Startup

8 Actions for a startup – #7 find and follow blogs

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A blog or website is essential for business.

What is a blog?

A blog is a discussion or informational site consisting of individual entries called blog posts. Blogs have been around since 1993.

Here’s a definition that Darren Rowse of Problogger used from Wikipedia “A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called blogging”.

Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links to other web pages, video, audio or other files….”

All businesses and many individuals have them.

Should you have a blog for your business? 

Yes.

QUESTION: “If a blog is defined as a website and I need to have a website for my business, what’s the difference between a blog and a website?”

 MY ANSWER: Simply put, a website costs more than a blog.

  1. It costs your time to decide what you want it to look like and the number and topics of pages to have.

2. It costs to hire a website developer and a copywriter if you don’t write your own content.

3. When you decide to have a website there are two more things you need to buy – a domain name (the name of your business or yourself) and a host (somewhere to keep it). The domain costs about $7 U.S. the first year but after that about $15 U.S. annually. The monthly hosting costs are anywhere from $7.95 U.S. to $14.95 U.S.

How do you find blogs ?

There are directories of blogs that you can go to. Go to google and type in “blog directories” and lists will come up. Each blog directory is good but choose the ones which publish to your target market.

How do you choose which blogs to follow?

Remember when I wrote about reading books I talked about how to choose them? Do the same thing for blogs.

  • Study blogs about your topic. It’s professional development or Research and Development and it should be ongoing.
  • Go beyond your topic. Stay at the leading edge. That’s how I learned about “neuromarketing”.
  • Find blogs about how to start a business and how to market. Remember that you can’t know too much.

What to do when you find them

Take a helicopter approach to finding them. Then shadow some of those.

  • Read them.
  • Study the content.
  • Learn from the “look and feel” of them. Does it attract you or not? What do you or don’t you like?
  • Sign up for and follow a few. You can always unsubscribe.
  • Look at their titles and what the author writes about.

Don’t start a blog yet. 

Observe them to learn about blogging.

Then start your own blog – you can always create a website later and copy and paste or export the content to the blog there. In the meantime grow your business and direct people to your blog!

So  … are you starting your business “on a shoestring”? You can do it by using a blog!

Choose a niche, write a business plan and a marketing plan for your business. Then have your own blog.

Comment here whether you’ve found blogs you like or whether this post is helpful to you. Let me know.

Originally posted February 27, 2012 

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Beliefs and Views, Small Business

How being a schoolteacher prepares you for entrepreneurship

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photo credit: Cultural viewpoints from around the world from photopin.com and flickr.com

You’ve probably been a schoolteacher if you’re a woman over 55.  

I was born in 1950 when women had three career choices. You could be a school teacher, a secretary or a nurse. I chose to be a teacher since I knew even then that I wouldn’t be one forever.

Since attending university in the late 60s and early 70s, I’ve wanted to have my own business. I taught elementary school for 8 years from 1972 to 1980. Little did I know then that teaching would give me the skills I’d continue to use as a business owner.

In the summer of 1978 I taught how to use computers in the classroom as a course to other teachers BEFORE you needed credentials to teach it. Nancy Murray a Superintendent in the Windsor Separate School Board took a risk on me. I had 40 elementary school teachers in my class that summer. That was the beginning of my self employment journey. I’d started.

Being a teacher is one of the best things you can do. 

Many of us have been teachers and most don’t know that teaching prepares you to become an entrepreneur who starts and runs your own business. 

Here are some of the many skills that teaching gave us.

  • being “teachable”. Learning what you need to know through professional development.
  • short term and long term planning. (Do teachers still create “day plans” and “weekly plans”?)
  • running a large group. When I started in 1972 I had 42 students in my first year. Did that ever prepare me!
  • risk taking
  • persistence
  • patience
  • goal setting. You set goals for yourself each year, for the class and especially if you taught special education as I did, you set goals for each individual student as well.
  • speaking to a group. You know how to speak to a group and if you had the courage, you also spoke to groups of your peers.
  • educating!!!
  • how people learn. As a teacher it was in the curriculum at teachers’ college.
  • how to research offline and online
  • “reading, writing and of course arithmetic”
  • creativity. You had to make do with what you had and therefore if you didn’t have something you used your creativity to make what you needed from what you had.
  • listening to and knowing the individual needs of your students/ clients
  • … and of course …being your own boss (I guess that’s why I liked Special Education so much.)

I could go on and on.

Do you see how as a teacher you have the skills needed as a business owner? What you don’t know yet is how to start a business but you know how to learn, don’t you? Well that’s all you need.

I and most entrepreneurs didn’t take courses on how to start a business. They and I learned what we needed as we went along using trial and error. Sure we made mistakes. Didn’t your students when they were learning? We read books, took classes, attended conferences and hired coaches.

Take a risk and start your own business. Ask for help when you need it. And keep learning. That’s what keeps us young!

As the Nike slogan says just do it .

What else would you add to this list?

 Originally posted October 23, 2012 

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Startup

8 Actions for startup – #8 who is your target market

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You have an idea of what you will sell to whom, don’t you.

