You must believe in your ability to make your dreams come true.
Others think it’s impossible. Others prevent themselves from achieving anything extraordinary — by rejecting extraordinary thinking. You are not others.
Thinking is not enough though: You must support it with confidence. Confidence is the fuel that will take you where you want to go. Actions are the accelerator. You are the driver.
You you must have a blind belief in your world-changing abilities.
Despite what all of us in that room thought about magic when we entered it, Roderick got up there with the attitude that he was going to change all our minds. He certainly changed mine.
That’s what it takes to create extraordinary lives: a killer sense of confidence.
The thing is, not all of us were born with it. And those of us who were may have had it beaten out of us by various eras of our lives.
Chris Ducker has recently launched his New Business Podcast, having Amy Porterfield, the Facebook and social media expert, as his first guest. I found myself franticly taking notes while listening to this episode, so I thought it’d be a good idea to share them with you.
It’s the first time I write this kind of post, so please do let me know if you’d like to see more of these in the future.
Why Should You Care?
Let’s face some facts:
No matter who you are, your audience is on Facebook.
No matter who you are, your competitors are on Facebook.
Facebook is one of the first places where new audience will find you. Do you want to have a say in their first-time experience?
What’s This Thing About Fans Not Seeing My Status Updates?
Some time ago, Facebook admitted that any given post you make on your Facebook page will only appear in the Newsfeed of about 16% of your fans. There has been a lot of distress ever since — as most people (including me) expected that a 100% of their fans will see a 100% of the messages they send out. After all, these are hard earned fans!
But listening to Amy (and following a great article by Dan Raine on the Digital Marketing Magazine) , I suddenly realized something. Something that has eluded me, no matter how obvious it may be:
Facebook is not here to serve our business needs. Facebook is here to serve Jane and John Smith. The people.
“Wait a second,” I thought. “That sounds a lot like the way Ed Dale talks about Google!”.
You see, Google still lives and dies on its search engine product. We all know what happens if our website becomes irrelevant in the eyes of Google: _Its ranks drop_.
What Do Pandas Have To Do With Facebook?
Here are some news for you, sunshine: Facebook is exactly the same as Google in this way. Just like the Smiths want to see relevant results when they use Google, they want to see something interesting when they log on to Facebook.
Just like they do not want to see spammy websites on Google’s results, they do NOT want Facebook to serve them a massive shitload of self-promoting content from the tens or hundreds of pages that they follow — every single time they log in.
This is exactly what Chris has mentioned when I interviewed him for the magazine — you must switch your marketing from B2C (business to consumer/customer) to P2P – People to People.
Chris Ducker. It’s about People to People (P2P)
What Do People Welcome On Their Newsfeed?
Amy explains that people want to see content that falls into (at least) one of the 3 E’s:
Entertaining
Educating
Empowering
That’s the kind of the content you need to produce on your Facebook page. But wait, it doesn’t end here (does it ever?).
“90% of the people that LIKE a Facebook Page will never visit it again” —Amy Porterfield
Read that again. 90% of your fans never enter your page for a 2nd time. There are two conclusions you must draw from this statistic:
You need to stop wasting so much energy on making your Facebook Page look drop-dead gorgeous.
Your cover and profile photos are your storefront. You need them to look professional. Help people want to enter and check out the goods.
Don’t go bananas with tabs and all that.
You must find a way to get your content into your fans’ Newsfeeds.
Right now, only 16% or less of them are seeing it.
You can bet your ass they’re not coming over to your page to look for it on their own.
How To Make Your Content Reach More Newsfeeds
Just like Google judges your website’s popularity and relevancy to determine search rankings, Facebook judges how engaging your content is to determine how many of your fans should see your posts in their Newsfeed.
Here are the factors that determine how engaging your content is considered to be, and therefore how many of your fans will see it (ordered in ascending importance):
Likes
Shares
Comments
Obviously, one question remains: How to make my content more engaging, so that it’ll get more likes, shares, and comments?
I’m happy to report that Amy delivered 5 key-points to help out:
Amy Porterfield
5 Ways To Make Your Content More Engaging
1: The Three E’s
As mentioned earlier. Every single post you write must be either educating, empowering or entertaining. And you should mix them. Don’t focus just on one. This is true for any kind of content, not just Facebook.
2: Make It Count
Every post you make is seen by some of your fans. Make it count for them. Don’t waste their time. Make something they want to engage with (like, share, comment).
Remember that every engagement action that your fans make will improve the EdgeRank score – the Facebook ranking that determines which stories people see on their Newsfeed.
3: Use Photos In Your Posts
You MUST. USE. PHOTOS. And use them often.
How often? Amy suggests that 90% of your posts should have a photo attached. Why?
It’s the most engaging format of content on Facebook today — even more than video (read: it gets the most likes, shares and comments).
It gives your posts more space in your readers’ Newsfeeds, compared to text posts (read: you get noticed).
