Creative Ways to Market your Business

You put a lot of work into your business, but to truly succeed you need a strong marketing plan. After you cover the basics, it’s time to move on to some creative ways to get the word out about what you have to offer. Here is a list of business marketing ideas to get you thinking about all of the different ways you can promote your business.

Socialize on social media

Popular social media channels include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Snapchat. Each of these social media platforms are unique in its own right and require unique ways of engagement. Rather than try to master it all at once, choose a few you like and try to master those first. Source: entrepreneur

Awesome Business Cards

Get yourself some snazzy business cards, then give them to every person you lay eyes on.  Every handshake should come with a business card. The more people who find out about your business, the better – even if it’s just a quick glance at a business card. Source: wordstream

Limited Edition Products

Celebrate summer with specially designed products or service packages that are limited to the summer months. Put a summer twist on things by incorporating pineapples, flamingos, beach balls…really anything that says ‘fun in the sun’ into your products or group together services you offer to cater to summertime activities. Source: thrivehive

Leverage your community

You don’t have to think big when it comes to your marketing efforts. Think locally. What’s going on in your community?

Sponsor a Little League team or a 5k charity walk/run. Print bookmarks and leave them at the local library. Get to know your ideal customer and think about how and where they spend their time.

Then search for opportunities to get in front of your customer with your marketing message. Source: blogs.constantcontact

Get into your local newspaper

Write a press release about anything newsworthy going on in your business. Not sure how to write one? Read these basic PR tips or simply pick up the phone and speak to a journalist to see if they're interested in running something. If they are, they'll probably write the story themselves. Source: creativeboom

Help Reporters Find You

Reporters are constantly looking for sources to quote in their stories. One way they find those sources is to use services that distribute their request for sources to publicists, experts, marketers and others who want to be sources. To find out when reporters are looking for information you can provide, sign up for these lists and scan them regularly. Source: businessknowhow

Start Blogging

Blogging can be a creative and low-cost way to market your business. Use your expertise to create unique content that’s helpful to your customers, and from there you can build a readership. Start with 1-3 high-quality, well-researched posts a month, and add an email signup on your blog so you can build an audience of dedicated readers.

WordPress is the most popular tool for blogging, but you can also check if the content management system (CMS) or website builder you’re using has a blog option. Be patient: This strategy can take several months of consistent content creation to pay off. Source: logojoy

Set Up Contests and Giveaways

Everyone loves the word free, so plan out fun contests and giveaways that keep your audience engaged. This will also build brand awareness and help you to connect with existing or potential customers. You don’t have to spend an arm and a leg. You can give away practically anything if you market it the right way. Get free advertising if you give away items like pens, keychains or notepads with your logo on them. Source: chicagonow

Repurpose Your Content

Recycle and repurpose content to increase return on investment. Recycle content by updating a popular post. For example, take one of your most popular posts from 2016, update that article with new, relevant information and republish it. You can also repurpose content by posting the same content in different formats. For instance, take an article and create a podcast using the same information. Recycling and repurposing content stretches ROI. Source: fitsmallbusiness

Ask Your Customers to be Your Advocates

Word-of-mouth will always be one of the most powerful forms of marketing. Leverage your satisfied customer base and ask them to leave reviews online, so that potential customers can see them when they search for your business. Podium, a review management software, lets you send review invitations, respond to those reviews, and monitor insights, messages, web chats, and customer reviews from 20+ review sites — all in one dashboard. Businesses that use Podium have seen up to 15 times more reviews and an increase in local traffic. Source: fitsmallbusiness

Pop-Up Shops

If your business is online, you don’t have to open a retail store to get the benefits of selling in person. You can run a pop-up shop instead. Chances are there’s an unused space in your city that would love to have you come in for a week—or even just a weekend—and open shop.

