Chunk-Down that Goal and Get Out of Overwhelm

This week an article  by Jack Canfield

Sometimes our biggest life goals seem so overwhelming.

We rarely see them as a series of small, achievable tasks, but in reality, breaking down a large goal into smaller tasks—and accomplishing them one at a time—is exactly how any big goal gets achieved.

After you have decided what you really want, with specific deadlines, the next step is to determine all of the individual action steps you will need to take to accomplish your goal.

How to Chunk It Down

There are several ways to figure out the action steps you will need to take to accomplish any goal. One is to consult with people who have already done what you want to do and ask what steps they took. From their experience, they can give you all of the necessary steps as well as advice on what pitfalls to avoid.

Another way is to purchase a book or manual that outlines the process.

Yet another way is to start from the end and look backward. You simply close your eyes and imagine that it is now the future and you have already achieved your goal. Then just look back and see what you had to do to get to where you now are. What was the last thing you did? And then the thing before that, and then the thing before that, until you arrive at the first action you had to start with.

Remember that it is okay not to know how to do something.

It’s okay to ask for guidance and advice from those who do know. Sometimes you can get it free, and sometimes you have to pay for it. Get used to asking, “Can you tell me how to go about…?” and “What would I have to do to…?” and “How did you…?”

Keep researching and asking until you can create a realistic action plan that will get you from where you are to where you want to go.

What will you need to do? How much money will you need to save or raise? What new skills will you need to learn? What resources will you need to mobilize? Who will you need to enroll in your vision? Who will you need to ask for assistance? What new disciplines or habits will you need to build into your life?

Another valuable technique for creating an action plan for your goals is called mind mapping.

How to Use Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a simple but powerful process for creating a detailed to-do list for achieving your goal. It lets you determine what information you’ll need to gather, who you’ll need to talk to, what small steps you’ll need to take, how much money you’ll need to earn or raise, which deadlines you’ll need to meet, and so on—for each and every goal.

When I began creating my first educational audio program—a breakthrough goal that led to extraordinary gains for me and my business—I used mind mapping to help me “chunk down” that very large goal into all the individual tasks I would need to complete to produce a finished product.

To mind-map your own goals, follow these steps as illustrated below:

1.) Center circle: In the center circle, jot down the name of your stated goal—in this case, Create an Audio Educational Program.

2.) Outside circles: Next, divide the goal into the major categories of tasks you’ll need to accomplish to achieve the greater goal—in this case, Title, Studio, Topics, Audience, and so on.

3.) Spokes: Then, draw spokes radiating outward from each mini-circle and label each one (such as Write Copy, Color Picture for Back Cover, and Arrange Lunch.)

On a separate line connected to the minicircle, write every single step you’ll need to take. Break down each one of the more detailed task spokes with action items to help you create your master to-do list.

Next, Make a Daily To-Do List

Once you’ve completed a mind map for your goal, convert all of the to-do items into daily action items by listing each one on your daily to-do lists and committing to a completion date for each one. Then schedule them in the appropriate order into your calendar and do whatever it takes to stay on schedule.

Do First Things First

The goal is to stay on schedule and complete the most important item first. In his excellent book, Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, Brian Tracy reveals not just how to conquer procrastination but also how to prioritize and complete all of your action items.

In his unique system, Brian advises goal-setters to identify the one to five things you must accomplish on any given day, and then pick the one you absolutely must do first. This becomes your biggest and ugliest frog.

He then suggests you accomplish that task first—in essence, eat that frog first—and, by so doing, make the rest of your day much, much easier. It’s a great strategy. But unfortunately, most of us leave the biggest and ugliest frog for last, hoping it will go away or somehow become easier. It never does. However, when you accomplish your toughest task early in the day, it sets the tone for the rest of your day.

By chunking down your goals, and then taking daily action on them, you create momentum and build your confidence, both of which move you farther and faster toward the achievement of your goals.

Now go take some action!

Many thanks to Jack Canfield

Jack Canfield, America’s #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

Five Easy Ways To Get Traffic To Your Blog

One of the key things that bloggers need to think about is how more readers can be brought in to read the blog, to add comments and to let others know about it.

