The Reflection is over and ramping up in the new year has begun. So what has all this reflection allowed for?
It has allowed me to disengage from my business in order to 'feel' what is important to me, and to clarify my direction. With so much information and 'noise' coming in, it is hard to distinguish what is of real value. Towards the end of last year I was feeling jarred with tweets, followers, who to follow, what to read, what to subscribe to, what I had subscribed to, and which of the myriad of "once ever only" offers were truly essential.
Reflection has allowed me to get back to basics by coming back to my business plan. Not just any business plan but one which is driven by my personal goals about how I want to live. The whole point of being in business as far as I am concerned is for it to give me control over my own destiny. (Ok, so there are other reasons also, but this is a driving force for me). If your business is not doing this, its time to reconsider what it is all about, or perhaps how you are going about it.
I have reaffirmed my desire for a very simple business structure, for diversified income streams, and to build my business in a way where systems and structures come first, so it can all be handed over easily, and where my personal presence will not be essential for the business to work. I have been much more detailed than this in my actual plan of course, and this has now allowed me to make some solid decisions. Here are a few...
1. Email lists - which to keep, which to ditch
If it does not fit with specific, actionable goals clearly stated on my business plan, I won't subscribe. I know how to find the information again when I need it. While ideally I would only use Google Reader to keep track of content, some excellent content only comes via an email opt in (from clever marketers who know the value of your email address).
2. Social Media
I now mainly have live push-type feeds switched off, but scan feeds regularly. I have affirmed my view that what I follow needs to be useful content and not just chit chat or blatant marketing, and I will un-follow a lot of people who don't provide the content which I need right now. For my own contributions, I intend to pass on others' excellent content as I find it, or my own content.
3. Utilize Google Reader a lot more
This takes the clutter out of my inbox, allows me to categorize my inputs, and quickly scan for what is useful at a time which suits me.
Here is an example of how this all works in practice. As I was writing this post, an affiliate application I had been waiting on for for some time came though in my email. I had included as part of my multiple income stream plan to develop the affiliate part of my business this year, so I will act on this straight away. Another email came through about a great workshop I would love to attend, but I deleted this because I have made a decision to APPLY what I have learnt this year without gaining more 'cutting edge, beat the market' type of input, as incredibly enticing as it is. Big tip - delete quickly!!
So what will you be doing differently? Has the holiday, reflective period created some insights or changes for you?
Resource: If you are unfamiliar with Google Reader, check out this 60 second grab. It will free up your time incredibly.
Tagging is an extremely easy and powerful way of organising your content, and an essential part of marketing it.
But what is it? Essentially it is a way of categorising your content. Tagging... keywords...categories....all fall within information and knowledge management.
You may already be doing it - tagging your blogs, tagging your YouTube clips, tagging your Delicious bookmarks, tagging your Ever-notes, tagging your photo library. Every social media site, and many of the software programs on your computer will have tagging functionality.
It is used to firstly categorise and then easily find any public or private content or information which you have decided to keep. As an added bonus, it is a great keyword hook in those cases where you want your content to be indexed and found by Google as well as humans! It adds weight in Google's eyes to your content by showing that you have bothered to categorize it.
So how should you create tags?
The more RELEVANT the tags you create for a particular piece of content, the more likely it is that you and others will find it when searching for this information. If you have keywords which you are specifically targeting, make sure that one of your tags reflects these keywords.
How should I tag THIS article?
This is what I have come up with so far.... tag, tagging, social media, information management, knowledge management, online marketing
Note that I have put in both the words tag and tagging - as I want anyone typing in either word to find this article. I also like to create a tag with the broader category or multiple categories I think that the article could come under, which is why I included social media, information management, knowledge management and online marketing.
Here is an example of how I have tagged this content in Evernote - where I keep all my content ideas and a record of all my writing...
Important: understand and work with your tag separators. A tag separator is how the program you are using defines the separation between tag keywords. Be very clear about what the tag separators are within the specific context you are in. Some programs use a space, others a comma (this is most common), and others a semi-colon.
See the examples below about how the above tags would be entered in these three examples using the different separator types:
Comma separators:
tag, tagging, social media, information management, knowledge management, online marketing
Semi colon separators:
tag; tagging; social media; information management; knowledge management; online marketing
Occasionally, tags will be only defined with a space. Be careful in this situation to keep tags which have more than one word together by inserting an underscore, or don't leave a space between a tag phrase. See example below:
tag tagging social_media information_management knowledge_management online_marketing or
tag tagging socialmedia informationmanagement knowledgemanagement onlinemarketing
Most tagging systems operate with predictive text, meaning that once you have entered a particular tag, it may suggest this tag when you next go to type in a similar tag. Certainly my Delicious and Evernote tagging systems remember tags I have entered, and in the case of Delicious (and many other programs), tags which others have used to tag that particular content also pop up. It is a good idea to pay attention to these suggested tags, as it shows you exactly what others have used to tag that content. Obviously this is for existing content which has already been in the public domain and not content you have only just created.
One final point. Tagging is a discipline. Do it with any content you may want to access again. Apply the 'do once' rule. When you have content which is useful, tag it straight away. You will then not waste time looking for it again. And remember that you can always go back and add more tags which you think are more appropriate, or remove ones which you think are not relevant.
Tagging is an extremely easy and powerful way of organising your content, and an essential part of marketing it. 
Comments
Post has no comments.