How to Be a LOUSY Entrepreneur

Are you wracking your brain for exciting, unique content for your blog or website? With each passing moment are you feeling more and more dreadful because you think it’s so tough?

Here are 6 tips to keep that unique content flowing and ensure it’s always top-notch:

Target Your Market: Who visits your website or blog? Whoever it is, your articles need to capture and hold their interest. Unique content needs to educate and inform your readers, and keep them coming back for more articles.

Define Your Niche: Don’t be general. You need to hit your niche with your content. For example, if you’re a chiropractor don’t write an article about the benefits of chiropractic care. First, it’s a real snooze but most importantly, it’s way too broad. You need to discover a unique perspective such as how regular chiropractic care aids in restful sleep. Angle your article to fit your specific niche.

Keep Up With Industry Trends and News: Bein the know. Read daily industry news for fresh and timely content. Doing so makes you look like an expert in the eyes of your readers and will definitely keep them coming back for more.

Write On A Regular Basis: If you write occasionally, your writing may become stale or boring. So, in order to keep those creative juices flowing write on a regular basis. If you write a blog, write consistently (at least three times a week) and keep a journal or notebook on hand to jot down notes and ideas for future articles and blog posts.

Don’t Compare Yourself To Others: Every writer and blogger has their own unique style of writing. Comparing yourself to others does nothing for your self-confidence and even worse, it will hurt your creative process. It’s helpful to research blogs, ezines and websites for ideas, but don’t copy another writer’s style. The key to branding yourself as a content writer is to find your own style and stick with it.

Keep It Simple: Help out your readers and keep it simple by not confusing them with jargon and complicated language. It’s okay to bend some of the rigid grammar rules when you write Web content; however, it’s still recommended to edit and use spell check. Implement this editing trick I learned from a professional copywriter: print out your article and circle mistakes with a red pen. It’s apparently much easier to find errors.

Remember to use these 6 strategies when writing content for your website or blog and watch how these simple strategies can transform your business.

Maureen Campaiola, known by her clients, asthe DARE Coach is President of DARE To Be Phenomenal. As an accomplished business coach, author, speaker and entrepreneur, Maureen spends her time in the trenches working on solving the unique problems of women business owners and entrepreneurs. She can always be counted on to deliver smart, innovative solutions to turn a hectic and draining business into a thriving, highly lucrative, smooth running, and fun money making reality. In addition, she is the founder of the wildly successfulSuccess Minded Women’s Business Network where like-minded and highly motivated women connect, support and engage in joint ventures. To learn more about how you can step into your greatness, accelerate your business, AND achieve all the personal and business success you desire visit: www.daretobephenomenal.com or email: maureen@daretobephenomenal.com

How to Be a LOUSY Entrepreneur20620How to Be a LOUSY EntrepreneurYou’ve had your genius idea, you’ve pondered long and hard, you’ve ordered and received your business license. Hooray! You’re a real, live entrepreneur! But starting a business is easy compared to the long, hard work of keeping one afloat. Here are tips on what not to do to if you want to be a successful business owner: Multitask. You may think you can do more than one thing at a time. But you really, really can’t. Multitasking makes you stupid, according to a recent study. Dividing our brain’s attention between two (or more) activities causes diminished response for both tasks. So even though you think it might be more efficient to balance the books while catching up on TV, it doesn’t. Doing one thing at a time will get your tasks done more quickly and more accurately.

Be available 24-7. This may seem like a good idea on the surface. What if something goes wrong? I’m the only one who can do it right. But keeping regular business hours will preserve your health and sanity for the long haul. Having specific hours set aside for business, and leaving the remaining hours for rest, relaxation, family and home will allow you to feel a real sense of accomplishment at the end of each day. You will know you got work done, rather than having a consistent unease about whether you’ve done enough. Emergencies are an exception, of course, but save those after-hours interruptions for true emergencies and keep yourself free and clear from burnout.

Ignore social media. Think you can’t be bothered to get on Facebook? Too tired to tweet? Think again. Social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are the new lingua franca of today’s business world. When we were younger the world (and the business that was conducted in it) was shaped by the physical limitations of brick and mortar. No longer. Now a customer in Hong Kong can buy your humble products as easily as a customer two towns over. And since it’s entirely possible there’s someone doing the same thing as you on the Internet, what’s going to set you apart? Building relationships on social media. Your business can’t just be a business anymore. It’s now an extension of you and what you represent online.

Be bad with names. Learning and remembering your clients’ names (and their relationships, and their stories) is as important today as it was 100 years ago. The fact is simple: People don’t care how much you know (or how cool your product is) until they know how much you care. As a teen working at my father’s diner, he gave me this important piece of advice:Learn their names, and call them by it when they walk in the door. It will make them feel important and welcome. Truer words were never spoken.

BeCash Only. Another great piece of business advice from my Dad:Never make it difficult for people to give you their money. Yet I am shocked to still see businesses that don’t take credit cards. I know, it’s an annoying hassle to set up a merchant account and to pay fees to the credit card companies. But more and more, people are simply not traveling with cash or checks. Consider the processing fees acost of doing business.

Or don’t. And be a lousy entrepreneur.

Leslie Irish Evans, is a Diva Toolbox Authority and Featured Contributor, the host of “Peeling Mom Off the Ceiling” on DivaToolbox Radio, and a contributing author of the upcoming book: Mompreneur Extraordinaire. Visit her and learn more at PeelingMomOffTheCeiling.com.