How To Get Rich Online Part 1 - Frank Kern

Great short video of Frank Kern - must watch!

8 Daily Habits That Will Make 2015 Explosive

The new year is here and most entrepreneurs are looking at how they will raise their game in 2015. Many of you may want to ramp up your personal development and productivity to a whole new level to reach some major goals.

When it comes to finding success and achieving your goals, many times the most important struggle is the one that you encounter in mundane daily life. To truly find success in your life, it is important that you take the time to do the little things that matter most. Small changes to your daily routine can translate into monumental success in all of your endeavours.

Here are eight things that you should be doing, if you aren’t already, habitually.

1. Get up early

Getting up early is about more than just getting up on time. When you get up early, before most people, you have a quiet and relaxing time to get things done. Imagine being able to sit down and go through emails or handle daily tasks without your message notification buzzing or your phone going off.

By getting up early, you are not only giving yourself some extra time in the morning, but you are giving yourself some extra valuable time that will allow you to get even more done.

2. Read

You should be reading every single day. Never let a day go by that you don’t grow in some area of your life. This doesn’t necessarily mean crushing an entire novel in a few hours, but put aside a little time to read, preferably 20 to 30 minutes.

When you read you help stimulate your thought processes, and may be surprised by the ideas that you come up with. Reading things such as magazines or newspapers can also help you stay abreast of the world around you, a trait that can only be helpful, no matter what industry you work in.

3. Exercise

Even if it is just for 30 minutes, it is important to start exercising daily. Exercise can help release endorphins that can naturally boost your mood and your energy levels. Not only will you feel happier and more energized but those who work out regularly report lower levels of stress.

4. Practice gratitude

This can be a hard one for some people and it’s something that unfortunately many of us need to consciously practice. When our lives get consumed with work and personal demands it can be hard to remember to show gratitude to those that we interact with. Try to make a conscious effort to practice this.

As it starts to become more natural, you will be surprised by how many doors open and how many new relationship you can form by showing sincere gratitude to those around you.

5. Schedule your day before it starts

Having a set schedule is a powerful tool when it comes to making the most of your day and being as productive as possible. To have the biggest impact with your time, try making your schedule the day before. This way the moment you wake up you will know just what is ahead.

6. Focus on high-priority tasks first

Many people actually often put their high-priority tasks on the backburner and end up saving them until the last minute. This may be because the task is daunting, or because they think they will have more time to dedicate to the endeavor.

No matter what the reasoning is, challenge yourself by starting with focusing on your high-priority task. Get it done first and then focus on smaller things. After being in the mindset of tackling a high-priority project, your less demanding tasks will be easier to complete. It's a small change but one that can improve your effectiveness drastically.

7. Always go the extra mile

Do a few extra (meaningful) tasks every day that go beyond what your actual requirements are. This can mean just a few extra sales calls beyond your quota, or working for an extra 30 minutes before shutting down.

By putting in a little more effort than required you can start getting the attention of your superiors or clients, get more done during the workday and feel a new energizing sense of motivation and satisfaction.

8. Improve in one area each day

This area can be something small or large and it can be in your personal or professional life, but make it a goal to improve in one area of your life every day. This can be improving your jogging speed while you work out, getting more emails done in a certain time period or improving on your elevator pitch.

No matter what it is, take the time to really try to improve one small thing, and before you know it the improvements in your personal and professional life will surprise you.

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7 Reasons '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' Lives on 25 Years Later

While thousands of leadership books are published each year, only a few might get some short-term success while the vast majority are quickly forgotten. So how has the bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People maintained its enviable shelf life for 25 years while so many other business and leadership books fade away fast?

First published August 15, 1989 by business management professor and leadership expert Stephen R. Covey, the book lays out seven core principles for achieving success in leadership and life—including often-quoted principles such as “Begin with the end in mind,” “First things first,” and “Think win-win.” The book has sold more than 25 million copies and continues to be used often in leadership training at companies and universities around the United States and worldwide. It’s been translated into 52 languages and helped build what’s now a $200 million enterprise.

After the huge initial success of the book, which remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 220 weeks, Covey was able to expand his training empire and author career. The book spawned an array of other books written by Covey, his family members, and others throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, including 7 Habits of Happy Kids, The 8th Habit, and 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families. More than 25 heads of state, including U.S. President Bill Clinton, asked Covey to help them learn and use the seven principles. Covey passed away in 2012 at age 79 after a bicycling accident but his empire lives on through the Utah-based global training company he helped build, Franklin Covey Co. The book’s enduring success has a lot to teach business owners and thought leaders even today, revealing lessons on clear thinking and motivational messaging a generation after it was published.

1. Be accessible. The book’s title spawned its share of imitators, proving its catchiness. But it also drew readers in, says Sean Covey, one of Stephen’s sons, an executive vice president at Franklin Covey. Stephen had originally planned to call his book “Restoring the Character Ethic,” but ultimately decided it needed a snappier title that explained the book’s takeaway in an enticing, clear way.

