My Path to Success

Faith To Do Any and All Things

Dreams of Hope

When I was a child I remember looking through the Philadelphia Magazine that came out every month. In the back of the magazine were fabulous mansion-like homes that were advertised for sale. I used to tell my heart, “One day I am going to purchase one of these homes for my parents.” I used to dream of living in a beautiful home with lots of space with my mother and father.

My Life, My Path

As I grew older, I lost those dreams to life and all the things I experienced. In the back of my mind, those dreams lay dormant until I became an entrepreneur.

The path that has led me to the enormity of my success has been through the deepening of my faith. I could write a book about not having an ounce of faith to believing all the things that have helped to shape my life, my happiness and my success.

The path to my ultimate success has been learning and applying God’s commandments as well as His principles, deepening my faith and belief in the Lord has led to great success, not only in my businesses, but in my life as well. My faith has helped me to build the businesses of my dreams.

Now, I’m back to dreaming and believing that I am going to receive the home that I always knew that I would buy some day.

4 Festive Tips for Holiday Social-Media Marketing

Happy Holidays!

The holidays are a special time of year, highlighted by the three F’s – family, food, and … fighting? I don’t mean fighting over who gets the last drumstick or whether Home Alone is better than A Christmas Story. I’m talking about retailers and brands fighting for consumer attention during the busiest shopping time of the year.

The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is the biggest opportunity brands and retailers have each year, but it’s also incredibly competitive, so it’s crucial to reach and communicate with your customer audience in the correct way.

One way to do so is through social media. The holiday season is filled with social posts about gifts bought, deals found, and complaints of poor customer service. Now like never before, brands and retailers have the ability to connect directly with their customers and create a more personal shopping experience.

Here are four tips for how brands can get savvy with their social media marketing during this year’s holiday madness.

1. Drive that local cheer.
The holidays experience in New York is different than in San Francisco. Your messaging should reflect that. Leverage geo-targeting tools to know from where your customer is. Then you can create content they can relate to and messaging that resonates with a personalized brand experience.

2. All I want for Christmas is user-generated content.
How do you connect with audiences when they are already inundated with advertisements? You make them the hero. Businesses that can actively leverage user-generated content are the ones that will drive deeper connections with fans. Most people today are programmed to ignore ads. Showcasing authentic photos of your audience drives your intended message while encouraging a deeper, emotional interest from new and loyal fans alike. Relate to them with real people, in real moments, using your product and services.

Your featured fans get credit and interaction, audiences find trust in real people using your product or service, and your brand will better understand what motivates your audience. Everyone is jolly.

3. Deck the social walls.

The best way to harness a viral lift is to showcase your interactive experience. Remember, the more observable you make a campaign, the easier it is for your fans to imitate.

Create a social hub with aggregated content from multiple social channels on your website or microsite to capture audiences online. Your consumers can then share with their social community when you feature them, extending your reach. But don’t forget about in the store. Providing social displays, with easy calls to action at physical locations, are a simple, yet effective way to generate engagement.

4. Multiple chimneys equal multiple presents.
Facebook is still expected to be the channel of choice for holiday social spend, as 92 percent of marketers are planning extensive campaign efforts for this one platform. But 73 percent of marketing professionals think Instagram is going to be the breakout platform for this year’s holidays.

Don’t silo yourself to one social-media platform. Instead, create content on the appropriate channels for your audience, each with native content focused exclusively to that channel. Your Facebook posts, Instagrams and Tweets should drive the same idea, but the content should be customized to resonate best with each channel’s unique community.

Think of your various social media channels as your own little elves, and put them to work for you this holiday season. Utilize these tips and you’ll win the holiday retail battle while leaving your customers filled with joy.

Amir Zonozi

Business Success

Great Tips for a Highly Successful Business

Duff Goldman says running a business is like being Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner.

Goldman, owner of Charm City Cakes in Baltimore and the focus of Food Network’s Ace of Cakes, says you have to be willing to give it your all and not worry that you might get hurt once in a while. Here are the 39 year old’s four other ingredients to running a successful business:

1. Don’t over-think your business or idea.

When Goldman was thinking about starting his business, he asked his dad, who has a graduate degree in business from UCLA, how to run his new cake shop. His dad said, “Sell a cake son, start from there.” In other words, keep it simple. Don’t get into the analysis-paralysis rut. Get busy. Do good work. Prove the model. Rinse and repeat.

