VE Digital

Author: hello@ve.digital

  • 9 Best Things You Should Never Do On Social Media

    9 Best Things You Should Never Do On Social Media

    9 Best Things You Should Never Do On Social Media

    For new businesses and marketers, social media can be a bit intimidating and overwhelming. Though it offers so much potential, it’s undeniable that it also has pitfalls. There’s no book on how to use social media the “right way”, but, unfortunately, there is a wrong way for you to use it. Whether it’s the customer’s comment or the company’s post, negativity is always present.

    Of course, when mistakes do happen, there’s always a way to make it up to your viewers. There are things you can do to rise back up. But even with the knowledge of how to manage mistakes, it’s still best to not commit any when possible.

    The best way to avoid mistakes is by knowing what not to do. Here are 9 things you should never do on social media:

    Forgetting to Edit Your Posts

    When you write a blog or any article, you wouldn’t dare publish it without editing and proofreading it, right? The same principle should be practiced on social media. Don’t tweet or publish any post without editing and proofreading it. Everything you post on your social media becomes a part of your digital footprint, even the things you delete, and miscommunication can change your customer’s perception of your brand. A single typo could sink your credibility and deplete your customer loyalty. 

    Concentrating on Only One Platform

    You might think it would be easier to just be on one platform and concentrate your brand growth there. Maybe you’d choose Facebook since it has over 2-billion active users every month. The downside of only limiting yourself on one platform is that you’ll miss out on other connections you might make on other platforms.

    Different social media platforms have different audiences, and they are designed to meet the needs of various types of people. Just like your business has a target audience, so too does Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Take for example LinkedIn – a social network for professionals and B2B marketing, that rather than followers and subscribers, you have connections and groups. 

    Other platforms, like TikTok, are far less professional and are widely used by the younger generation. If your target audience is between the ages of 14-24, you’d lose traffic and potential customers by not having an account here.

    Branch out and find out what platforms work best for your brand. You need not have accounts on all platforms, but you do need to know on which platforms your target audience hangs out.

    Marketing Without a Strategy

    Having a business plan and goals maps out your road to success. Having a strategy for social media marketing is the same. Without one, you’ll be driving around in a circle, never knowing the direction you ought to take. No matter how great your content is, if there’s no one to see and read it, your efforts will be in vain. You should include these things in your strategy:

    • The target audience for each platform in use.
    • Content schedules.
    • Communication tactics.
    • Metric tool management.
    • Time investment.

    Things You Should Never Do On Social Media

     

    Sharing and Referencing Sensitive Material

    Social media is a place of calm and relaxed atmosphere, it’s a part of its charm where people relieve their stress and get inspired. Social media lets businesses interact with their customers less formally. Aside from the casual conversation, it’s important to protect your reputation so as much as possible, avoid sharing offensive material. 

    Ignoring Negative Feedback 

    A grave mistake any marketer can make is ignoring customer feedback, especially the negative ones. Negative feedback brings light to the experience that your customer had. When a customer has an issue with your product or service, an apology should be issued. Not all companies have money-back guarantees, but all should have the common courtesy to apologize.

    Ignoring a customer complaint has an adverse effect. It’s just one person, so it might not be worth your time, but that negative feedback is visible to everyone. The way a company deals with negative feedback has a great impact on consumer opinion. Here are some tips you can do to deal with bad reviews:

    Honesty. Nobody’s perfect, and everyone makes mistakes. If the fault is yours, then be transparent about it. Your consumers will appreciate your honesty.

    Recompense if possible. Not all situations will require a refund, but when it does, offer it to the customer. Sometimes, all the customer needs is an apology, and that’s okay too.

    Be empathetic. When you can’t do anything, try to see the situation from the customer’s perspective. Empathizing helps.

    Be professional. Some negative feedback may be rude and can sometimes hit below the belt. When this is the case, it can be hard to keep your cool but don’t forget that this is not personal. Stand behind your brand and be the voice that you want your customer to remember when they see your company logo. 

    Being Too Formal and Uptight

    It’s important to always stay professional, yet social media is where businesses can be a bit laid-back and relaxed. After all, it’s where you engage with your customers. This is your opportunity to relax and have fun. This is where you show your content in a lighthearted manner so that you can show this other side of your brand to your audience. Try different types of posts that will humanize your brand, maybe some tasteful humor, personal anecdotes, or some behind-the-scenes footage. Try posting content like:

    • “Introducing the office” videos
    • Memes that poke fun at your own brand
    • Contests which include audience interaction

    Separating your Social Media and Website

    Your online presence is made up of everything you have online that your brand takes part in, this includes all the social media you have, your website, blog, press releases, etc. All the content that you can control should be connected to all platforms so your brand can be coherent.

    Separating your social media and website will mean that you’ll lose precious traffic. Make sure that your Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media links to your website, and vice versa. Having your social media buttons on your website will help users share your brand with their family and friends. This will then drive more traffic, higher conversion rates, and revenue increase.

    Disregarding and Not Monitoring your Automated Tools

    It can be tempting to make things simple by automating everything and then forget about it, but this isn’t the practical way to do things. Automation tools may let you schedule posts to multiple platforms but they are not perfect. Bugs and human errors can occur and should be considered.

    Have a second set of eyes on your automation tools, this will help keep things run smoothly and mistake-free. 

    Sharing Political Posts

    Nowadays, social media is too often used as a platform for people to share their political views. While this is fine for customers to do, as a business it would be best to remain neutral.

    For example, celebrating Pride Month. This is great but there is a less aggressive way to do so. Doing a post about encouraging people to vote is a much better thing to do than pushing your personal political opinion. You won’t only have the possibility of offending people, your brand could also lose business by having a strong political opinion. This is one area that you need to separate your personal and business life.

    Social media is a great marketing tool, and like any other, it requires a plan and confidence from the people working behind it. Do your research, have regular maintenance and keep a strong sense of customer service to achieve success.

    Mistakes occur, that’s inevitable, but no matter what happens, it’s possible to come out of it and bounce back. There are ways to deal with them, and how you deal with these mistakes is what matters most. However, knowing what not to do can help you avoid these mistakes beforehand, so make sure to keep the things stated above in mind.

  • 5 Powerful Facebook Ad Targeting Strategies

    5 Powerful Facebook Ad Targeting Strategies

    5 Powerful Facebook Ad Targeting Strategies

    Facebook is still currently one of the most widely used platforms online by adults. And the vast majority who use it daily continue to provide brands and businesses an opportunity for maximum visibility when implementing Facebook ad targeting strategies. 

    One of the toughest parts is how to get started but we are here to provide help and give you five of the most powerful Facebook ad targeting strategies that you can use every day to get great results. 

    Targeting audiences on Facebook can be done by a dozen different ad formats and thousands of possible as targeting parameters. Mastering Facebook ads strategies will get you in front of specific audiences who are motivated and eager to be wowed. 

    Here are some underrated tips that you haven’t even thought of:

    Recent Purchasing Behaviour

    Back in 2013, Facebook had a partnership agreement with Epsilon, Datalogix, and Acxiom, which are data-forming companies. Acxiom alone has over 500 million active consumer data users worldwide, with an average of 1500 data points per person. 

    This means that Facebook has a lot of information about its users. If you like horror movies, like playing Candy Crush Saga or even taking prescription pills, Facebook probably knows about it. This gives the advertisers the power to reach out beyond their own CRM databases. They can take advantage of these data and target their audiences accordingly.

