Four important online marketing trends for 2014

Greg Schwartz outlines four important trends for online marketing going into 2014.

In this highly competitive world, achieving any marketing success depend hugely on responding to cultural and consumer trends. Internet marketing is constantly evolving. Keeping up with web design and social media trends can only prevent your website from dropping down the search engine ranks.
Many companies face a dilemma today as there are so many trends introduced to promote and manage the products online. However, a basic market research can provide you a clear understanding of future direction of product or service platform. It’s a time where you can build your own crowd and increase the sales without paying the mass media gate keepers.
Some of the hottest trends that will continue to dominate this niche in 2014 are as follows:

1. Content Marketing continue to rule:  A valuable content through a variety of channels has always helped companies to establish authority and to gain trust with consumers. This includes relevant industry information that provides insight or entertainment to an audience. A strategy for high quality content makes the difference between appearing on Google’s page one review and disappearing from your customer’s view.  Indeed, it is the foundation of all digital marketing and this is the reason why people read, view and share.

2. Social Media Marketing will be bigger than ever: Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have attained a cult status. Millions of users subscribe these sites on daily basis. Smart marketers will optimize the power of social media platforms to generate more business in 2014.
However, it is also realized that promoting brand on social media sites is extremely complex. You need to invest a considerable amount of time to get the most from your campaigns. A research report indicates that marketers who spend 40 hours or more for social media marketing carry out their campaigns strongly through You Tube, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram. Also, forum marketing has decreased to 16% this year.

3. Mobile Friendly Content will be necessity: The moment when every business thought their web design was finally perfect, all the users went mobile. The rapid rise of smart phones and tablets led many marketing managers to develop a mobile friendly content. It is predicted that mobile browsing will soon overtake desktop computers and laptops as the most common way to search and buy products online. If mobile users are your target, make sure you have put most eye-catching headlines or images at the top of the page. Remember, people want pages to load quickly and they don’t like to scroll around to find information they need. By having a responsive website, you can grab the attention of the viewers and to stop them at your page.

4. Image-Based Content: Due to the increasing number of advertisements, it is extremely important to make content more easy and digestible. Ever if you have looked at social media sites like Buzzfeed and Pinterest, you might have noticed the viral potential of their image-based content. Even blog posts that receive most social shares have the same characteristic. They place the pictures in a good way to break the content up and emphasize certain points. Hence, it’s pretty clear that incorporating images is beneficial to a marketing campaign.

Author’s Bio: Gregg Schwartz is an accomplished Internet marketer for the past decade. He helps many businesses to increase their revenue by search engine optimization and lead generation services. He continues to find new and innovative ways to earn money from Internet enterprises.

http://www.businessreviewusa.com/marketing/web/four-important-online-marketing-trends-for-2014

