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Content at your finger tips

Are you tired of going through hundreds of websites each week to find content to share or write about? These two free tools will help you get your industry new at your fingertips!

Feedly

The content you need to accelerate your research, marketing, and sales.Feedly allows you to become a smart reader with less noise!

Google Alerts

Monitor the web for interesting new content. How often. As-it-happens. At most once a day. At most once a week. Sources. Automatic. News. Blogs. Web. Video. Books. Discussions.  And much more!

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How to track your goals

WOW, can you believe it is already the 22nd of January? Where has this month gone?

I hope you have had the time to write down your SMART goals, we have given you so much useful information to really make 2018 a success! Sometimes writing down your goals is the easy part, right? It is actually working towards them and tracking them that can be the challenge.

By the time April comes around people are usually way ahead of the game or have fallen back to their old routine. We have done some research for you to find easy and convenient ways to track your goals, so at the end of the year, you can look back at all you were able to accomplish!

Sometimes people feel that our phones can be a distraction to our lives, which I would agree. At the same time, we can use them for good and help us stay on track of our goals! Our phones are usually something that is ALWAYS with us, by our bed, on our desk, in the car, at the gym, wherever and whatever you do during the day, your phone is probably close by. Whether you are wanting to track personal goals or business goals, it is important to be able to monitor your success.

We have found 3 apps that you may enjoy to keep track of your goals:

Strides

We have really nailed down your SMART goals for this year, using this app Strides your can Track all your Goals & Habits in one place. Always stay motivated and on track with flexible reminders and beautiful charts to help you achieve your goals.

SMART Goal Setting
Track more than habits. Set Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant & Timely goals too:

Target value by date
Set a goal to increase or decrease anything, and see your pace, projection, and daily goal.

Average over time
Keep tabs on your average per day, week, month, year, or rolling (e.g. Last 7 days).

Project with milestones
Break a project down, and always know if you’re on pace to complete it by the due date.

Time Planner

This is a great app to be able to create all those lists you like and be able to check them off! You can track your goals, lists and habits with TimePlanner.

Do you also keep planning 100 things a day to see you accomplish maximum 10 in the end?

Does your time fly very fast as well?

Have you ever thought, where it has disappeared?

Quit wondering where see it with your own eyes!

This application that helps you to increase your productivity, organizing your days, weeks, months and years, and provides the opportunity to improve your planning skills and to commensurate your strength and capabilities. Boost your effectiveness and productivity in different areas of life!

Why this App?

  • Fast and optimized time management tool
  • Absolutely no ads (seriously!)
  • Convenient schedule with timeline and part of the day modes
  • Easy time tracking with bubbles
  • Handy customizing with loads of icons and colors
  • Two types of intents – goal and ritual
  • Reminders of different types
  • Task priority marks
  • Notes for categories, activities and tasks
  • Alarm + captcha to fight procrastination
  • Moon calendar
  • Backup

Google Goals

Who else LOVES Google calendar???? This one I think may be my favorite for goal tracking.

Find time for your goals with Google Calendar

Whether it’s reading more books, learning a new language or working out regularly, achieving your goals can be really hard. One day it’s “I got called into a last-minute meeting.” The next day it’s “I have a friend in town.” And before you know it, your goals are delayed or forgotten. In fact, with all the things you need to do in a given week, it’s probably harder than ever to find the time—even when your goal really matters to you.

That’s why starting today, we’re introducing Goals in Google Calendar. Just add a personal goal—like “run 3 times a week”—and Calendar will help you find the time and stick with it.

Goals are easy to set up

To set a goal (like “Work out more”), simply answer a few questions (like “How often?” and “Best time?”), and you’re all set. From there Calendar will look at your schedule and find the best windows to pencil in time for that goal.

If you still LOVE to write down your weekly or monthly goals and be able to look at them on a daily basis, don’t worry, we have you covered as well. Below is a checklist you can write down your monthly and weekly goals and then input the action items you need to make to complete this goal.

Download your checklist here

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Podcasting and Video Marketing (The Real Benefit to Your Business)

With Search Engine Optimization becoming more and more difficult as competition continues to emerge, your business can set itself apart by Podcasting and Video Marketing.

4 Reasons Why Your Business Needs to be Podcasting

Podcasts are a powerful marketing tool. Over the years, it has garnered immense popularity, with more and more businesses discovering how it can benefit their company. If you still haven’t incorporated podcasting into your marketing campaign, then you’re losing out on a lot of business opportunities.

