Marketing – Page 3 – Ask Michele Today

August 31, 2023August 31, 2023

Showcase Your Skills and Expertise Online

In today’s competitive and dynamic job market, having a strong online presence is essential for showcasing your skills and expertise to potential employers, clients, and collaborators. Whether you are looking for a new career opportunity, expanding your network, or building your personal brand, you need to leverage the power of the internet to demonstrate your value and stand out from the crowd. But how do you do that effectively? Here are some tips and strategies to help you create and optimize your online portfolio, profile, and content.

Choose the right platform

Depending on your industry, goals, and audience, you may want to use different platforms to showcase your skills and expertise online. For example, if you are a graphic designer, you may want to use a visual portfolio site like Behance or Dribbble to display your work samples and get feedback. If you are a writer, you may want to use a blogging platform like Medium or WordPress to share your articles and stories. If you are a developer, you may want to use a code repository site like GitHub or Bitbucket to showcase your projects and code snippets. Whatever platform you choose, make sure it aligns with your skillset, style, and niche.

Create a compelling profile

Your online profile is your digital resume and your first impression to anyone who visits your online portfolio, profile, or content. Therefore, you need to make it compelling, concise, and consistent. Start with a professional and friendly photo that reflects your personality and brand. Then, write a catchy and clear headline that summarizes your skills and expertise in a few words. Next, craft a persuasive and authentic bio that highlights your achievements, values, and goals. Finally, include relevant and up-to-date contact information and links to your other online platforms, social media accounts, or websites.

Showcase your best work

Your online portfolio, profile, or content is your opportunity to showcase your best work and prove your skills and expertise to your target audience. Therefore, you need to be strategic, selective, and organized in choosing and presenting your work samples, projects, or articles. First, identify your most relevant and impressive work that showcases your skills and expertise in action. Second, curate and categorize your work according to your industry, niche, or theme. Third, provide context and details for each work sample, project, or article, such as the objective, process, outcome, feedback, or impact. Fourth, use high-quality images, videos, or audio to enhance your work and make it more engaging.

Update and maintain your online presence

Creating your online portfolio, profile, or content is not a one-time task. You need to update and maintain your online presence regularly to keep it fresh, relevant, and accurate. This means adding new work samples, projects, or articles as you complete them, updating your profile information and contact details as they change, and removing outdated or irrelevant work as necessary. It also means checking your online platforms for errors, glitches, or broken links, and fixing them as soon as possible. Additionally, you need to monitor and respond to comments, messages, or feedback from your visitors, followers, or clients, and thank them for their interest, support, or collaboration.

Promote and share your online presence

Having a great online portfolio, profile, or content is not enough if no one sees it or knows about it. You need to promote and share your online presence with your network, industry, and audience to increase your visibility, credibility, and opportunities. There are many ways to do that, such as using keywords, hashtags, or tags to optimize your online platforms for search engines and social media algorithms, linking your online platforms to your email signature, business card, or resume, sharing your online platforms on relevant groups, forums, or communities, and asking for referrals, testimonials, or endorsements from your contacts, clients, or collaborators.

Learn and improve your online presence

Your online portfolio, profile, or content is not a static or fixed product. It is a dynamic and evolving process that requires constant learning and improvement. You need to track and measure the performance of your online platforms using analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or Twitter Analytics, and use the data to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You also need to seek and apply feedback from your visitors, followers, or clients, and use it to enhance your online platforms and content. Moreover, you need to research and follow the best practices and trends in your industry and niche and use them to innovate and differentiate your online presence.

Source: linkedin.com ~ By AI and LinkedIn community ~ Image: Canva Pro

February 28, 2023

Overcome Your Fears, Get Unstuck, And Fuel Your Success

What scares you? Learning how to overcome fears of failure can be challenging for everyone.

Fortunately, all fears are learned. No one is born with fears. Fears can, therefore, be unlearned by practicing self-discipline repeatedly with regard to fear until it goes away.

The most common fears that we experience, which often sabotage all hope for success, are the fear of failure, poverty, and loss of money.