2. Make big ideas easy to relate to. Covey spent decades reading and contemplating the works of many “great American thinkers,” including everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Henry James Thoreau. He fine-tuned his seven key principles, based on those years of reading and research, Sean says. But he took it a step further and injected real-life experiences and examples into his book to make the seven principles more relatable to readers.

3. Don’t rush it. “This wasn’t something he pumped out over a few months,” Sean Covey says. “This was his life’s work.” Stephen first started using his seven principles in 1985 in leadership workshops at the Covey Leadership Center (which merged with Franklin Quest in 1997 to become Franklin Covey.) The workshops eventually became so popular that he decided to turn them into a book. Strangely enough, Sean adds, “at the time, they were a little bit nervous about publishing the book because they thought it might cannibalize the workshop they were teaching.”

4. Keep the message alive. The popularity of his book helped convince Covey that many people yearned for such information but needed help incorporating the principles into their lives and work. He expanded on the principles in his book by creating new training programs around them. Today, many people buy the book as part of their leadership training. As part of the 25^th anniversary, Franklin Covey has introduced a smartphone app called Living the 7 Habits for iOS and Android and introduced an updated (“4.0”) version of its training program for organizations and individuals.

5. Craft universal lessons. By the late 1990s, the book was being published all over the world and today “it’s just as popular in China, Puerto Rico and Brazil as it is in the [United States,]” Sean Covey says.

The seven key principles are so enduring, Covey says, because they are timeless and universal. They point to real-life experiences—interactions between people—that anyone can relate with. Thanks to the timelessness of the advice, the book's original text has been changed only slightly over the years.

6. Share ideas that can have impact. David Esposito, who runs a personal and professional development consulting firm and an early-stage medical device company in Portage, Michigan says the book has also had a profound influence on him and his life. Two principles in the book—“First things first” and “understand before being understood”—have particularly resonated with him as he tried to balance his family life with his career. It helped him understand the importance of learning others’ points of views before making judgments or expecting others to see his point of view. “I have pen markings throughout the book,” he says, “but certain parts have really changed how I view the world.”

7. Be clear and organized. DaVita Healthcare Partners, a Denver-based kidney dialysis provider, frequently uses 7 Habits in its employee and management training programs for of its more than 50,000 employees worldwide. Jennifer Colosimo, vice president of DaVita’s “Wisdom Group" and a former executive at FranklinCovey, says she first read the book in 1994 and recently trained a group of 50 DaVita executives on the seven principles. She cites its clear message as a major driver of its popularity. “[Covey] organized these principles in a simple way that—no matter where you were—you’d be able to understand them,” she says. Colosimo notes that even Covey frequently acknowledged these weren't unique ideas. “He just organized them well.”

Esposito first read the book as a young sales rep in 1994 and still keeps it handy on the bookshelf in his office. “There’s a lot of pump-up [business] books out there,” he says. “This book …took what could be very complicated ideas and boiled them down very clearly.”

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The 4 Habits You Need to Be Successful

The most successful people in this world maintain and master good habits. They realize what they do on a daily basis and where they direct their energy deeply matters when it comes to reaching their goals.

The habits you have picked up over the past couple of years is a reflection of where you are right this moment.

The sad news is that most people don’t have very good habits. The great news is if you are unhappy where you are at in your life you can gradually change the trajectory by altering what you do daily. To achieve high levels of success, you must start to develop the habits of the highly successful.

Below you will find four habits that will help you maximize the results you have been producing and live the life of your dreams.

1. Focus your energy. Learning how to direct your energy towards your most rewarding tasks is crucial for achieving high levels of success. One of the biggest mistakes that many people make is directing their energy towards low-valued tasks. Take a look at everything you have going on right now in your life.  Pay close attention and ask yourself what the high-valued tasks are -- the ones that have the potential to bring the most reward to you and your business.

2.  Ability to prioritize. Think of what is your most important goal right this moment. If you had to pick one goal that would make everything else in your life tick, this is it. High achievers never lose sight of what their major goal is. Every day, do something that will inch you closer to the achievement of your main goal.

3. Can project and complete tasks. Being able to start something and follow through until it's completed is a key to long-term success. 

Picture yourself completely finishing your projects and tasks. Take note of how you feel visualizing yourself getting the job done. The more you can picture yourself following through and completing important tasks, the more determined you will be to actually do so. 

4. Having a PMA. To be successful, you need to have a positive mental attitude, or PMA. If you do nothing about negative thoughts, chances are you will be settling for average. Instead, you need to continually feed your mind with positive thoughts. 

A great percentage of successful people have all experienced some sort of setback or failure. They could have just stopped their journey right there and called it quits. Instead, they had a positive mental attitude about themselves and their abilities, which gave them the power needed to continue along and reach their goals. Creating this sort of attitude could be one of your most important habits that you end up incorporating on a daily basis. 

