Learn to Work Smarter, Not Harder: Before it Kills You
You may find the title of this blog post a little dramatic, personally I think it could have more impact but I don’t want you to think I’m trying to pull off a ’social-friendly’ title without the content to back it up. Killing, or more appropriately, death, is used here not as the death of your physical form, but of your soul and who you are.
You probably didn’t notice that I was sent to hospital on Monday (I use Wordpress future post feature) and got out today, repeatedly reassuring everyone back home I’ll be fine. Spending 5 days in a private room where nurses have to wear masks and gloves to see you can start to put things into perspective, and I greatly appreciate the experience.
25 Comments / 
July 14th, 2008 / 
Business
Organise your Internet Business for Maximum Efficiency
This is the second post in the series about building your internet business empire where we have previously covered the strategy side of things. This time I’m going to take a look at organising yourself for maximum effectiveness and efficiency in your actions.
This is something I struggled with for quite a while, I would find it impossible to launch a website unless it was perfect or I would spend hours reading and responding to emails. At times I would even get too stressed and want to give up due to having two jobs. However, I’ve been through all that and dealt with it, hopefully you can learn from my experiences and what I have to share.
5 Comments / July 8th, 2008 / Business
If You Want to Become a Success…Follow Your Passion
I’m sure many of you have heard this time and time again, I know I have. You have already envisioned the rest of this post:
“Write about what you love”
“Forget about the money, that will come later”
As with most people, you have probably dismissed ideas like these and looked at what others are having success with and tried to copy that. I’ve learned these statements are the truth the hard way, let me explain.
10 Comments / June 3rd, 2008 / Business
9 Ways to Build Your Reputation as a Blogger
Building the reputation of your blog is one thing, but it’s a blogs author who is creating the content and really matters. When I was 16 I started this blog and made all the biggest mistakes. Now at 18 and having achieved a dream job through blogging I think that I’m in a pretty good position to share my advice on how you can start to build your name online.
I’ve seen a few people grow into ‘names’ in my short time online, I remember the first post over at SEO 2.0 and seen how Tad has networked online and wrote great content and came away with a reputation as another knowledgeable person in this industry. You can do it too.
Let’s Go…
1. Use an Image on Your Blog
Think of all the people you ‘respect’ online but haven’t met in person, do you know what they look like? If you are like me the majority of the people you are thinking of will generate their picture in your head. Knowing what someone looks like is definitely a sign of trust and can also lead to people recognising you if you ever attend and industry conferences.
2. Write Posts with Your Full Name
I used to be afraid that people would be able to ‘find me’ online, especially my friends at college (I’m not at college anymore). I quickly got over that and found people much more willing to get in touch and talk to me after finding out what I was called. People like to have someone to relate too when they read your content, so along with an image this really works well.
After doing this on my own sites I found myself being quoted a lot more and subsequently linked too from other blogs in the niche.
3. Guest blog on other sites in your industry
I’ve wrote a guest post on the biggest blog in the search industry, search engine land. I’ve wrote on an up and coming blog named blogstorm, did my first ever guest post at EMoms and I have many more up and coming guest blog opportunities. The reason I do this is not for the links or solely for helping others add content to their site but partly because it gets my name out there to a completely new readerbase.
It takes the average person 8 times to a remember a name / company, guest posts can help you start to reach that number.
4. Network with those who have built up a solid reputation
Networking doesn’t have to be meeting people in person, it can simply be chatting to niche authorities online. In fact, I chat too the top Digg users, a number of CEO’s at the biggest marketing companies and the best minds relating to SEO and SMM…all via Instant Messenger.
Building up relationships with people helps you have someone you can trust to offer services too if you aren’t taking on any more work, people you can discuss ideas with that others wouldn’t understand, and even people to talk about a new product or service you are offering.
5. Comment on Blogs with your Full Name
When I first started engaging in blogs I used a fake name, but I guess you have to have done things badly to see the benefits of doing things properly. Not only will people notice your name and follow though to your site but they will see you being active in the community and start to build an image of you as an authority and networker in your niche.
6. Get Involved in Niche Community Sites
If you are involved in the internet marketing scene you have probably participated in or at least heard of Sphinn. I’ve found a lot of great new blogs to read simply because their authors have been active and approachable via the site. There are many niche news sites you can get involved with, Square Oak has a great list with 83 of them.