Perhaps you have been blogging for a while and have only been getting a trickle of viewers to your blog posts.  Now you need to put a traffic building plan into action in order to build traffic to the blog and to raise your profile, whether that is your personal profile or that of your business. Building traffic is just as important  to bloggers as writing posts that are interesting and appealing. Most bloggers focus on creating content and then think later about building traffic. Perhaps, there is a hope that a build it and they will come approach will work.

To help you, here is a quick guide to the five most popular (and most effective) traffic building techniques:

1.       Be social!

Blogging and social networking go hand in hand.  Social media channels can be used in many different ways and one of these is to make more people aware of blog posts. If you haven’t already signed up for Twitter, you need to sign up NOW. Perhaps you have a Twitter account but are not posting regular tweets. You need to be proactive and tweet about your posts as soon as you add them to your blog. (You also need to make sure that you post regular Tweets.) Make sure that you update your Facebook status with a link to your new blog posts. Use sites such as Digg.com, Reddit.com and StumbleUpon.com to submit information. Remember that in order for social networking to be effective, you need to be proactive and to communicate with other people.  This means communicating with people on your list as well as making new contacts through social networking. If you visit other people’s links and respond to their updates, they’ll be more likely to do the same for you.

2.       Get noticed!

Find blogs in your niche and start following their posts. Then make sure to add insightful and interesting comments to their posts. Not only will the blog owner take notice and visit your blog, but others reading the blogs and those commenting on it will be more likely to visit your blog to see what you are posting.  You need to be selective with blog commenting, but do make it a point to comment on a few related blogs each week.

3.       Use your RSS feed!

RSS feeds are a good way to syndicate your blog’s content so that it is sent to many different people in their own blog readers or on their own sites. Most blogging systems have RSS feeds automatically included but you can add a lot more functionality to your feed by using a free service like Google’s FeedBurner.com. With FeedBurner you can add things like sharing the feed via e-mail to your feed so it will pull in new readers and encourage previous visitors to come back to the blog again.

4. Post articles in directories!

In addition to blogging, you need to use article marketing in order to get traffic to your blog. However, you do not necessarily have to create totally new content because  you can tweak some of your popular blog posts and add them as articles to article directories. You can post your popular posts as articles with a link back to your blog in different article directories. Not only will you get a valuable backlink but your article may also be used by ezine owners in their ezines which will bring you more traffic.

5.       Using backlinks!

You should work to build backlinks to your blog using different methods such as online articles and ezines. By creating backlinks to your blog, you’ll improve your blog’s ranking in search engine results. You can get traffic from search engines if you are within the first group of search results for the keywords that the searcher put in the search box.

These five ways of building traffic can be to help build traffic to your blog and increase your readership as well as increasing your visibility.  You just need to make sure that you have a weekly plan that includes these five ways so that you are consistently building traffic.

© 2010 Copyright Wilma Garvin

Five Free (or almost Free) Ways to Market Your Business

For all entrepreneurs and businesses, keeping the impetus on marketing can be a challenge. If you are self-employed, you may be doing the marketing yourself as well as doing the actual work and so time might be an issue.  More established businesses might be using a marketing specialist who provides help on a contractual basis or have a full-time member of staff.  Whatever your situation, having a marketing plan that includes a variety of marketing methods is crucial.  So here are five free (or almost free ways to market your business) that can be included in your marketing plan:

1. List your business as widely possible: there are various online directories that you can use to list your business. (You can easily find these by doing a Google search and putting ‘online directories’ into the search box) Many are free, and some are specific to a single industry.  They can help you increase your visibility with your target market.

2. Networking events: when you attend networking events, use business cards – yours and those of the people you meet – to best effect. Make sure that your details are up to date and you can use the back of the card. People use this in different ways; some people use it to provide details of where you met and others provide details of the opt-in page on the website where people can request a free report that you are offering. Work the room at networking events and hone your elevator pitch. Get to know other business owners whose services complement your own. After the event, it is good manners to send those people an email, saying how much you enjoyed talking to them and, where possible, adding something that might be of particular interest to them.

