Successful Blog

Here is a good place for a call to action.

Search Results for: questions

Be Your Future … Now

by

Self-Talk and Self-Awareness

cooltext443794242_influence

Last night on PBS I saw a program on success and winning. The following fact almost floored me.

The self-talk in our heads runs at about 300-1000 words / minute.

Imagine the power of that barrage of thoughts. Whether positive or negative, that much energy can direct a life.

Just being aware of when we’re talking to ourselves makes a huge difference.
Taking responsibility for it can make a difference in our lives.

Be Your Future … Now

I believe that to know yourself is key to succeeding in both business and life. Once we figure our own direction and intentions, those of other people have less power to shape and bend us.

For a few years I spent significant time exploring self-actualizing questions.

Am I being true to myself?

I could tie my mind in complex knots over that one question. Being myself, being true to myself, knowing when to trust my perception of others, I found all of these far more complicated than I needed to make them.

In an attempt to sort myself, I did the math. I thought …

I have so many emotions. Do I always have to go with the one I feel most? If I’m 10% happy does that count less than the 20% nervous I feel? Is one thing I’m feeling more truly me than another? Which should I act on when I’m feeling, love, jealousy, anger, hurt, ignored?

Your answers might be easy, but I could think myself into a tizzy over such questions. Most situations offered too many possibilities.

Finally I looked outside myself for an answer. I saw Dorothy’s personal sense of class, Jo’s open acceptance, and Martha’s grace under pressure. I wished for my mother’s strength and my father’s generosity of spirit. I sought out the people who had the qualities that I admired, qualities I wished I could cultivate in myself.

Eventually, I found that I would grow more and with less angst if I used a different question.
Eventually that question became …

Am I being true to who I want to be?

That question I can check in mirror.

The person I want to be would respond like this …

And the benefits of this future question were lovely. I spent less time out-thinking things, more time doing. And with less and less future before me I want to be the future me now.

Who is the “me” in your future? You get to decide that.
This works for teams, couples, and individuals. Try it.

How will you be your future now?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

How to Choose an SEO Agency for Your Business

by

by
Brian Taylor

cooltext443809602_strategy

How to Choose an SEO Agency for Your Business

Well-optimized, effective websites aren’t just for Fortune 500 companies and tech companies anymore. Now more than ever, it’s important for small business owners to fully understand just how beneficial a successfully executed website can be for them as well.

In order to make your website successful, you need to make sure it’s fully search engine optimized and unless you’re an SEO expert yourself, you’ll no doubt want to hire a team of experts to help you get the job done right. Here’s how to make sure the experience goes as pleasantly as possible.

Have Faith in the Professionals You Choose

As is the case with hiring any other team of professionals to help you with your business, trust is an extremely important factor in your relationship with your SEO team. Once you’ve chosen the right professionals for the job, it’s important to have faith in their ability to do the job right and deliver you the results they promised. Avoid micromanaging and nagging at all costs.

Be Patient

Even once a given SEO strategy has been formulated and officially set in motion, it still takes time for the changes to yield results. Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all! The SEO agency you’re working with most likely gave you an estimate as far as how long it would take for you to start to notice results. Definitely give it that much time to work and take root.

Treat Your SEO Agency as a Partner

When working with any SEO agency, it’s of the utmost importance that you treat them as the partners they are. These are trained experts who know their craft just as well as you know yours, so they should be treated as equals working toward a common goal. Be professional in your communications and realistic in your expectations. Definitely address questions or concerns politely and with respect.

Pay for Quality Work

The SEO agency you hire to help you make the most of your website is made up of qualified business professionals that are doing what they do for the same reasons you are – because it’s their profession. As such, they expect to collect payment for services rendered according to their terms of service. Respect and adhere to the company’s business terms and be sure to pay them promptly for good services rendered. Always be sure to hold up your end of your business contract in every way, shape, and form as well.

Teaming up with an SEO agency in order to get results that deliver for you is simple when you follow a few simple guidelines.

Author’s Bio:
Brian Taylor is the VP, Business Development at Forix SEO in Portland, OR. a team of crack SEO experts with an impressive record when it comes to results, experience, and expertise. Forix offers affordable and ethical SEO services in Portland helping small businesses with their Internet marketing needs.

How Trust Raises the Bar

by

What Is Trust?

cooltext443809602_strategy

What is trust?

Trust is a very big word. I talk a lot about being authentic online because we can’t see the person on the other side of the screen. Truth is we can’t see what other folks are thinking even when they’re standing right before us. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about trust, writing about it.

Three years ago, when I was sick and couldn’t do everything for myself, I had to trust that the people who offered really wanted to help. It was trust that they would hold me in the same place with the same affection had I not asked. I had to trust that their help wouldn’t lead them to think less of me.

I choose with care, asked with care, and cared about the people I chose.

The help I received showed itself in ways I will never forget. I had forgotten that trust is a powerful relationship builder. Those old and new friends not only showed up, but came as if my request for a hand was a gift to them.

