Who Else Is Finding the Decision To Be an Entrepreneur Difficult?

Is your decision to be an entrepreneur what you will settle for, like Janis said? Or are you just having trouble finding the decision?

You are what you settle for.

–Janis Joplin

Think of a business idea … one you keep coming back to. One that you can never seem to get off the ground. Or, maybe you’re struggling with the final considerations for going into business for yourself. You find yourself in limbo.

To get unstuck and finally make a firm decision, consider these six areas that play into the decision to settle as an entrepreneur:

Evaluate Market Opportunities

Selecting a market segment and how you can discriminate your business are the most important decisions you must make before deciding to open a business.

If there are too many competitors (some irrational or inexperienced), even if you’re the best, it’s a lot harder to be a success.

If you don’t have discrimination, don’t plan on competing. The very best decision you could make under these circumstances.

Marketing and Branding

Act weak when strong, act strong when weak. Know when you should not be bluffing (mostly all the time).

Don’t let your ego destroy your talent. Learn to be humble.

Your “brand” is important. What characteristics of your personality do you wish to reflect? Brands definitely need a personality. If you have limited personality, you will be behind the eight ball at the start.

Help shape the stories that people are telling about you. Stories are the best way to connect emotionally to your customers. And the best way to market your products and services.

Trust that you know what to do

If you’re doing endless research to find the “right” choice, give it a rest. When making more complex choices, we do better when we go with gut instincts, rather than weighing all the variables. Your intuition unconsciously takes into account all the information available to you, including your values and goals, and is likely to guide you to the best choice.

If you’ve lost touch with your intuition, give yourself space to find it. Take a walk, get a spa treatment, or play basketball with your friends — whatever you find relaxing and enjoyable. Be patient. You will reconnect eventually.

Business Model

Always be prepared for the worst case scenarios and put some of your capital aside for one or two. Go for positive expected value, not what’s least risky. Make sure your cash is large enough to meet a conservative business plan.

Do not risk investments that you cannot afford to lose. Remember it’s a long term game. You will win or lose individual components of your business in the short run, but it’s what happens in the long term that matters. Be persistent and patient.

Business Tactics

Don’t use business tactics that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other businesses making money from them. Make sure you understand the business model and rules before you start.

Stick to your principles, but be prepared to adjust your business style as the dynamics of the market change. Be flexible and don’t fear change.

Be patient and think long term. The businesses with the most stamina and focus usually win, so stay focused on your goals.

Remember hope is not a good plan.

Continual Learning

Educate yourself. Read books and learn from others who have done it before. Find a good mentor who knows the ropes.

Learn by doing and always experiment with small tests. Rarely if ever bet large amounts without small testing first. Theory is nice, but nothing replaces actual experience.

Learn by surrounding yourself with talented employees, start slowly with hires and don’t be afraid to let bad hires go quickly.

Never be afraid to ask for advice from your mentors and others in your network. Continuous learning is the key to long term success.

Establish a Company Culture

Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you.

Be nice and make friends … become a key part of your community. It’s not a large community. Share what you’ve learned with others … play it forward.

Look for opportunities beyond just the market you entered. You never know who you’re going to meet, including new friends for life or new business contacts. Learn wherever and from whomever you can.

You’ve must love what you are doing. To become really good, you need to live it and sleep it. Have fun. Your business is a lot more enjoyable when you’re trying to do more than just make money.

Are you devoting enough time and energy to your decision to be an entrepreneur? Considered each of these decision factors?

Do you have a story about your career decision making you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Improve Your Content with these 5 Visual Tools

Want to improve your social media images? Looking for easy-to-use visual tools for creating high-quality visual content?

Visual content is an absolute must for generating engagement on social media, whether it’s in the form of videos, graphics, or emojis.

In this article, you’ll discover five tools for creating professional-looking visuals for social media.

Create GIFs

GIFs are powerful tools for showcasing your brand, products, and company culture on social media. MakeaGIF lets you create GIFs from your own images, YouTube videos, webcam, and other video files.

To build a GIF from images, select the images you want to use such as pictures of your latest company event, office activities, or something else.

Upload your images to MakeaGIF.

Then arrange the images in the order in which you want them to appear.

Arrange your images in the order you want in MakeaGIF.

Now, just name your GIF, pick the speed and category, and click Create a GIF.

Add a name and choose speed and category options in MakeaGIF.

Keep in mind your GIFs don’t have to be work-related. The best ones use humor, so get creative and brainstorm a GIF for TGIF, for example. Creating your own GIFs lets you add a more personal and unique face to your brand.

Add Emojis to Graphics

Emojis have become ubiquitous in online conversations as a way to add personality to content. The team behind EmojiOneis always on top of the newest emoji updates so you never have to wait long to use the hippest visuals available. The app makes it easy to use emojis on social media and lets you incorporate them in custom graphics.

EmojiOne is available as a desktop browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Once you install the extension, click the unicorn icon on the toolbar to access your emoji library.

You can also download the art files for the complete emoji library to use them in your other communications such as posters, infographics, or SlideShare decks.

EmojiOne is completely free to use. If you’re using their art files commercially, they ask that you give them attribution in the form of a link.

Produce Animated Videos

Moovly lets you create animated videos and presentations and then export and share them on social media.

After you register, click Create New Moov.

Next, enter a title, description, and category for your video. Then click Create.

Now decide what video style you want to create, such as an animated video, presentation, or display ad. You can either use one of Moovly’s templates or create a moov from scratch.