3. Use the articles and press releases: you can boost your visibility and credibility as an expert by creating articles. You can use these in one form on your blog but you can also repurpose these for posting on e-article websites. You can also submit your article to the local press who may be interested in an unbiased article. In addition, there might be local magazines where you can submit an article. You can also write an informative press release and send it to local publications as well as online publications or press release distributors.  You need to mention a unique aspect of your business or an upcoming event and send this to the appropriate editor.  It needs to be newsworthy in some way.

4. Commenting on blogs: It is likely that you have found blogs that are relevant to your business and ones that have interesting content, which you are following. You can raise your profile by making relevant comments in response to someone else’s blog posting. The idea is to develop a dialogue and to add value in the communications that might benefit other readers of the blog. These comments are NOT designed for you to try to sell your product or service. If you can develop a dialogue on someone’s blog, they might also ask you to do a guest blog for them.  (If you aren’t subscribing to any blogs at the moment, maybe it’s time that you did.  And if you are subscribing, maybe it’s time to review what you are following and to add some new ones.)

5. Public speaking: It is great to be paid for speaking at events but sometimes we need to accept that to raise our profile and to spread the message, we need to speak for free. It’s a good idea to create a set speech.  It gives you a chance to position yourself as an expert and to possibly attract more traffic to your website and blog. The speech or presentation could provide insight into your industry or practical advice.  You can volunteer to speak to local clubs, networking groups and professional organizations. You could even create a webinair with the content.

These are good ways to increase your visibility and to keep your name in front of your target market.

© Wilma Garvin, 2009-2010

How to Get Others to Visit a Blog

If you’ve ever created a blog before, then you know that the saying, “build it and they will come” just isn’t true. However, you can get more people interested in visiting your blog by following these five tips…

1.  Offer good content

By “good” content, I mean you should blog about topics that your audience wants to know about. To find out what they want, just follow these steps:

- Find out what types of information products they’re already buying – then write blog posts on the same topic.

- Use a keyword tool (like WordTracker) to find out what topics people in your niche are looking for.

- Visit busy niche forums and other blogs to see which topics are generating the most views and discussion.

- Survey your readers to find out what they want.

2. Update frequently.

Sometimes people start a blog, post a flurry of articles and then abandon the blog for months at a time. If you allow dated posts, then your visitors aren’t likely to come back again if they notice that you don’t update regularly.

What you need to do is commit to posting to your blog at least once a week. If you don’t want to be chained to your blog like this, then create the content ahead of time and automatically “drip” it to your readers. Or, hire a ghostwriter to both create the content and post it.

The point is, you need to post often to keep your blog from looking like a desert island.

3. Create regular features.

Here’s a great way to turn a one-time visitor into a repeat visitor. Specifically, by creating “regular features” and multi-part blog posts that your visitors can look forward to.

Example: Think about creating a seven-part article about how to make money with pay per click marketing. And then you could space it out so that you’re posting one or two articles per week. You can bet that your readers will return at least once a week just to finish reading the series.

Another way to get more visitors is by creating a regular feature, such as a “tip of the week” feature or even a “questions from our readers” feature.

4. Write about hot topics.

One way to get a surge of traffic and increase in your blog is by writing about hot or even controversial topics. You can include relevant keywords and “ping” the blog directories (like technorati.com) to make sure that those who are searching for the hot topic see your post.

Another way to leverage a hot topic is by joining in on the blogosphere conversation. Simply find a popular blog discussing a hot topic, and use a trackback to add your response.

5. Get someone influential to endorse your blog.

Finally, you can get others to visit your blog by first getting someone influential in your niche to endorse you (and your blog). You can do this indirectly, such as by offering to be a guest author on the other person’s blog. Or you can ask your joint venture partners to directly endorse you on their blogs and in their newsletters (and you’ll return the favor).

It’s free advertising. But it’s also extremely powerful, because you’re using social proof to increase your readership.