Running a pop-up shop will help you create exclusivity around some of your products, get covered in local media, take advantage of seasonal shopping, unload old inventory, and chat with your customers in person to learn more about them. Source: shopify

Leverage Your Mobile Website

If you have an existing website that is fully functional and mobile-friendly, then your site can be one of the greatest assets to promoting your app. At one point or another, all of your customers or anyone interested in your company will find their way to your website. When they do, it is important they all know you have an app.

Including your app in your site could mean sectioning off a part of your site exclusively for the app. Such as the corner of the screen or towards the middle of the web page. While this method can bring in more downloads we recommend taking an alternate approach. Instead of placing it solely on your site, have a pop-up page display whenever someone visits your site.

This way, the app is the first thing your viewers see. The pop-up page is simply a gentle reminder that you have an app and your customers are given either the option to download the app or continue to your mobile site. Source: buildfire

Send handwritten holiday, birthday, or thank you cards

To past and current clients, valued partners, vendors in your referral network, connections who have helped you--everyone you can think of. This is a low-cost and unique marketing idea for small business, but many entrepreneurs have reported its effectiveness.  Source: writtent

Tips on how to Improve your Sales

Sales may have a negative connotation, but it doesn’t always have to be so direct and intrusive. Increasing sales takes more than having a great product.

How can you increase sales without being too pushy? Use these creative ideas:

Clarify your mission

Begin by understanding your business niche. What do you do best? Who needs what you do? How do you best approach these prospects? How much are they willing to pay? If these questions are not answered easily, campaign at the top for clarity and vision. Source: sellingpower

Talk to Your Current Customers

Your current customers are one of your best resources for increased revenue. It’s much easier to upsell a client who already is familiar with your work, the quality of your product and services, and has already incorporated aspects of your services into their business.

If you’ve built a relationship with your clients, and they consider you a trusted partner, then they are likely willing to share current challenges they are facing. By listening, you can easily analyze how you might be able to help them address these challenges by offering new or alternative products. This approach allows you to continue to be a good partner while also increasing your revenue. Source: quickbooks

Develop Your Competitive Advantage

You define your competitive advantage, the reason for buying your products or services, in terms of the benefits, results or outcomes that your customer will enjoy from purchasing your product or service that they would not fully enjoy from purchasing the product or service of your competitor.

Focus on the benefits of what makes your product better than others. Source: briantracy

Give your full attention

When a customer is considering making a purchase, you want to give the impression that you're available to fulfill any needs or answer any questions that may arise. You don't want to give the impression that you're distracted or that you're attending to your customer as an afterthought. Whenever possible, interact with customers on a personal, one-to-one basis, returning to your other duties only when the job is done. Source: wikihow

Create a flow of consistent leads

Unless you have a one-of-a-kind product or service, you will need to do some marketing to inform people about your offer and selling to push them to make a purchase. Not everyone will make a purchase during the first point of contact. This is where the very important nurturing process has to take place in order to qualify people as leads. You create leads by providing content that educates your audience about the value of your product or service. This is done through your blog, webinar, e-book, and guides. These lead generation tools help build up the interest of people, turning them into solid leads who can be converted into customers.

The best way to improve your sales process is to study your customers and prepare yourself for any questions they might throw at you. You never want to appear unsure of what you are talking about when communicating with leads. Hesitation could stop them from committing to becoming a customer. Therefore, you need to commit yourself to improving your sales skills daily. The people who are underperforming with their sales are those who do not have sufficient leads to nurture. This is why you need to make sure that you are keeping a full pipeline of leads, and never operating with an empty reservoir. You can never have too many leads, especially when sales is a numbers game to begin with. Source: incorp

Prioritizing

To harness your most effective thinking, decide which activities are most important at the beginning of each day and then focus on one activity at a time, to the exclusion of all others. Source: jillkonrath

Personalize Prices

One big thing separates good sales teams from bad ones – a relationship with the pricing team. Sales and pricing professionals constantly butt heads, but if they don’t work together to build profitable deals, your company can’t possibly move forward.

