 (article text below video) Running your own business can be very rewarding. But there are times it can also be discouraging if you let it. Having run my online business since 2005, I've learned quite a bit about what works and also what does not. Here are 8 ways YOU are blocking success in your online business. 1. Grammar And Spelling Mistakes Whether in your blog posts, videos, or social media posts, making grammar and spelling mistakes can affect the way your business is viewed. Even if you're great at English spelling and grammar, it's always a good idea to check over everything before it gets posted. Having an experienced web content expert is ideal, where possible. 2. Not Giving Enough Information Not giving enough info is a big block in business success. When people purchase a product or service online, there needs to be some trust involved, as there are plenty of scammers out there. Trust building is one of the most important aspect aspects of running your online business. Part of that is ensuring your potential clients and customers get detailed and accurate information about not only the item or service, but about your business as well. If they can't find enough information, it can cause them to click away. Always include information that easily shows your business is legitimate. Products and services should require zero to little questions when the description is read. It should be very clear who you are and what they can expect. If you are not the best writer, you can always hire a professional product description writer to write or rewrite your product pages. 3. No Logo Or Other Brand Identity Issues Your business logo is a big part of how people will recognize your work online. In addition is your unique posting style, products, services, and business personality. If your business doesn't have enough of a brand identity, it can be hard to stand out in the sea of existing web content. Your brand identity is how people find you and stay with you. If you need help with brand identity, don't hesitate to reach out for a custom plan catered just for you and your business, regardless of your budget size. We work with small and large budget and payment plans. 4. Social Media Post Mistakes Always check and re-check everything before you hit that post button. Does all of your text make sense? Is the grammar and spelling correct? Does what you said fit correctly with your brand and with your audience? Are previews from any links loaded correctly? Are your posts going out at a good time for your audience? Is the information accurate? Some social media sites have text limits. Ensure what you are posting does not get cut off by these limits. Making these and other social media mistakes could be blocking success in your online business. Clients and customers can easily get turned off by inaccuracies. For those not versed in grammar, hiring a social media expert is a good solution. 5. Not Connecting Enough With Your Audience Audience engagement is huge in keeping people around for more. People want to interact with you and your brand. That's why they are there. But if you aren't doing that enough, they can easily wander to the next business who will give them the attention they crave. Create fun, engaging posts on social media.This could be memes, videos, stories, Q & A posts, and so on. Get creative and make it related to what you do. Be sure to respond as quickly and accurately as possible to all contact form requests, email inquiries, social media messages and comments. Learn your audience and grow with them to help them see they are a part of your team. Your audience is the key to your success. Appreciate and interact with them as much as possible. Your brand identity should be present in all of those interactions. They need that personality in order to have something to connect to. If you don't have the time for this, there are social media and branding experts who can learn your brand's personality and help or take over that area for you. 6. Not Keeping Your Mindset In Check YOUR mindset is KEY to succeeding in online business. Regardless of how little or how much you make, you need to keep those thoughts in check. In order to manifest and maintain a successful business, your thoughts about the business should always be good ones. During slow times, look at other positive aspects unrelated to sales. Think forward on the solution, not on the problem itself. It is okay to consider the issues and reevaluate based on them. But don't let slow or non-existing sales cause negative thinking in regards to your business. The main focus should be on goals and resolutions. Overthinking on problems can block success in your online business. 7. Location Of Your Products & Services Where are you placing your products? If you are listing in them in marketplaces only and don't have your own website or domain, this could actually block a large number of sales. While you can certainly succeed in online marketplaces, having your own website will hugely add to that success. It builds trust and legitimacy that online shoppers often look for. It also looks more professional and gives you much more room to build that brand identity. Hiring a professional website designer will ensure quality content, help you get found by search engines, and avoid common mistakes beginners make in building websites. However, if you prefer to build your own, there are plenty of business hosting companies that are easy for beginners. I personally recommend Weebly, due to the fact that they seem to offer the most options with the best prices. They are also very easy to use and automatically optimize your site for both web and mobile audiences. 8. Low Quality Images For Products & Services Online shoppers are very visual. This is because they cannot physically touch and see your items in person. Therefore, product images need to be as clear as possible. The images need to feel as though your potential buyer is looking at the product in person. Include as much detail as possible. Also, try to highlight the items in a way that stands out when you look at the picture. Try different angles to see what images catch your eye immediately. These are the images you need to use. You can also try accenting the images with text, your brand logo, and related props or image templates. When it comes to services, some may do better with mostly text and background graphics that accent what is being offered. You can also hire a professional image creator if you get stuck. If you are doing any of these 8 things to block success in your online business, that's perfectly normal. Don't panic. Simply focus on fixing it and watch your business start to do better as you make the appropriate changes. If you have any questions about online business success, you can always reach out to us for simple answers or even schedule a consultation.
