How to Craft Great Blog Titles

I’ll let you in on a little secret. The most important part of your blog post is your title. Here’s how to craft great blog titles.

How well you write, how well-researched your content is, or how pretty your images are means nothing if you can’t get readers to click through and start reading your post. And the single most important thing when it comes to getting readers’ attention is having a great blog post title.

It’s also the most important on-page factor when it comes to SEO. So, if you’re hoping for lots of free traffic from Google and all your favourite social media sites, you need to be good at crafting great blog post titles.

Start With Your Keyword

The key with great blog post titles is to strive for a balance between a title the search engines will like and one that your readers will find interesting and engaging enough to make them want to click on it. To get that balance just right, I like to start with a keyword or key phrase that I want to rank for in the search engines.

Open up your favourite keyword research tool – like the Google Keywords for example – and play around with it until you come up with the keywords or key phrases you want to rank for.

For the sake of illustration let’s say our keyword example is “best blog hosts” and the post will be a review of five of the best hosting companies for WordPress blogs. “best blog hosts” is the keyword we want to rank for in this example.

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Make It Interesting

Now that we have the keyword, it’s time to make it interesting for our readers. There are plenty of different ways to turn our example keyword into an interesting blog post title. Here are a few ideas:

· The Three Best Blog Hosts Reviewed – Read This Before You Sign Up

· Looking For a New Home for Your Blog? The Best Blog Hosts Reviewed

· My Top 5 Best Blog Hosts Revealed – Here’s Who I Recommend

· Wondering Who The Best Blog Hosts Are?

· Is Your Host One The Best of The Best Blog Hosts List?

Do you see how this works? Start with the keyword and then try to think about why your readers would be looking for this information. Focus on what’s in it for them by sharing content that will help them out.

Stay Authentic and Stick With Your Style

Last but not least, stay authentic and stick with your own style. This is particularly important if you’re an established blogger. Don’t just copy and paste the blog post titles above. They may not reflect the style and tone of voice of your blog posts. In other words, they may not be you. Balance the need of the search engines to easily find what you’re content is about, the need to keep things interesting for your readers, by using your own voice.

You may find it helpful to write a few different blog post titles down and then chose the one that resonates most with you (and hopefully with your readers).

Download the FREE Blogging Bundle

Also, if you haven’t already, be sure to read 52 Blog Ideas for your business, who couldn’t use 52 blog ideas?

9 Ways to Show Your Expertise When First Starting Out

When you first start out wanting to work from home and start your own business, it can be frightening and even seem impossible. It’s the old conundrum about how you can get experience without having experience. 9 Ways to Show Your Expertise When First Starting Out
But, when you start an online business, you can make your own experience and prove your expertise with just a little work. So, to help you, here are nine ways to show your expertise when first starting out! 9 Ways to Show Your Expertise When First Starting Out

Blog Regularly Toward Your Audience

Start a blog on your website and blog directly to your audience with many forms of content, discussing many issues that the audience has. It’s a great way to get traffic, but it’s also a great way to demonstrate expertise.

To help you get started with this, download my FREE Business Blogging Bundle

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9 Ways to Show Your Expertise When First Starting Out

Write a White Paper about a Problem

A white paper is a long report that addresses a problem and then offers solutions to the problem. If you write a paper or two about individual problems your audience has, you’ll be able to show your expertise even though you’re just starting out.

Publish a Book about Your Expertise

Writing a book and authorship is always a great way to show your expertise. Direct the book to your target audience and answer questions they may have. Address one problem and solve it and then you’ll get more respect that you do know what you’re talking about.

Make Checklists to Help Your Target Audience

If you know the types of things that your audience has questions about, you can create helpful checklists, cheat sheets, or tip sheets that are available for view and/or download on your website or blog.

Share Answers Freely on Social Networks

Social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and even forums and message boards are great places to answer other people’s questions in a way that highlights your expertise.

Become a Contributing Writer

Blogs, websites, newspapers and magazines all want more content and will take well-written, expertly delivered articles. Some of these will even pay you for the content. Write originally for each and rely on your bio to send traffic your way

Get on a Speaking Circuit

Create a couple of presentations that you could easily turn into public speaking fodder. Practice by putting that information on video on your blog, YouTube, and other places that take video. Make a “one-sheet” which is one downloadable 8×11 sheet that tells about what you’ll speak on and your prices.

