Trisha Sebastian | Trisha Claudine Sebastian

What’s a Sales Funnel | 5 Key Steps to Creating a Sales Funnel

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Sat, 30 Apr 2022 04:53:00 +0000

If you're running a business, you know that sales are key. But how do you make sure that your leads turn into paying customers? A sales funnel the answer! This guide will talk about a sales funnel, why you need one, and how to create and use one for your business. So, let's get started!

What’s a Sales Funnel? The Ultimate Guide to Creating and Using One for Your Business

Sales are the lifeblood of any business. But how do you make sure that your leads turn into paying customers? A sales funnel is the answer!

What’s a Sales Funnel

A sales funnel is a process that takes a potential customer from initial awareness of your product or service through to purchase. By mapping out this journey, you can better understand what motivates your customers and what challenges they face along the way.

Why You Need a Sales Funnel

A sales funnel gives you an overview of the journey your customers take from initial awareness to purchase. This helps you identify any bottlenecks or pain points that might prevent them from converting.

By understanding your sales funnel, you can also see which marketing activities are most effective. This allows you to focus your efforts on the channels driving the most results.

3 Key Sales Funnel Steps

Top of the Funnel
Middle
Bottom of the funnel

How to Create a Sales Funnel

Here are the Key Steps to Creating a Sales Funnel:

Define your audience: Who is your ideal customer? What needs do they have?
Create a lead magnet: This is an offer you provide in exchange for your visitors' contact details. For example, it could be a free e-book, white paper, or discount code.
Drive traffic to your lead magnet: Use paid advertising, social media, or other marketing channels to drive traffic to your lead magnet.
Convert leads into customers: Once you have a visitor's contact details, you can start working on converting them into paying customers. This could involve sending them additional information about your product or service or following up with a phone call or meeting.
Measure and optimize: Always test and measure your sales funnel to see what's working and what's not. Then, make changes to improve your conversion rate.

By following these steps, you can create a sales funnel that will help you to convert more leads into customers.

11 SEO Issues You Might Be Doing Wrong on Your Website

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 12:16:00 +0000

11 SEO Issues You Might Be Doing Wrong on Your Website

Do you know that there might be things on your site that are probably hurting your SEO traffic? Then, check out these 11 SEO Issues on Your Website that could be ruining your SEO. And find out how you can fix them!

1. HTTPS Pages Linking to HTTP Pages on Your Website

Modern browsers warn about a nonsecure page if an internal link on your website brings people to an HTTP URL. Nonsecure page warnings can damage your overall website authority and user experience.

Check your links to make sure that they link to the HTTPS versions. Make sure you link to HTTPS pages where possible.

2. Forgotten Noindex Tag

You are probably wondering why a page is not getting any traffic. One good reason it's not ranking would be your site tagged as noindex.

A noindex tag tells search engines that a page should not be indexed. In addition, it tells Search Engines that they should not show your page on its Search Engine Result Page.

You probably didn't add it manually. But some WordPress and e-commerce platforms can noindex a page with just a click of a button or a checkmark. So check if you have anything on your pages in the header that tells Google not to index a page.

3. Thin Content

Thin content does not help your site to rank well. Google has its prime pickings of content with a billion blogs. So it's a no-brainer for Google to rank high on its Search Engine Results Pages, the site with the good stuff, and ignore the crap.

Unless you create content on how-to instructions that do not need to be lengthy, make sure you give valuable and dense content. For example, add images, animated GIFs, or videos. Otherwise, thin content will not do well for you and your site.

It doesn't mean that you need 5,000-word articles or even 1,000 or 10,000-word articles. Just make sure that you cover every aspect of the article that helps someone get what they need. If you're not doing that, then your content is thin.

It's not about length. It's about the value that you're providing. So you're good if you can provide value in your content in 500 words. If you can do that in 2000 words, you're good too. It's fine if it takes 5 to 10,000 words. The key is to be super thorough.

4. Excessive Anchor Text-rich Links

It might be tempting to use terms where you want your site to rank as much as possible. However, while it is tempting to use keywords you want to rank on and link it to another page with the same keyword to rank higher on the keyword, it might be hurting your SEO.

The problem with this is that if all your pages have the exact anchor text, it alarms Google. It is not natural for every internal link or external link to have the exact anchor text.

An exception would be using the terms: Click here, Learn more, or even your site's main keyword repeatedly, but make sure that you use them naturally. The rule of thumb is to use them as best for the user.

5. High Resolution and Non-Compressed Images

High-resolution images may look great, but they will not help you rank on Google Image Search results if uncompressed.

Image Search can drive so much traffic. If you're not leveraging that,

you're missing out. So make sure you have high-resolution images,

high in quality but compressed from a file-size standpoint.

Compressed High-Quality images will help your site rank up well.

6. Irrelevant and Intrusive Pop-up Ads

Have you ever visited a site with too many pop-ups? How was your experience? Odds to none, those pop-ups probably ruined your viewing experience. You do not want to have these annoying customer experiences on your site.

It does not mean you should not have pop-ups anymore, as these pop-ups are helpful for brand monetization and revenue.

The general rule of thumb is to make sure that the pop-up's value is more than the intrusion effect that it causes. If the pop-ups don't add value and are just ads, you might want to reconsider your pop-ups.

If your site's pop-ups ruin your site visitor's experience and don't provide any value, either remove them or try to provide way more value.

7. Pages With Errors

Make sure to fix your 400 errors or 500 errors.

8. Redirect Loops

Often, you are going to remove old pages or consolidate your content. And when you do, you're going to use 301 redirects.

However, when you do these 301 redirects, they'll redirect one page to another. So it can cause a 301 redirect loop which you wouldn't want for your site.

Each time you do 301 redirects, ensure they're not in loops. Don't do 301 redirects to URLs that are redirecting to another URL. The best practice is to make them go straight to the most recent URL. If you have to update all your old 301 redirects, make sure you do that.

9. Orphaned Pages

Orphaned Pages are pages that don't get linked anywhere internally.

You probably have a well-done piece of content. But if no one knows about it, it doesn't matter. You're not going to get any rankings from it.

Make sure that you're interlinking relevant pages to your content.

You don't want orphaned pages. But, if you do that, you'll find that you spent all this time creating this content, making it so beautiful and visually appealing, but no one ends up seeing it.

Make sure you add the internal links. For example, on my team, what we do is anytime we publish new content, we link it to 3 old pieces of content. By doing that, we're ensuring that our new content also ranks well.

10. Links to Redirected Pages

Internal links should not be redirecting. Fix these redirecting internal links. Change those old internal links in your site and make sure you link them to the right end place. The best practice would be to update your internal links each time you add 301 redirects or 302 redirects.

11. Internal Broken Links

Broken links are a natural part of the website as your site gets older and your business becomes more established. Of course, every site does, but make sure you clean them out once a quarter.

