Business News

Mon Nov 13

Darleen Barton: Dump new year's resolutions, make a contract with yourself instead

Written by Tess Sanders Lazarus

According to Darleen Barton, Australia's leading 'relationship whisperer', life coach, counsellor and mediator and best selling author, we need to dump new year's resolutions and instead make a contract with ourselves. Research shows that new year's resolutions are a waste of time and the majority of people do not follow through with their commitments.

Leading business site, Business Insider, states that 80% of new year's resolutions fail by February. Even worse, Forbes states that only 8% of resolutions are achieved.

"Every year millions of people make new year's resolutions and most of them fail," Darleen said today.

"If we are serious about improving our life, making key changes and achieving the things we want to achieve, we need to start taking change seriously.

"2018 should be the best year ever and it can be if people are prepared to get serious. Forget new year's resolutions, they are a waste of time. Instead make a contract with yourself.

"We only live once, why not get serious about getting the best out of it. We enter into commercial contracts to buy things as basic as phones, internet and Netflix. Why not enter into a commercial contract with ourselves to improve our life. Isn't our life the most valuable thing we have? Surely it's more important than Netflix?

"Making a contract with yourself is easy and it involves five key steps:

Work out what you want to achieve in 2018

Identify what you want to achieve and by when and what you need to do or change to achieve this

Speak with significant people in your life to discuss the changes you need to make to achieve your goal/s

Discuss your goals with your inner circle. They may have suggestions and good ideas to help you. Get their buy in and ask them to assist you with moral support and encouragement

Draw up a contract with yourself to confirm the actions, dates and milestones

Detail in your contact with yourself what you are going to do, when and how. Be specific and make sure the document includes clear milestones

Build in rewards for yourself as you reach milestones and goals

Ensure you reward yourself along the way. Self encouragement is important and a vital part of growth and development. Keep your inner circle updated on your progress through progress reports

Sign the document in front of your inner circle - get them to witness it

"Signing the contract should be a celebratory affair - you are embarking on a life changing journey. Involve your inner circle in the signing event and have them sign the contract as well. Put your contract in a prominent place in your home/life and provide a copy to your inner circle

"Entering into a contract with yourself in this way will give you the structure, motivation and plan to create the life you want to achieve. By involving your inner circle it will provide you with the support you need and the accountability and motivation required to slay your goals. You can even go one step further and build in contract defaults, that ensure you penalise yourself if you don't make the required progress.

"I strongly encourage everyone to start preparing their 'self contract' now. Work out what you want to achieve and what you need to do to achieve it. Make new year's eve about the signing celebration, where you sign and celebrate your new contract with yourself with those in your inner circle.

"Make 2018 your best year yet. Do something about it. Sign a contract with yourself."

www.DIPAC.com.au

Sun Nov 12

5 Working Hacks on How to Revamp Your Marketing Efforts

Written by News Feature Team

It is not easy to set up a marketing campaign that superior to your competitors. It requires involvement of professionals in the niche who have made it in the past when it comes to effective marketing. Luckily, you can utilize the following hacks in order to add value to your campaign:

Build relationships and network online

It is good to have relationships with your target audience online. It helps you to build a strong network which you can promote your products to with ease. Once you have a strong relationship with your followers on social media, they trust you. As such, you will be able to launch a new product and take less time to convince them. To build a strong network, you will need the services of a reliable and local marketing agency which has experience and success in building brands across all major platforms.

Get more customer reviews for your site

Reviews make your site to look attractive. If you do not have any reviews from customers, you are likely to miss out on potential customers. For example, if you are running an online store, you should ask your buying customers to leave reviews. This will help grow your site for the better part of the market you are trying to lure into your business.To control how often customers leave reviews, you can hire a marketing agency to provide you with the way forward when it comes to customer reviews.

Make use of branded and long tailed anchor texts in your content

When selecting which anchor text to use for your backlinks or when linking your articles internally, you have to be wise about it. You need to select a text that gives the reader a way forward and entices them to click on the link. You can use your brand name to achieve this. It will entice the reader to click on it. Also, you can use long railed texts to achieve an objective. A long-tailed text will have a call to action and thus the reader will most likely click on it.

Engage more with your audience socially

You will be able to reach out to many people online who are active on social media and thus a better platform to do that. However, there are tools and tricks which you have to employ in order to get the results you need within a short period. This is where you will need a reliable social media partner like Shout Agency to help you with all the technicalities that come with that.

Remain active in online forums and blogs

You cannot give when it comes to blogs and online forums. You can get quality backlinks when it comes to both. However, the most important thing is the engagement part with your target audience. You need this to build a functional brand that your customers can relate with. When it comes to effective marketing online forums and blogs do the magic. You can present your brand in an online forum by pointing out a problem and then directing people to your website for the solutions. This will lead to quality traffic to your site.