Why You Shouldn't Say "You're Welcome

The script is so deeply ingrained that you don’t even need to think about it. When you do a favor, and someone says “thank you,” the automatic response is “you’re welcome.” It’s a basic rule of politeness, and it signals that you accept the expression of gratitude—or that you were happy to help.
But according to one leading psychologist, this isn’t the best choice of words. After four decades of studying persuasion, Influence author Robert Cialdini has come to see “you’re welcome” as a missed opportunity. “There is a moment of power that we are all afforded as soon as someone has said ‘thank you,’” Cialdini explains. To capitalize on this power, he recommends an unconventional reply:
“I know you’d do the same for me.”
There are at least three potential advantages of this response. First, it conveys that we have the type of relationship where we can ask each other for favors and help each other without keeping score. Second, it communicates confidence that you’re the kind of person who’s willing to help others. Third, it activates the norm of reciprocity, making sure that you feel obligated to pay the favor back in the future.
As Guy Kawasaki writes in Enchantment, “Cialdini’s phrase tells the person who received your favor that someday you may need help, too, and it also signals to the person that you believe she is honorable and someone who will reciprocate. If this is the spirit in which you’re saying it, your response is far more enchanting than the perfunctory ‘You’re welcome.’ ”
Although the logic is compelling, and I’m a longtime admirer of Cialdini’s work, I’ve never felt comfortable saying this phrase out loud. At first I thought I was too attached to politeness rules. How could I leave a “thank you” just hanging in the air without the proper acknowledgment? Awkward.
That explanation fell apart, though, when I realized I could just combine politeness with Cialidni’s response: “You’re welcome—I was happy to do it. I know you’d do the same for me.”
It didn’t change my mind. The response still left a bad taste in my mouth. Eventually, I realized the problem was the subtle appeal to reciprocity. There’s nothing wrong with trading favors or asking others to repay the help you’ve given, but when I chose to help people, I wanted to do it without strings attached. I didn’t want to leave them feeling like they owed me. So I stuck with the familiar, banal “you’re welcome,” which was mildly dissatisfying. Why do we utter this strange phrase?
In English, it’s a relatively new arrival. Over the past century, “you’re welcome” has evolved to connote that it’s my pleasure to help you or “you are welcome to my help,” which we tend to say more directly in other languages like Spanish and French (“the pleasure is mine,” “it was nothing,” “no problem”). Is there a better alternative?
I stumbled upon an answer after meeting Adam Rifkin, a serial entrepreneur who was named Fortune’s best networker. He goes out of his way to help a staggering number of people, doing countless five-minute favors—making introductions, giving feedback, and recommending and recognizing others. After Rifkin does you a favor, it’s common for him to reach out and ask for your help in return.
At first, it seems like he’s just following the norm of reciprocity: since he helped you, you owe him. But there’s a twist: he doesn’t ask you to help him. Instead, he asks you to help him help someone else.
Rifkin is more concerned about people paying it forward than paying it back. In his view, every favor that he does is an opportunity to encourage other people to act more generously. That way, a broader range of people can benefit from his contributions.
After watching Rifkin in action, it dawned on me that Cialdini’s line could be adapted. Instead of “I know you’d do the same for me,” how about this response?
“I know you’ll do the same for someone else.”
Just like Cialdini’s reply, it affirms your character as a person who’s happy to be helpful. Unlike his version, it doesn’t deliver the implicit message that you’re indebted to me, and I’m waiting for you to repay it.
It’s just a sentence, but the underlying values have the potential to fundamentally change the way that people interact. In traditional direct reciprocity, people trade favors back and forth in pairs. In contrast, Rifkin’s approach is called generalized reciprocity. As described by political scientist Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone, “I’ll do this for you without expecting anything specific back from you, in the confident expectation that someone else will do something for me down the road.”
If you follow this approach, when you really need help, you have access to a broader range of potential givers. If you stick to direct reciprocity, you can only ask people you’ve helped in the past or might be able to help in the future. In generalized reciprocity, you can extend your request to a wider network: since you’ve given without strings attached, other people are more inclined to do the same. In fact, social scientists James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis have conducted experiments showing that acts of giving often spread “up to three degrees of separation (from person to person to person).”
So next time someone expresses appreciation for your help, it might be worth stretching beyond politeness to ask them to pay it forward. I know you’ll do that for someone else.
By Adam Grant.

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131112175357-69244073-why-you-shouldn-t-say-you-re-welcome?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0

How to Productively Work From Home

With the internet allowing modern age business owners to run their operations from just about anywhere in the world, many are choosing to run their business entirely out of their house. Those who choose to forego the office and instead work from the comforts of home need to learn to manage their daily schedules in a manner that will keep productivity at a maximum.
Organize an At-Home Office
Aside from the tax benefits that some at-home business owners are entitled to, creating a space in your home that is specifically for work has advantages for your mental health as well. Creating a space in your home that can function as your office will allow your brain to transition into work mode and allow you to focus without the distractions of the television and other domestic chores that may call your name when spending time at home. While it may seem tempting, simply waking up and pulling your lap top into bed with you is not the recipe for a productive work day.
Set Your Daily Work Hours
It’s important to make a distinction between the time you spend working at home and your personal time at home. Making sure that you stop dealing with work and start spending time with your friends and family during the evenings is beneficial for your own mental health. By setting specific daily work hours, your associates will know which times they can contact you via phone or email. Putting down your laptop at 5pm and leaving it until the next morning will ultimately make you more productive during your set work hours.
Take Advantage of LinkedIn
Being active on LinkedIn is a great way to make sure that your face is recognizable to your business associates as they will not be seeing you around the office.  LinkedIn is the preferred social network for business networking as it is a strictly professional network where experts share articles with others in their industry. Unless you’ve built a personal relationship with a business associate, connecting on LinkedIn is the most appropriate social network to use that can still keep your personal and professional life separate.
By Brendon Pack.