Here are 4 reasons why your business needs to be podcasting.

Brand awareness

As mentioned above, podcasting is a powerful marketing tool. It can help you reach new audience, drive traffic to your site, and even build a community. By broadcasting podcasts regularly, it will help develop your company’s brand to make it a household name.

Simplicity

A lot of people are put off by the seemingly confusing technical aspects of recording a podcast. Producing a podcast is not as complicated as what most people think. You do not need a lot of money either to start a podcast.

To start, all you need is a microphone, a headset, a recording device, and editing software. A good wifi connection is also important for uploading the files.

Easy to consume

Humans have a very short attention span. In fact, an average person has an average attention span of 8 seconds. If you want to get your message across, then you need to make it easier for your audience to consume and understand what you’re trying to say. Podcasts can help you do that.

A 1,500-word article may provide your audience the information they need. However, not everyone will have the patience to read through the entire article. With podcasts, you can convey the message in a more interactive way. Plus, people can listen to podcasts during their commute or while doing other things at work or at home.

Build better relationship with your audience

Podcasts provides a more personal way of getting information. Instead of just reading content on your blog or email, they get to hear your voice through podcasts. This makes your brand more personable. Overtime, people will be more familiar of your voice and presentation style.

Building a relationship with your audience helps in building trust. Once you gain their trust, it would be easier for you to turn them into paying customers. After all, people are more likely to buy something from someone they trust.

4 Reasons Why Your Business Should Use Video Marketing

The use of video in content marketing is on the rise. A lot of businesses are centering their marketing strategies on videos to present content in a more personal, compelling way.

Here are 4 reasons why your business should use video marketing.

Capture the attention of people

Among the different types of content, video content seem to be the most effective in capturing people’s attention. With the sheer amount of new content being published on a daily basis, it can be difficult to cut through the noise. For some people, reading a long blog post can be boring. In an age of short attention span, video makes it easier for time-constrained viewers to consume and digest complex content in a shorter amount of time. If you want to capture the attention of your target audience, try creating more videos.

Higher engagement

According to a study that was conducted by Moz, videos get a lot more engagement as compared to other types of content such plain text posts or photos. In the said study, they revealed that posts with videos receive nearly 300% more inbound links.

There are numerous types of videos that you can use for your business. You can create demonstrations, animated explainer videos or how-to videos. You may also compile photos and videos from people who use your products and use it to promote your products. No matter what video you choose, make sure that the videos you create are congruent with your overall style and ethos of your brand.

Improve SEO

Contrary to what most people think, Google doesn’t just use text-based content to assess the relevancy of your web page to a specific keyword. It also takes into account other types of content you use, including photos, videos, and a combination of text and photos.

For best results, we suggest that you include a transcript of your video. Not only will it be beneficial for your audience; it can also help search engines to understand the relevancy of the video. Also, don’t forget to include the keywords in your video’s meta tags.

Video is mobile-friendly

Most people do almost everything on their smartphone. They use it to communicate with their family, friends, and colleagues, research information, schedule meetings, and even order a pizza. Almost half of the adult population say they can’t live without their smartphones.

In today’s digital world, videos can easily be accessed with a click of a button. By incorporating videos to your marketing strategy, you get to communicate your desired message and encourage your desired action.

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Reaching and Attaining your Goals

Last week in the Social Speak Network we discussed setting goals for your business. It all starts with creating SMART goals and making sure these goals are driven by your Internal Motivators rather than External forces. If you missed these topics, please click to get all caught up:

This week, we are focusing on Reaching and Attaining your Goals.

Achieve your Goals

The PDF Download is Available Here

The purpose here is to give you the tools you need to make sure you are being productive as you work towards you business and personal goals. Far too frequently, especially as a business owner, things pop up and derail our journey to leading a more successful life. What can you do about this? My solution, following the advice of Todd Herman of the 90 Day Year, is to focus, as his title reflects, on shorter increments of time. Focusing on shorter increments of time allows you to stay more focused on the efforts that are going to drive you forward.

The premise is that you can utilize Time Blocking to make sure that rather than multitasking, you are focusing specifically on elements that will make a difference in your business and life. I feel this ties in with Tim Ferris’ book, 4 Hour Work Week, in terms of finding ways to structure your time more efficiently (hiring virtual assistants to aid with repetitive projects, checking email at specific points during the day, etc).