Now you’re in the Moovly editor window where the magic happens! From here, you can add objects from the Moovly Library and access the text, color, animation, sound, and voice tools. The tool also lets you upload your own content in the form of pictures, graphics, and sounds.

Add visual and audio elements in the Moovly editor window.

When you’re finished creating your video, decide what platform or device to optimize the video for such as YouTube 480p, iPhone 5, iPad, Presentation, or custom dimensions. Then save your video and return to your dashboard.

Click the Moovly Animation Settings menu to view video platform optimization options.

Downloading your video is easy. First, choose the file format and video quality you want. (It costs up to $8 to export in HD.)

Select a download format for your Moovly video.

Then decide if you want the Moovly watermark on your video; it’s $3 to remove it.

Finally, choose whether you want to remove the “Made with Moovly” outro. (This will set you back another $2.) You can export your video and then upload and share it.

You can remove the Moovly outro from your video for a fee.

You won’t find many tools that let you create professional-grade animated videos and presentations for under $15. Moovly offers an easy-to-use interface and with a bit of tinkering, you’ll soon be creating high-quality videos like this for your social media channels.

Build Infographics

Infographics are a must for your social media marketing. With Piktochart, you don’t have to be a graphic designer to create attractive infographics.

A limited version of the tool is available for free and offers 10 infographic templates to choose from. For a monthly fee, you get access to hundreds of templates and icons, as well as integration with SlideShare, PDF, and more.

After you choose a template or start your own design, begin adding your content. Everything is customizable so you can tweak and edit the graphics, background, text, and more. You can also upload your own files.

Tweak your infographic design in the Piktochart editing window.

The Tools section lets you add charts, maps, and videos to your infographic.

You can add a chart or map to your design in the Piktochart Tools section.

When you’re happy with your design, download your infographic. Your choices are limited with the free version, but if you’re just starting out, you’ll be able to share an impressive-looking infographic with your social media followers.

Choose from these options to download your Piktochart image.

Turn Visuals Into Movies

Magisto eliminates the time and hassle of video editing and will create beautiful videos for you automatically from your photos and videos. It’s available on a variety of platforms, including desktop, Android, and iOS.

To get started, click Create Movie and choose the videos and images you want to include. The free version limits you to 10 videos or photos and a maximum length of 15 minutes.

Add photos and videos to create a movie in Magisto.

Next, choose from Magisto’s collection of themes and editing styles to apply to your movie. Your choice will determine the effects within your movie and the editing speed and filters. There’s also an option to let Magisto choose a style for you.

Choose an editing style for your Magisto video.

Next comes the music. Make a selection from Magisto’s excellent music library or you can upload your own song. The song and video will sync perfectly with the cuts and effects following the speed of the song.

Select a soundtrack from the Magisto music library.

Finally, give your movie a title and the app will do the rest.

Magisto does a great job of creating professional-looking video based on your selections, but if you want further editing options, you’ll need to upgrade to the Business plan for $9.99 a month.

My Best Morning Habits and Routines

Over my many years in business, I have always made it a priority to closely observe others for what I might learn. One of the more valuable topics I paid particular attention to was their morning habits.

To give you some quick context, they’ve worked at companies like Box, Kaiser, VMware, Optimizely, Cisco, Deutsche Bank or they’ve started their own companies.

They’re also mostly funny, caring, smart and thoughtful. So I would consider them to be well-balanced.

Here are my top morning habits:

Keep moving forward

A quote from Walt Disney: “Around here…we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things.” He was able to get through difficult times by always having something in the future to look forward to, even if it was just a small thing like a new comic book or a football game.

“This mentality includes staying in a forward-thinking state of mind. I try hard not to waste energy feeling badly about myself aid, because when I do I get stuck in a paradox where there is no room for happiness or any other emotion.”

Be OK with what you can’t do, because there is so much you CAN do.

Walt said he is very much aware of the things he can’t do, like ride a roller coaster, but instead of focusing on that he instead focuses on the things he can do, and the things he is passionate about. He said you can put some things that were impossible or out of reach before in the “can-do category” by making adjustments. To illustrate this point with an example he plays a clip of himself with the marching band, the story he opened with, which further illuminates his theme or his core message.

15 minutes of no screen time

Besides turning off an alarm that might be on your phone, resist the urge to check your email or social media. It sets you up for a day of being enslaved to technology, and your morning time should be reserved just for you. This might mean disabling notifications on your home screen so you’re not tempted by that Facebook update or mounting emails.

One simple question

In a commencement address he gave at Stanford back in 2005, Steve Jobs revealed the motivational tactic that he used to start each and every day.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”

And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Goals and Review

You want to make sure you set your goals and outcomes for the day as part of your morning ritual. You can do this in your task management system, or in a journal entry, or however you like. There is the assumption that you have longer-term goals written out already (go ahead and write them if you don’t).

To do this, you want to reference:

Your goals.
Your schedule for the day.
Your task management system.

It may also be worth creating a small outline for what your day is going to look like.

They’re crushing it on commutes

While everyone else is taking a nap on the train or twiddling their thumbs, they’re crushing it on their laptop and changing the world, one letter at a time. They also don’t make excuses. For example: “Nelson, how could I do this? I have to drive to work, I can’t create something while I’m driving!” Sure, that’s true, but you could be learning with audiobooks.

They create motivation by asking “Why?”

Ask yourself the hard questions like “Why am I doing this?” or “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” By the way, that last quote was from Steve Jobs.

