I Bet You Don't Own an IM Business
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Friday, 28 September 07 - 10:41 PM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - Tips |
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I recently took the HBDI* test for a management course at my day job.
For those that are in the know about what that is I am have a tri-dominant personality but I can be called a Yellow under normal circumstances and Red under stress. In fact so red that I was almost off the graph.For others that have never heard of it the test (which was me before I took it), it is basically to understand where your thinking goes normally, and under stress. This then allows you to practice thinking styles that you may need to round out your management style.
Being a yellow dominated person means I will look for the creative way to deal with work, decisions, my life. This is nothing new to me as I know that I would much rather have the idea, start it and then move on to the next, than see it through to the bitter end by doing all the work. After all, all the fun is in the thinking and planning for me, and getting someone to do the doing seems more logical (which is why I am a manager in my day job I guess).
So working my IM world I am seriously considering taking the advice of quite a few IM people out there (like Mike Filsaime ) who say that if you want to own a business rather than own a job then you should be getting other people to do the work, while you organise.
A great example of that philosophy is what is happening in the Immediate Edge at the moment, where Dan Raine has put out the direction and the membership go off and do the work.
You Are Here.
I am totally caught up in the tactical thinking of my niches at the moment and don't have time to step back and check that my strategy I created way back when is still on track. If I continue on this track the effort I am expending to get to my goal will be far more than if I stayed with my head above the waves and my eyes firmly on the shore.
Consider the following diagram. The red line is the planned strategy, the black line is where you go when you are doing all of the tactical stuff yourself.
Staying on the red line will require me to do the following
- Clearly document every step I need to take to get where I want to be
- Understand and allocate where and what work others can do
- Check regularly where I am at on that red line
- create an exit strategy for each project
- rinse and repeat for all tasks
This will not keep mistakes from being made, but it will ensure I can see them when they happen and be able to get straight back on that red line.
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HBDI
How This Blog Got To #1
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Thursday, 20 September 07 - 12:34 PM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - Tips |
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This is to all my readers out there that wanted to know
how this blog got to #1 against 7 others for internetmarketingfordummies after only 11 hours. Yes that post was serious!
Sure there is only a small amount of competition but it goes to show that if you are really doing loooooong tail then there are some pretty important tricks to look at. If my crazy little niche phrase was a high price ticket item that only a few people searched for then I would be up there getting the cream of the searches.
So Another Secret Revealed!
The secret of course is using Terapad blogs.Terapad has many many great functions, but Google at the moment is eating up the fact that your blog looks like
url = http://nichephrase.terapad.com
Title = Nicehephrase - blah blah blah
First line = Blah blah blah Nichephrase blah blah
Last line = Blah blah blah nichphrase blah blah blah
Tags = Nichephrase, blah , blah blah, blah , blah
Then utilizing the meta tags and definitions bits *points up to settings, search engines, meta" and whacking you nichephrase in there too.
Try them out before they cop the spanking
The Image Conundrum
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Wednesday, 19 September 07 - 09:57 AM (GMT) By Allison Reynolds in Internet Marketing - Tips |
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So there I am browsing Statcounter looking over the recent came from traffic and I see a heap (and I mean about 80%!) of my traffic coming from Google images.
Now the interesting this about that is is that Statcounter doesn't tell you (or I am too tired to figure it out) what the search terms are in image search. So I guessed and used my targeted niche phrase... and whatdaya know, in an open search there are two images from my blog in the top ten. In the "search" type search I am image number 1, 6 and 10 and number 10 picture is from one of my side bar ads.
Now as that blog is actually a review of products and link to the affiliate shops that sell them online it is plain to me that here is a good way to get traffic for visual type products.
The SECRET REVEALED
So what have I done with my pictures that others have not? Simple really. I did what I do with all blog post titles, first lines and last lines. I used the search term as the title to the picture followed by the brief description.
Now the very interesting thing I also found (probably interesting only to me but hey it adds to the word count) is that the searches not only came from good old Google.com but from non-English versions of Google as well. Places where I normally would not get traffic at all from due to the local rankings (my guess).
... More items are available in my News Archive