WordPress SEO Plugins To Optimize Your Site: Speed and Performance

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 17:38:00 +0000

Wouldn't it be great if you could optimize your WordPress site for SEO without having to be an SEO expert? Below, I'll share with you Factors to Consider in Optimizing your website, but I will also share which plugins you can use, so you don't have to worry about the details and coding.

WordPress SEO Plugins To Optimize Your Site

WordPress SEO Plugins for Site Speed and Performance Optimization

If your site loads slow, what you'll find is your conversion rates drop.

Imagine yourself being on your phone, searching on Google, and you land on a site that is taking forever to load. What would you do? Would you sit there and wait for the site to load? Of course not.

You're going to click the back button and go to a different page.

And that's why you'd want to make sure that your site loads fast.

Amazon themselves had to lose billions of dollars when their website loads slow.

And that's Amazon! Of course, you're not going to lose as much as them because none of us make as much as Jeff Bezos. But percentage-wise, we're going to lose way more than them because we don't have as well as an established brand.

Here are a few things that affect your site load time:

A cache is where people don't have to keep loading up your images.

They know that you're saving the same ones over and over again, so they cache them.

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network takes your content and puts it all over the web, like servers in India and Brazil, and United States. That way, whenever someone's visiting your site from the UK, you don't have to crawl through the broadband pipes underneath the sea to visit your site. They'll just ping a server in the UK so that way just loads faster.

Minification of Images

Not necessarily changing the size of the images,

but it does change the file size.

Lazy Load

When you go to a site and you scroll down, there's no need for them to load up all the images at once. Instead, they just load them as you scroll

so that way you can improve the experience.

JavaScript

If you have too much JavaScript on your site, it can slow things down.

Image Compression

WordPress SEO Plugins to Check Out:

WP rocket
NitroPack
WP Fastest Cache
W3 Total Cash
WP Smush for image compression.

WordPress SEO Plugins for Technical SEO

If Google can't crawl your page and understand what's on your page or able to read the content on your site. How are you going to rank for anything? And that's why technical SEO is super important.

Everyone talks about link building, and you need all these links, new content, and they're right.

You do need links and you do need content.

But if Google still can't crawl your website, understand the content on your page, and read the code. Then it doesn't matter how many links you have. You're not going to rank for much.

Here are some of the Technical SEO Elements:

Site Map is a page or a file and you can do another XML that lists all your pages on your site or all your articles.

Titles and Meta Descriptions

Whenever you do a Google search, you see a title and a text underneath that, a description, that's your title tag and meta description.

Robots.txt File

This is a file that you can block Google from calling certain pages.

If you have a login page or checkout page with credit card information,

you don't want people just scraping that kind of stuff.

Check for Broken Links

You don't want Google to crawl a link and find out that it's dead.

That makes you look bad.

AMP Pages

More people use Google from their mobile devices than desktop devices.

The AMP framework makes your pages load faster on mobile devices specifically for text-based articles.

Check your Redirects.

There are 301 redirects, 302 redirects. One's permanent, one's temporary,

but that can be because the bots go around in circles if you've done your redirects wrong.

Schema Markup

You know whenever you go on Google and you're searching for a product or a restaurant, you're seeing those star ratings, that's an example of schema markup.

Websites are passing that information to Google, so that helps.

SSL Certificates

Do you see that lock symbol next to your URL? That makes people feel more secure. And Google's looking for that when they're ranking websites.

WordPress SEO Plugins that can Help:

All In One SEO
Yoast SEO plugin
SEOPress
Schema Pro for Schema Markup
Rank Math
Simple SSL
AMP for WordPress

You don't have to use all of them but these are the list you can pick from. There's no wrong or right way as all plugins are getting better.

WordPress SEO Plugins for Content Marketing

If you write content, no matter how amazing it is, if no one reads it, no one sees it.

You're not going to do well if you don't focus on the marketing of that content and making sure that your content is buttoned up as well.

Here are the Factors to Consider for Content Marketing:

Push Notifications - You can send this out on your website to get more visitors.

Grammar

No one wants to read content that's poorly written. Make sure you check your grammar and fix it.

Because Google's like at the source in a dictionary, they know what's good spelling, bad spelling, great grammar, bad grammar. If you're writing, I love using Grammarly.

Social Sharing

Even though Facebook's reach isn't that great compared to what it was years ago it is still better than nothing. You'd still want to share that content on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn, depending on where your niche is.

Collect Emails

They always say, the money's in the list. Whenever you create a new blog article, you can send out an email blast and get that traffic rolling in.

WordPress SEO Plugins to Check Out:

Subscribers for Push Notification
Hello Bar for Email Collection and Call to Action
Grammarly for grammar
Shared Counts for getting more social shares

WordPress SEO Plugins for Security

These days we're all worried about privacy and security. You don't want hackers to inject malicious code into your website or publish fake content on your website. And it happens.

It's super important for you to avoid.

I've mentioned SSL earlier, but there are also a few other plugins that can help like Sucuri and Wordfence.

If you want to do it all manually, you can. But if you use these plugins,

it'll give you a kickstart without having to learn all the nitty-gritty details of SEO.

10 Advanced SEO Strategies for New Websites

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 17:24:00 +0000

SEO Strategies for New Websites

When starting with a new website on a brand new domain, it can be frustrating not to see any traffic on your website for months. But, unfortunately, that's just how it is.

But If you want to speed up this process and get more traffic on your site faster, follow these steps below. They will help ensure that Google sees what it needs to see to rank your website higher than all other sites competing with yours. Learn how to write content that gets ranked faster, build links quicker, and strategies that will help your site rank higher in search engines like Google. Here are some tips to help you speed up this process to see results sooner.

1. Write on Low Competition Topics.

In Search Engine Optimization, we call these keywords the low-hanging fruits. So first, write on topics that nobody has written about before. Do this for the first 15-20 articles on your new site.

Craft a well-curated, long, in-depth article for something that no one has ever written before to show Google that you belong at the number one spot.

2. Submit your published articles in the Google search console.

Every time you publish a new one on your new website, submit each link to Google Search Console for your first batch of articles. This is crucial for Google to find your content.

Google Search Console is an online tool that allows you to monitor and maintain your website's presence in Google searches. However, when it comes time for users to find information, the importance of this platform can't be understated, as many articles are constantly being lost within GSC due to glitches.

Submitting a new webpage or link ensures its visibility on Google by updating its indexing system directly. Don't worry, as this is something you'd need to do when your site is starting. As soon as your website is 3-4 months old, Google should be able to crawl and index it naturally.

How to Submit Your Site to Google Search Console.

3. Go hard after the Google Featured Snippets in Search.

Google Featured Snippets are a great way to get your content in front of more people. It's much easier to rank for snippets than ranking for 3rd, 4th, or 5th spot at this stage of your site.

