Monday, October 27, 2014

Going With Fresh Content is A Key For Successful SEO

In 2003, engineers at Google filed a patent that would rock the SEO world. Named Document Scoring Based on Document Content Update, the patent not only offered insight into the mind of the world’s largest search engine, but provided an accurate road map of the path Google would take for years to come.

Google Team have came up with Google’s Freshness Update, which places greater emphasis on returning fresher web content for certain queries. Exactly how Google determines freshness was brilliantly explored by Justin Briggs in his analysis of original Google patents. Justin deserves a lot of credit for bringing this analysis to light and helping to inspire this post.

Although the recent Freshness Update received a lot of attention, in truth Google has scored content based on freshness for years.

How Google Scores Fresh Content

Google Fellow Amit Singhal explains that “Different searches have different freshness needs.”

The implication is that Google measures all of your documents for freshness, then scores each page according to the type of search query. While some queries need fresh content, Google still uses old content for other queries (more on this later.)

Singhal describes the types of keyword searches most likely to require fresh content:

-- Recent events or hot topics: “occupy oakland protest” “nba lockout”
-- Regularly recurring events: “NFL scores” “dancing with the stars” “exxon earnings”
-- Frequent updates: “best slr cameras” “subaru impreza reviews”

Google’s patents offer incredible insight as to how web content can be evaluated using freshness signals, and rankings of that content adjusted accordingly.

Understand that these are not hard and fast rules, but rather theories consistent with patent filings, experiences of other SEOs, and experiments performed over the years. Nothing substitutes for direct experience, so use your best judgement and feel free to perform your own experiments based on the information below.

1. Freshness by Inception Date

A webpage is given a “freshness” score based on its inception date, which decays over time. This freshness score can boost a piece of content for certain search queries, but degrades as the content becomes older.

The inception date is often when Google first becomes aware of the document, such as when Googlebot first indexes a document or discovers a link to it.


2. Document Changes (How Much) Influences Freshness

The age of a webpage or domain isn’t the only freshness factor. Search engines can score regularly updated content for freshness differently from content that doesn’t change. In this case, the amount of change on your webpage plays a role.

For example, the change of a single sentence won’t have as big of a freshness impact as a large change to the main body text.


3. The Rate of Document Change (How Often) Impacts Freshness

Content that changes more often is scored differently than content that only changes every few years. In this case, consider the homepage of the New York Times, which updates every day and has a high degree of change.

"For example, a document whose content is edited often may be scored differently than a document whose content remains static over time. Also, a document having a relatively large amount of its content updated over time might be scored differently than a document having a relatively small amount of its content updated over time."

4. Freshness Influenced by New Page Creation

Instead of revising individual pages, websites add completely new pages over time. This is the case with most blogs. Websites that add new pages at a higher rate may earn a higher freshness score than sites that add content less frequently.

Some SEOs insist you should add 20-30% new pages to your site every year. This provides the opportunity to create fresh, relevant content, although you shouldn’t neglect your old content if it needs attention.


"UA may also be determined as a function of one or more factors, such as the number of “new” or unique pages associated with a document over a period of time. Another factor might include the ratio of the number of new or unique pages associated with a document over a period of time versus the total number of pages associated with that document."

5. Changes to Important Content Matter More

Changes made in “important” areas of a document will signal freshness differently than changes made in less important content. Less important content includes navigation, advertisements, and content well below the fold. Important content is generally in the main body text above the fold.


 Boilerplate Changes Count Less for Freshness      "…content deemed to be unimportant if updated/changed, such as Javascript, comments, advertisements, navigational elements, boilerplate material, or date/time tags, may be given relatively little weight or even ignored altogether when determining UA." 

6. Rate of New Link Growth Signals Freshness

If a webpage sees an increase in its link growth rate, this could indicate a signal of relevance to search engines. For example, if folks start linking to your personal website because you are about to get married, your site could be deemed more relevant and fresh (as far as this current event goes.)  That said, an unusual increase in linking activity can also indicate spam or manipulative link building techniques. Be careful, as engines are likely to devalue such behavior.


"…a downward trend in the number or rate of new links (e.g., based on a comparison of the number or rate of new links in a recent time period versus an older time period) over time could signal to search engine 125 that a document is stale, in which case search engine 125 may decrease the document’s score."