    And so, purchasing behavior is powerful because it taps into insights learned from shopper loyalty programs of all types and then gets matched to Facebook user profiles. Purchasing behavior has many different subcategories, and this includes buyer profiles, clothing, food & drink, health, entertainment, etc. You can be even more specific and drill down into the types of behavior. You can target foodies, DIYers, fashionistas, bookworms, and so on. 

    Facebook will show you the number of user profiles you can target in each subcategory based on the number of users in that category they’ve matched to offline purchasing data. So really, it’s not just things that people do on Facebook, but also the sort of data that transfers through from other purchasing behaviors. 

    The options here are limitless, engage in your niche in your area, and explore. Purchasing behavior is just another addition to one of your Facebook ads that you can try and run. Try it out, it’s an underrated yet a great and powerful Facebook ad targeting strategy.

    Life Events Targeting

    You should already know by now that Facebook uses life events. With life events, you can mark your timeline with the different milestones of your life, I’m pretty sure you’ve already seen a lot of your friends doing this. You can make your date of birth, when you attend a new school when you get a new job, your relationship status, and so on. These life events can be a very good targeting point to those types of businesses that are based on selling to people experiencing major life events.

    Funeral homes, for example, want to connect to people who are planning for a funeral, lost/losing a loved one, or are terminally ill. Wedding photographers target people who are engaged. Moving services want to target people who have just purchased a house or an apartment. A jewelry company may want to target those who are having their birthdays or anniversaries. 

    Facebook has a life event targeting option that you can use to run ads and get customers that way. 

    The Life Events parameter is unique in that you can target people at specific time intervals. This is a powerful trick that you can use for your Facebook ads as it supplies just another round of possibility of people buying something. As we all know, people are more inclined to buy something if it’s either for someone else as a gift or when it’s in a more predisposed setting like Christmas or birthdays. 

    Nurture Leads with Facebook Custom Audiences

    This tip is called “closing the gap”, which is focusing on customers and people that you know and have already interacted with. Facebook Custom Audiences are an advanced feature that enables you to connect on Facebook with your existing contacts. Being able to get in front of your existing customers and app users on their favorite social network reinforces your brand. It also gives you the opportunity to increase lifetime customer value, order frequency, and loyalty.

    This can work the other way around. You can increase the efficacy of your campaigns by excluding your existing customer list. One example is if you are offering a free trial to new users, there’s no reason to show it to your loyal customers.

    Custom audiences can be created using your customer phone list or email list and uploading them to Facebook. You can also create a Custom Audience based on your site visitors. And you can really be specific when you use this. You can exclude a subset or a specific list or just get down to the very basic and target existing customers.

    This tool is crazy powerful! You can target your existing customers who work in a specific field, make X amount of money per anum, and live in a certain ZIP code with a higher value product offer. You could also target those people who have visited your website with offers or free trials and product demos. These people already know who your business is and were interested enough to visit your website, but not convert. Facebook ad targeting using the Custom Audience can close that gap and get that sale. 

    The number of parameters that you can target here is huge. Marital status, net worth, living arrangement, parental status, location, interest – everything is there for you to leverage.

     

    Facebook Ad Targeting Strategies

     

    Lookalike Audiences

    Once you have the Custome Audiences strategy in place, the next logical step is Lookalike Audiences. Even if you don’t have your own email or phone list, you can still create a Lookalike Audience using a tracking pixel to mirror your Facebook fan base. Lookalikes allow you to expand beyond your reach but still target people with highly specific profiles, by creating audiences that look like your own targets. This strategy is a good way to earn new fans and followers that can potentially be new customers. 

    For example, if you know 100 people visit your website, you can create a lookalike audience of those 100 people that visited your website who might also be interested. Let’s say you have a skateboarding website where you sell skate clothing, and people who visit that are most likely into skateboarding. Of those 100 people that visited, you can create a lookalike audience that will involve similar traits and similar likes and user behaviors from those people who interacted with your website and create an ad using the audience that it will have targeted from the trades that is collected from those 100 people.

    Lookalikes allow you to expand beyond your reach but still target people with highly specific profiles, by creating audiences that look like your own targets. Once you created the audience you want to replicate, you can make it broader or more specific. Broader means Facebook is going to find you the top 10% of users in your target region who are most similar to your audience. 

    More specific means Facebook’s going to find you the top 1% of users to similar trades in your target regions. So you can really get quite specific here, and this is a great way to get new customers, a new fan base, and new followers, that are very similar to the people that are already interacting with your website.

    Layered Targeting Options

    The powerful thing about Facebook ad targeting is your ability to layer targeting options on top of the other, which will gradually make your audience more and more specific. You can use a combination of behaviors, demographics, and location data to reduce your audience to as little as one person. You can use these combinations of the different options that we’ve listed earlier to get a very specific audience and create an audience that’s just like the customers you want. 

    Let’s take a moving company, for example, that is promoting a special discount for senior citizens. They could target people who just purchased a house or apartment within the last month, layered with an age range of 60 years plus, and their specific service area location. 

    That is a great Facebook strategy because they’re literally serving the customers that they need. They have a specific promotion going on for senior citizens, and a moving company is most likely operating only a specific city or area. So that is a perfect strategy that would yield results because they’re being very specific in the audience, and they’re being very focused on who they are.

    Another example would be a retailer that focuses on baby food and can target new parents within a specific area. These are just some examples of layering where it involves a combination of these targeting options that are mentioned above and the target options that are available in Facebook ads. 

    If you can understand the intent, needs, and likelihood to respond to any given audience segment, you can layer Facebook Ads targeting options to tap into it and get in front of them.

    The Best Facebook Ad Targeting Strategies are Diversified and Comprehensive

    When choosing what strategy to use, you don’t have to pick just one from the tips given above. Check each one out and see how they might fit in your target market segments. Figure out what you really need from your audience. Facebook ads are a very tricky trial and error game. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t, you just have to try it out and figure it out for yourself. There are some general guidelines you can follow, as said previously, so make sure to internalize them all. 

    Helpful Tips to Keep in Mind:

    1. Know your audience
    2. Create a persona for your target audience
      Figure out:

      • Who are they?
      • What do they like?
      • Where would they be?

    The most important thing for having good Facebook ads is understanding your customer. If you understand your customer’s intent, their needs, and their likelihood to respond to any given audience, then you can layer your Facebook ad targeting options to tap into this audience and get very good results. Focus on your target audience, the best thing to do is create a persona around your target audience. Who are they? What did they like? What would they like and what would they dislike? Who do you want to reach? That is the most powerful strategy you can use. 

    Brainstorm on who your audience would most likely be and then reverse engineer backward into your Facebook ads. Understanding your customers is just very powerful. And if you know who your target audience is, then your Facebook ads will be extremely powerful in getting right in front of your ideal customers.

  • Saying Goodbye to Negative Thoughts and Toxic People

    Saying Goodbye to Negative Thoughts and Toxic People

    Saying Goodbye to Negative Thoughts and Toxic People

    Whether it’s at home or work, certain people in our lives just give off negative vibes. It doesn’t matter if they are a friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, roommate, colleague, family member, etc. If they are toxic and make you feel miserable more than happy, remove and cut them off your life. If getting the peace you want requires you to say goodbye to negative thoughts and toxic people, then so be it.

