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Jason’s Tips
Filling Your Blog Editorial Calendar
Filling Your Blog Editorial Calendar
When you get an idea to become a bona fide blogger, you really want to start off on the right foot. You know how blogging works and you take the time to find out which platform is best, which plugins will help you make the most of your visitors’ experience – but you get stuck when it comes time to create the actual content for your blog.
You’ll find that many marketers who teach this topic are always talking about themes and plugins – but that’s often because they make a significant commission on the promotion of those tools.
When it comes time to instruct you on creating content, they’re often just as lost as you are about the process, so you’re left struggling in front of your audience. It can be embarrassing and it can hurt your blog traffic if you start abandoning your blog frequently to wait for inspiration to strike.
By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.
You have to take a three-pronged approach to blogging. First, get everything organized. If you’re scattered on your blog, it confuses the readers, search engine spiders – and even you.
Then you want to map out a schedule for your blogging efforts. Having a deadline for yourself can benefit you and help you work towards a specific goal, not just something vague.
Last, you want to begin creating your content – and we’re going to cover three options for you to choose from – a series, an individual post, or a guest blog post (and you can mix these up – you don’t have to choose from just one).
Getting Your Editorial Calendar Organized
There are two things you can do to get organized. The first is a planning calendar and the second is an editorial calendar, which is for completed work that you are doing on your blog.
You can either buy a calendar or print one out from a site like this: http://www.pdfcalendar.com/monthly/. Print one out for the current month, and possibly the next month. You can schedule it as far out as you like.
This is your planning calendar. You can use this to fill in the days with whatever you’ll be blogging about (and we’ll go over that shortly). This helps you plan what needs to be written, and when.
This is perfect for using yourself or for whenever you’re using a freelance ghostwriter to create your blog content and you want to share it with them so that they can plan for publishing dates.
Once you have the blog posts created, you can use a different type of organizer to help you schedule them for publication. A free plugin called WordPress Editorial Calendar makes this a simple drag and drop process.
As soon as you upload a new post, you can drag the post around on your calendar to wherever you want it to be for it to go live. This can help if you have some timely information that needs to bump a previously scheduled topic.
By using a calendar plugin, you can glance quickly at your blog schedule and see where there are gaps. You want a consistent publication schedule, and we’ll look at that in depth next!
How Often Should You Be Blogging?
Many people want to know how often they have to blog. Well if you feel that way, you probably shouldn’t be blogging in the first place! Blogging should be for someone who can’t WAIT to wake up in the morning and share more information with people.
If you lack that, it could be a sign that you’re in the wrong niche. But let’s talk about traffic and authority. You’ll see some leaders in a niche who blog very infrequently.
This is sometimes because blogging is a side tool for them. They primarily use other things like television, radio, webinars and live, in person seminars to attract and cultivate an audience.
For bloggers who want to use this platform as their primary source of audience engagement, then you need to make a commitment to show up and share on a regular basis.
The more, the better – but there’s an asterisk to that*
* It’s only better when there’s more if there’s something valuable that you’re sharing. In other words, don’t blog just to blog. Don’t slap up meaningless content that dilutes the truly valuable blog posts you have just because someone told you to blog 3 times a day.
What you ought to do is go through and develop your editorial calendars to see how much content you can conceivably create. You’ll be surprised at how many ideas you generate once you understand how to look for good blog ideas.
As far as search engine bots (spiders) are concerned, they like to see a certain amount of “freshness” in your blog. They typically start off visiting your blog once every couple of weeks, but they narrow their visitation schedule to index your site if you blog regularly, and this looks good and helps you get content indexed faster.
It’s also helpful to your blog subscribers if you blog frequently. If this is a topic they’re interested in, then you want to be the go-to authority figure in your niche – the person they know will have continual updates and fresh information.
A daily schedule may be best but this can be quite hard to stick to. Some people post several times and day, and this is great too, but the problem is that their posts may be a little shallow and not have much depth or detail. Don’t burden yourself trying to reach that goal, though. Just be consistent. Sometimes less is more.
If you can only manage to post 2-3 times a week, then do it two to three times a week, but ensure your posts are high-quality and of a decent length i.e., at least 1000 words long.