Google displays featured snippets when their systems determine that it will help people more easily discover what they're seeking, both from the page description and when they click on the link to read the page itself. They're especially helpful for those on mobile or searching by voice.

If you want your new site included in featured snippets, there are several things you should keep in mind when creating content that will be eligible for this type of display.

You can get featured on Google Featured Snippets if you craft a better and more precise answer than the other sites out there, and if you're in luck, there might not be a featured snippet yet, and it's a no-brainer for you to go for it!

Write concisely with clear language. Write a short, concise answer that will grab Google's attention. You can do this by simply being the best short answer to what people are asking about.

Remember that it is important to write the snippet in the right format when you do this. For example, it could be a short sentence, a structured list, or a bulleted list. You can find out the best format for your answer by checking what the other snippets have done before taking over the snippet.

Look for a snippet that's not right on point where you can do a better and more precise answer.

To win this snippet, look at similar searches for more competitive keywords.

Here are some other tips:

Make sure all titles and descriptions include relevant keywords and phrases.
Avoid duplicating words from the title tag within the description tag.
Use bullet points where appropriate.

Once you create optimized content, submit it via Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools). Then monitor its performance over time by checking back every few months to see if it appears as a featured snippet!

It may take some time before Google starts showing your webpage this way, but once it does, users will love having access to information right away without leaving search results! And remember – don't forget about mobile optimization!

4. Make sure to answer the question completely.

Give your readers all the answers to their questions. But make sure you are still giving them enough reason to click from Google to your website.

You can do this by crafting an enticing title that shows people that you have something more for them.

You can do this by having a bulleted list as an answer but having a list more than what Google will typically show in its results.

Usually, Google will show from 5-to 7 bullet points in a list where the rest of the bullets will not show on Google SERP.

So to get those clicks to your site, you can say on your title something like 9 Best Ways to [Your Title] or 11 tips for [Your Title].

People will know that they have to click your title and read the article to get the full story.

5. Write to meet Search Intent.

To meet your reader's search intent, write the exact answer to what they are searching for and nail it.

Show them at the beginning of the article that you have exactly what they are looking for.

One frequent mistake that copywriters make is coming at a certain subject at an angle and building momentum before answering.

They usually give their answers at the bottom part of the article to keep readers on the page and interested in the article.

But, it's much better to offer the full and just short, concise answer at the top of the blog post, even though some people might bounce off your page right after getting that answer.

Google will know that these people found what they came for because they're not going to go back to the search result page and click on the next answer.

By putting the most important part at the beginning of your article, people will trust that you know what you're talking about and that you have the answer they're seeking, and they are more likely actually to read the whole thing.

6. Always check the competition in Google before writing.

Go to Google and search for the topic you want to write about.

If your website is new, you just registered the domain, putting those first articles up. If you find the correct answer in one of the articles that already rank in Google, there is no need to prioritize that topic.

7. Choose Your Traffic Wisely. Get relevant eyeballs on your first articles.

Refrain from asking all your friends and family to check out all your articles if they are not into that topic.

While you may be getting a lot of visitors to your site, if they are not into the topic of your site at all, they would just bounce off quickly, and Google will see these as bounce rates. This visitor behavior will tell Google that your page is not good quality content because it's not a good mesh with the audience you're showing it to.

So instead, find the people interested in what you have to write.

8. Go into Facebook groups or Look into Forums.

Go to Quora and ask some closely related questions about what you're writing about. It's important to show Google with the first visitors to your site that your content is clear content that people love and want to stick around.

They want to click through to the next article than not bounce off because they have no interest whatsoever in what you're writing about.

So even though it can be very tempting to show all your friends your new website, wait a little while and try to find the right places where people are looking for what you have to share.

Write the best possible content for your first articles and invite people over who have an interest in what you have to share.

This shows Google that you have excellent metrics that people want to stick around, and they love what you're doing.

9. Write for Your Niche.

Focus on creating great content relevant to what people in your industry search for online.

Make sure to include keywords in your post titles and throughout the body of each article.
Use your keywords in H1 tags and image alt text if applicable.

This will help Google understand what your site is about. In addition, this means Google will send more targeted traffic over time when they index it into their search engine results pages (SERPs).

10. Leverage Social Media Platforms.

Most people find out about new websites through Facebook or Twitter posts by friends or influencers they follow online who share links with their followers! So make sure to create profiles on these social media sites.

Use hashtags like #SEOStrategiesForNewWebsites when posting articles related to your niche topic area so others who might be interested in reading them will discover them too!

These are the SEO strategies for new websites. If done correctly, it will work for you! Of course, it takes time, but once it starts working, then everything will fall into place. Do you know of any other SEO Strategies for New Websites? Please share in the comments section below.

Good luck with ranking your new site up! If you've tried any of these tips and tricks, please let me know in the comments section below. I'd love to hear your testimonies and stories!

How to Grow Alocasia Albo from Seeds

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 17:29:00 +0000

Seeds (August 3, 2021)

After 2 weeks...

After 3 weeks...

After 4 weeks (September 3)

Growing Mango Plant

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 10:40:00 +0000

Instagram Aesthetic | Instagram Feed Branding Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 17:38:00 +0000

With Instagram being the number one social media platform where people share and discover new places, products, and experiences, it is no surprise that Brands from emerging to major ones are getting into Instagram to boost their brand’s social awareness.

Brandwatch, which is a monitoring tool for social media, says that People engage with brands on Instagram 10 times more on Facebook, 54 times more than Pinterest, and 84 more times than twitter. Seventy-one percent of brands have accounts on Instagram because followership on Instagram leads to a 75 percent conversion.

With this said, having a strong and consistent Instagram presence builds brand awareness. It creates lasting relationships, which result in long-term organic growth.

However, being on Instagram does not necessarily translate to that. Your brand needs to stand out, and a beautifully branded Instagram feed helps your brand to do just that!

Instagram Aesthetic

As a business, a beautifully branded Instagram feed creates the impression that you care about the details.

Instagram Feed Branding Strategy

1. Instagram Puzzle Feed

Instagram Puzzle Feed

This one image - broken up into different posts – layout is not just visually aesthetic but is also good for telling a story. This instagram feed is also good in laying out information in trickles creating excitement for their followers - definitely a catchy feed that makes people stay for the next post - a great way to market!

2. The Bright and Airy Instagram Feed

This light and airy feed definitely screams soft and feminine! This feed is popular to lifestyle brands and women bloggers. If you are in that brand category, this incredibly gorgeous feed trend is definitely one that converts! To achieve this look, fill your feeds with photos of light-colored background, muted colors and lots of natural light!

3. Colour Coordinated Instagram Feed

In the sea of the uniformly-looking instagram accounts made up of perfect sunsets and meticulously arranged food shots, this instagram feed filled with images dominated by a single color. Color-coordinated instagram feeds screams creativity that could definitely catch anyone’s attention.

