Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an extremely valuable tool to give to your clients so that their business capabilities are enhanced and so that they have a greater chance of succeeding through their online business capabilities and interactions.

Please forgive the constant repetition of the phrase “Content Is King”; however, truer words were never written. The way that you and your business will succeed through your social media interactions is with your content. Of course, it goes without saying that your content has to be well written, exciting, and informative. The fact is that you have tremendous capabilities when it comes to providing your clients with valuable content. The big question, now that you have the content to share with your clients, is how you truly give them what they want and need in order for them to succeed in their businesses.

Find out what they want and need

Sometimes the most simplistic approach is the most effective one. When it comes to clients, the majority of them won’t mind if you ask them what they want. In fact, it will probably make them happy to know that you are definitely putting their needs first by asking them how you can solve their problems. A great first step when it comes to gathering information about what your customers want and need is to send them a survey (through a free survey tool like Survey Monkey or Zoomerang). Once you have signed up for one of those services, you will need to create some questions, such as

• How can you help them to run their business more effectively?
• What do they consider the most valuable among your products and/or services and why?
• Exactly what do they lose sleep over when it comes to their business?
• What improvements would they like to see when it comes to your business offerings?

Your questions should be clear and concise and, of course, they should focus on the needs of  your particular target market. There is nothing worse for the recipient than long-winded and/or numerous questions. You may also want to consider offering an incentive as a reward for taking the time to answer your survey (such as a discount coupon, free gift, etc). This will make your clients happy and it will cause your relationship to grow stronger. 

The responses to your survey

After you have gathered the responses to your survey questions, you need to study them very carefully. Be prepared to receive both positive and negative comments. As painful as it may be to receive negative comments, you should be open minded and use them as a learning and growing experience for your business. Those comments may make you aware of an issue that you didn’t know existed. You can’t fix something that you don’t know about. As a result, you will be improving upon your existing offerings and presenting superior products and/or services. You should ask yourself the following questions based on the results of the survey:

• What additional services can I provide to my clients based on their feedback from the survey?
• What specific changes can I make to what I am offering?
• How can I fulfill my clients’ needs in a unique fashion?

Once you have come up with answers to those questions, it will be time to take action. With the feedback in mind, you can provide effective and helpful content that the search engines will love. The content should contain what offerings from what the clients asked for. If you are at all unclear about how to focus your content in that direction, your hints are in the feedback from your clients (look for the strongest and most prevalent keywords and key phrases).

SEO content writing results

After you have formulated your plan and have added the effective content to your website (or other elements of your web presence), you need to find out if what you did was effective.  Keywords and key phrases are at the heart of what is important when it comes to content and SEO. The way to truly measure the results is by looking at an analytics tool (such as Google Analytics). This will tell you where the clients are going.

Once you have identified that information, you will be able to understand what your clients want and need. There is no better source than your clients to know what you need to do in order to make them happy.

Conclusion

SEO is an extremely important and useful tool when it comes to the success of your business. It isn’t just an acronym that people utter with no strength behind it. It is a critical part of your business’s success when it comes to online interactions and online relationships. The more valuable the information that you share with other people  is, the stronger and more long lasting your relationships will be. That also means that the quality of your SEO must be top notch. Of course, that will ultimately translate into more success.

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You use Twitter constantly for your business but you may not be aware that Twitter has some limitations that may affect your use. A lot of the limitations may not be any big deal but they are important to know.

A limited number of followers

Once your Twitter account is following 2,000 other Twitter users, if you try to follow additional people, you will be limited by ratios that are specific to your account.  If you have that many followers (which many people do not), you will get a message from Twitter once you have reached that limit. Two thousand people is a high number for “regular folks.” You will receive notification that you have reached that limit and you will have to wait until you are given permission to go over that limit before you can follow any additional people. If you are connected to someone on Twitter and they are at their 2,000 follower limit, please don’t take it personally and unfollow them. They don’t really have any control over the situation. If you reach your Twitter limit and have other people with whom you wish to be connected, you need to look at your others and consider if you can do without following them. If you feel that you can, you can substitute the new followers for the ones that you already had.