No matter where you are in life, there is always more to reach for.  When you constantly strive to become a better person, refine your skill set and invest in your future daily, you become more as an individual. When you become more as an individual, your value increases.  The more your value increases, the more successful you will become -- and it all starts with your habits.

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The Mindset of a Winner

Seth God on the mindset of a winner! Let me know what you think.

The 3 Personal Development Goals Successful People Pursue Habitually

If you Google “daily habits of successful people” you’ll find almost every business-focused media outlet represented in the results. But if you’re looking for a guaranteed roadmap to success, don’t get excited just yet. If you read all of those articles, or even a few of them, you'll soon realize that successful people have a wide range of daily habits.

Some say you have to rise early, some sleep until noon then work from their bed for another hour. Some say to get the toughest thing out of the way first, some start their day in an easy flow of reading over coffee and don’t “eat the frog” until later. Some plan out their day the night before, some start their day by devising a plan. Some hit the jogging trail first thing, some barely take time for a stretch before hitting social media and email.

So how are any of us supposed to figure out which daily habits are critical to success, and which are personal preference and idiosyncrasy?

If you take a look at all the different lists of habits, routines, principles and priorities among successful entrepreneurs from Ben Franklin to Mark Cuban you’ll find these three universal success factors.

They spend time getting to know themselves.

If you know who they are, chances are they devote a lot of their daily practice to knowing themselves better than you can even imagine. Successful people are self-aware on multiple levels.

They know their energy patterns, so they know how much sleep is optimal. They know when they get their best rest they are at their best when they are awake. They know what fuel their body needs, and what kind of exercise it takes to feel the way they want to feel. They know what environments they need to be creative and productive, and they know the difference between those two states.

They know their priorities, too, and they know that all of their decisions must start with the highest level of their vision, mission or purpose. Benjamin Franklin’s documented daily schedule starts each day with a question; “What good shall I do this day?” Steve Jobs said in his commencement address at Stanford in 2005 that he spent 33 years asking the same question every morning; “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”

Bottom line, no matter how many articles, interviews or opinions you read, you’ll find that successful people are always tuned in to the one most critical success factor in their business -- themselves.

They spend time improving themselves.

Speaking of being tuned in to themselves, successful people know that to increase their net worth they must increase their personal worth. They’ve mastered the personal SWOTT analysis and they consistently invest in themselves.

It’s no secret that successful people read. They read story books, they read how-to books, they read news, they read industry articles. They read to improve their knowledge, their mind-set, even their mood.

But they do more than read. Successful people study. They study trends in their industry and outside of their industry, they study things that interest them and, most of all, they study people.

They spend time sharing themselves.

Many super successful people are generous with their money and time. I personally believe that trait builds both financial success and personal satisfaction, but it isn’t what I’m referencing here and I didn’t find it to be 100 percent consistent in all of the “daily habits” lists I read.

What I did find to be consistent is that every person referenced or interviewed had a personal message and a method for sharing it. Their audience might be primarily internal, but it’s not just, “Here’s what the company has to do to achieve success,” or it might be aimed at the general public, but it’s not just, “Here’s why you should buy what I’m selling.”

Successful people have a personal philosophy that permeates everything they say and do. They write, they speak, they mentor, they give interviews and in all of those circumstances they show up fully and completely, sharing not only their message, but the very essence of themselves.

If you want to be successful, I suggest you read those “daily habits” lists the way you’d look at a blueprint for a house you will live in. Make change orders where necessary. Your daily habits need to support your life and your success, don’t try to live by someone else’s blueprint. Just be sure you’re dedicating significant quality time to getting to truly know yourself, improving yourself and sharing yourself.  Because you are the single most important factor in your success, and the only one you can control.

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Pinterest for Business: Everything You Need to Know

While social networks like Facebook and Twitter are great for sharing content, some businesses can benefit from showing off their more visual sides, and Pinterest is the perfect platform for doing just that.

Pinterest is still fairly new to the social networking scene, so many people and businesses are still learning the best ways to navigate it. However, the platform can be incredibly valuable to marketers when used correctly. And Pinterest seems a lot trickier than it really is — it's mostly about sharing the right content in the most visually appealing and searchable way.

Ready to take on one of the most pin-teresting social networks out there? Here's everything you need to know before you start pinning.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a platform that allows users to share and save content to virtual collections called pinboards (also referred to as simply "boards"). The social network has both a website and a mobile app, and was launched in 2010 by co-founders Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra. Initially, the website was available only in a closed beta model, and users could join only by invitation until August 2012, when Pinterest opened to the public.

The platform has a very unique demographic, in that the vast majority of its more than 70 million users (according to a July 2013 study by Semiocast) are female. Globally, 83 percent of Pinterest users in 2012 were female, according to a study by Engauge.