4. Color Block Instagram Feed Theme

In contrast to the bright and airy instagram feed, this colorful feed is vibrant which will send your audience a young and playful vibe! To achieve this look, feed your feed with colorful and color-filled photos!

5. FlatLay Instagram Feed Theme

Flatlay Instagram Theme seems to stay in the game when it comes to branding feed as this kind of theme is really helpful in showcasing a product.

Have you made up your mind of what theme you want to brand your Instagram feed is? Let me know in the comments below so I could pop up and say hi on your feed!

How To Create Catchy Email Subject Lines

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 02:00:00 +0000

How To Create Catchy Email Subject Lines

Open rates are a number that you would want your email analytics to be good at. And catchy email subject lines would be your best allies in getting those emails opened. While you may not be able to get every one of these into every email subject line, aim for as many as possible where suitable.

1. Create urgency
Adding a bit of urgency into the subject line can propel action, especially if your email contains something that is time sensitive, restricted or in some way liable to sell out. The old ‘act now!’ might not be the right approach but you can add a sense of urgency without sounding like an old TV advert.

2. Pique their curiosity
You can make people curious to open your email in lots of ways but always make sure you deliver on the promise. A little mystery, a hint of what’s inside can work wondered – just avoid clickbait. ‘Exclusive new offer’ shouldn’t be the normal price on your website, for example.

3. Tell them there’s an offer
If you have a special deal for them, a new offer or a freebie to deliver, don’t be afraid to add it to the email subject line. The old (+ Freebie) after your main subject line is great – just ensure you actually do have a new freebie in there!

Tips on Creating Catchy Email Subject Lines

Once you have some ideas about how to create urgency, curiosity and how to let them know what you are offering, there are some other considerations to help you write the perfect newsletter email subject line.

Watch the length

We live in a mobile world and we pretty much live on our smartphones. This has an impact on the length of the subject line we can see – 50 characters are about the average.

Yet we routinely create subject lines that are too long and the 77% of people that use mobile cannot view entirely. Wasted effort! If you need to go longer, make sure the most important stuff is in the first 50 characters.

Get to the point

This ties in with the above point – make sure you immediately show why you are emailing and why they want to read it. We scan, it is inevitable so make sure you stop that scan with something interesting, eye-catching or even funny. They can all work (well, they have on me anyway!)

Use action orientated words

Using action orientated verbs in your email subject lines can inspire people to act. Words like try, register, important, go, celebrate – these prompt people to do something that we are directing them towards (and open the email, of course)

Make sure your sender name is familiar

Spam email is a pain and we all want to avoid it. We subconsciously decide about an email first by looking at the sender’s name. So make sure your name, business or blog name or other identifying information in the sender’s name to inspire confidence.

Add some relevant personalization

Personalization, done well, can make a difference and most subscription companies make this easy.
This is good for a greeting and the occasional bit of emphasis.

Go overboard in a good way

With newsletter email subject lines, you almost need to go a bit overboard to attract attention, pique curiosity and get the open.

Use a little punctuation but don’t go over the top and the same goes for using all caps.
One word for emphasis but not the whole thing!
Use emojis for emphasis not to try and write the whole subject line because not everyone speaks emoji
Talk to people like they are real people in your subject lines as this will get a better response – so you can be a bit over the top like you would when you excitedly emailed your friend about something, just not too much
CoSchedule have both some great examples on their post on the topic and also have an email subject generator that is like their headline writing tool.
Some of their examples include:

The best (audience you are talking about) are using this (tactic or idea) to (get this benefit)

The best Instagram influencers are using this number of hashtags to grow their account (bit long but you get the idea)

Save (%) on (your product or service) before (negative consequences)

Save 15% on my Pinterest management service before all the slots go (number)

secrets the best (audience you are talking about) use to (benefit)

10 secrets the best bloggers use to grow their traffic with Pinterest

Don’t forget A/B testing

Once your list reaches around 100 people, you can start doing a bit of A/B testing and much of the top software out there help with this.

With Maropost, I can send a sample of my different email subject lines. It then sees which one gets the most opens and sends the email with this subject line to the rest of the list. Try not to make them too different so you can see what works clearly.

Marketing Explainer Video | 4 Best Social Media Hosts For Your Explainer Videos

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 15:41:00 +0000

Marketing Explainer Video

Hosting your explainer video on your website means no ads, advanced analytics, faster speeds, and extra features — including CTA buttons, forms, A/B testing, social media integration, custom ads, and more!

But you would also want to have your videos up on the different social media where the people are already viewing. Below I list down the 4 Social Media that is best on hosting your explainer videos.

4 Best Social Media Hosts For Your Explainer Videos

1. Facebook

The big win you’ll make by uploading to Facebook and then embedding on your site is that all your views get totaled up in one place, giving your video uploads more social proof and making it more desirable to potential viewers (on Facebook and your website). If you have a particularly successful video, you can serve it up as a Facebook ad and double-down on its popularity. With Facebook ads, you can choose exactly who sees your video, meaning that you can magnify your video’s ability to attract customers.

2. Youtube

Being owned by the largest search engine (Google), it packs a one-two punch of a massive user base, and higher rankings in search results. Not to mention detailed video analytics to help you refine what makes a popular video. If you’re looking to reach a huge audience, want to gain followers with your YouTube videos, or want to monetize your content, then YouTube may be for you.

3. Vimeo

Not as large as YouTube’s, so potential audience is smaller, but the platform has a reputation for higher quality and more professional content. Videos are ad-free by default, and cross-device compatible, with no limits on bandwidth, file size or duration (as long as it’s within your plan’s monthly limit.) You’ll also get access to some privacy settings and basic statistics

4. Dailymotion

Offers free and paid accounts, as well as a partner program offering ad revenue and increasedexposure. Videos are not ad-free, but they play at the end of video by default. Like both other options, videos can be embedded on any other website. Storage and bandwidth are unlimited, but file sizes top out at 2GB, and videos can’t be longer than 60 minutes. Also, analytics are limited, even for paid accounts.

Organic Traffic Growth | 8 Untapped Organic Traffic Sources

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 01:26:00 +0000

Organic Traffic Growth | 8 Untapped Organic Traffic Sources

ORGANIC TRAFFIC GROWTH

You already know about Google, and you already know about Facebook, but there must be other traffic sources that you can leverage, and you know what - I've got Untapped Organic Traffic Sources listed just for you! Read on to find out more!

8 UNTAPPED ORGANIC TRAFFIC SOURCES

1. Quora

The first way you can get traffic is through Quora.
Go on Quora, find all the people that are typing in questions related to your space.

For me, I may go to Quora, type in online marketing and I'll look up all the questions people are asking around online marketing.

I'll respond to them. As I respond to them, if there's a good place for me to put in a link to my website, I'll do that.