Your following percentage is higher

Twitter allows you a slightly higher percentage of people whom you are allowed to follow than who are allowed to follow you. According to Twitter, the limit is not a set number. It is different for every person and it is based on the ratio of followers to following. Once you have hit the limit, an error message will appear in your browser. Once you have more followers, you will be able to follow additional people as well.

Daily following ability

You are only allowed to follow 1,000 people a day (this is pretty generous). You should be careful not to send tweets too frequently to the same followers, however, because you will hit the limit, which may lock your Twitter account for up to 24 hours. It is a good idea to follow people during less-popular hours (perhaps during non-business hours) in order to avoid your limit. You wouldn’t want your limit to prevent you from tweeting some really important content.

Daily tweet limit

Your daily tweet limit is 1,000. Of course, that is pretty generous. Depending on how actively you tweet, you will most likely not get close to the limit of 1,000 tweets a day.

Hourly tweets

If you divide 1,000 tweets in a 24-hour period by 24, you can do 41 tweets in an hour. What is the chance that  you will exceed that in any given hour during business (or even during your personal time)? You also have a limit of 250 direct messages a day. If you compare direct messages to Emails, would you really send that many Emails in one day?

Conclusions

Twitter is an excellent social media tool for business. It is important to be aware of what it can do for you and what it can’t do. It works most effectively one on one and is a tool that is tailor made for customization. Twitter is constantly striving to meet the needs of its users and feedback is taken very seriously and the suggestions that are communicated are implemented to a great extent. The tweets always cater to the individual. The chances are great that you will not go anywhere near the limits that have been discussed here. However, it is very important to be aware of the rules that Twitter has established so that you can use it in the most effective way for your business.

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If you write and submit a lot of articles to business directories,  you are aware that there are usually strict submission guidelines that need to be followed. All parts of the article are included, including the title.

Many of the article directories have specific rules about article titles and if they are not adhered to, your article will most likely be rejected. The rest of your article may totally be top notch but if you don’t follow the rules regarding the title to the letter, you won’t get anywhere. It is a shame that if your article is rejected because of a formatting issue. Your title must attract real people and encourage them to click on the link and read your article. You need to make sure that your article title is as interesting as possible.

Don’t underestimate the power of a title

You need to recognize how important titles are and how much thought you need to put into writing them. No doubt, you are spending a lot of time and putting in a great deal of careful effort into writing the body of your article. Are you devoting the same kind of care to your article title? If you are haphazardly putting your title together without too much thought, you are making a mistake. Of course, since you have put all of that wonderful effort into writing your article, you don’t want to do anything that would cause it to be rejected because of a technicality.

There are some standard formatting rules that need to be followed:

Title case

Your titles should always be in sentence case. Sentence case means that the first letter of every major word in the title (not articles like “the” and ”a”). You shouldn’t ever use all capital letters in your title. All capital letters just doesn’t look professional.

Impeccable spelling and grammar

If you have any grammatical or spelling errors in your title, the decision maker at the business directory probably won’t even bother reading beyond the title. He or she may think (and justifiably so) that if you don’t care enough to ensure that there are no mistakes in your title, why would you care about the rest of it. It makes your content seem like it is mediocre at best. Errors can easily result in your article being rejected. One of the critical places to put strategic and effective keywords or key phrases is in your title. The keywords and key phrases will be picked up by the search engines. If, on the other hand, you have errors in your title, people who are searching for you won’t be able to find you and that defeats your purpose entirely.

The length of your title

The goal of the article title (always) is to let the reader understand what your article is about. If you don’t have enough words in your title, it will be very difficult for your readers to understand what your article is about and to make an informed decision about whether they want to continue reading. A large number of publishers have a minimum word count for the title of two words. Your title needs to be long enough to communicate clearly what your article is about.

Punctuation

You shouldn’t use quotation marks or most other punctuation marks in your title. Many punctuation marks are not compatible with html and they will be lost in the translation. Additionally, you shouldn’t put a period at the end of your title because it causes the reader to pause and you don’t want them to pause. You want to have a continuity and a flow that is not interrupted. Readers are easily distracted anyway. You don’t want to do anything that causes further distractions. Many article directories will reject your article because of a period in the title.