Create a Dedicated YouTube Channel

Many people have become famous because of YouTube, and you can too. Use YouTube as a way to demonstrate your expertise on the topics of interest to your audience.

Host a Free Webinar or Teleseminar

Technology enables you to do a lot to spread the word about your knowledge and expertise. You can do “how-to” videos, and tip videos and more to show the world and most importantly, your audience, what you know.

These ways to show your expertise when first starting out don’t require you to have a huge client roster, or even a following yet. Doing them and I promise, it will help you gain a following, improve search engine optimization (SEO) and help you build the work-at-home business of your dreams.

Jump into the TVS Leave the 9-5 Workshop Group and tell us how any of these Nine Ways to Show Your Expertise When First Starting Out has helped you! Or better yet – do you have any other tips you can share? We’d love to hear them!

9 Ways to Show Your Expertise When First Starting Out

Home Business or Work-at-Home Job – Which Is Right for You?

With the 2020 pandemic rocking the world in ways, no one saw coming – more and more people are working from home. Either with their home business or work-at-home job. Some people started a business or the 9-5 corporations started having the work from home option now available.

Now, many don’t want to go back to the corporate cubicle or have always wanted to work from home for a variety of reasons. Maybe you just had a child and want more work-life balance, or perhaps you have an illness that makes it difficult for you to get out of the house. Or maybe you just like being home and want the freedom to work your way.

Whatever the reasons you want to work at home, you’ll need to choose whether or not you want a job from home, or you want a business from home. Here are eight questions to help you decide.

Are You Self-Motivated?

If you want your own business so that you can set your hours, you will need to be very self-motivated. You’ll need to take time out of your day for marketing, interviewing clients, closing the deal and then doing the work too. You’ll be 100 percent responsible for delivering the work, billing and collecting. You’ll even be responsible for deciding the methods you’ll use to do the work. To do that you’ll need to be a very self-motivated individual.

What Skills Do You Have?

Take a piece of paper and write down a list of the skills you currently have, based on what you’ve already done in the past. Can any of these translate into a business? Label them appropriately. Do any of these translate into common work-from-home positions such as call center agent or transcriptionist? Some skills cross over into both, but which side of the list gets full faster?

What Sort of Lifestyle Do You Want?

With a work-at-home job, you’ll be required to “show up” for work on time each day that you’re scheduled, and you may have little control over that schedule. What’s more, with work-at-home positions it’s a lot harder than typical jobs to call in sick, whether it’s you or a child who is sick. Often the first 90 days you cannot miss your schedule at all if you want to keep the position. Are you ready for that? Or, would you prefer a more family-oriented type of schedule that can be adjusted more easily and is more deliverables-based than hourly-based?

Do You Already Have a Business Idea?

If you have already researched a business idea, and feel as if you want to do that instead of working for someone else, can you pull it off? What steps do you need to take to make it a reality? Are you the type of person to be able to organize and take the steps needed to get your business off the ground? Can you find and afford help if you’re not sure what to do to get the business going? Does the thought of all this stress you out?

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How Do You Feel about Punching a Clock?

For some people the idea of clock-punching is relaxing, for others it feels like a nightmare. Neither feeling is right or wrong as it takes all types of people to make this world work. If you know upfront that you are fine with punching a clock and you’d rather someone else tell you when to be someplace and what to do, then a work-at-home job is best for you. If that feels like a prison to you, then a business is probably better if you can do what it takes to get it going.

Do You Have Money to Start a Business?

Starting any type of business, even an online business, requires an investment not only of time but also of money. Have you worked out a business plan and do you know how much money you need to get started? Do you have that money available? If not, do you have a way to get it? Perhaps working at a job first, while you save for and work on your business on the side, is the way to go if you don’t have the funds to start.

Do You Need Training and Education?

Both working at a job and owning a business sometimes require skills that you don’t have yet. But that’s okay. Decide if you want to invest in the training yourself to get your business off the ground, or if you would like to try to find a work-at-home job where they will train you from the ground up even if you have little experience and due to that the pay may be low.

What Is Your Biggest Dream for Your Life?

When you think of the future, what do you see? Does it sound relaxing to get up in the morning, have some breakfast, and move to your home office where you sign in to work at your job, taking a break when needed by telling your manager that you have to use the restroom, or go eat lunch and so forth, then when you get off work you’re totally and fully off? Plus, each week you collect a certain paycheck?

