Do You Have Training Processes in Place?
Whether you hire the occasional freelancer or have a full-time staff, your business needs training processes to ensure each employee knows his role. Many of us have found out the hard way that simply telling someone what to do isn’t enough; we need a program that includes written documents, shadowing and hands-on learning to properly help our staff maximize their potential.
Let’s Start With Training Documents
I’m to the point in my business that any time I have a set of tasks that can be duplicated, I write out a document detailing how to do the job. I keep them simple, and include steps. I link to resources my staff might find useful. For example, instructions on writing a blog post for a client might look like this:
1. Log into http://www.clientsite.com/wp-admin
Username: xyz
Password: 123
2. Click “Add New” on left sidebar.
3. Start writing post. Include:
- Title
- Body
- Image in body
- Photo source
- All in One SEO Pack title, description, keywords
4. Choose the appropriate category.
5. Save as draft.
6. Ping Susan to review.
It’s simple, step-by-step directions that should be foolproof. If you’ve never taken the time to detail the steps for a given process, I encourage you to try it as an exercise. Assume the reader has no prior experience in the task, and break it down to the basics.
“Watch and Learn”
If you have the staff for it, have a new hire shadow someone who already does the job, or who has done it in the past. At this point, the new hire has already read your training materials and is now only watching how to do her new job. This is a great opportunity for her to ask questions during training, and to take notes. If you don’t have the staff, the training is up to you as the owner! Busy as you are, it’s important that you carve out time for training new staff to ensure they know how to do their jobs well.
Hands-On Learning
Once you’ve spent time on the shadowing process, you can loosen up the reins a bit on the new employee. Let them take over the tasks, with you or another employee watching and correcting. Gradually ease away and let them manage the tasks on their own.
Feedback on the Process
Everyone learns at a different pace, so be open to the fact that it might take longer for some. Schedule a meeting with your new hire a week or two after they’ve completed training to address any questions they have, and to gently guide them in the right direction. Training should be a collaboration, not just giving top-down orders. Let your new employee make the role their own. You never know: you just might learn something from them!
Training Photo via Shutterstock
From Small Business Trends
Do You Have Training Processes in Place?
Build Authority Websites!
Build Authority Websites: Tips From a 7-Figure Blogger
Vishen Lakhiani generated $930,000.00 in 18 months from one blog… from scratch!
If you haven’t watched the video by Vishen Lakhiani of Mind Valley about his “bloodhound model” - you need to take the next few minutes and read this post and if you have some extra time – watch the video (scroll down for the video).
First, off… Vishen had no JV partners or anything like that to reach the figure of $930k.
He simply followed a very straight-forward site building model and built it up like anyone else. (and the amazing thing is that he managed to replicate his success with other sites).
It’s mindboggling.
And what’s more weird is that it was on a blog about “Remote Viewing”, called ”Learn Remote Viewing” (http://blog.learnremoteviewing.com/).
The Steps To Building Authority Websites
In order to build his Remote Viewing blog, he completed the following steps:
Step 1. Setup your blog
He reocmmends you use WordPress, and make sure you choose a decent looking theme.
Vishen recommends the Canvas theme by WooThemes, which incidentally is the same theme I use on many of my sites.
You can read my review of the Canvas theme here.
Step 2. Produce Content
As you already know, you don’t need to “write” your own content to become the expert or dominate your niche, and Vishen recommends the same thing…
He suggests that instead of “writing your own content”, you REVIEW other people’s content online
In other words, search the internet for articles on the topic, get permission from the article author to use the content on your site – then write an ORIGINAL introduction. (I personally don’t curate in this fashion but it worked awesome for him).
Another thing he would do is to post a video from Youtube with an intro and add a comment request at the bottom of the post.
I know… really simple stuff that doesn’t take much effort.
One thing he mentions in the video is that he created about 100 blog posts in short order to his blog and kept adding more content as time went on, and he outsourced all content creation after month 6 (to eLance).
Step 3. Get Leads
Build a list.
It’s essential to your business online.
To do this, he just used a generic aweber form for his blog…
An interesting tidbit was that he added a “Coming Soon” invitation, i.e. an invite to sign up to his list to get access to an upcoming free course in the beginning stages of his blog (since he didn’t have any of that setup at first).
His signup rate for the “coming soon” invite was 37%!
As for what he emailed his subscribers… well, he just sent them back to some of the hottest blog posts a couple of times per week.
And within a 6 month period of time he had created a list of 5,000 people (just from organic traffic).
Step 4. Monetize
He didn’t monetize his blog for 6 months… and when he finally decided to monetize he decided to become an affiliate of the various products already available in the marketplace.
