It’s a fact of life that the majority of people starting a business online will at some point find it difficult to be motivated. This leads to bad habits which then lead to getting stuck in a rut.

Well one of my inspirations online that helps me progress my business and inspire me with ideas is Marie Forleo.

Checkout here video on finding motivation. It will be the best 5 minutes you spend learning today I guarantee!

Leave a comment below by clicking ‘Comments and Reactions’ and I will reciprocate:

I have planned and mapped out 2012, have you?

Don’t worry if you haven’t I have made the video below with my 8 key steps to ensuring you succeed in 2012.

Take a look and if you leave a comment below I will reciprocate.

To Your Success in 2012!

I came accross this video after reading Get the Edge by Tony Robbins. In fact I have his audio collection, so inspirational and motivational.

I urge all of you to checkout his stuff. Whenever doubt comes into view I listen to Tony.

I saw this video a few years ago and then spoted it again on my mentor Simon Cad’s blog.

Whenever you feel self doubt watch it…

Hi everyone, it’s fair to say when you start out with your IM business it’s easy to suffer from “Information Overload” with so many offers landing in your inbox with soooo many ways to make money online it’s difficult to focus on one thing.

I have in the past spent many hours planning a strategy with a particualr method of IM and then when the next offer comes along,  jumped and started re-planning all over again. Spending so much time doing this meant I ever actually got started. This does not help your motivation and belief!

So I have put together a few hints and tips to help you to prevent this happening.

• Start by picking a single IM method that is simple and you feel able to work on. Stick to this method until you have mastered it.
• Write a plan of what you want to achieve everyday, it could be – I want to find 10 new Facebook friends, or I want to follow 25 people on Twitter.
• If you have a job, set a timetable of online business hours for each day and what you will do in those hours.
• On your day off from work spend a morning or afternoon of good quality time building your business, but make sure you still leave time to spend with family.
• Have a friend, online business buddy or family member who believes in what you are doing track your progress and give you a gentle nudge if required, this works great for me.
• Know what you want to achive, know the end result! Constantly revise your goals, I now know what I want to achieve and by when.
• Display your goals where you will see them everyday,. A great way to do this is to create a dream board that displays a mozaic of pictures with all the goals you want to achieve. This will serve as a constant reminder and keep you focused and driven.
• Step out of your comfort zone, this is something new that we have to learn! We have to work at it. Building a business online is a skill just like anything else, you cannot become a carpenter or electrician in one day, it takes time!

The most important factor -  Stay motivated and don’t give up! Only 3% of people achieve what they truly desire -  let’s be part of that 3%.

Facebook pages can be a huge way to connect to audiences. Facebook statistics tell us that the average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events. This means that your page is one of 60 trying to grab attention a fan’s attention.

For a more effective social media marketing program, here are ten things that you can do to turn your Facebook page into a dynamic and engaging destination for your Facebook fans.

1. Be unique

There’s nothing worse than a bland Facebook page. Think long and hard about how your page can be different. Remember, your page is one of at least 60 things that an average Facebook user is giving attention to. It’s insanely important that your page is unique and stands out from the rest.

Think creatively about how you can add value to Facebook users. Can you give them something? Can you provide them with help, or resources? These are the things that will get people joining your Facebook page and keep them coming back.

2. Don’t use a generic landing page

Facebook allows you to customize what page different types of users land on. You can show people who have never been to your page before a completely different message than people who are already fans on your page. It’s a great idea to show potential users a page specifically tailored for them. It might give a little background about your blog or site, and would give them a great reason for joining.

Never let new users land on your Wall. The Wall doesn’t really tell anything about your brand, and it won’t have much impact on new visitors.

3. Give something away quickly

Your die-hard followers won’t need any reason for joining your fan page. But if you’re trying to really grow your Facebook presence, consider giving resources back to your community and niche. This allows you to reach other potential fans within your niche that might not have known about your Facebook page.

4. Use a large profile picture

People on Facebook want to see photos. After all, Facebook is far and away the biggest photo sharing site on the web. So make sure your page has a large photo of your company or brand as the profile picture. This helps with branding and adds trust to your profile.

5. Record a video and tag your new friends

Many people have Facebook notifications that alert them when they’ve been tagged in photos or videos. Record an introduction video and tag your new friends they will see your video on their wall. This adds a nice social “hook” to your profile.

6. Use contests

Contests are a great way to make your fan page more engaging, and they also give incentive for potential fans to join. Contests that include giveaways can be excellent marketing tools if they’re done properly.

7. Integrate multiple social networks

You can use multiple Facebook applications to pull in your other already existing accounts from other social networking sites. With the help of some nifty applications, you can pull in Twitter, Flickr, and many others fairly quickly.