Or, do you like the idea of being able to do what you want when you want (and likely working more hours than you ever thought you could) without the surety of income each week, but knowing you’re forging your future?

Whatever you decide, neither is right or wrong. They are both good choices for you. Whether you want a work-at-home job so you can sign off after the day and focus 100 percent on your family, or whether you want a business that will cross boundaries into family time and vice versa but that puts you 100 percent in charge – both are good choices and choices that you are fortunate to have in this age of high-speed internet.

TVS has launched the Inspired Action Mastermind!

A premium mastermind for mission-driven, service-based women entrepreneurs who are ready and willing to put in the work it takes to reach the next level!

Inside the Inspired Action Mastermind, we are an intimate group of entrepreneurs, all of which are committed to the success of one another’s businesses. It is a mastermind that provides the support and guidance you need to help you move your business forward. Because, when you’re in the right mastermind group, you can start to see your business and yourself through someone else’s eyes as you support one another and leverage each other’s experiences.

If you are ready and willing to shift your mindset and tackle all the hard questions to accomplish your dreams, then join us.

Learn about the Inspired Action Mastermind

Tips to Creating Your Action Plan and Business Timeline

Most businesses start out with a dream and an inspiration, but that is where it ends. Even the most innovative businesses can wind up closing their doors because a good action plan and a focused timeline were not in place from the beginning. Tips to Creating Your Action Plan and Business Timeline

There are many benefits to creating your action plan and online business timeline. When you have an action plan put into place and follow it regularly and continue to focus on your business timeline, things will run much more smoothly for your new business, your employees, and your customers.

Streamline Your Path – If you have a dream and a vision – excellent. Now, you must have knowledge of where your business is heading down the line. It is important to focus on a streamlined path when you first start your business. Otherwise, you are likely to find that your business is “all over the place.” Be sure to be specific in where you expect your business to go in the first twelve months.

Put It in Writing – In the early stages of creating your business, it is important to create an action plan in writing. Without this piece of the puzzle, it can get messy quite quickly. Having an action plan in your head or verbalizing it with other team members is not nearly as efficient as putting it down in writing.

Measure Your Goals Consistently – Make sure to check up on your goals often. By measuring your goals, you consistently marry those goals against where you are at the moment. If your goals are not in alignment with where they should be, then it is time to re-evaluate.

Break Down Bigger Projects into More Manageable Ones – When you create your action plan, make certain to break down bigger projects into more manageable ones. In this way, you will be able to get the whole job done without it feeling overwhelming.

Delegate – Do not be afraid to delegate some of your action plan. If you try to do everything all on your own, chances are all those balls you are juggling will come tumbling down sooner rather than later.

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Create a Timeline for Every Task – You may think it is not necessary to create a timeline for each and every task; however, a timeline is essential for success. Creating a timeline will help you to manage your time and your business.

Keep It Real – A timeline should have a manageable date attached to each task. If you create a timeline goal too soon, then you may set yourself up for failure. By being realistic, you set yourself up for success.

Differentiate Your Tasks – Make certain to differentiate your short-term tasks from your long-term tasks. For example, a short-term task would be to hire employees and a long-term task would be to improve your social media status.

Stick to Your Timeline No Matter What – You have to have integrity in this area. You need to stick with your timeline no matter what, as this is the only way to achieve success.

Stay Focused – It is very easy to let a task go because other “stuff” gets in the way. Stay focused and stick to your timeline. Check your progress as you go along the way.

Get into the Entrepreneurial Mindset to Leave your 9-5

Have you ever thought about starting your own business, but “stuff” just got in your way? There are several ways to get into the entrepreneurial mindset. Also, there are just as many ways to clear the road to become an entrepreneur.

Get into the Entrepreneurial Mindset

Consider these personality traits:

Leadership qualities
Creative thinking
A feeling that there is something more
Innovative ideas

If you show any or all of these qualities, you could very well be on your way to owning your own business because you do have that entrepreneurial spirit.

How to Clear the Road toward Entrepreneurial Success

Going from the 9:00 to 5:00 grind to the entrepreneurial spirit may not be the easiest path, but it is something you can achieve. However, there are several steps you need to take before forging head first into business ownership.

Find Clarity – Getting clear on what it is you want to achieve is an integral first step. It is not as simple as coming up with an idea and writing it down. You have to write down your goals, but even more importantly, you have to break them down. Being specific is not an option; it is mandatory. You need to have clear, specific goals when it comes to starting a new business.

