Are You A 'Social' Business?

Looking at all the ways companies have been marketing their products and services in the past, we now know based on current statistics that a new direction and strategy is critical in capturing new clients and business. Social media has been the number one activity on the web and brands are following the crowd by going ‘social’ and joining millions of people online.

Many companies have set up Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, listed their products/services on web based directories that provide interactive customer reviews and use Google+ and LinkedIn to make professional and personal connections. Some also start blogs and create YouTube channels to share information through videos that now appeals to the masses.

Even so, many businesses are still trying to integrate social media into their old ‘marketing mix’ rather than understanding the whole purpose of social media. This traditional, one-way marketing doesn’t work anymore. Consumers are already bombarded with thousands of marketing messages on a daily basis but the majority of them are ignored. Newspaper circulations are down, television commercials are easily skipped, nearly half of all direct mail is never opened and there are over 200 million Americans on the ‘Do Not Call’ list which prevents any outbound telesales calls. Even the best banner ads are only getting about 1% click through rates now. So what else can you do to get your business out there?

Today, we are all connected and smart companies make business personal by becoming a 'social business' rather than applying the same old marketing techniques to the new medium. They realize that ‘social’ isn’t a new way of marketing, it’s a new way of doing business and they use an analytics culture to shape and adjust their strategy on the go. This is quite different from the traditional ways of brand building in the past.

Companies that get it right by becoming social see great success. Nearly two thirds of businesses have acquired a customer through their blog and a quarter of B2B firms have gained a client through Facebook. Company websites that have a blog get more visitors than those who don’t. Web visitors from social sites often have higher conversion rates than those who aren’t communicating directly with their customers.

It’s not just about going social it’s about becoming a social business. Creating the right presence, exposure with a Call To Action on the web is critical in branding your company to gain new business. It’s realizing that marketing doesn’t work like it used to and today, successful companies have to become social ones. Diversifying your web exposure and keeping your online presence filled with new and interesting content is the key. Just by having a website, blog and web profiles will not produce business unless you drive traffic to them and encourage engagement.

Living in this socially connected, real-time and mobile-enabled world, creating a compelling web based presence is critical for success. Even if you are a small company or entrepreneur with limited finances, cost effective marketing strategies can be implemented to help you achieve a social media presence.

Achieve your full potential and get the tools you need to excel in your business. Work with a Business and Life Management Coach with over 20 years experience empowering individuals, entrepreneurs and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional and personal lives. Book a complimentary session today to discuss your goals and objectives at http://www.denisedema.com

How to Get Organized

Creating productive habits will help you get organized, simplify your life and get everything under control so you can get things done. Look at all the improvements you can make to your daily routine and pick one at a time to incrementally change the way you do things so you can improve your life. Once one habit is changed then move on to the next one until you have a revamped your way of life to stay organized in everything you do. Its’ not that difficult if you take one thing at a time and put some action into it!

Collect information wherever you go. If you carry a capture tool with you whether it’s a small notebook, smart phone or anything else that works for you it will allow you to write down tasks, ideas, projects, phone numbers or anything else that pops into your head each day. I like to start my day by writing a physical list in the morning and use it to check things off as the day progresses. I also put certain reminders in my phone to make sure I address tasks that are very important.

The key elements of the capture habit are: take your capture tool with you wherever you go, write everything down before you forget, and empty your notes of what still needs to be done into your future to-do list when you get back to your home or office.

Process all information that comes to your inbox and create an action to follow. An inbox is any place where you check your messages or read incoming information. The first thing you have to do is minimize your inboxes. List all the ways in which you receive information, evaluate each to see if it gives you value, and find ways to combine or eliminate inboxes.

Make sure that all the papers, letters, bills etc. that come into your home get placed in the one inbox so you can address all of them at the same time preferably at the end of your day or week.  If you use a smart phone make sure you get all your messages together in one area whether they are in different email accounts, text messages or voicemails. Once you scroll through them you can then decide what to do at that moment.

Start with the top item on your inbox and work your way down, making immediate decisions as you go along, delete or trash it, delegate or save  it. If it’s something you can deal with in two minutes or less, do it immediately. File it if it’s something you need for reference. Add it to your to-do list or calendar to do at another time. Work your way down through each item until the inbox is empty. Leave nothing in the inboxes.