Demonstrate positive attitude

Build and maintain a positive mental attitude. Do things to let it be seen and felt by others. It’s often easier to give into cynicism, but those who choose to be positive set themselves up for success and have better reputations.

Maintain patience

The proper timing of your words and acts will give you a big advantage over people who are impatient.

For example: Don’t click send on the email right away — breathe and reread it. The classic example would be getting irate and sending something with hostility.

Much of real happiness is a matter of being aware of what you’re doing while you’re doing it — and enraged people aren’t typically conscious of their actions.

Don’t procrastinate

Procrastination communicates to people that you’re hesitant to take action. This demonstrates the worst form of fear.

Reflect at end of every day

Most of the time, heading out of the office is the time for rehearsing everything that went wrong that day. I recommend also reflecting on what went well. That way you’re not denying that some things went poorly, but you’re getting a richer picture of what happened.

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find him on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

40 Positive Secrets for Motivating and Inspiring Change

The past can’t be changed, but the time for change is now. That’s why this list is here—for inspiring change. Which of these positive lessons resonates with you? Which do you see yourself sharing with your own kids, if any? What would you add? Share them and make a difference in life. In anyone’s life, for that matter.

No matter what anyone says, being you is enough.
Look at the most successful people in history. You are capable of all that and more.
Always think about how your words and actions will affect others.
When you shake someone’s hand, make it firm but friendly.
It doesn’t matter how good-looking or successful someone is, or how much money they make—no one in this world is above you. Or beneath you.
Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you’re obliged to let their negative behaviour continue in your life.
Learn the best ways to say the words “no” and “enough.”
Do things that scare you once in awhile.
Never be afraid to ask for help. You can’t do it all.
Read something positive every day.
Don’t be hard on yourself. It’s never too late to do better.
Exercise every single day for at least an hour. Even a walk contributes to your health and well-being.
Choose the pain of having discipline over the pain of feeling regret.
Follow through.
Learn how to cook really well and do it often. You’ll be happier and healthier.
Work on loving and accepting yourself every day.
Respect anyone who had the guts to look fear in the face and smile back.
Learn how to listen. Most people just wait for their turn to talk.
Get out of bed when it’s absolutely the last thing you feel like doing.
Figure out a few things that you do really well, and strive to master them.
Fall in love with learning.
Find peace in every part of your life. Then share the peace.
Don’t underestimate your power to change yourself.
Don’t overestimate your power to change others.
Be willing to change for yourself, not someone else.
Honour everyone who ever taught you something valuable.
Practice the 3Ps—be prompt, be prepared, and be professional.
Don’t compare yourself to others. They aren’t comparing themselves to you. (When in doubt, refer back to Number 1.)
Notice something in a random person that makes you smile to yourself and say, “That’s really inspiring.”
Remember what John Lennon said: Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.
Train your mind to only believe in what’s possible.
Be your own best friend.
Celebrate your own accomplishments with humility, and the accomplishments of others with extravagance.
Walk away from a relationship with anyone or anything that doesn’t make you feel good.
You don’t owe anyone any explanations. It’s your path.
Ask yourself often, “How am I better today than I was yesterday?”
Always be willing to learn something every single day.
Be brave. The hard times never last.
You choose how you think and feel in any situation. This is one of the hardest lessons you’ll ever learn, and when you do it will transform your life.
You are not alone, ever.

What will you add?

How Schools Can Improve their Product of Learning

What do you believe is the major product of schools? My opinion is to achieve the ability and desire of students to learn new things. That is the product of learning!

The change we are in the middle of isn’t minor and it isn’t optional.

–Clay Shirky

As Clay describes the digital internet age, it is far from minor and not optional. Right on the mark isn’t it? This description is particularly relevant for the need for continuous learning.

The amount of new technical information is doubling every two years. EVERY TWO YEARS. The top 10 jobs that were in demand in 2013 didn’t exist in 2004. We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that don’t yet exist. All this in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet. Scary, isn’t it?

For students starting a 4 year technical or college degree, one half of what they will learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study. We are clearly living in exponential times, aren’t we?

What is your choice for the top learning issue of the day?

Continuous learning is our choice. Taught in schools? I have not found many that are changing their learning and education strategy based on this environment. In fact, most seem to be hunkering down even more into the past. I was very surprised by this finding.

In earlier times, perhaps several generations or so ago, our great grand parents and their parents faced an entirely different problem of learning. In their environment, both generations shared the same problems and basically the same solutions. Learning in this environment was a lot simpler. It was simply a matter of transferring information (facts) from the older generation to the newer one.

Enter the industrial age where the world had begun to change very rapidly and grow in complexity. Old solutions, old facts, were no longer enough. Learning needed to change to keep up, switching from learning old information to discovering and understanding new information and solutions. Clearly a paradigm shift had begun. No longer dumping facts into a learner’s memory was going to be adequate.

In the information and internet ages, learning problems have gotten much worse. As we said earlier, the amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years … doubling. We are clearly living in exponential times.

So how do we improve our ability for continuous learning in such a fast changing and complex environment? We have defined 10 ways we believe are essential in achieving this goal. Let’s discuss each of these:

Learn by doing

Most of what we know, we didn’t learn in school. We learned it in the real world,actually doing, not reading or listening about doing. Confucius once said:

I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.

He appreciated that being a creator was the best way to learn. Make your learning be active learning and be creators as often as possible. And learn as many new things as possible. That means making your work environment be an environment of change. Rotate into new things to learn often. We believe this the most critical of the ways for schools to improve your learning.

Walt Whitman: Remember this above all. There is no royal road to learning.