Create a plan – Once you are clear on what your goal for your new business is, you have to create a plan for success. Write down what your goal is, how you will achieve that goal in smaller steps and then break that list down even further.

Take action – Next, it is time to take action steps. Action steps need more than just thinking about taking them. Declare aloud and to everyone you can what your action steps are; in this way, you are accountable to your word.

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Delegate – If you are starting a new business of your own, do not be afraid to delegate tasks, even if you do not have a business partner or associates yet. One day delegating will be a task you will have to learn anyhow.

Allow family members and friends to help take the load off somewhere else while you learn all you need to know about your new business endeavour.

Letting go – Sometimes in order to create something new, we need to let go of something old. In order to clear the path to create a new business, something else will have to fall by the wayside. Your home may need to be a little cluttered or less clean. You may have to let go of a favourite sport or activity for a while, but it is well worth it in the end.

Keeping your day job is important until you are secure financially in your new business endeavour. It may be a difficult road to travel, but having an entrepreneurial mindset is a gift. Once you open it, you will be happy that you did.

TVS has launched the Inspired Action Mastermind!

A premium mastermind for mission-driven, service-based women entrepreneurs who are ready and willing to put in the work it takes to reach the next level!

If you are ready and willing to shift your mindset and tackle all the hard questions to accomplish your dreams, then join us.

Learn about the Inspired Action Mastermind

How to Perform a SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business Idea

If you have an online business idea, chances are that you want to protect that idea. You will also want to do anything and everything you can in order to make that business strive and thrive.

Using a SWOT analysis for your online business idea is a great way to assess your business idea. First, however, let us examine what a SWOT analysis is. Put simply, it involves assessing these factors:

Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats

A SWOT analysis is valuable in evaluating a product, service, new business endeavour or even an employee.

Strengths – By evaluating your company’s strengths, you do yourself a great service. By looking through a microscope into what is working, you can enhance that performance and its progress and multiply it.

By mimicking a proven formula that already works, you increase your success two-fold. You can also pinpoint specific areas of success and magnify them innovatively in order to grow those strengths.

Weaknesses – The whole point in evaluating weaknesses for your online business idea is to eliminate or at the very least minimize them. Weaknesses are in every aspect of business and if unaddressed, those weaknesses can fester and grow. Eliminating or minimizing those weaknesses will keep them from detracting from your success in an online venture.

There are two major categories of measurement – internal factors, which are within the organization, and external factors, which are outside the organization – with strengths and weaknesses belonging to internal factors.

Opportunities – Evaluating opportunities is useful in seeking knowledge on how those opportunities are useful to gain momentum for your online business endeavours. Taking advantage of any existing opportunities and expanding them to greater heights will provide more success for your business idea.

Threats – Evaluating threats in the environment is crucial to the success of your online business idea.

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SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business

Opportunities and threats belong to the external factors category. If you are on the lookout for threats, warding them off before they occur is key to maintaining optimal success as a line of defence for your project or business.

Evaluate your online business idea for its strengths by highlighting the areas that receive the most positive response. If you have done a test market on a product or service or have a website with a comments section, check to see where the positive highlights are for your online idea.

Evaluate your online business idea for its weaknesses by answering a negative comment on a website, asking for the opinions of others, and checking the competitions’ websites.

Seek out new and innovative opportunities based on existing ideas that you can expand. Search out opportunities within other businesses to grow and expand your own.

By utilizing a SWOT analysis, you protect and enhance your online business idea.

SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business

Hello, August!

August has arrived! Summer is nearing its end, so let’s take advantage of the month.

August

How to Make Your Business Stand Out from the Competition

Since the creation of the internet and social media, hundreds of thousands of businesses have emerged. Of course, you want your business to stand out head and shoulders above the rest. How do you achieve that goal? There are several ways to make your business stand apart from the competition but you have to start by evaluating your own business.

Stand Out from the Competition

Evaluate Your Own Company

It is often very easy to compare your company to others. The tendency may be to think that they do something better than you. However, it is most important to start from within. Looking within your own company is the place to begin.

Look at where you have been static – Take a good long look at where you have been static in your own company. Has your company become stale and outdated? Is there room for something new and innovative? Can you improve a product or service?

What can you reuse – Is there a sales letter that you can re-circulate or a product that you can enhance in order to gain new clients and customers?