While you can find just about anything on the Web on Pinterest — the website's categories include everything from art to technology, Pinterest is known as a hub for DIY and craft projects, recipes, fashion, home décor and health- and fitness-related information.

How does Pinterest work?

Creating your account

To use Pinterest, you first have to sign up for an account. For businesses, it's really important that you make sure you specifically sign up for a business account. Using the main sign-up page creates personal accounts — to create a business account, go here.

It's important to make this distinction because business accounts, while free like personal Pinterest accounts, give you access to features to help your business thrive on the platform, like analytics tools.

To sign up for a business account, you need to enter your email address, a password, the name of your business and your website (though including your website is optional). You also need to select what type of business you run from a drop-down menu. From there, you can set up your profile.

When you log in to your Pinterest account, you're taken to your home feed. Your home feed shows you all of the most recent pins from the other Pinterest accounts you follow and features endless scrolling for seamless browsing.

Across the top of each page you visit on Pinterest, there is a large search bar with the Pinterest logo on the left-hand side, and a drop-down menu to the right. Clicking the Pinterest logo takes you back to your home feed, while clicking the drop-down menu displays links to all of the categories you can browse through on the platform. To the right of the search bar you'll see a button with your username and profile picture, and a small button next to it that pulls up a window with your recent activity (i.e., your notifications and messages as well as news from people you follow). Clicking your username takes you to your profile page, where you can see all of your boards and pins, as well as options to edit your profile.

So what exactly are pins and boards? Well, in simple terms, pins are the content you share on Pinterest, and boards are how you organize that content — sort of like visual bookmarks. Before you can start pinning anything, you need to create your boards.

Creating your boards

To create a Pinterest board, go to your profile page and in the space where your boards would go, you'll see a rectangular space with a "Create a board" button.

Once you click, a box will pop up with the information you need to fill in. You'll need to enter a name for your board, a description of what your board is about (these are optional, but should be filled out as they can help people discover your boards more often) and select a category for it (also optional, but very important for the same reasons). In addition, you can choose to keep your board secret, so that only you have access to it.

At the bottom of the "create a board" box, you'll also see an option entitled, "Who can add Pins?" with a text box where you can invite other Pinterest users by username and/or by email. Adding other users to your board creates a group board, which will show up on both your profile and the other users' profiles as well, and everyone added to the board can contribute pins.

Once you're done filling out your board's information, just click "create board" and you're done. From there, you can start adding pins.

Adding pins

You can add pins to your Pinterest boards in a few different ways. To add your own content to Pinterest, go to the board you want to pin to, and click the "Add a Pin" button. A box will pop up with the options to add a pin from the Web or from your computer.

If you decide to add a pin from the Web, Pinterest will prompt you to enter a link to the page you're pinning from. Once you enter the link, you'll be taken to a page that shows all of the images from that website. You can then select the image you want to pin, which will open a box that allows you to enter a description for your pin. You can also change the board you want to pin to via the drop-down menu. When you're done, click the "Pin it" button. Pinning content from the Web will ensure that your pin links back to the website it came from.

If you choose to add a pin from your computer, Pinterest will prompt you to choose and upload an image file. From there, the process of adding a pin is the same.

To pin from the mobile app, go to your profile tab and click the plus button. This gives you the option to create a new board or pin from your phone's photos, the Web, or to pin your location if you use the maps feature (part of Pinterest's "rich pins").

All pins must include an image or a video in order to be added to Pinterest.

You can also "repin" content from other Pinterest users, as opposed to adding your own content, and it's good to share a mix of both. Repinning is an easy way to be more active on Pinterest when you don't have your own content to share, plus, it can get other Pinterest users to notice your brand.

To find content to repin, you can browse through your home feed, browse through specific categories, or search certain keywords in the search bar. When you want to repin an existing pin, hover over the image and click the red "Pin it" button. You'll then be prompted to select a board from the drop-down menu, and you can either leave the previous user's description, or write your own.

Rich pins

Rich pins are a special type of Pinterest pin that make using the platform more straightforward and seamless. These pins include extra information beyond just the image, click-through link and the pinner's description. Currently, there are five types of rich pins:

• Place pins: Place pins are a special kind of rich pin that allows users to create a map with the content they share. To enable place pins, you simply check off the "add a map" option when you create or edit a pinboard. Selecting the map option overlays your pins onto an actual interactive map (as opposed to the typical solid-color background). You can then add places to your existing pins and pin new places as well.

Place pins include important details like addresses and phone numbers — perfect for mapping out restaurants and other attractions when you're planning a trip.

• Article pins: Just because Pinterest is highly visual in nature, doesn't mean it's not a good place to share written content. So long as an article features an image, it can be pinned to Pinterest.

But article pins make it so that users can automatically see the article's headline, author and a story description — making them much more searchable and distinguishing them from other content on the platform.

• Product pins: Product pins make shopping via Pinterest a lot easier. Unlike a regular pin, these rich pins show where the product you're pinning can be purchased, the current price and a direct link to the product page.

