Your Digital Ally

This post includes my evolving process for creating a blog post.

It continuing my theme of how to get out of the dilemma of being "too busy to stop being too busy". The story so far is that the solution requires us to make use of ready-made systems and processes.

I'm working on it!

In my previous post - 3 Process Documentation Approaches For Digital Marketing - I focused on the process side rather than the systems side, and mentioned that, for simple processes, I tend to use something like Evernote.

In this post I finally give a specific example of a process. Aptly enough, it's the process I'm using right now for creating a blog post!

Your initial reaction might be: "Why on earth do you need a process to write a blog post? You just write it and post it into WordPress."

Not really. Take a look at all the steps I've identified.

Process For Creating a Blog Post

Choose Topic:

YDA/BDS-WP: Decide on topic for blog post

Load voice-recognition page

Click Start Recording

Tick "Transfer to clipboard"

Write draft in Evernote (Under "YDA Blog posts")

Use guidance in SOP: Writing a Blog Post

Copy text into WP Post (use Text mode in the editor when pasting)

Edit the post.

Find/create an image.

Ideally, align with requirement for FB Ad

Size 1200x628px

No more than 20% text

Tools to use

Pixabay

Canva

Checking appearance in Social Media

Put URL in https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ to see how it will appear on Facebook

Create relevant tweets in the tweet bank: see  and... (TBD)

Update SocialOomph for tweeting (no - still to decide on how to do this)

If using a Kartra optin form in the post, update Form Usage record

Syndicate the content

IFTTT does some automatically

Use SyndLab for others - when ready click "Syndicate" link for the post on the Posts Page

Review Content Promotion Re-Purposing for anything else (need to formalise that Note and/or transfer some content to here)

Think about measuring performance - update the Business Measurement process?

Here's a video of me talking through the process (and changing it as I go along!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYGAuMrx-7M

This documentation of a process for creating a blog post example illustrates a number of interesting points.

Sub-Processes

Three of the links go to other Evernote notes which define how to go about performing specific subtasks. It's important for any single piece of documentation to not get too large. You want to divide a process into chunks of guidance that are reasonably self-contained and cognitively manageable.

The sub processors that I've identified are:

YDA/BDS-WP: Decide on topic for blog post

SOP: Writing a Blog Post

Content Promotion Re-Purposing

You can probably infer from the names that I'm still evolving my naming convention for these processes! Which leads me nicely into my next point, which is:

Constant development

I'm evolving and building my process documentation as a parallel activity to following and applying the documentation. And also as a parallel activity to evolving the processes themselves.

You can see that I've included notes to myself about how the documentation needs to be changed. When my goal is to actually write a blog post, I'll allow myself to get distracted to modify the documentation - but only up to a point.

If the distraction seems that it might stop me getting the blog post completed in time, I'll just make a note of what I think needs to be done and move on.

Eventually the documentation becomes reasonably stable - but it's never cast in stone.

Links to speed up the process

Including links to specific resources and my own working documents is one important way that this type of documentation improves my efficiency.

Personalisation

This example shows very clearly the difference between personalised process documentation and standard "how to" guidance. The latter is what you might find on a website as a PDF.

As well as including links to my own working documents, there are steps in here that are very specific to my own operation - such as the step related to the use of Kartra forms.

In the next post I'll probably include an example of a process documented in Google Sheets.

The example that I'll use clearly demonstrates why I have to use Google sheets rather than Evernote.

Have YOU created documentation of a process for creating a blog post?

Do you think you'll be able to make use of this process for creating a blog post - probably in some modified form?

Do share your ideas and feedback in the comments.

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This post is about the importance of having effective business management systems and processes. If follows on from my previous post "Being too busy to stop being too busy".

What I pointed out in that post was that, as single person business owners, we have far too much to do than can actually be achieved by a single person. Unless we can find a way to get more done in the time available, success is going to keep getting postponed. This can seriously effect our motivation and ability to stick to a particular path. Often, it means we never achieve success.

I stated that the only solution to this is to create business management systems and processes to help us become super efficient. But, of course, we simply don't have the time required to create those systems.

The dire consequence of this is that it's incredibly hard to succeed without a great deal of luck.

This follow-up post explains what I'm doing to help alleviate that problem - both for myself and other small business owners.

And it's simply this...

I AM taking the time to create the business management systems and processes required to run the digital marketing elements of a business.

I'm doing this party because I simply can't help it! I have this compulsion to systematize and organise, so to some extent I'm just going with the flow!

The Case For Creating Business Management Systems and Processes

I'm also doing it because it's eminently clear that online marketing is getting more and more competitive. That means that every task we perform online is getting more involved. In order to survive, let alone thrive, we need to be more strategic, more complex, more consistent, more scalable and to constantly learn, test and adapt.

And those are the 7 reasons why it's essential we have good business management systems and processes, because:

Reason # 1: Without them we can't operationalize our strategy

Reason # 2: Without them we can't incorporate the complexity into our operations

Reason # 3: Without them we cannot ensure consistency

Reason # 4: Without them we cannot scale (this is HUGELY important!)

Reason # 5: Without them we don't have anywhere to record and incorporate our learning to make sure it gets used

Reason # 6: Without them we don't have a way of systematically testing and recording the results of those tests

Reason # 7: Without them we don't have a way of adapting our operations based on our learning and testing

So to my mind, I HAVE to do this for my own success.

I know this is a massive undertaking, although I've got a lot done already. However, I'm very happy to put the effort in, not only because it's essential to my own business success, but also because many other marketers will be able to benefit from this as well.

In the video below, I explain these reasons in more detail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R88m-EbCvQ

The point is this:

The way I can help other people overcome the "too busy to stop being too busy" syndrome is by providing them with ready-made business management systems and processes - as far as this is possible.

It's true that the details of systems and processes are generally unique to each business, but I will be restricting what I do to one area of business - online marketing. By doing this, I can go quite a long way towards providing systems and processes that can be re-used with only minimal changes and configuration.

I'll also be providing training and guidance for you to create your own systems and processes from scratch.

The Components Of Business Management Systems And Processes

Up to know I've been vague about what I mean by business management systems and processes. Here is some clarification. Primarily, I mean

Documented business processes

This is a mixture of checklists, detailed business-specific how-tos, standard operating procedures and activity records.

I've developed different methods of documenting processes to serve different purposes

&

Structured business records

This is about using spreadsheets to keep track of everything that needs to be recorded.

I've created an effective way of using spreadsheets in a consistent way that provides many of the benefits of a relational database approach

 Those are the two main areas, but in addition, it includes

Organized business assets and knowledge

In part, this includes my old-but-still-very-useful IMI Organizer

Managed tasks and priorities

In essence, this is my Max Productivity Management product

 Over the course of the next blog posts, I'll explain in more detail what I mean by each of those topics.

 Let me know in the comments below whether this makes sense to you. Have I missed out any important area of business management systems and processes?

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Here's a video summary of this post. (If the link in the video points back to this page, it means the next blog post isn't ready yet!)

https://youtu.be/Mk5o_oDIsIc

Most small business owners feel overwhelmed and far too busy. We're always looking for a way resolve this and achieve both "success" and a good work-life balance. There are serious health issues involved here.

But we're caught in a dilemma. And this dilemma is almost insurmountable for single person online businesses. In a nutshell, the dilemma is the reality of these two facts:

Fact 1: You MUST be highly systematized and organized to maximize the use of your time - which is essential for success. Fact 2: You're FAR TOO BUSY to spend the time needed to set up your systems and organizational processes.

Here's the longer version of the TOO BUSY argument.

The resources you need to run a single-person online business amount to about 2-3 people if you want to do everything properly. And you HAVE to do everything properly if you want to maximize your chances of success.

So unless you can afford to hire people, your only option is to do everything you can to increase your own personal efficiency. That means being as organised and systematic as you can possibly be. Of course, it does NOT mean that you ignore the creative elements of running a business.

But if you want to be organised and systematic, you need to have very well defined processes and systems in place.

Unfortunately, THAT means adding a very large area of work to your already impossible workload: creating and maintaining your business and personal efficiency systems.

What do I mean by that? Here are the general areas...

Managing all your business records

Documenting all your business processes (and linking them to your business records)

Keeping track of all "business assets" that you download and store on your hard drive

Keeping track of all "business assets" that you create and store either on your hard drive or online

Managing your time, your tasks and your priorities

Keeping track of, and documenting, the multiple work streams that you're working on simultaneously - many of which can last for several weeks or more

I think you get the picture. Pretty much everyone is going to feel too busy to sort all that out!