So how can you structure your SMART goals to be more attainable in your business?

Many of you may have focused on only your business goals within the SMART goals worksheet, in this scenario, we will be needing to grow your list slightly. If you only work towards your business goals, you may not be structuring enough time to work on personal and family goals, as well.

Step 1: Within the categories of Work, Education + Personal Development, Health, Family, and Something for Others, what is your number 1 SMART goal?

The worksheet provided at the end of this article includes space to enter these goals.

Step 2: Most likely, these goals are for the entire year. Working backwards, where would you like to be for each of your goals in 90 days (3 months)? It is alright if you want to complete the entire goal within the 90 days.

Step 3: To reach the goal or your progress towards the goal, what needs to be accomplished each week? What TIME do you need to set aside each week to ensure these tasks be completed?

Why do you need to understand the time it will take for you to reach your goals?

Within our daily lives, especially as business owners, we always have things popping up. When you are working towards our goals, knowing how long you need to focus on each one allows you to Time Block your week. This doesn’t mean necessarily writing down everything that you will be working on for the week at the specific time, but it does mean blocking off an hour (or however long you need) to focus specifically on one goal without interruption. No email, no social media, no phone calls. Just you and your work towards the goal.

Let’s say your goal to engage with your email list more frequently. What does this actually mean? Be more specific. What about, send 1 email to your email list each week with the goal of scheduling the email 1 month ahead of time.

To achieve this goal in 90 days, you would need to: come up with an email template, decide on the day of the week to send your email, come up with topics to discuss in your email campaign, start sending/ scheduling the emails. To have the goal of scheduling the emails out 1 month ahead of time, over the course of 90 days, you would need to write and schedule 4 extra emails (13 emails to be sent out during the 90 days + 4 pre-written for the following month).

Take the time to think about the amount of time you would need to prepare each email:

  • Email prep (template selection, day of week, etc): 1 hr
  • Content for each email: 45 min

From here, figure out how long you need to spend each week to achieve your goal of writing 17 emails in 90 days.

  • 17 emails divided by 13 weeks equals 1.3 emails per week (17/13=1.3).
  • In other words you would need to write one complete email and start the draft of the next email (or finish the draft of the email you started the week prior).
  • This equates to just about 1 hour per week to achieve your goal in 90 days (1.3 emails per week times 45 min per email equals 58.8 minutes per week). That seems pretty doable, right?

This means each week you just need to block off one hour to work on your newsletter.

Now, let’s just look at if you wanted to write all of the newsletters for the year within that 90 days, how long would you need to spend per week?

  • 52 newsletters divided by 13 weeks equals 4 emails per week
  • 45 minutes per email times 4 emails per week equals 180 minutes per week
  • You would need to spend 3 hours per week or just over 30 minutes per day to write a years worth of newsletter content in 90 days. This actually could be a great goal to have for your business.

You can follow this same process for all of your goals in the 5 categories listed above. As you move along in the 90 days, assess if you are actually committed to focusing only on the one goal for the blocked time allotted. Often if you find yourself falling behind, it may be because you aren’t committing to this task specifically. If you find you need more time, create 2 blocks during the week for your goal or 1 block of time each day to make sure you are progressing towards it.

Personally, I tend to choose themes for my years and create goals that relate back to these broad themes. In 2018, my theme is Organize. This includes my house (we already tackled our ‘hoarding closet’ and donated 2 giant bags of clothing, old bed sheets, old bags, and shoes to goodwill), my business (creating a process for setting my top priorities each day), my family (doing a better job managing childcare for our toddler), etc. So, however you choose your SMART goals for the year, make sure you start tackling the ones that are going to make the biggest difference in your work and life.

This 90 Day Year framework is available for download HERE. In the download you will find sheets to organize each of the top goals in the 5 categories as well as a weekly time blocking sheet to help you set specific times to focus on your goals. Again, during this time, you are not to answer emails or phone calls and you should be purely focused on the task at hand.

Download PDF for the 90 Day Year Here.

[This PDF is not the actual pdf that you would receive from Todd Herman’s 90 Day Year]

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Pinterest Checklist

Pinterest Checklist

Is your Pinterest set up correctly? This checklist reviews the items you should be sure to consider as you are creating your Pinterest profile.

Download PDF Here



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Blog SEO Checklist

blog seo checklist

The Blog Checklist for Search Engine Optimization covers the most important aspects of SEO on your blog posts.