    A toxic person can control your life without you even realizing it. They know your weaknesses and know how to use them against you. They know when to make you laugh or cry. And they may also be physically, mentally, or emotionally abusive yet somehow you still allow them in your life to continue doing these things. It may be because it’s not easy to spot these things sometimes, or maybe because you just can’t let them go.

    It’s not easy to cut off people from your life especially when they’ve become a constant. When you love a person, you open up yourself to them and go the extra mile for them. This is completely understandable, it’s normal and nothing is wrong with it. What’s not normal is you being good to someone who does not do the same to you in return.

    There are a lot of toxic people around you. Maybe it’s your boss who nags you at work and continues to take advantage of you even after work. Maybe it’s your current relationship who fails to appreciate you and gives you more stress than happiness. Or maybe it’s a family member or a relative who is so negative, you just can’t even deal with them.

    Dealing with toxic people can be one cause of losing yourself. In the process of exposing yourself to these people, you can even develop self-destructive habits and not even know it. Toxicity is mind-damaging and this is a big reason why we should be aware of it.

    Saying goodbye to negative thoughts and toxic people can be a little bit hard at first, but it will eventually become natural once you understand the reason why you had to cut them off your life.

    Saying Goodbye to Negative Thoughts and Toxic People

    Take A Break

    You always have the option to choose how you want to spend your time and who to spend it with. To start with, take a break from interacting with people who drain you. Lessen your time and exposure with that person and stop forcing yourself to “deal with them”. Avoid that aunt you dread to be in the same room with, decline your boss’ call when your phone rings beyond working hours, stop going to social gatherings when you know that a certain person is going to be there. You have the ultimate choice who to let inside your circle, if guarding your happiness means less time with other people then you’ll just have to brave it out.

    Establish Boundaries

    Just like social distancing, establishing boundaries is creating emotional distance from toxic people in your life. Say, for example, there’s a friend who always depends on you and asks for your help whenever she’s in trouble, but when she’s not, you never hear from her. Some people take advantage of other people’s kindness and compassion, and if you feel like your relationship with these kinds of people is not healthy anymore, then you’re better off alone.

     

    Avoid Negative Self-Thoughts

    You are entitled to your own thoughts and opinions, but when these are full of negativity, then it’s best to avoid them. It’s not easy to be always positive, trust me I’ve been there. There are always the down days and negative thoughts will always creep up on you when you are vulnerable and get the best of you. It’s tough but for your own sanity, it’s best to avoid negative thoughts when you can.

    Surround Yourself with Positive People

    This may be an unpopular thought but you can choose your crowd. You can choose who you spend time with. Surround yourself with people who are great for your mental health. Spend time with loyal friends who genuinely care for you and support you to do better. Being around positive people will influence your mood and reactions.

    You Have the Right to be Happy

    Remember, you have the right to be happy and you can do whatever you want to secure that happiness even if it means cutting off people. The most important part here is taking care of your emotional and mental health. The happier you are, the healthier you will be.

    Life is too short to deal with negative thoughts and difficult and toxic people. When things go haywire, it’s time to finally let go of them. It’s easier said than done, but it is possible.

  • 10 Incredible Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Blog or Website

    10 Incredible Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Blog or Website

    Do you ever wonder how famous blogs and websites get their traffic? In our previous post, we have talked about how to drive traffic to your website by submitting your blog posts to article sharing sites, using hashtags, bookmarking sites, and more. For this post, we are going to share more ways for you to increase traffic to your blog or website.

    At first glance, this may seem a bit gimmicky, but trust me, these are proven methods.

    Guest Blogging

    Not only is guest blogging another great way to get more traffic to your blog or website, but it also helps with getting more backlinks to your blog. It is also a great way to get new awareness of your blog.

    You can find blogs that accept guest blogging by searching in Google for your niche or topic + “write for us”. Example: “cooking + write for us”.

    Blog Commenting

    Commenting on blogs is another great way to get backlinks and potential new visitors to your blog. Comment on blogs with the CommentLuv plugin activated because having this will show your latest blog post, which is a great way for other commenters to see and maybe give your website a visit.

    Commenting on other blogs may not be an immediate boost to increasing your blog traffic, but you can make a name for yourself by providing clever and insightful comments. Just like guest posting, relevance, and quality of your comments are the key. You need to be engaging with other people in your niche and not just dropping spam links on unrelated websites.

    Invite Others to Guest Blog on Your Site

    Besides guest blogging on other websites, you can invite other people in your niche to do a blog post on your site, too. They will definitely link and share their guest article, which can bring their audience to your site, hence more traffic! Post high-quality and original content that doesn’t contain spammy links.

     

    10 Incredible Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Blog or Website

     

    Internal Linking

    When people visit your blog, your goal should be to get them to continue reading on to the other pages of your website. This is where internal linking comes in. Putting in links to other pages of your website on your blog posts is important. When your visitors continue reading, it will be more likely for them to convert and become one of your followers and brand enthusiasts. 

    Your website’s strength is not only dependent on how many websites link back to you but also depends on your internal link structure. Improve your site’s link structure and interlink your smaller existing articles so you can provide a better user experience. This way, your readers can stay on your website a little longer, consuming other resources found on your site instead of just leaving after reading your article.

    Email Marketing

    Many businesses have their attention and focus on attracting new customers through content marketing, and they’re forgotten about the more traditional methods. Email marketing can be a powerful tool for driving traffic to your blog or website. Just be careful not to spam your subscribers with relentless emails every single time you have an update. 

    Video Marketing

    According to a report by Cisco, videos will account for almost 82% of web traffic by 2022. Start adding video marketing to your content strategy as soon as possible because this is the content that is all the rage today.

    Make creative videos for your Instagram posts and stories, Facebook Stories, YouTube, and more. For video marketing tips, click here. 

    Paid Advertising

    Another way to increase traffic to your blog or website is by paid ads. With search engines such as Google and Yahoo, you can run pay-per-click ads. With social media such as Facebook and Instagram, you can run sponsored posts and display ads. You can include any combination of different types of paid advertising in your strategy.

    This is a fast way of driving traffic, although it can be costly. Adjust your paid ads according to your needs and according to your goals. Each channel has its pros and cons, do your research and carefully look over your objectives to determine the best type of paid advertising to implement.

    Do a Giveaway

    This is a simple way to drive traffic to your website. Having contests or giveaways can give you a quick boost, all the while rewarding your followers. Host your giveaways on social media or your email list. 

    Hire Influencers

    Influencers are not just a gimmick. Influencer marketing has become quite well known today if you want your brand to be promoted across certain types of audiences. It’s a budget-friendly option if you want to drive and increase traffic to your website or blog. According to Google, collaborating with YouTube influencers is four times more effective at driving brand awareness and familiarity than collaborations with celebrities. When influencers post something on their social accounts, you are also tapping into their audience and reach to drive more traffic to your website.

    Have Social Share Buttons on your Blog Posts

    These buttons are links that can make it easier for your readers to share your content on their social media. When your loyal readers promote your content, it can be a bonus for your website to gain traffic from their audience, so make sure your content is visually pleasing, valuable, and high-quality.

     

  • Content Creation and Generating New Ideas

    Content Creation and Generating New Ideas

    Content Creation and Generating New Ideas

    In building a successful blog, it’s not a joke when we say content is everything. This cannot be stressed enough. The key to having success as a blogger is putting out high-quality content consistently. The idea is simple: the more valuable content you post, the more opportunities you’re going to have to connect with people, grow your audience, and build a profitable business. That’s why an endless supply of ideas for content creation is critical.