Additionally, product pins prices' are updated in real time, and if a user pins a product pin to one of his or her boards, that user will be notified when the product's price is lowered. Since many Pinterest users create boards that serve as wish lists for things they want, product pins are a great way to convert pins into purchases.

• Recipe pins: Pinterest is already a huge hub for foodies, and you can find just about any recipe imaginable on the site. Recipe pins take sharing food on Pinterest to a whole new level. Unlike a regular pin, which would show an image and a description that is manually entered in by the pinner, these recipe-specific rich pins show users important information like the necessary ingredients and their amounts, cooking times and serving info.

Recipe pins also display details about whether a recipe is vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, paleo, etc., making searching for – and determining which recipes you can make – a lot simpler. And users can still click-through to the website from which the recipe came to see detailed instructions and more photos of the recipes they're pinning.

• Movie pins: Great for film buffs, these rich pins show more details about the movies you pin. Movie pins include information like the year a film was released, its rating, the director and the main stars of the film.

When pinning from different movie websites like Netflix, Flixter and Rotten Tomatoes, pinners will also see how those websites' users ranked films as well.

To use rich pins, you need to apply for them. According to Pinterest, there are four steps to this process.

1. Decide which type of rich pin you want to use.
2. Read the documentation for your chosen rich pin type.
3. Add the appropriate metatags to your website.
4. Validate your rich pins and apply to get them on Pinterest.

You can find out more about applying for and enabling rich pins on Pinterest's developers page.

Interacting with other Pinterest users

Pinterest is, unlike other social networks, much more about saving and sharing content than it is about interacting with other users. However, it's still a social network, and like any other social network, Pinterest does give users ways to connect with other people. Repinning and using group boards are a few ways to interact with other users, but there are other methods as well.

• Likes: Liking a pin is the easiest way to interact with another Pinterest user (and save a pin for later, if you don't have time to pin it right away). Simply hover over the pin you want to like and click the heart-shaped button. As with favoriting a tweet on Twitter or liking a Facebook post, this will notify that user, and you can access your liked posts from the "Likes" tab on your profile page.
   
• Comments: You can also add comments to other users' pins. To do so, click on the pin you want to comment on. This will pull up a larger window with the pin and more information about it (especially if it's a rich pin). Under the pin, you'll see a comment box where you can type in and share what you want to say.
   
• Sending pins: You can also send pins you want to share with other users (or non-Pinterest users, even) by hovering over pins and clicking the send button. A box will pop up that allows you to search for other Pinterest users by username, or type in an email address to mail the pin to.

Additionally, you can find friends from other social networks to send pins to as well.

• Tagging users: Just like on Twitter, you can tag users using the @ symbol on Pinterest. When you're writing a description for your pin or adding a comment to someone else's pin, just type in the @ symbol and the username of the person you want to tag, and they'll be notified.

Karen Leland, branding, marketing and content expert at Sterling Marketing Group suggested using these features to promote other brands.

“Build your brand by engaging with the community via repinning, commenting on and liking other pins,” she said, adding that tagging other users in your pins' descriptions is a good way to reach out, too. 

Hashtags on Pinterest

Pinterest users can use hashtags when sharing their pins, as with other social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. However, Pinterest has its own unique search system, so hashtags are not the most effective way to make your content searchable on this social network. Hashtags are more effective if you use your own, brand-specific hashtags, and less effective if you were to share a pin with the hashtag #recipes, for example.

While you may be tempted to put hashtags in your business's description (like on Twitter) or in your boards' descriptions, don't do it — hashtags on Pinterest only work in pin descriptions, so if you put them elsewhere, you'll only waste your time and look like you don't know how to use the platform.

What's more important on Pinterest is that you use proper keywords when describing your pins and boards, keep your boards organized (i.e., don't pin recipes to a fashion board by accident) and categorize your boards correctly. Hashtags are really only a bonus on Pinterest, whereas on Twitter they can make or break how successful your posts are.

Personalizing your Pinterest profile

Unlike other social networks, Pinterest does not give you many profile customization options. That doesn't mean that you can't show off your brand, though. Pinterest allows you to upload a profile picture, use a custom username, and write a summary about you or your business. You can also list your location and your website.

While you can't change the layout of your Pinterest page like you can on Tumblr or upload a banner image like on Facebook or Twitter, there are other ways to make your profile unique. You can name your pinboards with clever phrases that are both searchable (i.e., contains the proper keywords) and relatable to your brand. You can also enter a short description of each board that explains what that board is about and how it aligns with your brand. Additionally, you can choose cover photos for each board that relate back to your brand and are visually stimulating. While you may not be able to change much about your Pinterest profile, you can still successfully represent your brand with the options the platform gives you if you get creative.

Trending topics on Pinterest

To see what's trending on Pinterest, click on the drop-down menu in the search bar and select "Popular" (if you're on mobile, go to the search tab and select the same category). The Popular page will show you a feed of the most popular pins on Pinterest at that time.