Plan at the beginning of each week the larger tasks that you want to accomplish and schedule them first on your list. Prioritize your tasks to get the most important ones done in the morning each day to ensure that they get done. Planning gives purpose to your week because you’re not just checking items off of a to-do list, you’re doing what’s important to you and what will take you closer to achieving your goals.

Do One Thing at a Time without distractions and select a task and decide that you’re going to work on it either until it’s done, or for a set amount of time. Before you get started de-clutter your desk and eliminate all distractions, shut off your e-mail and cell phone, get off the internet if it isn’t part of your work, and so on. Focus on the task you’ve selected to the exclusion of everything else during the time that you’ve allotted to that task. If you get interrupted or think of something else that needs to be done while you’re focusing on a task, write it down for later and get back to the task until completed.

Use an Easy System instead of getting caught up fiddling with tools and making things too complicated. Concentrate on “doing” and not on the tools. What will work for you is what is best, so think about what is the easiest to implement and start. I create a paper list each morning that I carry with me to add and cross off things as the day progresses. I use my Blackberry to complement my schedule with reminders and put future tasks into my calendar as they come to play. This works for me but you can also separate your tasks in each area for everything work related, all your personal tasks, for calls you can make from anywhere, your list of errands, things you need to follow up on and a list of stuff you don’t want to or can’t do right now, but want to check on later.

Keep lists simple so you can stay focused. All you really need is one list to work off of daily and a master list that you review and update weekly/monthly. I use Outlook as my master list and sink it with my Blackberry. You can also add the small less important tasks as well and whatever doesn’t get done you should put on the following day’s list. If it’s still there at the end of the week then take it off your list because it doesn’t seem to be worth your time…lol

Everything Has Its Place and your life can be completely organized by following two rules: everything you own should have a home, and when you’re done using any item, put it back where it belongs. Create a simple filing system so that you can keep things organized and quickly file any papers that have been finalized or that you’re going to need for future reference.  Putting things where they belong, immediately, is a good productive habit. Treat it like any other habit and focus on it for a month to turn it into something automatic.

Set and Keep Routines. It’s important to create productive routines and eliminate the habits that you have that no longer serve you. You should make sure that you are mentally and physically doing what is in your best interest each day. Find routines that work for you so they are within your comfort zone. It’s important to create structure so your routine will work within your home and work life. Following a routine that is flexible as well reduces stress and leads to living an organized, focused life. Knowing what you will be doing each day creates a sense of calm internally.

Do a Weekly Review so you can see the progress you have made with each task completed. It is important to focus and look at your accomplishments so you see improvements to your life and acknowledge the steps that were taken to bring you closer to your goals whether they are daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Focus on what is important and make sure that your projects/tasks lineup with your goals concentrating on what matters the most. A plan for the future is great but you must live in the now to make each day productive, organized and purposeful.

Tap Into Your Passion and do those things that bring joy to your world. Embracing something that you feel passionate about will replenish your soul and give you the energy and focus to stay on track. If you’re passionate about your work, your family or your home, then your task list will almost seem like a list of rewards.

Get Organized and Achieve Your Full Potential! Work with a Business and Life Management Coach with over 20 years experience empowering individuals, executives and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional and personal lives. Book a complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com to get started in reaching your goals today.

Keys to Success: The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement

"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve."

Scroll One - Definiteness of Purpose
Definiteness of Purpose is the starting point of all achievement.

Don't be like a ship at sea without a rudder, powerless and direcionless.
Decide what you want, find out how to get it, and then take daily action toward achieving your goal.
You will get exactly and only what you ask and work for.
Make up your mind today to go after it! Do it now!

Successful people move on their own initiative, but they know where they are going before they start.

Scroll Two - Mastermind Alliance
The Mastermind principle consists of an alliance of two or more minds working in perfect harmony for the attainment of a common definite objective.

No two minds ever come together without a third invisible force, which may be likened to a "third mind."
When a group of individual minds are coordinated and function in harmony, the increased energy created through that alliance becomes available to every individual in the group.

No man can become a permanent success without taking others along with him.