However, there is such as thing as blogging too little. When you start going weeks or months without blogging, don’t expect a blog audience to stick around and become subscribers and fans of your content. In fact, they won’t even know who you are!
If you really want to know more about the power of blogging, you can take a look at the Rapid Blogging Blueprint training course or if you just want a few pointers for now you can grab the featured resource below for a free blogging report; download, read it and take action 🙂
3 Tips To Boost Productivity And Focus
3 Tips To Boost Productivity And Focus
We live in an era of information overload. We are bombarded with media, technology, entertainment, and notifications every day. It seems there are hundreds of people and things competing for your attention at any given time. There is no wonder why in the last few years, our attention spans have become shorter and our ability to focus has decreased.
Your time is valuable. Not being able to focus can have a negative effect on how successful we are at work and in our personal lives. Focus is a skill that we develop by training and practice. Productivity requires intention and strategy to help make your time work for you!
Let’s begin by examining some productivity maximizers that make us more productive. We will discuss tips and techniques to help improve your focus. Then let’s look at how holding yourself accountable can help you to improve your productivity today! Finally, we’ll look at how you can start to set time limits on projects to keep you on track.
Productivity Maximizers
Hacking your mind to increase your productivity is just one part of the process.
The next relies on maximizing that productivity. You’ll need to decrease burn out, as well as focus on the end results.
In addition, learning to turn your goals into processes will help you get more done.
How To Decrease Burnout
Burnout is a very real problem that affects your productivity. The work-life balance is hard to achieve, but it is necessary.
Symptoms of burnout:
- Inability to concentrate
- Lack of energy
- Having many non-productive workdays in a row
It’s clear that a burnout period can make it even tougher to get your tasks done. Thankfully, there are some tricks to help you get out of this slump.
Some of them involve taking time for yourself.
Start meditating, get plenty of sleep, take a few hours off and do something fun. Force yourself to have more of a work-life balance.
Not only will these activities help prevent burnout, but with them, you can overcome it. You’ll end up much more productive as a result.
Focusing On The End Result
What’s the end result of the items on your “to do” list? By focusing solely on the goal instead of the individual tasks, you’ll be more likely to get everything done.
The end result can be either big or small.
For example, it could something as simple as completing a project, or as large as winning an award or meeting a sales goal. View each task as a step that needs to be taken in order to get the proverbial finish line.
By changing how you think about your tasks, you’ll be able to achieve more. The process stops being about getting one thing done and instead focuses on meeting a goal.
Concentrate On Processes
Stop thinking about your goals as events, and instead, consider them processes instead. The difference lies in learning how to enjoy everything that it takes to meet those goals. Once you love what you do, you’ll want to work harder.
Now let’s take a look at accountability.
Holding Yourself Accountable
If you’re struggling to get things done, it’s easy to switch up your routine believing that will help you get back on track.
Sometimes this is effective, sometimes it only makes it harder to refocus our attention where it’s needed most.
It’s always better to take a step back and evaluate why we’re losing focus. What is happening in our lives that we’re finding ourselves running out of steam?
What can we do to refresh and refocus so that our attention and energy is going on the things that matter? And where is that time going?
Were you spending too much time in email or on social media trying to respond to customers or provide instant support?
If so, consider outsourcing support inquiries to a live agent or support desk so that you aren’t constantly distracted by people who need your time while still being able to provide prompt service.
P.S. Want to know more about outsourcing? Click here for a great post to read and you can also get a detailed outsourcing report here .
Did you fail to prioritize tasks and goals and ended up losing focus because you are constantly multi-tasking in an effort to catch up?
If so, consider using a product management tool that will guide you through each workday. The key is to develop a regular routine, along with work habits that improve your focus and workflow.
It’s also important to know when your struggle to focus is your body’s way of saying it’s had enough.
It’s way too easy to think you can push out one more hour or get that one more thing done each day but when your mind has had enough no matter what you do, you’ll struggle to regain focus.
Instead, give yourself time for creative breaks so that you’re able to reenergize and boost that productivity.
