What is the secret behind success that is talked about in so many books?

The number one reason people are successful is how they think and what they believe. Really – its that simple. This may sound overly simplistic. Certainly a secret cannot be revealed in just two words you say! Well, if you think about it. Secrets are often very simple “nuggets of truth” or “gems of wisdom”.

I could probably write a whole book about the “secret” of this or that. In fact, writing a whole book creates the perception that the secret to be revealed is so incredibly valuable that is certainly must take a whole book to explain.

In fact, the actual secret may not even be revealed as in the case with Napolean Hill’s classic best seller Think and Grow Rich. In the beginning of his book, he alludes to the fact that there is an underlying secret revealed dozens of times throughout the book, but never labels any of his concepts as being one of “the secrets”.

He perhaps titled his book Think and Grow Rich instead of “secrets of growing rich” because there was already another book written before him in 1910, “The Secrets of Growing Rich” by (William Wattles ?)  Of course, Napolean Hill didn’t want to be a copycat so he left “secret” out of the title, but alluded to it at the beginning of his book. So in his own way, he is saying that his book also reveals a secret to wealth and riches.

“The starting point of all achievement is desire” – Napolean Hill

There are many other secrets contained in the book. Faith for instance, is a state of mind, a belief that gives rise to greater action than merely the thought itself.  Other concepts are persistence, having an organized plan, a mastermind group, the power of the subconscious mind, decision, imagination and others.

What I find interesting is that the recent revival of many of these ideas was resurrected in the movie “the Secret” which is based on the term “Law of Attraction” which actually can be traced back to the late 19^thcentury.  Napolean Hill touches upon the concept of law of attraction when discussing the subconscious mind, the power of autosuggestion, desire and the mastermind principles.

In fact anyone who is an avid follower of the Law of Attraction “movement” should indeed read Think and Grow Rich and be amazed that many of the so called “secrets” are not really new or newly revealed as in the movie.

I find the term definiteness of purpose to be similar to the “power of intention” which is another term based on these principles, just packaged differently. Thought plays a key role here. Faith in circumstances beyond your apparent control gives rise to the “magic” of manifesting your intentions. Merely having good intentions do not guarantee results.

I hear a lot of people stating that the Law of Attraction “doesn’t work” (for them). They should read Think and Grow Rich and then fully understand the theory behind the Power of Intention, (perhaps read Wayne Dywer’s book, The Power of Intention).

It all starts with the mind, the thoughts and desire which creates the catalyst for manifestation. Of course it doesn’t hurt to having a “burning” desire. Do you see the difference between simply having a desire (a form of wanting) and a burning desire? The burning denotes an emotional reason behind the purpose which gives rise to a higher vibration associated with the thought of desire.

I encourage everyone to add these principles to their arsenal of self improvement, be persistent in your path to success and most of all, have faith.

 
As a network marketing leader, I get alot of feedback from my downline about people who fail to step up. This leads me to question whether the issue was with the leader or the follower.

A leader who has a relationship with a group of people such as a department manager, a drill sergeant or a sports coach often asks for “volunteers” from their team to do something beyond what is expected. 

How the group reacts to the request for volunteers says a lot about the leader and the followers. A leader who does not command respect may not get any response. A great leader however, will get the entire group to volunteer.

Great networking leaders will know what the response will be from a well managed team. One way to find this out is to ask them to go beyond what is expected of them and observing their behavior.

Testing your team in this way (asking for volunteers) can also be called “separating the men from the boys” or “the wheat from the chafe”, or “the cream will rise to the top”, etc. A leader must therefore test their team, observe and learn.

Not only is a lot of information revealed about the motivations and drive among the team, but the degree of respect for the leader can also be revealed.

Those who volunteer go into the “pull” group; those who resist volunteering go into the “push” group.  You can “lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”. You have heard this many times. The point is obvious that one must decide they want to do something on their own.

Forcing someone to do something for which they do not having a burning desire is like pushing someone to do something against their will. They must possess the inner drive, the momentum so that you need only pull them along as a leader.

If you are a follower at the moment, examine how you react when your leader asks you to do something. Do they test you in any way? How do you react?

Do you feel resistance when they ask you to do something? Be careful not to be quick to put blame on the leader for failing to be an “effective” leader.

This could be a sabotage maneuver on your part. Perhaps you are not willing to go the extra mile to achieve your goals. Perhaps you are more aligned with the “idea” of having your own business rather than achieving it.