You have just discovered five proven ways to get others to visit your blog – and to visit it again! Your next step is to take action.

Starting today, apply these tips… and then keep an eye on your traffic logs!

© 2010 Copyright

Ping, a book on traditional and social media by Alan Stevens

ping by Alan Stevens is a book designed to help you tap into the power of traditional and social media to help you to improve your profile with the aim of ultimately increasing your profits. Although the book is called ping, it should not be confused with ping.fm which enables you to manage your twitter and facebook accounts.

Alan aims to show you how to integrate your PR using print, radio, television, blogs, twitter, linkedin and facebook. Alan is a media specialist. He makes the point about becoming an expert which means offering to speak about your area of expertise, writing articles, giving interviews and making yourself available to answer questions from journalists.

He provides some useful suggestions such as focusing on one social network at a time, offer something of value such as advice, a contact or a link and don’t sell or even expect to sell using social media.  Alan suggests that people who use social media should tell others their views, get involved in debates and offer opinions on current topics. This partly conflicts with other experts’ views such as Dan Crowther who has suggested tweeting a range of content that includes information about your latest blogs and articles as well as providing alerts to other useful information or discussions on other sites and blogs. Personally, I share a range of information and sources through my daily tweets that I think might be of interest to my followers and which fit in with my own profile. You need  to decide what is most appropriate for you,

The checklists at the end of each section are useful and can provide useful guidance to those who are new to traditional and social media as well as handy reminders to the more experienced. The information is presented in bite-sized chunks and it is easy to dip in and out of the book. The contents information is detailed and it might have benefitted from an index.

While it has benefits for the inexperienced and the experienced, the more experienced might need books with more in depth information so that they can maximise their use of specific media.

You can find information on the book here:

http://www.mediacoach.co.uk/Media%20Coach%20Products.htm

© Wilma Garvin

© Wilma Garvin, 2009-2010.

Using www.Formulists.com to manage your Twitter lists

Twitter is a wonderful resource. It can bring us into contact with old friends and new contacts and alert us to new resources such as articles, blogs and teleseminars. On the other hand there are times when the amount of information on Twitter seems to be overwhelming.

www.Formulists.com is a neat tool that helps you manage the Twitter lists. You can create lists such as ‘Who I recently followed’ and what is really useful is that it updates itself. Then you can sort who is following you and manage your followers and created custom lists really quickly and easily.

Why would you want to organise people in lists on Twitter? The reasons are:

- reducing the potential for overwhelm on Twitter
- managing a stream of Tweets
- giving you a greater chance to notice Twitter posts that interest you the most
- it makes people with certain interests or expertise more visible
- complements what you can do on Twitter

www.Formulists means that you can categorise the people who you are following into groups and it becomes more manageable. Perhaps you only use one Twitter account and you could create lists for work, friends and specific interests that you are following on that one Twitter account. You can also use Formulists for specific information that you might want to manage. It helps you create lists of people who you might like to follow.

It is a nice resource. It’s quick and simple to set up. It’s very polite as it sends you an invitation when it is ready for you to sign up. At least that is what it did when I registered to use it as it was trying to manage its users.

© Wilma Garvin

© Wilma Garvin, 2009-2010.

A tidy desk makes for a tidy mind

There are a lot of clichés about having a tidy desk.  Some organisations insist that their employees have a tidy desk before they leave the office.  For someone running a business having a tidy desk can help to create focus.  Focus on planning what needs to be done and also focus on carrying out the tasks for the day.  For example, if you are planning to develop a new product, starting off with a clear desk deduces the risk of being distracted.  Here are some points to think about:

Have a filing system

Where possible, I try to file things electronically.  This is true for the documents that I create, send to others and post on my blog or website and for the documents that I receive.  I might need to file actual documents in a filing cabinet but I also scan important documents.

Keep notes

Notes on meetings, telephone conversations and ideas can be kept by date as it is often easier to remember when something happened than why or where it happened or who was involved.  Of course, it is always possible to cross-reference notes based on key words that might help us to remember them.