Work closely with the pricing team to dig into customer and product mix to build truly unique prices based on specific customer needs and product strengths. Don’t try to sell prospects something they don’t need at a price that doesn’t work for them. Figure out what they value and sell on that instead. Source: thekinigroup

Delivering Persuasive Presentations

If you are not good at getting your message across to potential buyers, you will find yourself lacking enough impact to close on deals. While not every sales rep needs to deliver visual or oral presentations, those that do had better be darn good at delivering effective and persuasive ones.

Sure, the internet continues to change the way we deliver and display information, but that does not mean you should ignore being good at delivering presentations to prospects. Source: thebalancecareers

Encourage Your Sales Staff to Upsell

Essentially, upselling involves adding related products and/or services to your line and making it convenient and necessary for customers to buy them. Just placing more products near your usual products isn’t going to do much. How to increase sales? Persuade the customer of the benefit. Source: thebalancesmb

Invest in Quality Product Images

Regardless of what you sell, include high-quality images of your products – no tiny thumbnails or poorly lit shots taken in your stock room. Also be sure to include a wide range of images. It might seem overkill to include shots of your products from every conceivable angle but try it out. People love to kick a product’s proverbial tires before buying, especially online. Source: wordstream

Boost Morale

Morale is similar to confidence: A sales team with high morale will always outperform one with low morale, getting more work done with fewer resources and a better attitude.

Strong team morale is the result of good management. Here are a few steps you can take to boost morale:

Be trustworthy; always keep your word.

Convey in words and actions a concern for the welfare of your sales team.

Demonstrate a commitment to excellence in all aspects of the business. Source: business2community

Stay Organized

If you’re disorganized as a sales manager, then your entire team will be disorganized. Organization is something that can be taught, but you need to be willing to put in the effort to learn.

Whether you’re a salesperson or a manager, think about how miserable your sales life would be if you didn’t have an organized sales track to follow. Organization is paramount in any facet of business, but sales are so important to the growth and sustainability of a company. Without sales, the company sinks. So, stay organized! Source: customerthink

Ask for Feedback

Especially on what your offerings lack. Is there a specific problem that you could help them with?

For example, a printing company might do an excellent job printing promotional brochures that clients mail out to generate business. A client who wants to automate the process even more could be interested in having the envelopes printed and addressed. They may even like to have the printing company handle the mailing itself.

If you can provide a broader range of services for your current clients, you become even more essential to their business. That means more sales and a stronger relationship. Source: thrivehive

5 Excellent tips on Doubling your Sales this Year

Do you want to double your sales?

Of course, you do. Every organisation does. A boost in sales provides all sorts of benefits. You’ll increase your revenue, which usually means you see a boost in profits. You can then use this extra money to grow the organisation, which should lead to even more sales and even higher profitability.

Find New Customers

So what’s the first one? The first thing is we have to get out and meet new people. One of the strategies is that we have to have our marketing focused on benefits. What are we doing for the customer? Remember, they only listen to that one radio station, WIIFM (what’s in it for me). So we need to have benefits-focused marketing, so that we can attract the most new people to the business. Source: businesstown

Build a revenue ladder

Unless you launch a killer new product, it is unlikely that you can double your revenue based upon a single offering. Get to work and brainstorm. Effective entrepreneurs know that the key to revenue growth is to get that revenue coming in from multiple streams. You build your revenue ladder one step at time based on the idea of growing multiple revenue sources simultaneously. Source: entrepreneur

Stay Visible and Connected

Accreditations, licenses, and certifications—for your business or individual employees—can set you apart from your competition. Take your reputation online, using social media, your website, and a blog to connect with clients and make strategic alliances.