The actual achieving it would require you to change in some way and that is where many people get stuck. This is where leadership comes into play.

The effective leader can see the follower resisting. They know the feelings of being stuck. They can craft a game plan for the person and encourage them to create momentum so they can guide them along the path and pull them towards their goal.

Pushing is not leading. In fact, it is a step backward because you are not in front of them, rather you are behind them. You are in a subordinate position which only creates a relationship of dependency rather than self sufficiency.

As a network marketing leader, when someone falls into the “push” group, it is time to evaluate your strategy and time commitments. You may also wonder if it is you who is failing to be an effective leader.

Are you valuable to those you lead? Do you provide support, knowledge, encouragement and other forms of value to the group that they cannot get by going to a weekend seminar or purchase in a book?

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Converting Web Visitors to Leads

(Part 1 Driving traffic to your site)

A marketing plan is your key to success

Your content marketing efforts, social bookmarks, videos, etc. must have a link that sends traffic to one or more of your sites. This may be a landing page, a sales page, a blog or an all purpose website which may have a combination purpose. Identify and setting up your traffic channels is the first step in your marketing blueprint.

Driving traffic to your blog is a good way to start building a relationship with the visitor. They can find out a lot more about you, read all your other marketing materials and useful information that you have posted.  Keeping your blog focused will result in a successful marketing strategy.

Focus on just getting their email and nothing else at this point because once you have their email, you can send them messages that start building a successful relationship for them to develop the like and trust factors.

Once they do arrive at your site, you will want to have your opt-in form very conspicuous, above the fold with a compelling offer of something valuable in exchange for their name and email. This is a key strategy in carrying your marketing blueprint.

Make sure that what you are offering has a high perceived value. Don’t just offer a “free report”, make it compelling such as “Get Your Free Marketing Blueprint for Success and Start Generating Leads Tomorrow”.  Your offer should be related to your site and the subject matter of your content.

Don’t give away too much in exchange for an email address on a blog site. You are not asking them to pay for anything. Save the over the top bonus offers for your sales page (stay tuned for my future article on how to bundle your offers and the 3 mistakes marketers make when giving away bonuses).

However, if you already have a high converting landing page that results in either leads and/or sales, then by all means, drive traffic directly to that landing page.

When you are starting out, your primary directive is to collect names and build your list.  Not everybody will have a landing page with a specific product offer ready to go.

For income along the way, you can set up affiliate programs and receive commissions from a host of other sites that offer related products that your target market may find useful. Again, this is leveraging your list and after awhile, you will be mailing them offers for your own products or primary business opportunity when the time is right or upon their request.

As you are marketing via several different traffic channels, you will achieve more success by testing the effectiveness of your campaigns. You will want to track the link that people are using to get to your sites. Campaign strategy testing is an important part of your marketing blueprint for success.  

At that point, you will be able to see the effectiveness of the link you placed in various marketing channels.  You will be able to see your conversion from page visitors to leads captured.

You will need to set up separate domains so each “campaign” has a separate URL.  Set up separate subdomains and give those links out to separate locations such as Youtube, vs. Facebook, vs. article directories, etc.

Start out simple at first, focus on just a few marketing strategies. As your list grows, add more marketing strategies once you feel they are effective, successful, profitable and worth continuing.  

There are many variables that will affect results ranging from the viability of your chosen niche, to the target market, the copywriting of your marketing materials including the actual headline, the copy, the offer, the price, your consistency of ads, etc.

Just because something isn’t working doesn’t mean you should abandon the whole campaign.  Examine the variables one by one and test them.  Don’t change all of these at the same time; it could be just one variable that needs fixing.

Key points to remember:

1) Drive traffic to your sites via marketing plan strategies;

2) Convert traffic to leads in the form of permission based opt in list;

3) Cultivate a relationship with your list through your autoresponder follow up messages

4) Include links to your landing page or other sites where you can monetize your list

Prepare your marketing blueprint in groups like the four key points above, and then get more detailed within each category so you can include goals and benchmarks to achieve success.  Remember, a marketing blueprint without details is really just a concept. The more thought out your strategy, the more success you will get.

Quiz: Find the SEO friendly keyword phrases in this article

Fresh content is food for web spiders

One part of your internet marketing strategy is to brainstorm about  web content ideas for articles (reviews, case studies, top-10s, how-tos), blogs, news, press releases, widgets, tools, UGC, web 2.0, linkbait, viral, SMM, podcasts, videos, photos.