Let me give you one concrete example: testing and tracking

An online business lives or dies by the effectiveness of its testing and tracking. Unless you're extremely lucky, any marketing campaign you create is unlikely to be as successful as you would like. Indeed, if you don't have much online experience it's very likely to be completely unsuccessful. Now that doesn't mean you abandon the whole thing right away. It means you test it and tweak it until it DOES become successful. Or until you have enough evidence to justify abandoning it.

When you're testing the effectiveness of a campaign, there are many things to test so that you know which parts are successful and which need adjusting. Usually, that means using different tools and systems to access the different statistics about the campaign. For example, your funnel builder, autoresponder, link tracker, Google Analytics, social media stats, form manager, sales processor etc.

That can become a very time consuming activity which you need to do on a regular basis. And you need to remember the whole process every time you execute it, and you need to store the results in a systematic way. And you need to remember to do it regularly.

Everything included

Notice that that absolutely critical activity for online marketers - testing and tracking  includes nearly all the above areas that I mentioned:

Managing business records: the tracking data which you gather.

Documenting business processes: how you go about measuring the performance of each part of the campaign.

Keeping track of "business assets": the funnels and pages and forms and lists and products and lead magnets and tracking links and affiliate programs and social media accounts and sales processors.

Managing your time, your tasks and your priorities: ensuring you are reminded to perform the testing activity regularly.

Keeping track of, and documenting, the multiple work streams that you're working on simultaneously: tracking the performance of a campaign is only one part of the larger workstream of testing and improving. You also need to decide what to adjust, document it and monitor the results.

It's hardly surprising  that most single-person entrepreneurs ignore this entirely, or do it half-heartedly, because it's so complex and time-consuming.

An impossible dilemma

This is an impossible dilemma.

UNLESS you can find more-or-less READY-MADE organizational systems that you can simply pick-up and use. In particular, you want systems designed specifically for online marketers (or people using online marketing in the business). Systems which only need a bit of simple configuration before you can use them - rather you having to design them from scratch.

The good news is that I have a bit of history in exactly that area. I'll say more about it, and my plans for how I could help you resolve this dilemma, in my next post.

 Do YOU feel too busy to stop being too busy? Let me know in the comments section below and stay tuned!

 The follow-up post to this is: 7 Reasons Why We Need Systems And Processes

 And make sure you sign up to my newsletter to get digital marketing tips and, especially, notification of new blog posts.

You need a Personal Vision and a Business Vision because hard work and dedication do not guarantee success. What are you working hard on? What are you dedicated to? To be successful, you need to be working hard on the right things, and you need to be very clear what it is you're dedicated to.

I can recall a time in the past when I would have balked at the idea of writing anything so wish-washy as a vision statement. "That's a complete waste of time!" I would have said. "Vision statements are for poncy pontificators who prefer to just talk about stuff instead of getting down to doing stuff!"

Ah - happy days!

Life back then was black-and-white, action-oriented and free from distracting nuances.

"The bad guys have captured the good guys! We need to rescue them! What's your plan, O Leader?"

"My plan is that we should arm ourselves, then go in and rescue them!"

"Great! Let's do it!"

I guess I must have grown up and adjusted my views because in a mentoring program that I used to run, the second stage of a seven stage process required my mentees to write two short documents: a Personal Vision statement and a Business Vision statement.

It Works!

Getting back to the Personal Vision and Business Vision statements - to confirm that I really have grown up, I'm pleased to say that when I first started working on this current business venture, I decided to take my own advice and actually write both vision statements for myself.

And I can confirm that it is very good advice, and it works!

But it would be a mistake to think that you can write them once and then forget about them.

In fact, one reason that I'm writing about this topic today is because I was reminded about it by my task management system. Earlier today it presented me with a reminder that I'm due to review my Vision statements. I did that, and the review provided very valuable re-alignment and re-focusing.

These statements helped me (and can help you) define a strong clarity of purpose and they provide a context and guidance for when you start defining your business (see below).

What is in a Personal Vision Statement?

My Personal Vision statement has two parts....

The first part is Self Reflection, which helps me document what I believe I understand about myself.

Second is a collection of Objectives.

What is critically important is to make sure the two parts are congruent. It would be a disaster to have objectives that don't align with your values and interests and so on.

I've structured my Personal Vision statement under the following headings...

Self Reflection

What are the core values you aim to live by? How would you like to be remembered? What is really important for you? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are your passions and interests?

Objectives

Objectives around Family & Friends Objectives around  Civic Activities & Hobbies Objectives around  Health & Fitness Objectives around Things to HAVE and Things to DO Objectives around your Business

The objectives around my business (e.g. income goals!) enable some elements of the other objectives to be achieved. They also provide input to my Business Vision.

The Business Vision Statement

My Business Vision statement is quite a lot simpler and consists of just four strategic objectives. It is very generic and does not presuppose any particular type of business or business model.

For some reason I keep thinking it should be longer, but after reviewing it I can't see anything to change at the moment.

In fact, there is a much more substantial document which I have also created - a Business Definition document (also part of my past mentoring program) - which describes the characteristics and set up plan for the particular business which I want to develop. In this case that business is, of course, Your Digital Ally.

I will write more about the Business Definition document in a later post.

What's the real point of Vision Statements?

Whether you're just starting up a new business or whether you've been working on one for a while, I do highly recommend creating, and regularly reviewing, both a Personal Vision statement and a Business Vision statement.

As I am experiencing for myself, they will help you answer two questions which you should be constantly asking yourself.

Am I still heading in the right direction?

Is this still the direction I want to be heading in?

Or to put it another way...

Is my strategy and are my actions still aligned with my vision/purpose?

Do I wish to change my vision/purpose?

Clearly, you shouldn't change your vision or purpose very often, if at all. But you should constantly remain open to that possibility because, as you build your business, you're quite likely to be building yourself and developing personally. And that personal development could well result in you wanting to reevaluate your personal Vision.

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I hope I've made a strong case for creating - and regularly reviewing - Personal and Business Vision statements. And I hope you will make it a top priority to do that now.

Sure - you could simply "arm yourself and charge in to rescue the good guys" - and you could make fast progress for a while. But the chances are that, sooner or later, you'll either get shot or end up interminably in a non-productive defensive position.

It may not be obvious to you at that time that you ended up like that because of a lack of vision statements - but I'd be willing to bet it would be a major contributory factor.

I hope that helps.

 Alex

P.S. For anyone who would be swayed by Biblical advice, here are over 50 variants of a well-known proverb with a similar sentiment to what I'm writing about.

There are many benefits of blogging - even if you don't yet have a business up and running. This approach is often recommended by online marketing mentors - including Dean Holland who makes it the foundation of his Quick Start Challenge program (QSC). (I mentioned the QSC in this post.)

I also very strongly recommend this approach because there are actually more benefits of blogging right from the start than Dean mentions.

His approach is that you should create your blog and document your journey, including your past struggles, your failures and your successes. No matter what type of business you plan to set up, provided it include online marketing, I think this makes sense.

But why?

It may seem like a very odd thing to do if you analyse it in one way. After all, who would want to bother following a blog that's little more than the story of someone struggling, and often failing, to get anywhere - and who has nothing specific to offer? It goes against the grain of what everyone advises: mix with and learn from successful people.

But the reasons for going through this process are a lot more subtle than just getting some folk to register on your list - which is the goal Dean has in mind - and you may feel is unlikely to happen much anyway.

These are the seven benefits of blogging that I have identified:

1. Basic Training

If you're very new to online marketing, it gets you familiar with the basics (domain registration, hosting, WordPress etc.).

If I were running a similar program, I would include setting up basic social media accounts and linking them your blog - as I describe in How to Auto-Tweet New Blog Posts.

2. Online Presence

You're starting to build an online presence at the earliest opportunity: no matter what business model you finally decide on, establishing an online presence is absolutely essential. The idea that you can build a successful online business whilst remaining anonymous and not interacting with people (albeit virtually) is a myth. It's a useful myth to propagate of you're selling a money-making system and don't want to exclude introverts from your target market. But it's still a myth. People buy from people - or from the recommendations of people.

3. Publishing habit

The goal is not just to create a blog: it is to publish to it regularly. This strategy gets you into the habit of regularly posting content - an absolutely essential habit for an online marketer.