It’s much, much easier and faster to produce than video.
Now, don’t stress! Finding photos can be easy — if you make it that. You don’t need breath-taking photography; You need real life photography. Start using that iPhone camera of yours. Then, the next time you post something, take a quick look at your photo library. Find something nice and voila! Problem solved!
How far can you take this relieance on your smartphone’s camera? Pretty far:
If you don’t have a photo appropriate for your post, why not write the subject down on your whiteboard and take a snapshot of that? —Amy
4: Curate Content
It ain’t easy to create awesome posts every single day. This is where curation comes into play. Share some of the great stuff that your peers, idols, colleagues, market leaders and fans make. This is beneficial in more than one way:
It gives you great content to share without having you create it all.
It shows your community that you care (you spend time on finding them interesting stuff).
It shows you’re on the top of your game (you know what’s going on in the niche).
It creates relationships with the market leaders that you promote via curation.
Two caveats (making my humble addition to Amy’s tips) are:
You should always, ALWAYS, include your own opinion. It can be as short as 1-2 sentences, or even 2-5 words. But add something of your own.
Whatever you share has to be great. Don’t share “just becasue you need content and can’t be bothered with creating it today”. Share stuff because it’s great.
5: Contests and Giveaways
Amy points out that contests and giveaways are a fantastic tool for getting traction, engaging and getting to know your audience. But there are a bunch of pitfalls, so be sure to check out 6 Ways to Keep Your Facebook Contest on the Up and Up (so it Doesn’t Get Shut Down) on Amy’s blog for 3rd party tools, terms, conditions and tips.
Advanced Stuff
As you can see, Amy & Chris shared an amazing amount of great content. There’s more stuff that was covered on the episode that’s more advanced, like Facebook ads and (my favorite) “how to turn LIKEs into $$$” — but this post is already pretty long, so here’s what I’ll do:
If you liked this post, and want me to cover the more advanced subjects – let me know via the comments and I’ll make a “part 2” post soon enough.
Objective: I’m making the Inspiring Innovation magazine an even bigger success in 2013. (Notice the positivity + present progressive tense.)
Key Results:
Grow my subscribers base to 30,000 (65% monthly growth rate).
Interview all top 20 leaders of the solo-preneurship world.
Get listed in Apple’s top #5 Business & Investment magazines ranking of the US Store (see how detailed that is?).
Get 2-3 sponsorship deals summing to $100,000.
Personal Brand
Soon to be launched…
Objective: I’m creating my personal brand in 2013 by maintaining an active blog, two weekly podcasts and social media outlets.
Key Results:
50,000 podcast episode downloads for each podcast.
30,000 addresses in mailing list (including mag subscribers).
10,000 Twitter followers.
5,000 Facebook fans.
E-commerce Book series
Objective: I’m co-authoring an e-commerce how-to book series to help people create their first passive income stream while still working at their day job.
Key Results:
Release at least one book each quarter.
Reach a total of 50,000 book downloads from Amazon.
Create an e-commerce business generating an income stream of $1000 per month as proof of concept for readers.
Inspirational App
Objective: I’m creating a social app that will encourage hundreds of thousands of users to take massive actions every day to reach their highest human potential (credit on the term goes to my friend Phil).
Key Results:
Find a partner in crime for this project by the end of January.
App should hit the App Store by June.
Reach 200,000 users by the end of the year
Time management
Objective: I’m drastically improving my time management. This December I created a system to make sure I have a working process, instead of just putting off fires all the time. It combines the pomodoro technique (to make sure I’m being efficient with my time), monthly planning, and simple measurement of the performance.
This also defines the actions that I’m taking throughout the week for all of my objectives, and guarantees I’ll always have an action plan.
Key Results:
I will be held accountable by creating a section on the site that will be updated daily with my KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) results: How good was my time estimation, and how many pomodoro units have I completed.
Complete an average of 70 pomodoro units per week.
Have an average of -10% – 10% estimation error.
Complete less than 300 pomodoro units on Fridays and Saturdays (that means working less than an hour and a half on weekends) — representing both sanity and successfully completing tasks during the week!
Gaining Health
This is what happens when I talk a walk during sunrise!
Objective: I’m gaining health by keeping better eating and living habits.
Note: Key results could be an improvement in heart rate or loss of weight, but I’m not doing this for a specific result. Instead of results, here are the actions I resolve to take:
Key Actions:
Walk an average of 15,000 steps per day.
Avoid white carbs (sugar, white flour, potatoes, etc.).
Fantastic post by Seth about something that every entrepreneur needs to be reminded of from time to time.
the farmer who grows corn has no illusions about what his job is. He doesn’t avoid planting corn or dissemble or procrastinate about harvesting corn. And he certainly doesn’t try to get his neighbor to
grow his corn for him. Make more decisions. That’s the only way to get better at it.