    To publish good content, the first step is to come up with good ideas. This is what we are going to talk about today. This post is going to cover a variety of strategies and tools to help you find ideas and inspiration for your next piece of content. 

     

    The Importance of Content Consumption

    As a content creator, one of the best things you can do is to make it a habit to consume content, lots of it. And it doesn’t matter what kind of medium you choose – books, social media, newspaper, journal, etc. Renowned author Stephen King has a great book called On Writing – A Memoir of the Craft. In it, he discusses how important it is for aspiring writers to dedicate time to reading. 

    The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one’s papers and identification pretty much in order. Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mind-set, if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor. – Stephen King, On Writing

    Content consumption is great for forming and creating ideas. There’s really no such thing as an “original idea”. This is going to be kind of weird to hear but it’s true. The “new ideas” we call are simply combinations of existing elements. When you get yourself immersed into those existing elements, you get to let your creative juices flowing and encourage the ideation process. 

    In the habit of consuming content, I don’t only mean that you consume content that’s relevant to your niche. Aside from the blogs in your space, you definitely should be also reading books, science, poetry, history, and even social media posts. You’d be surprised at how two seemingly unrelated topics and concepts can suddenly click and form a great idea, and this often happens when you least expect it. 

    There’s a concept known as unconscious creativity. This is when you’re working on a problem and then you stop it to do something else. Your unconscious mind keeps working in the background until suddenly, you have that light-bulb moment in the shower, your car, or wherever you are when you’re not actively trying to come up with ideas. So, make it a habit to consume lots of content and immerse yourself in all those existing elements, then step back and let unconscious creativity work its magic.

    Unconscious creativity can play a big role in the ideation process, but the truth is, you’re not going to always have an epiphany. Most of the time, you will need to be actively extracting those ideas from your brain, and one way to do it is to do a Brain Dump.

    Content Creation and Generating New Ideas

     

    The Brain Dump

    Here’s how to effectively use the Brain Dump:

    • Set a timer for 3-5 minutes to create a sense of urgency
    • Start jotting down content ideas as quickly as possible
    • Use any writing materials you are comfortable using: notepads, sticky notes, notebook, etc.
    • Write down all your thoughts and ideas without filtering them

    A brain dump is all about quantity, not quality. Don’t worry if your ideas are bad or good. Get all of those ideas out of your head and into the paper, and worry about refining them later. When the time is up, sort through the ideas you’ve jotted down and decide which ones are the best. Look for emerging patterns or combinations that could work. You may find more ideas come to you during this process so be sure to record them as well. You should have a solid list of ideas that can fit into your content strategy at the end of the process.

     

    Tools for Content Research

    Buzzsumo

    A favorite tool for content creators to generate ideas and inspiration for new content is a tool called Buzzsumo. This service allows you to see the most popular content on any topic or from any competitor based on social shared and backlinks. Just go to the website, enter up a topic related to your industry, and you’ll get a list of popular headlines from all around the web. You can click each link to open up the original post and be ready to get some ideas. 

    There’s also a wealth of data on the results page itself. Under each post title, you’ll see the author and the source. On the right side, there’s an overview of the number of times the post was shared on each of the major platforms. You can filter the results by content, type, country, language, country, word count, and specific domains. 

    Buzzsumo is a great tool to use to understand the mindset of your target audience and see what types of content they’re consuming. It’s also an opportunity to see where your competitors may be lacking, for example, topics they’re not covering or areas where you may be able to create something better.

    Quora

    Another favorite site is Quora. It’s a Q and A service where people ask and answer questions on thousands of different topics. Unlike the disaster that was Yahoo Answers, Quora has built an incredible community where you have absolutely everyone, from car mechanics to astrophysicists, answering questions about their expertise. If you consider yourself a curious person, this platform is a joy to use. 

    With these in mind, Quora can be an asset for your content creation efforts as it allows you to see what questions people are asking about your industry. 

    Go to Quora, enter a topic, and browse the popular questions and answers about that topic. If you click topic FAQ, you’ll have a curated list of the most common questions people have on that topic. You can also browse topics and do the same with each of those. Aside from knowing your audience better, you can also use core questions as a direct starting point for new content. If a lot of people are asking a particular question and you have the expertise to provide a helpful answer. That there is your new piece of content!

    Reddit

    Another way of finding inspiration and ideas is by exploring the places where your potential audience hangout online – groups and communities. Reddit is a great example of this. Reddit is a message board website divided into various boards or communities called Subreddit. These subreddits are each focused on a particular topic. This site is huge, and there’s a subreddit for just about any topic you could think of. If there are at least 4 people interested in a certain topic, there’s probably a subreddit for it. 

    Take a look around and see if you could find a couple of active subreddits that are relevant to your audience. Browse through the top posts and change the sorting into all-time for best results. Look at the links that people are sharing, read the text posts, and pay attention to any recurring questions or themes and consider how these might help you create your content strategy. 

    Other Groups and Communities

    You can also look into Facebook and Linkedin groups which are becoming more relevant in the age of social media. Public groups are searchable so find some relevant groups and do the same thing. Watch for any recurring questions and conversation topics and you should come away with some solid content ideas straight from the people you hope to serve.

    Blogs and Publications

    Finally, follow the major blogs and publications in your industry, as well as your competitors. Read their content and pay attention to what people are saying. Read the comments section and see how people are responding to certain topics. What questions or problems are they facing? How can you be a part of the solutions? The goal, after all, is to provide value in solving people’s problems.

    Also, monitor your own comments and social media interactions. Look for repeating questions and other trends that you could potentially use for future content. You can also ask your audience what they want from you by prompting them to leave a comment or having them fill out a survey or even interviewing readers one on one.

    Nobody knows your audience better than your audience. Ask them about their problems, their struggles, and their questions. You can even ask them about their reading habits if you want to get a closer look into their mind and understand what types of content they like to consume. 

    Your past contents are also something you can learn from. Take your most successful content and build on it with supplemental material. The content that didn’t do so well can be your learning experience.

    Monitor your analytics. Not just the traffic, but also the demographics of your audience and the keywords people are using to find your site. Be careful not to overlook your existing audience in your existing content when it comes to content creation and generating new ideas.

  • 8 Helpful Tips to Improve Patience

    8 Helpful Tips to Improve Patience

    8 Tips to Improve Patience

    “Patience is a Virtue.” There’s a reason why this passage has stood the test of time. Patience will always be one of the many things that will get you through life no matter what your situation is and how bad it is. It’s a tough skill to master, and, like most skills, it can be developed and improved with dedication and perseverance. Here are some tips we can share to improve patience.

    8 Tips to Improve Patience - by VE Digital

    Slow Down

    Sometimes, we need to slow down and take a moment to see our surroundings. Not everything needs to be rushed. Some of us tend to always be in a hurry, want things to be done immediately, and can’t wait for things to take their natural course. This is not how you want to live your life. Pause and take deep breaths when you find yourself in these situations. Getting impatient won’t take you anywhere, it will just let you lose control, so why get worked up over nothing? Instead of losing patience, do something else that will take your mind off the things you’re impatient at, say listen to some music, read a book, or just enjoy the view.

    Practice Deep Breathing

    Deep breathing and meditation will help calm your nerves when you are in a frantic state of mind. Practicing this every day helps it become a habit. When faced in a stressful situation and you feel like your patience is running dry, taking a few deep breaths will greatly affect your mood and level of patience. Practicing meditation is also recommended as it takes us out of our thinking mind and lets us connect with our inner feelings and emotions.