4. Learning to be imperfect

It's important to have a fixed deadline for setting up your blog. The reason is, you need to learn the art of getting something done rather than getting something perfect. Perfection is the enemy of success - and this is another essential skill/mindset to be learned.

5. Self-reflection and learning

In the early days, at least, what you'll be publishing on your blog will be your actions, your successes and your failures. This will require you to self-reflect on your actions and their outcomes. In its most general form, this is a hugely important skill in personal development (this is the premise behind a subject area called Action Inquiry). This is an invaluable life skill.

6. Documenting your self-reflection

Of course, the point is to actually document that self-reflection. But this isn't a personal Journal (Journaling is another personal development technique): it's a document for public consumption as well. So, I would limit the amount of emotional content and personal circumstances referenced: some is good to make you real, but this is mainly about your business journey, not your personal transformation journey - although some of that is likely to happen and hopefully, that will come through naturally.

7. Developing your Voice

The more your write, the more you'll develop a particular style and approach and focus - and then you'll begin to stand out. Unless you've done a lot of writing before, that won't happen overnight: so the sooner you start, the better.

So those are the seven benefits of blogging that I have identified. But that leaves open the question of what to write about. So...

Ideas of what to write about

I would recommend writing things such as

What set you on this journey

What tools you use, and why

What problems you find and how you overcome them.

What training and learning you go through

How you are trying (with your successes and failures) to manage your business-development time alongside your life commitments; how you are trying to avoid distraction etc.

What your longer term aims are - and how they change and evolve as you gain experience and understand what's involved.

A weekly/monthy/6 monthly review: what you had hoped to achieve, what you actually achieved, and the reasons.

There is a possibility that your posts will be a catalogue of missed deadlines, distractions, periods of inactivity etc. etc. But that isn't important - provided you keep getting back up and carrying on!.

The vast majority of people will read your posts and think - "Yes! That's exactly like me. I can relate 100% to this person." Unlike the stories of "$1,321 per day after 3 weeks" which no-one relates to. No-one will be able to read your blog and not admire you for getting something done (which puts you ahead of the vast majority of folk) and for honestly and persistently posting your story.

I think that would be really interesting to anyone who is a few steps behind (which covers most people!). They will see YOU putting in the effort (perhaps not that consistently) making progress (perhaps not that quickly) and think "I want to follow along and see how they get on - if they can muddle through like that and keep going, perhaps I can too. It's inspiring - I'll sign up and keep in touch. "

Wouldn't YOU be interested in someone like that?

And the great thing about it is that you're building your audience and presence even while you're still building your "proper" business at the same time.

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I hope the articles in this blog will provide you with some guidance and tips to do exactly that. Do Sign up to my newsletter to make sure you never miss a post!

Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below - especially if you can think of any other benefits of blogging.

In this post I'm going to describe some parts of my business strategy. In particular, I'll explain why I don't think a USP (unique selling proposition) is particularly important, even though I DO have one - and I'll tell you exactly what that is and how it supports my positioning.

Positioning

The starting point is my tag line: Results-Oriented Digital Training For Individuals and SMEs. That summarises my positioning:

Results-Oriented:

What I offer is practical training, not (just) theoretical. In itself that's not unique, but my USP (see below) does, in fact, support that attribute in a unique way: it's not just a cute marketing phrase!

Digital Training:

That summarises the subject matter very broadly. I do have a definition of the scope, but that's not relevant to this post.

For Individuals and SME:

That summarises my target market very broadly. I do have an explicit breakdown of the target market into 5 specific groups, but again, that's not relevant to this post.

In this earlier post, I described how I used Personal and Business Vision statements. There's another, more detailed document that I also created, which is my Business Definition Document - and it's in there that I outlined my Strategy. Here are some key elements of that

General Principles

I included these these three General Principles for operating my business

The business must be easily scaleable - i.e. revenue and profits should not be directly related to the number of staff or time spent working

The business must be systems and process focused: this is closely linked with the need for scaleability, but also reflects my (perhaps overly extreme) obsession with systematization!

The business must be customer focused: these days, that sentiment is a given, but what I mean by it more specifically is that the business direction and evolution will be driven by my customers. So, I am open to the business evolving in directions that I've not planned for - if that is driven by an obvious customer demand and it still allows me to fulfill my stated business and personal visions

Unique Selling Proposition

It's not uncommon for a business strategy to highlight what its USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is for it's offerings: what is the characteristic of the product or service that will make people want to buy YOUR offering as opposed to anyone elses?

Are USPs important in the digital technologies training niche?

Training related to digital technologies is ubiquitous, and much of it is free - so it might seem crazy to try and build a business around that niche. And yet, there are many examples of people in this niche who are highly successful and profitable.

Despite all the freely available content, people will pay (sometimes a lot - $497 or $997 or $1977) if they believe they can get the results faster, more consistently, and there is good follow-up support.

I believe the core elements of online success in this niche - indeed, in almost ANY niche, is to

develop a strong online presence (social media, website, mailing list),

be recognized as an authority, and

build a reputation for creating excellent content

Now, none of that requires a USP, as such: none of that is unique. What differentiates the successful from the unsuccessful is that the successful people do all those three things, and they do them for long enough to succeed.

There is no real need for a USP because people end up marketing and selling to their "tribe" - people who know, like and trust them. At that point they don't need strong product differentiators.

Nevertheless, there ARE benefits to having USPs - and in my case it's going to be very helpful as I establish myself on third party training platforms (primarily Udemy) where the competition is fierce and differentiators ARE useful.

My Unique Selling Proposition

My USP is around the very idea of systems and process that I apply to my own business. My systematizing drive is stronger than most people's - as anyone who has worked with me will know. I'm not saying that to brag because, I'm perfectly aware that it can be overdone and I constantly have to strive for the right balance - and don't always get it right.

But given that that is how I am, I may as well take that aspect of my personality and emphasise the virtuous part of it.

So, when I create training courses, wherever it's appropriate, I will provide operational artefacts that my customers can use when applying and using the digital technologies that are the subject of my training. By that I mean (for example):

Process documentation

Checklists

Record keeping artefacts

That may not sound unique - except perhaps that very few training providers think to include record-keeping artefacts. But my approach is to combine all three functions into one artefact - usually using a Google Sheet.

An example may help explain the idea.

Suppose I'm creating training about Twitter that covers creating, configuring and operating a Twitter account. (That's very likely going to happen, BTW.)

The first thing I'd do is clearly separate out the Setup training (creating and configuring) from the Operating training (all the ongoing activities to grow the account and use it for whatever business purposes it was created). In fact, that's something of a USP in itself: I rarely see training courses that make the difference between setup and operations explicit enough.

As with most training in this area, most of the material would be a video walk-through of all of the steps inviolved. That's fine and obviously very helpful and any half decent training includes that.

Better training will also include, for example PDF checklists and resource lists etc.

But, to my mind, the best training includes something more - and it's that which I'll include and which will be my USP. It's a document/artefact that

Summarises each of the steps covered in the training in the right order needed to get the required result. Note that this is NOT a PDF document because you can't change that. This makes it easier to go back to the essence of the training without hunting through videos

Allows you to tick-off each step as you complete it

Includes all relevant links to supporting resources and websites

Allows you to record relevant data right there in the same document. In the Twitter training example, this could include lists of influencers relevant to your niche which you may want to get connected to and interact with. This facility is important not just for general record-keeping, but also so that that information is available in the most convenient place when it's needed by later steps.

Such a document serves multiple purposes.

It's a way of documenting your own business processes. And following on from that, it provides you with a way to improve upon and enhance those processes by updating the document. (You can't do that with a PDF checklist!)

It's an artefact you can give to your staff or outsourcers which provides them with very explicit instructions AND a way for them to record the completion of each step for auditing purposes

It's a record-keeping artefact

Much of these ideas come from what I learned and developed in an earlier existence as a knowledge management consultant.

This artefact that I'm talking about can be seen as a knowledge artefact in that it contains important business knowledge (i.e. detailed documentation of your setup and operational processes), AND serves as an instruction manual for yourself or others performing that process on your behalf AND it proves a mechanism to implement continuous improvement because you can easily capture what you learn from experience simply by updating that artefact. (Of course, you'll need a process for that!)

This isn't all theoretical, by the way. I've creating such artefacts for my own use, and I've included some in past products that I've  created, and I've provided them on occasions as bonuses for affiliate products that I've promoted.