Use advertisement sharing with complementary businesses, find ways to leverage referral selling and take advantage of affiliate marketing tools to drive new customers to your site. Eliminate stale, ineffective alliances that may be dragging you down. Source: thebalancesmb

Eliminate Costly Services and Activities

Many companies get into a routine or rhythm of offering expensive services to their customers that they could easily discontinue with no loss of customer satisfaction.

Look at the little services that you offer to your customers. Is there anything that you could reduce or discontinue altogether? Source: briantracy

Get Better Leads

Getting more leads may seem like the secret to doubling your business growth. After all, if you get twice as many leads, shouldn’t that mean twice as many sales? Not necessarily. For instance, if your marketing agency targets midsize businesses as clients, getting lots of leads from small businesses won’t do you much good.

The real secret to doubling your business is focusing on attracting leads that fit your target customer profile. These leads are more likely to convert to customers, making them more valuable and more profitable. Source: fundbox

Benefits of Hiring a Business Consultant

All business owners will agree – managing your own business entity is a challenge. You find yourself running around all day, strapped for time and often budget. While you may be able to visualize where you’d like your business to head, you might be finding it difficult to put the necessary action steps in place to ensure your organization heads in the right growth direction. With business consulting, you can entrust the planning and implementation of business growth tasks to those who make it their business to grow your business. Here are some benefits of business consulting..

You take advantages of New skills

The critical role of any consultant or business growth agency is to ensure the business stays afloat in regard to business strategies, methodologies, and trends. When a consultant puts these methodologies into play, its commonplace for the company’s top management to ask for an in-depth explanation as to how they utilized them to come to their conclusions.

This is the right time for the company’s top brass to learn these new business consulting skills. These skills will be beneficial in the long run, especially if the consultant walks away or their contract expires. Source: upwork

Objectivity

As the owner or manager of your business, you likely can’t see the forest for the trees. You’re immersed in the daily operations of the business, so it’s difficult for you to focus on the cause of an issue to reach a resolution. A business consultant can look at your situation objectively, without prejudice or getting caught up in the personal or political aspects of it. They can analyze the facts and offer solutions without getting sidetracked. The business consultant has probably helped other companies work through similar situations, so they can draw from that experience to benefit your business.

Because consultants are objective parties, they’re able to compile all of the data necessary to make the best informed decisions. By having all of the right data, you’re able to get complete transparency into your business, and how it impacts your role, and bottom-line. Source: e3businessconsultants

Accomplishing Short-Term Goals

Employees are established performers within their own job descriptions. However, it can be difficult to get employees to implement short-term goals when it involves utilizing other skill sets. Employees that normally perform specific tasks may get annoyed at having additional duties or may simply be unfit and too inexperienced for the task. Bringing in an experienced consultant and the resources available to him or her often ends up saving the substantial time and money that would be involved in retraining employees, organizing and prioritizing their schedules, and executing the strategy. Source: help.legalnature

Contributing fresh, new ideas

A solid strategic consultant should have the ability to bring a new perspective and generate new ideas that you haven’t already been considering for your small business.  Their specialty and expertise should contribute dynamic new approaches to what you’ve already laid out on the drawing board. Source: pcg-services

A consultation can provide answers and insight for industry-specific burning questions.

Business owners frequently have a specific problem that is pertinent to their particular industry and can’t rely on one-size-fits-all business advice. Business consultants often specialize in certain industries based on their professional experience and interests, and can pinpoint what works and doesn’t work for your industry. Many new business owners find themselves wandering around in the dark trying to apply standardized solutions to industry-specific problems; a business consultant can turn that situation around completely. Source: rueassociates

Save Time

Another benefit to using a consultant lies in their keen ability to simplify project components and strategize ways for your entire organization to save time.

