Pay attention to me: do gimmicks really work in digital marketing? by Megan Totka

Part of the challenge of digital marketing is that competitors are trying to master it too. No matter how high the number, if you have the same amount of followers, email addresses or page views as your next closest enemy, are you really at a digital marketing advantage?

Creativity in marketing is often the thing that sets businesses apart. While breaking away from traditional advertising pursuits is certainly necessary for business success, marketers should be wary of promotional equivalents to “look at me” signs.

Take a glance at the good and bad of three popular digital marketing gimmicks:

Giveaways.
 Deciding to give away a product or service, or to sponsor a giveaway with other companies making the donations, can be an excellent way to get new people to your site. The problem of course is that some people enter any giveaway they see – whether they have any interest or not in the companies behind it. You may find that a high level of participation in a giveaway will end in a low conversion rate. To make the most of a giveaway, make it mandatory to submit an email address (and expressly mention that you plan to use it for promotional reasons) and then follow up after the giveaway ends with a great discount or deal.

Contests.
 A contest will likely result in a higher number of quality followers or contacts than a giveaway because the level of effort is higher on the part of the entrants. Instead of simply “liking” a Facebook page or typing in an email address, people who enter a contest usually need to take it a step further. Perhaps you want to facilitate a holiday photo contest, or even an essay contest for Mother’s Day. Those who want to enter for the prize (provided by your company) have to care enough to make the extra initiative to complete the requested task. The downside of contests is that they are also more work for those who host it. Rules, eligibility and shipping details are all the responsibility of the contest host and can be a headache if not handled correctly.

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About Megan Totka

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.

                    

You Must Live Tweet Live Events~By Chris Abraham

I can’t believe you’re still hiring professional photographers with expensive DSLRs who shoot your events live but time-delay the results by days and weeks. Yes, I am looking at you!
I am not saying you shouldn’t hire a professional team for posterity, the Annual Reports, and your organization’s archive; but why are you time-delaying your fundraisers, events, conferences, gatherings, jamborees, and rally by hours, days, and weeks when you have all the cheap-and-accessible tools all around you to take dozens of “good enough” images real-time, allowing hundreds, thousands, and millions of friends, family, fans, and potential donors, clients, customers, attendees, and members to get a selective and well-curated peek into all the cool stuff you do every day, as it happens, live, en masse, over the course of the entire event, instead of only the tightly-edited album you may only share with your current friends and family, all in one dump, at one moment, well after the event is far in the rear view mirror.
Yes, those professionally-shot 16.2 megapixel photos may well be well-lit, hi-def, perfectly posed, and color-corrected, but they’re also planned, dull, and edited down to so few images that all you’re left with are some boring photos of some random “celebrity” at a dais, some sponsors, board members, and honored guests mugging in a huddle, some glad-handing photos, and maybe a snappy of plates of rubbery chicken on linen-festooned banquet tables. Lame. Keep the pro shooters but see if they might be willing to live tweet, Vine, Instagram, Google+, Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumbl on your behalf, logging in to your Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Google+, Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumbl accounts before the night begins; alternately you can follow my advice below and get the sort of impact you need from the events that you’ve spent a lot of money and energy on already — events that could really help your brand profile in the noisy, noisy, world — but at which there are only dozens to hundreds of attendees and not the thousands-upon-thousands you’ve acquired through social media marketing across all of your social networks and social sharing platforms. Plus, there’s the excitement of the check-in, be it checking in on Foursquare, Facebook, Google Plus (or even on Foursquare through Instagram, actually).

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HERE

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HERE

Authored by:

Chris Abraham

Chris Abraham is a leading expert in digital, including online reputation management (ORM), Internet privacy, social media marketing and digital PR with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement and Internet crisis response. Chris is Principal Consultant of Gerris digtial
A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, ...

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Instagram Marketing in Just a Few Minutes a Day~ By Dave Conklin

Understanding Instagram’s potential

When it comes to social media and its place in your overall SEO / internet marketing strategy, visual social channels like Instagram have been making themselves known as the place to be for target markets across a variety of industries.
Instagram is a growing platform with a great deal of direct marketing potential – sometimes your target audience is just an image away!
Users on Instagram often single themselves out and identify as members of a target market without even realizing it. This can be seen in the hashtags they use and the accounts they follow and are followed by.