2. Live within your means.

Goldman spent $2,600 and bought his first large mixer after he sold his first big cake order.

“If you can’t afford it, you don’t need it,” he says.

Too many startups waste money on swag and T-shirts with their logo on it when they should be banking that cash or spending it on people or things they really need.

3. Make great stuff.

No matter how great the product or experience was last month, Goldman says he is always judged by the last cake he makes. In his case, a sub-par product will literally leave a bad taste in mouth of customers. That’s the quickest way to go out of business.

4. Be kind.

This one seems like a no-brainer, but so many companies seem to get this wrong. Why is the customer-service person at the department store so angry when you bring in a return? Why is it so difficult to get through to your cell phone or cable TV provider?

Being kind also applies to treating your employees with the respect they deserve, Goldman says.

We can probably all afford to be a little more kind to each other.

BRYAN ELLIOTT
CONTRIBUTOR
CEO of The GoodBrain Digital Studios

11 Reasons Why Your Website Doesn’t Sell

A well-designed website organically grows a company’s business and reinforces branding.

A study by Nielsen Norman Group found that users stay on a website for an average of 10 to 20 seconds. Visitors hang around longer only if they find something worthwhile during those initial glances. For a business, every second counts.

Several factors may strip a website of value. Here are 11 problems that affect a site’s presentation alongside fixes to immediately apply to help drive greater user engagement and better traffic.

1. Low-quality visuals.

Many have written about the power of visuals in communication. A 1986 study by the University of Minnesota’s Management Information Systems Research Center with 3M support found presentations using visual aids 43 percent more convincing. A website’s potential can be held back by the inclusion of low-quality visuals.

Marketing expert Govind Agarwal recommends having high-quality photos to grab viewers’ attention, increase social shares and even boost overall SEO if pictures are tagged appropriately. Labnol.org offers a list of places for finding free professional images.

2. Lack of reviews or testimonials.

If its website does not have testimonials, a business is missing out on an easy and effective marketing tool. Customers are discriminating. Merely telling them of the strength of product or service is not enough anymore. Testimonials can help create trust for a company’s offerings and quell concerns customers might have about making a purchase. Derek Gehl, CEO of the Internet Marketing Center, has shared guide to using testimonials and choosing ones that are suit an audience.

3. Lacking color savvy.

Another factor that might cause weak sales on a company site is its color scheme. Much research is being done on visual information that’s hue-related. Many entrepreneurs probably already understand the importance of branding. A powerful brand sets the company apart from the competition and makes the business instantly recognizable to consumers. But it can lose credibility with users if its website is adorned with an unimpressive color scheme.

For a crash course on color theory, reference Smashing Magazine’s in-depth guide. Determine what the company’s brand should convey to customers and be sure the website has an appropriate color scheme to match.

4. Outdated information.

Scroll down to the bottom of a webpage to where a copyright date is listed. Is it still recent? According to Small Business Trends, a website appearance that looks out of date is an instant turnoff to customers.

Clients want to see that a company has put in effort to stay current. This includes regularly adding new content and refreshing existing copy.

5. Hard to find.

The best website in the world is useless if no one can find it. An entrepreneur need not know much about search engine optimization to develop pages that are easily discoverable by search engines and consumers. Gwen Moran has recommended a strong domain name, carefully optimized page titles to accurately reflect the content inside and using keywords effectively.

6. Not being mobile friendly.

A business website may resemble a work of art when opened on a desktop computer, but if it does not display well or function on a mobile device, the company will lose out on a growing segment of the online audience. Shopify, a leading ecommerce platform, looked at data from more than 100,000 websites that use its platform and found that slightly more than 50 percent of shopping is being done via mobile. To ensure that a website is mobile responsive, check these actionable tips.

7. Difficulty in finding contact information.

Ever needed assistance in a store just when all the sales associates seem to have disappeared? In retail, that should never be the case. Online, it shouldn’t be either. If a customer has a question or needs help, the site’s contact information should be easy to find. Being available on demand, such as via live chat, can also help a business better engage customers, reduce costs and boost sales.

