By Susan Young

It's been 4,745 days of being self-employed.  In April, 2001, I started my PR and communications company.

A few years ago, my accountant, who is also self-employed, shared his definition of an entrepreneur:

"I am a self-employed individual working for a lunatic."

As I mark this proud milestone, I have taken time to reflect on the entrepreneurial roller coaster I have ridden.

Here are 10 communication tactics every small business owner must know:

1. You must know how to sell. Too many people decide to hang their shingle out only to learn they don't know bubkus about sales. Entrepreneurs must be diligent at developing the self-confidence, attitude,   discipline, and perseverance to ask people to hand over their hard-earned money.

2. You must live the 'publish or perish' mentality. In my pre-blogging days, I wrote bylined articles for trade publications and membership newsletters. Early on, I landed a spot as a columnist for the Princeton (NJ) Business Journal. I generated content and built my credibility. My volunteer gig lasted more than two years, and ended when the paper merged with another publication.   

 3. You must be willing to speak in public. You were brave enough to launch a small business. There's no time for being shy or nervous. Partner with a networking group to be the guest expert at a meeting, conference, or webinar. You'll be front and center with dozens of potential prospects interested in your topic. Beats cold-calling.

4. You must be able to validate others.  Validation is an acknowledgement that the other person (your prospect or client) is being heard. Validation is proof that you are listening. For example:  "I can imagine that the loss of your vendor has been difficult."

 5. You must know how to ask for what you need.  No one expects you to know everything. That's why there are contact lists, databases, and rolodexes filled with names of people who can provide products and services to you. Get rid of this self-induced pressure and be willing to speak up. Asking for help is a sign of a true leader.

6. You must be able to identify your ideal customers. This is accomplished by self-communication. Ask yourself: Who do I enjoy working with? What niche am I passionate about? Who needs my expertise? Do these people have the budget or resources to pay me?

7. You must have thick skin. People can be awfully mean. They say crap that's not helpful or positive. Entrepreneurs are so fully vested in their own businesses that it's hard not to take things personally. Don't take the BS to heart.

8. You must communicate patience when educating people. Clients do business with you because you offer a valuable product or service that they want or need.  You, on the other hand, are entrenched in your niche or business and will have to slow down to educate those who don't know all the ins and outs like you do.

9. You must develop charisma. Charisma is that special charm or personality trait that draws people to you. Self-confidence, along with a friendly and easy demeanor, will take you a long way in business.

10. You must be willing to reinvent yourself. Chances are you are planning to be self-employed for a long time. Businesses and people change. It's a given. How can you effectively communicate changes in your messages and direction, without alienating people?

Source:
http://www.projecteve.com/10-communication-things-every-entrepreneur-must-know-2/

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Even the starving artist sometimes leaves his or her Parisian garret (which is really just a small attic, but COLIBRI thinks garret sounds more romantic) and tries to sell a painting to, yes, a buyer. If the starving artist doesn't have a buyer, chances are he or she has a model. Or a wife. Or a child. Or a cat.

The truth is, no one ever really works alone. At least not all the time. Thank goodness! Despite the fact that human beings are nothing but trouble, they are also pretty much what makes life worth living. COLIBRI has come to discover, through trial and error, how to work well with other people.

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7 Secrets for Working With People:

1. Understand. Be conscious of your own expectations. Understand what you expect out of a situation, yourself and other people. This step should happen before you start interacting with someone else. Figure out why are you in the game (whatever your game is) and what you want to get out of it. After all, no one can be expected to understand you if you don't understand yourself.

2. Communicate. Honestly, it isn't fair to make people guess and, if you do, chances are they will guess incorrectly. Unnecessary and incorrect guessing wastes everyone's time.

3. Listen. Once you've come to terms with your own expectations, take the time to listen to the other person's expectations. This may be harder than you think. It usually isn't enough to merely ask. Think about it as a combination of investigative journalism and psychology.

4. Be compassionate. As the Buddha said, this applies to yourself first and then everyone else. Consider your expectations and those of the other person's and seek to emotionally understand both.

5. Meditate. Meditation is a beneficial daily practice, but if interactions get difficult, take a pause and observe deeply. Observe your reactions and sensations, making an effort to let go of judging either what you observe in yourself or what you think you observe in others.

6. Let go. Perspective, play and a sense of humor can come in handy here because they help you relax and let go of expectations. Letting go can lead to even better outcomes than you originally imagined.

