort zone and did so on a number of occasions on his discoveries of new lands. He was certainly ahead of the game with personal development training.

How do you think he managed to keep the motivation of his crew on board his ship as they travelled into uncharted waters. He wouldn’t have had the benefit of a blog diary to keep people informed, his method of recording events would have been a journal diary. The journeys they were undertaking had never been completed before and at the time the general thinking was that the world was ‘flat’ and should anybody dare to venture too far they would fall off the edge of the earth. One of his more difficult tasks must have been to change the mind set of his crew from the old way of thinking to a new paradigm of think that the world was, in fact, ’round’. It must have been quite a challenge to change their way of thinking; if he had listened to his doubters and those who loved the space of their comfort zone how long would it have been before the Americas was discovered?

Another, more recent, example of changing the general pattern of thinking was in 1954 when Sir Roger Bannister broke the record for running a mile when he did covered the distance in less than 4 minutes, the exact time was 3′59.4″. Up that point it was considered an impossible task for a man to run so fast, however since that record breaking feat the time has been lowered by almost 17 seconds. Not bad for something that was considered an impossible feat.

These are only two of the many major ground breaking events in the world. What are your own ground breaking events in your own life? If you can’t name any, what major ground breaking events are you going to implement in your life to create the major shift that is required to ’shake it up’. To begin making the changes in your life and to find out how far you can go, you need to change your thinking and mind set. Start thinking big! Thinking small never helped anybody; all it does is prevent you from progressing and reaching the targets you set for yourself.

If you’re used to the small time thinking of mediocrity and the simplicity of your comfort zone and you’re looking for a way out; start by thinking of the impossible and the unachievable. Without thinking on a higher plane and more creative level you will continue to live your life of un-eventfulness and the same cyclic events you have lived previously will continue. Shake off the old life style and move into the ‘fast lane’ and start living your life on your terms. Get moving on your personal growth.

Thank you for reading; please let me know what you think and share your experiences.


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The value of quality communication

The fundamental reason for communicating is to relay messages between individuals and/or groups of people in order to disclose information. The  information being relayed could be of great importance or it may be mere ‘chit chat’. The content of the message isn’t being discussed here, what is being addressed is the importance of the quality of the communication the sender and receiver place on it. So how important is the quality of your communication? Probably more to the point, how much do you value the quality of your communications?

One of the chapters, “Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood” in Stephen Covey’s book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” epitomises the essence of how our communications should be conducted.

How often do you communicate with the sole intention of ensuring you get your message across, without a care in the world for your listener. Heaven forbid them if they interrupt! When you communicate how much of the message you are relaying is loaded with items from your agenda without considering whether or not your listener would like to contribute or even the value of what they could contribute; and when you find yourself having to listen are you truly listening or just hearing the words because you’re waiting for the opportunity to ‘jump back in’ and continue with your verbal expression.

The next time somebody says to you, “You never listen to me”, or may be suggests that you talk too much and never listen, try this exercise.

Sit down with this person and ask them to explain to you what it is they want you to listen to; if there’s more than one ask them to choose one. Ask them to include as much detail as possible; when they are speaking remain absolutely silent, do not interrupt them, do not speak or ask any questions. When you think they’ve finished check with them; ask them to confirm that they have. When they’ve confirmed they have finished, feedback to them how you understand what they have explained to you; then ask them if what you have relayed back is correct. If there are any errors ask them to explain it again; repeat this process until your version of things matches theirs. Using this process in your communications will enhance not only your communication and listening skills but also your reputation as a considerate listener. As you use this principle more and more your self development and personal growth will benefit immensely. I’m not suggesting you use it for every communication you have; your reputation would certainly diminish if you were to ask for a detailed explanation for every conversation between you and your friends or colleagues.

This exercise highlights the need to fully understand the questions your listeners are asking and the information they are seeking. It is impossible to know what they want if you are doing all the talking and no listening, so how about giving a thought to your listeners and asking them what they want.

If you are a blogger, you can apply your new learned listening skills when you are selecting the material you intend to add to your blog. Whether it’s a new post or a new ad to make your readers aware of something they will benefit considerably more if you use your listening skills beforehand.

So whether your communication is a two way conversation or through your blog where you may be encouraging your readers to buy something, your upper most thoughts should be about them first and foremost. What is it they want? What are they seeking? Don’t assume you know, find out through research. Your research results could come from a poll on your blog or the comments left on your blog by your readers. Be careful not to use research material from other niche areas this could well dilute your reputation as a specialist in your niche; especially if you start writing blog posts out of your niche area.

Try forgetting about selling on your blog, make it a secondary reason and write your posts for the sole purpose of genuinely wanting to inform or help your readers! By all means put ads on your blog, especially if the purpose of your blog is to make money. When you write your posts forget the outcome from the ads (money) and write with passion about your niche area and strengthen your position in that area. Any earnings you intend to raise from your blog writing will be sure to appear as you continue to increase your list of loyal readers and the word spreads about the quality of the content of your posts. It will all contribute to you Personal Development.

Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think and share your experiences.


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Don't let SEO burst your budget

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is specialist, expensive and you need to know what you are doing.. don’t you?

SEO-image-smallRight? wrong!

The commercial and financial climate that we are operating in is causing most of us to tighten our belts and think twice about spending. This especially true for Training, HR and other small consultancies and entrepreneurs.