Preparing to be an Instagram marketing champion

Before you get really excited to be an Instagram marketing super star, you have to make sure that you are set up to receive all of the attention and recognition that you crave for your brand.

• Register a username that fits your brand – This is a no-brainer for any social account you register, but make sure that you take special care when creating your username on Instagram. Like Twitter, Instagram has a large number of savvy users and you’ll want to name your account something relevant and clever if you want to catch their eye.
• Upload a profile picture that turns heads – Again, you know that your account is going to need a profile pictures, and your first thought might be to slap your logo up there and leave it at that. This isn’t always the best course of action however – if you are a technology brand, think a bit outside the box and feature a product you sell or an industry-related illustration or character. A lifestyle brand focusing on fitness might choose to feature something related to exercise, like a running shoe. The possibilities are endless!

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Author: Dave Conklin Dave Conklin on the Web Dave Conklin on Facebook Dave Conklin on Twitter Dave Conklin RSS Feed

Dave Conklin is the president and co-founder of RankPop.com, an affordable high end SEO and content marketing agency. Dave and the RankPop team are excited to contribute to the resources at Business2Community.com!...
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Outsource Your Social Media to the Professionals

Outsource Your Social Media to the Professionals
 By Chris Abraham
I really believe it’s bad advice to recommend that companies fire their social media consultants, experts and agencies only to bring everything in house.

While “everyone” is on Facebook, social media is no longer a land of tinkerers; it’s a land of consumers. If you fill a room of potential brand ambassadors you harvest from your own ranks, I guarantee that only 1% to 10% of those people are active participants, and the rest are passive folks who are mostly lurkers. And when people bring up Zappos as the corporate exemplar, I always remind them that Zappos is exceptional and that’s why they’re the only company anyone can think of who does it as well internally. Plus, Zappos is a dyed-in-the-wool customer-service-centric company with an aggressive, visionary founder — someone who has completely rebuilt itself to over-serve its communities. Kudos, but seriously a truly exceptional example.

Only the largest companies have in-house counsel — their own corporate lawyers. Very few small or medium-sized companies maintain their own in-house accountants, designers, publicists, reputation and crisis managers, or marketers — some don’t even have their own dedicated sales teams.

And this is becoming more and more the reality of modern business — and it started in the ’90s. Why incur internal staff bloating when you can keep your staff limited to core expertise and services in focus, outsourcing everything else to professional service firms — vendors? Specialist vendors, like doctors or lawyers or management consultants, are generally staffed by people who are not only trained and experienced but also have the benefit of being able to load-balance and mind-share across the experience of multiple clients.

The best vendors, like the best docs and lawyers, keep rigorously up to date in the state of the art with a single-minded incentive to keep up and even lead the way. Personally, I have over 15 years of experience in consulting, and the only way a consultant ever gets a job — and keeps it — is by being just a little smarter, more curious, quicker, and more confident than the client — and since this is rarely completely true, most consultants worth their salt work really hard and spend many hours being and staying a top expert in the field.

Why Zappos is the unicorn of social media success stories....................


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Neuromarketing: The Future of Advertising

Marketing Conversation

Neuromarketing: The Future of Advertising
by speters on August 14, 2012
Marketing evolves over time to the will of the people. This is a very important fact for business owners and other entrepreneurs to remember and follow accordingly. As times change, people change, and because advertising and marketing rely on the response of the people, they need to change as well.
In recent years we have seen the use of strategic ad placement, as well as social media marketing techniques. These strategies work very efficiently and sometimes effortlessly; however, success can be pushed even further by getting it all down to a science. What does that mean? Marketing to the masses using neurological means of advertising.
Some of you may think this already sounds confusing and complicated, but thankfully, it isn’t. Neurological marketing strategies are in fact very simple and easy to effectively incorporate in your business. In order to equip them into your business plans, you’ll need to understand basic examples of neurological marketing strategies.
When designing psychological based methods of advertisement, entrepreneurs should always be thinking of basic human needs. Basic human needs are what drive consumers to make choices about certain products and purchases; thus, if a consumer ultimately feels that their needs are not being supported, they will choose to not purchase a product. Bartering with consumers and proving to them that you understand their desires and needs can help resolve their decision in your benefit.
With our current generation, there are multiple needs you can strike a chord with in order to be innovative and successful. In fact, these methods of neurological marketing are simple and have been used for years, but the way we use them is what has changed. The following are 3 basic marketing needs used by business savvy entrepreneurs that had their production booming in a short amount of time.
The first basic need we’ll cover is sex. For example, in 2002, cosmetic dentistry business owner Helaine Smith was finding trouble with her advertisement plan. She began to brainstorm other abstract ways in which to bring interest to her business. She considered the human need for sex, and published an electronic book titled Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex, documenting how good oral hygiene assists sex in being a much more pleasant experience.
Since the publishing of the book, her Helaine’s annual revenue for her business has tripled to one million dollars. This is due to readers finding information linking the book to Helaine’s original business.
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Don’t Roll Your Eyes at Social Media Influencers