He then interviewed the top experts in the niche and put calls to action in the interview to buy their product.
In his his very first interview he generated over $10,000 in sales; and by his second interview, he generated over $110,000! (from his small list of 5,000 subscribers).
Why did this work?
Because he had built trust and authority.
People prefer to have someone else tell them what to buy, IF it is a recommendation from a trusted source which Vishen became over a 6 month period of sending out good quality information.
He calls this the “Robert Ebert Effect” (Robert Ebert is a film critic… in case you don’t know who he is).
Not only did he become the trusted source of information for his readers, but he also became the “star maker” of the niche (and the #1 affiliate).
Anyway, he talks about more details in the following video below:
By the way, he has replicated his success on other sites and gives an example of a site he made for a customer of his on the topic of Chakra Healing.
For the launch of this site, he outsourced the creation of 50 articles straight out of the gate (with more content being added all the time).
This site has earned over $500,000 (in less than a year) and is used as a case study because it’s the highest converting site in its industry.
One of the hardest things to do when building a blog like this on your own, is coming up with content, particularly if you plan on curating content.
It involves creating your curation inbox and a way to organize the feeds, videos, articles etc. into something you can use right away.
I’ve traditionally done this via Google Reader, bookmarks, email (using Google Alerts), Twitter search etc. but have been looking for a way to consolidate it into ONE place.
I purchased the PageOne Curator software today based on a recommendation (from another blogger), and it looks to be the tool I’ve been looking for.
I can create custom lists of feeds to include in my search; search twitter, articles and videos from one place; and it even allows me to write, format my post (using proper attributions) and post it on my blog from one simple software.
On top of that it works on both Mac and PC (since it’s build on the Adobe AIR platform – like Market Samurai).
I figure it has a 30-day money back guarantee, so I’ll test it out and see if it is something I can keep integrating into my day-to-day workflow (I don’t see why I couldn’t since it’s WAY easier to do things now).
Because I haven’t used it (only played with it a bit this morning), I can’t recommend it outright.
But it’s definitely an intersting piece of software that will help anyone who is looking to do curation.
Here’s a 10-minute video on how it works:
Check Out PageOne Curator >>>
Build Authority Websites! is a post from: SuperSimpleMarketing.com
On Demand Creativity: Turn the Switch On
I spend a lot of time marketing my business. To be heard over the ‘online noise’ and reach a lot of relevant people throughout the world is a trying challenge. It requires much more than banner ads and press releases.
While I am learning about all the things that possibly work with online marketing, it seems that doing things “well” require me to be creative at all times. However, every once in a while, a lot of us get the ‘creative-block.’ Or is it just me? Here are a few things that I do, to get inspiring ideas that move the dial:
Overcoming Writer’s Block
A lot of us write online – on our own blog or guest posts, business or personal. I am writing this article right now, I write product updates on my own blog and emails communicating what we do, to prospective customers and partners. However, I often stop writing when I do not have fresh thoughts. I envy folks that can produce words and articles on demand.
To overcome this, I came up with “story-telling” my thoughts. If I am thinking about a topic or a discussion or my product – I start writing a story around it. The best part about this is that it is honest. It requires no superficial effort to come up with dangling thoughts. The story will be a free-flow form of writing and you can extract the facts from it to write a more concise post.
Overcoming Analytics
While it is great to have access to where all your website visitors come from, it can be very frustrating when a good part of them fall under “direct” traffic. This means that they came to your site by typing your company URL or feeding your company name into Google. Hence, you do not know for sure where they heard about you or what source, referral or marketing activity worked. You could try asking them during a signup form, but usually that field has to be optional.
You have to use some broad-brush approach to carry on all the wonderful things you are doing for marketing. Check the day’s or week’s traffic and if there is a spike, try to understand what happened during that period. Did an article or review on your company get published?
The point is you cannot stop doing something which will give you consistent, long-term results just because you do not see traffic coming from that activity in real-time. There are word of mouth and gradual brand building efforts, which I have seen grow to a formidable number in our business.
Overcoming Rejection
You are doing content marketing and high energy social media stuff. Now what? Maybe a channel partner would really make an instrumental difference. You reach out to a few suitable partners and let them know how awesome you are. Some may respond or initially you may get nothing.
You need to keep reiterating on what kinds of incentives make sense for different partners. Additionally, some of these partners may respond to you when you have more traction or frequent press. Reinventing and improving your proposals is not only going to land you good channel partners eventually, but also teach you more about your industry and product. While pursuing such initiatives, the creative aspect is in thinking of how you can help others. People will help you grow, if you can help them grow as well.
What do you do to stay creative at work?
Switch On Photo via Shutterstock
On Demand Creativity: Turn the Switch On