Does this all make sense? Does it sound useful? Have you created / used anything similar? Is this less unique that I'm assuming? (Yes, language pedants, I know you can't be more or less unique..!)

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Oh yes - and if you can think of a generic term for these operational artefacts that's a bit more meaningful and inspiring that "operational artefacts" - do let me know!

Alex Goodall

After several years of not doing any mentoring, I find myself starting TWO mentoring programs in one week.

One of them takes the form of a monthly local Meetup here in Oxford. This is an offshoot of the Oxford Internet Professionals Meetup which I took over some years ago. The normal format for these is an evening meeting in a central pub where we informally chat about anything related to the internet - usually with a marketing bias.

A while back, there were a few of us diehards still chatting after most of the others had left, when the idea of a separate mentoring-focused meeting came up. This eventually came into being last week (Tuesday) with small group of people meeting in a coffee-shop/bar in central Oxford for 2-3 hours. They had very diverse backgrounds, business skills and technical skills, all with very different needs from a mentor. However, they were all united in understanding that a common need they all had was for accountability!

I can see this continuing on a regular basis and quite possibly expanding to several such meetings per month.

(If you happen to live in or around Oxford, do come and join us! See http://meetup.com/oxford-internet-professionals)

The second mentoring program kicked off on Thursday of last week. This is a 6-week program, over Skype + Hangouts, which I'm providing as a bonus to people who purchased the Quick Start Challenge program through my affiliate link. The QSC is a defined program of work for people who don't already have an online business to get them to the point of earning $100 per day - supposedly in 30-days.

Unlike the local mentoring, everyone in this group will have exactly the same tasks to perform each week - so my mentoring here is - in theory at least - almost 100% accountability, with detailed oversight of weekly plans and goals.

I have to say that I'm enjoying these mentoring activities, and they are influencing my plans on what topics to cover in my Your Digital Ally training.

 Are you involved in a mentoring program? Are you finding it useful/value for money?

Let me know what you think about mentoring in the digital marketing/internet marketing world.

Alex

It's July 1st 2017, and I'm writing the first blog post on this site. This marks the first public act as a build a new business. And you can watch me do it!

Some of you will know that this isn't a new site. I'm relaunching it to support this new business, and I've removed or hidden just about everything that was on here before.

You can't fail to have noticed how I'm describing the business since it appears at the top of every page. It's to provide "Results-oriented digital training to individuals and SMEs".

A simple and not particularly original idea - but it DOES address a real need. And over time, I hope it will become clear that the Your Digital Ally training WILL have some USPs that differentiate it from the competition.

I have a pretty clear idea of what they will be, but I won't start talking about them until I have some concrete examples.

(By the way, the qualifier "results-oriented" isn't just marketing-speak. I do have a specific approach I plan to take which will make that into a reality.)

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So - this post is turning out much as I expected - rather rambling and inward-looking - but let me try and turn that around and make it relevant to YOU!

I'm aiming at four audiences - and hopefully you fit into at least one, to some degree:

End-user micro-enterprises (1-3 people) who want to make more impact on their business by smarter use of digital technologies - probably involving better online marketing for the most part. These are folk who don't have big (or any!) budgets to pay to agencies and have to do most things themselves.

Service provider micro-enterprises (probably individuals) who support end-user organizations with web development/management, social media management, training etc. who want to run their businesses more efficiently and/or train up to provide additional services.

Professional employees in any organization who want to take more active control in promoting their personal brand online and expanding their network of contacts.

Anybody who has figured out that the online world offers significant opportunities to build a business and generate a second or even first income - but perhaps hasn't yet managed to get all the ducks lined up in a row to make it happen!

The chances are, you fall into at least one of those categories. Personally, I'm smeared across all four, to some degree!.

Now why might this be of interest to you - whichever category(s) you may relate to?

Because, where I am RIGHT NOW, and the journey I'm about to undertake

will be an INVALUABLE case study - no matter what your level of experience.

Watch me build a new business

I'm planning to document that journey and share my successes and failures - all of which will provide excellent lessons.

And here's the first lesson - one I know well from prior experience.

I'm currently approaching the end of the "easy" part of the journey (although it's never felt easy!): the planning and building of enough of the "stuff" to get something out there and publicised and start building an audience.

I call it the easy part because up until now, there has been a finite number of tasks needed to get to this point, and the order they are done in is reasonably clear.

But from now on, my task list triples because:

I still need to keep building and refining all the "stuff" (or "infrastructure" to be a bit more formal). This is all the online assets and all the tools and systems for running the business. Building and developing and maintaining that never ends.

I need to actually OPERATE all the business processes (traffic generation, content creation, support, product development), and

I need to monitor, test and improve all elements of the business (the "stuff" and the processes), continually learning and trying out new technologies and ideas.

And it's no longer obvious what the most important or urgent next task is!

This is the reality (and the fun!) of what happens when you build a new business, and then start running it.

So - if you want to watch me go through that process, just sign up to my new Newsletter (see the form below or at the top of the page). I'll make sure I keep you updated.

And just in case you need any further incentive, I'll be making various artfacts available for free to my subscribers as I go along. Worth it at 10 times the price!

Alex

One of the key steps I went through recently was to set up my Market Intelligence System (MIS) - and nowadays I recommend that this should be something everyone does at a very early stage of their business setup.

In fact, as soon as you know what market sector / niche you are operating in, it's a good policy to set up your MIS.

What is a Market Intelligence System?

And MIS is a fancy term I came up with for a system that monitors what the influencers and competitors are talking about in your market or niche.

There are two parts to setting up an MIS

Finding who the influencers are, and

Setting up a way to monitor them

I'll tell you what tools I used for both of those steps in a moment, but first let me tell you WHY I decided to set up an MIS. This part is key.

Why I created an MIS

I did that for three reasons.

The first reason is obvious:

It will help me stay well informed about what's going on in the digital marketing world. That's essential if I'm putting myself forward as an authority figure in that field.

The second reason is:

It's going to help me set up and operate my core social media activities. I plan to use social media as my basic traffic generation system - at least for now. But also...

The third reason is:

Potentially I'll be able to set up an automated list building system that piggybacks off what the influencers and authority figures are doing. This could potentially be a very effective system - but it needs testing and experimenting. Knowing and monitoring the influencers is a key part of setting this system up.

I'll talk about my social media setup quite soon, and that automated list building system some time after that. I'm quite excited by it, but I'm not relying it.

Finding Influencers

There are many ways of finding influencers - such as doing searches on social media sites for your main keywords. But here's a resource I found recently which simplified the process considerably:

http://rightrelevance.com

Create a free account with them (no need to sign up with their $500 per month API service!) and use it only for finding influencers. There are several other things you can do with the free account in relation to monitoring activities but I think there are better alternatives which I'll talk about later.

Once you've entered your keyword (probably your niche name), click on the word Influencers and you'll see the results displayed, with a score for how well each one stacks up for that keyword.

What I also like is the list of related topics. Experiment with different topics - perhaps there's something more focussed for your particular positioning in your niche.

I will be using this tool - including the related topics section - when I set up the account-growth part of my Twitter account setup.

Before I go on to explain how I monitor the influencers, let me say something about RSS.

What Is An RSS Feed?

(In a future re-structuring of the content on this site, I'll put sections like this in a separate type of post - but for now, I'll embed it right here.)

What is key in setting up the monitoring part of a Market Intelligence System is the use of RSS feeds or Atom feeds. (Being a bonafide digital marketing expert I should know the difference between those two types of feeds. But I don't because I've never needed to know it!)

However, I do know that a lot of people are not really quite sure what an RSS feed is or how it works. Here's a simple explanation.

Think of any 'channels' on the web where content is - or could be - added to on a regular basis. Examples include

Posts on a blog

Posts in a certain category on blog

A Facebook timeline

Posts to a Twitter account

Videos in a YouTube channel ...

You get the idea I think.

Think of an RSS feed for a channel as an "administrator" that makes a "log entry" each time a there is a new post made to a channel.  Typically, each log entry consists of the title of the post, an extract of the content, any associated image, various items of metadata and a link to the post itself.

It's pretty much as simple as that.

An RSS feed is accessed via a URL - but what you see if you display it in your browser is a chunk of data not designed for human consumption.

The URL of the RSS feed for all posts of a blog is probably (but not necessarily) structured like this

http://anyblog.com/feed

Note that finding the actual URL of an RSS feed for any particular channel can sometimes be something of an issue.