Burn out is a real thing and it’s the #1 focus killer so learning to hold yourself accountable while still also giving yourself room to take those necessary breaks so that you’re able to boost creativity and output is important.
Setting Time Limits On Projects
It’s easy to get caught up spending more time on a project that you initially planned. We can always find ways to tweak and improve our brand, services and products – but the problem is that not all of this time is wisely spent.
In fact, it’s often a better idea to get these to market rather than fall behind because you’re trying to get everything “just right”.
Let your market dictate the time you allocate to your projects.
Here are a few tips to help you improve focus and boost productivity:
Block Time
Set time limits on every single task – no exceptions.
Lay out the groundwork for each project you are working on, including a complete overview of how to get from start-to-finish. Then, create to a schedule and stick to it!
Assign time blocks to every task so that you can stay focused while being reasonable with how much time each goal will take.
Not only will doing this help you get more done in less time, but it will immediately improve your focus because you are allocating a specific amount of time to one thing – and following through with it.
Prioritize
We can easily waste a ton of valuable time by trying to get everything done at one but without creating a priority list that outlines the most critical steps in the process of reaching your goal, we can end up struggling to meet deadlines.
Not every task on our ever-growing to-do list is essential. It’s important that you are able to identify what is absolutely required from your list of “want-to’s”.
WANT TO Doesn’t Mean You HAVE TO.
When you’re running short on time and you’re struggling to focus, a priority list becomes even more important.
And by breaking your tasks down into chunks that are assigned a clear value, you’ll be able to zero in on the parts of your business that need more attention while freeing up valuable time.
Prioritization is a crucial skill to master so take the time to get used to it.
Create A Routine
This is a critical step in staying focused. It begins with creating a strategy and regular routine based on when you are most productive, creative and able to produce without distractions.
Do you feel more creative in the early mornings but discover that your energy tapers down by noon? Then set your alarm and start working earlier, giving yourself a cut-off time.
Do you have to shut off your phone, close your email, or fire up a playlist in order to spring into action?
Separate Business From Personal (If Possible)
Your work environment is just as important as your overall workflow. You should do everything possible to separate your personal life from your work life so that you are able to eliminate distractions and focus on your priority list.
If you work from home, you should have a dedicated area to work in, ideally a home office. In there is work time, out of there is home/personal time.
Boundaries are very important for productivity so try to make use of them if at all possible.
Mute That Inner Voice Of Doubt
If you’re allowing negative thoughts and self-doubt to lead the way, you’ll never have enough faith in your abilities to see things through.
You’ll not only take longer to get ahead, but chances are you’ll never reach your desired destination.
Well, there is a lot more to be learnt about increasing focus and productivity; far more than can be covered in this short post, but if you’d like to know more about this, then click on the featured resource below where you can pick up a free report that covers this topic in more detail. Download, read it and take action 😊
The Power Of Outsourcing
The Power Of Outsourcing
There’s no doubt about it: outsourcing important tasks to qualified freelancers is the easiest way to free up your time and resources while being able to focus on the things that matter most.
And it helps you to work on your business rather than in your business, which means you have a good overall view of what your business is doing and the direction you want to take it, rather than getting bogged down in everyday tasks that you really shouldn’t be doing.
But outsourcing is more than just time management and being able to spend more time doing what you enjoy.
By hiring qualified professionals, you’re able to tap into new markets, expand your outreach and test new products and ideas that you may otherwise not be able to develop on your own.
Think about the countless businesses that have benefited by hiring app developers, or companies that outsource all of their brand-building and marketing campaigns so they can focus on brainstorming new avenues and products.
We’re all good at some things and not-so-great at other tasks associated with our business so it only makes sense to hand over the reins to someone who can do a better job then we can.
That doesn’t mean that you’re giving up control of your business. Your freelancers will work behind the scenes for you, at your discretion. They will follow your lead and work hard to get the job done – with no credit.
Yet you reap all the rewards.
Now, let’s look at the importance of utilizing contracts in order to protect yourself and your business. You need to read this before you even consider hiring a freelancer.
Contracts That Protect You
Before you seek out potential candidates to fulfil the gaps in your business, you need to make sure you have all your ducks in a row – starting with contracts.