 Why insincerity doesn’t work in PR, sales, marketing & online media June 12,2012
by Chris Abraham
I experience a lot of contempt for bloggers and social media influencers. From agencies
and marketing firms as well as from self-professed social media experts and social media gurus. Bloggers and other social media online influencers may not know who Edward Bernays is or have the lingua franca of a trained communications professional, but they sure can spot the eye roll of condescension and contempt from a mile away, even through the terse messaging of a single pitch.
While the biggest brands with the biggest gifts and social cachet can get away with being douche bags and intolerable asses because the level of peer and personal prestige and importance more than compensate for bad manners, rudeness, and a condescending manner — the proverbial upturned nose and eye roll — this sort of behavior isn’t acceptable from anyone but the crown king and queen of their particular demographic.
For example, if you’re offering cars, purses, trips to bloggers to review, you can act as you like; if you’re offering coupons, you had better really try to understand that it is relationships, kindness, attention, and connections that is selling your pitch — and the blogger’s valuable-to-her time — instead of your patently insulting suggestion that “you and your readers would really benefit from this dollar-off coupon.”
If you think that bloggers are actually failed journalists, you may have contempt for your audience; if you consider the time spent to become a blogger would be better spent “working,” you may have contempt for your audience. If you believe that what bloggers do is “just prattle on,” you may have contempt for your audience; and if you actively play favorites and only engage with the crème de la crème of bloggers, you may have contempt for your audience.
Why it’s important to be generous for its own sakeThis contempt is made plain by two variations of a quote attributed to Henry Louis Mencken: “No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby” and “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”
This blog post came to a head upon reading the time-honored and often-reviled book by Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People. At first blush, it is a deeply troubling and kiddie-pool-shallow indictment of all that is superficial and manipulative about sales, marketing, PR, and social networking.
If you gird your loins, however, and push through, I kick myself for not having studied it further. I will admit that I always get to where it really sounds like Dale is suggesting that we superior elite who are reading his book need to learn to manifest the same sort of compassion, patience, and calm — grace — that we generally reserve for children and the infirm.
And then I realized that that is indeed what Dale Carnegie is saying! But that we should not just reserve compassion, empathy, gentleness, love, patience, attention, and kindness to just children, we should lavish anyone and everyone in our lives with adoration, no matter if that person is one’s child, one’s wife, one’s business associate, or one’s prospect.
What he seems to be suggesting — and this is really revolutionary to see laid out through endless illustration and scenarios taken from history’s greatest and most successful men and women — is that being nice, generous, and friendly should be something one aspires to generally and not just as a ploy to make friends and influence people.
While this book may well have been popularly reflected as insincere, insincerity is what doesn’t work in PR, sales, marketing, and especially in earned media online with bloggers and other online influencers.
Some good advice that Dale Carnegie offers is “bait your hook for the fish you want to catch rather than for yourself.” (OK, if you’re rolling your eyes now and thinking, “pearls to swine” right now, get out of the business immediately and get into a profession that better tolerates insufferable snobs and douche nozzles.)
I have been saying this forever based on what I read years ago in a very popular book of the day called Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray: “You need to give the gift your partner wants instead of the gift you want to give.” Great advice for us men who are constantly giving vacuum cleaners to our significant others for Valentine’s Day instead of a romantic weekend at a bed and breakfast or whatever may well indicate love and appreciation to her or him.
People will put up with assholes if the reward outweighs the shame
And on the topic of appreciation, Dale Carnegie addresses this, too. And you need to be obsessed with it. Too often in earned media engagement, agencies and firms keep up appearances until a media mention is acquired and then see ya! The fire-and-forget method of acquiring social media mentions works if the brand is high prestige but appreciation goes a long way toward making up for not offering the blogger an Audi A8 to test drive for a month instead of just providing a limited-time-offer coupon for sessions at a regional day spa.
Dale does address this, and I will paraphrase: People will put up with assholes if the reward outweighs the shame. Your boss can be an asshole because he can fire you; the king can be an asshole because he can make you a knight; the judge can be an asshole because he can incarcerate you and instantly turn you into a felon.
The limits to what signifies paid or sponsored media and contentEarned media marketers are pretty vulnerable in this regard! We’re not paying anyone anything. Sometimes we’ll offer a review copy or product, but we’re professionally limited in terms of what signifies paid or sponsored media and content. We have to rely on our wits and of our general, natural, and effortless love, appreciation, and respect for social media, social influence, citizen journalism, and the power of blogging.
And while I think you either have that respect, maybe because you are, yourself, a blogger or social media content producer, I do believe you can fake it ’til you make it. (I have been blogging since 1999 and have been in social media since they were called bulletin board systems and required 1200 baud modems.) But you need to make it, you can’t just grin and bear it because you’re not having fun. If you don’t love love love chatting and interacting with the unwashed masses, the hoi polloi, the vox populi of online influencers — no matter how little influence — then you’re screwed and this whole blogger outreach thing will end up blowing up in your face and you will hurt your reputation, your agency, and the reputation of your client.
Primum non nocere.
Do you have contempt for your audience?
Oh, actually…………………..

