9 Expert Public Speaking Tips For Business Growth and Success

In a list of “top 5 phobias,” public speaking takes the top slot, followed by death. That’s right, more people are scared of speaking in front of others than they are their own death. And that’s a shame, because what many people don’t realize, particularly business owners, is that public speaking is a tremendous tool for growth and success.

Brand benefits of public speaking

Public speaking is one of the most effective ways to showcase your products and services to a larger audience. Think about how business owners usually extend brand reach. They either pay for expensive advertising or they take part in what seems like an endless series of one-on-one meetings.

Public speaking helps build brand awareness for your business. As a bonus, it will generally pay YOU to speak to a hungry crowd, so it’s easy on your ad spend budget. And, instead of winning people over one by one, you can impress hundreds of people in a single presentation, encouraging them to give your brand a try.

No other endeavor can build your reputation as an expert quite as quickly or efficiently as public speaking. This is invaluable as more consumers are apt to engage with a new brand that has proven its expertise.

And finally, public speaking can greatly enhance your confidence and sales skills. Selling is an integral part of growing a customer base and monthly revenue. If you generally aren’t thrilled selling to others, public speaking can help you feel more comfortable talking to just about anyone.

9 Public speaking tips to get started

Now that you know public speaking can be one of the best things you can do to grow your business, let’s look at some practical tips to get started:

1. Develop a relevant presentation

What will you speak about? In order to offer the most valuable information, you’ve got to do a little research on your audience. What are their biggest pain points? What kinds of questions do they ask on social media and online forums? How can you genuinely help?

If you focus on what people need to hear instead of what you want to tell, you will develop relevant messaging that resonates with the audience. That’s powerful.

2. Practice

If you’re new to public speaking, it’s a good idea to practice before booking your first gig. You can start by presenting your speech out loud to yourself, perhaps in front of your mirror. Once you’re comfortable speaking your ideas out loud, ask a few friends, family members or associates to listen to your presentation and offer feedback. Take this feedback to heart. Don’t get offended by any criticism, instead use it to get better and better.

You may also want to record yourself speaking so you can see for yourself how you are coming across. Are you stiff and robotic, or do you move and act naturally? Is your voice monotone or expressive? Are you talking very fast or taking your time and using effective pauses? These are some of the things to look for and improve upon.

3. Set your business objectives

How do you specifically want to use public speaking? Do you want to connect with potential investors? Network with other business owners in your industry to form alliances? Introduce consumers to your new product or service? Get specific with your business goals so you can then identify the right prospective event organizers to target.

For example, if you want to network with other business owners, speaking at a chamber of commerce event makes sense, whereas if you want to get in front of consumers looking for your product, a chamber of commerce event could be a big waste of time.

4. Actively seek speaking engagements

 “If you develop a great presentation, they will come.” This sentiment does not apply to public speaking. In the beginning, you’ll want to set time aside each month to actively seek speaking opportunities.

Consider adding an email signature that advertises for you. Have a speaker’s bio available to pass out at trade shows and chamber of commerce events. Add a speaking page to your website and actively reach out to event organizers to offer to speak.

Once you get a few engagements under your belt, you will become known as a subject matter expert and will eventually be invited to speak at events. It will take a little bit of time to get there, but don’t get discouraged. A bit of work up front will really pay off.

5. Come with marketing materials

Once you start booking speaking engagements, remember to bring with you enough marketing materials to hand out to prospects. This can include brochures, business cards, coupons and free giveaways (pens, magnets, etc.).

6. Think quality not quantity

While public speaking is a great way to get your brand message in front of large audiences, don’t focus on the size of the crowd. The goal is to make sure your time is well-invested. It is much better to speak in front of a totally engaged audience of 80 people than waste your time speaking to a disinterested audience of 500.

7. Don’t get lazy

Once you get comfortable with your presentation, it’s easy to get lazy and just give the same old presentation over and over for years. It’s important to keep your presentation fresh and engaging, so find updates or new examples to add to it.

8. Stay on top of trends

Stay on top of industry trends and share innovations. By doing this, you will be considered not only an engaging speaker, but one who can be depended on to keep the audience informed.

9. Be helpful – not perfect

Do you know why so many people are terrified of public speaking? Because they are afraid they will make a mistake and look like a fool in front of others. But that is entirely the wrong attitude to take.