The challenges for new startup firms and those that are trading but need a change of strategy to keep the work coming is:

“How are we going to get seen on the web in order to market ourselves effectively?”

Who can do this for us – it’s hard to get seen on the web isn’t it?

Your web designer will say that they can offer SEO and indeed a search on the web will give you 1000s of people and firms promising to get you on page one of Google. And all for £500-£1000 per month… ouch!

In good trading times this may be hard to justify – but in tough times?

The reality is that it is easy to get seen on page one of Google or other search engines – the ‘con’ a lot of providers will do is to help you find a “key word phrase” that is almost unique to you, and get that on page one of Google – easy.

Take a look at the phrase “squarespace template design” if I search for the term without quotes I get:

squarespace template design-google1

(See the current results yourself here – http://bit.ly/ASXKQ )

And with the quotes we get:

squarespacetemplatedesign-google2

(See the current results yourself here – http://bit.ly/B4dRS )

This is a great ‘trick’ with the first search term Google only shows 6,730 results, getting to the top of only 6000 pages is not that difficult. On the second example where the search is for the exact phrase, there are only 4 results. Now after this blog is published the results will be very different. So using some simple techniques (that I will share with you) watch the results change over time. (this article is being written on 10/10/09).

The real test of SEO is getting to the first page for a popular search term- one with 10,000s or millions of results.

I say this is a ‘con’ as who would look for a product name? very few in the business world – our customers are looking for solutions to their problems. They wont be looking for “ABC Inc” – they will be looking for “train the trainer provider” or “train the trainer provider in London”. You need to think like your clients and find key words and phrases that they will be looking for. 

 

So what are the secrets to doing SEO for yourself?

1) Research your customers and find out what they are looking for – you need to discover key words and phrases. (if it is things like “leadership development” “management development” or “train the trainer” then good luck for there are millions of sites with these words and while it is possible, it is very tough and time consuming.  One way of making the achievable is to have a specialism i.e.:

  • Management development in the care sector
  • Train the trainer in Berkshire
  • Leadership development for women

The more specialist you can be the more likely your success at getting seen on the web .

2) Get your web developer to add your keywords to your site – in the title, in the description and in the other meta-tag areas of your pages – have different key words and phrases for each page

3) Write copy for those pages which make use of your keywords – repeat the phrase 3-5 times (each page MUST be very different)

4) Write a blog(off your site and free Wordpress or blogger), ensure that the content is supportive of your key words and include these in some of your articles – then have these articles link to your site (relevant pages) – yes put the links in the article, not just links on the blog itself

5) Promote your blog – on forums, on other blogs and on twitter. The ‘trick’ or secret is content and links. One powerful and low cost strategy is:

twitter-blog-forum-promote-smallWhere you use tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning and forums to promote content that you have written on your blog. These are articles that are of interest to your audience. Your goal is to build a ‘name’ in your potential clients heads that you:

a) can be trusted

b) that you know what you are taking about

c) that you can solve their problems

d) you are confident enough that you ‘give away’ valuable material

As Robin Elliot said “Enthusiasm is contagious. When you are absolutely convinced, sold, passionate, enthusiastic and confident about what you're offering, it's hard NOT to sell.”

 

Have compelling reasons in your blog for readers to explore your site.

 

6) Encourage others to promote your blog, use Linkedin and other vehicles - with great content people will link to your blog – I recently (yesterday!) had a major US training provider send a link to a blog post to over 14000 of their clients – wonderful

7) Have good value material on your site, answer the questions purchasers want to ask, make sure your contact details are easily found – keep the site up to date. the site does not need to be large – but it must be kept fresh.

 

In SEO content is king.

The more you specialise the easier it is to write unique content, the more niche the content the greater the opportunity you have of attracting visitors, the more visitors the greater conversions you will have. SEO is no longer about the technical “stuff” that developers do – its is all about content and people valuing your content

The ultimate goal is to have people buy you and your service not you having to pitch and sell.

 

Purchasing SEO

Before you pay anyone for SEO work on your site check out their site. If they advocate using a blog – what is their blog look like? If they claim to be able to get you on page 1 of Google for your search terms – look and see if they have done it for themselves (use view source in your browser and Google the text they are using under “keywords”) – make sure they walk their talk – if they don’t – walk away!

 

Summary

Wow this is a lot of content for you to get your head around.

In follow-up articles I will share:

Step by step HOW to do each of the above (not the meta-tag – best left to the programmers)

I’ve already told you all you need to know – i.e. the WHAT

Then WHERE and WHEN will also feature.

SEO is best done by yourself, or in the very least as a partnership – don’t outsource this core part of your business – your Internet reputation.

PS if you want to check out these techniques for yourself, I have a ’secret’ project running. For 3 weeks I have been trying to get “train the trainer” with and without the quotes ranked in Google. This is a difficult one to break, I tried once before using old techniques and failed. 

I am now hovering between pages 1 & 2 with over 3m results! Watch my progress http://bit.ly/sXDXE (staying on page 1 is my goal – not being at the top)

You do not need to do ALL the things I have talked about, but do link your strategies… http://rapidbi.com/management/2009/10/dont-let-seo-burst-your-budget/
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© RapidBI.com This article has been written by Mike Morrison or one of the RapidBI team. We welcome your comments. If you wish to use any text you are free to do so, however please credit us and link to our site.
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A great article from Mike Morrison

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