Observe and reflect

By observing life’s experiences around us and careful reflection of what we observe, we can gather facts and information to learn new solutions and methods. Give students more opportunity to increase their ability to ‘connect the dots’ around them.

Present novelty

Our brains pay more attention to things in the environment that are new to our experience. So, seek out as many new experiences to try as you can handle and help students become an explorer. Continuously expand their boundaries of new experiences …include some far out things in different fields. Continuously practice connecting the dots of experiences.

Don’t fear failure

Students need to be learners that ask hard questions and explore what might work and what won’t. As a learner, we need to accept failure so we can use the often times messy trial and error. Make failures and mistakes as learning sources (and the mistakes and failures need not be yours).

Develop curiosity

Continually to get students to think about what they don’t know, don’t be afraid of confusing student learning and evoking tough questions. You can develop curiosity. This curiosity can be used to tailor robust methods of blended learning. Curiosity must come first. Questions can be fantastic windows to great learning, but not the other way around. Build students skill of curiosity … it is a necessity for good learning.

Practice imagination

Albert Einstein once said: Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you anywhere.

He understood the complexities of the world today required imagination for the discovery of new ideas and solutions. Imagination requires lots of practice; it doesn’t just happen on its own. So start working on this skill to add it to improving student learning.

Related post: Albert Einstein Facts and Wisdom

Employ emotion

We as learners respond to things around ourselves that elicit emotion. Put emotional stories to work to create a stimulus-response learning process. Listen for inspirational and emotional stories and use them as experiential learning in the classroom.

Embrace change and contrast

Students learn new things best when they are in contrast to other information in the environment or to things that are in contrast to previous experiences. To improve learning, work on the experience of change … have students study trends and study changes going on around them. Get them to step out into the unknown as often as they can.

Understand the meaning

In learning, students tend to respond best when they determine things are that are most meaningful. Find the meanings that provide that which motivates us to dig deeper.

Connect and collaborate

Connecting with others in the internet world is a great way to share ideas and solicit feedback, new views, and ideas. Have students find some online interesting connections who share like goals, and have them try a collaboration project or two. Collaboration is an excellent way to expand learning in a sharing environment.

In 1976, a British statistician named George Box wrote the famous line, “All models are wrong, some are useful.”

His point was that we should focus more on whether something can be applied to everyday life in a useful manner rather than debating endlessly if an answer is correct in all cases. As historian Yuval Noah Harari puts it, “Scientists generally agree that no theory is 100 percent correct. Thus, the real test of knowledge is not truth, but utility. Science gives us power. The more useful that power, the better the science.”

How to Turn Quora into a Traffic-Driving Machine for Your Blog

Frustrating, isn’t it? Have you learned from Quora? You work tirelessly on your content – but no one reads it.

It’s like giving a presentation to an empty room. No matter how much insight you have to share, nobody’s there to even notice.

You feel certain that if you could only get some more traffic to your blog, the content love would flow.

But even when you promote the heck out of your latest post, the following week you have to start the process all over again.

It’s exhausting.

But what if there was a strategy that could drive traffic not just to your latest post, but future ones too?

And what if that same strategy was as effective as guest blogging for getting new visitors, but was quicker, easier and didn’t require you to pitch your ideas to anyone?

What if by using that strategy you’d be rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names on the web?

Wouldn’t you want to know what that strategy is?

Quora – The Surprising Traffic Driver for Savvy Bloggers

Have you heard of Quora?

It’s the Q&A platform where anyone can post a question and get answers from experts in the community.

Even though Quora was launched way back in 2009, you might not have encountered it until recently.

If so, you might be surprised to learn that Quora can be a major source of traffic for bloggers.

Don’t believe me?

Right now, Quora is the number-one traffic driver for my blog.

Along the way, my answers on the platform have hit over 1,000,000 views, and I’ve been featured three times in the Quora Daily Digest that goes out to up to 2,000,000 people.

And all of this has happened in just six months.

The Benefits of Quora for Smart People with Answers

When you think about it, Quora is the perfect platform for bloggers to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise..

After all, most of us blog to help our readers with the problems they wrestle with, and a Q&A format is the purest expression of helping people with their problems.

As a blogger, not only will you find Quora a natural community in which to participate, but you’ll get several benefits from doing so.

Benefit #1: Quora Is a Source of Long-Term Traffic

I’ve already mentioned the traffic potential of Quora, but an additional benefit is that answers posted on the platform can continue to drive traffic months after being created.

For example, I still receive significant traffic from one post I wrote back on August 23rd, 2015:

Nearly three months later, people are still finding my answer to this question about passive income, and when someone “upvotes” it (the Quora community’s way of giving support for an answer), my answer appears in their feed and is visible to all of their followers.

The result? More traffic comes back to my blog as well as a ton of new opt-ins for my email list.

Quora’s Stats page shows how my answer has received 83K views from the community.

Benefit #2: Quora Lets You Establish Yourself as an Authority

How would you like to be known as the most viewed writer in your topic area?

That’s what I was able to do in Self-Improvement, a seriously competitive topic.

When you appear in the most viewed writers list and start to earn badges, you’ll find that people begin to ask you questions (called Ask to Answer – A2A) on the topic under which you are featured. And that’s the true sign of authority, right? When people approach you for your expertise completely unprompted.

Benefit #3: Quora Can Get You Noticed by Major Publications

Continue writing on Quora and you also have a good chance of being featured on a big site like Forbes.

That’s because major publications are now sourcing content directly from Quora and publishing selected answers verbatim on their websites.