http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=182405#.UnvIgttFDIU

Google Study Reveals Internet is Top Choice Among Shoppers this Holiday Season

The internet will be a top resource for many shoppers this holiday season,  smartphones will be the device of choice, online marketing will influence holiday shopping, and cross-screen shopping will be a big deal, according to a recent study conducted by Google.
This holiday season,  89% of shoppers plan to use the internet for holiday shopping.  Seventy-nine percent of  shoppers consider the internet the most useful resource for holiday shopping.
Three in four of shoppers say online research will help them decide which gifts and brands they’ll buy this holidays season. Online research will influence brands bought (76%),  retailers shopped (76%)  and type of gift (77%).
According to Google 2013 Holiday Shopping Intentions study,  online ads will influence holiday shoppers more than television.  Display ads, email offers and search ads as a whole influence more than television.  Six in 10 shoppers will pay attention to search ads and one in three will pay attention to video ads.
What are shoppers using this holiday season to help them shop online?  The study revealed more shoppers will use  a smartphone to help with their online shopping.  In fact, 41% of all adult shoppers will use a smartphone for their holiday shopping which is seeing a 17% increase from last year.
Seventy-six percent of smartphone owners will use their smartphones for holiday shopping, according to the study.  One in four smartphone owners plan to make a holiday purchase on their smartphone, which is up 21% from last year.
Google expects mobile shopping to increase on traditional in-store shopping days – weekends,  especially the one between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The study shows that 53% of smartphone shoppers will use their device to help with ecommerce shopping,  an increase from 46% last year and 53% of shoppers will use their smartphone while in the store.
This holiday shopping the Google study revealed that cross-screen shopping will be huge.  Eighty percent of shoppers will use more than one device at once while holiday shopping and 84% will start gift shopping on one device and finish on another.
This year mobile holiday shopping is being driven by millennials, according to the study.  Eighty-eight percent of millennial smartphone owners will use their devices for holiday shopping, a jump from 67% last year.  Thirty-one percent of millennial smartphone owners plan to make a holiday purchase on their smartphone, a jump from 17% of adults last year.
Shopping for the holiday season has begun early this year, according to the study.  Shopping for the holiday season, the study revealed began before Halloween.  Half of shoppers will research before Thanksgiving weekend and 60% will purchase that weekend.
It’s all about the bargains this year , 81% of shoppers will rely on discounts and 76% will take advantage of free shipping and 60% of shoppers will act on purchase incentives.

http://multichannelmerchant.com/marketing/google-study-reveals-internet-is-top-choice-among-shoppers-this-holiday-season-05112013/