Contracts, such as NDA (non-disclosure agreements) ensure that your information, ideas or discussions are kept private and that freelancers aren’t able to discuss or share any part of your project with other potential partners or employers.
This is not only important when it comes to hiring authors and writers to develop content where you wouldn’t want them to share that work as samples for future positions, but it’s also important regardless of the type of freelancer you hire.
You want to make sure that all your ideas and creative output is protected and that whatever you discuss with freelancers remains confidential.
Many people make the mistake of thinking that NDA’s are only assigned once you have hired a freelancer when in reality, you can easily require a potential freelancer to sign an NDA before you even begin discussing the project or the possibility of them joining your team.
Here are a few resources I recommend if you’re looking for pre-made contracts and NDA’s that you can customize to suit your needs:
https://www.jotform.com/pdf-templates/contract
https://www.legalcontracts.com/
Keep in mind that these are templates designed to give you an outline but aren’t necessarily entirely applicable to your business. You should eliminate clauses that don’t apply to you or add new clauses as necessary before you ask anyone to sign them.
Next let’s look at the importance of properly managing a team.
Managing Your Outsourcing Team
You’ve assembled a team of skilled freelancers and you’re ready to put them to work.
What’s next?
Teamwork! Your freelancers will only do a great job for you if you manage them properly and build a cohesive team that includes you, your full-time employees, and your freelancers.
In this section, I’ll explain some of the key strategies you can use to manage your freelance team members and maximize productivity.
Communication
The key to managing any team is communication. It’s one of the most important leadership skills to have. Without it, your other skills and strategies won’t amount to much.
With it, you can do anything.
It’s important to set up lines of communication for you and your team members. Here are a few suggestions that you may find useful:
- Create expectations for communication by email.
For example, you might let your team members know that you expect them to respond within one business day when you send them an email.
- Set up an online messaging board or use a content management system like Asana to assign work, exchange notes, and track the progress of each freelancer and their assignments.
- Schedule a weekly conference call or Skype to check in and make sure that your team members have what they need.
That takes care of the organizational part of communication, but I also want to talk about the kind of casual communication that rarely gets discussed, so let’s look at that now.
The Importance Of Open Communication
In the previous section we were talking about how to effectively manage a team of freelancers, but can you guess what one of the most common reasons that projects get delayed or deadlines aren’t met?
Lack of acknowledgement!
When a freelancer delivers work to you, always acknowledge it.
Make sure you let them know that you got it, and if you won’t be reading or reviewing it immediately, make sure they know that, too.
It’s also a good idea to give feedback on the work you receive even if you don’t have any changes.
Every freelancer appreciates that kind of communication and believe it or not, it’s rare.
Finally, you should also let your freelancers know that you (or someone you designate) can be available to answer questions at their request.
What you don’t want is freelancers who are second-guessing themselves or you, feeling adrift because you haven’t responded, or wondering what you think of their work.
While you don’t want to spend too much time micro-managing your freelancers, it’s important that you open up a channel of communication and that you stay available during projects.
If you want a structured system for this to make it easier to manage, consider adding your team to a SLACK channel so that you can communicate both individually and as a team.
You can also set up a schedule so that your freelancers know when you’re available and when you’re not.
Well, there is a lot more to be learnt about outsourcing for efficiency; far more than can be covered in this short post, but if you’d like to know more about this, then click on the featured resource below where you can pick up a free report that covers this topic in more detail. Download it, read it and take action 😊
The Importance Of Creative Visualization
The Importance Of Creative Visualization
Humans have developed to use our imaginations for all kinds of purposes. Whether it is for comfort, entertainment, safety, or protection, our own imagination performs many jobs in our day to day lives that we rarely, if ever, even think about.
Visualizing can be a powerful tool in our self-help and self-preservation toolkit. The process can be undertaken at any time of the day, in virtually any situation you can think of. All you really need is your brain, and since that’s already with you all the time, you’re all set!
Creative visualization is just one way our brain seeks to find the solution to a problem. If we creatively think about a situation, we can imagine the situation from all angles and see the various outcomes.