This has happened to almost all of Quora’s top writers. One of the most successful is Nicolas Cole, who has been featured in TIME, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, Forbes and many others.

How to Start the Engine on Your Quora Traffic Machine

At this point, you must be asking how can you tap into all this Quora goodness.

Fortunately, there’s a simple three-step process you can follow to dominate Quora in your topic and start driving traffic to your blog.

Step #1: Create a Traffic-Optimized Profile

New writers on Quora often don’t take the time to fill out their profile in its entirety. But that’s a big mistake because you’ll fail to stand out from the thousands of other profiles on Quora.

The perfect Quora profile starts with the perfect profile bio.

Give Yourself a Killer Headline with the Profile Bio

Your profile bio is the “headline” that appears immediately beneath your name in your Quora profile.

When completing this, you need to decide what topic you want to be known for and consider the type of questions you’ll be answering.

Your bio should signal to your audience that you’re qualified to answer those questions.

Choose your words wisely because space is limited – you only have 80 characters to express yourself.

One popular format is to give a list of descriptive roles separated by a “pipe” character.

Your profile bio is important because it appears next to your name in any context where your profile appears, e.g., above any answers that you create.

Note that any links you put in your bio will not be rendered as clickable links, so you might want to reserve those for your profile summary.

Add Detail Using the Profile Summary

Under your profile bio is your profile summary, where you can provide more information about yourself.

The summary field is only shown when people click to view your profile in full, but on the plus side it is far less restricted in length and format than your profile bio.

Rich formatting like bold, italic and underline is supported, together with lists and blockquotes. Web addresses will also be correctly rendered as clickable links, so this is the perfect place to link to your blog.

Here are some of the ways you can use your profile summary field, inspired by top Quora writers:

Tell the story of your life and professional experience.
Link to your blogs and social media profiles.
Mention publications you’ve written for, to build social proof.
Share any quirky or interesting facts – this is your chance to be different.

Above all, don’t bore the reader. Try to be interesting and inspiring – humor works well too.

Claim Your Core Topics and Add Custom Bios

Quora allows you to add specific topics to your profile and provide bios for each one. (These bios override your main bio when answering questions on these topics.)

To add a topic, simply click on this panel in the sidebar of your profile:

Then search for relevant topics to add to your profile. In this case, we’re adding Blogging as a topic that we know about:

Once you’ve selected a topic, you can edit the bio that’s used when you answer questions on that topic:

Creating a custom bio for each of your main topics allows you to highlight the most relevant aspects of your experience for each topic.

Once you’ve added some topics that you know about, they’ll appear in your public profile.

Here’s a preview of Nicolas Cole’s list:

Step #2: Go Hunting for “Big Game” Questions

This is the step that 95% of Quora writers miss and it’s the difference between getting 50 versus 1,000 views on your answers.

Are you ready?

Before you write a single answer, you need to find the answers that are attracting the most views and upvotes within your topic of interest.

So start by looking for a relevant topic. You can use this list of the most followed topics on Quora for 2015 to find the ones getting the most traffic and views from the community.

You’ll notice in this example that 1,613 people have answered the question, “

Click through to the question’s answer page and you’ll find out:

Notice the number of people following this question – over 35,000!

And many of these folks will be notified as soon as your answer is posted.

It’s like having a huge mailing list at your fingertips.

How awesome is that?

Since you’re just researching questions at this stage, not answering them, click the “three dots” icon and select “Answer Later.”

This will help you build a database of questions you want to answer. When it’s time to dive into the writing process you can take a clear run at it, rather than go looking for new questions to answer each time.

As you browse Quora, whenever you find a popular question you could answer, be sure to add it to your “Answer Later” list.

10 Ways to Destroy Social Media Engagement

Do you wish more people interacted with your Facebook posts?

Looking to improve your Facebook news feed exposure?

The more likes, comments, and shares you have on your page posts, the more likely your Facebook content will be seen.

In this article, you’ll discover 10 ways to destroy engagement on your Facebook business page posts.

Eliminating Shareable Content

If you want people to share your Facebook posts, you need to create highly shareable content. It’s that simple.

“Highly shareable” means the content is relevant to your audience and compels people to share it. Your content should make people stop in their tracks. Facebook calls this “thumb stopping,” since the majority of users view the platform on mobile devices. When your audience stops scrolling and pauses to read your content, they should feel an instant urge to share it with their audience.

The content could be breaking news, educational, hilarious, entertaining, or something that’s not typically seen elsewhere. This is the type of content that will make your audience look good to others when they share it.

For example, this video from The Kitchn is a simple recipe that plays off their audience’s love for avocados and desire to learn something new. This post has received more than 6,800 shares.

Create thumb-stopping, shareable content.

Makeup Lessons is another page that posts a variety of engaging, shareable visuals, such as stand-alone, multiple, and instructional graphics. The beauty pics really pop in the news feed. Plus, they use carousel posts to showcase multiple links and images.

Publish link posts with multiple images to create a carousel.

Takeaway: Create videos, graphics, and posts that are relevant, stand out in the news feed, and make people want to share. The content doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should look good and be of value to your loyal following.

No Call to Action

Just as you want to create shareable content, it’s important to ask people to engage. Include something as simple as an invitation to share the post.

For instance, write, “If you found value, please share with your fans.” Or “If this speaks to you, share it with your audience as well!” You may also want to invite people to comment.

For Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day, Positively Woof invited fans to share a picture of a pet that had passed. The eye-catching video post has over 7 million views, 19,000 comments, and 208,000 shares. (I’m one of the 19,000 commenters. My own beloved cat, Baby the Bengal, went to kitty heaven in September of last year. So sad.) You can see the incredible bond that animal lovers have in the epic thread on this post.

Include an invitation to share a picture to inspire comments.

The Positively Woof Facebook page team does a great job of publishing timely content that is also related to pet celebrations, holidays, and awareness events. Their website has a pet calendar at a glance, which also helps inform their social media calendar.

Takeaway: Create shareable content that includes a call to action. Also post content that aligns with a trend or holiday related to your business so your audience will want to chime in.

Mix Up Content Types

There’s a window of opportunity right now with the Facebook news feed algorithm, since not nearly enough businesses are doing video.

If you put a higher ratio of video in your content mix (three times a week), it will increase the visibility and engagement of your page substantially. Mix in other content types and you have a recipe for success.

The Betty Rocker is a nutrition and fitness expert who has a wonderful mix of content types. From recipes and checklists to inspirational pics and fitness videos, there’s always something interesting on her page.

Bree Argetsinger, aka “The Betty Rocker,” publishes great fitness video content.

She also adds a human element to connect with people viewing her page so they’ll engage.

The Betty Rocker mixes up fitness videos and recipe posts with more personal updates.

Takeaway: Provide fun and interesting content for your fans so there’s always something to see, learn, and do on your Facebook page.

Not Using Facebook Live Regularly

One way to incorporate more video is to use Facebook Live regularly on your page. Start with doing one live broadcast a week. Ideally, plan your broadcast ahead of time to get the best results.

National Hammer Dulcimer Champion Ted Yoder does Facebook Live concerts from his backyard. Ted makes an announcement ahead of time to give his audience advance notice, even if it’s just earlier in the day.

His videos are extremely popular (he’s amassed more than 75 million views on Facebook), and he was even noticed and written about in the Huffington Post.

Plan Facebook Live video broadcasts to connect and engage with fans.

Takeaway: It takes time to build a Facebook Live video audience. Although you may not become a hit out of the gate, be persistent, practice, and find your voice. Keep showing up and fans will find you.

Not Designing Video for Viewing With the Sound Off

To encourage engagement, make your videos understandable with or without audio. Although Facebook is testing autoplay video with sound on, you should still design your video to be viewed with the sound off whenever possible, since users will have control over the mute button.

Remember, autoplay video (with or without sound) is here to stay. Use a tool that easily allows you to add text such as lower thirds and captions to your videos.

This Tony Robbins video offers the same info to viewers, whether or not they’re listening to him speak.

Design video to be understandable when muted.

Takeaway: When your audience can consume your content with the sound off, they’ll be more likely to engage with it.

Not Using Instant Articles

Instant articles load 10 times faster inside the Facebook mobile app than links on the regular mobile web. If you haven’t configured Facebook Instant Articles, it’s something to consider.

Companies using instant articles include Business Insider, BuzzFeed, the Washington Post, and others. For example, Mashable publishes some content via instant articles, like this one about upcoming LinkedIn changes.

Instant articles are identifiable in the mobile feed by the lightning bolt icon.

One click and the article appears.

Instant articles show up immediately when a reader clicks.

Yes, it does require time and effort to set up instant articles. However, since people get instant gratification when they click an instant article link in the feed, they’re more likely to read it. Then they’ll share and otherwise engage with your post.

Takeaway: Perhaps you won’t use instant articles for every article you publish, but test it with some of your flagship content.

Not Varying Your Posting Time

Not getting the engagement you want on your Facebook posts? Try publishing content outside business hours, such as in the evenings and on weekends. Publish when more of your audience is online.

Also, it’s totally okay to repurpose content. Post content that’s already been shared on other networks and periodically republish your most popular Facebook posts. Don’t share a previously published post, though; republish it as a fresh post.

Post at off-times when your competitors are not online.

Be conscious of the evergreen content you share. If you’re republishing older content, remember to read it first to make sure it’s still relevant. Plus, while you can autopublish links and blog posts using third-party tools, don’t set and forget it.

Every now and then something may happen in the world or in your business and industry. Just be aware of what you’re posting and when to make sure it’s still relevant and not disruptive during a crisis.

Takeaway: If you’re not already doing so, post once a day to your page, which is what most brands do. News organizations post more frequently because they tend to have noteworthy and time-sensitive stories.

Not Getting Ideas From Other Facebook Pages

Check out what’s working for other businesses in your industry, as well as those in different industries.

To monitor other pages, go to your Facebook page Insights and search for and set the Pages to Watch. Facebook will send you notifications of what’s popular on other pages. Also check those pages regularly to see what catches your eye.

Set Pages to Watch to keep tabs on what works for other pages.

You can use a free third-party tool like SumoRank to check any Facebook page and see their most popular posts.

Takeaway: If something engages you, it will likely engage others. Take the lessons you learn from the other business’s top posts and apply those tactics to your own page.

Stimulating Traffic From Other Sources

Another way to increase engagement for your posts is to send traffic to your Facebook page from other social networks and your newsletter.

Click the timestamp of your Facebook post to get the permalink. Then use a URL shortener (like Bitly) to create a shareable link.

Grab the permalink of your Facebook post to share it in other places.

Share the Facebook post link on Twitter (or another social network) with an invitation to join the conversation. This will bring some of your Twitter followers over to Facebook to engage.

Alternatively, or additionally, include information about the discussion (along with the link) in your newsletter.