7. Be strong. Working with other people requires patience and persistence. The rewards are great so don't give up!

Your turn: what do you think it takes to work well with others?

Source:
http://www.projecteve.com/7-secrets-for-successfully-working-with-people/

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So, friends, we're still working on how to do SEO (search engine optimization), but this time we're focusing on how to do seo for your top quality websites.

You have already completed these steps:

-Researched keywords and
-Tested Your Keywords

Now it's time to learn how to do SEO for top quality websites.

How To Do SEO
Doing SEO is, as I, COLIBRI, like to say (full disclosure: I stole this line from a self-help book and I can't remember which one) a marathon and not a sprint. What this means is, you've already spent some time, I know, figuring out which keywords will serve your business objectives best.

If you haven't, review How To Choose Keywords and  How To Test Keywords in 3 Easy Steps to refresh your memory.

First Choose More Focus Keywords
Do you want the good news or the bad news? Okay: the good news is that you have a focus keyword for which you will optimize your site and towards which you will orient your branding.

But. Now you have to do the whole thing all over — that's the bad news!

Here's What You Do
Let's say you own a flower shop. You have chosen to optimize your site for the focus keyword phrase "lower haight flower shop" because, let's face it, San Francisco has a lot of flower shops and you want to show up in the searches of neighborhood people who will actually come in and buy.

So, now it's time to optimize for each individual page of your website. And then maybe create new subpages.

What's The Point?
The point of that is, the more content you have on your website, the more Google has to search. So, even if your site is basic, you want each page to be optimized so that it is findable by Google and all the millions of people Google serves.

In a WordPress site you can give each page a label, which is what people see, but give it a URL that you want Google to see.

Why would you want to do that?
It's A Marathon, Not A Sprint

By now you're starting to see why it's a marathon and not a sprint. When you're thinking about how to do seo for your website, you have to think of every individual page. And you have to, like I, COLIBRI, said, rewrite all of your pages, and even create new ones, with SEO in mind.

San Francisco Massage Center Example
Let's say you own a massage business. We'll call it San Francisco Massage Center.

You, of course, offer different kinds of massage such as shiatsu, swedish, deep tissue and cranial sacral. You will do keyword research and testing for each type of massage and then create an appropriate page, based on a focus keyword for each type of massage.

The focus keywords could sound kind of like this:

SF Massage Center Shiatsu
SF Massage Center Swedish
SF Massage Center Deep Tissue and
SF Massage Center Cranial Sacral
As it happens, I, COLIBRI, used my keyword search tool and found that "sf massage" is a low competition search term. Now you go do this for the services and other content pages on your own website!

I Hope You Like To Write
Because you have researched and tested keywords for your services and other content pages for your site, you get to write and rewrite–or pay someone else to write and rewrite–your web pages.

Who knew that how to do SEO for your top quality website would require so much work?

The upside?

You were probably due for a website update, anyway, because of all of the brilliant ideas you've been having lately.

Okay, maybe I'm stretching things here. But, when all is said and done, regular updates to your website keep content fresh and relevant.

What's Next?
Use the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin. It includes a very helpful tutorial for beginners.

You will need to use a focus keyword for:

Each page. Each page of a website is defined as separate part of your website you have to click to see, as opposed to just scrolling
Your SEO (or page) title. The SEO (or page) title describes the content found on the page. It displays across the top of major browsers and is the text that displays in bookmarks
Your article heading. This may sound confusing, but the article heading is basically the name of the content you wrote. Like the article heading of this blogpost is "How To Do SEO For Top Quality Websites"
Your page URL. Each page has its own URL, which is usually has forward slashes. This is just an example, but the URL to this blog post might be http://projecteve.com/profiles/blogs/how-to-do-seo-for-top-quality-websites/
Your content. The content of the post or page is all the words you have written. A good rule of thumb is 6 to 8 repetitions for a 600 to 800 word page or post.
Your meta description. The meta description is the description that shows up in Google searches. Although Google took the metadescription out of its algorithm, it is still used to entice people to come to your site. So make it good!
Here is an example of all of this from the ANNACOLIBRI website:

Images Can Be Optimized
It's important to remember that images, which could be photos or other digital media, can also be optimized.

Here is an example within an HTML image tag:

(FYI: there is actually supposed to be a space between img and src, but I took it so the image wouldn't load.)