Scroll Three - Applied Faith
Faith is a state of mind which may develop by conditioning your mind to receive Infinite Intelligence.
Applied faith is the adaptation of the power received from Infinite Intelligence to a definite major purpose.

Both poverty and riches are the offspring of thought.
When faith is added to thought, the subconscious mind instantly picksup the vibration, translates it into
its spiritual equivalent, and transmits it to Infinite Intelligence. Faith is the only agency through which the cosmic force of Infinite Intelligence can be harnessed and used.

You can do it if you believe you can.

Scroll Four - Going the Extra Mile
Render more and better service than that for which you are paid, and sooner or later you will receive
compound interest on compound interest from your investment. For it is inevitable that every seed of useful service you sow will multiply itself and come back to you in overwhelming abundance.

Put your mind to work. Access your ability and energy. Who could use your help? How can you help?
It doesn't take money... all it takes is ingenuity and a strong desire to be genuine service. Helping others to solve their problems will help you to solve your own.

The most successful people are those who serve the greates number of people.

Scroll Five - Pleasing Personality
A pleasing personality is the aggregate of all the agreeable, gratifying and likable qualities of any one individual.

Believe in yourself - first and foremost! What you believe yourself to be, you are.
The attitudes you transmit to others will tell more about yourself than the words you say or how you look.
Enthusiasm comes from within. It is a PMA characteristic. You can generate enthusiasm by your thoughts, feelings and emotions.

It is essential that you develop a Pleasing Personality -pleasing to yourself and others.

Scroll Six - Personal Initiative
Personal initiative bears the same relationship to an individual that a self-starter bears to an automobile!
It is the power that starts all action. It is the power that assures completion of anything one begins.

Personal initiative is the inner power that starts all action. It is the dynamo that spurs the faculty of your imagination into action and inspires you to finish what you start. Personal initiative is self-motivation.

Today's employer usually is yesterday's employee who found opportunity waiting for him at the end of the second mile.

Scroll Seven - Positive Mental Attitude
Your mental attitude is the medium by which you can balance your life and your relationship to people and circumstances - to attract what you desire.

We are all born equal in the sense that we all have equal access to the Great Principle: The right to control our thoughts and mental attitude. A positive Mental Attitude is the greatest of life's riches... it is through this attitude that anything worthwhile is achieved.

Keep your mind on the things you want and off the things you don't want. Remember the old proverb: "Be very careful what you set your heart on, for you will surely achieve it."

Scroll Eight - Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm is a state of mind. It inspires action and is the most contagious of all emotions.

Enthusiasm is a combination of mental and physical energy which is seldom found in an ailing body. It thrives best where sound physical health abounds. Sound health begins with the development and maintenance of health consciousness, just as economic success begins with prosperity consciousness.

To be enthusiastic - act enthusiastically!

Scroll Nine - Self-Discipline
Self-discipline, or self-control, means taking possession of your own mind.

The power of thought is the only thing over which any human being has complete unquestionable control.
We have the power of self-determination, the ability to choose what our thoughts and actions will be. If you direct your thought and control your emotions, you will ordain your destiny. Take charge of your life. You are what you think!

Direct your thoughts, control your emotions and ordain your destiny!

Scroll Ten - Accurate Thinking
Accurate thought involves two fundamentals. First, you must separate facts from mere information. Second, you must separate facts into two classes - the important and the unimportant. Only by so doing can you think clearly and accurately.

Accurate thinkers permit no one to do their thinking for them. Gather information and listen to the opinions of others, but reserve for yourself the privilege of making decisions.

Truth will be truth, regardless of a closed mind, ignorance or the refusal to believe.

Scroll Eleven - Controlled Attention
Controlled attention is the act of coordinating all the faculties of the mind and directing their combined power to a given end. It is an act which can be achieved only by the strictest sort of self-discipline.

Learn to fix your attention on a given subject, at will, for whatever length of time you choose. You will have learned the secret to power and plenty! This is concentration.

Keep your mind on the things you want and off the things you don't want!

Scroll Twelve - Teamwork
Teamwork is the willing cooperation and coordination of effort to achieve a common goal. Teamwork is sharing a part of what you have - a part that is good - with others!

Teamwork differs from the Mastermind principle in that it is based on coordination of effort without necessarily embracing the principle of Definiteness of Purpose or the principle of absolute harmony, both of which are essential to a Mastermind Alliance.