8. Thank people for becoming your fans

When someone becomes a fan on Facebook, immediately thank them! Give them something in return, like an ebook or coupon, or at the very least send them a quick “thanks!” message.

This small gesture can be huge in spreading goodwill about your page and brand. It might even give users more incentive to share your contests and resources on your fan page.

9. Don’t treat your fans like kids

In case you haven’t noticed, Facebook has grown up a lot in the past few years. What used to be a place for college students and younger is now a place for everyone. So don’t write for an audience of teenagers.

10. Keep at it

Oftentimes people will create their pages and leave them. Facebook pages are breeding grounds for excellent feedback and engagement. Many people are starting to find that Facebook pages have excellent discussions and high interaction rates, oftentimes higher than Twitter and other social networks. Photos and contests are great interaction tools, and posting stories and articles also add lots of value to the community.

There are plenty of ways to stay involved with Facebook fan pages. Growing a fan base on Facebook for your page requires work, but engaging with your community on Facebook pays huge dividends.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good)and will no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write blog posts reguarly. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don’t have to produce one post per day but it is important you reguarly update your blog when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging, be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your fresh smaller articles, your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

This concept can be confusing so I suggest you take a look at the Carnival of the Cats for an example. You can also find a list of all the carnivals and submit your articles at the Carnival Submit Form.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

Press releases provide a substantial amount of content to search engines and can rank well in standard search engines like Google or Yahoo.

However it’s important to optimise press releases for your specific audience.

What Process Should You Follow to Optimize Press Releases? Here’s a useful checklist:

• Clearly define the goal and target audience of the release
• Research keyword phrases (1-2 per release)
• Add phrases to the title, sub heading and body copy
• Use keyword phrases when linking to landing pages or other web site pages – not “click here”
• Add media to the release (images, video, audio) as well as alternative formats of the release (MS Word, PDF)
• To count conversions, use tracking codes in the URLs that point from the press release to landing pages
• Monitor release rankings, social mentions, traffic & outcomes

Press releases are often copied with links embedded into other news web sites and blogs as content and can result in direct traffic as well as links that are detected by search engines. Search engines count and value links as part of the ranking process. A single press release may result in 10 new inbound links or 1,000. It depends on the content and the reach.

I cannot emphasise enough that it’s important that press releases are optimised for people first and search engines second. A highly ranked press release is of little value if it does not make sense to a person reading it. Few people will link to or pass along a press release that reads as if it were “optimised” for keyword phrases.

The single most important place to add keywords in a press release is in the title tag as shown in the image above. That same text is displayed at the top of the browser and is used as the hyperlinked title in the search results.

Here are some Press Release Websites for you to use:

http://www.freepressindex.com/

http://www.news.eboomwebsolutions.com/

http://www.pressreleaseforum.com/

http://www.free-press-release.com/

http://www.pr-gb.com/

http://www.1888pressrelease.com/

By now almost anyone online has heard of Twitter and are already tweeting until their hearts are content.

However, as an Internet Marketer is it possible to use Twitter for traffic generation?

Of course, if you respect and interact with the community the way you should.

To be successful on Twitter, incorporate the following success formula:

IM success = adding value to the community through content + giving to the community without want.

So how does one do that and be successful at traffic generation?

Well, it starts with the image that you present to the community in your profile and the way that you have it set-up.

Profile

There are three important areas of your Twitter profile that you want to pay attention to if you want to succeed in this community as an Internet Marker.

First is your picture. If you intention is to interact and transact with someone on Twitter, I would suggest that your picture be a head shot and somewhat of a professional look. When you upload, make sure your picture looks good as a thumbnail picture. This is what everyone is going to see first within the community.

Second is your bio. Your bio should start with a link to a website where one can get more information about you. I recommend that it should be your blog. Along with this link, attach a 160 character bio that best describes you and your involvement with the community. Hint: You may want to use keywords within your bio.

Third is background. This is not important at first, but as you are building your brand you may want to change the background to standout from the masses. When you’re ready to make changes to your background, Google “Twitter backgrounds” for free and paid ways to make that change.

Now you are ready to “tweet.” So what would an Internet Marketer “tweet”?

This is where the adding value and giving to the community comes in.

I like to tweet about what is happening, who to watch for, resources that have been helpful and articles that I have enjoyed.

I interact with the community by responding to direct messages (DM) that I receive, as well as, when someone ReTweet’s a message that I sent.

Sometimes, people will just mention you in their tweets. I always acknowledge each one and pass on something positive.

The one thing that I never tweet about is an affiliate link. That is not adding value to the community, it is called spamming!

So how can Internet Marketer be successful at traffic generation on Twitter?

Periodically throughout the day I will create a tweet that addresses a problem within the community and a solution to that problem. I will provide a link to that solution. Remember: I never tweet  an affiliate link.

