Parenting Hacks

It’s essential for you to establish your presence in different social networking sites. This is where most people are currently talking and connecting with others, so you would be amiss if you don’t use these different platforms for engaging your audience.

Word of mouth marketing is more important than ever yet is also a double-edged sword. It has also become vital to your personal brand that you monitor what’s being said about you. Social brand monitoring needs to be an essential part of your personal brand communication plan.

There are many reasons why monitoring your brand can help you in your career or business.

Here are some of them:

1. It helps you understand how your brand is perceived

As a personal brand, it is essential that you know how your audience views you. If the feedback is mostly positive, then you must be doing something right and you seem to be on the right track.

On the other hand, if the feedback you’re getting is mostly negative, then you need to start reassessing. Your reputation is suffering, which is not going to be good for your personal brand. It’s essential that you understand how people perceive you, in order to make changes and improve your brand.

2. It helps you stay ahead in your industry

Monitoring your personal brand, related keywords, and your competitors can help you stay ahead in your industry. It keeps you up to date about the current trends, so you know how to keep your skills and knowledge sharp and dynamic. You don’t want to get left behind as others move forward and embrace what’s new.

3. It helps you make informative decisions regarding your brand

Personal brand monitoring helps you make informative and educated decisions regarding your brand. It gives you a more targeted outreach, and helps you learn what would best engage your audience.

4. It helps you know your audience, your connections

With social brand monitoring, you can learn about your audience’s demographics, and gain insights on what your audience wants. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to enhance their experience and deliver a more targeted message.

Monitoring your personal brand in social media helps you respond to your fans and followers, and really know who they are – not just who you ‘think’ they are. You can learn what engages them, and what doesn’t.

5. It helps you facilitate and filter what’s being said about you

By monitoring your social brand, you can respond to what’s being said about you and try to filter that message. The worst thing you can do is ignore any issues that comes up regarding your brand – you need to address them as soon as possible. That early intervention can prevent something that is small from becoming an issue.

Brand monitoring is essential

In the dynamic and highly competitive world of today, to achieve success, you need to be aware of your reputation. Learn your strengths and weaknesses so you can become a better personal brand.

You see, conversations about your brand happen whether you listen to them or not. So it is in your best interest to find out what people are saying about you.

Here are some tips to help you monitor your brand:

1. Use Twitter Search and Twitter management tools
Twitter Search is a great way to find out who’s talking about your brand and what they’re saying. Use it with a Twitter management tool such as Tweetdeck or HootSuite so you can continuously monitor what people are saying about you.

2. Use the Google Email Alert System
It’s easy and convenient to sign up for Google Alerts so that every time someone mentions your brand or keyword, Google sends it straight to your email inbox so you learn about it.

3. Use SocialMention
Another excellent tool for monitoring your social brand is SocialMention. It monitors more than a hundred sites directly, so you can quickly know who’s talking about you and your brand. You also have the ability to click on the link where your brand is mentioned, enabling you to answer or enter into a conversation with them.

4. Use Brand-Yourself
This is a great free tool that shows you were your search results are when people Google you and what links of information are already out there about you. My favorite part of this tool is that it’s an organic Google Search that you are working with – not a custom search with a link to that search. You are getting feedback and insights when people actually search you on the web. We’ll be discussing this tool more in future posts and on the twitter chat I moderate, #brandchat, this coming Wednesday, March 28th.

Today I wanted to discuss something that is sure to cause some disagreement perhaps. But what’s life without a little controversy, right? )

I’m going to challenge the myth out there that basically goes like this:

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”

To explain this statement in case someone has not heard this, it basically means to spread yourself out thereby spreading the risk, so if one revenue stream dries up, you have others to fall back on. Sounds good in theory.

In my window washing business, I bought into this “multiple eggs” philosophy for many, many years. I was always doing at least a half dozen different businesses or money making ventures at once. A little network marketing, a few insurance sales, some credit card selling, a bit of travel fundraising, let’s throw in some paralegal work, etc. etc. It doesn’t work! Sure a little income comes in here and a little income comes in there, but the operative word is “little”. Can you imagine the results if 100% of the time spent was in ONE business-my window cleaning business?

So I’m here to say “hogwash” on having a bunch of different eggs.

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Put ALL Your Eggs in One Basket

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This is contrary to what many, many people believe these days but if you’ll allow me to expand on it, I think you’ll understand the point I’m trying to make here.