Keep active files within reach

It can be more effective and efficient to keep active files within reach and, if possible, in sight.  This reduces the need to look through filing drawers in order to find a crucial piece of information.

Keep everything in its place

Assign a place for everything.  This means having a place for current work files, old client files, reference books, magazines and other paperwork that you need for the business. For example, magazine files are good for keeping magazines in one place, easy to find and tidy.

Minimise handling

Keep the number of times that a document is handled to a minimum.  When a document comes in, read it and then file it, discard it or put it into a ‘to do’ file.  Make this a daily routine and it keep make it easier to manage paperwork and to keep the desk clear.

Have a monthly clear out

Timetable a monthly clear out so that the work space is kept clear to focus on current tasks such as writing new articles, current work with clients, research projects and development work on new products.  Try to recycle and throw away as much as you can.  Make sure that any loose papers are scanned and/or filed.

Creating and running a mastermind group

Being in a mastermind group can be a fantastic way to help you work towards your goals more effectively and more quickly than working away on your own.

What can you expect from a mastermind group?

The objective of a mastermind group is to provide mutual support and ideas to the members of the group so that each member can be more successful in what they are doing. As well as providing support, it also provides accountability. If you tell people that you are going to do something by a certain date, then people will ask you at the next meeting, what you have done.

It is often recommended that the members of the mastermind group should come from different industry sectors so that there can be different perspectives on the members’ issues.
One key point of a mastermind group is confidentiality. Discussions within the mastermind group stay within the mastermind group. Trust within the group means that people can provide the details that enable the other members to make suggestions.

How big is the group?

It is usually suggested that there should be five to six people in the group. If there are too many people, it is difficult to get a chance to be heard and arranging meetings that are convenient to everyone become more difficult. If there are less than five people, the creativity might be less and the mastermind meetings are less dynamic.

What to think about before starting in the mastermind group?

 
There are various things to think about before joining a mastermind group and these include:
• What is your business mission statement?

• What are your one and three-year goals?

• How will you find time to participate in the Mastermind Group?

• On a scale of one to ten, how committed are you to moving forward in your business?

You can share these with the group before it starts as a way to introduce yourself.

Holding the meetings

Mastermind meetings can be held every week or every two weeks. It is important that all the members of the group attend the meetings. The meetings can be either face to face or over the telephone. In addition, some groups decide to meet up now and again for a day or two days. They can also keep in touch between the meetings by using a closed group on www.facebook.com or www.ning.com .

The meetings will usually last about one to two hours.

The format for the meetings

It is a good idea to use the first few meetings to get to know everyone in the group. Each member should explain something about their situation, the opportunities and challenges facing them and the needs that they have for support. The other members can brainstorm ideas for how they can help that member. At the later meetings, each person will get a short time to update the others, ask for help and get feedback. Someone at the meeting takes responsibility for timekeeping so that the meeting runs to time and each person gets a chance to speak and get feedback.

The agenda for the meetings

1. Share a success story of, at least, one thing that has happened since the previous meeting as well as saying what action has been taken as the result of the previous meeting.
2. At each meeting, everyone should have about 10-15 minutes to share challenges and to get feedback. It could happen that some people want extra time. Perhaps some members are prepared to give up their slot that week. Extra time has to be negotiated and the timekeeper should act as the referee. After this has been negotiated, the meeting can start. (In fact, these negotiations could take place before the meeting by using group emails.)
3. During the meeting, members can discuss challenges and ideas for their business. They might say, ‘I need ideas for how to develop an email list’…’I’m looking for someone to do copywriting for me. Can anyone recommend someone?’ …’I want to identify the market segments for my new product/service?’ These challenges and ideas are discussed, ideas are brainstormed and there is feedback.
4. After the discussions and brainstorming, the member then commits to an action or actions to take. This will include actions that will be taken before the next meeting. By making a commitment at the meetings, each member should be moving forward towards the achievement of their goals.

Mastermind groups can be a very powerful way to achieve goals, and they provide support, encouragement and solutions.