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Learn Or Plateau

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In his book No Excuses, Brian Tracy mentioned something that forever changed the way I view my niche. In the book, he said that you either learn more about your niche or plateau. You can only go so far with the knowledge you already have, but in order to go further, you need to obtain more knowledge.

Learning more about your niche creates more possibilities. If you stop learning about your niche, you are limiting your capabilities. Learning about your niche will allow you to become the go-to expert in your niche. In addition, learning about your niche will give you more knowledge that you can package into books and training courses.

Make the choice today to learn more about your niche so you are able to grow instead of plateau. Never settle for where you are. Always raise the bar higher and strive for better results.

 

How To Remove Yourself From The Competition With Blue Ocean Strategy

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It has become an imperative to make yourself stand out from the competition. Removing yourself from the current competition and tapping into a new market is one of the best ways to stand out and get more attention. However, the idea of finding an entirely new niche sounds daunting. Luckily, I had the privilege of reading Blue Ocean Strategy which has been sold over two million times. Blue Ocean Strategy goes into detail about how different businesses were able to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of these businesses differentiated themselves with the same rubric. These are the components of the rubric that will allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition:

  1. Reduction. What are certain aspects of your niche that can be reduced. Do the people in your niche push out too much content? Do they post too much on Facebook? Find something that you can reduce that your competitors overuse.
  2. Elimination. There will be some aspects of your niche that can be completely eliminated. Blue Ocean Strategy goes into detail about Cirque du Soleil eliminating the need for animals and rings in their performances.
  3. Raising. There are some aspects of your niche that can be raised. McDonald’s and most of the other fast food restaurants do not focus on providing healthy food options. Elevation Burger on the other hand, focus on providing healthy food options, and their slogan, “Ingredients Matter” enforces this message.
  4. Creating. There are going to be some things that no one in your niche would think about doing. This is where the creation process comes into play. In order to make the creating process easier, look at what different niches do and see how you can apply concepts from different niches into your niche.

That is the rubric you need to create something that stands out from the competition. This plan will allow you to get out of the red oceans and go into the uncontested blue oceans. If you want to learn more about leaving your competition and creating an uncontested market space, then Blue Ocean Strategy is the right book for you.

 

How To Accomplish Bigger Goals

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There are some people who struggle to write 1 book within a year while other people are able to write a high quality book every month. There are some people who can accomplish big goals while others find it difficult to get the smallest goals accomplished. Some people wish they could get more accomplished faster while others want to go from the big goals they are accomplishing right now to accomplishing even bigger goals.

Getting better time management will give you the time you need to get the bigger goals accomplished. After you find more time in your day and manage it more effectively, you need to create a weekly scorecard. As you get more better at creating scorecards, you need to raise the bar higher for yourself.

When you raise the bar higher for yourself and accomplish bigger goals, it is important to gradually raise the bar higher. If you immediately go from writing 10 blog posts every week to writing 30 blog posts every week, it will be overwhelming. Instead, go from writing 10 blog posts in one week to writing 15 blog posts in one week. Then go up to 20 blog posts in one week and continue to work your way up until you are able to write 30 blog posts every week.

Raising the bar higher combined with effective time management and accountability will allow you to accomplish the bigger goals. What are your thoughts about the list? Do you have any additional advice to achieve bigger goals? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

10 Ways To Improve Your Facebook Page

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Facebook Logo

The two components that decide how many likes and engagement your Facebook Page gets is the way it looks and the content you post on that Facebook Page. However, many people are not optimizing these two components well enough in order to see better results. The better you implement these two components, the more likely you are to be successful on Facebook. In order to make your Facebook Page better, follow these 10 tips.

  1. Facebook prefers that you use 180×180 pictures but then converts your picture to 160×160. That means the avatar picture you choose for Facebook needs to look good even if it is 160×160. Make sure your entire company’s logo or the picture of you shows up on the entire avatar. If part of your company’s logo or your headshot gets cut out of the picture, then you need to fix that. There’s nothing worse than having a sloppy appearance prevent you from getting more engagement on Facebook.
  2. Make sure your background picture further emphasizes what your Facebook Page is about. A picture of your company’s logo or a headshot does not necessarily tell people what your Facebook Page is about. If you put a headshot of yourself on your Facebook Page, then your background picture needs to show people what your posts are all about. If you only write Facebook posts about Facebook marketing, you can have a picture on the background related to Facebook marketing. If you write Facebook posts about motivational quotes, you can have a background picture of the sun rising with your favorite quote in the same picture. No matter what you post about on Facebook, your background picture needs to give everyone a good idea about what you post. As a side note, the ideal dimensions of your Facebook Page’s background image are 851 pixel width by 315 pixel height.
  3. Make sure your Facebook posts are only 80 characters. The longer your Facebook post is, the less likely someone is to read the entire post. If you want to get more likes and engagement on Facebook, you need to create short and sweet posts that are easy to read and have a clear message.
  4. Include pictures in your Facebook posts. Facebook posts with pictures get more engagement than the Facebook posts without pictures. Although pictures are optional for Facebook posts, you should make it a point to have at least one picture in a Facebook post.
  5. Experiment with your posts. When you first start to see more engagement and likes coming in every day, it is important to identify what kind of content your fans like the most. There are a variety of factors that decide how much engagement your Facebook posts get such as the character count, topic of choice, way you worded what you said, the color of the picture, and other factors as well. You will be able to identify which factors work for you by posting a lot of content and seeing which Facebook posts get the most attention.
  6. Have an effective short bio. People get to see your short bio directly under your picture. They don’t have to click an About Me Page on the menu like you have to do with a blog. Instead, it’s right there. Your short bio can give people an idea of who you are and what you do. Since a short bio does not take a lot of time to read, most people will read your short bio before reading any of your posts.
  7. Post videos on Facebook. Videos grab our attention differently from the way a typical post grabs our attention. Posting videos will keep someone on your Facebook Page for a longer period of time. That’s long enough for someone to like that Facebook post, leave a comment, possibly share it with their friends, and repeat the process for some of your other Facebook posts as well.
  8. Get more likes for your Facebook Page. These are a bunch of ways that you can get more likes on your Facebook Page. Getting these likes makes your Facebook Page look more popular. Whether it is actually very popular or not, potential fans will see your Facebook Page and believe that it is very popular. These people will then engage with your posts and like your page because they see that so many other people have done the same.
  9. Post every day. New visitors are more likely to like your Facebook Page if you post every day. Posting every day shows that your Facebook Page is active, and if visitors like what you have posted in the past, then they know they need to like your Page in order to get your future posts in their news feed. The average dormant Facebook Page does not get as many likes as the average active Facebook Page. Facebook also does a really good job at telling people when they have not posted on their Facebook Pages in a while. If you ever get that kind of email, you need to stop what you are doing and immediately post something on Facebook and then schedule posts for the days to come.
  10. Time your posts based on what your audience is on Facebook. In order to get the best engagement from your Facebook posts, you need to send these posts out when most of your audience is on Facebook. Facebook provides analytics that contain the number of people who visit your Facebook Page for every hour of every day of every week. That is a powerful statistic that Facebook gives you for free. If it’s free, it doesn’t hurt, and in this case, the statistics can be the difference between your Facebook post getting 25 likes or 50 likes.