This quality may not seem intuitive at first, as some organizations see researching, screening and selecting the right business consulting service as adding to their workloads, not reducing them. Yet the advantages of hiring a consultant are a lot like a new business investment, with the up-front effort saving you measurable time and resources down the road. Source: m-inc

Get an Outside Take on Your Operations

Sometimes all it takes to see the trees through the forest is an outside perspective. Rather than trying to improve operations from the inside out, having an outsider offer their view of your current state of business may clear things up as to how to achieve growth and improve overall efficiency. Source: cmtc

Confidentiality

When you work with a seasoned business consultant, you can be sure they will keep your information confidential. Advisors are often privy to highly sensitive data like compensation, personnel matters and changes in ownership. It is critical that business owners and senior leaders feel comfortable revealing everything that’s important with the clear understanding that it will remain private. Source: krissibarr

Delivery Speed

Consultants are not distracted. They are focused on the results and task(s) they are hired for. Unlike internal management, which tends to have other responsibilities. Consultants are able to deliver results with speed. They do not have a learning curve and are able to provide advise and guidance to clients. Source: illuminationconsulting

Navigate changing workloads

Here’s an important question for every small business owner to consider: If you would need to ramp up your small business suddenly and significantly, could you deliver?

If you don’t have ample support to meet an increase in demand for your products or services or to create new offerings, you could be at risk of disappointing your customers — and potentially damaging your business’s reputation.

You could also end up burdening your core staff and undermining their on-the-job happiness. But of course, you also want to avoid hiring more employees until you are certain that workloads will be sustained. Source: roberthalf

Increases accountability

It’s easy for business owners and CEOs to lose focus and veer off track. This is typically the result of a lack of accountability. When an individual finds himself in a position of power, accountability dissipates and the ability to act autonomously often clouds judgment and decision making. When a consultant is hired, accountability suddenly reenters the picture. The consultant will establish meetings, set goals and provide objectives that have to be satisfied by certain checkpoints. This is good for everyone involved. Source: cio

Training

Consultants can facilitate workshops and courses that can help your workforce learn a new skill, keep up on technology or achieve professional growth and development. Source: kjco

Things to consider in Starting a Business

However you’ve reached your decision to take the plunge and start your own business, you need to go in with your eyes open – there are certain things you need to do to make sure you stand the best chance of success.

The plan

Create a business plan. Many people skip right pass this step and end up backtracking. Creating your business plan at the beginning will help guide your vision and direction as you continue along you entrepreneurial journey.  Think of your business plan as your blue print…you wouldn’t just start building a house without a plan would you? Source: forbes

Self-discipline

This may be one of the most important qualities for an aspiring entrepreneur to have. You are at the heart of your business idea, meaning that you will be the one to hold yourself accountable. As an entrepreneur, you’ll have to stick to your business plan, make and respect your budget, dedicate time to developing your business, and meet the goals you’ve set for yourself. If you find yourself lacking in self-discipline, this might be something to work on before you pursue your entrepreneurial dream. You have to be ready to put the time and effort in before you begin your venture. Source: drivinginnovation

Define your target audience

Appealing to everyone appeals to no one. You need to focus on your target audience and style everything, from your website to your marketing campaigns, around them. Make sure you are targeting the right people by sending out questionnaires, speaking to your customers through social media and holding focus groups. The only way to provide a product or service people really want is to get inside their heads. Involve your target customer in the development of your business and continue to test, test, test. Consulting your customers will also make them feel like they have a voice, will breed loyalty and, if you're lucky, will increase the likelihood of them recommending you to others. Source: smarta

Don't listen to statistics

People love to throw around the statistic that 95 percent of business fail. Don't listen to that -- it's an excuse to make you feel comfortable about giving up. If that number is even correct, it's because most people don't commit, they don't follow through to the end or they are stupid in how they manage their money. Source: entrepreneur

Start small and grow

If possible, self-fund your startup and then go for funding when you can create a growth story. This might cause you to break up your product/service offering into smaller pieces so you can fund the early stages and get some traction and experience. Source: blogs.constantcontact

Find the funds

Start-ups often spend more than they earn for as long as two or three years. Make sure you have funding in place to cover initial purchases and the time it takes to start generating income. Remember, government grants are available to top up your investment, so don’t be shy of applying. Source: axa

Read Up on Managing People

Many first-time and new business owners have never had any experience managing people. Learning how to manage people is an art, and it is essential to the success of every business. Fortunately, there is plenty of great advice on management; you just need to know where to look. Source: help.legalnature

Focus on the market instead of the product

Many startups and small businesses make the mistake of relying too much on their product to drive sales. What this means is that they fail to take into consideration the market they're getting into.