7. Links from Fresh Sites Pass Fresh Value

Links from sites that have a high freshness score themselves can raise the freshness score of the sites they link to.  For example, if you obtain a link off an old, static site that hasn’t been updated in years, this doesn't pass the same level of freshness value as a link from a fresh page – for example, the homepage of Wired.com. Justin Briggs coined this FreshRank.

"Document S may be considered fresh if n% of the links to S are fresh or if the documents containing forward links to S are considered fresh."

8. Changes in Anchor Text Signals may Devalue Links

If a website changes dramatically over time, it makes sense that any new anchor text pointing to the page will change as well.

For example, If you buy a domain about automobiles, then change the format to content about baking, over time your new incoming anchor text will shift from cars to cookies.

In this instance, Google might determine that your site has changed so much that the old anchor text is no longer relevant, and devalue those older links entirely.


"The date of appearance/change of the document pointed to by the link may be a good indicator of the freshness of the anchor text based on the theory that good anchor text may go unchanged when a document gets updated if it is still relevant and good."  

9. User Behavior Indicates Freshness

What happens when your once wonderful content becomes old and outdated? For example, your website hosts a local bus schedule... for 2009. As content becomes outdated, folks spend less time on your site. They press the back button to Google's results and choose another URL. 

Google picks up on these user behavior metrics and scores your content accordingly.



"If a document is returned for a certain query and over time, or within a given time window, users spend either more or less time on average on the document given the same or similar query, then this may be used as an indication that the document is fresh or stale, respectively."

Conclusion:

The goal of a search engine is to return the most relevant results to users. For your part, this requires an honest assessment of your own content. What part of your site would benefit most from freshness?

Old content that exists simply to generate page views, but accomplishes little else, does more harm than good for the web. On the other hand, great content that continually answers a user's query may remain fresh forever.

Be fresh. Be relevant. Most important, be useful.



Source: Cyrus Shepard to Advanced SEO

Friday, October 24, 2014

Attracting High - End Clients By Applying Promotion Frameworks

Many of my friends who have a business ask me different questions about how to promote their business and what is the fastest way to find new customers and attracting high - end clients?  In this post I am going to explain the most important secret to attracting high - end clients. This could be the most important article you’ll read in your business (sure, everyone says that), but from my perspective I strongly say the logic says 1 plus 1 equal 2 and in my math I would add when you master the art of attracting high - end clients, you’ll transform your whole business.

Everyone wants to attract more clients. But I think it’s even more important to set your sights on attracting more high - end clients. What do you think?
I have sketch out a new framework about the high - end clients. And I define high - end clients in the following three ways: 

1- They are “ideal clients.” That is, clients you can really make a difference with and whom you love to work with.
2- They are “long - term clients.” These are clients with whom you can offer programs and services for a year or more.
3- They are “high - paying clients.” They understand the value you offer and are willing to pay you more than average clients will.

Today, there are many forms of promotional media. Some marketers also refer to them as "touch points," since they are every place where people encounter your brand. I'll describe a one of most important technique (which I know best) that helps many businesses to boost revenue in a positive direction. Keep in mind, what works for one industry or brand may not work for other industries and brands. This is simply to provide you with an idea of the options; it's imperative that you adapt the medium to what works best for your brand, your stakeholders, and your goals.

An advertisement would be effective only if the media audience accepts that message and is motivated to take the requisite action. The mission of an advertisement is to attract a reader, so that he/she will look at the advertisement and start to read it; which will then interest him, so that he/she will continue to read it; then to persuade him/her, so that when he/she has read it he will believe it. If an advertisement contains these three qualities of success, it is a successful advertisement. 

AIDA Model


AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. It is an acronym used in marketing and advertising, which helps marketing managers develop effective communication strategies and communicate with customers in a way that better responds to their needs and desires. AIDA describes a common list of events that occur when a consumer views an advertisement. Each letter in the acronym stands for the following:

The "A" represents attention or awareness, and the ability to attract the attention of the consumers. Without attention, I can hardly persuade them of anything. Your marketing messages, materials, marketing strategies and sales processes need to communicate the message that you offer higher - end services. Perception is essential. Every impression you make should communicate: “I offer high quality, pay attention to details, follow - up professionally and produce great results.”

For instance, When I write blog posts, I like to split the title into two parts: what I’m talking about (the feature), and the result of it (the benefit),  just look at my last few blog post titles here:

- Build Your Income By Creating Your Own Online Business
- Balanced Scorecard Your Tool to Translate Business Performance
- Putting Information Technology on Track and Why it Matters for Marketing!