If you look at my Quora profile, I generate over 100,000 views a month, because I'm continually answering more and more Quora questions within my space. It's a good source of traffic.

2. Reddit

The second way you can get more traffic is through Reddit. Reddit has subreddits literally on every single topic, whether it's pets, marketing, space, etc. There's a section on Reddit pretty much for every industry out there! What you want to do is participate in the community on Reddit. Don't just submit your own content, upvote content that you like. Downvote content that you hate!

Submit other people's content from around the web. It's a great way to generate more traffic.

3. Forums

Everyone talks about how they're dead because of Facebook but you know what? A lot of popular forums still exist on the web. Go out there, participate in them, answer questions within your space.

For example, I'm in the online marketing niche, there's so many online marketing forums such as Warrior Forum or Digital Point. When I go there and I respond to questions, in my signature, I can leave a link back to my URL or my homepage. It's a great way to drive more traffic.

4. LinkedIn

The fourth way is sharing your content on LinkedIn. Whether you have new posts or old posts, don't just click the LinkedIn share button, you can actually write content on LinkedIn!

Take your blog content.
Write the first few paragraphs of it or more so copy and paste it right on to LinkedIn.
After, the third or fourth paragraph, you can put "Click to continue reading," and if they want to read the rest, they'll go over back to your website.

It's a really easy way to generate traffic! I generate an excess of 30,000 visitors a month purely from LinkedIn by just using this tactic.

5. Small Blogs within Your Niche

There's a lot of popular blogs like TechCrunch, Mashable, Forbes, etc., but there's also lots of smaller blogs within your niche and the people who read these blogs are much more relevant to you and your business.

Go to all these blogs.
Look at their posts.
Leave comments. Leave comments providing insights.
With most blogs, when you leave a comment, it asks you for your name and URL.
When you share your name and URL, people can click on your name and go back to your website.
But make sure that when you're leaving comments, you're not spamming. If you're not adding value, don't leave a comment!

6. StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon may not seem that popular because it actually is, and you can buy clicks for pennies on the dollar. You put in what industry you're going after, and you can buy clicks from StumbleUpon for pennies on the dollar. You can also get free traffic if you use a toolbar and you're sharing content from around the web as well.

7. Facebook Groups

Participate in Facebook groups. Similar to forums and to Quora, people have a lot of questions in these Facebook groups. Join them. You can do a search on Facebook for anything. It will show you groups.

Let's say I type in "marketing related terms" and it will show me some groups. I'll join some of these groups and within there, I can participate and help people out. If I have a blog post that's relevant to some of the questions that people are asking, I can even link out to my own blog post. By doing this, I'm driving traffic from Facebook. The beautiful part about Facebook groups is it doesn't adhere to the same restrictions or algorithm that a Facebook fanpage does. With the Facebook group, if you leave a comment and it's a good comment, everyone within the group can see it and you'll generate more traffic.

8. Tiktok

@arsenkay Facebook wants your money to get your posts seen by your followers. ##marketingtips ##facebooktips ##tiktoktips ##paytoplay ##monetization ##organicgrowth
♬ original sound - arsenkay

How To Play Tennis

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 10:01:00 +0000

How To Play Tennis

How Does Tennis Scoring Work

How Many Sets in Tennis

How To Wash Tennis Shoes | How To Clean Tennis Shoes

How To Serve In Tennis

My Birthday in Port Barton

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 09:50:00 +0000

My Birthday in Port Barton

Port Barton Palawan

Digital Nomads | How To Be A Digital Nomad

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 08:08:00 +0000

How To Be A Digital Nomad

Digital Nomad Jobs

Best Jobs To Work Remotely

Digital Nomads

How to Create Landing Pages That Convert

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 04:55:00 +0000

How to Create Landing Pages That Convert

Landing pages are an essential part of any online marketing campaign. They are the pages you send your visitors to, with the primary goal of converting them into customers. To create landing pages that convert, you need to focus on a few key aspects.

In this article, we will discuss the main characteristics of high-converting landing pages and how you can use them to improve your conversion rates.

What Is A Landing Page

In our previous articles, I've taught you how to create lead magnets. In this article, I will teach you how to create Landing Pages. Lead Magnets attract people to subscribe, and landing pages are what we create to collect their email addresses to receive our amazing incentives!

The Pin Funnel

Pinterest Pins - promotes our Lead Magnet/Incentive - Blog Post, Pop-up, or Product Page of our website.
Blog Post - reiterate that they can sign up to get the free training.
High Converting Page: The form where they put their email address to confirm they want to get their free incentive and to get on our list.

Elements of High Converting Landing Pages

Clear Title - Know what we are getting when we subscribe
FREE/INCENTIVE LISTED - Reiterate the cost and incentive! Use it in the button and the copy!
Branded Image/PERSONALIZED
Call To Action - Grab Your Copy/Get Your Free Download/Arrow to Draw Your Eye on where you want them to sign up.
ONLY ONE ACTION - Do not add multiple options or many opportunities to click away. That is to SUBSCRIBE

Main Characteristics Of Landing Pages That Convert

The main goal of a landing page is to convert your visitors into subscribers. Converting your visitors to subscribers means creating an environment that only highlights your lead magnet and keeps visitors from leaving your landing page. So that subscribing to your email list seems like the only option available.

A Properly Designed Landing Page

Remove outbound links: Get rid of all the links and navigation bars on your page that would allow visitors to leave your landing page.
Craft an effective CTA: Make your call to action buttons more compelling by using actionable words like "Get It Free," "Download Now," or "Sign Me Up."
Include the CTA above the fold: Add a CTA section:

In the top half of your landing page
And at the end of the page.

Embed a video: Studies show that embedding a video in your landing pages helps encourage your visitors to stay longer on your website.
Optimize for color psychology: The colors you use on your landing page and your CTA buttons also psychologically affect people. So choose the colors wisely to achieve better results.