The other side of working from home

"You are so lucky," grumbled an acquaintance at a party. "No commute, no boss, no office politics. I would love to lounge around in pyjamas and work when I want and how I want." "It is not that easy," I protested but he was carried away by his own misery and refused to believe me. I work from home. The key word is WORK but what seems to stand out is home. It seems enviable to many, especially the men who are denizens of the corporate world. Working from home conjures up images of leisure, freedom and flexibility. You don't have to get up to an alarm and rush around getting ready, gobble up a hurried breakfast and brace yourself for the traffic. Instead, you can take your morning breath to the computer which will not complain about your hygiene or dress sense. Shower in the afternoon, if you feel like a shower at all. And when you need a break, just shout out to the spouse/servant who brings a hot cup of tea made just the way you like, along with some fresh pakodas. What's not to like? When I decided to quit a full time job and become a consultant and a writer, I believed that working from home would be a blessing- the ideal solution that would let me work at my time, be with my daughter and keep a gentle eye on the goings on in the household. I saw myself deftly juggling a rolling pin and rolodex, seamlessly switching from the key board to the blackboard. Ours is a small household of 4 including my full time help who is the cook and housekeeper. I could easily manage. I don't cook or clean. I do have some flexibility and freedom. Yet working from home requires truckloads of discipline, oodles of self motivation and nerves of steel. I can recall a day last week when I thought I would have a productive day at work. A typical day when I am not in a workshop or client site begins at 6.30 in the morning when I get up to send my daughter off to school. The husband and I have a brief chat on the plan for the day and he leaves for office. I do my yoga and/or walk, breakfast, shower and move to the study which doubles up as my place of work. I have plans for this day. I need to complete a proposal to a client, attend a conference call , send a couple of emails and write at least 500 words for an article. So far, so good. At 10.30 a.m,I switch on my laptop and start with the proposal." Didi, Colin nahin hai." my cleaning maid pokes her head in. I make a note in my list of Things to Do. I remember that she had not dusted the sideboard. I notice a stray cobweb. Instructions are given.Back to proposal. The intercom rings. I rush to the phone and pick it up only to have it disconnected. Where is the maid and why is she not picking up the phone. Just as I settle down again, it rings again. I ignore it.My housekeeper announces that someone is coming with a parcel. Turns out to be a courier with my husband's credit card. I am asked to produce identification to receive the credit card. I manage to get type up something on the design of a workshop that I am proposing. My mobile pings. It is already the time for my call."Didi, gas khatam hua," says the help. 5 minutes to the call. I tell her to change the cylinder. It is stuck she says. We push and pull and fix the thing togetherI get on the conference call. In the middle of the call, the maid enters and gesticulates wildly. She holds her nose and makes some gagging sounds. Something is not right. I can't focus on the call. Finally, I am done.I rush out to discover that there is a leakage of some sort from the gas cylinder. The kitchen smells of LPG. There is a defect in the new cylinder. She is in the middle of cooking and we are out of fuel. I call some neighbours and someone kindly offers me her spare cylinder. I call the Gas agency but no one picks up. I make a note in my Things to do.The cleaning maid comes in to tell me that she is leaving. She wants a day off. No, I almost shout. You take too many holidays. It is my son's school meeting she says. They have called the parents. Her husband is quite useless in this matter. I negotiate for a late arrival. She will try, she says , making no promises. I relent, one working mom to another. Back to proposal. Is it already lunch time?I get into my wannabe Multitasking avatar. I am halfway through lunch and The Lowland. The Lindt chocolate in my fridge beckons. I ignore it until it becomes an insistent shrill summon. The book is interesting. I continue with a few chapters after lunch. Surely, I deserve a break of half an hour. I promise to myself that I will finish my proposal today. I still have time.2.30 p.m. I go to the bus stop to pick up my daughter. We discuss what happened in school. We have Bio test tomorrow she says. And there is some Hindi project. Something needs to be researched and written about Chanakya. I think school is a great institution but I have my reservations about homework. Especially the kind that makes the parent work at home.Start reading Bio. I will finish my work and we will revise. I check my mails and see that there are two new ones that need to be answered.My daughter comes in to negotiate. I will study Bio and you can research my project, she starts. No way. I have too much work to do. We discuss what she can write about Chanakya. One thing at a time, I insist. Finish Bio and then we will do Hindi. I need to finish the proposal. I notice an email reminder for my credit card payment .I add it to my Things to do.I get an unexpected call from a client. She wants to discuss the dates for a workshop that had been planned for the month. They may need to change it. As we discuss options, my daughter mouths something to me. I shoo her away and try to shut the door. She glares at me and marches off. The maid shouts from the kitchen- something about jeera or Kheera . I ignore her. Finally I finish my call and step out- Can't I even talk for a few minutes in peace, I say but no one cares to respond.My daughter looks at me accusingly. You forgot. I told you the light in my room wasn't working. Now I can't study. Damn. Didn't I put it in my Things to Do. I call the electrician.I reconfirm dinner menu and give the maid money to buy cucumber for the salad from the shop in our condominium complex. I check on the state of bread and eggs and find we need to replenish that too. Why does she tell me these things at the last moment?Is it evening already? I have to make the last page of the proposal. I have to check the research on Chanakya. Why do 12 year olds need to write about Chanakya in Hindi? Why do they also need a printout of a picture which can be seen anytime on Google Images? I open up the Google Hindi website on Chanakya and toggle between that and my proposal. In the meantime, I am also giving my daughter some questions to answer in Bio. My husband calls and asks if I have paid the electricity bill due three days back. Pay it yourself, I want to shout. I make a mental note to make an actual note in my Things to Do.Is it dinner time already? My husband is home. Horrible day, Terrible traffic he says. You are so lucky you don't have to go out to work everyday! I glare at him. We do dinner. I am almost done with the proposal. I tuck my daughter into bed. It is only 10.15 p.m and I feel terribly sleepy. I drag myself back to the computer and send off the proposal. I still have the article to write but my brain has gone into deep freeze. I can't get a word out. I read a few pending emails.I shut down the machine and decide to go to bed. My husband is checking Facebook. Other people seem to have interesting things to do and say. What did you do today? He asks. I rack my brain. I finally sent off that proposal to ABC, I say. That's it? That's all you did the whole day, his look says but he wisely restricts it to a 'Uh uh.'Another day of work has gone by. My Things to Do list has grown exponentially. I shouldn't complain. I know I have to be more disciplined, more assertive, more focused, more tenacious. Some day, I will get there. Someday I will also get myself a little office-away from home.

 http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/nirupamasubramanian/3585/64908/the-other-side-of-working-from-home.html

Science reveals what really increases Twitter followers

The world of science has some new advice for people who want to increase their Twitter following, and it may sound something your mother used to say: If you don’t have anything nice to tweet, don’t tweet at all.
“Expressing negative sentiments in tweets is the second most harmful factor to growing a Twitter audience,” say researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology. They speculate about why: “This might be because Twitter is a medium dominated by very weak social ties, and negative sentiment from strangers may be unpleasant or uncomfortable for a potential new follower to see.”