Conclusion

As small of a thing as the title of your article seems, it isn’t small at all. There is a great deal of thought that goes into the title and writing it so that it entices your readers and compels them to continue reading the rest of your article and then interacting with you and building a relationship with you that will last for a very long time. Remember, you must always write the title with the objective of getting the article accepted for publication and, at the same time, enticing the reader and causing them to want to keep reading what you are writing.

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Your blog is for your business but it is also intended to grab the attention of your target audience, which is not such an easy thing to do. You need to write exciting and compelling content that captures their attention.

It doesn’t make any sense to spend a great deal of time on research, thought, and subsequently, writing your content if nobody but you actually reads it. In this day and age of technology, everyone is constantly being bombarded with vast amounts of content on every topic imaginable. So much content is being fed to people that they don’t know what to do with it on many occasions. If people read everything that came their way, they wouldn’t have time to do anything else in their professional or personal lives. With that concept in mind, it is very important that the content that you are writing and sharing with other people is so strong and compelling that it is constantly being kept at the top of the pile of important things to read.

A brilliant opening paragraph

The first thing that you need to consider is your opening paragraph. This paragraph is also called a teaser paragraph because it teases the reader just enough to want to continue reading. Remember, you only have three seconds to capture the attention of the reader enough for them to want to read on. So, you better make it really good. It is critical to your success as a content writer that you share content that is thought provoking and really grabs your readers. Considering that the first few sentences of your opening paragraph are the ones that will be picked up by the RSS feeds, they must really pop. When people scan an article, their eyes move across the page. That is why using bold type and bullet points or numbers is so effective. Once the reader’s eyes have moved across the page, they tend to look down the page as opposed to scanning subsequent lines horizontally.

Use emotion

Whatever your content is about, there must be an emotional element to it. People react with feelings. Knowing that, you need to make sure that you use keywords and key phrases that affect people emotionally. Whatever the reason other people have for taking an interest in your content, they definitely have a reason. Your main objective when it comes to relating to other people is to help them to solve their problems. If you can do that, you will not only be building meaningful, lasting relationships with them but you will also be gaining loyal clients at some point. If you use the most effective keywords and key phrases, there is a guarantee that you will touch your readers. It is also very important that you speak to your readers at a level that is comfortable for them. Don’t use big words merely because you feel that it makes you seem impressive. If you use words that they don’t understand, what good will it do for you? If you use simple, straightforward language and the concepts of what you are trying to say are ones that they can relate to, that is really the best approach to take.

WIIFM (What’s In It For Me)?

When other people read your content, they are spending the time to do that because they are looking for a solution to their problems. They aren’t interested in how great  you and your business are. They aren’t even too interested in what you have accomplished so far (in your business or otherwise). All they need from you is to help them make their problems go away. If you are considering writing something that you think is interesting but that doesn’t really benefit them in any way, it isn’t worth writing. People want to learn  from you and they want to be excited by what you are offering. If you want to maintain the relationship with them, give them something that they can walk away with. Strong relationships are ones where the two people trust each other and feel that the other is credible.

The presentation of  your content

There are several different approaches that you can use when it comes to capturing the interest of your readers. You can write from the perspective of vulnerability. This will show your readers that you are human, just like them. At the same time, you should always come up with a moral (or solution) to your story. This is the educational part for them. If you taught them something the first time that they read your content, the chances are great that they will keep learning from you. It is definitely worth their while to check it out each time. However you choose to present your content, it needs to touch them in some way and they need to feel that their lives have improved in some way because of it.

Conclusion

With the amount of information that is available online today, everyone must be choosy when it comes to deciding what to read (and write). You must write content that is valuable, engaging, and educational, and magnetic. Your content should never be about what you can gain personally. It should always be about how you can help the other person to benefit. Their needs are what come first. Remember that if they benefit, you will benefit as well.

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Traditional media has been around for a very long time. For a great while, there has been a need for it to embrace the social aspect of media in order to engage readers (also known as the audience).

Although the face of traditional media has changed a great deal in the last several years because of the social media revolution, it is absolutely necessary for it to get involved with people in other ways in order to remain successful. If that doesn’t happen, traditional media will not exist as we have know it up to this point. The differences between social media and traditional media are vast and although both should exist side by side for the most effective outcome. The more the readers are engaged (and in as many different ways as possible), the stronger and more successful the outcome.