Don’t try to be perfect and memorize every word and hand gesture. Be real and honest and most of all, be genuine in your desire to help the people in your audience solve a problem. If you focus on helping instead of being perfect, you can’t go wrong.

Wrapping up

Public speaking is one of the absolute best ways to grow your business while being seen as an expert in your industry. Don’t be afraid to speak in front of groups. Instead, follow these tips so you can become comfortable and skilled with public speaking.

Guest author: Ashish Arora is the Co-Founder of SketchBubble.com, a leading provider of result-driven, professionally built presentation templates. Travelling the world to gather new creative ideas, he has been working in the digital marketing space since 2007 and has a passion for designing presentations. You can also find him on Twitter or LinkedIn

The post 9 Expert Public Speaking Tips For Business Growth and Success appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/public-speaking-tips/

Why SEO Is More Than Just Optimizing For Google

The search industry is always on a buzz about how to crack the Google algorithm updates and rank in search engine results.

But is SEO just about Google?

Too often we only think of Google when it comes to SEO because you want to rank in the greatest search engine there is. But are you missing out on anything when you are just going for the big picture?

Google isn’t the only place on the web where you could rank or sell a product. From a customer’s point of view, I would watch a YouTube product review before buying my favorite phone and if that looks good, I’d straight away go to Amazon, read some reviews and add the phone to my shopping cart.

For some, privacy is a matter of concern when online shopping since Google tracks literally every move you make. These people may opt for a search engine like DuckDuckGo where they are not interested in your data!

SEO is not just about Google and there are a lot of possibilities on the web to rank your products and get good conversions.

Search engine alternatives

The obvious question is…

Is SEO for non-Google search engines worth it? We rarely see headlines of other alternative search engines.

The answer is, the recent changes in the popularity of new search engines makes the effort worth a try. Not just that you can find new potential opportunities, you could also learn how SEO works on these new platforms and whether you should give attention to them or not.

When it comes to Google alternatives, there are many search engines that you could try to rank on.

Yahoo Search

Yahoo! Search is a web search engine owned by Yahoo. Yahoo search technology works very similar to Google’s. If you’re optimizing for Yahoo, focus on straightforward and simple keywords since Yahoo tends to show webpages that have exact keywords.

Yahoo treats title tags as an important factor to rank web pages in search results. Meaning, you should optimize the title tag relevant to the search queries without being long or repetitive.

Bing

Yahoo and Bing are really not that good at handling search queries, compared with Google. Just like optimizing for Yahoo, Bing works on straightforward keywords. Bing does not crawl and index URLs very frequently. To make sure your website gets indexed on Bing, you should submit your site on Bing Webmaster Tools.

DuckDuckGo

While most people use Google to search and find the information they need, Google does a lot of tracking and collecting your information. With more news on data breaches and personal information being misused, DuckDuckGo is a perfect solution for this. Unlike Google, DuckDuckGo tries to protect the privacy of its users by showing all users the same search results for a specific keyword and personalizing them based on the history of the user.

The Internet is moving from a trackable arena to an anonymous realm, DuckDuckGo exploits this SEO opportunity with currently more than 12 million direct queries per day and 108 million visits per month.

The best thing? They only have one position on top for ads while Google bulldozes the approach with 4 paid ads.

DuckDuckGo has its own crawler called DuckDuckBot and there is little information available about their optimization outside the traditional methods.

You can apply the following techniques to rank in DuckDuckGo search results:

• Attract quality links for your key term
• Do deep keyword research to find what searchers might be looking for
• Learn trends from your previous visitors and their demographics
• Add a geo-qualifier to your search query if you want to get listed in local results
• Optimize for Bing and Yahoo

Social media

What do Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have in common?

Huge traffic that’s out of Google’s reach.

While social media may or may not affect your Google ranking, social media profiles are the first thing that appears in search results for brand names.

For others, social media is no less than a search engine. People don’t just go to Google to find everything. They also use social profiles to find what they are looking for. A job search on LinkedIn, purchasing through an  Instagram business account or even to find the trending news on Twitter, social media is a major medium for search.

Moreover, prospects check your social profiles and reviews to find out how authentic you are and what kind of presence you have on each channel.

Companies should apply the concept of SEO not only to the popular search engines but also to the social profiles they are using.

