Grow Your Authority With Your Geekiness
How do people really connect and build friendly relationships? What is it that causes people to want to hear from you more than anything else?
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How to Grow Your Long-Term Authority
Why do some people manage to stick around forever, while other people and brands seem to be here one day and gone the next? What is it about some people that makes you warm to them, while others give off a dodgy vibe that repels even the most tactile extroverts?
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Why New Products Fail
What is the difference between new products that take off in popularity and those that essentially get ignored? How do you know when your new product is ready to sell? Today I would like to share with you the key strategy that will allow you to not only sell more of your products and services…
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How to Go from Author to Successful Online Business
Since I let slip that I was a wannabe fiction writer, a few people have asked me questions about the modern author/publishing business: “Can you make a full time living as a writer, without being freelance?” “What should a modern indie author do to maximise their business?” “For successful self-publishers, what would we do differently?” I’ve answered…
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Why Even a Big List Won’t Save You from Bad Strategy
A big question I get asked all the time here and on Copyblogger webinars (right after how to generate traffic or build a list), is “How can I get more people to respond/buy/subscribe?” In my previous post, I talked about what makes content truly successful, and I gave a big answer, but for this particular…
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Want to Know What Makes Content Truly Successful?
What is the secret to getting your content read, shared and acted on? Is your content really useful versus just well-written? Why do some writers get real results from their articles, while other writers work just as hard, or harder, and don’t seem to get noticed? Of course there are many reasons, but a key…
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29 Blogging Business Survival Tips
What does it take to be successful in blogging as or for a business? My friend Al from Coolest Gadgets contacted me for some quotes to use in a presentation he has coming up, and as usual, I gave him way more material than he could use. Rather than let it go to waste, I…
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5 Essential Skills for Today’s Online Marketer
What are the most important skills for an online marketer, blogger or professional? I am going to list my response to that, but I would be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments. I’m intentionally keeping this one short so you can dive in and tell me where I am wrong! This post came…
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Is it Just Business? How to be Professionally Human
Have you ever worked with someone who uses the phrase “It’s just business“? Or played a game with someone who, after cheating, back-stabbing, lying or just being a jerk, said “It’s only a game“? How did that make you feel? Did you respect the person more, or less? Did you trust them more afterwards? When…
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The Secret Element of Successful Marketing Campaigns
Why could Brian Clark send one email from his email list and make 6 figures? Is it list size? Yes, scale obviously comes into it, but if someone else had his list they wouldn’t necessarily get the same result. So what is the crucial factor that makes the difference? Is it Authority? Yes, of course, that’s…
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How to get 80% of the results with 20% of the content
When should you write? How often? How long should your blog posts be? Should you have a schedule? I get asked these questions and similar every week, between emails, Q&A calls/webinars, and clients. Content is becoming super important. We used to talk about if content was king or not. Now, I see a shift. The…
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How to Avoid Cold-Feet Killing Your Progress
Today, I want to talk about what happens when you give in to your fears. I want you to learn from my mistakes so you can have the courage to do what you need to. I have a lot of fears. That’s just part of who I am. I’m risk-averse, and I tend to focus…
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Your Best Foundation for a Sustainable Business
What would you do if your business burned to the ground? If you had to literally start over, would you be able to cope? What would your approach be? I have been falling behind with my workload lately. You just have to look at my posting frequency to see that I have been dropping as…
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Risks for Healthcare Businesses
Growing healthcare businesses get into trouble for all sorts of reasons. It’s one of the hardest sectors to really succeed in, as any entrepreneur will tell you. However, if you manage to get it right, it can be a heady experience. The level of success that some startups achieve is phenomenal, especially if they succeed…
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How to Get Paid for Free
One of the key ideas behind being an Authority Blogger, or “Content Marketing”, is that you put out lots of educational material that ordinarily people would be willing to pay for. How do you turn that free stuff into profit? The thing is, while we KNOW this works, a lot of people get stuck on…
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4 Pieces of Advice to Help Your Small Business
You might have noticed a bit of a gap in posting here. Well, I have still been writing, just over at the BMO Bank’s Small Business site: I am writing about how online tools and techniques can grow your business. Check out my most recent articles and let me know what you think! 4 Key…
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How to Solve the “Creativity Problem” and Stand Out in a Crowd
I think everyone has the capacity to be creative, but if you listen to some pundits it seems creativity is something only bestowed on an elite few. The fact is, the word “creativity” itself can cause a lot of creative resistance, and make people feel that the bar has been set too high for them….
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Course-Correction and Your Half-Year Resolutions
We are half way through the year. How are your new-years resolutions working out? Are you closer to achieving your goals? A lot of my coaching clients feel bad when I ask this but I want to encourage you to not feel like a failure if you have not achieved all that you had planned…
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The Simple Route to Generating Sales Leads with Your Business Website
Something all businesses have in common is they have to generate sales leads. If you are not generating sales, well, you are not in business!