These fears cause people to avoid the risk of any kind and to reject opportunity when it is presented to them. They are so afraid of failure that they are almost paralyzed when it comes to taking any risks at all.

There are many other fears that interfere with our happiness.

- People fear the loss of love or
- People fear the loss of their jobs and their financial security.
- People fear embarrassment or ridicule.
- People fear rejection and criticism of any kind.
- People fear the loss of respect or esteem of others.

These and many other fears hold us back throughout life…

Here are a few techniques to help you overcome your fears and fuel your success:

Fear Paralyzes Action

The most common reaction in a fearful situation is the attitude of, “I can’t!”

This is the fear of failure that stops us from taking action. It is experienced physically, starting in the pit of your stomach.

When people are really afraid, their mouth and throat go dry, their heart starts pounding. Sometimes they breathe shallowly and their stomach churns.

These are all physical manifestations of the inhibitive negative habit pattern, which we all experience from time to time.

Fear Shuts Our Brains Down

Whenever a person is in the grip of fear, he feels like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. This fear paralyzes action. It often shuts down the brain and causes the individual to revert to the “fight-or-flight” reaction.

Fear is a terrible emotion that undermines our happiness and can hold us back throughout our lives.

Visualize Yourself As Unafraid

By visualizing yourself performing with confidence and competence in an area where you are fearful, your visual image will eventually be accepted by your subconscious mind as instructions for your performance.

Your self-image, the way you see yourself and think about yourself, is eventually altered by feeding your mind these positive mental pictures of yourself performing at your best.

Practice Acting “As If”

By using the “act as if” method, you walk, talk, and carry yourself exactly as you would if you were completely unafraid in a particular situation.

You stand up straight, smile, move quickly and confidently, and in every respect act as if you already had the courage that you desire.

Use The Law Of Reversibility

The Law of Reversibility says that “If you feel a certain way, you will act in a manner consistent with that feeling.”

But if you act in a manner consistent with that feeling, even if you don’t feel it, the Law of Reversibility will create a feeling that is consistent with your actions.

This is one of the greatest breakthroughs in success psychology. You develop the courage you desire by disciplining yourself repeatedly to do the thing you fear until that fear eventually disappears—and it will.

Confront Your Fears Immediately

Your ability to confront, deal with, and act in spite of your fears is the key to happiness and success.

One of the best exercises you can practice is to identify a person or situation in your life of which you are afraid and resolve to deal with that fear situation immediately.

Do not allow it to make you unhappy for another minute. Resolve to confront the situation or person and put the fear behind you.

Move Toward The Fear

When you identify fear and discipline yourself to move toward it, it grows smaller and more manageable.

What’s more, as your fears grow smaller, your confidence grows. Soon, your fears lose control over you.

In contrast, when you back away from a fear-inducing situation or person, your fear grows larger and larger.

Soon it dominates your thinking and feeling, preoccupies you during the day, and often keeps you awake at night.

Deal With The Fear Directly

The only way to deal with fear is to address it head-on.

Remind yourself that, “Denial” is not a river in Egypt.

The natural tendency of many people is to deny that they have a problem caused by fear of some kind. They’re afraid of confronting it. In turn, it becomes a major source of stress, unhappiness, and psychosomatic illness.

Be willing to deal with the situation or person directly.

As Shakespeare said, “Take arms against a sea of troubles, and in so doing, end them.”

When you force yourself to face any fear-inducing situation in your life, your self-esteem goes up, your self-respect increases and your sense of personal pride grows.

You eventually reach the point in life where you are not afraid of anything.

Source: briantracy.com ~ Image: Canva Pro

February 21, 2023February 21, 2023

7 proven MLM tips to become 100% successful in network marketing

Run research to find what consumers think about the direct selling industry in general. Apparently, they are the ones who determine the success of the industry.

It’s good to hear their tips based on their experiences, it will motivate us to go forward. However, we need something more than that. Here are 7 proven MLM marketing strategies that have great practical value rather than just plain concepts. If you follow these network marketing tips, then the result is assured!