This year I’m determined to set better and more effective goals than ever before. To do that, I first sat down and went through the mistakes I made in 2012. This resulted in the 9-step checklist that follows. You are holding me accountable this year, so hopefully you’ll see for yourself how effective this is.
#1: My Resolutions Must Resonate With My Core Values
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve finally been able to compose a list of the 6 values that are the most important to me. This list will be used to filter all candidate goal for this year’s resolutions. Most of the problems that arose during last year were rooted with miss-alignment between my core and the goals that I’ve set.
Implementation: I did not filter anything out while I was mind-mapping, outlining, and writing my resolutions. Everything was allowed on paper. Only when I started editing, I filtered out more and more goals, making some tough decisions along the way, removing stuff that’s not ‘me’.
Does it mean that something that was removed from the list won’t get done in 2013? Not necessarily. But it does place it at the bottom of my priorities when compared to stuff that did make it into the list.
#2: I Must Be Held Accountable
Anyone that I’ve interviewed for the magazine this passing year, talked about accountability. It’s pretty basic, and I’m heavily counting on you guys on this one 🙂
Implementation: This blog post.
#3: The List Must Be Balanced
My 2012 resolutions where completely biased to business. This year at least 30% of the resolutions must resolve personal growth and pleasure.
Implementation: Remove low priority business goals.
#4: I Must Let The Universe Know
No one can help me reach my goals if I don’t share them. I strongly believe that when you declare your goals in a clear and concise way, both your brain and the universe help you achieve them. Whether it’s by giving you the right ideas, bringing you the right people or offering the needed opportunities. It’s like tuning in to the perfect radio station.
Implementation: This blog post.
#5: Goals Must Be Clear
This one is pretty obvious. Nothing vague ever gets done.
Implementation: I will use Google’s “Objective, Key Results (OKR)” method. I’ll explain in-depth after the checklist.
#6: Goals Must Be Measurable.
This one is also obvious. If something’s not measurable, it’s not manageable.
Implementation: OKR.
#7: Goals Must Be Time-bound.
There must be an urgency to a complete goal. See Parkinson’s Law to learn why.
Implementation: This is a tricky one, as most of my goals are based on an ongoing effort. This has to be broken down. For instance, going from 100 to 20,000 paid magazine subscribers within a year requires a monthly growth rate of 59%. But a 59% growth rate can be measured and worked towards every single month, instead of a yearly basis.
This will prevent me from waking up cold-sweated one morning in June, trying to figure out if I’m on track.
#8: Goals Must Be Actionable
Goals need to have a clear definition of what has to be done in order to achieve them.
Implementation: Action plan made for quarterly and monthly OKRs.
#9: Goals Must Be Described In Present-Progressive Tense
Goals must focus on the positive and be written in present-progressive tense. This is a tip I picked up last week from my good friend Farnoosh, on her episode 73 of her podcast: How Not to Make New Year Resolutions.
Implementation: Instead of saying, “I will make the magazine a success”, I shall say, “I’m making the magazine an even bigger success”. Tell the brain it’s already doing it, and be positive about it.
OKR Stands for Objective, Key Results. It’s a system originating from Intel, the chip manufacturer, but was made famous by a small company called BackRub, although you might also know them as Google (honest to god, Google was originally named BackRub).
Here’s how it works (dead simple):
You set an objective that inspires you and gets your juices flowing. The objective has to be time bound.
You define 3-4 key results. Each key result is measurable and clear. These results will serve for focusing, planning and measurement; They must pose a serious challenge.
You will try your best to achieve the key results. As you set very challenging ones, if you hit the 70% line your good. If you hit 85%… You aimed too low to begin with! Gotta keep that brain of yours inspired with great challenges!
Here’s an example OKR:
Objective: I’m making the Inspiring Innovation magazine an even bigger success in 2013. (Notice the positivity + present progressive tense.)
Key Results:
Grow my subscribers base to 30,000 (65% monthly growth rate).
Interview all top 20 leaders of the solo-preneurship world.
Get listed in Apple’s top #5 Business & Investment magazines ranking of the US Store (see how detailed that is?).
Get 2-3 sponsorship deals summing to $100,000.
From the yearly OKR you derive your quarterly OKRs. Some people go as far as deriving weekly and even daily OKRs — I don’t think I’ll go that far, but I’m planning on going monthly.
So there you have it! This is my checklist for creating this year’s resolutions, and I’m almost done. I plan to post it tomorrow, so make sure you come back and check it out — some cool projects going on.
What are your tips for creating valuable new year’s resolutions? Let me know in the comment section below. If you likes what you’ve read, please LIKE this post or click on the Tweet button. I’ll really appreciate it!
![My 2013 New Year’s Resolutions [OKRs Included]](https://www.meronbareket.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Fotolia_45711231_S©-chrisdorney-Fotolia.com_-e1357143700783.jpg)