Above the popular pins, you'll see a banner of the top interests on Pinterest at that time. You can click these interests and see the popular pins in those topics in addition to related topics.

Knowing what's trending on Pinterest can help you decide what types of content to pin. For example, if you see a lot of DIY projects trending, that would be a good time to find and share DIY content that can relate back to your business, if at all possible. Any time you can relate trending topics back to your brand, you make your business more discoverable on Pinterest.

Advertising on Pinterest

Currently, Pinterest does not offer advertising options for businesses. However, the platform has been testing an option called "Promoted Pins," which Pinterest plans to launch in the near future. Businesses can sign up to receive updates and priority access to the Promoted Pins feature here.

Pinterest analytics

To access your account's analytics page, go to your profile page and click the gear button in the top right-hand corner. This will pull up a drop-down menu where you can also access your account settings, a tips for businesses page, and the log-out page.

When you select "analytics" you'll be taken to a dashboard where you can see statistics about your profile, audience and more. Specifically, you can see data on your profile's average daily impressions and viewers, your average monthly viewers and average monthly engagements, and data about which pins are doing the best. You can click "more" on this data to see graphs of all your data.

Pinterest's analytics tool shows you which of your pins have gotten the most impressions, repins, clicks and likes, so you can see what types of your specific content get the most traction on the platform.

Through Pinterest analytics you can learn valuable things about your audience demographics, like gender, location and other interests, what devices visitors to your page are using, along with what your most popular pins are.

You can learn more about navigating and understanding your analytics data here.

Pinterest tips & tricks

• Connect to your other networks. You can connect your Pinterest account to your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Gmail and Yahoo accounts, and can choose to log in with Facebook and/or Twitter (instead of typing in your email and password) as well. Connecting to your Gmail and Yahoo accounts allows you to find and connect with your contacts who already have Pinterest accounts, and when you connect to your other social networks, they'll be displayed on your profile so pinners can easily find you elsewhere on the Web.
   
• Use the Pinterest bookmarklet or browser add-on. Pinterest offers both a bookmarklet (a button that you can drag to your browser's bookmarks bar, which, when clicked, allows you to pin content from the websites you visit to your Pinterest boards) and a browser add-on for Google Chrome. The browser add-on appears as a small Pinterest logo next to the search/address bar, and works similarly to the bookmarklet.
   
• Add a Pinterest board widget to your website. This is a great way to let visitors to your website know that you're active on Pinterest. Just choose the board you want to share, paste the URL into the widget maker, choose the size you want, and click the "Build It!" button. Then, embed the code on your website somewhere visitors will see it.
   
• Add the "Pin it" button to your website. Have you ever gone to a website, hovered over an image and seen a little red Pinterest button pop up? That's Pinterest's Pin it button, and it allows Pinterest users to easily pin your content to their boards directly from your website. Adding the Pin it button to your website makes it simpler to share content from your website — meaning more people are likely to do just that.

• Watch your percentages. Achieve balance with the content of your boards by posting specific amounts of certain content. Leland said that, in general, 40 percent of your boards should be motivational and inspiring, 40 percent should be instructional and educational, and only 20 percent should be directly about your brand (things like announcements, contests, etc.) Although it's important to see what works with your audience by looking at your analytics page, and adapt your strategy that way, too. 

You can find the bookmarklet and browser add-on as well as more information about creating a board widget or adding a Pin it button to your website here.

Cool uses for Pinterest

Pinterest may seem like a simple platform, and it is, but that doesn't mean you can't find cool and unique uses for your pin boards. There are a lot of ways that businesses and users alike can use Pinterest for purposes other than just sharing products, recipes or articles (or as previously mentioned, planning a trip with the maps feature). Here are a few ways to take advantage of Pinterest:

• Create gift guides. Don't just pin your latest products to your boards. For holidays (or other special, relatable occasions), turn your pinboards into gift-themed gift guides. Include your own products as well as other brands, so that it doesn't look like one giant advertisement for your business. Other pinners will love browsing through your products, and you'll probably be more likely to make a sale.
   
• Show off playlists. Since you're not limited to solely pinning images, try pinning music videos from YouTube to create a playlist board. With a huge fitness community on Pinterest, this could be a great way for fitness-related companies to stray from the norm of sharing workout guides and exercise gear, for example.
   
• Make a reading list. Save thoughtful articles and books related to your business with Pinterest by creating pinboards of all the good reads you think your visitors and customers would be interested in. You can also create secret boards with all the articles and books you're dying to read in your spare time, so they don't get lost or forgotten in your bookmarks folder.
   
• Plan an event. From a business trip to the office holiday party, Pinterest makes planning events (perhaps surprisingly) easier. Just create a secret group board with everyone who's working on the event, and each person can pin or repin helpful ideas, locations and tips.
   