The waning popularity of newspapers

There are many possible explanations as to why newspapers have declined in popularity to such an extent. One of the reasons may be websites such as Craigslist and  other online classified sites. The reason for this is that the online classified services offer revenue-producing services that newspapers used to offer to their readers. Another possible reason is that online news websites, such as Google News, have monopolized the market when it comes to news content. A possible third reason is advertising that is now transmitted through the Internet instead of in print. 

Slow recognition of reality

Traditional media were not quick to recognize the impact that social media was going to have and how it was going to affect people who worked with traditional media. Aside with the rapid dissemination of huge quantities of information, the vast majority of available online information doesn’t cost anything to obtain. That has an extremely strong appeal to a large number of people. The competition has just become too stiff. The reality is that it should no longer be an issue of one sort of media over the other. They need to find a way to work together for the most positive results. One of the results of the denial of the impact that social media has had is that it was assumed that because newspapers (and other forms of traditional media) would be here forever because they have been around for such a long time. It was taken for granted that traditional media was indispensible. As everyone knows, nobody (and nothing) is indispensible.

If the people who work with traditional media are to fix what is broken in their industries, there are several actions that must be taken:

• Transparency: If newspapers and other types of traditional media have any hope of being on the upswing again, they must be transparent to the public. They should inform the public of how they earn their money, how they spend their money, and the justification for what they spend their money on. Additionally, the transparency should include who the editors are, what their background is, and what is important to them.
   
• Get involved in the community: At the heart of social media is relationships. Traditional media is no different. With that in mind, relationships must be built and trust and credibility must be earned. The interactions should include discussions on what the people want to discuss and learn  about and how their problems can be solved.
   
• Be a part of the solution, not the problem: Content that is delivered through traditional media serves the same purpose as content that is delivered through social media. It is about solving the readers’ problems. No reader is concerned with how wonderful the traditional media specialists are. All they are concerned with is getting their problems solved.

Conclusion

Social media and traditional media can both succeed if, and only if, they work together. One is much less powerful without the other. However, together, they are truly a force to be reckoned with. There are so many different ways to combine the various types of media. People from both schools of thought need to be as open-minded and flexible as possible to survive. There is great value in the collaborative effort. There is certainly room for creativity when it comes to combining them and giving the public the best possible delivery of content, content that is informative, educational, helpful, and compelling.

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The way that people build exposure is very different than what used to be. Before the technical revolution, people would meet for coffee or lunch and get to know to each other. Now, they connect online. Their exposure is critical.

People are still having coffee; however, not necessarily together in person. The relationships that people are maintaining are still just as real as they have ever been. It is just that they are being maintained in a different way. When it comes to online exposure and connecting with other people through the Internet, you have the power to reach many more people at once and you can get your message to them effectively. Online communications have taken over where face-to-face communication used to be. It is; however, important to understand that online interactions and face-to-face interactions should work in tandem. One without the other doesn’t have the potency and won’t achieve the successful results unless they work together. This is the age of instant gratification. People want information and they want it now. Not only do people want it that way but they expect it and that is how they function comfortably.

The preferred news source

People need to be informed of what is going on in the world. In fact, some people are positively addicted to it. One of the main sources where people like to turn is the Internet for that type of information. Many people like to use several different sources for news and the Internet is definitely counted among those sources. Many, many people use the most popular search engines to get their news (such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, to name a few) several times in any given week. The way in which the news is presented online is very convenient to readers also. The topics are clear and concise and the resources are easily identified. When news is presented online, there are usually links that lead to other interesting information.

Advertising and promotion

Advertising and promotion online has an array of possibilities. It is presented differently than it would be with traditional advertising; however, it is no less effective. If your promotional content is presented compellingly and properly, it will grab your readers and will entice them to continue to read whatever you are sharing with them. Even if your readers are not immediately led to your website, they can still have valuable content at their fingertips that will expose them to what you and your business represent and what you are offering.

Writing different types of content

If you write a blog article and you post and syndicate it, you don’t need to worry about how long it will be available to people who are searching for information within the confines of the topic about which you have written. The article will be available online for a very long time to come (months, and possibly even longer). The more information that originated with you online, the stronger your reputation and online exposure will be. 