As human beings, we make use of RSS feeds using an RSS Feed Reader, which monitors all the feeds you tell it to.

It goes to each RSS feed URL on a regular basis, and takes a look at the admin log to see if there's been a new entry since the last time it looked. It can then display the entry in nice, friendly human-readable ways!

What RSS Feed Reader To Use?

I spend some frustrating hours looking into this - so you don't have to!

Some years ago, the answer was easy - Google Reader.

But that got discontinued and I, like many people, found Feedly to be a perfectly viable alternative.

However, when I looked at it the other day, I found annoying restrictions which require a paid upgrade to overcome. That's when it became frustrating...

Until I found Inoreader.

There is also an upgrade option with Inoreader, but I've not found any limitations for myself on the free version. There are LOTS of things you can do - including creating advanced filters on feeds, combining feeds, tagging them in multiple ways - etc. etc.

Brilliant!

Actions

Although these blog posts aren't supposed to be a step-by-step blueprint for people to follow, I'll include explicit action steps whenever I can.

Get hold of Right Relevance.

Experiment with various keywords and find some influencers.

Perhaps use some other tools to find influencers as well.

Find the blogs of the influencers and find the RSS feeds of those blogs

Get hold of Inoreader.

Add in the RSS feeds of the influencers.

Experiment with the features of the product - play around with it: there's lots to learn

That's all for now.

Let me know how you get on with those tools - and any problems you encounter.

And if you're not already subscribed to my newsletter - do it NOW so you don't miss out on any of these posts!

 Alex

Am I behind the curve by focusing on Twitter?

It seems to me that Twitter has gone somewhat out of fashion with online marketers recently. The focus has been more on Facebook (as always) along with Pinterest and Instagram and, in some cases, LinkedIn. Oh yes - and YouTube for fast ranking of content.

But the way I see it, once you have your blog set up, the next step should be to create and set up a Twitter account. It's the simplest social media account to set up and run, and it's essential if you want to be regarded as an influencer or an authority and to have a serious online presence.

And, it's easy to link your Twitter account to your blog.

That's why, although I have set up Your Digital Ally on Facebook, YouTube and GooglePlus as well, it's Twitter where I've been putting my setup effort.

If you've not already taken a look at my twitter account, go take a look now (and why not follow me - and let me know in the comments below?)

Not too bad, is it? I think it looks quite nice.

By the way, the image is a 100% copyright-free picture I found on Pixabay.com: and I've used the same one on all my social media accounts. I also find most of my blog post images on Pixabay. Add it to your favourites!

I've been developing the Twitter account on three fronts:

Twitter Account Growth - SocialQuant

I'm growing my followers on 95% autopilot using an excellent service called SocialQuant. It's 95% rather than 100% autopilot because I go and check (and adjust) the keywords that SocialQuant uses to select which accounts to follow - in the hope of a follow-back.

I chose this service because:

It does the Following for me.

Other services just tell you who to Follow, and you have to do the clicks yourself. This is because of Twitter's API limitations, I believe. But SocialQuant doesn't use the API, so can act fully on your behalf.

It is very selective in who it chooses to follow.

The appearance of a keyword in a tweet is just the trigger to consider the suitability of the account as one to follow. SQ applies quite rigorous criteria before deciding whether or not follow anyone: and I don't have to fiddle around deciding for myself what those criteria should be.

I get reports on the success rate of each keyword

I then use those report to delete poor performing keywords and test out new ones.

Excellent free training

When you sign up for the free 14-day trial, you're given an excellent 14-day course with detailed advice on how best to set up a Twitter account for maximum effectiveness.

In a future post I'll explain in detail how I use SocialQuant, and in particular how I find, monitor and track the keywords it uses via a Google Sheet that I created. I'll also tell you the one thing I wish I'd done differently before turning on the service!

Autoposting Collections of Tweets - SocialOomph & Social Motiv8

I'm using SocialOomph - one of the very earliest Twitter (and more) automation tools - to auto-post pre-defined collections of tweets.

I'm using it because it provides the most flexible and powerful facilities - even though its user interface is quite uninspiring!

These are the collections of tweets that I'm auto-posting. Note that in each case, I cycle through each collection repeatedly.

Motivational Quote Images

I'm using the Social Motivat8 collection of 150 images which I created for myself and now sell as a product.The reason I'm using these is purely to get as much engagement within my account as I can without me having to go in and engage personally! But see below for more about this. It definitely works.

A collection of humorous one-liners with images.

Exactly the same idea. I've not created as many of these, and not turned them into a product (yet). One day I'll test to see which get the most engagement.

Tweets about past blog posts.

This is the "business" activity, of course.

Whenever I write a new blog post, I create three different tweets about it and feed them into SocialOomph. To be able track clicks on each individual tweet, I use a unique bit.ly link for each one.

As I write more blog posts, the proportion of tweets that relate to blog posts will increase. At the moment my tweeting is heavily motivational-quote oriented!

Again, in future blog posts I'll explain exactly how I set things up in SocialOomph, including

How I add my own watermark to all the 150 Social Motiv8 images in one operation using free software

How I set up the queues of tweets in SocialOomph

The system (Google Sheet) I created to automatically calculate the posting frequencies for each of the queues

The process I go through to construct the three tweets and unique URLs for each blog post and add them into the correct place in the queue of other blog post tweets within SocialOomph. Again, I use a Google Sheet to streamline, semi-automate and simplify this process.

Automatically Posting a Tweet (and more) when each blog post is published

As well as adding three tweets about each blog post to the relevant SocialOomph Queue, I also automatically send out a once-off tweet soon after publish the post.

In this blog post I explain exactly how I "syndicate" my blog posts to multiple social media accounts - not just Twitter.

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So far, everything I'm doing on Twitter is almost 100% automatic, and my Twitter account is growing nicely with very high quality followers and some quite reasonable engagement.

The engagement is coming mainly from the Social Motiv8 motivational quotes and humorous one-liners rather than from my blog posts. But that is exactly why I am including them.

Any form of engagement is good: it raises your score for various social metrics and increases your likelihood of being found for various searches. And it starts to get you noticed by your followers and should eventually lead to a more business-oriented engagement.

That's why I made the motivational images quotes into a product: ANY social media account will get more engagement (possibly MUCH more) by including these images in their content.

What I Still Need To Do

Automation and auto-engagement is fine: but it can only get you so far.

I need to put a process in place whereby I manually engage with people on Twitter.

Later on, I'll be doing this with specific goals in mind - such as wanting to get the attention of major influencers - but I'm not ready for that yet. For the time being, I just want to "be engaging" with my Twitter followers.

But I want to do this in the most efficient way, using tools that suggest who I should engage with and exactly what form of engagement to use in each case (e.g. reply, re-tweet, like). I've not set this up yet, but when it IS set up, my aim is to spend at most 15 minutes per day on Twitter engagement.

I'll write about this system on this blog when I have it set up.

Other things I haven't done include:

Make any use of hashtags: not doing this is plain dumb, and is high on my list of "twitter system improvements"

Make any of use of Twitter Lists

Make any use of Twitter Momements

Add my Twitter stream to my blog

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So that's the current state of development of my Twitter account.

I could have had quite a few more followers by now (at the time of writing I have 680-ish) if I'd put in some manual effort myself and been more aggressive, but I didn't want Twitter to be a big distraction from the dozens of other things that I also need to be doing.

So - I'm pretty pleased with how it's going, given the effort I've put in.

As for results - I've not even bothered to check how much traffic I'm getting because I know it's going to be minimal until I get more followers, do some manual engaging and ramp up my content posting with another content source (see below).

But this is a long-term project to build a valuable asset, which I'm treating very much as a background activity.

However, I DO have plans to apply a very smart advanced tool which will both auto-post additional high-quality, niche-related content AND get me optins for my list. That will be when this effort will pay off.

As always, I'll reveal what THAT is all about some time down the line.

So - Why Not Follow Me on Twitter?

If you've not followed me yet, please do so - and let me know in the comments box below. If you do that, I'll follow you back. (I let SocialQuant manage all my following activities, so you need to tell me explicitly or I won't notice your follow!)

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I hope that's been a helpful post. Let me know what you think of it.

There are a lot of details I'll be filling in during future posts, so to ensure you don't miss any of them, get on my newsletter mailing list to receive notifications of future posts.

You'll be able to copy exactly what I do.