    Think Before you Speak

    When we are in a situation where our patience is being tested, one thing we resolve to do is blurting out the first thing in our minds without thinking about how it will affect the people we are speaking to. By building the habit of thinking before you speak will help you practice and improve patience. We often have bursts of impatience when we are triggered and most often, we do not think of the consequences of our actions. Being patient will not only improve our mental wellness, but it will also help us avoid hurting and offending other people.

    Review the Situation you are in

    To assess the situation you are in, pause, and ask yourself questions. Is this in my control? Can I do something about it? Did I misunderstand something in the situation? Why am I irritated? Know the situation you are in before reacting.

    Accepting Things as is

    Accepting the situation doesn’t mean that you have to like or even agree with it. But accepting what it will help us get over our fighting nature. By learning how to accept things as it is, we will be able to breathe and relax. We can take in the situation without reacting immediately and this is what having patience is.

    Let Go

    Learning to let go of things and the need to know everything will help improve patience. Let go of the idea of perfection, let go of the desire to be entirely in control of everything in your life, let go of all the things you can’t understand. Learning to let things go bit by bit is a good skill to develop because by learning to let go, you will make space of the things that matter more and of the things that you can control.

    Choose to Grow

    Choosing to grow will make it easier to improve patience. When you see the bigger picture, it will help you keep yourself in check. Bad situation, frustrating moments, and irritating people can teach us valuable lessons if we choose to learn and see the bright side. By choosing to learn from these, we choose to grow.

    Appreciate Life

    Above all, we improve patience by learning to be appreciative of life. Look for the great things that are in front of you. Don’t take things and people for granted, no matter how small and insignificant they are. Don’t forget to see and appreciate the beauty of the world. Be grateful for the small moments that make life worthwhile.

  • Your Personal Brand: Nurturing Your Community

    Your Personal Brand: Nurturing Your Community

    Your Personal Brand

    Finally, we are at the final phase of our personal branding series and phase three is all about nurturing your community. After phase two, you will now have articulated your value proposition, built your destination (which is your personal website), created and completed your social network profiles. Now, it’s time to be active and social, and if you are good at this, you’re going to develop some influence to elevate your personal brand.

    Practice Social Listening

    Being in social media can be compared to being in a house party. And if you’ve been to one, you might have experienced the awkwardness of trying to belong and get into a social circle. People standing in circles are often having conversations on just about anything and everything. One circle might be talking about politics, another might be talking about business and stock prices. One might be talking about what their plans are for the weekend, another might be talking about their current favorite Netflix show. That is similar to social media.

    There are fragments of different conversations on just about any number of topics comprised of people with various levels of familiarity with one another. Then there’s you – someone who is eager to talk and be heard. Before you can speak and be heard though, you have got to listen first.

    As an introvert, I can pretty much say that I am good at listening. I tend to edge into circles in these events by smiling first and then waiting for a social cue to enter. It can be a nod or a wave, and then I smile, maybe laugh a little bit, nod and agree, and just become an attentive listener. This is a passive engagement, just like liking, commenting, and sharing in social media.

    Eventually, as the conversation goes on, the attention turns to us and we are asked to speak. This is the time to be a good house party guest and there are a few things that you need to avoid at all costs.

    Be a good guest and avoid the following:

    • Inappropriate or illegal activity
    • Harassment
    • Divulging confidential information
    • Lies or misrepresentation
    • Rants about colleagues
    • Non-inclusive language

    To be in sync with the conversation of the day, there are a couple of things that you need to do and that is to learn the field.

    1. Read what the leaders and influencers are saying
    2. Be aware of the moves being made
    3. Get to know your intended audience

    To start with, you have to follow industry leaders and influencers. This includes personal accounts, journalists, news stories, industry publications, and more. Curate a feed of insights and information that will keep you up-to-date with the trend in your field. Get into the habit of checking in and being aware of the moves being made, as well as the conversations of the day.

    Figure out the valuable players, follow them, and create lists. Keep track of people you want to follow and sort them based on the importance of your particular objectives. 

    For example, if you are trying to win some new business, try following some key decision-makers and interact with them gradually. Wait for them to follow back and engage with you. Once there’s enough familiarity and trust, reach out to them with a link to an article they’d appreciate or even an invitation to an event that you think they’ll be interested in. Play the long game on social media. Give, give, give, with no expectation of return.

    You’ve got to set up several jabs before you could go for the right hook. – Gary V.

     

    Your Personal Brand

     

    Engage Meaningfully

    Once you’ve earned some attention from being a good listener, it’s time to engage. Start putting your flare on the contents you’ve shared, or even putting out your own content. There are several things you can do to gain engagement. Through managing several accounts, five types of content perform really well.

    • Useful Content – helps people learn or sharpen a skill.
    • Amusing Content – this is content that gets anything from a smile to a hearty belly laugh.
    • Informational Content – this content gives the audience new knowledge or a different understanding.
    • Inspiring Content – this is content that fires people up and compels them to act.
    • Critical Content – this is content that challenges people’s perspectives.

    This list is helpful for all types of content, from tiny tweets to long-form blog posts. Your content needs to meet only at least one of the following criteria. Don’t feel the pressure to infuse all five ingredients.

    Now, when it comes to maximizing engagement, there are a few things you need to do:

    1. Summarize your story
    2. Use first-person language
    3. Be visually presentable
    4. Provide all necessary details about who you are and what you do
    5. Participate in like-minded conversations
    6. Publish relevant articles, videos, podcasts, or presentations

    If you do this right, a few things will happen. 

    • You’ll find opportunities
    • You will generate leads.
    • Gain advice and knowledge
    • Expand your networks
    • Enhance your profile and awareness
    • Make Social Connections
    • Improve communication skills
    • Increased confidence and happiness

    Discovering, articulating, expressing, and building your personal brand online correctly should yield all of these outcomes and more. 

    Build Thought Leadership

    Congratulations! You’ve made it to the final action of this personal branding series – build thought leadership. If you follow all these steps, you’ll start to notice that your online influence will grow. Eventually, you’ll be considered an authority on the subject that you’re intentionally applying yourself again.

    To make this step effective, give this 90-day game plan a shot. It’s an excellent way to re-orient your account if you’ve hit a plateau. This is the 90-day game plan:

    1. CURATE (30 days): Amplify other voices and become synonymous with select topics
    2. COMMENT (30 days): Add your perspective to conversations
    3. CREATE (30 days): Once you have enough permission space, create original content

    For the first 30 days, follow the foremost experts, influencers, publications, and thought leaders on the internet. Like, repost, and/or retweet their content. Let your audience get used to expecting these kinds of content from you.

    Then for the next 30 days, gradually add your perspective to the conversations. Repeat the steps in the curate phase but now quote tweet instead of a retweet. Add your own captions instead of using theirs. Your audience now knows what you are passionate about and what’s you’re gonna talk about. It’s time to let them know what you think about what you are sharing. 

    By the 60-day mark, you’ll have earned sufficient permission space to start creating original content related to the topics you’ve been curating and commenting on. This is your time to shine. Your audiences are dialed in. They’ve adapted themselves to the new brand promises you’re making. They’re used to a certain type of story being shared, and they’ve stuck around waiting for more. So give them what they’re here for. 