Amazon

Amazon recently surpassed Google to become the #1 product search engine. It is a great opportunity for every business to list their products and make more sales. With over $232 bn net sales in 2018 alone, there is no doubting Amazon is a leading online marketplace. So who doesn’t want to be a part of it?

While most people try to rank their product listing on their webpage, listing products on Amazon opens the door for millions of potential customers. Amazon dominates Google search results, too. This means you could hit the jackpot if you properly optimize your amazon listing for SEO, not to mention giving a close eye on product reviews. Product reviews have a huge impact on a customer’s buying decision.

Amazon SEO is more than ranking the page in Google, but to rank your page within Amazon. Almost half online shoppers go directly to Amazon for purchases rather than going to Google search results. This Amazon pie will definitely taste good for marketers if they are serious about getting conversions.

Wrapping up

Ultimately, the web is all about making your presence known. Be it YouTube, Facebook, Bing or Amazon you want your prospects to see your existence. Apply the concept of SEO everywhere you can.

Your turn. Where else do you think is a good platform to apply SEO tactics?

Guest author: Ramzeen is a social media guy at TechWyse who loves big Ideas and making brands look good on social media. You’ll usually find him on a football pitch or tasting new teas!

The post Why SEO Is More Than Just Optimizing For Google appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/more-than-optimizing-for-google/

How to Deal With Social Media Trolls and Spammers

It doesn’t matter if you are running a social media marketing campaign, advertising, or just trying to build rapport with your customers – there are always people who are not being constructive.

They don’t come to your business’ page to learn, share their opinions, or report a legitimate concern. No, they arrive to make your day miserable because they derive some sort of an obscene pleasure from making others suffer.

I’m talking, of course, about social media trolls and spammers.

Not only are they annoying but they can also do serious damage to your brand. Think about it – somebody can post a malicious link in your comment section that will lead your customers (or potential customers) to a scamming website or install malware on their devices. It would be quite disastrous to your reputation so you have to deal with it and do it quickly.

Luckily, to do that, it’s not necessary to get super-technical and install third-party solutions like Avast or IPVanish. Trolls on social media can be dealt with using just the tools given to us by social networks themselves.

And today, I’m going to show you how.

A small side note

Though I’m sure you fully understand it, I think it’s worth reiterating that you should only block people who are actually social media trolls or spammers. There are customers who can be annoying on social media but still have legitimate questions. They should be dealt with in a respectful manner.

1. Blocking social media trolls on Facebook

Facebook is the most popular network to get in touch with your clients and promote your brand. More than 80 million small and medium businesses do it regularly. With such a large coverage, it’s no wonder Facebook attracts so many spammers and trolls.

So how do you deal with them?

First of all, you need to be logged in to your Facebook account to block someone.

Second, locate the circle with the question mark in the top bar:

Then, click on it. You will see this dropdown menu show up. You need to click the Privacy Shortcuts button:

Right at the top of that page is an area titled Privacy. Click See more privacy settings:

You will find the Blocking section on the left:

Clicking on it will take you to the next page. Just copy the name of the account that is bothering you and paste it in in the highlighted box:

Click block, and that pesky social media troll won’t be able to ruin your day anymore!

2. Blocking social media trolls on Pinterest

Pinterest has become a great tool to raise your brand awareness in the past few years. More than 300 million people use it so there is a lot of potential for your marketing campaigns. But as it always is, the bigger the pond, the more food in it for the trolls.

The good news is that it’s very easy to block and report them on this site. Here’s how you do it:

First of all, you go to the profile of the user you want to block. Right next to the Follow button, you’re going to find a round icon with three dots in it. Click it, and a drop-down menu will appear:

Just click Block. When you do this, Pinterest will ask you for confirmation.

Confirm it, and you are all set!

3. Blocking social media trolls on Instagram

If the product or service you sell can benefit from visual representation, you very likely use Instagram for its promotion. The reason is simple – with its outstanding active user base of more than 1 billion, it is a great site to reach out to your customers.

And if you do use Instagram, you probably know the feeling when you see that your post has garnered new comments only to check them and find out that they are all senseless spam and not real consumer feedback.

In this case, it’s time to go on a blocking spree! Thankfully, doing it is just as easy as using Instagram in general.

Head over to the assailant’s profile first. There, you will find the familiar three dots button.