8. Misdirected focus.

Customers want their experience on a business website to be focused on them. This means including sections that answer their questions and address their needs. An easy fix is including a frequently asked questions, or FAQ, page. The Content Marketing Institute recommends highlighting top questions, with timely answers and making the archive searchable. When possible, simplify the user experience by making answers accessible within one click. Customers want fast, helpful information.

9. Requiring sign-ups first

Forcing users to sign up on a company site before they can access can deter engagement. It puts an artificial hurdle between customers and the company’s products. According to user-experience blog UX Movement, aggressive sign-up forms make readers hesitant to divulge personal information for fear of receiving spam. In many cases, consumers assume the value they’ll receive won’t be worth the price they pay in sharing an email address. Make each visit count and do not corner users into doing anything they’re not comfortable doing.

10. Audio or video the autoplays.

One way to surely annoy a site’s visitors is to set audio and video on pages to autoplay. In an editorial, Troy Dreier, senior associate editor of StreamingMedia.com, wrote, “Sites are overusing autoplay, and it reflects badly on the whole online video industry.” Unfortunately, publishers, desperate for revenue, are still happy to deliver autoplay ads. To minimize disruptions to the reader experience, limit a clip to five seconds or less or offer a pause or stop button if it runs longer.

11. Painfully slow load times.

Digital audiences are impatient. Even if a website is filled with incredibly captivating media, it may experience high bounce rates if pages take too long to load for readers. Visitors highly value their time, so build a fast website that caters to their needs at lightning speed. Compressing images and large files is an easy way to guarantee quicker load times. Use a tool like Smush.it to shrink files and optimize a site’s performance.

FIRAS KITTANEH
CONTRIBUTOR
CEO at One Mall Group, Entrepreneur, SEO and Ecommerce Expert

A New Path

New Creations – God’s Virtuous Women Entrepreneurs

If you’re lost in life and you don’t which way to turn, now is the time for you to start a new path in your life. Creating new paths can be an exciting time. Whether it’s your path to a new found business or a path that will allow you to begin to build new relationships, it’s time to rejoice!

Life is filled with so many different avenues that sometimes it’s hard to choose which path you should take. I believe in letting God create my paths for me. When God has spoken to me and He has equipped me with all the tools that I need to do whatever it is He tells me, I know that I am on the right path and I am excited to see His plan unfold right before my eyes, always one truth at a time.

My New Path

A few months ago a good friend of mine told me about this priceless opportunity that I was very skeptical about at first, but because of her sincere heart and great business knowledge and understanding, I decided to give this life-altering business a try.

She told me about this organic detoxing tea that gave her great health benefits that she had never experienced before. Before ordering the tea I asked her a few important questions because I was worried about potential side effects. She kindly informed me that with this detox there were absolutely no side effects. I wasn’t sure if this detox tea would take my appetite away, dry my mouth, give me headaches or just make me sick overall. She told me that she had been drinking the tea for a few months and she had lost 7 pounds in eight days. I was concerned about trying the tea because I had had an embolization and I was afraid that the tea might make me worse.

Well, after believing my dear friend, I decided to purchase the tea for just $38.95 which also allows you to become a distributor as well. I thought what a great company to be able to purchase the tea for such a low price and then become a business owner with my own website.

I got the tea about five days after placing my order. Two tea bags makes a gallon of ice-tea. I drank 16 oz of the tea in the evening hours before going to bed. The next day the tea did exactly as my friend told me it would do. It cleansed me thoroughly. After about the third day my back pain was gone and I was feeling so much better. I didn’t even have any cramps. I was elated. I felt healthier than I did before I had the embolization and the weight on my stomach has melted down.

Laying a sustainable foundation is the key to your success.

I am now embarking on this new plan and I am beyond thrilled and I’d love for you to join me.

Total Life Changes

As an entrepreneur I have learned many life-changing things that have helped to prosper my life and my businesses. Total Life Changes is a part of my new found journey and what an amazing journey it has been. If you want to lose weight, be super healthy and make an amazing amount of money, then Total Life Changes is the answer!

I am delighted to share this awe-inspiring opportunity with you so that you too can become healthier than ever, physically and financially.

If you have any questions, please send me an email and we can talk more about this life-changing opportunity that is truly altering lives around God’s glorious globe!

Blessings.

Cynthia G. Boyer

cyndisdesignz@gmail.com

Category: Women entrepreneurs