To maximise the impact of a new blog post, you should announce it on your social media sites. Here's a video showing how to do it automatically in the fastest and simplest way using the free service IFTTT.

This just shows how to set up auto-posting to Twitter, but the process for most other social media account is the same. (Google plus requires an extra setp - but I'll cover that in another post.)

Whenever I make a post on this blog, I automatically make a post that links to it on each of the related social networking sites. For example, my earlier post about my Twitter account:

... was automatically sent to these social media acounts:

My Twitter Account

My Facebook Page

My Google Plus account

My personal LinkedIn status feed (I don't have a specific LinkedIn Page for Your Digital Ally yet.)

Setting  up something similar should not take you more than about an hour using  IFTTT if you already have your social media accounts set up. And it will definitely be one of the most effective hours you spend in terms of the return on activity for the time spent

This is the first and simplest form of automation you could (and should!) set up in your business. But it is nevertheless very effective. Provided you find the time to make blog posts every so often, you can avoid the embarrassing and unprofessional state of having social media accounts set up which are forlornly devoid of content, and where there's not even any tumbleweed to distract the visitor!

It's better to NOT to have a social media account than to have one sitting there empty.

I hope that helps.

And if there's no follow-up blog post quite soon to explain how use IFTTT with Google Plus - feel free to get in touch and remind me! With that added, this little piece of automation training will be complete.

Alex

You're starting a new business or brand. You want to ensure the name is not already in use. What do you do?

Back in the days of PI (pre-Internet), you'd check registered company names, trademarks etc.

But in these days of PI (pervasive-Internet), you start by checking for existing domain names. But it shouldn't end there.

This is what I (used to) do:

Go to Godaddy.com and check domain names (but I always register domains on Namecheap.com)

Go to Twitter and check that the relevant Twitter handle exists

Go to Facebook and check whether there's a Facebook Page with that name

... and also check for a Google+ Page

... and also check for a YouTube Channel

...and also check on Pinterest

...and also check on Instagram

I've been through that process perhaps 7-8 times in recent years (for myself or clients) and it's a hassle. Usually, I have five or six ideas for a brand, and have to do all that checking for each potential brand name.

And even then, it's an incomplete check: there are hundreds of other sites where you can create branded accounts, but who's going to bother checking them all?

Well - in future, I would!

Looking back, it was pretty stupid of me to go through that process so many times and not stop to ask myself "Is there a site/service that would make this easier?"

I know perfectly well that, whenever I have a problem or there's something I want to achieve online that isn't weirdly abstruse, there is always a product or a service tailor-made to my needs.

That's where we are at on the interweb these days.

So I kicked myself when I found Knowem

You can search the 25 most popular social sites and key domains all in one go.

And if that's not enough, you can also search 500+ more sites.

It's brilliant - and best of all, it's FREE!

And if you're keen to grab your brand everywhere that counts, they offer a service to create the accounts for you - a great time-saver!

I don't have any plans to start a new brand at the moment, but I'm almost tempted to start one just to use Knowem in earnest!

If you're starting a new brand and find a name and test it using Knowem - let us know in the comments section - but perhaps it would be wise to do that AFTER you create your social accounts!

BTW - are you registered to receive my newsletter and get updates of new posts? If not, use the optin box on the right, or on the not-at-all annoying popup (which you've probably already seen) or as a last resort, click this link for a dedicated optin page! You'll get a colourful and motivational and useful gift!

What do you understand by Money Site vs Traffic Site? I believe this is a very useful concept, and I explain how I'm using, and plan to use, the idea with Your Digital Ally.

For the most part, the only people who make a distinction between money site vs traffic site are the communities discussing some advanced (and usually blackhat) SEO techniques.

However, I think it's very useful for anyone to keep that distinction in mind - and I'll explain why.

First of all, what's the difference?

Money site

Simply put, a money site is the site which includes the "buy" buttons - whatever else may be on the site. Usually it includes some sort of sales copy, and any supporting information and descriptions and perhaps testimonials about the products and services. That's where the financial transaction takes place. The job of the money site is to convert visitors to buyers.

For me, that is this site http://yourdigitalally.com.

At the moment, the only product on sale is the SocialMotiv8 Motivational Quote Images and that is pretty much the only sales page on the site for now. Because that isn't a core product (it's part of my optin funnel), there is no link to the sales page from the site's navigation.

When I start publishing courses, there will, of course, be very prominent links to the relevant sales pages from the site navigation and the home page.

Traffic site

This is a site whose main function is to generate traffic through SEO and/or social media, presell (in some way) the products on sale on the money site - and then filter that traffic to the money site. Usually this mean publishing relevant content to the traffic site on a regular basis.

If that content is keyword-optimised, that helps generate traffic through SEO.

If that content (or links to it) also appears on social networks, then that should drive additional traffic to the site in two ways:

By the backlinks on the social networks giving the traffic site extra authority in Google's estimation, and

By people directly clicking on those links and visiting the site

The final way that the traffic site generates traffic is from mailing list subscribers.

If you have a mailing list (and you should be creating one), you can mail your list whenever there is a new post and get traffic from there as well. Although those won't be NEW visitors, any visitor helps to persuade Google that your site deserves a higher ranking. And, of course, the more visitors you get - old or new - the more likely you are to make a sale (duh!) ...

... not to mention the importance of providing your subscribers with valuable information!

My traffic site

I have decided to make http://yourdigitalally.com my traffic site as well as my money site, so they are completely integrated as far as the domain is concerned.

My other options would have been, for example:

yourdigitalallyblog.com (a completely different domain), or semi-integrated as blog.yourdigitalally.com (on a sub-domain) or yourdigitalally.com/blog

I can't give you a list of pro's and con's for each choice - other than the obvious one of the hosting and maintenance issues of having a separate domain or sub-domain.

I chose the simplest option since I could see no reason to do anything else!

Given what I've said above, a traffic site is likely to contain an optin form to capture the email addresses of visitors to help build a list.

Note that, depending on the nature of your business, you may also, or instead, have the optin form on your money site where you offer a free trial of your service, or a free, reduced functionality version of your product.

As regards social media, you should integrate the posting of content on your traffic site with your social media accounts.

I'll explain how I've integrated my traffic site with my social media accounts and my email list in another post. This type of automation can save a LOT of time.

Why it's useful to distinguish between Money Site vs Traffic Site

If you have your own products, it may seem pointless to even think about the difference between the two types of site - but consider this.

You will always have just ONE money site.

But you are NOT restricted to just ONE traffic site.

Some of the advanced blackhat SEO techniques involve having tens or hundreds or even thousands of traffic sites, all focusing on ONE money site- with complex relationships between those traffic sites involving perhaps multiple rings and layers.

But even if you choose to live in a simpler, greyer world - as I do - you could easily have at least one other traffic site. Here's how...

It's relatively easy to create a "news aggregator" site that gets its content (perfectly legitimately) from other relevant sites in your niche. Because this site is publishing fresh content daily, it could/should do very well in Google's eyes, and so rise in the rankings and get relevant SEO traffic. All YOU need to do is direct that traffic (in a suitable way) to your money site - via listing building or your own display ads or links.

And what makes this idea feasible is that the aggregation can be completely automated.

This is on my own todo list for the future. I'll write about it when I implement it.

The other scenario where money site vs traffic site is a useful concept is in affiliate marketing. In fact, any decent affiliate marketer uses this idea as standard.

As an affiliate in a niche, you would normally create a site where you post content about that niche to attract traffic and build a list. In other words, as an affiliate, it's your job to create traffic sites and pre-sell the affiliate product(s). The product vendor's job is to create a money site that converts visitors into customers.

So - it's a very useful concept to keep in mind.

Know what you're doing!

When you're creating a site, be very clear whether it's a money site, a traffic site or a combination: and if it's a combination, which parts are money-oriented and which are traffic-oriented.

Was this helpful?

Let me know your comments below.

 Alex

There's so much I want to write about, I decided I needed to reduce the time I spend on content creation. Use of speech recognition is one part of achieving that. This post was going to be about a very different topic - but it morphed along the way! I'll write a second post today to make up for it.

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So - this is the next update on my business blog which is recording what I do as I go about developing the business which you see on this site.

There's certainly no shortage of material to write about. In fact each day I think of about three different topics I'd like to cover, but right now I don't have the time to write content at such a fast rate.