Conclusion

It is obvious that the Internet is here to stay. People have gotten so comfortable with using technology and with interacting with one another online. It certainly is much more serious than a passing fad. As a business owner, it is important that you recognize the reality of the Internet for what it is. You must also recognize how important your online exposure is to your success. How you present yourself online will give your reputation unlimited power.  It is a powerful and really incredible tool that has the ability to help you and your business to become even more successful than you have been up to this point.

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Now that you are writing content and posting it on your chosen social media channels, your writing skills are bound to be improving. Even if you were a great writer before, social media can help you become even better.

When you write content for business, your approach to the language should be totally different than it is if you are posting content for personal use. The language that you use for business is much more formal than when you are sharing it with friends and family. The chances are great that the quality of your writing is a lot better now than when you first started writing and posting your content. The approach that you now take is much less selfish and focuses much more on other people. It is geared to reaching out to them and addressing their needs and wants. The following points may illustrate the differences that you see from your original writing to your writing style now:

• More “them” and less “you”: You now write a lot less about what you need and want and how wonderful you are. Instead, you gear your writing toward how you can help other people to solve their problems. In other words, you practice the marketing principle of “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me).
   
• Clear and concise: Your writing used to be verbose and unending. Now, you write clearly and concisely. You choose your words very carefully, knowing that your readers don’t have the time or the patience to read encyclopedias. At the same time, you want to give them something of value that they can benefit from.
   
• No editing required: You no longer see the value in big words that are only used for the sake of appearing impressive. They serve no purpose for your readers (or, in turn, for you). Knowing (or hoping) that your content will be shared by others, the last thing that you want is for someone else to have to edit what you post in order to make it suitable to share with other people. If your content needs to be edited, people will not make the effort as frequently to share it as they would if all they had to do was push to button to send it to other people.
   
• Social media appropriateness: Writing content for social media is very different than writing content for any other medium. You are now able to effectively communicate your ideas in short and compelling ways. If you have a lot more that you feel you want to write on any given subject, you use a different forum (such as a blog or Ebook) to do so.
   
• No more writer’s block: You used to experience writer’s block quite frequently. Now that you have been writing for a while, your creative juices are flowing more easily than ever before. One of your biggest sources of inspiration can be what other people are writing. Ideas for your content can come from many different sources.
   
• Interactive discussions: You are involved with a lot of interactive discussions based on the content that you are posting and sharing. Those discussions (on many occasions) result in ideas for more content. People love to know that their needs are being met and that their interests are being satisfied. If you write on topics that other people tell you they would like to read about, you will be building strong relationships and they will eventually become loyal customers of yours.
   
• Write everyday: The more you write, the better your writing skills will be. If you make it a point of writing something every single day, you will find that the effort will pay off for you. By writing everyday, you are forcing yourself to evaluate your work carefully and really hone your skills, including identifying both your strong and weak points.

Conclusion

As important as it is to be persistent and consistent when it comes to your writing online, it is also important to make sure that you manage your time effectively when it comes to your involvement in social media. You should make a commitment for a certain, finite amount of time and stick as closely to that as you possibly can. When you are not interacting (or doing other important, work-related, necessary things), you should continue to hone your writing skills. The more you write, the better a writer you will become. Other people are bound to appreciate the quality of your writing and you will be tremendously proud of what you have accomplished.

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Many people don’t truly understand affiliate marketing although they are familiar with the term. Affiliate marketing is marketing that rewards affiliates of a particular business as a result of that business’s marketing efforts. Some are legitimate and some are not.

There are several different ways to tell if a specific type of affiliate marketing is genuine or if it is a scam. A sensible thing to do when it comes to spotting legitimate versus not legitimate affiliate marketing programs is to get a hold of testimonials from the affiliate marketing company.

Cost versus no cost

Genuine affiliate marketing programs don’t cost anything to join and the only way that you will ever make money affiliate marketing is if you sell something. Many of the affiliate marketing programs are two tiered and in that case, the only way that you will make money from the second tier (if you are in the first tier) is if your second-tier colleagues sell something. Additionally, there is no membership fee in an affiliate marketing program if it is on the level. If you come across an affiliate marketing program that says that there is a fee for setting up or that offer to sell you a website with which to market. If you are considering getting involved in one of those programs, please don’t. They aren’t on the level. Bear in mind that it is very easy to be fooled by scammers.

