Blog Author Mellissah Smith - Page 77

After having an issue the other week with a man that quite simply told me a bunch of lies that were completely untrue and then spent the next few days after realising that I found out, covering his tracks, I was in good need of my  friends. It's amazing what people do when they are caught out lying. They have to tell lies to cover lies unless they are man enough to own up to what they have lied about which most people, including myself, am fairly forgiving. It's when they lie, then have to make up stories to cover them, that it gets out of control and becomes a drama that quite simply, it does not need to be. But friends, they are great levelers. They tell you how it is and always put things in perspective. Unfortunately, in life, there will always be people that can't help themselves with lying and they will do crazy things and say complete crap, in order to try and make themselves look and feel better. It's quite sad really... but as you get older, you realise that there will always be people who disappoint you. Rising above it, is important for your soul as much as it is for the situation.

When you run a small business, it can be lonely, but life can be even lonelier when you travel every week interstate and overseas and only ever seem to see the insides of a hotel room or the office.

Who would have thought that you could learn anything from the six women who star in the Real Housewives of Atlanta?

I certainly didn't think I could learn too much from NeNe, Cynthia, Kandi, Phaedra, Sheree and Kim - but every small business owner can!

It's fair to say that marketing strategies don't work by themselves. You can spend thousands of dollars having a marketing strategy written for your small business, but if it isn't implemented, it's not worth the paper it is written on.

I know hundreds of companies that have engaged a marketing consultant to write a marketing strategy and then are left miffed as to why it didn't work. Well, it doesn't work if you don't do anything with it! It's as simple as that.

There are thousands of marketing companies in America. They range from one-man bands, to small and mid tier agencies, right through to large multinationals.

For small businesses, it is very hard for many entrepreneurs or business managers to ascertain what is the best marketing solution for their business and what will help them get to the next level.

As a business owner and entrepreneur, it is paramount to understand our competitors and do the complete opposite to what they are doing.

It's no different to Justin Bieber, the Venture Capitalist, reportedly having earned $108 million over the past two years investing in tech startups like Spotify. Becoming complacent because you think you have made it or everything is going swimmingly well, could be your biggest downfall.

If you are anything like me, Sunday morning, I always go down to my local cafe at 7am with my dog to buy a coffee and a fresh croissant. It gets rid of two things; my need for a coffee in the morning and my dog needing to 'do her business'.

Then, I come home, shower, and turn on my computer. Mainly I write, but at least for an hour or so, I work.

Unlike most people, I rarely go into my emails. That to me is a Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 job. Instead I look at the Marketing Eye website and think of ways to market our business.

I am THE SUNDAY MARKETER.

There is a reason why this marketing blog has been neglected and it's not something that I particularly wanted to share.

And, to some extent, I won't.

However, today I received in the mail a book and it was a reminder that 'everything happens for a reason'.

I travelled around the world twice in six weeks for business and when you do such an exhaustive trip like that, twice, you immediately get a feeling that 'it had better be worth it'. Fortunately, it always is. Afterall, its a journey and when we embark on any journey with an open and honest mind, we move that step forward to realising whatever it is that we were meant to realise.

Both trips were different. Other than for the business aspect, they could not have been more different. The first trip was one of adventure, excitement, opportunity and putting in place things for the future that needed to be put in place.

At Marketing Eye, as we are a marketing consultancy firm, there is never a day whereby everyone is in the office. The other day it was quiet - a bit too quiet. Everyone was working away diligently. So, I did what any leader would do. I said to everyone "we need to have some fun". And fun, we had.

We set up a photoshoot, which the young guys in the office instantly became photographers. Everyone was asked 'to act silly' and we all laughed, played around and were back at our desk in half an hour with big smiles on our faces.

It's amazing what small things can do for team spirit.

Have you ever thought about what your website is really used for? Why people are visiting it in the hundreds, thousands, ten's of thousands?

One of my clients yesterday said to me that they Google searched an obscure term, and Marketing Eye came up. He was surprised, but I guess, not as surprised as I was.

A website, if it is search engine optimized, comes up on search engines. That is the purpose. Right? You invest all of this money, time and effort into ensuring that your website comes up trumps when prospects, clients and stakeholders are looking for your company or a company that provides your products or services.

But who else visits your website and why?

There were 9.66m tweet in the first day of the London 2012 Olympics, surpassing the Beijing 2008 Olympics total in just 24 hours.

In fairness, Twitter was just a startup then, so our timelines were not flooded as they are today and there was no colossal 340 million tweet per day. But this microblogging site is mammoth when it comes to bringing us the news faster and and more efficiently than any other medium in sound bites that most of us can understand. It also gives us choice as to whether we wish to read more or not.