How your specific keywords and keyword phrases are integrated into the copy, the headline, the meta tags and description are key to getting good rankings on the search engines for your articles.  

As a network marketer, one method of communicating value to your readers is the publishing of keyword rich articles. Written words that educate, inspire, enlighten and otherwise impress the reader with your knowledge and wisdom.

Writing SEO friendly articles is just one of several techniques in your marketing tool box.

Before you start writing about your selected topic, follow these key points so that your article is leveraged to the max and will not only be read, but linked to, ranked high on search engines and create a positive impression of who you are as the “expert” author.

Don’t be tempted to simply stuff your website with articles that you have acquired or cranked out in lightning speed.  Your articles will overlook the important strategy of being SEO friendly to the search engine spiders. 

Take the time to “optimize” your content using keyword phrases that you have researched before diving into the writing the content.  Try also to write some of the content around the key words as well rather than just sprinkling them here and there.  

These strategies will leverage the contents of the written words in your article for what it is designed to do: drive traffic to your sites and create a personal brand of you as the author.

 A well written article and headline will not only catch the eyes and interest of your readers, but the search engines as well.  Your headline should be relevant to your content. The headline is, in SEO terms, the title tag or really your main keyword phrase.

Don’t be afraid to have up to 70 characters. If possible, also provide a subheadline that has secondary keywords and leads the reader into the content or the body of text.  

So here are the four factors to consider when writing SEO friendly keyword rich articles:

•             Keywords and Keyword Phrases.

An article must always be focused on the keywords and keyword phrases.

During your keyword analysis, ask yourself what would somebody be typing in the search engine to find information about writing articles for their website? What problems would they probably have other than the actual task of writing an article?

They would probably have to do keyword research so that their articles are picked up by the search engines right ?  They would probably type in Search Engine Optimization or perhaps just “SEO” because they know that is important. 

Get into the mind of the searcher as you develop your secondary keywords and use them within the articles as well as the primary keyword phrases.

•             Keyword Density

Once you have your keywords and keyword combinations, you must use them as described above, in the headline, the sub headline, the meta tag and description box inside your blog control panel.

If writing on a blog, take advantage of the keyword generator to be used as tags which assist the reader in locating other content on your site using similar keywords. 

An article must have good keyword density. This is the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is used on an article relative to the total word count of the article.

For a search engine to “trigger” its response to your keywords, the rule of thumb is to have a density of at least ten percent  in the content for search engines to rank a site high in their search results.  

Make sure the keyword density is not too high or too low. With too much density or repetition of terms, the essence of the article is lost and may turn off a reader as well as the search engines.  

The article should read naturally without the feeling that certain works were simply stuffed in as keywords.  Too many keywords not used properly in the body will come off as aggressive and overeager. Conversely, an article with virtually few keywords will be ignored by search engines.

•             Article Content With Beef

Again, you cannot just sprinkle a bunch of keywords throughout the article. That’s like flavoring a stew with basil leafs and not bothering to take the leaves out before serving it. The content must be balanced with the keyword phrases and good relevant content.  

Articles should keep the reader’s attention, be informative, perhaps entertaining as well, and must deliver on what the headline states. Make sure you give them useful, helpful information that is written well with correct spelling and proper grammar.

If you want people to trust you, make your content SEO friendly, good and well thought out.

People respond well to figures, facts and statistics. Try to get great information and as many facts as you can. A good and well written article will boost your reputation as an expert in your chosen field or topic.

At the end of the article, you want them to feel like it was worth the time to read the article, that it was useful to them and make them look for additional articles you have created. this is when you lead them to take action.

At this point, you may have earned their trust.  They believe that you have something of value to offer them which is more useful information and hopefully delivered in a witty manner they find compelling.

•             Linking Articles

Depending on where you are posting your articles, always include a signature at the end with you’re your name, title, link to your main website, etc.  

If it’s in a blog, make sure the blog is set to allow comments at the end of the article and have an RSS feed link in case they want to subscribe to your posts.

Set up the social media links so they can bookmark your site.  Cross link with any other websites that are relevant. Another way to include links is to hyperlink certain keywords within your content to outside URLs or other articles within your blog.

Article writing for content marketing when integrated with the other forms of marketing make a great long term tool to help drive traffic to your primary websites to capture leads, make sales and build your downline.