C.J. Hutto, Eric Gilbert and Sarita Yardi tracked data from over 500 active Twitter users as they tweeted more than 500,000 times in the course of 15 months. The Twitter users were randomly selected from the public timeline over a two-week period, and then screened for requirements like English language, an active account that was at least 30 days old, with at least 15 friends and 5 followers. Hutto elaborated by email:

Although we did nothing to specifically exclude institutional/brand accounts, a quick investigation of a subset of the ~500 users that passed all filters every 3 months indicates these are mostly “everyday” typical non-celebrity users… Very few (if any) are brand or institutional accounts.

About every three months the researchers recorded each user’s follower growth, and analyzed what it was about their tweets and behavior that seemed to lead to growth.
They say this is pretty groundbreaking work — “the first longitudinal study of audience growth on Twitter to combine such a diverse set of theory inspired variables” — and it seems so.
Another bit of advice based on the findings: Stop tweeting so much about yourself.
“Informational content attracts followers with an effect that is roughly thirty times higher than the effect of [personal] ‘meformer’ content, which deters growth,” the researchers wrote. “We think this is due to the prevalence of weak ties on Twitter.”
In other words, your Twitter followers don’t know you that well and thus don’t care about what you’re eating. Feed them information instead. Among the accounts studied, users talked about themselves in 41 percent of their tweets while informational content accounted for only 24 percent.
Overall, the study tracks and compares three types of factors — the content of your tweets, the dynamics of your social behavior and the structure of your follower network. Or more simply: What you tweet, how you interact and who you know.
This chart illustrates the statistically significant factors with the biggest impact on follower growth (translated into lay terms in the list below):

1. Number of connections in-common with potential new followers (good)
2. High frequency of others retweeting your tweets (good)
3. High frequency of informational tweets (good)
4. Too many “broadcast” tweets not directed at anyone in particular (bad)
5. Too much negative sentiment in your tweets (bad)
6. A detailed profile description or “bio” (good)
7. Profile has a URL listed (good)
8. “Burstiness” of your tweets, or the peak rate of tweets-per-hour (more is good; Twitter agrees)
9. High ratio of followers to following (good)
10. Lots of tweets with positive sentiment (good)
11. Cramming too many useless hashtags into your tweets (bad)
12. Use of long, fancy words (good)
13. Your tendency to follow-back those who follow you (good)
14. Profile lists your location (good)

As always with research like this, consider it a helpful framework but not a step-by-step rulebook. Twitter users in general seem to want you to be positive, informative and interactive — all good advice — just remember you also need to be yourself.

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/205411/science-reveals-what-really-increases-twitter-followers/

If you are wondering why you are struggling to succeed with your online business, this article by David DiSalvo gives some insight into how your brain might be working against you ...

"Luke: I can’t believe it.

Yoda: That is why you fail."

My research into the traits of influencers and achievers continues, and as I turn more pieces of this puzzle around to fit the whole, more ideas appear to me as a fit for this space.  In this edition, reflections on falling short — more precisely, why we fail despite ourselves.

1. Like Yoda said, you just don’t believe it. 

The crucial part of Yoda’s dialogue with Luke is “believe.”  The human brain is a powerful problem-solving and prediction making machine, and it operates via a multitude of feedback loops. What matters most in the feedback loop dynamic is input — what goes into the loop that begins the analysis-evaluation-action process, which ultimately results in an outcome. Here’s the kicker: if your input shuttle for achieving a goal lacks the critical, emotionally relevant component of belief, then the feedback loop is drained of octane from the start.  Another way to say that is — why would you expect a convincingly successful outcome when you haven’t convinced yourself that it’s possible?