But having said that, I've just changed my mind about the subject matter for this post. What I'm now going to write about is how to create content fast. More specifically, a technique for creating content much faster than normal. It's what I'm using right now...

Speech Recognition

Talking to a number of colleagues recently, I was surprised to learn how few of them realised that speech recognition technology is now many times more efficient than it was just a few years ago.

What I'm doing right now is speaking into my smartphone and creating this post in an Evernote note using the built-in speech recognition facilities of Android. I just click on the microphone button on the keypad and the input mechanism switches from keypad to microphone.

The quality of the speech recognition is quite amazing. It works at its best if you speak at normal speed because as you complete a sentence the system looks at the whole structure and goes back and changes words which it might have misunderstood initially.

The only annoying factor is that the speech recognition doesn't always recognise punctuation commands.

For example - if I say full stop new line it very often just insert those words - exactly as it has right now (!) instead of actually putting in a. And starting a

Ha! In that instance it actually put in the punctuation!

Because you can't be sure whether it's going to put in the punctuation or not, it ends up being quicker to always switch into keyboard mode to do it.

The fastest way to change words or phrases

For some types of change the best way is to switch to keyboard mode. But often it's fastest to stay in speech input mode and do the following :

Position the cursor just after the incorrect word or phrase.

Click the back icon - which is to the right of the microphone (on an my phone at least). In speech input mode this deletes a complete word rather than just a character - which is exactly what you want.

You can then, of course, just re-speak that word or phrase - and the change is done.

Practice to improve your speech

To begin with you may find that using speech recognition is hardly any faster than simply typing in the text. But keep experimenting for a while and you're likely to find you get a very significant speed improvement.

You will need to get good at articulating the words clearly, but don't fall into the trap of thinking you need to speak slowly and pause between each word. That will actually give you worse results.

Also don't be put off if you have a strong regional or foreign accent. You may be surprised at how well this technology handles strong accents.

Practice to improve verbal and semantic structures

( I'm almost certainly using the wrong terminology here but I'm going to assume that not many linguistic students (at most one, probably) are going to be reading this.)

There are two points I want to make here .

The first is that the way you think when you're speaking is somewhat different to when you're writing. And your sentence structures end up being somewhat different.

You may need to get used to seeing your spoken sentence structures preserved in text as opposed to disappearing into the ether as soon as you finish speaking.

But with a bit of care and practice you can create more than half decent sentence structures that you're happy to preserve in print.

The second structure point I want to make is that I personally end up with a slightly different attitude to how I structure the complete article when using speech input.

If I'm speaking the article I'm more likely to make a start without a clear idea in my head about how the whole thing will be organized. I'm very unlikely to create an outline beforehand.

This can mean that the article ends up being a little bit meandering - perhaps like this one! Sometimes that matters and sometimes it doesn't.

You just need to make a judgement and adjust accordingly.

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So if you've not already started using speech recognition I do encourage you to give it a go - and let me know your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

Regards

 Alex

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The implementation of my business development project plan for Your Digital Ally is coming along nicely, and the end of July marked the end of Phase 1 of my plan.

I'll tell you more about what was in the plan and what I've so far put in place for my business in the next few blog posts, but for this post I think it worthwhile making a diversion into the topic of development plans.

The first thing to say is that, by "plan" I don't mean some vague intention of achieving something by some unspecified time in the future.

I mean a detailed schedule of tasks, with time estimates for each. Here's a snapshot showing a 2-week period for my own plan.

I expect for many people that that level of planning may be overkill - but I've learned enough about myself over the years to know that that's the best approach for me. I would also recommend that whatever your attitude to planning or your level of experience, that you DO create a plan - at whatever level of detail you feel comfortable with or are competent to create.

The more experience you gain with planning, the better you'll get at it, and the more valuable it will be for you.

Why Create A Business Development Project Plan?

There are three fairly obvious reasons

It defines exactly WHAT it is you are trying to achieve

It provides you with an estimate of WHEN you plan to achieve it

It tells you HOW you will get there

The high-level, very important reasons are:

It helps you create realistic time-frames so that you don't get demoralized by things taking longer than you hoped

It keeps you focused: you will always know whether what you are doing at any given time is moving your forwards or is just a treadmill or a distraction

In summary, if you don't have a plan, you WILL spend months and months doing un-directed stuff, being very busy, but not getting anything completed. I know. I've work with and without a plan: and I know which works best!

What exactly IS a Business Development Project Plan?

If you've studied project management, you'll know that a project plan can take many forms, and can include many different types of artefact. The bigger the project and the more people involved, the more complexity needs to go into the plan - obviously.

To put things into context, what I'm talking about here is a plan for the work to be done by ONE person (perhaps with some outsourcing) for a relatively short period of time (see next section).

It consists of

A defined "end state" which you are aiming to achieve at the end of the project or phase. Typically, that will be defined by what "things" need to be in place at that time. (The technical term for a "thing" is "deliverable" - which is a bit more meaningful.)

Examples of high-level deliverables would be

A website with basic functionality or A funnel with a lead magnet and tripwire or All core social media sites set up or An email management system selected and fully configured.

A collection of all the specific tasks that need to be performed in order to create those deliverables

Where tasks need to be completed in a particular order, you should obviously put the earlier task ahead of the later tasks.

Also, it's critically important to include a TIME ESTIMATE for each task.

Whether you estimate in hours, days or weeks depends on how granular your tasks are. You should make them as granular as possible - based on your experience and understanding of what's needed.

For example, if you are completely new to building an online business, have no real idea how long things take and don't understand what needs to be done, your plan could include tasks like this:

- Find and go on a basic course on building a WordPress-based site: 1 Week

- Build basic WordPress site: 3 weeks

You may want to adjust the 3 week estimate and possibly break it down into sub-tasks, after going on the course.

On the other hand, if you are very experienced and don't like detailed planning, you may just have the task

- Build WordPress site: 2 days

Or, you may have a predefined detailed template website-building checklist / documented procedure so that the website-building section of your plan could include 20-30 very granular activities with time estimates in hours for each task.

To summarise the key idea here:

A Business Development Project Plan consists of a defined collection of deliverables and a sequence of tasks with time estimates for creating them.

The Never Ending Plan

I've never been involved in an online business where the development work is ever complete.

What happens is that there is a setup period, where all your time is spent on creating the minimum collection of  deliverables needed to launch your business. At that point you can launch it - meaning it's open to the public to some degree or other.

Then your life splits into two:

Strand #1:

You continue with more development - and this usually goes on forever to improve your performance, grow your business, adjust to changing technologies and opportunities and changes in strategy.

Strand #2:

You start operating your business - generating traffic, delivering your goods and services, providing support... and doing the monitoring and measurement that will help define what the ongoing development work should be.

SO - development goes on forever

Timeframes, milestones and progress monitoring

What I've found works well for me is to have a detailed business development project plan or phase that lasts for 4-6 weeks. For the level of granularity at which I like to plan, I find that that is a sensible and manageable time-frame to plan for. Of course, you need to have a meaningful - and hopefully significant - collection of deliverables at the end of that period that make a real difference to your business.

I also like to include 3-4 meaningful intermediate milestones linked to particular deliverables.

Although I'm constantly monitoring progress as I tick off each task, I formally review and adjust the plan each week, trying very hard to ensure I'm on track at the end of each week. If I'm not, I move the incomplete tasks into the following week and check the implications on the overall plan. I adjust the plan accordingly, doing my damnedest to NOT change the end-date!

Hitting deadlines: Secret #1

Contingency!

When I divide the plan up into weekly chunks, the number of hours I have in my plan for each week is 50-70% of the numbers of hours for which I COULD be working on the project. I nearly always need those extra hours - either because my task estimates were too low, or because I decide to adjust the deliverables. It's very important to have the scope to be able to do that.

The best plans are NOT fixed and unchangable. You MUST be able to adjust and enhance as new ideas come along which often can only arise once you start DOING rather than PLANNING. It has to be an iterative process, so you must leave enough slack to allow it to happen.

The other element of contingency is to add to 1 - 2 weeks onto the end of what your original time estimate tells you.

For example, when I first put the plan together for the most recent phase, adding up all the estimates for the tasks told me it would be complete soon after mid-July. At the time, that seemed very reasonable.

But I was persuaded to set my end-date deadline to be the END of July: and I ended up hitting it to the day!

Hitting deadlines: Secret #2

Accountability!

When I said I was "persuaded" to adjust my end-date deadline - it was my Accountability Monitor (Ray) who did that.