• Redesign your office space. Moving into a new office or redesigning your old one? If you can't or don't want to hire a designer for any reason, create a secret group board and invite your employees to contribute ideas. Pinterest has a plethora of DIY projects and décor ideas just waiting for you on the Web.
• Do giveaways. If you’re holding a contest or promotion, pin it to the relevant boards on your Pinterest page. Leland noted that pins with a call to action like this see much more engagement on the platform. 
  Source

The Importance of Social Media Today

If you are serious about making money in any niche then you need to be using social media. Check this out!

Lessons From a Country Music Duo to Make Your Business 'Big & Rich'

Every entrepreneur starts their business with dreams of becoming big and rich. This column is about what you can learn from a different kind of Big & Rich, as in the country music duo. On Thursday night I attended their concert in my hometown of Lewiston, Maine.

What I got wasn't just a concert, it was an experience filled with some great lessons for entrepreneurs. The questions I’m about to ask you are the same questions I asked myself about my brand as I reflected on my experience at the concert.

Their performance actually began the night before the concert. When Big Kenny and John Rich arrived in Maine, their first stop was at a popular club in town where they unexpectedly showed up and bought the entire bar a double round of Crown Royal shots. Not simply a nice gesture, but also built-in guerilla marketing that’s congruent with their brand. This move was straight out of the lyrics from their song "Save a Horse." 

I buy the bar a double round of Crown and everybody's getting down.

They don’t just sing about it, they do it. Their generosity reinforced their brand message, won them some new fans and got people on social media talking about the upcoming show.

As an entrepreneur, you’re also in the marketing business first and then you’re performing your job. Is your marketing creating a buzz in a way that reinforces exactly what your brand is about? What is something unconventional and thought-provoking you can do to harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing?

The week before their Maine show I went online and watched Big & Rich perform at Comerica Theatre in Phoenix live via Yahoo Screen. Suffice it to say, Comerica was a significantly larger venue with a much bigger audience, which clearly made it a bigger (and richer) payday for the duo.

But what we got was every bit as much of a performance. They brought the same level of energy and quality to their performance in small town Maine as they did in big city Phoenix. What a great lesson for entrepreneurs. We should be putting forth as much energy and effort into every interaction, big or small.

Today more than ever before, customers have an almost insatiable appetite for quality and service. Do you treat your smaller clients with the same level of service excellence as your key accounts? If not, someone else will.

I’ve attended hundreds of country concerts. Name the artist and I’ve probably seen them, twice. On Thursday I learned you don’t just attend a Big & Rich concert, you experience Big & Rich. They take audience engagement to a whole new level in three ways:

1. Personal connection

Between songs, they told jokes and shared personal stories about how they met, got their start and how Kenny’s inspiration for writing the song “Last Dollar” was literally being down to his last dollar in Vegas in 2002. Through these conversations they made the audience laugh, cry and think.

Sharing personal stories can help you connect with your audience too. Do your clients know why you do what you do or how you got started and some of your stumbling blocks? It will ratchet up the respect and admiration they have for your brand.

2. Sharing the spotlight

The duo literally shared the spotlight with everyone, taking turns complimenting each other and their band members, and frequently shining the spotlight on the crowd to sing along. At one point, they asked everyone in the audience who served in the military to rise for a standing ovation, then handed the mic to a U.S. Navy veteran in the front row and asked him to speak about his service.

They didn’t just paint the picture -- they painted the audience into the picture and let us help paint the picture that night. Your job is incredibly similar to theirs in that regard. Want to be a more compelling communicator? Share the spotlight by painting your prospects into the picture, then let them help paint the picture.

3. Details amplify

Lots of performers play the guitar, but how many have it outlined with rhinestones so the guy in the worst seat in the house can see it sparkle just as well as the girl in the front row? There are lots of distractions at a concert. The lights dancing off the rhinestones on the guitars keeps you focused on the artists.

How do you keep your clients' attention? How many artists use their guitars as cue cards to elicit a desired response from their audience? The only ones I’ve ever seen do it were on Thursday night. The duo used guitars with different messages in big letters on the blank space on the back of it. Instructions such as “Scream” and “Louder.” When they wanted the audience to scream louder they flipped over their guitars and held them up. Why? Because energy is contagious. They took something that was already going on and amplified it.

Energy is contagious in your business too. How do you accentuate your audience’s response? Details of any customer experience impact the emotional connection people have with your brand. The back of your business card, your apparel and your company vehicle are great blank spaces you can use to amplify your message and shine brighter.

The biggest lesson was gained from one simple question. They don’t ask you if you’re having a great time, they ask if you’re having a “Big & Rich time.” A Big & Rich time is a one-of-a-kind experience. It’s a feeling.

You’re not selling a product or service, you’re selling an experience. That’s your competitive advantage. Anyone can copy your product, but they can’t duplicate the value in the unique experience only you can provide. What experience does your brand provide? Compare your answer to that question to how your fans would actually describe it.