And because I choose to trust with care in my life. I could trust without fear.

How Trust Raises the Bar

Trust in business works the same. When we worry about who will speak for us, it’s a moment of trust. Whether it’s at a conference booth, in an email, or on a social networking site, we just need people we trust. Employees, vendors, partners, customers — the question isn’t about controlling their words. It’s about choosing people who share our values, because shared values build trust. Choose people you trust to build your business.

If we choose the people we hire with care, assign them to work they care about, and care about them and the work they do, we find out that the trust goes both ways. We don’t have to fear how they’ll respond when the going gets tough. When we take time to answer questions, listen, engage, build relationships by aligning our values and goals, trust occurs in both directions. Build trust relationships and your policy documents won’t have to weigh tons, because …

Trust raises the bar for all of us.

How do you recognize people you trust?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Top Rated Content Management Systems to Run Your Site

by

by
Franklyn Stephen

cooltext443809602_strategy

Whether you’re planning to build a corporate website, a creative blog or just want to make your presence on the web, hand-coding HTML pages and CSS are becoming obsolete. Nowadays all it takes is to buy a hosting and install a content management system (CMS), add a theme and within minutes you can have a website that looks extremely stylish and displaying the very content that you like to share with the world.

Of course, there are lots of ways in which you may use your website, from displaying a gallery of images to advertising your business, running a technical support page or even an online magazine website. This is why; there are many content management systems available, each with their own strength.

The following are the Top 5 Content Management Systems that are rated by downloads and user experience.

WordPress

Without doubt the most accessible and commonly used is WordPress. The power of WordPress is in its fast installation, huge user, vast array of plugins and enhancement for the platform.

Throw in the extra bonus of a vast template library and easy to edit PHP and CSS file from admin screen, it becomes clear that why WordPress is used for the whole thing from personal blogs to business websites.

For setting up or customize your WordPress blog or Website, check out WordPress Customization service providers.

Joomla

A quick view on Joomla website will make sure that plenty of websites are running on the software and the reason behind is easy to use, customizable and appropriate for pretty much any use.

This is why Joomla is frequently used by SME’s, big organizations, non-profits and individual organization. Joomla’s admin section is user friendly and with the vast collection of features from templates to adding pages and menus; at last you will come to know why Joomla is an accurate choice.

You can download latest version of Joomla and try it now it’s free.

Drupal

A famous free open source content management system is Drupal, It is one of the best choices while developing a new website. Like various tools listed here, Drupal can be used for personal blogs or huge websites and like WordPress there are millions of modules that can be added to enlarge functionality.

By Clicking on the image, it will redirect you to the home page where you will be able to take a look at the showcase of websites made with Drupal. It is significance noting that questions from the user group of people about apparent failings in latest versions are yet to be entirely addressed by developers; but Drupal remains as well-liked solution.

Concrete5

Plan to make it feasible for anybody to build and manage a website without investing a lot of time and cost then you need to go with Concrete5.It has been appears to be doing excellent job.

This content management system is eventual time saving solution to designers, developers and website owners alike, which almost certainly accounts for its reputation. User-friendly, with a well-built focus on the end user, web designer and developer, Finally Concrete5 is definitely worth a look.

You can find more details by visiting Concrete5 website. Check with experts to customize your Concrete5.

CMS Made Simple

CMS Made Simple has an attractive smart name. Its initials are represents CMS, which makes it recursive. CMS Made Simple was launched in 2009. Though, it is already downloaded by millions of people and become popular for many reasons.

CMS Made Simple aims to offer its users to easy to develop and customize a website without any technical knowledge. If you don’t be set to hack around with the essential code that powers your website, CMS Made Simple is best solution for you.

Conclusion

If you’re wondering to choose best CMS platform for your website or blog, then your best bet is to hit each of the links above and download the software and install it. There are different things you should consider while choosing a CMS and these are all knowledgeable only through your own potential, your objective and the purpose of the website or a blog. Just choosing one among them and using it without being aware of that particular CMS how you will use it, these things makes waste a lot of time for us. Be sure while choosing your best fit content management system. If you’re still wondering about the exact solution for your website always check with CMS customization experts.

Author’s Bio:
Franklyn Stephen Issac.J is a webmaster having substantial four years of experience in analytics, Search engine optimization, social media marketing, SEM and PPC. His company Actmedia.net customizes Content Management Systems and shares his great passion for analytics and ecommerce solutions. More than 50 keywords ranked prove his strong insight knowledge on keyword research and analysis.

What’s the WHY of Your Business?

by

Influence and Attraction

Purpose, Mission, and Vision

cooltext443809602_strategy

Whether we’re working with a new businesses, a project, or a team that needs rebuilding, it’s typical to start with purpose, mission, and vision.

You have to choose your future before you can make it happen.

Though we might not fully agree on the exact definition of those terms, a true strategy will investigate, establish, and articulate these foundational ideas of mission, vision, and purpose before …

  • before auditing market share and position;
  • before studying current trends, cycles, and conditions;
  • before making product or customer service decisions,
  • before choosing a core community;
  • before considering processes and systems.