Download PDF Here



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Achieve your Goals Workbook

business goal setting

In this workbook you are given the framework to set your goals through sprints towards the end result!

Download PDF Here



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Internal and External Goals

Today we are talking about setting your internal and external goals. Every year we all set goals and New Year’s Resolutions but sometimes we get lost just focusing on the destination and not the journey. When we are talking about your internal goals we are looking at your creativity, feeding your soul, positive things, finding your purpose and fulfilling yourself. Whereas External goals focus more on how people view you, the extravagant things like a huge house, nice cars, making 6 figures a year, now those things are great, but are are you wanting them because they mean something to you or because of how people will view you? The external goal focuses more on the outside appearance and just your destination and not your journey.

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Digital Marketing and Search Engine Optimization in 2018

As technology continues to evolve, it may come as no surprise that the marketplace has become increasingly digital. In an attempt to capture a growing and lucrative online marketplace, business owners are beefing up existing marketing efforts with digital marketing strategies. They are doing everything they can to keep up.

Here are 3 ways digital marketing can help grow your business.

Connects you with mobile consumers

Whether you’re managing an e-commerce business or a brick and mortar store, it is important now more than ever to have a solid online presence. According to studies, 72% of consumers are already connecting with brands through their various digital marketing channels.

Having a strong online presence makes it easier for potential customers to find you. Remember, your competitors are working hard to build an online presence. If people can’t find you online, then they are likely to come across your competition.

Generate more sales

Thanks to the internet, almost everything can be done on a smart phone. It allows you to communicate with your family and friends, keep up to date with current events, do research, and even go shopping.

In the age of digitalization, more and more people prefer to shop online than visit the local stores. After all, online shopping is more convenient. Plus, all the items your purchased will be delivered right at your doorstep. With the increasing popularity of online shopping, it is important harness the power of online marketing. Not only will it get your products and services in front of potential customers; it can also help you generate more sales.

Allows you to compete with large corporations

Not too long ago, big businesses would put up billboards and create TV commercials in the hopes of reaching their audience. While there is no denying that such methods are effective, they can be too expensive for small business owners.

With digital marketing, small business owners and marketers can get the word out about their business without having to spend a huge sum of money; thus, allowing them to compete with large corporations. Since majority of their target audience is already spending most of their time online, online marketing provides a quick and easy way to reach your target audience.

SEO Myths You Should Leave Behind in 2017

SEO is always changing and evolving. With this continuous change, a lot of marketers and business owners are left in a state of constant adaption.

Thanks to the internet and blogs, it is easier now more than ever to share information. A lot of people want to share their knowledge with others. Unfortunately, not everything you read on the internet is true. Often, false ideas and wrong information gets mixed up with facts. Because of this, a lot of myths and misconceptions remain no matter how many experts debunk them.

There are lots of misconceptions about SEO that you should know about. Here are some of the biggest SEO myths you should leave behind in 2017.

Keyword stuffing is the ultimate SEO hack

Back in the early years of search engine, people used to shove as many SEO keywords as possible onto a web page to improve SEO rankings. Using keyword in your content can get your website ranked high in search engines. But overly stuffing your content with your keyword isn’t a good thing either. If you do, your content will be perceived as spam, and your site will be penalized.

When using keywords, make sure you incorporate them as seamlessly as possible into your content. Also, make sure that the keyword density doesn’t go over 5%. Otherwise, it will be viewed as spam.

Social activity doesn’t affect SEO

Google doesn’t use social metrics such as the number of shares, likes, and followers for SEO. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that your social media efforts are useless.

Each post you make will be categorized as a page. With millions of social media posts, along with other contents published on the internet on a daily basis, not everything gets indexed by Google. But when a social media post goes viral, it triggers a signal in the Google algorithm. This puts your content in front of the right users; thus, increasing engagements and driving more traffic to your site.

Social media may not directly affect search engine rankings, but it can have significant secondary effects on your SEO.

Creating high quality content is enough to rank your website

It is true that content is king. In fact, Google rewards websites that generate valuable content regularly by giving it a higher ranking in the search engine results page.

While creating well-researched and relevant content is a great starting point, it’s not enough to get you to the first page of Google. It may be impossible for crawlers to find your content if your website isn’t optimized.

You may have a blog full of good quality content and you make it a habit to publish a new one every week, but there is no point in writing great content if no one is aware of your work.

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