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" Having a Business While Having a Life "

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Military Dog Picture of the Week. (July 25th, 2012): Dogs Down Under

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Military Working Dog Handler Leading Aircraftwoman Samantha Vassallo and Military Working dog ‘Ally’ practice winching during continuation training at RAAF Tindal. CHC Helicopters and RAAF Tindal Security Police dog section conducting winch training, the training provides both SAR and RAAF Security Police a chance to maintain and increase their Search and Rescue skills. (Photo by LAC Terry Hartin)

Military Working Dog Handler Aircraftman Lloyd Burbage and Military Working Dog ‘Khan’, practice winching techniques before attempting the real thing. CHC Helicopters and RAAF Tindal Security Police dog section conducting winch training, the training provides both SAR and RAAF Security Police a chance to maintain and increase their Search and Rescue skills. (Photo by LAC Terry Hartin)

Leading Aircraftwoman Heather Shepherd and Kruger, her military working dog, spend time together at RAAF Base Darwin. Military Working Dog (MWD) Kruger and Leading Aircraftwoman Heather Shepherd have been working together since 2008. MWD Kruger is now finishing his Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) career. They have worked together at RAAF Base Williamtown and were then posted to 13 Squadron at RAAF Base Darwin in early 2012. 13 Squadron Military Working Dog Section provides security for the base. (Photo by ABIS James Whittle )

Military Working Dog Handler Corporal Damien Martin and Military Working Dog ‘Trooper’, prepare to attack (using blank ammunition) the enemies’ position during a training exercise. Military working dog section at RAAF Tindal practice fire and movement techniques on a regular basis. This training is assisting the Military Working Dogs prepare for the increased activity during Exercise Pitch Black 2012. Security Police is providing critical support to RAAF Base Tindal for Exercise Pitch Black 2012. One of these elements is the unit’s Military Working Dogs and Handlers, both of whom are highly trained to provide security to the base and its high value.

