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When content marketing is done right, it can be one of the most powerful marketing channels available.

Good content marketing can offer a return that far exceeds most other marketing spend, both in the short and the long-term.

Content has the power to drive visibility and awareness to your brand years after its initial publication, and continue making money for you around the clock.

After all, each piece of content can act as an entrance door for your brand, making consumers aware of what you have to offer and naturally moving them closer and closer to a sale.

The potential is insane.

The real power of content marketing however, comes when you can begin utilizing these benefits at scale – releasing more and more content that all works together in a system, each piece building each other up.

By developing a framework that fosters this long-term growth, you ensure that each piece of content that you release continues to build up your brand. Permanently.

In this article, let’s go over how you can create a content marketing strategy that continues to work for you, and build your brand over the long-term. These strategies aren’t specific to any one platform. They’ll work whether you’re utilizing blogging, YouTube, podcasting, social media, something else entirely, or a combination of all of these.

Let’s get to it!

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Note: Listen to this post instead using the audio player below, and consider subscribing on your favorite podcast player!

Yesterday, you were exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 marketing messages – but how many of those do you actually remember?

Out of those that you remember, how many actually sparked a powerful enough reaction in you to affect your opinion of that company?

Chances are, not very many. In fact, you unconsciously filtered out the vast majority of advertisements without even realizing that they were there – despite the fact that your eyes likely did pass over them.

As entrepreneurs, we often make the mistake of believing that more eyeballs on our offer is a good thing, without taking into account an important fact – if no results are actually being delivered, we are wasting our time and money for no good reason.

As social media marketers, we make the mistake of prioritizing reach – acquiring new followers, going viral, chasing social shares and retweets, even if it means that our messages fall onto deaf ears.

That’s a problem.

Social media marketers do best when they prioritize engagement first, building a framework that actually connects with the audience. Once this framework is in place, only then can it be effectively scaled by amplifying reach.

In this article, I want to help you develop that framework. Let’s look over 7 methods we can utilize to improve engagement on social media, and build a more meaningful connection with our audience.

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How would your business change if you could hire your first full-time employee today, without even spending that much money?

What if you could build out an entire team for the price you pay for just one employee locally?

How much more would you be able to get done if you could hand all of the small day-to-day tasks to somebody else, and focus on working on your business rather than in it?

There’s an easy way to accomplish this, and I still consider it to be one of the best-kept secrets in the business world.

That secret is hiring from the Philippines.

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It may not have seemed obvious at first, but entrepreneurship is not always as glamorous as it is made out to be.

It can be painfully challenging. More so than even a terrible job, with a terrible boss, and a terrible work environment.

Entrepreneurship can be cruel and heartless, and cripple even the most confident and ambitious people to a shell of what they once were.

One of the hardest things about it all? How lonely it can seem when you’re in this dark, uncomfortable place.

I know what this is like, because there have been times when I have felt this way myself. I know how it feels when you are no longer enjoying your business. In fact, I think most entrepreneurs – even those that achieve massive levels of success, despise their companies at one point or another.

And you know what? That’s okay.

What’s not okay however, is remaining in a state of misery forever.

You started your company for a reason, and it takes a certain type of person to make that sort of jump.  In this article, I want to give you permission to feel these negative emotions. Then, I want to help you lay out a road map to help you develop the best course of action heading forward.

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We live in a beautiful time for entrepreneurship.

The internet has leveled the playing field, and makes it easy for just about anyone to compete in a global marketplace, even without a very large budget. It is even possible to start an online business with no money whatsoever!

However, although it’s possible to start an online business for free, it certainly becomes much easier if you have a little bit of money to work with.

I was one of those people that started from nearly nothing – I remember having to beg my grandmother for $20 to buy web hosting and a domain name. I was only 14 at the time, and had no real income source to work with.

Today, my brands have sold hundreds of thousands of units, and I’ve worked with entrepreneurs around the globe to help them achieve a similar level of success.

Do not let your lack of money stop you from pursuing entrepreneurship – I promise you that it can be done without a large budget. However, if you do, there’s certainly opportunities to build success more quickly.

In this article, I will recommend my best purchases based on your starting budget. This article will be aimed towards people who want to start online businesses – either eCommerce shops (selling physical or digital goods to customers), affiliate marketers, or other content-based entrepreneurs (such as bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters.)

Let’s get into it!

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Blogging may be the single most effective way to market a small business, yet a surprisingly large number of people fail to take it seriously.

It’s cheap to start, and cheap to scale. It works in almost every industry. It generates sales in the short-term, and is an incredible brand-building tool in the long-term.

When it’s pulled off correctly, it can not only completely transform entire companies, but it can make it incredibly difficult for anyone else to even compete.

The potential here can not be overstated. My first ever hire was a content writer. There’s a reason blogging is at the core of all my companies, (including my eCommerce brands which have gone on to do millions in sales.)

The importance of blogging cannot be understated. In this article, I am going to make the case why it’s time for you to start a blog, and showcase all of the incredible benefits that blogging can offer your small business. Some of these will not be obvious, and I urge you to continue reading with an open mind – taking examples and imagining how they will fit in with your own business, and your existing marketing strategy.

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