Small businesses should focus on delivering a product that people are actually willing to buy. You can come up with the most revolutionary product in the world, but you won't get anywhere if there isn't a market for it. Focus on niches. Getting a small market share is better than trying to invest in a market that doesn't exist. Source: inc

Resolve Is Your Greatest Asset

Despite anything that you’ve heard or seen on TV, starting your own business isn’t very glamorous. It’s a grind that involves obsessive dedication and unrelenting effort and resolve.

Every startup will encounter obstacles that will threaten to shut it down. Every new business will face seemingly insurmountable odds. Getting your idea off the ground will require your weekdays, weeknights and weekends. There’s no getting around that.

If you’re launching out to start your own business, you must be prepared to fight. Will you be willing to stick to the plan even if it seems that it’s failing? Are you willing to make the sacrifices today that might pan out in five or 10 years? Source: businesscollective

Target Market

Determine your target market so that you know if a demand exists for your product or service and how best to market your business. Consider the demographics of your target market, including their age, gender, neighborhood, income level and consumer behavior. Research your target market by examining consumer surveys, census reports and competitor information. Source: smallbusiness

Get your advisers in places

Source your advisers early and get them involved in the set up of the business. Ensure you have a great accountant (ask other business owners for referrals), a great lawyer (especially if you are leasing a premises), a great marketing adviser to help develop your Marketing Plan ahead of time and possibly a few other advisers like a graphic designer, website developer, IT consultant etc. It does depend on the type of business you are planning to open. Invest in getting the right advice before you start your business and your chances of success will be dramatically increased. Source: news

Read up on what the government and tax office need

there are so many hoops to jump through from letting the tax office know that you are now self employed and registering for VAT to setting up a limited company if you are going down that route to any health and safety certificates if you need them. So make sure you know what’s required otherwise you may find yourself with a big fine. Source: smallbusinesspro

Rent – Don’t Own – At Least at the Beginning

It’s almost axiomatic that you will need cash in order to start a business. But most of that cash will likely be needed for your personal survival. The less that you put into the startup itself, the more you’ll have for survival, and the longer that you’ll be able to last during the early days of your business. Source: allbusiness

 

 

Tips on how to be an effective Speaker

Public speaking is one of the most important skills that you can develop in your career. Most effective public speakers have worked hard to master effective speaking skills and good public speaking techniques. They may spend hours practicing, working with a coach, or taking speech courses. Here are some things to take into consideration when preparing for your public speech.

Listen to recorded speeches

If you want to become a great speaker, you should first have an idea on what it means to be great. Famous speeches became that way in part because the speaker knew how to wring the most feeling and meaning out of what he was saying. Pay attention to the pauses they take, the words they emphasize, and the steady pace most famous speakers perform at. Source: wikihow

Nervousness Is Normal. Practice and Prepare!

All people feel some physiological reactions like pounding hearts and trembling hands. Do not associate these feelings with the sense that you will perform poorly or make a fool of yourself. Some nerves are good. The adrenaline rush that makes you sweat also makes you more alert and ready to give your best performance.