How to Succeed in Network Marketing

Let’s learn and master the network marketing strategy one after the other right way. Also, I’m going to show you the easiest way to achieve success in network marketing as a bonus tip.

Source: epixelmlmsoftware.com ~ Image: epixelmlmsoftware.com

February 21, 2023February 21, 2023

How to Succeed at Network Marketing Without Annoying Anyone

Network Marketing, Multi-Level-Marketing, MLM, are all terms for a common business structure in which companies utilize a sales force made up of “Independent Distributors” to market their products. It’s a business structure that has been around for a long time and the appeal of it comes from a distributor getting residual income, having their own business, and being their own boss. In short, it’s the American dream.

Unfortunately, for most distributors, it will remain just that, a dream. In this article, we’re going to discuss the most common reasons people fail at MLM and give you suggestions on how to succeed at network marketing.

Network marketing has a bad reputation and is often referred to as a pyramid scheme. The reason for this is twofold. First, there have been some companies out there promoting real pyramid schemes disguised as multi-level-marketing companies. The other reason is the average person doesn’t really know what a pyramid scheme is.

So, just to be clear the difference between a legitimate network marketing company and a pyramid scheme is how they earn their money. Network marketing companies derive a majority of their revenue through the sale of a product or service. An (illegal) pyramid scheme gets most of its income through the fees charged to its distributors. Now, does that mean that if a company charges a fee to become a distributor is a pyramid scheme?

No, and we can think about it this way. Legitimate MLM companies use a micro franchising model in order to sell their products. And like any franchise, (McDonalds) they charge a franchising fee. Then you as the new franchisee make money by selling the company’s products, be they hamburgers, makeup or supplements.

But, unlike the McDonald’s franchise, a network marketing company allows you to find other individuals who want to sell the products and when they become a distributor (franchisee), the company rewards you by paying you a commission on their sales too.

It’s this model that benefits the company through low-cost marketing and growth, and it rewards independent distributors for their efforts in expanding the business.

So, what does a pyramid scheme look like? Well, there are variations, but the classic pyramid scheme runs like this.

A person recruits ten people who pay $100
They then instruct those ten people to recruit 10 more people to pay $100
The initial 10 people have just made $900 on their $100 “investment”
But now there are a hundred people who each have to recruit 10 others in order for them to get paid

This process repeats itself over and over until it eventually collapses under its own weight.

But, enough about pyramid schemes, let’s talk about legitimate network marketing companies and how to succeed at network marketing.

Network Marketing, Pros, and Cons

As we stated earlier, network marketing is really just a way for a company to market its products. By using independent distributors, a company’s marketing and advertising costs go way down. It also provides a way for the average person to own their own business either full or part-time. But with that said, there are both pros and cons to network marketing.

Pros:

Low initial investment – Most network marketing companies only cost a few hundred dollars to join. Compare that to a Domino’s pizza franchise ($25,000) Mcdonald’s ($45,000) or Burger King ($50,000), making them one of the cheapest ways to start a business.
Financial independence – Many people invest in becoming distributors for multi-level marketing companies because it offers them a chance to earn extra income. Whether full-time or part-time because it provides an extra income.
Flexibility – Network marketing allows stay-at-home moms and dads to generate an income without putting the kids in daycare. It’s also a business that can be done in your spare time, it’s not a regular 9-5 gig.
You can leverage your income – By recruiting others into your “downline” you’ll be paid a commission on all of their sales as well as your own.
It can provide “residual” income – Residual income is just income that reoccurs over and over again. By building your business and downline sufficiently, you can develop a significant amount of residual income.
Growth opportunities – It’s not always clear how to grow in your career at a “regular” company. In fact, for some jobs, there is no way to advance your career at all. With network marketing companies you’ll have a very clear idea on what it will take to advance up the ranks.
There is no cap on your income – Unlike a job, there is no upper limit to the amount of money you can make.
The internet has changed everything – The internet and social media have made MLM marketing much easier.