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Active Search Results

Internet Search Engine
 Website Traffic Is Not The Key To Success
By: Mike Burke
Website traffic is deemed the single most important factor when it comes to the success of a website but that statement needs to be qualified. Although it's true that a constant stream of traffic is the lifeblood of a website, the quality of the traffic is far more important than the quantity.Of course, any amount of website traffic is better than no traffic at all but even if you have the most perfect website, your site is doomed to fail if you are not getting visitors that are looking for the products or information you have available on your site.
It's easy to get caught up in a numbers game. It's exciting to see the number of visitors to your site climb from a few a day to a few hundred a day. On the surface, this looks like exactly what you want but if your visitors are looking for something other than what you are offering, for the most part, your website traffic is wasted.
You could have a great website design, compelling copy, the lowest prices and fantastic specials but all your efforts will be useless unless your website is drawing traffic that is interested in what you are providing or promoting.
What you need are visitors specifically interested in your product or service -- you need 'targeted traffic'.
Don't think of targeted traffic as a sub-category of website traffic because they really are two separate entities. If you're marketing plan is designed to drive as much website traffic as possible to your site, no matter what kind of traffic it is, then you're not making effective use of your time and you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
The web is a very different venue than a shopping mall. A shopping mall relies on unfocused traffic, wondering from store to store, not looking for anything in particular but willing to spend it's money on an impulse.
Believe it or not, people surfing the web will leave a website after viewing it for only about 2 seconds. They're looking for specific items or information and if they don't quickly find what they are looking for on your site, they'll click out of your site and go to one of the other millions of sites on the web.
That's why most of the successful websites are tightly focused on their 'niche' and their marketing plan is focused on driving people to their site that are looking for what they offer - they understand the importance of 'targeted traffic'.
Of course, targeted traffic and a website focused on a particular 'niche' go hand and hand. Think about your website. Does it really lend itself to a specific product or service, or is it so broad that it tends to confuse potential customers?
Here are a few tips to help you prepare your website for targeted traffic:
Design your website to promote one particular product or service as your main item.
Determine the type of people that will be interested in your product or service and adjust your website to be attractive to them.
Establish the items or services that are 'closely' related to what you're promoting on your website. If you think that they would be interesting to your visitors, offer those items on your website as well.
Keep a constant flow of free content, that your visitors will find useful, on your website and add new content and information often. Invite your visitors back to your site to see the new material you're constantly adding.
Keep in mind, a website that's focused on a particular 'niche' item or service lends itself to targeted traffic simply because there is something specific to target and the more targeted traffic your site receives, the more productive your site will be.
There are many conventional and many not so conventional ways to drive targeted traffic to your website but we'll explore them in other articles.
The purpose of this article is to point out the difference between website traffic and targeted traffic. More isn't always better and if you focus your marketing on 'targeted traffic' you'll quickly find that the hits your getting on your website aren't just empty numbers - they'll be potential customers and, more importantly, sales.
For more website traffic tips visit www.starttheprofits.com
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Mike Burke is the author of numerous articles and has an affection for website marketing. Learn how to drive tons of targeted traffic to your site without spending a dime on advertising. Visit us at http://www.starttheprofits.com
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Center for American Women and Politics

Eagleton Institute of Politics

About CAWP
The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is nationally recognized as the leading source of scholarly research and current data about American women’s political participation. Its mission is to promote greater knowledge and understanding about women's participation in politics and government and to enhance women's influence and leadership in public life.
CAWP’s education and outreach programs translate research findings into action, addressing women’s under-representation in political leadership with effective, imaginative programs serving a variety of audiences. As the world has watched Americans considering female candidates for the nation's highest offices, CAWP’s over four decades of analyzing and interpreting women’s participation in American politics have provided a foundation and context for the discussion.
CAWP's Programs and Resources
Information about Women in Politics
•Facts about women in politics
•Election Watch
•Presidential Watch
•Women's Vote Watch
•State-by-state information on women elected officials
Education and Training Programs
•NEW Leadership™
•Ready to Run™ Campaign Trainings for Women
  Elección Latina
   Rising Stars: Educating Asian American Women for Politics
   Run Sister Run: Women of the African Diaspora Changing the
   Political Landscape
•Senator Wynona Lipman Chair in Women’s Political Leadership
•Pathways to Politics h
Other Resources and Programs
•Research on Women in Politics
•Bipartisan Coalition for Women’s Appointments
•Good Housekeeping Award for Women in Government

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Biz Ladies ~ Finding Your Niche

biz ladiesby Stephanie

　

If I had a dollar for every time my father told me I’d have a career in the creative industry, I’d be a millionaire by now. As a kid growing up, I didn’t think I had to “find my niche.” I already knew what I was destined to be, where I was going to live and what I was going to do as a profession. But life didn’t turn out that way, and boy, was I headed in a direction that didn’t at all match my “plans.”

What I didn’t realize when I was young was that finding your niche really means finding your way — finding what you’re good at and succeeding at that skill. Life always has other plans for you, but if you can learn a few pointers that will help you out, you’ll be well on your way to finding your niche.

Here are some of my key tips on how to find your niche, which I really developed as I become a business owner. These have helped me tremendously, not only in finding my niche but also in growing as a person and mastering some skills I never thought I had.