Instead of thinking of what you do as a job, think of it as a performance. Your business is just like performing music. It’s about connecting with your audience of customers and employees. Each of our performances leaves a mark on our respective markets. Is it strong or weak? Positive or negative?

Like great musicians, great entrepreneurs leave a powerful, positive mark on their market.

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Your SEO Checklist: 4 Steps to Optimizing Your Website

In his book Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Your Website, SEO and online marketing expert Jon Rognerud shows you how to build a high-performance website and get top ranking on all search engines. In this edited excerpt, the author outlines a broad strategy for successfully optimizing your website.

The goal of search engine optimization is to have the search engine spiders not only find your site and pages but also specifically rank the page relevance so that it appears at the top of the search engine results. The process of optimization is not a one-time process but requires maintenance, tuning, and continuous testing and monitoring.

Below is a broad four-step process for a strategy for search engine optimization. Use this as your top-level checklist.

Step 1: Target Market Business Analysis

• Website analysis. Analysis of meta sets/keywords, visible text and code to deter­mine how well you're positioned for search engines. For example, how much code do you have on a page compared to text?
   
• Competitive analysis. Examination of content keywords and present engine rank­ings of competitive websites to determine an effective engine positioning strategy. Pick the top five results in the Google listing results to begin this process. Expand as necessary. Use tools such as Semrush.com and Keywordspy.com.
   
• Initial keyword nomination. Development of a prioritized list of targeted search terms related to your customer base and market segment. Begin with this: What would you type into a search engine to find your business website or page? Then, ask your customers!

Step 2: Keyword Research and Development

• Keyword analysis. From nomination, further identify a targeted list of key­words and phrases. Review competitive lists and other pertinent industry sources. Use your preliminary list to determine an indicative number of recent search engine queries and how many websites are competing for each key­word. Prioritize keywords and phrases, plurals, singulars and misspellings. (If search users commonly misspell a keyword, you should identify and use it). Please note that Google will try to correct the term when searching, so use this with care.
   
• Baseline ranking assessment. You need to understand where you are now in order to accurately assess your future rankings. Keep a simple Excel sheet to start the process. Check weekly to begin. As you get more comfortable, check every 30 to 45 days. You should see improvements in website traffic, a key indicator of progress for your keywords. Some optimizers will say that rankings are dead. Yes, traffic and conversions are more important, but we use rankings as an indicator.

• Goals and Objectives. Clearly define your objectives in advance so you can truly measure your ROI from any programs you implement. Start simple, but don’t skip this step. Example: You may decide to increase website traffic from a current baseline of 100 visitors a day to 200 visitors over the next 30 days. Or you may want to improve your current conversion rate of one percent to two in a specified period. You may begin with top-level, aggregate numbers, but you must drill down into specific pages that can improve products, services, and business sales.

Step 3: Content Optimization and Submission

• Create page titles. Keyword-based titles help establish page theme and direction for your keywords.
   
• Create meta tags. Meta description tags can influence click-throughs but aren't directly used for rankings. (Google doesn't use the keywords tag any­more.)
   
• Place strategic search phrases on pages. Integrate selected keywords into your website source code and existing content on designated pages. Make sure to apply a sug­gested guideline of one to three keywords/phrases per content page and add more pages to complete the list. Ensure that related words are used as a natural inclu­sion of your keywords. It helps the search engines quickly determine what the page is about. A natural approach to this works best. In the past, 100 to 300 words on a page was recommended. Many tests show that pages with 800 to 2,000 words can outperform shorter ones. In the end, the users, the marketplace, content and links will determine the popularity and ranking numbers.
   
• Develop new sitemaps for Google and Bing. Make it easier for search engines to index your website. Create both XML and HTML versions. An HTML version is the first step. XML sitemaps can easily be submitted via Google and Bing webmaster tools.
   
• Submit website to directories (limited use). Professional search marketers don’t sub­mit the URL to the major search engines, but it’s possible to do so. A better and faster way is to get links back to your site naturally. Links get your site indexed by the search engines. However, you should submit your URL to directories such as Yahoo! (paid), Business.com (paid) and DMOZ (free). Some may choose to include AdSense (google.com/adsense) scripts on a new site to get their Google Media bot to visit. It will likely get your pages indexed quickly.

Step 4: Continuous Testing and Measuring

• Test and measure. Analyze search engine rankings and web traffic to determine the effectiveness of the programs you’ve implemented, including assessment of individual keyword performance. Test the results of changes, and keep changes tracked in an Excel spreadsheet, or whatever you're comfortable with.
   
• Maintenance. Ongoing addition and modification of keywords and website con­tent are necessary to continually improve search engine rankings so growth doesn’t stall or decline from neglect. You also want to review your link strategy and ensure that your inbound and outbound links are relevant to your business. A blog can provide you the necessary structure and ease of content addition that you need. Your hosting company can typically help you with the setup/installation of a blog.