By constantly improving your Facebook Page, you will continue to see better results over time. Your engagement will go up, more people will hear about you, and by implementing circular viralocity, your blog and all of your social networks will be able to go viral. Having an effective Facebook Page is just one piece of the puzzle.

What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice about improving your Facebook Page below.

 

The Power Of Setting A Date For Your Goals

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Deadline Approaching

The biggest lies are soon and later. I’ll start this soon. I’ll work on that later. Those are stallers that make an attempt to hide the fact that you don’t want to do anything that you say you will do soon or later.

Setting a date eliminates the problem of soon and later. Soon and later do not define a date. As far as we know, soon and later can range from a few days to a few years. Setting a date will be the only way you will get your goals accomplished.

Setting a date forces you to give yourself a deadline. When I decided to self-publish 1 book every month, I was able to do just that. Then, I started writing a book that I gave myself no due date for. That’s when my self-publishing career hit a bad note, but ever since I reapplied the 1 month rule, I have been able to write, and self-publish 1 book every month. Instead of saying soon or later, I made sure that soon and later meant by the end of the month.

If you continue to say soon and later, then don’t bother. Setting a date is the only way to tell yourself that you are serious about a particular goal and want to accomplish it.

 

How To Wake Up Earlier

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Morning Roaster

Did you know that your morning is a strong indicator of how productive you are throughout the day? Waking up earlier in the morning may be the difference between an unproductive day and a day when you are able to write 10,000 words. The logic behind it is that when you wake up, you have more willpower. When you wake up, there are less excuses. You have less to do at 7 am than you have to do at 7 pm. If you are wondering how you can increase your productivity, you should also wonder how you can wake up earlier.

Before I continue, it is still important to get the right amount of sleep. Based on scientific studies, 6.5 to 7.5 hours of sleep every day will lead to a longer, healthier, and more productive life. If you are sleeping below 6.5 hours, then you are not getting enough sleep. However, if you are sleeping for 8 hours, then you are getting too much sleep (yes, there is such a thing). That means you only want to sleep in between the 6.5 to 7.5 hour range. This is where waking up earlier comes in.

The first thing you need to do to wake up earlier is to create a schedule that you are committed to implement. If you get to bed at 11 pm, then you need to commit yourself to waking up in between 5:30 am and 6:30 am. That does not sound like a lot of sleep, but that is because most people sleep longer than the recommended amount of sleep.

Now that you have the schedule in place, you need to have motives. How are you going to benefit by waking up earlier? If you can’t think of a benefit, then you will continue sleeping for 10 hours. We need to have a reason to get up every day, but having a strong motive will make you want to get up quicker every single day. Some strong motives could be getting work done faster, publishing more books in a shorter amount of time, doing the work now so you can spend more time with your family later in the day when everyone wakes up, and so on. Those are the types of motives that get you out of bed faster and allow you to be more productive throughout the day.

One of the easiest ways to wake up earlier is a two step strategy. Most people get the first step right, but almost everyone messes up the second part. The first part is setting an alarm clock. Everyone seems to do that. The second part which almost everyone messes up is leaving the alarm clock out of reach. If you can click the snooze button on your alarm clock while in bed, then the alarm clock is too close to your bed. Keeping it further away will force you to get up in order to turn off the alarm clock (which gets very annoying after a while).

If you want to be productive, what you do when you wake up will play a big role in how productive you are for the day. If you wake up and go straight to TV, then your day is not going to be very productive one. However, if you wake up and start the day off by writing some blog posts, then you are going to have a very productive day.

You have more control over your productivity than you think. What you do in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. By setting a good tone in the beginning of the day, you will be able to get more work done throughout the rest of the day. What are your thoughts on waking up earlier, and do you have any other advice about sleep? Please share your thoughts and advice below.