The best way to overcome anxiety is to prepare, prepare, and prepare some more. Take the time to go over your notes several times. Once you have become comfortable with the material, practice—a lot. Videotape yourself, or get a friend to critique your performance. Source: extension

Focus on concepts

Avoid sounding over-rehearsed. Rather than memorizing the entire content of your presentation, understand the concept as this will help you develop the points even on an impromptu basis. It also takes away the fear of your mind going blank at any point during the presentation. Create bullet points of the key takeaways and speak naturally about them. Source: yourstory

Give Yourself Time to Acclimate

Many speakers begin talking immediately after being introduced or walking onstage. Instead, try approaching the stage in silence. This gives you time to gather your thoughts, take a deep breath, and get used to being in front of the audience.

It gives your audience the chance to get used to you as well. If they’re checking email or answering some last-minute texts, it provides a few buffer moments so they can wrap up. This pause also sets the tone for the rest of your speech, which should be evenly paced, effective, and purposeful. Source: blog.hubspot

Slow Down

Most inexperienced speakers talk faster on stage than they realize – and it’s completely understandable.

When you’re giving your talk, you’re nervous, anxious, and you’re trying to hold all the information you need to present in your head. All you want to do is get through your speech so you can get off the stage and go someplace where people can’t judge you.

Unfortunately, this can cause you to rush through your speech far too quickly, which make the information you’re presenting hard to understand. Source: collegeinfogeek

Structure your material in three sections

Grabber, middle, close. Know your material. Get really interested in the topic. Find good stories. Source: forbes

Be Yourself

You don’t have to be someone else on stage, all you have to do is just be yourself. Sometimes, no matter how much you believe in your message or how well you’ve rehearsed, if you don’t act like yourself in front of the group, your audience may view your speech as insincere or calculated.

If a political candidate doesn’t seem authentic, it’s not likely they’ll win an election. If a company’s social marketing strategy appears inauthentic, their sales will not go up. If you create a page on a dating website but what you write is not authentic, the people reading are likely to pick up on this inauthenticity and never contact you. Speaking is the same way. Source: magneticspeaking

Body language

Make sure your body language is engaging and comfortable. If you fold your arms across your chests or you speak with your head down the audience will be able to pick up on your nerves and may not be receptive to you. Use your body language to convey a message of ease, comfort and openness. Source: studentbrands

Think Positively

Positive thinking   can make a huge difference to the success of your communication, because it helps you feel more confident.

Fear makes it all too easy to slip into a cycle of negative self-talk, especially right before you speak, while self-sabotaging   thoughts such as "I'll never be good at this!" or "I'm going to fall flat on my face!" lower your confidence and increase the chances that you won't achieve what you're truly capable of.

Use affirmations   and visualization   to raise your confidence. This is especially important right before your speech or presentation. Visualize giving a successful presentation, and imagine how you'll feel once it's over and when you've made a positive difference for others. Use positive affirmations such as "I'm grateful I have the opportunity to help my audience" or "I'm going to do well!" Source: mindtools

Just Smile

There is nothing as powerful as a smile and nothing as simple either. Smile before you head on stage. Smile as your audience filters into the room and smile during your speech. When you take a moment to smile, it naturally brings a feeling of confidence and relaxation over your entire body.

Smiling at someone in your audience can help you feel calmer, and less nervous, while helping you feel more connected to the audience that you are speaking to. It is really that simple—so give it a try. Source: blog.mindvalley

Ask questions

Draw your audience in by asking questions. If you do not receive many responses to a question posed to the entire group, approach one of the participants and ask, “What do you think, John? I’m interested in how you would approach this.”

Once one person responds, others will often engage. If you are asked a question, repeat if for the group, and rephrase it to be sure you fully understand what is being asked. When responding to a question from the audience, be sure to talk to your group, not at your group. Source: meadowlandsusa

Make first impressions count

Before you even begin to present, your audience will base their first impressions on your appearance. Make it count. Dress appropriate to the event. Be neat, clean, professional, and comfortable enough to act naturally. Source: office.xerox

Be Open to Receiving Feedback

Both positive and negative feedback can improve your confidence. One of the most painful experiences is watching recordings of yourself. Although I’m uncomfortable every time I view my performance, I push myself to do it and to find places I can improve.