Cons:

Competition – Because most MLM companies only cost a few hundred dollars to join, they can be a lot of independent distributors located in any one area. This can impact sales and profitability as they are all selling the same products.
It’s not a good fit for everyone – Because the barrier to entry is so low, basically anyone who pays the fee becomes a distributor. Even people who don’t have the time, temperament, or personality for network marketing can become distributors.
Motivation – Being a distributor is a business there is no boss telling you what to do and when to do it. You need to be a self-starter.
It takes time – As stated earlier, multi-level marketing is a business. And it’s also one that you are starting from scratch. Don’t expect to make a lot of money right away. It is normal for the average distributor to go two years without making any significant money.
There is a lot of rejection involved – Many people will tell you “no” when you first start network marketing. That negative response is going to continue on and on… and on. The average person who is first getting started with this challenge may have a conversion rate of 1%. That means out of 100 people who are approached for a sale, 99 of them are going to turn the opportunity down. For those who get discouraged by such negativity, the rejection can cause a good network marketing opportunity to go away.
High turnover rate – A lot of network marketers simply quit. They might move to a different company or product, or they might just stop with MLM businesses completely. That’s a problem for you because the most profitable way to operate an MLM is through recruiting other people into your downline. If those people quit, then you won’t be getting residual income from commissions on their sales.
Constant recruiting – As a result of the high turnover rate, you’ll find yourself back out into the field spending more time recruiting people. This can also interfere with friendships and family relations if you are looking to those groups for your recruits.

Steps to Success

Despite what your company tells you, building a list of people in your warm market isn’t the best way to start out. When you look at the top performers, they have very few people that were on their original list in the business. Now, I’m not saying it’s wrong to let your friends and family know what you’re doing, but most of your warm market will only join after they see you succeed. So, the bottom line is to go ahead and let your warm market know what you’re doing, but if they say no, let it go.

Target your market – Some companies call this “pre-qualifying” a prospect. You must understand who the person is that would be interested in your product or opportunity. What are your customers’ wants and desires? Only then can you tailor your marketing efforts to that portion of the population that is most likely to buy.
Focus on gaining customer-first – People are naturally skeptical of “money-making” opportunities, so don’t focus all your energy in recruiting your downline. Instead, focus most of your efforts on recruiting customers. Once someone is a customer, they are going to be much more receptive to joining your downline.
Don’t convince anyone to join your downline – This is why we concentrate on generating customers first. You will have already narrowed down your target market to people who have used and know the benefits of the products. Then you can offer them the opportunity. But, never convince, cajole or hound people to join your business, they won’t do well anyway.
Be genuine and ethical – This is where network marketers can give the entire industry a bad name. Don’t come off as the clichéd “used car salesman” anxious to close the sale. This is a “people” business, your prospects are going into business with YOU, not your company. By the same token, be careful when marketing your products or services. Over-hyping or exaggerating the benefits of your products or services is a sure way to set people up for failure.
Separate yourself from all the other distributors – This is one of the inherent issues with network marketing. You are just one of the thousands of distributors offering the exact same products at the exact same prices. You need to set yourself apart from everyone else and give the potential customer a reason to buy from you. Check out the resource section below for some great suggestions on how to do that.
Have a system – If you really want to succeed at network marketing, then having a system in place is critical. Marketing to customers and prospecting for recruits takes a lot of time and effort. By putting a system in place you can; target your marketing efforts to those looking for your products, set yourself apart from other distributors, add value to the consumer giving them a reason to buy from you and finally to automatically follow up with the customer to build a relationship and for re-orders.

Internet Marketing

It happens to every network marketer, you run through your warm market and then hit the internet. But how do you use the internet?

Here’s how it goes for most people. They get on all of their social media accounts and post a link to their generic company website. Some people even join groups whose members would have an interest in the products. For example, if you’re selling weight loss supplements, there are a ton of groups out there talking about weight loss. And while there’s nothing wrong with doing either of these things, I have never seen them generate any substantial business for network markers. So, what should you do? CONTENT MARKETING.