Remember all the stupid or even harmful comments this person has written under your posts and click that button like there’s no tomorrow.

You can either report or block a user this way. If you feel that their comments have been illegal, you may go with the first option. Otherwise, if they are simply annoying and irrelevant to your page, just block them.

When you click the Block button, you will see this window pop up and ask you if you want to walk the talk. Just confirm your decision, and that troll will never bother you again!

This message will show up, informing you that you can unblock that user in case you believe in redemption:

One way or another, dismiss it and enjoy the sense of satisfaction.

4. Blocking social media trolls on YouTube

Having a YouTube channel is practically imperative nowadays for businesses. Chances are, you have one (or, likely, several) as well. What does it mean?

On the one hand, it raises brand awareness and acts as a means of communication with those people who are your clients and converting those who are not (yet). But on the other hand, your YouTube videos are to trolls what an open jar of honey is to flies.

And just like that, you have to unholster your figurative banhammer and go to town on those spammers and trolls.

First off, go to their profile by simply clicking their nickname. There, in the bar under the avatar, find the About subheading in the far right:

Click it and directly under the word “about” you will see some stats. However, they are of no interest to you. What’s more important is that little flag at the bottom.

Don’t hesitate to press that button. It will display the following message:

Click Submit, and now you have one problem fewer than a moment ago.

5. Blocking social media trolls on Twitter

Who doesn’t have a Twitter account these days? There, you can communicate with your clients, make announcements, and perform other marketing activities. Obviously, it needs protection against social media trolls just like all other social media.

If such a need arises, go to the offender’s profile just as usual. Right next to the Follow button, you will see our good friend the triple-dot.

Twitter gives you several options of how to deal with spammers. From the least to most severe, they are Mute, Block, and Report. The Report one will result in the suspension of the account so it requires a moderator’s involvement. The other two variants, though, are much simpler.

When you mute someone, they can still see your posts and reply to them but you won’t see their posts. That’s not optimal because other users will be able to see them and you don’t want to subject your customers to that.

That leaves us with blocking. So click the three-dots icon and in the next menu choose Block:

As usual, you will be prompted to confirm your decision, which you should do.

And to show you that your trouble is no more, this message will be displayed:

Yay! Now your Twitter account won’t be flooded with senseless twits!

Wrapping up

Now you know how to block the undesirables on your business social media. As you have seen, it’s very easy to do but it will make your pages much cleaner and more pleasant to use – for both you and your clientele.

Guest author: Robin is a Technical Support Executive. He is an expert in various LMS and employee training software. Currently, he is a resident learning management expert at ProProfs. In his free time, Robin enjoys cycling and sky diving.

The post How to Deal With Social Media Trolls and Spammers appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/social-media-trolls/

A Detailed Guide on How to Start and Scale an App Business

The mobile app market is growing constantly. According to App Annie, the app store revenues will surpass $101 billion by 2020. Statista stated that 252.2 mobile apps will be downloaded by 2022, which is higher than in 2017. With these numbers, there will be more growth.

Image Source: Rainnews

Considering this, many startup aspirants are willing to start an app business, but they don’t know where to begin.

To give an answer and help those wanna-be entrepreneurs, I have created this complete guide on how to start and scale an app business. During my career as a marketing professional, I have helped numerous startup owners to grow their app businesses and market their brand to the right audience.  

Let’s dive right in!

#1. App idea

Your idea is everything.

To get success for your app business, you need a solid idea. Your idea sounds best to you, but you must check whether users like your idea. In leading app stores like Google Play Store and Apple App Store, there are almost 4 million apps with different ideas. It’s a challenging task to come up with a new app idea that has not been turned into a mobile app.

Make sure your app idea provides a solution to a problem.

Developing an app that solves a real-time problem assures success. Thorough research will help you know the apps that offer the same solutions like yours. So, you can develop a product that has a unique selling point and gets users engaged with your app.

#2. The right audience

You must be thinking about getting more and more users onboard, but you may have no idea who your target audience is. To develop a successful app, you must identify your potential audience. Knowing this will help you narrow down the features that you want to include and identify the potential channels for app revenue.

