While You Might Be on the Journey to Work for Yourself, You Don’t Have to Go It Alone. About five years ago, I started out on this crazy journey to become an entrepreneur. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew that I couldn’t keep working for terrible bosses and giving of myself in situations that were not replenishing me. I tried becoming an influencer and did pretty well, garnering over $5,000 in books and another $5,000 in yoga clothing and gear, in exchange for positive reviews. But I wasn’t able to monetize it and I didn’t see a sustainable career in it because it wasn’t me. I’m not saying that you can’t make a living through becoming a social media influencer, it just wasn’t the…
Getting to know your audience is a major component of your content marketing strategy If content marketing is creating relevant, and interesting or meaningful content, on a consistent basis, how do you find out what kind of content that is for your business? How do you find topics that your current and prospective clients or customers will want to read? This is where the rubber meets the road in content marketing. It’s not just enough to write a bunch of content that you think your audience will find meaningful, helpful and interesting. You need to get closer to them and actually test it out. Doing that is beneficial yet can be somewhat difficult if you’ve never done it before. That’s where working with a professional content marketer like myself comes in quite handy. But let’s talk through it more before I make…
What you say becomes you, becomes your business. These are terms used commonly and openly by many entrepreneurs but to me, they are shortsighted and have negative implications. Allow me to expound upon this thought for a moment. Let’s look at the definition of these words. Hustle: At best, the word means to be frantically about something, or to force something as in to force someone out of your way. Slang definitions of this term are even worse, one is to be aggressive with your sales or financial dealings, while another means to solicit clients in the form of prostitution. Even words like “side hustle” are starting to pop up now and frankly, it doesn’t make the effect any less potent. Grind: Literally this means to reduce to fine particles or to crush something. Are these really the words you want to be using…
Without Paying for Ads While paying for Google Adwords, Facebook Ads and boosting posts can help get traffic to your website, it’s important to first invest the time to create relevant and interesting content for your current and potential customers on a consistent basis. Then when you pay to get visitors to your site, they’ll have something great to read. Paid traffic requires a strategy, the creation of ads, and the corresponding landing pages, plus methods of capturing information. This is often referred to as digital marketing. But there is another way to get visitors to your site without making an investment in digital marketing. It’s called content marketing, and it uses content, like blog posts to attract visitors to your site. These visitors are known as organic traffic. Think of them as visitors that stop by “naturally”. How does Content Marketing…
Helping entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses architect their brand. When you launch your own business, there is so much to do. After coming up with the idea for your business and figuring out your business plan and how it will all work, you still have to name your business and brand it. Naming is tough, but you got it done. You’ve picked a name that is reflective of the products or services that you offer, with a bit of your personality. But the branding stuff, that’s the difficult bit. In my work with people who have just launched, one of the hardest parts is often their branding. We’re not all writers, or graphic designers. If we were, that would be our line of business. But that’s not you – you’re a photographer, or artisan, daycare owner, virtual assistant. Or maybe…
On a Road to Self Discovery When starting a business, there are some things that you need to know, and a lot that you don’t need to know right now – but can learn along the way. One of the things that I learned when starting McKeating Solutions, and that I see with a lot of the entrepreneurs and business owners with whom I connect, is that you need to know yourself. I’m not talking about in a “Hi, I’m Maggie” kind of a way. When I say that you need to discover who you are, I mean at a very basic level. Starting a business is filled with emotions (the elation at the start, the fear and doubt that creep in along the way, the joys and everything in between), it takes a lot of hard work (energy, passion and dedication…
Partner with a web content specialist to create meaningful content and deliver it to your target market. With the plethora of easy to use content management systems (CMS), like WordPress, Wix, Shopify and countless others, almost anyone can build and manage their own website. This democratization of the internet has helped make being a small business, startup, entrepreneur, blogger or influencer a bit more attainable – as now you don’t have to pay a web design and development agency big bucks to carve out a small place on the internet. But, the benefits of being able to setup and manage your own website, to create your own content, have made the internet a crowded and clamorous environment. While the Googles of the world try to instill order and create organization, it can be difficult to reach your target audience, as they now have so many websites available to…
The Difference Between Personal and Professional Pages Running a business, whether you are an entrepreneur or a CEO takes a lot of time and energy. It requires you to wear a lot of hats, learn quite a bit about many different facets of your business and industry – and then there’s marketing on top of all that. At McKeating Solutions, we understand that the nuances of Facebook and other social media platforms might be the last thing on your mind, but they are important. That’s why we focus on learning all of the ins and outs of these platforms, so that you have professional partner that can take this off of your already overflowing plate. The Downsides to Using Personal Pages All to often we see businesses using a personal facebook to represent their business. After all, if you’ve never worked in social media…
As a Business, Should You Invest Your Time on Facebook My answer – yes and no. I’ll explain further here in just one second. Facebook is the one social media platform that we all know, and yet, can’t figure out. It’s not our fault. Facebook continues to change and evolve, trying to keep pace with the demands that we users place on them, and that the market necessitates. Let’s face it, social media is an ever moving target. There are new platforms that come out all of the time, and as everyone rushes to be an early adopter and attempt to gain Gary Vaynerchuk like success, the other platforms are struggling as ways to keep those users active on their own platform. Back to my answer. Yes, you should have and maintain a presence on Facebook. While it’s not the…
Learning to Say No to Yourself To stop creating stress and anxiety in your life A lot of different bloggers, lifestyle coaches, and popular influencers are chatting about learning to say no to other people in order to live a healthier, happier life. And that’s great. Many of us feel like we cannot say no. Somehow along the way we learned that saying no meant letting someone down, or hurting them in somewhere. But in a perverse reality not saying no actually hurst us far more. In my last post, I talked about When the Hustle Hurts, when I realized that in getting my hustle on (as many bloggers tout) actually hurt my chances of succeeding. This wasn’t because I think anything other than hard work brings success, but because, when emotions are involved, you can be hustling in vain. I’d like to follow…