Virtually no one clicks on a random link to a website that’s trying to sell them something. If they want to buy your product, they will do a Google search and find it themselves. But, that’s a problem. You see, most company websites are identical. Google doesn’t like that because all the content is the same. So, Google will only index one site, ignoring all the rest. Using content marketing will not only help in getting you ranked in Google, but it will also help to set you apart from the thousands of other distributors out there.

Start by making a simple website of your own. There are a lot of companies that have a very simple drag and drop systems for building websites, including, [WordPress], Wix, and Weebly. Be careful, don’t make your website another advertisement for your MLM. It needs to be an informational site that provides valuable information to the people who visit. Once they are there, you can have a products page.
Start creating valuable content with a blog. Again, this is not to be content-focused on your products or company, instead focus on creating content that would be helpful to readers. For example, “Tips on Starting an Exercise Routine for the Procrastinator” or “10 Tasty Snacks that Won’t Ruin Your Diet”.
Post all of this valuable content to your social media accounts and in the various weight loss groups, you joined. Always have a “For More Information” link that goes to your website. This increases your profile and credibility within the community. People will only buy from those they trust, and you are building trust.
Once someone visits your site you want to be able to collect their information so that you can continue to communicate with them. The easiest way to do this is by using a lead capture system or landing page.
Generate additional streams of income by incorporating affiliate marketing into your website. Not everyone who visits your website will be interested in your products or opportunity, but that doesn’t mean you can’t profit from them. Affiliate marketing is a great add-on to any network marketing business. It allows you to sell other people’s products and services without having to stock, ship or service them.

Conclusion

Network marketing can be a fun and profitable business for the average person looking to earn some money. With a low initial cost, network marketing puts business ownership within the reach of almost everyone. The downsides are that you will run through your warm market fairly quickly and that the products you sell are exactly the same as every other distributor. However, you can overcome this by setting yourself apart from other distributors, providing more value to the consumer, and developing relationships within the online communities you associate with. Remember, if you can help people out with valuable information, they are more likely to trust you and become customers. And satisfied customers are more likely to become partners, so concentrate first on getting and maintaining customers and your downline will follow.

Resources

You can get a copy of our latest book “The Complete Internet Marketing Strategy” for free by clicking on the link below. After you get the book, take a look at our videos explaining the automated supplement marketing system. It was designed for Herbalife distributors, but can be modified for use in ANY network marketing business. It is designed to target consumers that are already searching for the products you have. Then offering the customer more value than other distributors makes you stand out and gives them a reason to buy from you. Finally, it automatically follows up with them for re-orders, offers on other products, and downline recruitment.

Source: onlinebizfacts.com ~ By David Carpenter ~ Image: Canva Pro

September 27, 2022September 27, 2022

5 Practical Social Media Marketing Strategies That All eCommerce Sellers Must Know

With more customers shopping online than ever before, and ever-increasing competition for attention, online businesses will only be able to maximize their success if they learn how to build on organic engagement in social media.

Don’t get me wrong, gaining organic traffic through search, and even conversions from paid ads, are still great ways to build a business. However, leveraging a community to build sales from organic engagement costs nothing more than your time. And besides that, there are plenty of tools available to help you along the way.

Here are five practical strategies you can implement straight away which will help boost traffic and sales through your social channels.

1. Create, Curate, and Share Awesome Content

If all you do through your social channels is promote your products, your audience is going to burn out on your pages and posts pretty fast. The more the engagement drops on your posts, the less often your new posts will be seen by your followers – after all, channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest want to display only the most interesting content to keep users engaged (and there are a lot of brands competing for the limited space in a user’s social feed).

Ramp up engagement by finding awesome repurposed content. I’m not just talking about reposting old articles or sharing cool stuff you found on other websites. Instead, take the Skyscraper approach or create something similar to Buzzfeed’s listicles.

Find an interesting topic and mold it into something much better than the original. That’s what the guys at Shopify did when they were tasked with launching a profitable business in just three days.