Now that you’ve done the first seven actions, it’s time to get more specific and decide WHO your target market or niche is.

Whether you’re starting your first business or have been a business owner for years, every year you should review who and what your target market is. I did this in 2011 since many things had changed in my life. I used Judi Hughes of Your Planning Partners here in Toronto  https://yourplanningpartners.com/ . I also took a small group course by phone from Tsufit called Step into the Spotlight. https://tsufit.com/blog/ They really helped me focus on what I have to offer and to whom.

6 ways to help find your target market

1. Go to bed with it (what is your target market) on your mind then let it go and fall asleep. That’s what Jack Canfield did to get the name for the book series he co-authors with Mark Victor Hansen call Chicken Soup for the Soul.

2. Meditate. Put this as a question BEFORE your meditation then let it go.

3. Contemplate all that you’ve learned from books, webinars, conferences, your coach and newsletters you get. What do you REALLY sell to whom?

4. Daydream. We all have daydreams, don’t we? Look at them. Take them seriously. You may see your target market.

5. Imagine what you’d be doing on your ideal day. Who are you doing it for? What are you doing?

6. Listen to your coach (be sure they really know you) and consider what the leader of each webinar you take says.

BELIEVE! Most importantly, what do have PASSION for? What do you need? What solution do you have for a problem?

Tell me and my readers what problem you can solve with your solution. Who is YOUR target market?

Originally posted March 3, 2012

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Startup

8 Actions for startup – #7 Find and follow blogs

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A blog or website is essential for business.

What is a blog?

Here is a definition that Darren Rowse of Problogger used from Wikipedia “A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”.

Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links to other web pages, video, audio or other files….”

All businesses and many individuals have them.

Should you have a blog for your business? 

YES. As a startup business, check several of them out even before you build a website.

QUESTION: If a blog is defined as a website and I want to have a website for my business, what’s the difference between a blog and a website?

 MY ANSWER: That’s the subject of another blog post.

How do you find them ?

There are directories of blogs that you can go to. Go to google and type in “blog directories” and lists will come up. Each blog directory is good but choose the ones which publish to your target market.

How do you choose which blogs to follow?

Remember when I wrote about reading books I talked about how to choose them? Do the same thing for blogs.

  • Study blogs about your topic. It’s professional development or Research and Development and it should be ongoing.
  • Go beyond your topic. Stay at the leading edge. That’s how I learned about “neuromarketing”.
  • Find blogs about how to start a business and how to market. Remember that you can’t know too much.

What to do when you find them

Take a “helicopter” approach. Then “shadow” some.

  • Read them.
  • Study the content.
  • Learn from the “look and feel” of them. Does it attract you or not? What do you or don’t you like?
  • Sign up for and follow a few. You can always unsubscribe.
  • Look at their titles and what the author writes about.

Don’t start a blog yet. 

Just observe to learn about them. Choose a niche, write a business plan and a marketing plan. When you have done your own website and become a guest blogger (I’ll write more about this in a future blog post) then have your own blog.

Comment here whether you’ve found blogs you like or whether this post is helpful to you. Let me know!

Originally posted February 27, 2012  Tagged with: blog, social media,startup

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Startup

8 Actions for a startup – #4 read books

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These are some of my books

I’ve always loved to read – anything!

Buying books is one of my favourite things to do. So entering a bookstore is a dream come true for me. I was so happy when they first opened coffee shops IN bookstores. Now I can start reading what I’ve bought. But enough about me.

Have passion for your business topic and love to learn

You can learn a lot from books. When I decided I wanted to learn more about a concept called neuromarketing I found the name of several books about it. When I had the opportunity to go a bookstore I could scan the books themselves and decide which ones were for me. When I did, I ended up buying two of the books on my list.Forms of books

It used to be that there were two forms for books – hardcover and paperback. I know you could also get “books on tape” or books with large fonts. Now there are also ebooks. More authors are making sure their book besides being on paper is also an ebook.

It also used to be difficult to choose an ereader because each book chain has its own. But that’s changed. I have bought several ebooks for the Amazon KINDLE. I have an ipad so with the Kindle App downloaded on it, I open the KINDLE App there and voilà there are the books!

You can also listen to books with Audible – but I prefer seeing rather than listening😃

What should you read?

  • It goes without saying that you need to read books about your topic. It’s professional development (here in Canada you can deduct a book as Professional Development and not just courses). You can read them for Research and Development which you need to do all the time. So if you think you can stop learning since you’ve done a course on a certain topic, you can’t.
  • Go beyond your topic. Stay at the leading edge. That’s why I have read several books about neuromarketing.
  • Read about how to start a business and how to market. Remember that you can’t know too much.

Where can you learn what you should read?

  • Browse your topic in bricks and mortar bookstores.
  • Read newsletters online (that’s where I learned about neuromarketing. Patsi Krakoff of The Blogsquad wrote about books she’s read in her newsletter ).
  • Browse authors and your topic at online bookstores like amazon or Chapters or Borders.
  • Visit blogs. (They’re the topic of another post.)

Tell me what books you’re reading. As you know, I love to know about them! Share the titles with everyone.  

Originally posted February 10, 2012

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