2.  Other people have convinced you of your “station.”

I’ve always thought the “know your station in life” idea to be among the most pernicious we humans have ever come up with.  The only version of it I like is Tennessee Williams’:   “A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.”  Love that Tennessee Williams.  What’s more pernicious than the idea itself is that it’s often heaved upon us by other people, and they convince us that we are what we are and we’d better just live with it because, well, that’s what we’ll always be.  Really? Says who? Show me the chapter on predetermined stations in the cosmic rule book, please. This also gets back to the feedback loop dynamic, because if this external “station” scripting is part of your input, you can expect sub-par outcomes all the time.

3. You don’t want to be a distrupter.

The word “disrupter” has taken on such a heavy, mixed bag of meanings in the last few years.  Reading both popular psychology and business books, I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing to be.   One thing seems certain — the notion of disrupting anything–of being the water that breaks the rock–is scary to most of us.  Reason being, disruption is perceived as a threat to our threat-sensitive brains. Disruption means that consistency, stability and certainty might get jettisoned for a time, and that puts our hard-wired internal defense system on high alert. Sometimes, though, you have to override the alarms and move ahead anyway.  If you never do, you’ll never know what could happen.

4. You think, “what if I die tomorrow?”

We all think this from time to time.  And you know what, sure, any of us might die tomorrow — all the more reason not to waste time thinking about it and hamstringing yourself from going after what you want to achieve.  Would you rather die as a monument to mediocrity or as someone who never quit striving?  Which leads to the next one…

5.  You wonder how you will be remembered.

The rub here is simply that, if you “die tomorrow,” will people remember you as someone who clung to stability like an existential life preserver — and is that what you really want?  I know for a fact that many people do want exactly that, because it’s a comfortable niche to occupy on the obituary page.  ”She/he was a good person, good friend, good….”  Good is fine, but it ain’t great. You can’t strive for great achievements by dropping anchor in Goodville.  My take on this is: it’s OK to wonder how you’ll be remembered, but don’t let thoughts of “good and nice and stable” effect that all important feedback loop, because if you do your brain will be happy to oblige with lots of good and little else.

6. You think there must be a pre-established role for your life, and you might be screwing with  it.

This one also touches on the “station” idea discussed above, but it goes deeper than that. We humans are prone to believing in something psychologists call “agency.”  We want to believe there’s a reason for everything, and that everything has a prime mover — an agent, whether human or otherwise. So, we think, what if there’s a reason we are what we are — what if celestial agency has determined it so?  Should we be messing with that?  The error in thinking here is clear — agency is a figment our brains rely on to manage difficulty with as little trauma as possible. The first thing to do is recognize that, and then recognize that the role for your life has only one true agent — You.

7. Your career appears to be well-established and that’s good…right?

Well, maybe that’s good, sure.  The question becomes, is “established” what you really want?  Maybe it is, and that’s cool. But if “established” means you can’t reach beyond certain imposed parameters to achieve anything else that you truly want, then maybe it isn’t so useful after all.  Like most things, this is a personal choice and it doesn’t have a right or wrong answer.  But it’s worth acknowledging that you may very well be “establishing” yourself out of greater achievements.

8.  You are afraid of losing what you have built.

A totally legitimate fear, and one we should kick out of our perspectives as quickly as possible.  Here’s one example why:  Remember this little thing we’ve been suffering through for sometime now called a recession?  Remember how many people lost all or nearly all they’d “built” during these last few years of economic erosion? The reality is, you can lose everything in a heartbeat through no fault of your own, so why allow that fear to stop you from reaching out for what you really want?  This goes in the same basket as “I could die tomorrow.”  Yes, true, we can lose, we can die. So what? Push forward.

9. You think, “maybe I’ve hit my ceiling.” 

The proverbial “ceiling” — so long have ye been with us, and yet so little have ye given us.  I side with the late great Peter Drucker who said (paraphrasing from this classic article on Managing Oneself) if you reach a point in your career where you think you won’t progress any further, then start focusing on the next part of your life.  Actually, he added, you should start thinking about the next part of your life well before you begin it.  The point is, forget about ceilings and focus on achievement. When you start using the cultural shibboleth of the ceiling as an excuse, you are achieving nothing and will continue to do just that.

 1o. Confusion about where to go.

Of all of these 10 ideas, this one is to me the most difficult because it plagues me almost constantly. Gearing up the cerebral feedback loop for achievement is one thing, but without a sense of focus and direction, all of that energy isn’t going to yield very much in the end.  My experience has been that sometimes you have to let the energy flow for a while without too firm a sense of direction and see if focus emerges organically. Once it does, you can then nurture it into a more structured method for getting where you want to go.

 

http://startinganonlinebusinessfast.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-10-reasons-why-we-fail.html