Takeaway: The more traffic you drive to Facebook, the more fans you’ll get and the more likely they’ll engage with your content. Remember, newsletter subscribers are loyal members of your audience. Lead them to your page so they can engage with you and your community.

Not Embeding Posts and Videos on Your Blog

You can increase visibility and engagement for your Facebook content by embedding posts on your blog. To get the embed code for a post, click the timestamp, click the arrow in the upper right, and select Embed.

Not Copying your code and pasting it into the HTML of your blog post.

You can include the full narrative with the media posted on Facebook (image or video) or just the media. The example below is a Facebook video I embedded on my blog to create more visibility for branded content, an important topic.

Social Business Strategies

Here is a great social business strategy that you should know..

A landscape gardener ran a business that had been in the family for two or three generations. The staff was happy, and customers loved to visit the store, or to have the staff work on their gardens or make deliveries – anything from bedding plants to ride-on mowers.

For as long as anyone could remember, the current owner and previous generations of owners were extremely positive happy people.

Most folk assumed it was because they ran a successful business.

In fact it was the other way around…

A tradition in the business was that the owner always wore a big lapel badge, saying Business Is Great!

The business was indeed generally great, although it went through tough times like any other. What never changed however was the owner’s attitude, and the badge saying Business Is Great!

Everyone who saw the badge for the first time invariably asked, “What’s so great about business?” Sometimes people would also comment that their own business was miserable, or even that they personally were miserable or stressed.

Anyhow, the Business Is Great! badge always tended to start a conversation, which typically involved the owner talking about lots of positive aspects of business and work, for example:

the pleasure of meeting and talking with different people every day
the reward that comes from helping staff take on new challenges and experiences
the fun and laughter in a relaxed and healthy work environment
the fascination in the work itself, and in the other people’s work and businesses
the great feeling when you finish a job and do it to the best of your capabilities
the new things you learn every day – even without looking to do so
and the thought that everyone in business is blessed – because there are many millions of people who would swap their own situation to have the same opportunities of doing a productive meaningful job, in a civilized well-fed country, where we have no real worries.

And so the list went on. And no matter how miserable a person was, they’d usually end up feeling a lot happier after just a couple of minutes listening to all this infectious enthusiasm and positivity.

It is impossible to quantify or measure attitude like this, but to one extent or another it’s probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, on which point, if asked about the badge in a quiet moment, the business owner would confide:

The badge came first. The great business followed. And that my friends is the best social business strategy that I know of.

Tips on How Pauses Can Help Your Speeches

NFL superstar Deion Sanders, known for his bling and flashy suits, likes to say, “Look good, feel good. Feel good, play good. Play good, they pay good.” He knew that pauses can help.

On the face of it, wearing a custom-made suit off the field shouldn’t make a player catch a football better when he’s on it. What Sanders really was talking about was confidence. Anyone making it into the NFL has the ability, but a loss of confidence could neutralize it. Of all the factors (look, feel, play, and pay), looking good is the easiest to control. Addressing that can create an upward spiral of confidence. When you look good, it affects how you feel and . . . you know the rest.

Don’t dismiss these as inconsequential window dressing compared to the content of the message. Not only are they vital for effectively transmitting your message and holding attention, but (and just as important) they’ll help you feel more confident. Sound good, feel good. Feel good, play good. Play good, they pay good. Sound good, feel good. Feel good, play good. Play good, they pay good.

“So, Mike, of all the things you teach, what’s the number one thing you tell executives?” I said, “That’s easy. It’s . . .” and I paused, waiting as each pair of eyes shifted away from their notes and up at me. “It’s pauses.”

Pauses are magical. The longer I speak professionally, the better I understand just how powerful and versatile they are. They are one of the most undervalued skills any speaker can develop. Pauses

• . . . create time to think.

• . . . cause people to mentally lean in.

• . . . allow space for people to respond.

• . . . decimate filler words (um, ah, er, and the like).

• . . . make you sound more confident.

• . . . demonstrate mastery and control.

There are three types of pauses: (1) the thinking pause, (2) the question pause, and (3) the interest pause.

The Thinking Pause exists In our mental and verbal tracks—your brain is always running in the background and trying to figure out the exact thing to say, how to structure it, and which word to use. Your brain is fast but not instantaneous. Pauses are essential for accessing its repertoire of words and linking together your chain of thoughts. The problem is that “nature abhors a vacuum.” Meaning, in this case, that (if you’re like most people) you’re intuitively uncomfortable with the silence created by pauses, so you fill it with the aptly named “filler.” There are three different types of fillers, listed here in order of increasing distraction.

a. Elongated Words Just what it sounds like, this means drawing out a word to fill the silence as you mentally develop your next thought. These aren’t too distracting, providing they aren’t drawn out comically long.

b. Stammer Stammering happens as a speaker tries to come up with the next thought and bridges the gap between thoughts by re-re-repeating p-parts of what they are saying. This should not be confused with the speech disorder known as stuttering; instead, stammering is a habit developed as a coping mechanism to fill in spaces between thoughts.

c. Extra Words This is simply adding extra, unnecessary words. Two common examples are “like” and “just”. They don’t add anything to the point but attempt to fill in empty space. I once heard an old missionary say “Father” about twenty times in a five-minute blessing over dinner. Transition words are also common offenders: “so,” “also,” “okay,” “as I was saying,” “that is to say.” I listened to one politician who said “however” at the beginning of nearly every sentence. One mark of an experienced speaker is knowing when to pause, so the audience can process and internalize what’s been said. Remember: A speech isn’t like a book. Your audience can’t go back and “reread” something that requires extra thought.