Tools To Create High-converting Landing Pages

1. Lead Pages

2. Mail Chimp _ Free Email Management Program/Email Collecter

3. Aweber

4. Email Manager

Personal Branding in 2020 | How to Successfully Build Your Personal Branding

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 19:18:00 +0000

Personal Branding in 2020

How to Successfully Build Your Personal Branding

View this post on Instagram

I was just saying the other night (to @callaloobox ) how I don’t ever want to be the smartest person in the room!!! I don’t need to be head honcho all the time (just sometimes 😝) 💥 What do you need to learn today to move your business forward? The answers are right here in this group of amazing women @herpowermoves @herpowerspace @sarahjakesroberts with A Word #creativebusiness #dreamsdocometrue #herpowerspace #herpowermoves #reachyourgoals #dreamersanddoers #homebasedbusiness #dontquityourdaydream #communityovercompetition #empoweredwomenempowerwomen #fempreneur #smallbusinesslove #workfromhomemommy #savvybusinessowners #bossbabetribe #fortlauderdale #sunriseflorida #tamarac #lauderhill #selfcaresunday #dreamscancometrue #personalbranding #solopreneur #buildyourbusiness

A post shared by Michelle Y Talbert Esq-Curator (@herpowermoves) on Mar 1, 2020 at 12:20pm PST

View this post on Instagram

Funnels are great, but building trust and credibility is better.⁣ ⁣ So many spammy looking funnels out there are crushing people’s credibility.⁣ ⁣ It’s a sin because these people probably have legit products and services.⁣ ⁣ So my question is, “How do you want to be perceived by your audience?”⁣ ⁣ Before you dive into creating funnels, the first question I’d ask is, “Do I have a brand?”⁣ ⁣ Once you build that first, your funnel has a much better chance of converting quality leads into paying customers.⁣ ⁣ The full video on this will be out tomorrow on my YouTube channel “The Brand Doctor” tomorrow (Monday) Link is in my bio @thebranddr 👈 #levelupyourstandards #scaleyourbusiness - The Doc 👊

A post shared by Branding For Entrepreneurs (@thebranddr) on Mar 1, 2020 at 9:17am PST

Have Your Own Website. Watch the video below on how you can choose your domain name.

Once you are decided on your domain name, start and plan your website.

Once you are done with your website's blueprint. You can now create your website.

Mitch Miller is a former rock star turned entrepreneur, who’s experienced homelessness, a heart attack, and financial ruin. He is the owner of Opposed Media, a marketing agency and training company. Mitch is the author of 6 books, host of the Dark Horse Council Mastermind, award winning makeup artist (don’t ask), TEDx speaker, and university lecturer. He hosts up to 12 live training events per year and commands a daily consulting fee of $20,000.

Add caption

Perry Belcher is one of the co-founders of DigitalMarketer.com, the world’s leading digital marketing education company. He is also the CEO and President of Native Commerce, Convention People, Scalewind and other companies. Perry has made over $400M in direct sales. Additional trivia: he co-invented the hand sanitizer and sold the patent in the 80s.

How to Use Social Media to Penetrate Any Market, Make them Addicted to You, and Create a 7-Figure Business with Die Hard Customers for Life

Mailchimp Tutorial For Beginners 2020 [WITH VIDEO - LEARN MAILCHIMP FAST IN 16 MINUTES]

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 05:16:00 +0000

One important aspect of Digital Marketing is converting leads.

This is when a lead becomes a paying customer. Lead conversion aims to achieve this. True conversion occurs once you've made money with your marketing, not simply when you've attracted someone to contact your company, email you, or fill out a web form.

As an Editorial Manager of different brands, I aim to generate content and get more eyeballs on our sites through Social Media Marketing and convert these eyeballs into leads through Newsletters.

One of the great Marketing platforms that I use is Mailchimp. In this article, I would like to share what Mailchimp is and How it is used to convert your leads into paying customers!

Mailchimp

Mailchimp Login

First things first, the Mailchimp Login! You may go to this link to login in to Mailchimp: https://login.mailchimp.com/.

What Is Mailchimp?

MailChimp is a well-known, industry-standard email autoresponder that's been prevalent in the field for several years. It has become somewhat of an industry-standard thanks to its free pricing to certain levels and wide-ranging functionality.

How To use Mailchimp?

What Does Scaling A Business Mean?

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 06:28:00 +0000

What Does Scaling A Business Mean?

When starting a business, one of your main goals is probably to grow it as much as possible. But what does scaling a business mean? And more importantly, how do you do it?

This blog post will give you a comprehensive definition of scaling a business, along with some tips and strategies to help you get started. So read on to learn everything you need to know about scaling your company!

When it comes to scaling a business, there are three essential things you need to know: what it is, how to do it, and the benefits.

In this blog post, we'll explore all those topics so you can make an informed decision about whether or not scaling your business is the right step for you. I'll also provide some tips on getting started!

First, let's start with the basics: what does scaling a business mean?

Scaling a business simply means growing it to a larger size. This can be done in several ways but typically involves increasing your customer base, expanding into new markets, or adding new products or services.

Now that you know what scaling a business means let's look at how to do it.

How to Scale a Business

If you're looking to scale your business, there are a few key strategies you can use:

Identify new markets

When scaling your business, one of the best things you can do is identify new markets to tap into. This could involve expanding into new geographic areas, entering new industries, or targeting new customer segments.

Increase your marketing efforts

Another great way to scale your business is by increasing your marketing efforts. This could involve ramping up your advertising, launching new marketing campaigns, or investing in PR and thought leadership initiatives.

Invest in growth initiatives

Finally, investing in growth initiatives is another key strategy for scaling your business. This could involve hiring new staff and opening new locations to develop new products or services.

What Does Scalability Mean?

Scalability relates to how fast a business can grow and how much earning potential it has.

Both revenues and costs go up.

A business with high scalability is where the revenues go up, and the costs do not go up too much - leaving room for profit. It all goes down to fix costs and variable costs.

Now that you know what scalability is, what scaling a business means, and how to do it, let's look at some of the benefits.

Benefits of Scaling a Business

Typically, businesses scale to achieve one or more of the following objectives:

Increase revenue

One of the most common reasons businesses scale is to increase revenue. By growing your customer base and expanding into new markets, you can drive top-line growth for your business.

Improve profitability

In addition to increasing revenue, another common goal of scaling is to improve profitability. You can boost your bottom line by becoming more efficient and streamlining your operations.

Drive shareholder value

Another benefit of scaling your business is that it can help drive shareholder value. By growing the size and scope of your business, you can create more value for shareholders.

If you're thinking of scaling your business, I hope this blog post has been helpful. Check out other resources for more information and tips on getting started!

Steps in Scaling A Business

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 02:44:00 +0000

Scaling a Business with Digital Marketer's Co Founder and Rival Brands CEO and Co-Founder, Perry Belcher

Steps in Scaling A Business

Trisha Sebastian Scaling a Business with Digital Marketer's Co Founder and Rival Brands CEO and Co-Founder, Perry Belcher

1. Products.

The best products don't always win. Products does not necessarily take you to the next level.

2. Personality.

If you die or if you do not exist, what happens to your business? If you die, the business dies. If a business is 100percent predicated on your personality, it is not a scalable business. If it is, you wont have a life.

3. System

If a business is built on a system, this allows you to scale.

Have a Stream-lined System that produces a result with the great product that you have not based on your personality.A great system, with a good product and a decent personality would do 10x more better than a great product, good personality and a decent system. Make Sure that your system is driving Your Business!

Trisha Sebastian Scaling a Business with Digital Marketer's Co Founder and Rival Brands CEO and Co-Founder, Perry Belcher

What You Need With A Great System - You need someone to drive the System!
You don't have to have the most flamboyant personality to be a great driver.