I'm lucky enough to have a very experienced project manager meet with me once a week for around 20 minutes over Skype to review my plan. This has proved invaluable.

Ray has a lot more project management experience that I do - but with teams of people who are accountable to their bosses. So his role with me as a single person, creating his own plan and officially accountable to no-one is very different.

Although his project management experience has been useful (e.g. persuading me to add in even more contingency) - the most valueable role is just being there for the meetings and listening to my account of my progress. He has no power over me; has no financial interest in my business and can take no sanctions. But that fact that I know that, at 2.00pm on Monday I will be meeting with Ray to explain my progress, significantly changes my behaviour.

First of all, it means I ALWAYS have an adjusted plan in place by that time - otherwise we would have nothing to talk about. It is properly updated each week.

And secondly, just knowing that if a task doesn't get done, or significantly overruns, that I have to tell Ray about it - changes my behaviour. I know I'll feel much better being able to say - "Yep - everything got done" as opposed to "Three tasks had to move into next week, and that's now looking very tight".

Also - Ray regularly reminds me to create longer-term milestones. These are my current best-guess at what the high-level deliverable should be for longer time-frames - 3, 6 or 12 months, for example. As it happens, my plan for this week includes doing exactly that. (I have to say that because Ray might end up reading this!)

Summary

Here are the three key points from this post

Create a continuous PLAN for the setup and ongoing development of your business: include tasks and time estimates at whatever level of granularity is appropriate for you and your experience; use 4-6 week phases of detailed planning

Include plenty of CONTINGENCY so that your plan can be adjusted and can evolve as you iterate through doing and (re)planning: include contingency both within each week's plan and add time to the end of the planning period.

Find someone to be an ACCOUNTABILITY Monitor - preferably with weekly meetings.

I hope you find this helpful. Do you have a business development project plan? If not, do you think you should -  or do prefer to wing it? Despite my approach and opinions, I do know very successful people who never plan - so I can't be too dogmatic. (Although I know even more people who struggle dreadfully through a lack of planning.)

What are YOUR experiences?

Let me know in the comments area.

 Alex Goodall

I think it's time I provided an overview of what I want to achieve with my Your Digital Ally business. The main take-away here is the importance of having your own brand.

In the first article in this series, I explained how I was setting up a business to create and sell training courses online in the area of digital technology.

I was inspired to do this by a number of success stories of people who had created some courses on the Udemy portal and were doing quite well from the residual income that it generated. This seemed like an attractive option because I didn't need a website, and I didn't need to generate traffic and customers. Udemy would do that - apparently.

But it wasn't long before more in-depth research of this model revealed that my initial impressions were quite false.

Successful vendors have their own brand

What I quickly discovered was that the really successes people ALSO had courses on other platforms - such as Skillshare. And more importantly, they also

Sold courses on their own website

Sent their OWN traffic to Udemy etc.

Built a list of customers to whom they could sell new courses, and, in amongst all this

Had their own brand

In fact, this is a general principle for anyone who plans to make use of large third party platforms that help with promotion and sales.

For example, I know sellers on Amazon with multiple products who advise people to start with Amazon, but then transition to selling off their own website as well. Their goal is to build a strong, multi-product brand and then sell the brand/business for many $millions.

I also know a highly successful eBay seller who is so successful, he's hit the eBay "glass ceiling".

Whatever he does with his business, he finds that he cannot increase his revenues on eBay any further. It seems as though eBay puts a cap on the amount that any one vendor can earn - although of course this is not official policy and is not stated anywhere. (He was invited by eBay to a special "top-sellers only" event, but no-one would admit to this policy.)

The principle is this: you don't want the existence of your business to be dependent on the changeable rules and regulations of an impersonal behemoth who would neither know nor care if you were to go out of business.

So, whatever third-party sales platform you may decide to hook onto - Amazon, eBay, Udemy, Skillshare etc. etc. - (if any), you should also always have your own website and build your own brand.

It was fairly clear, then, that I would need to expand the scope of my business model to include creating own brand and website, creating a traffic plan etc. That was all fine because all those activities were topics I could potentially create courses about.

The question was - when to create my own site?

Own brand first, or later?

One option would have been to immediately create some courses on Udemy so that I would quickly have something to sell and I would gain early experience of the platform. I would then create my brand after establishing an initial presence on Udemy and Skillshare.

This seems to be the route that a lot of Udemy sellers have taken.

However, I decided to take the opposite approach and build my website and brand first. There were three reasons for this:

My reasons for building my website and own brand first.

Firstly, it means that when I DO start putting courses up on Udemy, etc, I will immediately be able to promote my brand to the students who enroll on those courses.

Secondly, it means I can immediately put a traffic generation system in place.

As I said above, I learnt from my early research that successful sellers drive their own traffic to their courses - even on Udemy. This told me that - as with most online businesses, I was going to need my own effective traffic generation system as the engine driving the whole business.

No shortcuts here!

And finally, of course, once I have a site up which is attracting traffic, I can start building a list. And as we all know, the most valuable asset you can create in online marketing is a mailing list.

So that gives you some idea of what my end game is.

In summary, my roadmap is:

Website

Traffic

Listbuilding

Course development

And right now, I'm still primarily at step 1 - itching to get to 2 and 3!

In the following posts I will talk more about this roadmap, the tools and systems I'm using - and why.

Alex Goodall

If you're building a website you must have a Privacy Policy. This post explains why you need one and the free and easy way to make one!

Creating a Privacy Policy is one of those things that is so easy to ignore.

It's hidden away, most people don't really care about it, and whose going to check up on you anyway when you're just starting off. And more importantly, you don't have any idea of how to create one, other than paying a lawyer (no thanks!) or copy-pasting someone else's (hmmm... doesn't seem like a good idea).

So the default action is - "let's leave that till later". I know that's true, because that's what I've done in the past (shock!) but I did it properly for this site.

And since you are now reading this article, the excuse of not knowing how to do it is about to disappear. Looks like you're going to have to bite the bullet and NOT put it off.

But first...

Why is a Privacy Policy nearly always essential?

The first reason is simply that you're required to have one by law if you collect data.

For example, you need one if you collect, store or share personal data such as email and name information. Your Privacy Policy must explain what you do with that information.

There may be a few countries or states where this isn't a legal requirement, but you may as well as assume that it is a requirement, wherever you reside.

But what if you're not collecting personal data?

Then ask yourself this:

Do you currently, or might you in future, make use of services offered by third parties such - as Google Adsense? If so their terms and conditions will almost certainly require you to have a Privacy Policy. In the case of Google Adsense - it's a must!

What are the EXACT conditions when a Privacy Policy IS essential?

I have no idea!

Maybe there are a few special cases where you can ignore it, but I haven't bothered to figure out the exact conditions under which you must have a Privacy Policy because that would take more work than actually implementing one.

And in any case, there are many marketing benefits to having one - such as increasing the trust of your visitors and giving them additional peace of mind.

So my advice would be to regard a Privacy Policy as a must have for any website.

How to create a Privacy Policy - freely and easily!

To create the Privacy Policy for YourDigitalAlly.com I used this website:

https://www.freeprivacypolicy.com

You can see the result here.

You'll need to create a free account on the Free Privacy Policy website, and then go through a series of questions under the following headings:

Getting Started Information Collection When Information is Collected Information Usage Information Protection Cookies Third-Party Disclosure Third-party Links Google CalOPPA COPPA Fair Information Practices Contact Information CANSPAM Additional Clause

And when you hit the Create button you get an HTML file of your tailored Privacy Policy. If ever you want to make an adjustment, you go back to your account on that website, change the answers to any questions and create a new HTML file.

Depending on the level of your technical expertise, you can either upload that file to your website and link to it, or you can copy the HTML into an appropriate page on your site.

But either way, you don't need any knowledge of HTML to either create or amend your Privacy Policy.

I wouldn't say it's a trivial exercise because there are quite a loft questions to answer and in many cases you do need to think about the questions, but half an hour should be ample time.

What about Terms of Service?

That's the question I asked after creating my Privacy Policy.

And the answer was - go to the same website and create a tailored Terms of Service document in a very similar way.

In this case, there was a $7 charge - which I felt was reasonable. I effectively paid $3.50 for each document.

Given the time and uncertainty that would be involved in taking any other route, this seemed like a great deal.

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I hope that's been helpful.

Let me know what you think in the comments - especially if you use their services.

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