    The Game Plan is just a Template

    Of course, this game plan is just a template, and reorienting your brand might take shorter or longer. Feel it out and pay attention to your analytics. Do more of what gets more engagement and less of what doesn’t. 

    Perhaps, an executive recruiter will type in your name into Google after seeing it on a resume, maybe it’s an event organizer clicking on your Instagram handle after seeing it tagged in a photo, or maybe it’s a friend recommending you for a speaking engagement based on a blog post you wrote. These are all real scenarios. No matter the situation, if you aren’t treating your personal brand as an asset, it’s probably becoming a liability in ways that you’re unaware of.

    It doesn’t matter if you’re a student, a job seeker, or an executive, having a well-defined personal brand is critical. Don’t leave it up to someone else to craft your story because chances are, they’re harming your brand. Your big take away from this blog series should be this: Do things, tell people. 

    Here’s a quick recap of everything that you’ve learned in this blog series:

    1. Identify your brand perception gaps
    2. Discover your reason for being
    3. Articulate your mission (in 8 words or less)
    4. Select your channel mix
    5. Complete your social profiles
    6. Create a personal website
    7. Practice social listening
    8. Engage with purpose
    9. Build thought leadership

    Do what the best brands and most influential people do. Do things, tell people. And do it over and over and over again. 

    You can never get tired telling your story because chances are, someone is hearing it for the first time. – Dr. Julie Payne-Kirchmeier

    Become your own great exhilirator. Get excited about your personal brand. It should be easy because you’re already doing important work, and you’ve got an incredible story to tell. All you’ve got to do is define your personal brand, put your best foot forward, and nurture your community. The rest will fall into place.

  • Personal Branding: Putting Your Best Foot Forward

    Personal Branding: Putting Your Best Foot Forward

    Personal Branding: Putting Your Best Foot Forward

    While phase one centered on defining your personal branding, phase two is all about polishing your online presence and putting your best foot forward.

    PHASE 2: Putting Your Best Foot Forward

    Select Your Channel Mix

    There was a time earlier when we all didn’t know any better that we thought we had to be in every single platform. Aside from the basics – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, we thought we also needed to be active on Tumble, Pinterest, Snapchat, Foursquare, and many more.

    This can be very overwhelming and it won’t be worth it because of the diminishing returns. To make the long story short, be only on platforms where your audience congregates. Find out where you get the most engagements and the platforms that yield results and concentrate on growing there.

    Platforms suggested are Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and a personal website. If you have to choose one, choose Linkedin because this is where the most influential online networking takes place. Have a personal website, and depending on your line of work, be on platforms that will be good for your career. For instance, if you’re an actor, spend time on IMDB; if you’re a graphic designer, spend time on dribble; if you are a vlogger, spend time on YouTube. 

    A non-negotiable is having a website. You will need an online destination for people to learn more about you as they engage with you and your work online.

    Complete Your Social Profiles

    What’s the number one activity on social media? Stalking, and you and I are both guilty of doing it. The mindless scrolling through feed and timelines without purpose, it’s like repeatedly returning to your kitchen to open up your refrigerator expecting something to be different in there. You know it’s pointless but you still do it anyway because it’s habitual and compulsive. 

    One thing you can do is to play to that and make it work for you. Play into the reflex of people scrolling and stopping to stare and then clicking to learn more. The last thing you want is for a potential client, someone who will prove beneficial to you, to arrive at your profile and not be impressed with it because of a lack of information.

    At the very minimum, you are going to need the following:

    • a user handle – your handle should be easy to remember and state who you are.
    • an account name – your account name should be recognizable because this is what the users see the most.
    • a bio – your bio should talk briefly about who you are and what you do. This is the perfect place to plug in your mission statement.
    • links – the link in your bio should be the most important platform to your desired goals, such as the website we’re about to create or your blog or a portfolio, or another social profile
    • visuals – stories are better with pictures. Make your profile picture clear and unchanging. Use your cover photo as a tool to reinforce some themes around your mission.
    • content – the lifeblood of your social media as it keeps your story current.

     

    Personal branding

     

    Mastering your Social Posts

    To be consistent with your personal branding, you will have to be well-versed with all your social media content. Be consistent in all of your platforms, here are some things to keep in mind: when appropriate, include a call-to-action. An engaging content contains a call-to-action, “click on this link” or “comment below” are two typical examples.

    When sharing links, have it shortened. The goal of an effective post is to drive a link click. Use a shortening tool such as bit.ly to create a trackable, easy to input link. 

    Use visuals. On Twitter, for instance, tweets with images receive 18% more clicks and 150% more retweets. The adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” is very true online. All of the social media platforms, from Facebook to Instagram, don’t merely place a photo just for the sake of posting it. Visuals are everything because it acts as the permission to play.

    Think about it, when was the last time you clicked on an article on Facebook that didn’t have a thumbnail? Even the motivational quotes on Instagram are given careful consideration in terms of font design and layout. 

    Use hashtags for connecting with community, campaigns, and other related content. They can also be used humorously and for afterthoughts, but don’t hashtag basic nouns. 

    Don’t cross-post. Tweets are for Twitter, Facebook posts are for Facebook. Unless you’re Taylor Swift, don’t link them, or fans who are following you on both might stop engaging altogether. And remember that timing is everything. Use your app’s native built-in analytics to find out the best times for you to post. If you want to invest in a central social media dashboard with really robust analytics, check out Hootsuite or Sprout Social. 

    When it comes to Linkedin, make sure you go the extra mile. Consider the following: 

    • Linkedin profiles with photos are 14 times more likely to be viewed 
    • Linkedin profiles with skills are 13 times more likely to be viewed
    • Complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities

    Also on Linkedin, it’s important that you illustrate your work and your job descriptions. A simple title and location are not enough. Write down what you did and use this basic structure to tell a better story: I did X which resulted in Y. For example, “I lead a team of 10 marketing professionals to render professional services to more than 50 clients. Pro tip: use numbers generously and then illustrate your contributions with links and media. 

    Lastly, get endorsed and recommended. Think of your social profiles as spokes in a hub and spoke model. The spokes republish the traffic drive to the hub, and the hub helps drive conversions to the spokes. The hub is important because, without a hub, the spokes would just be standing on properties not tied to any specific goals or strategy. The hub and spoke model are tied together.

    They need to be done in tandem because without the spoke content, promoting and distributing, the hub wouldn’t get enough traffic to be successful.

    Build a Personal Website

    The next action in this phase is to build an online destination aka your website. Don’t worry, you will need zero design coding experience to do this because all you need is about.me. about.me is a professional, authentic, and simple page that presents who you are and what you do in one link. It will be a single centralized destination that will allow you to showcase who you are from your work to your passions. And it will be super easy for your audience to learn more about you. The best thing is it’s free and search engine optimized!

    Head over to about.me and get started. Make sure that your website has the following components: name, title, profile picture, short bio, links to social media, published works if you have any, and a clear call to action. And that’s it, you will now have a simple and effective online destination that you control.

    This concludes phase two of the power of personal branding blog series. The last part will be up soon. For more fabulous digital marketing content, don’t forget to visit our blog!

  • The Power of A Personal Brand

    The Power of A Personal Brand

    The Power of A Personal Brand

    Having a personal brand is the key to building a solid foundation for effective communication of telling the world who you are and why you matter. Nowadays, posting your story online and sharing it with the world has become easier and more accessible. The big challenge now is to compete for attention, because when it comes to social media, attention is everything.