Businesses wont scale on their own.

Drivers do things that you and I never see - Drivers know how to drive a vendor. They know how to drive a partner, an employee, an executive, a team member and a client!

5 Steps in Scaling A Business

1. Think Big - Continuously!

Being a big thinker among your friends does not necessarily make you a big thinker. You may be a big thinker amongst small thinkers. Apple happened because there was a product expert Steve Wozniak, but it scaled because there was a big thinker driver - Steve Jobs!

2. Celebrate Life Span!

If your entire goal is tied on a money

3. Learn to Balance Working in your Business and on your Business.

Time this well.

4. Always aim for the Optimal Solution (Highest Return)

Do not simply put a band aid on issues, but always sit down to make sure that the pain will go away. Make sure to always find the optimal solution not just a solution.

When looking for a solution, always answer the question: What is going to put you and your business to not face the same issue again instead of making the pain go away.

What can you do to get the highest possible return?

5. Leverage

Knowing that you don't have all the answers, Bring somebody in who is the opposing strength of you. If you are the profit/visionary type of CEO, bring an operations Driver. If you are a good CFO, bring in a great investor. Leverage partnerships - right vendors - a partner thats going to come that you may give something to scale the business with.

What can you do to leverage time?

What can you do to leverage Business?

What can you do to leverageVendors?

What can you do to leverage Partners?

What can you do to leverage Executive around you?

What can you do to leverage Team Consultants

What can you do to leverage someone who is going to help you scale the business?

Hire very slow and Fire very fast!

Pinterest Marketing Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Fri, 21 Feb 2020 08:11:00 +0000

With Digital Marketer's Co-Founder Perry Belcher

Hi! I’m Trisha Sebastian, Resident Pinterest Marketing Expert and Social Media Strategist for Olympus Peak Media. And In here, I’d like to share with you my Pinterest Marketing Strategy on how I increased our Pinterest followers, link clicks and saves, and have converted these numbers on Income generating revenues!

In here, I would be sharing best strategy on Pinterest Marketing and how you can use pinterest to help grow your business!

Scaling A Business

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Fri, 21 Feb 2020 05:06:00 +0000

Scaling A Business

If you're reading this, then congratulations!
You have a successful business, and you're looking for ways to take it to the next level.
Scaling a business can be tricky, but you can do it with the right tips and advice.
This blog post will discuss some of the best ways to scale your business.
We'll talk about how to identify growth opportunities, how to create a roadmap for scaling, and how to execute that plan.
So if you're ready to take your business up a notch, read on!

With Director of Operations Malou Sebastian, Digital Marketer's Co-Founder Perry Belcher, and Agency Owner Roger Sambrano

Scaling A Business

Scaling a business can be difficult, but these tips will help you do it successfully.

When scaling a business, there are a few things to keep in mind.

Identify growth opportunities.

Look at your customer base and identify areas where you can expand.

Create a roadmap for scaling.

A roadmap for scaling will help you map out what you need to do to expand your business successfully.

Execute your plan.

Executing your plan includes putting all of the pieces together and ensuring that everything runs smoothly. Scaling a business can be difficult, but these tips will help you do it successfully.

With Director of Operations Malou Sebastian, Digital Marketer's Co-Founder Perry Belcher and Agency Owner Roger Sambrano

Now that you know how to scale a business, it's time to put these tips into action.

Begin by identifying opportunities for growth in your customer base.

Once you've done that, create a roadmap for scaling.

This roadmap will help you map out what you need to do to expand your business successfully.

Finally, execute your plan. It includes putting all of the pieces together and ensuring that everything runs smoothly.

Scaling a business can be difficult, but these tips will help you do it successfully.

By following the above steps, scaling your business will become much easier and less daunting of a task.

Remember to identify growth opportunities, create a roadmap, and execute your plan. With these steps scaling your business will be a breeze!

Did you find this blog post helpful? Let us know in the comments below! And be sure to check out our other blog posts for more great tips and advice. Thanks for reading!

If you have any questions about scaling your business, please reach out to me in the comments below. We would be happy to help! And don't forget to check out our other blog posts for more great tips and advice. Thanks for reading!

The Tips For Scaling A Business This 2020!

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Fri, 21 Feb 2020 03:24:00 +0000

Scaling A Business

The Tips For Scaling A Business This 2020!

Got the chance to sit down with Digital Marketer's Co-Founder Perry Belcher, and get the Tips for Scaling a Business this 2020.

View this post on Instagram

What skill are you learning online? 🧐 - *This is not meant to be a quote* 👀 - - - - #quotestoinspire #businessgoals #buildyourbusiness #successminded #elonmusk #inspirationalquotes #businessgrowth #businessquotes #entrepreneurship #millionairelifestyle #successquotes #millionairemindset #positivequotes #BusinessConsultant #BusinessCoach #freedombusiness #successcoach #businessstrategy #startyourbusiness #growyourbusiness #scaleyourbusiness

A post shared by Business Tutorship (@businesstutorship) on Jun 1, 2019 at 4:45am PDT

You're not supposed to be seeing this... but these are The Tips For Scaling A Business This 2020!

Learning The Tips For Scaling A Business This 2020 from Digital Marketer's Co-Founder, Perry Belcher

Strategies For Overcoming Procrastination

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 18:27:00 +0000

Strategies For Overcoming Procrastination

The first month has gone by f0r 2020, and have you achieved a percentage of your tasks leading to your project completion in achieving your 2020 goals? Procrastination is the opposite of productivity. If you want to be productive, you need to stop procastinating. In here, I will share with you my Strategies for overcoming procrastination and hopefully this year will be a fruitful and productive one for you.

1. List down the things that you need to do.

If you are like me, you can be starting your day without a list with a lot of things to do and needed to finish. Listing down things that you need to do could help you see things more clearly and organize your system better. List down the things that you think you have put on hold.

2. With your list up, do one thing right now!

Instead of making excuses, tick off one thing that you can do right now. Execution removes excuses and action eliminates anxiety. As Nike says, Just do it!

3. Set a time TODAY to do things on your list.

With one thing ticked off from your list, it could set you on a roll. Put a deadline on each of your list. A dream without a deadline is just a fantasy, so make sure that you put a deadline on each one. And remember that once you have placed a deadline on it, that you respect your schedule.

4. Stop being a perfectionist.

Remember that there is no such thing as perfect and this could free you up some slack to actually doing things right now. At times, we wait for the perfect moment, the perfect time and the perfect mindset. But as Anna sung in Frozen, just do the next right thing! Sometimes just one step forward is better than no steps taken at all.

5. Have a vision of what it would look like after you have done what you are delaying.

Accomplishing your tasks would give you a boost of energy and sense of fulfillment!

Cork Wine Bar & Shop

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Cork Wine Bar & Shop

Cork Wine Bar and Shop is a wine place located in BGC for the wine-lovers!