The "I" is interest and points to the ability to raise the interest of consumers by focusing on and demonstrating advantages and benefits (instead of focusing on features, as in traditional advertising). Once I have their attention, I will sustain that attention by getting the other person interested!

You can bolster interest with offers and compelling reasons why you’re better than your competitor, and how you can solve customers’ problems. Features and benefits weigh heavily in this level, and social media can help you kick their interest into high gear.

For instance, you’ve got my attention, but I’m not ready to buy your product yet. And even if I was, I need to know you can actually UNDERSTAND and SOLVE my problem… which is why you need to tell me what problem I’m having and how can you really help me solve it.

The "D" represents desire. The advertisement convinces consumers that they want and desire the product or service because it will satisfy their needs. I believe once they are interested in my business and what I offer.

In the “interest” stage you’ve already done the clever storytelling… now you need to tell me what it is you want me to buy:

Social media can help bolster desire through communication and engagement, but to fully satisfy someone’s desire to buy, you need to have a site that is streamlined and optimized. Take the time to go through your site and optimize the presentation and the shopping cart experience. Testimonials gathered from linkable social profiles are a great asset. Take the customer from interest to desire with a clean, easy to navigate, info rich, and functional site.

What’s the exact name of your product and what’s in it?
What’s in each module, why is each module important and why is it given in the order you show it?
What bonuses are you giving me?

The "A" is action, which leads consumers toward taking action by purchasing the product or service. I would add, this is the magic stage when they take action on their desires and actually do their purchase and buy my products or services.

In small-business marketing, AIDA helps owners communicate more effectively with their customers. I would to say, the AIDA is like a tool we can use it to convince others not only in business or promote the product, I believe it's door key which persuade others to achieve the desired goal.

In this regard, AIDA has become a sales-driven tool that is strategized to lead the potential buyer towards an end suggested by the advertiser.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Start Your Business And Stand Out In The Market!

If you're thinking about starting or creating a business, you (hopefully) have an idea that will fill a void in the current marketplace, and when you plan to start this business you should ask yourself “What is it the business that would make customers buy from me instead of my competitors?"

Growing your business without understanding your competitors is risky, in simple terms; the competitors can be identified as those companies or business that offers similar products or services to the same customers at similar prices. These can be either direct or indirect competitors. 

On the other hand, knowing and understanding customer needs is at the center of every successful business, whether it sells directly to individuals or other businesses. Once you have this knowledge, you can use it to persuade potential and existing customers that buying from you is in their best interests. As we know customers now have a wide range of information and experience at their disposal and have the means to research which product is good or bad and might be provide the best value for their needs and wants.

The more you know about your customers, the more effective your sales and marketing efforts will be. It's well worth making the effort to find out Ten things we should know about our customers

Who they are
If you sell directly to individuals, find out your customers' gender, age, marital status and occupation. If you sell to other businesses, find out what size and kind of business they are. For example, are they a small private company or a big multinational?

What they do
If you sell directly to individuals, it's worth knowing their occupations and interests. If you sell to other businesses, it helps to have an understanding of what their business is trying to achieve.

Why they buy
If you know why customers buy a product or service, it's easier to match their needs to the benefits your business can offer.

When they buy
If you approach a customer just at the time they want to buy, you will massively increase your chances of success.

How they buy
For example, some people prefer to buy from a website, while others prefer a face-to-face meeting.

How much money they have
You'll be more successful if you can match what you're offering to what you know your customer can afford.

What makes them feel good about buying
If you know what makes them tick, you can serve them in the way they prefer.
What they expect of you

For example, if your customers expect reliable delivery and you don't disappoint them, you stand to gain repeat business.

What they think about you
If your customers enjoy dealing with you, they're likely to buy more. And you can only tackle problems that customers have if you know what they are.

What they think about your competitors
If you know how your customers view your competition, you stand a much better chance of staying ahead of your rivals.

From my perspective, I find it is difficult for small-business owners to clearly define what makes their businesses different and even more difficult to communicate this to potential customers. Businesses that are able to differentiate themselves from the competition have a much better chance of success than businesses that bring nothing special to the market.

If you want to improve your chances of having a successful and growing business, spend time identifying what makes your business special. Determine what you need to do to make your business stand out among your competition in the minds of your customers.