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How to Use Your Website to Get Offline Clients Into Your Office
More transactions are happening online, but also a great deal of the research. How to Use Your Website to Get Clients Into Your Office
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How to Make Your Site the Destination for Your Market
Why do you blog? Is it for traffic and attention? If you blog to get more visibility, then you have a lot of company. One of the major reasons companies and individuals create content is to increase their share of attention, to build credibility, and to grow an audience. HubSpot research indicates companies that blog generate 55%…
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How to Improve Your Website Trust Factor
Is your website harming the trust and credibility of your business? Are people worried or put off when they visit you online? Could your site be working against you rather than working as a business asset? I’m sad to say that this is more common than we would like. It was certainly the case with…
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What to Say When Nobody Cares What You Do
It’s a simple but uncomfortable truth. Nobody cares what you do. Oh, people might ask. At a networking lunch, a cocktail party, and so on. But nobody cares. What do people actually care about? “Enough about me. What do you think about me?” It’s funny because it is true. People want to hear if listening…
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Breaking the Rules for Fun and Profit
I joke that I am the most conventional unconventional guy you might ever meet, but it is true in a way. When we think of unconventional we often think about specific things. Going off to live on a commune might be a big one, having tattoos and piercing might be smaller “bucking the system” type…
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New Edition of the Problogger Book Released
Well it’s finally here! The third edition of the Problogger book is now available to order. (You might have already seen the news at Problogger). The first edition came out May 2008, co-authored by Darren Rowse and myself, and published by Wiley Publishing. We released the second edition in 2010 to expand and update the…
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The Real ROI of Engagement
We are bombarded by “feel good” social media advice. Join the conversation. Engage. Listen. But this stuff takes time and effort. Where is the return on investment? It’s not just about chatting, and the ROI is not found by simply throwing up a Facebook page. If you are struggling to convince your boss (or yourself)…
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Authority Blogging for Artists (New York Daily Photo Critique)
What should a blogger do when they want to profit from their creativity, knowledge, experience and skills, but not by teaching “how to”, but instead from the results of their work? As you no doubt know, my strategy for building a profitable blog around what you know is called Authority Blogging. Build an audience of…
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When Should You Start Selling from Your Blog?
How do you know when your audience is ready to buy from you? Should you wait to “monetize”? How big does your audience need to be? These are common questions and the answers have been debated over the years. I am going to share an answer I gave George from the Man Up Blog during…
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Why You Shouldn’t Drive Traffic
In the first 7 days of this blogs life, 20,000 visitors checked it out. Sounds like a pretty nice result doesn’t it? I was super happy, but a little disappointed in one specific respect. Only 500 people subscribed. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved and nurtured those 500 subscribers and 500 subscribers in any…
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How to know what your audience really wants
If you think that because your website looks great that people will want to visit it … think again.
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How to REALLY make money from a website
As much as I tell people to seriously reconsider buying too much into the hardcore “Make Money Online” hype, I can not argue against its allure and the fact that, well, people DO make money online. The problem is, there are the usual caveats: These are challenges facing Roman who asked me for a blog…
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7 Virtual Assistant Services Worth Checking Out
If you’re running a small business or early-stage company, you’ve probably felt the pressure of juggling too much. The work that actually grows your business, strategy, serving clients, shipping products, gets pushed aside by admin, inbox overload, scheduling, bookkeeping, and more. These things all matter, but they’re not where your energy should go if you…
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Feeling Anxiety in Business and Moving the Fear Line
Fear and anxiety dominate if we allow it, but we have to keep working and striving. How can we succeed despite fears, panic, and anxiety?
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The Strange Art of Achieving More by Doing Less
If you feel like you are working too hard, or working too many hours, this might give you some hope for a solution. I’m not saying it would work for everyone, but it has certainly given me a new perspective on my own business. Over the summer I achieved something I thought was unlikely at…
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The Importance of Standing Out in a Crowded Market – YoungPrePro Blog Critique
This critique will be useful to you if you believe you are doing all the right things but are still not getting the results you want. I get a lot of clients come to me with similar situations and many are on the verge of giving up due to this frustration. Fact is, you could…
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5 Essential Elements You Need to be a Complete Success in Business
I am sure you know someone who chases the latest shiny flavour of the month tactic and fails every time. I’m also sure you know some people who work really hard toward their goals, but never seem to get anywhere. Today I want to help you avoid these problems so you can grow the business…
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Is Generosity Killing Your Business?
I always tell clients and customers they need to be generous first before taking anything. Sometimes though it can seem challenging keeping up the generosity in the face of bills and expenses. We don’t want to go too far the other way either – who wants to be seen as someone who takes, takes and…
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Critique – BankNerd.ca
BankNerd.ca is a Canadian website all about the banking industry. This is an interesting critique for me having recently moved to Canada and have a whole raft of banking type stuff to set up. As you might see from the screengrab above, the site is about everything banking and aims to monetize mainly with advertising….
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Blog Critique: Life on the Buy Side
Getting an outside opinion on your blog is always a good idea, but especially at the beginning, and especially when you have a great deal of expertise in comparison to your average target audience member. Why is this? A little thing called “The Beginner’s Mind”. When we start learning a topic there are all these…
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Authority Rules for Making Non-Sleazy Sales
Do you find you give and give, but people do not seem to be buying? Or maybe people do buy, but not in the numbers you would like? I get that, and I hear it a lot. You might have heard me joke that for a while there I was stuck in a loop of…