Cork Wine Bar & Shop

Add caption

It's a great night spent with these Badass Girl Bosses!

Add caption

Barre 3

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 10:50:00 +0000

How To Build New Habits

noreply@blogger.com (Trisha Sebastian) — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 11:45:00 +0000

According to studies, January 19 is usually the date when New Year’s Resolutions get abandoned. That's why I chose to write mine today...

How To Build New Habits

But seriously speaking, how do we get to form a new habit and stick to it? Stopping bad habits and implementing good ones seems to be a struggle to all of us.

James Clear's Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones is one of the best books that gives actionable advice on how we can live more effectively. While there is no new information in this book, this book gave a masterful job of synthesising and condensing information in a highly digestible and actionable series of steps!

Here are some of the great takeaways I learned from the book:

How To Build New Habits

Incremental Changes Can Result In Massive Results.

Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. However the Effect of Compounding does not just apply to investments. Small 1% improvements in our lives compound to create astounding effects in our lives.

In illustration, if I improve 1% each day for a full year, I will end up 37 times better by the end of the year! As James says, HABITS ARE THE COMPOUND INTEREST OF SELF-IMPROVEMENT. While a one percent better or worse choice could seem insignificant to us, these countless moments add up to who we are day by day.

Success is a product of our daily habits - not once-in-a-lifetime transformations. This effect applies to both our positive and negative compounding.

When we automate an old task or master a new task - it allows us to handle more without thinking - allowing our brain to focus on other things. This is the same with knowledge - learning one idea does not earn us a degree, but a commitment to lifelong learning can make us excellent.

The downside of this is that negative self-talk compounds as well. The more we tell ourselves that we are not good enough, or unable - the more that we will interpret life through that lens and ingrain it further and further!

Understand that Progress Is Not Overnight.

James Clear hits the nail on the head when he described "breakthrough moments" as the result of many previous actions. You don't simply work out for one month and see a huge body transformation. Habits often appear to make no difference until we cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. He describes this Valley of Disappointment in the early and middle stages, where you are expecting to make linear progress. However, those most powerful outcomes are delayed.

To make a meaningful difference, habits must persist the Valley of Disappointment and cross the Plateau of Latent Potential.

You Fall To The Level Of Your System

You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.

While goals or inspiration motivate us, it will not carry us, but our systems will. If you are having trouble with changing your habits, the problem is not you but your system.

The Problem With Goals

Goals are about the results that we want to achieve, but the systems are the process that lead us to those results. James Clear pointed out some few issues with goals:

Winners and losers have the same goals. We concentrate on those who end up winning and mistakenly attribute their success to their ambitious goals - a textbook example of survivorship bias!
Achieving a goal is only momentary change. When we solve problems at the results level, we only solve them temporarily. In order to have sustained improvement, we need to solve them at a systems level.
Goals restrict happiness. The implicit assumption behind any goal is that once we reach the goal, then and only then can we be happy. You understand the concept of delayed gratification in reaching our goals. However goals create a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different - Either you achieve your goal and is successful or you fail and are a disappointment. However, if we love the process rather than the product, we don't have to wait to give ourselves permission to be happy.

Habits Shape Your Identity

3 Layers of Behavioural Changes Described by James Clear:

Outcomes - Changing our outcomes would be something like losing weight. This operates on the level of goals.
Processes - This second layer of changing your process would be something like implementing a new routine at the gym. This applies to changes in habits.
Identity - This 3rd and deepest layer is changing identity. If you believe that you are a fit and athletic person, your behaviors and results will follow. This applies to changes in beliefs.

Changing our beliefs changes our identity and this is the most powerful agent of change.

To illustrate, take 2 people who are trying to quit smoking. When offered a cigarette, the first person says: "No thanks, I'm trying to quit. But the 2nd one says: "No thanks, I'm not a smoker." This is a small and subtle difference but this power of language is tremendous!

The goal is not to read a book but to become a reader. The goal is not to get an A in class but to become an excellent student. The goal is not to bike 100miles but to become a cyclist.

This could work for you, but it can also work against you. Be careful of saying things like you are bad at Math or that you are not a morning person. To get an A in Math or consistently wake up at 5am now results in cognitive dissonance and people hate contradicting themselves.

But how do we really get our desired identity to stick?

How Do You Change Your Identity

The more you repeat a behavior, the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behavior. Each experience in life modifies our self-image. A vlogger would not consider himself a vlogger after uploading just one video. But after dozens and dozens of times uploading, his self-image will start to change. This is gradual evolution.

We don't change in one moment but rather we change bit by bit, day by day. habit by habit. The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do.

Everytime you write a page, you are a writer, and you are reinforcing this identity. But each time you engage in a bad habit, you are reinforcing that identity as well.

Changing Identity is a 2-Step Process.

1. Decide the Person You Want To Be.

2. Prove it to Yourself with Small wins to reinforce that identity.

Easier said than done... which brings us to the prescriptive method of the Atomic Habits Book - The 4 Laws. These are the actionable steps on how to actually change habits.

Habits 101

To understand how to change habits, it is important to understand first the purpose they serve.

The Purpose Of Habits

Habits are essentially autopilot scripts that our brain writes to decrease the cognitive load of solving recurring problems. The first time you walk into a new room, you spend significant effort figuring out where exactly it is. But after a couple of days, you no longer consciously even think about it.

Habits are essentially a memory of steps that solved a problem in the past. And whenever the conditions are right, you draw this memory and automatically apply the same solution.

By offsetting these functions to your subconscious, your conscious mind has more space and resources to address new stimuli.

Discipline Equals Freedom

Discipline and Systematic Habit Formation does not make life dull. Discipline is actually equal to Freedom. People without a grasp on their habits are those with the least amount of freedom. Without good financial habits, you will always be short on cash. Without healthy food and exercise habits, you will be constantly sluggish. Without good habits, you will always be behind the curve. With effective habits, you open up more time for yourself and your mind is free to focus on new challenges and new experiences.

The Habit Cycle or Loop

Similar to the Habit Cycle proposed by Charles Duhigg in the Power of Habit, James Clear describes 4 Steps:

Cue - triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. This indication triggers a
Craving - which is the motivational force behind every habit.
Response - is the actual behavior that is performed
Reward - is the end goal of every habit.

The first 2 steps: Cue and Craving are the Problem Phase and the Last Two Steps: Response and Reward are the Solution Phase.

For Example:

Cue: You reached a difficult problem in your exam.

Craving: You feel stuck and you want to relieve your frustration.

Response: You pull out your phone and check instagram.

Reward: You satisfy your craving and you feel relieved.

Checking social media becomes associated with feeling frustrated or bored while studying.

UP NEXT:

4 Laws of the Habit Cycle Or Loop

How To Implement Good Habits and Eliminate Bad Habits