    Whether you are a small-time entrepreneur or a seasoned executive, having a strong personal brand is essential to succeed in this highly digital economy. Building a strong online presence can open up new opportunities, create demand, mobilize people and drive outcomes that are vital to winning in our fast-paced, mobile-first, and highly modern world in which the majority of the people’s expectations are ever-changing.

    The goal here is to empower yourself to discover your personal brand and use it both online and offline to gain success in the modern economy. Whether it’s for unlocking new opportunities, pursuing a new job, earning a promotion, or landing a new client, your profile is a portal where your prospects can learn more about you. Investing in your personal brand has been proven by studies to influence things such as raises and promotions. 

    People that create a strong online brand have a competitive edge. Brand narratives are furthered when ambassadors do things and tell people. Because when stories are told, meaning is made.

    Who is telling your story? 

    Are you the one telling your story? If you are and you’re doing it well, it means that you know yourself. If you’ve established an incredible online presence and you are actively networking to further both your professional and personal goals, then congratulations! You probably don’t need to read the rest of this post, but stick around anyway because you might learn a thing or two to take your game to the next level.

    But let’s go back to the question of who is telling your story. And the answer is it should be you, but it can also be your friends, your family, your co-workers, and maybe your boss. Online, it’s probably your fans and followers across your social media networks. It’s also going to be your future employers, customers, investors, partners, supporters, etc. 

    You probably know this already because you do it, too, but the natural reflex before, after, and during our interaction with people is to look them up online to try to get a peek of who they are. And when there is missing information, what do we do? We fill in the blanks based on our first impression of their online presence. For us pattern-seeking human, we naturally fill in the blanks to fill up the void. If you are not telling your story online, someone else is, and they’re probably doing a poor job. So don’t leave it up to others to tell your story. 

    Storytelling is Timeless

    Staying on top of social media can be overwhelming, but not participating online can come at a real cost. If you are gone for an extended period, you can experience a decline of leads, sales, engagement, website traffic, blog reads, and all other metrics that are relevant to your business. The advantage of having stories is that they are platform-agnostic. Storytelling is timeless, it’s human nature. Stories are a fundamental unit of human understanding and it’s how we construct meaning.

    Every leap in communication technology has shared one common denominator, transmitting stories. From the Orrell culture through the phonetic alphabet, Gutenberg press, universities and publishers, telegraph, radio and television, personal computers, to the internet, and social media. The mediums may have changed, but the purpose has remained constant and that is to share stories. With that said, the fundamentals of personal branding online in this digital age are no different than they were at any point in the evolution of communication technology.

    Do Things, Tell People

    Something powerful happens when a story is told. Have you ever heard of the Zeigarnik Effect? The Zeigarnik effect occurs when an activity that has been interrupted may be more readily recalled. This effect states that people remember incomplete or interrupted tasks better than the completed ones. It’s human nature to want to finish things once you’ve started them, and you can easily make this work in your favor. Tell a good story about yourself online where it’s easy to be found, where people are already paying attention. 

    Nobody hears the stories that aren’t told. – Dr. John Austin

    The Power of A Personal Brand

    PHASE 1: Defining your Personal Brand

    Define your Personal Brand

    This action is all about looking inward and discovering the essence of your brand. So what is a BRAND? A brand is an idea, an essence of something. Consider the brand, Apple. You may think you know the business they’re in but think again. What is it that they’re really selling? It’s creativity and simplicity, the feeling of being part of a community that just gets it. Their slogan: Think different.

    Take Nike for another example. Nike sells shoes, sporting gear, apparel, etc. But what Nike is really selling is performance, the idea that anyone can be an athlete. If you’ve ever laced up a pair of Nikes, you might have felt an extra bounce in your step. Not necessarily because Nike is a superior product, but because the brand stands for something more. Their slogan: Just do it. Disney is another example. They sell movies, theme park experiences, toys, merchandise, etc. But what is Disney really selling? It’s happiness, nostalgia, magic, smiles. Their park’s tagline: Where dreams come true. Coca-cola sells beverages. But what are they really selling? Refreshment. Their current tagline: Taste the feeling.

    These brands are doing an incredible job at harmonizing the various dimensions which comprise up the people’s perception of their brand

    Every brand is comprised of two elements. Perception and experience. 

    Perception is a combination of three things:

    1. How you see yourself
    2. How you want to be seen
    3. How others see you

    Experience is:

    1. Activities that the brand engages in
    2. Interactions it has with the others
    3. Time – total time that your brand has been doing both

    You can also do this to your brand perception. Start answering the questions and make sure you talk to other people to qualitatively assess how others see you. 

    When it comes to the best brands mentioned earlier, the answers to how they see themselves, how they want to be seen, and how others see them are either identical or very tightly grouped. That is brand integrity. 

    Brands with low brand integrity have different and competing answers to those questions. A person working at the company, a fan of the brand, and someone with limited brand awareness – all may have different answers. That’s not good. Fortunately, you can engage in activities and have interactions that will reinforce your brand integrity, and you can do this over time. The goal here is for the answer to all three questions to be the same. 

     Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. – Jeff Bezos, Founder & CEO of Amazon

    When you combine perception and experience, you get a brand. In this way, your brand is a promise and a story. Stories are after all the fundamental unit of human understanding.

    Discover your Reason for Being

    Have you ever heard of the Ikigai concept? Ikigai is a Japanese concept meaning a reason for being. A reason to wake up and get out of bed each morning. Your driving force for your WHY’s. 

     

    The Ikigai Framework is comprised of four sections: what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, and what you’re good at.

    There are several questions you can answer relating to each of the four elements that will help you articulate your why. To discover what you love, ask yourself the following: Is what you’re doing something you’re genuinely passionate about? Could you enthusiastically talk about your industry or profession for hours on end? Are you emotionally connected to the result of your work? And if you weren’t concerned about money, would you still do what you’re doing.

    Then to discover what the world needs, ask yourself the following: Are you helping to solve an actual problem? Is the marketplace demanding what you have to offer? Are people willing to part with the resources such as money, time, attention, trust, loyalty, and love to buy what you’re selling? Will this work still be needed 10 years from now? 100 years from now? If not, will the value of your work today increase over time?

    Then to answer what you can be paid for, ask yourself the following: Have you ever been paid for what you do? If not, are other people being paid for this work? Are you already making a good living doing what it is that you’re doing? Can you eventually make a good living doing this work? Is there a healthy amount of competition in your industry? Are there other people who can do it better? 

    And lastly, to discover what you are good at, ask yourself the following: Are you useful? Is what you do something that your friends, family, or community have sought your advice or opinion on before? Are you among the best in your workplace or community at this? With some more education and experience, could you master what you do? 

    And if that’s too complicated or time-consuming of a process, here’s something that you could do but it’s something kinda different and also kind of dark. Write your eulogy. And if that’s too dark, write your lifetime achievement award acceptance speech instead.

    “What do you want other people to say about your brand when you’re not in the room?” – Jeff Bezos

    The exercise is simple, and you can get it done in one sitting. Get into the right headspace. Simulate the circumstances that a loved one might experience in preparation for delivering your eulogy. Then grab your favorite writing pen and paper, then start writing it all out. Write out what you hope your family, friends, colleagues, co-workers, and customers might say about you. Get into their mindset and imagine what you said, what you did, how you made them feel, and the impact you had on their lives and the lives of others. And then take a break. Once you’ve finished, do step away from the eulogy. Do something light and happy that will take your mind off what you’ve written. Congratulations because you’ve written out one of the most important things you’ll ever write!