What needs recreating? – Is there an area of your business such as reorganizing one of your departments? Perhaps management and assistant management need to put better communication policies and procedures into place.

Does your product or service live up to today’s standards? – Look and see if your product or service lives up today’s standards. Once you have evaluated this, take a look and see if your product or service is trending according to today’s standards.

Where do you stand with social media? – If your website does not incorporate social media, then it is time to include this all-important aspect into your business. Many times a customer will immediately leave a web page if he or she does not see social media buttons.

How can you reach more clients? – Investigate how you can reach more clients. Perhaps you need to set up a Facebook fan page if you do not already have one put in place. Check to see if you are responding to comments that visitors leave on your webpage if you have one. Engaging with clients is a sure-fire way to bring them closer to you rather than alienate them. Reach out to other businesses and blogs to create a sharing opportunity on each other’s web sites through guest blogging or blog rolls.

Today’s business is extremely fast-paced and moves at a rapid speed through change. Keeping up with those changes is the only way to stay ahead of the competition.

Taking a look at all these things in your own company is the foundation of a company that is capable of standing out from the competition.

Stand Out from the Competition

How to Have a Stress-Free Business Launch

How to Have a Stress-Free Business Launch
Let’s face it, the last thing you want to do, now that you’ve decided to finally leave the 9 to 5 job, is to add more stress to your life. Isn’t that why you decided to build your own business in the first place? You’re looking for freedom from the stress of a fixed schedule, working with those you don’t get along with, and from the limitations of a fixed salary.

But if you’re trading all that in for a different kind of stress, what have you gained? Before you kiss your cubicle goodbye, be sure you first build a solid foundation—and we don’t just mean business-wise.

Build a Financial Safety Net

Nothing stresses us out quite like worrying about money. Whether you’re concerned about those college tuition bills you’ll be facing in a few years, or worse, not sure how you’re going to make the rent or bills, it’s easy to lose your business mojo. As a new business owner, you certainly don’t want money trouble casting a shadow over your entrepreneurial dream.

Before you turn in your resignation, set aside some cash in case of a rainy day. Aim for at least three months of living expenses but more is better. Hopefully, you won’t need it but having some cash on hand will relieve the pressure of having a new business that’s not earning its keep—yet.

How to Have a Stress-Free Business Launch

Make Sure Your Family is on Board

Money troubles are bad, but there may be one worse thing: an unsupportive spouse. And as any entrepreneur will tell you, not everyone understands the drive to be a business owner. Most people find it pretty scary to step away from that regular paycheck to chase after a dream.

If that sounds like your partner, don’t take it personally. They’re not making a statement about your ability. More than likely, they’re just worried about what the future holds. Do your best to understand where they’re coming from, and be sure to clearly explain your ideas, why you are confident it will work, and how you plan to cover the start-up expenses and manage the risk.

If he or she is still not on board, consider starting slow, with a part-time business while still working your day job. That will allow you to prove your idea is workable, and might just help your spouse get as excited about it as you are.

Read my article: How to Talk to Your Family About Working From Home – it may be helpful with this topic!

Take Time for YOU

No matter what’s going on with your money, your partner or your business, you need to be sure to schedule some “you” time. No one can work all the time, regardless of how driven you are. I am sure I don’t need to mention that no one can stay healthy while maintaining a nonstop schedule. Go for a walk, hit the gym, get a pedicure or just binge on your favourite brainless television show. The point is simply to take time away from your desk to rest and rejuvenate. Without it, you’ll soon find yourself overwhelmed and stressed, even if you truly love your new business.

Affirmations for Starting a New Business

Affirmations for Starting a New Business
If you didn’t’ already know, I am a huge fan of affirmations and use them as part of my daily morning routine. They were especially helpful when I first started coaching. Not only did they help make major shifts in my mindset they reminded me that I have started and ran a successful business before, why should this one be any different?

If you are just starting out with affirmations, I recommend you speak the affirmations out loud for about five minutes – three times a day, morning, midday, and evening. An ideal time to do this is when you’re putting on your makeup or doing your hair so that you can look at yourself in the mirror as you repeat the positive statement. Another option that helps to reinforce the new belief and would be easy to do at work is to write out the affirmation several times in a notebook. Notice over time as you write it if your style of writing changes. This could be a clue as to how your mind perceives the new concept.

Here are a few of my favourites to get you started.