If you read carefully you will see alt="ANNACOLIBRI, tech savvy coaching, business coaching, web presence tech savvy, values-based marketing tech savvy". Each one of those keyword phrases can be searched by Google.

Source:
http://www.projecteve.com/how-to-do-seo-for-top-quality-websites/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer3e365&utm_medium=twitter

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As entrepreneurs time is a valuable commodity. We need to learn to manage it, otherwise it will manage us. Especially if you're a Virtual Assistant. Time is money! If you do not learn to how to manage your time you are losing money and clients.

If you think you are managing your time effectively, try this easy exercise.

Keep a log of what you do each day for a week. Include all interruptions, distractions, how many times you stop and start tasks, etc. This is an eye opening exercise that helps you see just how much time gets away from you.
To manage your time, here are some simple tips you can easily implement:

- Schedule everything – use a Task Management System such as TeamworkPM.

- No multi-tasking – do one thing at a time and finish what you start.

- Stick to your schedule – create a schedule for your daily tasks and stick to it.

- Process for interruptions – create a process for how you handle daily interruptions.

- Have client status calls – schedule weekly or bi-weekly status calls to stay informed.

- Manage your email – close your email when you are working on tasks or projects.

It's amazing how these simple tips can help you save time each day and in the process become more organized and efficient.


Source:
http://www.projecteve.com/tips-on-managing-your-time/?utm_content=bufferdb8a9&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

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It is not a big workload that causes depression at work. An unfair boss and an unfair work environment are what really bring employees down, new study suggests.

huge pile of unfinished work is not the main reason why employees become depressed, concludes an extensive new Danish study.

Surprisingly, the study indicates that a heavy workload has no effect on whether or not employees become depressed.
Instead, it is the work environment and the feeling of being treated unfairly by the management that has the greatest effect on an employee's mood.

"We may have a tendency to associate depression and stress with work pressure and workload; however, our study shows that the workload actually has no effect on workplace depression," says one of the researchers behind the new study, psychologist Matias Brødsgaard Grynderup, PhD, of the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University.

"This suggests that the risk of workplace depression cannot be minimised by changing the workload. Other factors are involved, and it is these factors that we should focus on in the future."

The findings were recently published in three articles in the scientific journals Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Psychoneuroendocrinology and The Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health.

A study of 4,500 public employees
The researchers handed out questionnaires to 4,500 public employees at Danish schools, hospitals, nurseries, offices, etc. They also conducted personal interviews with most of the participants to determine who suffered from clinical depression.

Our results actually show that high cortisol levels are associated with a low risk of developing depression. This means that we may be able to use cortisol measurements as an indicator of the risk of developing depression.Matias Brødsgaard Grynderup
They also examined the concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol in the participants' saliva.

From the questionnaires, the researchers could determine the sense of justice that the employees felt in their workplaces. The feeling of justice in this context includes the feeling of being heard by one's manager and the feeling of everyone being treated on equal terms in the workplace.

Asked why people still tend to associate work pressure with depression, Grynderup says:

"When high levels of work pressure and depression appear to be linked in people's consciousness, it is not because a heavy workload increases the risk of depression. Or that's not what we found in our study. Instead, depression can make work assignments appear insurmountable, even though the depression was not caused by the workload."

High cortisol levels do not cause depression
The study also looked at the link between cortisol levels and the risk of developing depression.

Previous studies have indicated a link between work pressure, high cortisol levels and the risk of developing clinical depression. The new study, however, points in the opposite direction:

Facts
The Danish study differs from similar international studies in that the findings are not based on the individual's experience of the work environment, but rather on the aggregate experience of the healthy employees in a given work department.
In this way, the results are not affected by depressed employees who, as a result of their illness, often have a negatively tainted experience of their work environment.
"Our results actually show that high cortisol levels are associated with a low risk of developing depression. This means that we may be able to use cortisol measurements as an indicator of the risk of developing depression."

How to avoid workplace depression
The new findings can be used as a guide for future focus areas when stress and depression become a part of the workplace.
The study suggests that looking at the employees' own assessment of the work environment and possible changes to the work environment has a much better preventive effect on depression than reducing the workload.

"When the employees' sense of justice plays such a central role in minimising the risk of depression, this is probably the area that the preventive work should focus on," says Grynderup.

"I recommend a management style in which there is a clearly expressed wish to treat employees properly – combined with a transparent organisational structure."

Source:
http://sciencenordic.com/boss-not-workload-causes-workplace-depression
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