This list represents the “who” “how” and “what” of a business.

What’s the WHY of Your Business?

Making any key decisions without agreeing on mission, vision, and purpose is dangerous. It’s an invitation to hidden assumptions, shallow thinking, and miscommunication. Without clarity, everyone who might help you, your team, or your business — employees, vendors, partners, customers, friends — will construct their own definition of your mission, vision, and purpose.

Next time you want to influence people to support your idea, project, or business venture, next time you want to attract people to participate with you, answer these four basic question sets:

  1. Who are we? / What do we value?
  2. Where are we going / what are we building?
  3. How will we get there / how will we build it?
  4. Why is this quest important? / Why are we uniquely suited to meet this call better than any other?

These foundational questions require priority attention because they build they WHY of your business.
They underpin your best true, compelling story — the calling and commitment — that fuels your business and the people who want to help it grow. Yet, the last of these, the “WHY” fuels is of what moves us and the people we serve to action.

The WHY of your business is the bedrock of influence and attraction.
The WHY attracts people who share your values and believe in what you’re building.
The WHY calls the ideal employees, customers, vendors and partners to pitch in to help you build it.
The WHY is irresistible reason to join you in making something you can’t build alone.

What’s the WHY of Your business?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Just How Secure is Your Business?

by

For the small business owner that has to deal on a daily basis with making a profit, keeping up with the latest in products and/or services in their industry and taking care of his or her customers, worrying about security should be the last thing on their mind.

That being said, many small business owners do just that, wondering if their business is susceptible to a number of forms of theft.

From a physical break in to stolen data, business owners are finding more and more that security needs to be one of if not their top priority. But can internal threats be just as dangerous if not more than external ones, especially given today’s troubled economy?

Just as you would want the best home security system to protect your family and possessions, having a security system in place on the job is critical too.

So, for the small business owner who is not sure where to start, what should they look for in order to protect all they have worked hard for over time?

The first order of business should be to complete a Threat and Risk Assessment (TARA), allowing you to decide the best security route to travel. Take the time to look at your company’s assets and decide what their value loss impact is. Next, look to see what possible threats are facing your business, be they from the outside or possibly within. Lastly, put in place the needed procedures to make your business as secure as possible.

If you are wondering just who may be a threat to your small business, consider the following:

* Outside threats – The most common threat comes from the outside. Many thieves will scope out a small business first before striking, so look for any unusual activity with people who come to your place of work. Are they there for actual business, or are they there asking questions and trying to get a feel for your operation? If you have customers coming into your business on a regular basis, it makes sense to have security in place such as cameras and detectors at entrance and exit points to curtail shoplifting. Proper office security should also be a priority to protect your employees while they come and go, meaning the proper lighting and locks for the building space you own or rent.;

* Inside threats – Especially given today’s challenging economy, it is not unheard of to find small business owners finding criminals right under their noses. Whether it is someone stealing funds or property from the company, in-house theft can cause major financial repercussions for the small business owner. In some cases, the theft/s may go unnoticed for some period of time, meaning the company’s financial stability can be greatly impacted by the time the crimes are discovered. Make sure employees with access to company funds, computers and other items are properly screened before hiring. Consider using tools such as performance review software from Halogen” to track employee performance and ensure that no suspicious behavior arises. Only give out office keys to those who truly need them to enter and leave the building;

* Threats from competitors – You may think your business is immune from threats from the competition, but guess again. Whether it is spreading untrue rumors about your company or actually doing something physically to tarnish your business like stealing your property, you can be financially impacted from actions by your rivals. Let’s say you run a weekly newspaper and you fill the local vending machines with your product each Friday. After filling up the machines, readers call to report they can’t find your newspaper in the machines. It may not be a case of the product was so desirable, but rather your competition had someone go around and empty the machines minutes after you filled them. As a result, readers can’t get the news they want, the coupons you supplied in the publication, while advertisers are upset people are not seeing their ads. The trickle down effect can harm you before you know it;

* Cyber threats – As more and more business finds it way onto computers, is your small business properly protected? According to a 2011 survey from Symantec and the National Cyber Security Alliance, 85 percent of small business owners thought their company was safe from hackers, viruses or a cyber-security attack. That being said, a whopping 77 percent did not have a formal Internet security policy for their workers, while 49 percent failed to have an informal policy together. Data theft can be a major problem for the small business owner who does not have the proper firewalls in place. Not only can company information be compromised, but customer data can be stolen. When the latter happens, customers are not only upset, but are more apt to take their business elsewhere. Make sure that not only are you protecting in-house business information, but also have security in place when it comes to online customer transactions and more.

Given you would not leave your home susceptible to theft, can you say the same for your small business?

Photo credit: Stealbreaker.com

About the author: With 23 years of experience as a writer, Dave Thomas covers a wide array of items from starting a small business to hiring the right employees.