    When you come back to your eulogy, skim, and look for attributes, adjectives, and values. Highlight the keywords and phrases you find. Start to compile them and find the promise that things that you’ve highlighted will comprise the promise you hope to have in this world. Arrive at the core statement of how the world will be different as a result of you being in it. That is your value proposition. That is your personal brand.

    At the end of this exercise, you’ll end up with a strong WHY. Most people position themselves online and offline starting with the WHAT. They typically lead with their company name or their position. It’s ineffective especially if you have a confusing title and work in a not so well-known company. What you really want to do is to start with the WHY. Lead with the impact you’re making and how the world is changing as a result.

    Articulate Your Mission (in 8 words or less)

    Why in only 8 words or less? Because constrains breeds creativity. By forcing yourself to be concise, you will cut out all the unnecessary, distracting things you’re believing about your mission and get right to the heart of it. Once you have your nucleus, you can build it outwards. Your mission is the business you’re in and it can change based on the phase of your life and the role that you’re in. 

    The structure of a good mission is as follows: VERB + AUDIENCE + OUTCOME.

    In other words, what you do, who you do it for, and how the world is going to be different as a result. Here are a few good examples:

    • TED: “Spreading Ideas.”
    • Coca-Cola: “To refresh the world.”
    • Google: “To organize the world’s information.”
    • Richard Branson: “To have fun and learn from my mistakes.”

    Your mission statement should basically answer these three questions:

    • What do you do? What business are you in?
    • Who are the people you serve?
    • How is the world different as a result?

    Well-articulated mission statements enable you to know yourself better and to stay focused on your reason for being. Know yourself, and once you do, everything else falls into place and you’ll find your personal brand.

    This is just phase one of three. Practice the exercises and come up with your unique personal brand. Phase two will be posted soon!

  • Stress Management: What is Stress and How to Deal with it?

    Stress Management: What is Stress and How to Deal with it?

    Stress Management: What is Stress and How to Deal with it?

    Stress is not something new. With so many triggers in our world today, it’s no doubt that life is full of stress. The question now is how do you manage your stress? How do you take care of your mental health and live your life fully despite the stress? In our post today, we’ll be talking all about stress management – how to recognize it, how to cope with it, and some tips to strike a balance. So keep reading!

    Stress is a normal part of life and like everything else, there are many ways to deal with it. Before we go over the heart of this content, let’s first define what stress is and how to recognize one.

    Stress Management: What is Stress and How to Deal with it?

    What is Stress?

    Stress is our body’s physical response to whatever is happening in our surroundings. It is a normal reaction that the body has when changes happen, and our body responds to these changes with physical, mental, and emotional responses. Sometimes, stress can be positive as it can keep us alert and ready to avoid danger. But stress can also be negative when a person experiences continuous challenges without relief in between. This negative stress will result in overfatigue and tension, and this is what we have to deal with healthily.

    Learn to Recognize Stress

    The first step in stress management is acknowledging that it is ever-present in your life. Stress is manifested differently in each individual and we respond to it in many different ways. A person may feel angry or irritable, be sleepless and tired, or have headaches or upset stomachs.

    There are many signs of stress and learning what yours are is the first step in learning how to manage stress. You will also need to identify your stressors, i.e. the situations that cause you stress. These could be family, friends, school, work, money, relationship, or health problems. Once you have determined and understood where your stress is coming from, you’ll be able to find ways to deal with it.

    How NOT to Deal with Stress

    While there are many ways to deal with stress, there are ways that are unhealthy and should be avoided. When we get stressed, there is a tendency that we resort to doing unhealthy behaviors to help us relax. Behaviors such as eating too much, cigarette smoking, alcohol or substance abuse, and/or sleeping too much or not sleeping at all. These habits may help you feel relaxed and better at first but they can be harmful in the long run. Avoid these behaviors and find healthier ways to reduce stress.

     

    Deal With Stress the Healthy Way

    There are healthy ways to cope with and manage stress. Here are a few stress management tips you can try, and see which ones work for you.

    Recognize that there are things that you cannot change. There are certain things that you can’t change and the earlier you can accept that, the better you can let go of them and not get upset with them. A great example of this is being stuck in traffic whenever you are driving to and from work. You cannot change the fact that this will always be the rush hour, and there will always be traffic.

    What you can change is your perspective and the way you react. You can look for ways to make your commute or drive a little bit more relaxing, like listening to an audiobook, music, or even a podcast. There are ways where you can make a stressful thing non-stressful.

    Avoid getting into stressful situations. If and when you can, remove yourself from situations that may cause you stress. There are certain circumstances wherein you can walk away to avoid stress. For example, if social media stresses you out more than giving you good vibes, you can do a social media detox to stay away from it. Deactivate your Facebook account or delete your Twitter App, it’s up to you to take control of your life.

    Sweat it out. Exercising is one of the best and easiest ways to deal with stress. When you do physical activities, your brain releases endorphins (aka happy hormones) that will make you feel good and trigger a positive feeling in the body. Exercising will also help you release your frustrations and therefore relieve stress. There are a lot of ways to exercise, find something you enjoy like dancing, walking, jogging, cycling, or swimming. Do it regularly and you will certainly see an improvement!

    Improve your perspective. This can be easier said than done, but this is not impossible. Change your outlook and try to develop a more positive attitude when you face challenges. Be more forward with how you feel and try to address the negative situations with positive thinking. It will be hard at first but you’ll get better in time with practice.

    Do the things you enjoy. When you are stressed, one thing that can relieve you is by doing something you love. Read a book, bake cookies, write in your journal, watch your favorite TV series, talk to a friend, or learn a new hobby. Simple things will bring simple joys and that’s what you need when you feel stressed.

    Find and learn new ways to relax. You can learn and practice new relaxation techniques to handle daily stress. These techniques will help you slow your heart rate and lower your blood pressure. From meditation to deep breathing to yoga, the possibilities are infinite. You can opt to take classes or self-learn from videos, books, and other online resources. This is definitely one way of stress management.

    Find support with your loved ones. Don’t let your stress get in the way of socializing with people you genuinely like. Spend time with your friends and family, this will help you feel better in no time. Talk to them and share the problems you’re having. Confiding in people you trust will help you relieve the baggage you’ve been carrying.

    Always ensure you get enough sleep. This advice may be overused but it’s one of the most helpful ways to deal with stress. Getting a full and good night’s sleep will be a tremendous help for your mind. It will help you have a clear mind and give you more energy to think things through. Having enough sleep will make it easier for you to handle the next day’s challenges. It’s recommended that you get at least 7-8 hours of sleep so keep that in mind.

    Maintain a balanced diet. Eating healthily will keep your body and mind fueled. Lessen your sugar intake and eat more fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, low-fat dairy, and whole grains. Practice a balanced diet in every meal. You will get more energy and proper nutrition that will keep your body healthy.

    Stress is always present in our lives and it’s up to us to cope with it. Just remember that there are a lot of healthy ways to battle stress. Don’t limit yourself with what you know. Find new ways to cope with stress and always keep a positive attitude in dealing with it.

    Take control of your life and hopefully, the stress management tips listed above will be helpful to you.

    If stress is still a rampant problem to you and the tips you’ve found are not enough, discuss this issue with a healthcare professional.