Re-Boot Your Blog

Posted on January 8, 2012 by admin | Permalink Comments Off

If you blog for a living it’s inevitable that sometimes you’ll get short on inspiration, regardless of how knowledgeable or passionate you are. Building a career for yourself online can be hugely rewarding, but frustrating in equal measure. Here are a few of our expert tips for professional blogging:

1. Ask yourself what your audience wants to hear. What are they looking for when they click through to your blog? What challenges and concerns does your target audience face, and can you help them or shed light on the problem in a unique way?

2. Avoid wordiness: good writers know not to use five words or sentences where three will do. You want to get your full point across, but in the most succinct and clear way possible.

3. Shake up your routine. Try working in a new spot- move your desk to face a different wall, or into a new room- or even getting out of the house altogether. Try writing your new post down on paper, discussing ideas with a friend, or drawing a mind map. Change your surroundings, tools and methods and you should find it easier to step out of a blogging rut.

Online Careers , ,

Commercial Tweeting: The Balancing Act

Posted on January 7, 2012 by admin | Permalink Comments Off

Most businesspeople, especially online marketers, see Twitter as a valuable means of connection with new, relevant and like-minded potential customers. Unfortunately many make the mistake of abusing the interest of those who have ‘followed’ them, by spamming their followers’ timelines with self-promotional sales material.

This is, of course, the main reason we join twitter. We’re not self-adsorbed teens looking to over-share on every detail of our lives; we want to promote our business, increase sales, conversions or whatever it is we do for a living. To do this we need to tweet promotional material. However, if you want to keep your followers (at least, the useful ones who actually read your tweets), you need to approach things differently.

As always, for a strong foundation you need to be genuinely concerned with giving people what they want; entertainment, information, and lastly information on your service or product. Invest some time and personality into this thing. In general, commercial to non-commercial tweets should be at most 50/50. Don’t push it further or your followers will start to realize that you’re only in it for the dollar signs, and you will start to lose them.

Online Careers , ,

Making The Change

Posted on January 6, 2012 by admin | Permalink Comments Off

Transitioning into online marketing for a full-time job is a scary and overwhelming prospect. It took me years to come around to thinking that this was something that could really be done, and even longer to have the confidence that this was something that could be done by me.

There is a lot of misinformation out there, and I’m sorry, but anything that promises you a huge payout with minimal training and effort is never going to work out. I am so glad I never quit my secular job until I had a lot of training and experience behind me- I had to watch project after project crash and burn until I figured out what would work. But what I’m even happier about is that I did eventually quit and am now earning a living online.

It isn’t easy. It took years of hard work and sinking money into training that wasn’t that helpful. It took a lot of work that never amounted to anything. But that was all a learning curve, something that we as online entrepreneurs can never leave or take for granted.

In terms of money, well, it has it’s upsides and downsides. My salary was reliable and decent, it came in every month and paid the bills. In contrast, I now live with the constant worry that my income stream could be wiped out virtually overnight. But you know what? I hated working in healthcare. I hated waiting for the clock to tick over to 4.30 so that I could get the heck out of there every single day. I hated winter, when I’d have to get up before the sun rose to be at the hospital by 7am, and get home after it was dark.

Now, as my own boss, there is a lot more stress- but with that comes freedom. I can sleep in if I’m tired, or rest for the afternoon if I feel I need to. My health has improved a lot as I have a more flexible schedule for exercise, and no longer need sugary snacks and coffee to get me through the day.

Recently I traveled to Bali, Indonesia and took a few days to find accommodation and get settled in. I couldn’t do any work, and I was terrified of what this might mean for my business. However, with my websites up and working for me, I still earned my normal income during this time. Sort of like built-in holiday or sick leave.

My point is, self-employment is difficult and maybe a little risky, but it’s definitely a goal worth working towards if you are entrepreneurially minded. I hope I can use this blog to help and inspire you to consider the change.

Entrepreneurial Careers, Online Careers , , , ,