So to back up for a second, the first thing we need to do is determine whether the window washing business is a profitable business.

Is it?

Well…let’s look at the facts.

The window washing business will never go away and dry up. Through recessions, boom years, slow home building years, etc. etc, it’ll always be an in-demand business filled with customers who refuse to clean their own glass and won’t hesitate to hire professionals to do it for them. This business year in and year out will continuously be a profit generating machine.

Yes, the window washing business is a very profitable business.

So knowing this, why would we want to dilute our efforts in making this business the strongest it can be?

I talked to one of my students a couple days ago who routinely brings in $400 to $600 per day six days a week and is begging for the phone to STOP ringing. In it less than a year. This is executive type money. I know people who don’t make $600 in a WEEK. He focused and worked on this one revenue stream. Fast forward a few short months and bingo!

So again, is the window cleaning business profitable? Without a doubt.

Let’s look at an opposite situation.

A few months ago, someone bought my window washing program just to stick his feet in the window cleaning business and try it out. I had an opportunity to check out his website. He was selling a bunch of stuff and doing some network marketing all from this one site. And he decided to bring in window washing as another revenue stream. When we spoke, he told me his time was limited. Of course it is. It’s obviously going to be limited with him trying to get multiple businesses up and running.

How successful can this individual really be since he can’t devote quality time to promoting his window washing business? He certainly won’t be seeing the results he could be seeing by eliminating the other two businesses and focusing only on windows.

Something has to give. We only have so much time during the course of each day, right?

I understand of course that some folks get started part-time in the window washing business. They usually work a main job and get window washing going at the same time on a part-time basis. Great. But they are usually able to devote “quality” time promoting their window washing business once they’re off the clock from their other job.

For folks doing multiple businesses and working multiple eggs though, it’s hard to spend “quality” promotional effort on just one thing. Because where does one business end and the other begin? It doesn’t. Everything kind of blends together with the owner/operator trying to juggle all of it at once. It’s real tough to do and usually results in an across the board decrease of your total income.

We need to focus on one thing, build it, and then expand from within. I wish I would have followed this advice. Most of my students don’t know this, but even in the middle of my window washing business which was absolutely booming, I decided to invest in an unrelated business. It was a colossal failure.

I bought an asset protection business. A bunch of time, money, and resources was devoted to it. And guess what? The time and money spent in asset protection was taken directly from my window washing business. So what happened? Both businesses suffered. Eventually I saw the writing on the wall and kicked asset protection to the curb and refocused 100% on my window washing business. It was soon back to where it was before my asset protection purchase. Almost immediately the calls increased and so did the profits.

A more recent story involves The Customer Factor which is my window cleaning software. There are sooooo many distractions online. You can spend 4 hours online before you know it and then wonder where the time went. These distractions got in the way of me building new features into The Customer Factor regularly. So what happened? Well, although new members signed up, they didn’t sign up with the same frequency that they did during the first year of the program’s existence.

But as soon as I recommitted to investing into and growing The Customer Factor, a funny thing happened. My signups went through the roof. So although I’m in front of my computer 7 days a week 12 to 14 hours a day, what I do now is check email and work on The Customer Factor along with spending some time posting window washing articles. Total focus with no more distractions.

Back to the window washing business…So we’ve determined the biz is profitable, right? You have the tools to make it grow. So Grow it! Focus on it! Then once you have the calls continuously coming in, and customers are lining up for your window cleaning service, then perhaps it’s time to look at offering a related biz like pressure washing or blind cleaning. Expand from within. You’ve already got the customer base so provide ‘em another service.

But window cleaning and asset protection? Nah…not a good combo. ) I was a biz opp addict who always needed to build additional revenue streams. No regrets because it’s all a learning experience, but sometimes I think about how much faster I would have seen success if I just spent 100% of my time, money, and effort on one thing instead of splitting time, money, and effort in half or into thirds or even into fourths with unrelated businesses.

So if you are trying to create multiple revenue streams, I encourage you look at it objectively and ask yourself if it’s going well. Think how much farther ahead you would be if you focused only on your window washing business. Spend your valuable time and resources on this business. Yes, you may only see one revenue stream, but it’ll be one outstanding and profitable stream. )

Again, windows aren’t going anywhere. And they keep on building more. And they keep on getting dirty. So the only way this revenue stream would ever dry up or diminish is if you spread yourself out therefore spending too little time working in and growing your window washing business.