Degree of difficulty

When it comes to affiliate marketing, you absolutely have the potential to be successful. However, that doesn’t mean that your success will come to you with very little work or effort involved.  You will have to work at it in order to be successful. Also, even if you work hard at becoming a success and in maintaining success, you have to be careful that the business with which you are getting involved is offering you something genuine and worthwhile and is not merely playing on your emotions.

Beware of empty promises

One of the most common ways in which people fall into affiliate marketing scams is by being convinced to buy tools, systems, and/or information products. They buy these items because they promise that if someone buys them, that they won’t have to do any more work. A weight-loss pill is a perfect example of this. The marketers promise that if you take the pill,  you will never  have to diet or exercise a day in your life and the pounds will just melt away. There isn’t a person alive who would prefer to work hard in order to lose weight rather than just swallowing a pill once or twice a day. Of course, the marketers support their claim with graphic evidence. They show you photographs (before and after) of people who have taken the pills and have shed numerous pounds as a result.

Ignoring the hype

The best way to never fall into the trap of scams is to make sure that you thoroughly understand what to look for when it comes to red flags. If you educate yourself on the basic principles of affiliate marketing, the scammers will not be able to scam you. After you have become educated, you can think in terms of those principles that you have learned and you will be protected. There are some common red flags that you should watch out for to start:

• A promise of money without doing any work
• Photos of fancy cars and other outrageously expensive luxuries
• “Fool proof” anything
• Photos of earnings with no details attached to them except for a mention of affiliate commissions

The true potential of affiliate income

The best way to avoid scams is to remain calm when hearing about some affiliate marketing program that seems too good to be true. The fact is that you can make a successful career from affiliate marketing. On the other hand, it is not a large percentage of the people who actually become tremendously successful from affiliate marketing programs. It is critical that your expectations are realistic and that you don’t allow yourself to distance yourself from the reality of the situation.

Conclusion

Many people have gotten involved with affiliate marketing programs and have become tremendously successful. However, it is very important to be knowledgeable to recognize legitimate from bogus affiliate marketing and to protect yourself when you thing that something might not be right. If you are unsure of a particular program, don’t make a decision that you will regret afterwards. Having your own business can be wonderfully rewarding and satisfying. A lot of people can potentially benefit, if done correctly. However, you must go into it with both eyes open and make decisions from you head, not your heart.

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There is a whole lot of online garbage that comes to you via the Internet. When you get garbage, your first inclination is to press the “delete” button ASAP. On the other side, you want your content to be valued.

You want your content to be read, cherished, and shared with others by others and by others. The issue is that people are in a position where they have to sift through a great deal of useless information in order to get to valuable and educational content, such as the content that you are sharing with them. They have to brush away all of the dirt before they get to the actual gem that is your content. Earning the undivided attention of other people is definitely no easy task. You really need to change your approach to getting attention. The old methods just don’t seem to be working as effectively as they used to work.

Earning attention from the right people

As is always the case, you will want to earn attention from the people with whom you can share a mutually beneficial relationship. When you change the dynamic and you earn the attention of others rather than demanding their attention, it completely changes the impression that other people get of you as well as improving the results that come from that new approach. The very first thing that you need to determine is connected to the marketing principle that is commonly uttered by many people nowadays and one that has truly been instrumental in building solid business relationships: WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). In other words, your goal is to make sure that you are able to help the other person solve their problems. If each side has their needs satisfied, everyone will be happy.

There are several different ways in which you can earn attention from the content that you share.

Inspiration: If you can succeed at touching people emotionally, you will succeed at establishing a relationship with them, which will hopefully flourish for a very long time. At the heart of social media is the relationship. With that in mind, it is not surprising that emotional connections envelope relationships and they are the fuel that makes the relationships work. All human beings want the same thing. They want to feel good and they want that feeling to last indefinitely.  A great way to capture the emotional element in writing is through testimonials from other people. Testimonials are generally charged by emotion. It is rare that you will read a testimonial that is so flat and dry that you don’t feel anything when you read it.