Creative visualization is also a technique anyone can learn, yet it promises to give you your heart’s desires and set you on a course for personal success. What is this powerful tool, and can it really deliver what it promises?
Creative visualization is a specific way of using your imagination. It’s a cognitive process that consists of forming vivid mental images. You consciously change the images, which in turn changes your emotions about the subjects of the images. As you practice visualizing the future you want, you create that future. I can be incredibly motivating when done well, and we all need more motivation, don’t we?
Clearly, we will choose one outcome over the rest that appeals to us the greatest, and we can then focus on attaining that outcome.
You know how famous people often claim to have “visualized” their success long before it ever happened for them in real life? It’s the power of creative visualization that they are harnessing.
And once you see yourself as already having “achieved” your goal (whatever it may be), then your intuition and sense of “inner knowing” will light the proper path.
The importance of creative visualization comes into play as we seek to attain that one appealing outcome. We are genetically built to use our imagination without even being conscious of doing it. When we intentionally focus our imagination on a single outcome, it becomes much easier for us to set up action steps to take to finally get to that outcome.
It doesn’t matter what the outcome is. You might be surprised to know that you can use creative visualization to attain any goal at all – there is no right or wrong.
- If you want weight loss, visualize yourself wearing clothes you love, and let yourself feel the confidence you have in your new body.
- If you want more money, visualize your ideal situation – your ideal location, home, companions, etc. What kind of work do you see yourself doing?
- If you want to travel, visualize yourself going to the airport, your luggage full of resort-wear. Imagine yourself on a warm and sunny beach, napping while you hear the waves of the ocean lapping up on the shore.
The next step, once the goal has been established, is to use your imagination to discover steps you can take to actually get to those places – the beach, the slimmer body, or making more money. A dream is only a dream if there is no action taken. Once you begin taking action, it’s a plan!
Creativity is so important in this process. Without creativity and imagination, you can’t envision what you want to have and what you want to be.
Use your imagination to fuel your future!
“Can Creative Visualization Help Me?”
No matter who you are, where you come from, or what your ultimate goals are, creative visualization can help you.
We all want to succeed in life, and success is going to mean something different to each individual person. When you consider it, every one of our ancestors was a success, because they continued to live and reproduce. That bodes well for our potential success, too!
Our individual success goals vary greatly, as they should! For one person, success may mean a big house, several expensive cars, and a few exotic vacations each year.
To someone else success means a cabin in the woods with a woodstove and enough cut wood to make it comfortably through the winter. Success is completely subjective, and there are no right or wrong answers.
Creative visualization is one very powerful way to see yourself through to whatever success means to you. By visualizing the desired outcome, you can also creatively brainstorm the action steps you’ll need to take to get to that outcome.
Momentum is key here – once you’ve begun practicing creative visualization, you’ll begin to see changes in your life that you may never have expected!
Creative visualization has also been used very successfully to change negative ingrained habits into positive habits!
Let’s say you’re prone to procrastination. It’s clear what you need to do. You know the deadline as well. Yet, no matter how much you know what needs to be done, you still don’t do it.
At the end, you are always rushing to get the tasks done in time for the deadline, creating horrible stress for yourself, and doing a less than stellar job.
Using creative visualization, you can attack this bad habit from several different angles. You can break down the “why” of the bad habit – maybe you don’t feel like you know enough to complete the task sufficiently, so you put it off – and then you can move into the action steps you need to take to replace that bad habit with a positive one.
The next step would be to creatively visualize how you’d feel if you didn’t have that habit anymore. How great would it feel to have every work assignment scheduled out and delivered on time?
Maybe you’d even get a raise! And how awesome would it be to not have that last-minute stress of being under the gun with your projects?
Creative visualization can help you help yourself and turn your bad habits into positive action!
As you can probably appreciate, mindset is incredibly important in your life, and if you want to know more about developing a strong mindset, check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊
Are You Building An Email List Or A Tribe?
Are You Building An Email List Or A Tribe?
You are using email marketing as part of your business strategy, right? I am sure you are but thought I’d ask because some folks get distracted by the next best thing and tend to neglect using email as part of their marketing strategy and they are seriously missing out.