Using BuzzSumo, they searched for pieces of highly-shared content that was relevant to their audience. Using the original video created by someone else, they took the tips and created a targeted list post, then shared that to a relevant community online.

It didn’t take long for the new content to start driving traffic to the online store where the article was hosted.

While this surge of new traffic usually won’t result in immediate sales, well-optimized content like this will continuously send traffic and generate sales over the long run.

2. Embrace Micro-Content

One of the problems faced by many marketers today – not just those in eCommerce – is that the web is in a constant state of information overload. Audiences are bombarded with updates from their favorite brands, publishers, and media outlets, both directly and through the shares of people in their network.

With limited time and shrinking patience, consumers just aren’t willing to spend a lot of time digesting content anymore, you can’t expect them to be willing to watch a 10-minute video or read a 5,000-word article when they’re on the go.

This is why micro-content comes in handy. Short, 10-second Snapchats or brief videos posted to Instagram and Facebook – or even a video converted to GIF format for Twitter – can bump up your engagement.

With micro-content, you get the same benefits of video, and your audience is more likely to watch when they know it won’t cost them more than 10-20 seconds of their time.

Major brands have been leveraging this since Vine took off, including Lowe’s, Doritos, Taco Bell, and even NASCAR.

3. Blogs Are Social, Too

It’s not uncommon for marketers and online store owners to have tunnel vision and get stuck on the idea that social media is all about Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat. But blogs are absolutely forms of social media – they’re platforms where content is posted, and that content sees shares and comments, just like the more popular social platforms.

When you’re marketing an eCommerce business, be sure to include regular blog outreach in your social media strategy. It can drive a LOT of traffic back to your store if you do it right.

That’s what Richard Lazazzera from A Better Lemonade Stand learned when he challenged himself to launch a t-shirt business in just 24 hours. After creating his store on Shopify and listing his products, he reached out to a local blogger to ask if he would be interested in covering the products since they related to an article the blogger had recently published.

When Richard woke up the next morning, he found a stream of notifications from new customers that came from that blogger publishing a post about the shirts. That post not only led to sales but other people interested in collaborating with Richard.

Don’t just create your content, reach out to influencers and bloggers who align with your audience and work with them to get your business or products featured on other sites and social channels.

4. Create More Engaging Content

Whenever you post content on your social channels, it should have a purpose, whether that’s to generate comments, and shares, drive traffic to your store, etc. The best way to do that is to always create content with a focus on maximizing engagement.

Some of the best ways to do this include: asking questions, crafting strong call-to-action specific to engagement, and targeting your audience’s emotions with a little controversy from time to time.

This is particularly effective if you center your content around a product or your brand like Ahole Gear has done.

Doritos recently combined another one of the above approaches by creating a short video clip that leverages its product and adds a touch of political controversy to get people talking.

The more engaging your content is, the farther it will reach beyond your immediate followers as they comment, like, and share the content. This will lead to repeat customers as well as the acquisition of new customers who weren’t previously aware of your brand.

5. Use Social Reviews

Customer product reviews are great ways to build social proof on your product pages and let new customers know what they can expect when purchasing from you. A lot of eCommerce platforms use apps like Yotpo to develop more engaging reviews in their online stores, but you can also leverage reviews from your social media.

Not only does Yotpo enable you to connect your social accounts to post user-generated content on your pages, but Facebook also has its own native reviews that you should activate. This way, when prospective customers discover you in social media they can see right from the channel, without ever going to your site, that people are raving about your products and service.

For example, Coval Vapes is a brick-and-mortar store that also sells its products worldwide on its online store, and it has amassed a nice run of highly-rated reviews on its Facebook page.

Be sure to consistently encourage your fans to leave reviews. Rather than ask for reviews through your social channels, send follow-up emails after purchases and include a highly visible call-to-action note. Ask them to please come back and review their purchase on your social channels, or within your store, so you can later benefit from greater social proof generated by satisfied customers.

Source: socialmediatoday.com ~ By: Aaron Agius ~ Image: Canva Pro

Category: Marketing