Education: Another great way to earn attention from other people is by educating them. When gearing your content in the educational direction, the elements of information that you may want to include are what to do and not do, when and when not to do it, why and why not to do it, and how to do it. Most people love to learn new things whenever possible. The more they learn, the smarter they feel. After all, who wouldn’t want to feel smart? Again, it is that emotional connection that causes people to respond. Feeling smart makes them feel good about themselves. It is a feeling that they hope will continue for a very long time.

Participation: In order to earn valuable attention, you must interact with others on a consistent and regular basis. People who don’t interact with others won’t get anywhere. Your success in business is all about  your success with your relationships.

Entertainment: People love to be entertained as much as possible. If your content is dry and boring, people won’t pay attention to it and people won’t remember it afterward. If you make it interesting and touching in some way, its impact will go on for a very long time. You can certainly present content that is entertaining in a clever and effective way as opposed to being silly or fluffy.

Controversy: Controversy does not necessarily have to be a bad thing. One thing that is undeniable is that controversy earns lots of attention. Of course, when it comes to controversy, you need to exercise a great deal of discretion. Of course, you must gear your controversial contact to the people whose attention you are interested in earning. The topics must fit the needs of your audience.

Conclusion

If the content that you are sharing with others fits into one or more of the categories mentioned above, you are in good shape. The more categories that apply, the better. Attention is a very valuable and rare commodity and at times it can be difficult because you don’t control the amount of attention you earn, others do. Earning valuable attention from business associates who matter to you and your business and with whom you share a valuable connection will take you very far and you will find that this new approach will work extremely well.

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Since 2008, when the US economy seemed to hit rock bottom, many people were forced to consider new ways of earning a living. Many opened their own businesses and introduced themselves to other business owners.

One essential part of being an entrepreneur is networking with other professionals. One part of networking that you can count on is the elevator pitch. The elevator pitch is when you speak for a short time (30 seconds is common) to the other networkers to tell them what you do and what you need. The reason that it is called an elevator pitch is that it should take approximately as long as an elevator ride takes. The purpose for your networking is to establish connections with other people so that you can hopefully help each other professionally. The elevator pitch is a tease. In other words, you are enticing the other people just enough for them to be interested and to want to learn more about you and your business. The elevator pitch (or some form of it) must also be a part of your entire online presence. It should be included in every social media profile that you have online and on your website homepage. On your website, the concept must be there even if the wording is not identical to the verbal elevator pitch that you share with others when you are networking in person.

Changes over time

Elevator pitches are interesting. The elevator pitch that you use when you first start networking is most likely not the elevator pitch that you use subsequently. It changes all of the time. As you start to develop your business and experience new things and new people, your wants and needs will change as well. Your elevator pitch will be adjusted to fit the rest of it. Bear in mind that when you are giving your elevator pitch, people aren’t interested in the minutest details. They are interested in the bottom line and they want to know immediately how you and your business can help them to solve their problems. There are several elements that go into an effective and successful elevator pitch.

• Humor
• Entertainment
• Very little or no technical details
• Your elevator pitch assumes that your audience has an extremely short attention span
• Your elevator pitch will help you to gain clarity
• It puts you in a position of understanding the position of the person to whom you are presenting your pitch

If you incorporate those elements into your elevator pitch, you will capture the audience’s attention and you will succeed at keeping their attention. In addition to those elements that have already been mentioned, there is some additional information that you may find useful and effective in your elevator pitch.

• An explanation why you are doing what you are doing (professionally)
• Your elevator pitch captivates your audience
• Your elevator makes you seem credible

Getting people interested in what you are doing

Your absolute first goal is to get people to be interested in what you are doing and what you are offering. If you can get them interested with that initial 30-second pitch, you can go into more detail at a later date. In fact, it is at the time when you share more details about your business that you will be able to distinguish yourself as a subject matter expert and the person who other people will go to when they have an issue or question that needs to be resolved. Elevator pitches may seem very easy but there is more to them than you might think. It is important to be well prepared before you walk into the room and you will be surprised at how much polishing is necessary before you actually get to the point of standing up and delivering your pitch.

Conclusion

Elevator pitches (whether you like them or not) are an extremely important part of your business. It is so important for you to be able to articulate what you do and how you can help other people through your offerings. Remember that your elevator pitch has nothing to do with actually selling anything directly. You will want to say something in your elevator pitch that stands out and that makes the members of your audience associate you with something that you said in those 30 seconds.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

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