7. Get in touch with others via Social Networking Sites
Social Networking sites are a great way to get in touch with those who may not be active in the niche sites or just allow you to get in touch with people on a more personal level. I prefer using Facebook and regularly chat to not only my friends but CEO’s, Internet marketing professionals and a few consultants because that’s the industry I’m involved in.
Not only can you get in touch with people on a personal level but you can also find others with the same interests and build up your network of connections. If you can get the authorities talking about you, you start to become one.
8. Write things that are original / unique
Don’t copy what everyone else is talking about, people want to read what is unique to you and your experiences. Looking back on the first posts of this blog is so embarrassing because I was writing, short direct posts that had no personal mention - I was missing the words ‘I’ and ‘me’.
For example my guest post at Search Engine Land was covering what I taught others that were new to Social Media Marketing. If I do research into something like the top 50 SU users then I share what I’ve learnt and have some unique content in the process. People like content that ’stands out from the crowd’ and it helps build credibility for whoever wrote it…you.
9. Keep it Going
Nobody became well known in an industry overnight. I’ve been writing since July 2006 and I wouldn’t say I’m hugely thought of as an expert in my niche. Darren Rowse didn’t suddenly become the problogger to go to and Brian Clark didn’t suddenly become known as an awesome writer by hundreds of thousands of people.
What these two men did was shared their knowledge on a regular basis, constantly producing content people want to read. Figuring out how to do that is the easy part, keeping it up and doing it is the hard part.
22 Comments / February 15th, 2008 / Business
7 Steps to Building Your Personal e-Brand
Only recently did I start to embrace who I am Online, I finally did some of the steps I knew would help me in getting more client referrals from this blog (now happening), getting more feed subscribers (now happening) and increasing my sense of being on the internet. Even though I knew how I could improve all these things, I never did them for the fear of my Offline life being affected if anyone could easily track what I was up to. Not that I actually do anything to be ashamed or embarassed of and now I fully focus on Building My Personal e-Brand and my Internet life has changed so much for the better. Here’s how you can start to achieve more success online aswell:
1. Accept What You Do
By this I mean don’t be afraid of the whole world knowing what you do online, what you look like or being scared of your friends finding out about you and making a joke of it. Now that I dont care about these things the benefits are major and it actually feels like a huge weight lifted off your shoulders.
2. Profile Yourself
Get out there and have a page on your blogs or websites about who you really are, include some pictures and possibly some humerous or unique information people couldn’t find about you elsewhere. I think I do that well on this blog by simply having my full name on the posts and an image on the actual blog post pages.
3. Understand why you build your brand
If you dont have the understanding of why your building your brand then you wont realise how good it is to share yourself online. The reason your profile and brand online is important is that pictures and a name are about as personal as you can get to bring trust to others to visit your site. Trust leads to people buying your products or enquiring about your services. If you dont have a face or a name its often hard for people to trust you.
4. Become Involved in the Blog-O-Sphere
The Blogosphere is becoming the new media at an alarming rate so it’s good for you to get in their early, early is now. I started this blog a year ago and whilst I’ve never been a consistent writer like I finally am now, I’ve always been involved on linking to other blogs, commenting on other blogs and joining in their communities. This has helped me with business enquiries and traffic to my site that I wouldnt have had. And oh yeah, this is all because my name is really out there!
5. Be Real In Social Media
Social Media sites arent there for you to wade in, post some stories or give some thoughts and get tonnes of traffic and links back to your sites. They are social media sites because they are where people are supposed to be social and interact with each other. Really take the time to get involved in a community you are interested in and it will help your brand ten-fold.
6. Learn Your Subject So You can be an Expert to Others
If you are passionate about your subject, then its so much easier to happily read and learn about it, becoming an expert on the subject and sharing what you have learnt so you can be perceived as an expert to others. Seth Godin wasn’t always an expert marketer, Aaron Wall wasn’t always an amazing seo and John Chow wasn’t always an expert at making money online. Being seen as an expert on particular subjects will always build your brand online.
7. Be Your Own Person
You can decide on your own whether you think this blog post is good or bad. Whether I have personally learnt about building my online e-brand. I dont think I copy anyone in this industry, partly because I wouldn’t and partly because I am my own person. If you aren’t your own person and unique in someway, how can you stand out from the crowd and be memorable?
Personally…Im starting to see the affects of building my brand when my name gets mentioned and my blog posts get linked too, not just because I’m writing decent content. I hope my findings teach you something too…
10 Comments / August 21st, 2007 / Business