Network & Connect

This is #1 in my book. Networking and connecting with the right crowd is key no matter what type of business you are in or the type of position you hold. In fact, one of my past Design*Sponge posts was all about
Trendsetters, Influencers and Connectors because I know that if you arm yourself with the right networking ammunition, you can conquer anything and anyone. Connecting and networking with business folks doesn’t have to be invasive, nor does it have to seem like a sales pitch. It’s all in the art of how you approach them, knowing what you want to take out of the conversation and how you remain connected with them after the initial handshake. Business people “get” that networking and connecting are a natural part of any entrepreneur’s growth in the business world, but when you do them right, you will see the positive changes they can truly make.

Do Your Own SWOT Analysis

If companies believe in creating a SWOT analysis to understand what their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are, you should do the same for your own personal brand. Consider this making the most of your talents and opportunities. In the words of the famous French chemist Louis Pasteur, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Chances are, you are most likely to succeed in life if you use your talents to their fullest extent. Similarly, you’ll suffer fewer problems if you know what your weaknesses are and you manage these weaknesses so they don’t affect the work you do. If you look at yourself using the SWOT framework, you can start to separate yourself from your peers and further develop the specialized talents and abilities you need to advance your career. SWOT analysis is great for new business owners because it can often change over time as you develop a better sense of what your business and its goals are, but arming yourself with this foundational element from the get-go will prepare you for the long haul.

Your Personal Brand

That’s right — you are your own personal brand. A personal brand is a great second step after you determine your SWOT analysis. Remember, branding is more that just your visual identity. Branding reflects your personality, your traits, the way you dress, the way you shake someone’s hand, the way you communicate with others and the list goes on. An article in Fast Company states, “Everyone has a chance to stand out. Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills. Everyone has a chance to be a brand worthy of remark.” Personal branding is one of the most powerful assets you have as a business person; whether you are self-employed or a full-time employee at a company, it really does define what you are all about and how you come across to others.

Listen + Learn

No matter how experienced someone is at business, listening is still a challenge for most people, and not everyone does it right. “Listen 90% of the time and talk 10% of the time,” is a quote I heard that I believe is very true. People love to hear themselves talk, but are they really listening? Making eye contact? Both of these are very important when you are (a) networking and (b) listening to clients and what their needs are. If you listen carefully, you ask the right questions and you always learn.

Don’t Be in a Rush

If there was one thing that I was always guilty of doing growing up it was rushing everything. I was always in a rush to grow up, to get to the next step, make money, own a place and get to the top of the food chain. You name it, I was in a rush to get there. Here’s what I’ve learned through my experiences: Rushing. Doesn’t. Get. You. Anywhere. Ambition, on the other hand, is entirely different. Ambition, drive and tenacity are awesome traits because with those, you often find that you get to your final destination much quicker, and you do it all without rushing but taking the time, effort and skills to get there. Small-business owners who master this do it well and often get what they want. Don’t ever mistake ambition for ego.

Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

The word “fail” often scares people because it is seen as a sign of defeat and well . . . failure. Everyone fails at something in his or her life. It’s what you take away and learn from that failure that makes you a stronger person and allows you to grow. Keep in mind that what you see as a failure is not necessarily what others see in us. We are our own worst critics, and we are always the hardest on ourselves, but what if we looked at ourselves as others see us? Would you consider something you did a failure or a success? If you asked me, I have failed at a lot of things in my life, but I wouldn’t consider myself a success if I didn’t look at those so-called failures, learn from them and move onward and upward. Now I look at them as the best things that could have happened to me.

My first company, The Smart Cookies, was founded because of what I considered a failure: I was bad at managing my money, racked up thousands of dollars of debt and considered myself a lost cause when it came to my finances. But because of my situation, I started a money group, got smart with my finances, was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show, wrote two best-selling books, hosted a TV show and much more — all because I took something I thought I was failing at and turned it into a success. It’s possible; you just have to be willing to see the positive in failures and learn from them.
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I would love your thoughts on how you found your niche because I adore hearing stories of how others did it. Email me at andrea@bratfacemarketing.com. You can also sign up for my quarterly newsletter for all the goods at www.bratfacemarketing.com. Follow me @BratfaceMrktg & @andreabaxter or “Like” us on Facebook.

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