Harmonious cooperation is a priceless asset which you can acquire in proportion to your giving.

Scroll Thirteen - Adversity and Defeat
Every adversity you meet carries with it a seed of equivalent or greater benefit. Realize this statement, and believe in it. Close the door of your mind on all the failures and circumstances of your past so your mind can operate in a Positive Mental Attitude.

Every problem has a solution - only you have to find it!

If you develop an "I don't believe in defeat attitude," you will learn that there is no such thing as defeat - until you accept it as such! If you can look at problems as temporary setbacks and stepping-stones to success, you will come to believe that the only limitations you have are the ones in your own mind.

Remember: every defeat, every disappointment and every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.

Scroll Fourteen - Creative Vision
Creative vision is a quality of mind belonging only to men and women who follow the habit of going the extra mile, for it recognizes no such thing as the regularity of working hours, is not concerned with monetary compensation, and its highest aim is to do the impossible.

Creative vision is definitely and closely related to that state of mind known as faith, and it is significant that those who have demonstrated the greatest amount of creative vision are known to have been men with a great capacity for faith. This is both logical and understandable when we recognize that faith is the means of approach to Infinite Intelligence, the source of all knowledge and all facts, both great and small.

The imagination is the workshop of the soul wherein are shaped all plans for individual achievement.

Scroll Fifteen - Mainttenace of Sound Health
Follow work with play, mental effort with physical, eating with fasting, seriousness with humor, and you will be on the road to sound health and happiness.

Don't try to cure a headache. It's better to cure the thing that caused it.

Whatever you possess, material, mental or spiritual, you must use it or lose it. You are a mind with a body! Since your brain controls your body, know that sound physical health is dependent upon a Positive Mental Attitude. Establish sound, well-balanced health habits in work, play, rest, nourishment and study, and develop and maintain positive thought habits. Remember, what your mind focuses upon, your mind brings into existence.

If you think you're sick, you are.

Scroll Sixteen - Budgeting Time and Money
Effectiveness in human endeavor calls for the organized budgeting of time. For the average man the 24 hours of each day should be divided as follows: 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for work, 8 hours for recreation an spare time.

The successful person budgets time, income and expenditures, living within his means. The failure squanders time and income with a contemptuous disregard for their value.

Tell me how you use your spare time and how you spend your money, and I will tell you where and what you will be ten years from now.

Scroll Seventeen - Cosmic Habitforce
The orderliness of the world of natural laws gives evidence that they are under the control of a universal plan.

Man is the only living creature equipped with the power of choice through which he may establish his own thought and behavior patterns. You have the power to break bad habits
and to create good ones in their place - at will.

You are where you are and what you are because of your established habits and thoughts and deeds.

Implement these principles into your life to achieve your full potential! Work with a Business and Life Management Coach that specializes in the development of human potential and personal effectiveness. Book a complimentary session today!

Professional Coaching for Success!

Today, more than ever before, men and women are turning to professional coaches for assistance in any number of areas of their lives. Some people understand that a coach can help them achieve a higher level of success in business and in life. Others are motivated by the distressing recognition that their lives are on a course that has little definition, direction or control.

Some individuals are facing important decisions about their career paths, businesses or personal lives that they feel ill-prepared to make without some help or guidance.

Unstable economic conditions, career uncertainties, business losses, health crises, and relationship tensions are but a few of the issues in everyday life that can contribute to that uncomfortable feeling of indecision, maximum overload, frustrating lack of control, or even quiet desperation.

Business and personal life coaching can provide the very assistance you need to eliminate barriers, reduce anxiety, set and achieve goals, and increase your level of success.Whatever areas of your life you may want to address – from business strategies to career decisions to getting your life/relationships in balance – a professional coach can make the difference between moving farther away from success or confidently achieving it.

Great coaches have one thing in common: the sincere desire to help others with their knowledge, experience, skills and training. They are objective, passionate professionals whose single purpose is to help you succeed in attaining your goals.

Explore working with a seasoned Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 years experience empowering individuals, entrepreneurs and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. Visit http://www.denisedema.com/ to learn more and book a free consultation to get started.

Just ask D: The Wheel of Life

Just ask D: The Wheel of Life
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