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by Phoenix Desertsong, Tarot Reader and SEO Expert When you create any piece of content, your intents must be aligned with the intents of your audience. That’s really what SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is all about, after all. Searcher intent is the most important thing to understand when deciding how to frame your content and making it easy to find through the use of search engines. That’s all well and good, but how do you actually know searcher intent, especially when it relates to the specific things you do, love, and are passionate about? Sure, there are plenty of free - and paid - SEO tools out there that give you some insights into keyword phrases, search traffic volumes, competition, ranking factors, and blah, blah, blah. That’s not to say these things aren’t important, because they can be helpful. But, they are just tools, after all. When it comes to optimizing anything in your life or business, making your intents clear and focused is of absolute importance. You can write content or tag and describe podcasts, videos, and pictures and whatnot with the perfect keyword phrases. But even if people find it, will they actually get anything out of it or interact with it? Probably not, if your true intent isn’t clear. You may know what that is, but is that clear through what you project through your website, branding, and content? Online tools won’t help you with this. Nope. You have to look within yourself and use your own intuition to figure out how to best align your intents with those of your intended audience. How the Heck Do I Use Intuition in SEO? I’m sure I’m far from the first person to say that using your own intuition in optimizing your content for search and inbound marketing is a good idea. After all, you are creating - or responsible for the creation of - the content that surrounds your brand and business. Even if you’re running a website for a hobby that’s not for profit, because you are putting your energy into it. If you’re pouring your heart and soul into something, it’s business. So, you want to have your brand and business to be consistent with your intents and keep that balance clear, focused, and obvious. If you’re very goal-oriented and are a good planner, you probably already have a good idea of the keywords and target audience to focus on already. But if you don’t have all that planned out, that’s OK, too. You don’t always need a plan to be exact. After all, it’s your thing, so do it how you’re comfortable doing it. While numbers, keyword research, and traffic reports & insights have their place in optimizing the searchability of your content, they don’t tell you the most important thing that you need to know. Where do you focus your energy? That’s where intuitive SEO comes in. What Tools Do I Need for Intuitive SEO? The beautiful thing about intuitive SEO is that you don’t need to pay a whole bunch of money for a tool. In fact, the tools are pretty cheap. I know that I’m not the first one to do this for business, but I may be the first to do this, at least publicly, for the purposes of figuring out your SEO strategy. Let’s do a Tarot card reading. Wait, huh? One of the best ways to know where we should be putting our energy is to relax, take a deep breath, and use some divination tool to help us tap into our own intuition. Contrary to popular belief, tarot cards and the like don’t “tell the future,” but rather give us insight into where we’re at right now in the grand scheme of things and where the Universe suggests that we should go. If you’re not into the spiritual “stuff,” that’s OK. But hear me out. For my example here, let’s take something that I know I like and would write content about if I took the time to. That thing is vegan sausage. While that sounds like a silly example, it probably shouldn’t surprise you that people like to find new ways to cook with sausage. I’m not here to talk about the benefits of vegan sausage. Or am I? Before I do any fancy keyword research, or look at potential competition, or anything, I need to know what my focus should be. How would reading a Tarot card help us do that, though? Let’s see. For this reading, I'm using my personal Mystical Cats Tarot deck. But you can really use any Tarot deck you want. As you shuffle the deck, clear your mind and focus your energy on the deck. Then, ask the question “Where should I focus my energy when writing about (enter your topic here)?” In this case, I’m asking the deck about “vegan sausage.” The card I drew for this? The Three of Earth reversed.  Image © Rayne L.L. Desertsong; All Rights Reserved Let's see what the Mystical Cats Tarot guidebook, “Tales of the Mystical Cats” says about this card. When it's in the Upright position, the card offers this advice: "Problems that seem insurmountable alone become manageable - and enjoyable - when you work together. Think about how your project could benefit from teamwork. Apply creative cooperation toward a common goal." But what if it's reversed, like in our case here? Tarot cards have a significantly, sometimes drastically different meaning for you - when reversed. Reverse: "You are taking on too much on your own, This doesn’t make you independent, it makes you a martyr. Don't try to cope with more than is reasonable or become exhausted by struggling on alone. Ask for help." What do these reasons have to do with SEO? SEO can be extremely overwhelming. But you don't have to reinvent the wheel or even do it all yourself. This reading tells us that in order to succeed with writing SEO-friendly content for the topic of “vegan sausage” we should be seeking out help. Collaborating with others is a key to being successful writing online content on this topic. Of course, guest blogging and blog collaboration is commonplace. But especially with how popular vegan meats have become, working with others is key to getting noticed and included in the community for this niche. In fact, this reading just saved you a lot of time. Rather than spend countless hours digging for long tail keywords, you should instead introduce yourself to like minded bloggers and website owners to collaborate. That way everyone wins and you have people already invested in your work. Then once you have an established following, see what you alone can offer that you haven't seen written about. Then, you can focus on a few key tee directly related to the topics you want to focus your original content around. Since then you'll already have an audience, your content will get seen by more people. Also, since your audience will already be targeted towards people who like recipes and whatnot about vegan sausage, it will perform better! There you go! You can do this exercise with any oracle deck, even inspirational ones. There’s also divination with playing cards, too, called cartomancy. There are plenty of guides on cartomancy and all you need is any old deck of playing cards. It's all about using the cards as a tool to focus your mind on intuition. So, if you're feeling stuck or overwhelmed with your content strategy our keywords research, don't worry! This one card business reading could be exactly what you need you jumpstart your content! If you're just starting out or focusing on something new, you should give it a shot, too! ~ Phoenix <3 ~ >>> Get a FREE Business Tarot or Oracle Reading with any Brand Shamans Custom Brand Healing Package, starting with a Brand Analysis! <<<
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