Watch yourself on video and observe your overall delivery. What seemed to rouse the audience? Watching yourself from a third-person perspective can accelerate your growth. Negative reviews help you pinpoint areas for improvement. Even though negative feedback might sting your ego, these points of view usually boost your skills in the long run.

Being open to criticism helps you develop thick skin. Grow your confidence from both positive, inspiring feedback and negative, constructive feedback. Source: businesscollective

11 Tips on How to Improve Yourself

Do you find yourself feeling frustrated on a daily basis? Do you feel like a zombie, waking up each day to the same repetitive cycle that seems never-ending? Has the quality of your life decreased over time, resulting in a loss of energy, vitality, and enthusiasm for the future?

We have gathered up things that could help you improve yourself and make a better person.

Exercise your willpower to change direction

You don’t have to keep doing what you’ve been doing the last six years if it’s not yielding the benefits you want. Pick a new destination and go that way. Use your willpower to start the process. You don’t have to repeat last year. Clean up the errors. Invest it now in the next year. Watch it make the difference. Source: success

Read a book every day

Books are concentrated sources of wisdom. The more books you read, the more wisdom you expose yourself to. When you’re reading a book every day, you will feed your brain with more and more knowledge. Do you know what’s the best way to store up all this knowledge and information? You need this Digital Brain. Source: lifehack

Learn a new language

Learning new languages without a particular need, develops and opens our minds. It is beneficial to our academic and work environment and allows you to get to know other cultures. Source: lifehacks

Optimism

Never mind if you don't have hours a day—even a few minutes spent in quiet contemplation once in a while yields noticeable benefits. A group of adults who meditated an average of six hours and 13 minutes over the course of five weeks developed patterns of brain activity typically associated with positive moods. Source: oprah

Do something different

If you zig when others zag you will avoid being in the majority making it easier to rise to the top. Its far easiest to be great in a smaller pool. Source: medium

Be kind to yourself

If you had a friend who spoke to you in the same way that you sometimes speak to yourself, how long would you allow that person to be your friend?  The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others.  You must love who you are or no one else will. Source: marcandangel

Appreciate life lessons and mistakes you’ve made

No one is perfect, and there is nobody who never makes mistakes. The only difference is that some people successfully overcome difficulties and make the right conclusions, and other people easily get discouraged and believe that life is a failure. Remember, life’s obstacles and trials make you stronger. Having taken a risk and fallen, rise and try again. Try to be in constant motion, learn new things, grow and improve yourself. Source: learning-mind

Create goals and targets

What does it distinguish successful people from others? Well, the willing to build objectives and achievements. They know what they are looking for, they do daydreams, and they dare. The secret to achieve any goal is then to plan every step. If you want to have a better idea, you have to create smart goals.

And remember, big goals are always divided into several smaller steps. Identify the steps of every target plan you are going to do. Source: mind-globe

Change Your Habits

Do you find yourself feeling frustrated on a daily basis? Do you feel like a zombie, waking up each day to the same repetitive cycle that seems never-ending? Has the quality of your life decreased over time, resulting in a loss of energy, vitality, and enthusiasm for the future?

We are all creatures of habit. We follow the same routines, day in, day out. This makes life easier for us, but also makes us lazy. To spice things up, you need to change your habits. I’m not talking about refraining from brushing your teeth, but maybe brush with the opposite hand. Source: MoneySmartGuide

Learn to face your fears

If you constantly shy away from facing your fears then you will never be able to improve yourself. When you face your fears not only do you feel incredibly liberated but you also broaden your horizons. This will help to make you a better and broad minded individual as well. Source: WiseStep

Don't want too much

Desire can be a powerful motivating tool, but wanting something too much can be very painful and very expensive, so don't live beyond your means or covet the unattainable. Seek your desire, but keep your integrity. Source: PsychologyToday