I use the 90/10 rule for my tweets. If I was to send out 10 tweets throughout a 24 hour period, then 90% of them would be considered value adding tweets. The remaining 10% would consist of personal and marketing related tweets.

If you hate marketing, it’s going to be very difficult to have a successful business! If you believe that marketing means talking to people you don’t know, trying to convince them that they need what you are selling… well, marketing will be quite a challenge.

So, do you give up marketing? Not if you want to have a successful business! What you need to do is to give up your old beliefs and mindset about marketing and adopt new beliefs and a new approach.

Start with redefining what marketing is. Marketing is providing information to allow others to make a decision on a product or service.

Your mindset and attitude are what are going to make your marketing efforts successful. Approach your marketing with the idea that you want to help people and provide value and solve problems. You have something to GIVE. So come from a place of giving, rather than a place of asking. Come from a place of genuine interest and caring about the people you are connecting with.

After you have established rapport with your prospects, then you might tell them about the benefits of your product or service—NOT the features, but the benefits. How will this benefit THEM? How will it solve their problem?

Your goal should be connecting with people. Successful business comes from successful relationships or connections. In order to connect successfully, you need to be genuine and real—you need to be yourself. People are automatically attracted to people who are comfortable with themselves. When you learn to come from a genuine place of wanting to help others, your marketing efforts will be successful.

So, your biggest challenge in marketing is going to be being comfortable with yourself and believing in yourself. The actual mechanical skills you need to learn in order to do the marketing is secondary. Successful marketing is not just mechanical or technical skills, it comes from your attitude and approach.

My Top 7 Free Methods to Get Traffic to Your Site

No matter what you sell online you can be sure that you will need traffic! With the search engines changing the rules all the time and Pay Per Click being costly unless you know what you are doing people want FREE methods of getting traffic to their websites and capture pages. Here are my top 7 ways of getting some quality traffic for FREE.

1. Social Networks.

They are free to join and easy to find people in the niche you are promoting in, I prefer twitter for this as there are many websites to help automate the experience. There are websites for automatically following people that tweet about the keywords you would be looking for, my personal preference is TweetSpinner.com You don’t have to be sat at Twitter all day long posting out your links as there are also websites that allow you schedule tweets, spending half an hour in the morning is all it needs to set up some schedule tweets throughout the day, check out Socialoomph.com If you’re followers are targeted based on keywords then the more followers you have the more potential people will see your tweets. Just don’t spam, people want helpful information and quotes etc as well as a link to your site every now and again.

2. Forums.

Forums are a great untapped resource for traffic. Check the rules on the site prior to posting but usually you are allowed a bio box with a link or two. These get automatically placed at the bottom of each and every post you write. Don’t put your links blatantly in the posts (this is usually against the forum rules anyway and will get you kicked off the forum) Just post helpful information and respond to other peoples questions. If you help someone they are likely to check out your links and bio box. You will get the instant response from the person you helped plus remember forum content stays around for years so there is a lot of people that could see your posts. There is usually a forum in every imaginable niche so whatever you promote have a look.

3. Blogging.

Blogging is great as the search engines love blog posts so they rank highly. You may have noticed when ever you search for anything online there is usually someones blog post that appears high up in the rankings. If you use blog software such as WordPress these usually “ping” the search engines when you create a new blog post. Pinging is letting the search engines know you have updated your blog. If you don’t use WordPress or are unsure if your blog “pings” the search engines then try a website called pingomatic.com it will ping several search engines for you.

4. Video Marketing.

YouTube is very big now and many people are using this to promote their business. When you upload a video you can assign it key words, you can place these videos on your sites too. Viral is best though! How many times have you received a funny video on you tube and forwarded it on to 20 people, no doubt 20 of their friends forwarded it on to 20 of their friends too so you can see how quickly it can spread. If the video has a link to your site on it then that could create you a lot of traffic.

5. Article Marketing.

OK I admit I’m writing this article not only to help you out but also because I know if you do find it useful there is a good chance you’ll click my links and find out more FREE tips on online marketing. Again articles are liked by the search engines so write an article about what you promote and that’s another way to get traffic. Again articles are around for a long time so can be seen by many.

6. Responses (Blog and Article)

If you read a blog post or article you like and it relates to what you market in leave a comment on it. Most blog and article responses will ask for your website. It’s just another place for your link to be seen and the more links available to be seen means more traffic.

7. Free Classifieds

Yes these do exist, funded by the paid adverts on the websites these are a great way to get targeted traffic, there are many so search in Google but my recommendation would be Phinditt.com or VivaStreet.co.uk Choose the area you wish the advert to be seen, select a category and section for your advert then come up with a great headline that will inspire people to check out your ad. I would recommend putting a picture in the advert, people are more tempted to open an advert with a picture in it.