For example, some businesses stand out by bringing innovative solutions to their customers. These businesses spend a great amount of time researching the wants and needs of their target markets and developing new technology and products.

Using marketing mix model (product, price, promotion) have helped the business to differentiate effectively in the marketplace and your business is being something remarkable. That's how it will get noticed, get publicity, get word of mouth, get new customers and create loyal fans.  I would say being different is desirable. It's a good thing. Not only do you want to be different in order to stand out from your competitors, you want to be radically different. You want to be the "only."

For instance, such businesses are known for solving problems and improving the quality of life for their customers. Samsung is a good example to introduce in this post, it is a company that regularly brings different technologies to the market and has developed a loyal following of enthusiastic customers, who many times can't wait to get their hands on the latest Samsung products because of the product itself, price and promotions they offer. Am I right?

I would like to give another example about the marketing mix model that adopted by a well-known company in the world that deliver their products or services to customers economically, quickly and conveniently. Their efficient operations produce consistent products at reasonable prices. Businesses such as McDonald's have mastered this concept and serve millions of customers each day, customers who return because they know what to expect and how it will be delivered.

Other think we should keep on mind to differentiate from competitors is Reputation. Your reputation is what other people think about you. It may be based on a number of factors: the quality of your products or service, how you treat others (including business partners, workers, and the environment), and most importantly, your values as an organization and how you express them. While you can shape your voice or design, your reputation ultimately resides in the minds of other people. 

They make the final decision whether they admire you, fear you, respect you or love you. Microsoft, the U.N., Calgary City, Real Madrid, the Catholic Church, and other institutions can do many things to shape how they are perceived, but they can't completely control that impression.

One's reputation also differs in the minds of different people: your mother probably does not think of you the same way your boss might. 

It's also important to remember that your reputation is affected by who you associate with. For example, tobacco companies might be highly profitable, but they do not attract many partners. Other companies try to associate their brands with certain geographical locations (consider Swiss chocolate, German engineering, or Hollywood movies). And yet others try to associate with charities and causes to improve their reputations. Consider the reputation of this school: how would you define it?

When defining the reputation of a company, it's important to research what other people think about it, NOT what the company says about itself.

Know what makes your business special and make sure your customers know it, too.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Your Strategy to Sell Your Image Through Content Marketing

Everyone is talking about how content is so important (which is true) but no one is really talk about WHY content is king and WHY content is critically important. The buzz words these days are content marketing. But what exactly does it mean and how can a business implement its use to bring value to their customers?  Basically, content marketing is publishing information through various media outlets that will educate your customers.

Some of the biggest companies in the world today didn’t exist just 10 years ago. Companies like YouTube, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to name a few. And the one thing that all of these huge companies have in common is their product: information. Welcome to the Information Age. (Also referred to as the Digital age) 10 years ago, if you wanted to do research on any given topic, you would find yourself traveling to a library. Not today. Today we have an entire world of information at our fingertips

Nowadays, words have shifted from being on books, magazines and billboards to living on computers, smartphones, laptops, televisions and tablets. First of all, great content is something that can be easily read by a person browsing your website. But that’s not where it ends. In fact, that’s where it starts! 

The benefit of publishing good content is that your targeted audience will come to rely on you as an information resource for their decision making.  It is important to understand that content marketing is more than just information about your products or services. It includes relevant and useful information that will be used to develop opinions about your business and help build a relationship with your customers. 

Great content serves a very important purpose: it informs the reader about the topic of the page. When great content is smartly developed and used strategically, it easily accomplishes the following tasks:
1- Helps people understand the topic
2- Demonstrates your unique expertise or angle on the subject
3- Makes people want to come back and read it again
4- Makes people want to link to it so other people can access it from their website, blog, social network feed, etc.
5- Let people buy something on the site
6- Let people download a document, a file, or an app
 
Great content is what the Web was originally designed to facilitate. Write what you know, make it compelling, and people (and search engines) will respond accordingly. It may take time, of course, but even viral content starts with an initial post. For instance, Expact Women website did not reach hundred thousands of people by accident. Its founder was smart, or more importantly, had smart strategies.  When I was doing my research on some articles in expatwomen, I found out that the blog wrote one article last month that generated more links and shares than 46 of their posts from 2013 combined.  This post is about effective blogging, and going beyond the the strategy that built a big community of audience.

Think about how often you search for information before making a purchasing decision. Your customers do the same, so it is important to position yourself to be a credible resource for them.
 
But How Do You Create Great Content? 

Great content is, well, great! Of course, that can also be a relative thing. It’s like the old story of being in the woods with a bunch of your coworkers when you accidentally encounter an ill-tempered bear. When the chase begins, you personally don’t need to outrun the bear (good luck with trying that). You only need to outrun the other people you’re with.  Sure, that’s a grizzly (pun intended) tale with a morally ambiguous message, but that’s why I made the other people your coworkers. Business is business, after all!


I’m sure you’re thinking “sounds like a great idea, but how do you go about publishing relevant content?” As usual, it takes some planning and the first thing you need to do is develop your content marketing strategy.  There are four main areas to consider: audience, media, timing and topic. 

Audience
Who is your intended audience? This relates back to who your target customer is.  You need to understand your customers, what their needs are and purchasing patterns are. I tell my clients that you need to know your customers like you know your mother. What do they like and dislike? Who do they go to for an opinion prior to making a purchasing decision? Where are they located? What is their age, income and education level?  Once you understand your target customer, it is easier to determine what media to select, when you should publish content and what topics would be of benefit to your customers.
 
Media
Where does your target customer go for information? Would they read a newspaper, look for online reviews, articles, videos or blogs? Do they reach out to their friends and families for recommendations? Would they like to get their information in an online newsletter?  If you are not sure, ask them when you see them or send out a small survey. Or just research the various social media resources and see who’s using them. By “Googling” the various types of social media for statistics on who is using them you can determine the best media to use for your target customer.
 
Timing
How often should you publish? The medium you’re using will dictate how often you need to publish your content.  Twitter and Facebook could be several times a day, blogs at least weekly, LinkedIn can be every couple of weeks, and online newsletters can be monthly or quarterly.  Realistically, think about how often you can develop content and publish it. This is a big task and often it needs to be delegated or shared among several people. Starting a weekly blog may seem like a good idea at first, but remember there are 365 days in a year. 

Topic
Most important, where are you going to find relevant content? After publishing for a while you can run out of ideas to write about.  Places to look for content are trending topics, newspapers, blogs or your customers’ tweets and posts. What are they talking about and interested in? This is where you can find topics for content that will be of interest to your target audience.  Remember, developing and implementing a content marketing strategy is a lot of work and requires planning, but the rewards can be tremendous.

Friday, October 17, 2014

Balanced Scorecard Your Tool to Translate Business Performance

In most big or small organizations whether they are profit or no profit sector, managers are implementing different strategies to measure the organization performance. For example, executives may introduce new strategies and innovative operating processes intended to achieve breakthrough performance, then continue to use the same short-term financial indicators they have used for decades, measures like return-on-investment, sales growth, and operating income. With all these calculations and doing their own maths, we can see these managers fail not only to introduce new measures to monitor new goals and processes but also to question whether or not their old measures are relevant to the new initiatives. 


Also most organizations dutifully complete strategic planning on a regular basis. However, there are several studies suggest that fewer than 10% are successful in implementing the strategies created. Based on that in 1992 Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton came up with new effective measurement tool that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals.

“You can have the best strategy. You can even frame it and put it up on the wall, but if you’re not executing … it’s just artwork," management expert Tom Peters says. 
The scorecard allows managers to look at their companies and approach links strategy to measurement by asking firms to consider their vision, critical success factors for accomplishing it, and subsequent performance metrics. Here's an example of how the Balanced Scorecard adapted in E- Business or Marketing these perspectives 
1. Learning and growth perspective: innovation, employee training and corporate cultural attitudes related to both individual and business improvement. Key question: How can we continue to improve and create value?

2. Business process perspective: internal business processes or operational priorities. For instance, key applications for digital strategies include the development of collaboration tools, document management, content management, online project management. These applications are more successful when accessed through the Intranet, and perceived by the employee to be part of the Intranet, rather than a standalone application. 



3. Customer perspective: customer focus and customer satisfaction. Key questions: How do our customers see us? What can we do to increase our brand awareness? In Digital Marketing for example using the customer perspective to develop digital strategies should be the most lucrative aspect of the digital strategy. The customer perspective elements of the Digital Strategy include providing information through the website, sales enablers including eCommerce applications, customer self-service where customers can manage their own portfolios through extranets, building communities of value where customers can network and engage with each other, crowd-sourcing initiatives so that the customer can help the organization design products, using social media such as blogs to educate the customer, social tools to create and retain relationships and a host more applications. I would say, satisfied customers drive business success – and business success enables investment to satisfy customers!