Now, think about a host getting ready to announce the final results. He doesn’t rush through but skillfully increases anticipation through pauses. The producers pull it out even longer with carefully timed commercial breaks. You know how it goes: You’re waiting on the edge of your seat, his finally start to move, and then the theme music plays over his voice, and you throw something at the TV. You knew it was coming, but it still gets you.

Skillful speakers know how to use pauses to increase anticipation. This could almost be called a dramatic pause because you are being dramatic. Used correctly, it can add interests to almost anything—even financial reports: “Last quarter was great . . .” [pause, pause some more. Eyes begin to focus on you] “. . . and this quarter was even better.”

Obviously, you want to use the Interest Pause strategically. Long pauses followed by something not worth waiting for will get you parodied at the company Christmas party. Consider using it for:

• Key transitions,

• Significant points,

• Before or after statements that resonate emotionally, or

• Before your conclusion. Skillful speakers know how to use pauses to increase anticipation. There’s a next-level version of this, inspired by my favorite story about the Dalai Lama. He was running late for a speaking engagement but wanted to find a way to honor the audience and connect with them. He walked in without saying a word and, one by one, silently greeted each person with eye contact and a smile.

He did more than connect—he created intense anticipation for his speech. I tried a similar strategy when I spoke to a room of professionals and found that, because of the anticipation I built, I was able to shorten my planned introduction and get into the meat of what I was saying.

But, again, this is a “next-level” skill because it requires great confidence. If you feel awkward, the audience will as well. And use it very sparingly. If even one person in a group has seen you do it twice, it may feel very insincere.

Awareness and Practice First, practice by reading aloud from a book and finding places to use all three types of pauses (Thinking, Response, and Interest). Experiment by moving pauses to different places and get a feel for how meaning changes. Second, use what you just learned to find strategic places to pause in your next presentation and literally write “PAUSE” in your notes. Finally, build awareness by recording that presentation and observing what worked and what didn’t.

Don’t be embarrassed by what didn’t work—just learn from it. Do you like your voice? Do you find that people frequently ask you to repeat yourself?

Every Leader Needs to Learn These Lessons

Nothing really prepares you to be a leader. In most cases, you get the opportunity to lead by being good at something else. However, while being a strong performer gives you the credibility to learn these lessons, it says nothing about your ability to lead. Leadership is a skill in its own right and, for the most part, it’s one you learn on the job.

The truth is that all leaders have different styles. Still, one thing I wish somebody told me before I began leading people is what I would be required to do and how it would be different from any other job. So here’s four things you’ll need to learn in order to become a successful leader.

1. Developing Talent Is the Most Important Thing You Do

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that strong talent is important to every organization, yet it’s unlikely you’ll be able to attract better talent than your competitors. For the most part, you’ll be offering similar compensation to do a similar job. You can try and screen people as best you can, but you won’t be able to truly evaluate them until they’re already on the job.

Look at truly great organizations and you’ll find that they excel at developing — rather than just hiring — talent. The US military doesn’t really attract better talent than any other country, but the way it develops talent makes it the best fighting force in the world. Companies like GE and McKinsey are also renown for their ability to develop top talent.

So your first job as a leader is to help everyone on your team to maximize their potential. That means a lot more than just setting up training programs. It means taking an interest in the personal development of everyone on your team, even if it means that they eventually find that they are better off pursuing their dreams somewhere else.

Ironically, the best way to attract talent is to build a reputation for developing it. So if you want the best people to come work for you, the first step is to find the best in the people who are already working for you.

In situations like that, advice like “be rational” or “go with your gut” is completely useless. You simply have to make the best decision you can and accept the consequences.

2. A Certain Percentage Of Your Decisions Will Be Wrong

Even more challenging than the fact that it is your job to make decisions that nobody else wants to, is the reality that a certain percentage of the decisions you make will be wrong and it will be your job to clean up the inevitable messes you make. This is simply unavoidable. Nobody gets it right 100% of the time.

When this happens, somebody will always be there to remind you that they had preferred a different option. This will be true, but meaningless, because one of the reasons you had to make the decision in the first place was that there was no clear consensus. Whatever choice you made, a lot of people were backing a different one.

This is perhaps the most important thing you have to learn to be a good leader. Being put in a position of responsibility doesn’t make you clairvoyant or endow you with any special wisdom, it just means that the consequences of your actions will be much greater than for anyone else.

Once you are able to accept that, everything else becomes easier.

3. People Follow A Mission, Not A Plan

Leaders do a lot of strategy and planning. It is simply a necessary part of the job, because people need a guide for what’s expected of them in order to operate at a high level. Still, as Steve Blank has observed, “No business plan survives first contact with the customer.” A plan never perfectly reflects reality.

In Team of Teams, General Stanley McChrystal describes how when first took over command in Iraq, his forces were winning every battle, but losing the war. The problem was that although his squads of commandos and intelligence analysts were performing their individual tasks with world class alacrity, they were failing to, as he put it, “see the whole system” and the greater mission was getting lost.

So his commandos would capture valuable intelligence, but it would take weeks to get it in front of an intelligence officer. Or a target would be identified, but by the time it went through the chain of command the terrorists would be long gone. He realized that rather than a better plan, he needed to build a sense of shared mission to accomplish a single goal. So while planning and supervising work are part of every leader’s job, they’re not what’s essential. What’s most important is providing a mission with meaning. Great leade