There are four types of apps with different revenue models:

1. Apps that charge a little for each download. Because of the large number of userbase, their revenue is high.
2. Apps that target a particular audience. They don’t charge per download, but each download earns more profit.
3. Apps with high volume and high profit. These kinds of apps generate sales with their add-on services, for example, Candy Crush and PUBG. Most of the gaming apps have set this profit model.
4. Lastly, apps that generate low profit with a low number of downloads. Sadly, these apps don’t get a favorable outcome.

By finding the right audience, you will be able to pinpoint the right users. Hence, your app won’t fall into the fourth category.

#3. Creating a prototype

The next step is to build a prototype that includes the below steps:

Validate your app idea

Validating your idea is the most significant step for a successful app business. Your idea is just speculation before your customers buy from you. Use Google Keyword Planner to see how many people are looking for a solution that your app provides.

Designing a landing page with a detailed explanation of the app idea can also help you understand users’ interest through email signups. Additionally, you can also create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with the core value of your ideation to measure user interest.

Wireframe your app

Wireframing is the next step after getting the validation of your app. It can be as easy as mapping your app on paper, or if you want to research more, you can use different prototyping tools. Make sure you put every detail of your app on the paper or in the tool as much as possible. Incorporating the user flow and navigation of the app will help developers understand the app requirements.

#4. Costs to develop an app

Developing an app requires funds for each process involved. Different variables affect the actual cost of the mobile app development i.e platform you want to launch for, the complexity of the app, and hiring dedicated developers for quality code.

Platform

Native apps are platform-specific apps and use single programming languages. Hence, if you launch an app for both app stores – Google Play Store and Apple App Store, it will cost you more than a cross-platform app. Cross-platform or hybrid apps use shared code for both app stores, so the estimated cost will be less compared to native apps.

Web apps are the mobile version of the website, so users can’t download via app stores. So, web apps can be built at a lower price than native apps.

Complexity

This is fairly obvious that a more experienced and professional team is required to build complex features that directly affect your app development cost. The higher the complexity, the higher the cost.  

#5. Raising funds

Raising funds for any startup is an important step and so too for an app business. From ideation to launching your app in the app store requires funding. Securing more investment will help you get more resources, hence more chance of app startup success. But many startup owners are not aware of which stage they should apply for funding.

At the initial stage, using personal funds and assets can be a good idea. If required more, asking friends and family members to maintain internal cash flow can help you run the startup smoothly. To speed up the development process after ideation, another option is to consider small business loans.

Angel investors are willing to invest in startups, and in return, ask for an equity stake in your venture. You can approach these angel investors after launching your first version of the app and receiving some user growth.

#6. Pre-launch and post-launch marketing for an app business

Keep in mind, it’s a myth that users will find your app directly from the app stores and engage with it. To reach your target audience and to market your app, marketing strategies should be defined even before it’s launched.

Pre-launch marketing helps to launch your app successfully and to get initial traction. Create social media buzz to get the attention of users and take benefit of their excitement for the new app. Connecting with industry influencers can help you get the word out about your app, and reach your target audience.

Now, your app is launched in the app stores, and you want to grow your userbase. Post-launch marketing is as important as pre-launch to increase the userbase and convert them into customers. Market your app on suitable platforms.

Don’t forget to optimize your app for the app store. Add a title and description for your app with keywords that you want to target and then try to get reviews to rank in the search results.

#7. Taking feedback to improve

“Nothing works better than improving your product” – Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Stack Exchange

No product or app is perfect. What works for you might not work for your users. If they don’t like your app, there is a high chance they will abandon your app.

To understand users’ pain points, you need to know what they are expecting from the app. If users provide feedback before they discard the app, it will help improve your app as users need it. Make it easy for them to provide feedback. Ensure you take the criticism as remarks to improve your app, and respond to users politely.

To conclude…

Developing a successful app business is not easy, but if you have planned properly at each stage, you are more likely to get the rewards. By identifying the users’ needs and expectations, you can fill a gap in this growing app market.

Guest author: Kunjal Panchal is a Brand Strategist at Simform, a custom software development company. She is passionate about content marketing and strongly believes in the power of storytelling for marketing. She has shared her inputs on high-end publications like Search Engine Journal, Entrepreneur and many more. A perfect day for her consists of reading her favorite author with a hot cuppa coffee. Connect with her on @KunjalPanchal

The post A Detailed Guide on How to Start and Scale an App Business appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/start-app-business/