4. Financial perspective: financial-related data, such as risk assessment and cost-benefit data. The Financial perspective is satisfied when we are able to capture financial information to report on the period. In general key questions: What revenue and profit do we want to achieve? What costs do we have to cut? For instance in Digital Marketing, we determine which numbers we will be interested in seeing at the end of the financial period and how we will quantify the success of the implementation and applications. 
Scorecard Benefits 
1- Obtain timely information to update its strategy. 
2- Balance long-term and short-term measures and evaluate every part of the firm and how each contributes toward accomplishing selected goals. 
3- It helps firms leverage their relationships with partners and supply chain members. 
4- Go beyond financial metrics in measuring many different aspects that lead to effective and efficient performance. 
5- Creates a long-term perspective for company sustainability Forces companies to decide what is important and translate those decisions into measurable outcomes that all employees can understand. 
6- A great communication tool because employees can use the scorecard as a guide to coordinate their efforts. 
7- Support employee evaluation in that individual performance can be tied to successful outcomes on the metrics. 
8- A way to measure intangible as well as tangible assets. 
To sum up, I would say “All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they are now getting. If we want different results, we must change the way we do things.” .. Tom Northup

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Go To Expert Level in Your Field

Many people would like to know how they can be an expert in their business, job or industry and their life as well. In business for instance, some would argue that you can only earn your expert status from your customers and peers, never by simply saying that you are one. From my perspective I would say it didn’t happen overnight. It’s the culmination of years of effort, but well worth the investment of time and resources, and we should spend years developing the knowledge that made our company or business success. This in turn, will maximize the return on your knowledge by leveraging it gain authority and build up a celebrity status in your marketplace.

Being recognized as an expert in your field can bring many opportunities to edge out your competitors and grow your business. Once you have devoted yourself to becoming an expert, you will need to take the appropriate steps and suggestions to build your reputation as an expert and burnish your business. Below are five simple suggestions for you to do just that.

1. Become an advocate and educator for your customers.
Part of having authority status is being both an educator and an advocate for your clients. As an educator, you work hard at communicating with your customers on a regular basis. For example, lawyer expert David Cohen has a site for Canadian Immigration Consultant who posts various information and forums for his clients and people.


In addition, he facilitates application process that helps his customers learn more about match Canadian Immigration needs. He even offers free consultations resources. All these elements and many more, are examples of how he educates his clients.

2. Micro-specialize.
Instead of trying to please everyone, focus your efforts on a small amount of possible clients. This approach will help understand the niche better and be able to cater your marketing better. Furthermore, focusing on a specialist area will give you less competition, and a chance to really shine by utilizing your sector specific knowledge. Think about which area or specialist subject is likely to grow in relevance for your clients and customers over the coming five years? I would say you’ll perfect the art of appealing to and pleasing that smaller scope of customers. 

An example of micro-specialization in the event management field could include companies or people who only choose to only work with Pre – Event Planning companies to stage public and private exhibitions.

3. Write articles for news sites and profession publications.
Make a concerted effort to write articles pertaining to your area of expertise. Send them in to newspapers and trade journals along with other professional publications. 

If you can manage to do this, you will have content to back up your authority status in your field. Don’t simply write a few articles here and there, but instead commit to regular content creation for a variety of outlets, as it helps build up your personal brand faster.

4. Start speaking.
Speaking in public is scary for many people. However, giving speeches or participating in seminars or panels is a great way to present yourself as an authority in your field. 

One way to obtain a few speaking gigs is to align yourself with other successful speakers. If given the opportunity to speak alongside someone who is already well known, you will have a good-sized audience, and you can offer a different perspective on whatever the topic. Hone your speaking skills, study voice projection and observe other engaging speakers, ensuring you will be ready to give an interesting, stimulating speech an opportunity comes along.

5- Write a book
Nearly every “expert” has authored a book. With self-publishing resources today, publishing a book is easy and affordable. Wondering how to write all that content? Repurpose your blog posts. Compile your blogs and before you know it, you’ll have enough material to fill the pages of a book.  Remember, as the founder and owner of your small business — you are the business. Building your celebrity status is a great way to help your business soar to new heights.