Let me say this now, email marketing is not going anywhere, and is a simple, effective way to reach and engage your readers, but it must be done correctly to be optimally effective, and hopefully this post will help with the way you approach email marketing and nurturing your list in future.
Now, if you’ve been doing online marketing for any length of time, you’d have heard the line, “The money is in the list” repeated ad nauseam. Yet, it is true. The money is truly in the list, especially if you have a large and responsive one.
But it shouldn’t just be a list of freebie seekers; the real money is in the buyers list, as you know they are much more likely to be serious, take action and see results.
Because of this obsession with list size, thousands of marketers resort to a myriad of methods to grow their list. They focus on the numbers and the size of the list but often fail to realize that quality beats quantity.
It is a fact that there are marketers who have a list of about 10,000 subscribers and are able to generate six figures a month from this list as compared to many other marketers who have 10 times more subscribers but can’t make even half of what those with the smaller list are making.
If You Are Just Building A List And Not A Tribe, You’re Doing It Wrong
The secret to getting the most out of your list is to build a tribe and not a list. You may be wondering, “What’s a tribe… and what’s the difference?”
The difference is that a list is just a group of subscribers who’ve either opted in to get a freebie or they’ve purchased a product of yours and landed on your list. At this stage, the list isn’t too familiar with you, and they don’t really know you well.
If you do not establish a relationship with them and you just keep hitting them with email after email, many will unsubscribe and leave because they do not feel a connection with you. You’re just another marketer to them.
A tribe, however, is loyal. It takes time to nurture a list till it becomes a tribe. You’ll need to provide value to your list and help them progress towards their goals. Your emails will need to be entertaining and yet, useful.
You’ll need to be honest in your emails and your personality needs to shine. The products you recommend should be good and you must always look out for your tribe because in a sense, since it’s your tribe, you’re the leader. Your vibe attracts your tribe.
Just like any leader knows his tribe well, you’ll need to understand the needs of your list. Create a subscriber avatar. For example, if you’re in the weight loss niche, you must know who your target subscriber is.
It may be a middle-aged woman who could be juggling her career and her family and trying to get her body in shape. Or it could be a busy mom who has had no time to exercise and she’s trying to get rid of a few pounds.
Or it could be an overweight man who wants to get in shape so that he can gain confidence and ladies will start looking at him in a whole new way.
As you can see, all these are different types of people with different needs. You cannot help all of them. You need to pick one specific group or niche and address the needs of these people.
Trying to be everything to everybody is a surefire recipe for failure. Speak in a language that your subscriber can identify with. If your list is mostly comprised of women trying to lose weight on their tummy but you’re talking about getting ripped and muscular, you will not form a bond with your list.
You need to be on the same page as them and know what their needs, goals and dreams are. Now you can help them and provide them the value they need. Once they see that you have their best interests at heart, they’ll trust you and anticipate your emails. You now have a tribe of people who look up to you and want your emails.
It is inevitable that you will get unsubscribes along the way. Do not take this personally or lose sleep over it. To become a navy seal, one needs to go through a series of rigorous of tests and must make the final cut. Many start out but only a select few get through. However, these few are highly trained and have a bond like no other.
In the same way, the people who do not ‘get you’… are better off on someone else’s list. You can’t please everyone. You should be glad to see them go because not only will your autoresponder fees be lower but you’ll also have a list that’s ‘tight’ and a bunch of subscribers who hang on to your every word.
That is definitely a good place to be. Keep building your list and while you’re doing that, always establish a relationship with your subscribers so that you have a growing list that becomes a tribe.
Many marketers, especially affiliate marketers, simply pound their list with offer after offer and provide absolutely no value. This inevitably results in a high unsubscribe rate, so they must be constantly trying to build their list to replace all those that are leaving.
Just thinking about that makes me feel exhausted! Wouldn’t it be easier to nurture your list, look after them and offer them products and services that will genuinely help them, instead of thinking purely selfishly about your next commission payment?
Take time to grow your list, nurture them, look after them and always have their best interests at heart and they will reward you and your business.
If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊
