Posts from — December 2010

Download this book for Free

Dear Readers,

I am pleased to share with you that I have  released my E-Book Winning Ideas for a wonderful Life. I have been writing this book since last one month of course in chunks. It was yesterday,I gave it green signal to go live on the web:-)

You were having lots of enthusiasm when you started your blog. However it has been quite sometime, you find that your blog is not receiving much traffic. You are clueless about why your efforts are not getting rewarded. You are now discouraged and disappointed. In short, your blog is not well.

Dear new blogger, what you are experiencing is normal. Give a break to your disappointment and take a look at below checklist to see that whether you are making below 9 mistakes? If so, then rectify them and witness the results yourselves.

1. Your writing is not interesting
   Though you might have written good numbers of articles on your blog but if it is not written in an interesting manner, it won’t appeal to the visitors. Remember, retaining visitors is equally important as attracting visitors. Write in such a way that it converts casual visitors into subscribers. It’s time to brush up your writing skills. Create irresistible headlines, put images, and use bullets points where ever required. Let your writing be interesting. I think you got my point
2. Most of your time is spent in Design and Dressing up your Blog
   My dear, there is no doubt that your blog should look good and appealing. However blogs are read not seen. Even search engines will not see the design of your blog, they read your blog as a plain text. You decide where you should focus. My advice is chose a design and incorporate few basic widgets and stick to it. Just focus on writing quality articles.
3. You write a post but discard it thinking that it is not unique
   Let’s imagine that your friend uses a great software utility and recommends the same to you. You also try the same and find that it’s really great. This inspires you to create a blog article reviewing this tool. You now create the blog article nicely and before clicking the publish button, you do search in Google about this new utility to find out whether somebody else has written a post about it. To your horror, there are hundreds of blog posts already about this tool. You now discard your blog post thinking that why should you again write about this utility since there are already so many entries on the internet. You are afraid that you won’t be adding any value and instead duplicating the content. Hold on. Please don’t do this mistake .I advice you to continue writing about the utility. It’s you who is reviewing this utility now. Write your own opinion and benefit experiences about this product in your own manner. Reveal your views on this. You are NOT duplicating the content.
   Now, if it so happens that for every article of yours, you find thousands of blog entries already on the Internet, then I would like to put a quick question to you. Have you selected your blog niche properly? It seems to be very broad to me.
4. You have not put subscription form and social sharing buttons on your blog
   How did you miss this basic step? Put subscription forms enabling readers to subscribe via Email and RSS. You can create a page for Subscribing and keep all subscriptions options right there in the page.
   Regarding social sharing, add social sharing options for each one of your posts. You can utilize wordpress plugins to do this task. People definitely share the good stuff. That’s why web has been a great success. Never underestimate the power of sharing. You can use a great plugin called ShareThis. It’s very easy to create an account and put the code in your blog template.
5. You are not guest blogging
   Guest posting on other blogs is very important strategy for driving traffic to your blog. Submit quality articles to high authority blogs in your niche. If published, it will result in good amount of traffic back to your blog. I do guest blogging for couple of blogs. It has been a great experience and my referral traffic from those blogs has been awesome.
6. You are not harnessing the power of blog commenting
   Commenting on other blogs is easiest way of getting quality backlinks. However, don’t spam other blogs but leave quality comments.
7. You are not an active player on social networks
   Social networks are great places to boost your blog traffic. Promote your blog actively on these social networks.
8. You are not utilizing the power of email marketing
   Email still rules and its here to stay. Send your blog updates through emails to friends and relatives. They will share your article via social tools if they like it. You can also use Aweber for great Email marketing tools.
9. You want overnight traffic and a quick success
   This will not happen, believe me. Remember, it needs hard work and consistent efforts. Things will take time and be patient.
   Patience is a virtue. With above tips and hard work I am sure soon you will see great traffic flooding your blog.

All the best for your blog. Time for you to implement point 6 now.

Communication is always looked upon as key factor in a person’s overall growth whether in career, personal or professional relationships. Indeed, it is.

What is effective communication and the importance of communication skills.

Many people confuse communication with excessive talking. Effective communication is not excessive talking. It’s actually talking less, saying more.

It is the art of conveying a message effortlessly which most of the crowd understand and grasp quickly.

There are  lot of talented people who can deliver excellent results when it comes to their work but struggle when it comes to communication. They can’t express or explain what work they have done in a convincing manner. It’s true that work speaks for itself but we are in the modern world and one need to have minimum level of effective communication. You will get right answers if you ask right questions. Communication helps you to ask right questions. Communication helps you to bridge the gap between what you know and what you want to know.

Let me share few tips for better communication if not effective communication.

Breaking the ice

To become an effective communicator, first thing you need to do is to learn to break the ice. You need to get started with something (even by asking a question) whether be it in a meeting or a general discussion. You also need to be a good listener if you want to ask right questions.

Once you break the ice, continue with your normal tone and speak few words about relevant matter. Don’t worry if it doesn’t sound effective at first attempt. Your mind is powerful and it knows how to better your speech next time. It’s important to get started.

Let the words flow

Deliver your words like a flow of water. Speak to the point, be clear and maintain continuity. However you can pause in between to get the feedback of audience if you’re giving a public speech. Try to make your public speech interactive by asking questions or launching an on spot quiz. People love quizzes.

Don’t repeat the same words

Next thing is enhancing your vocabulary of words. You shouldn’t use same words repeatedly in your speech. Learn new words and add quality to your speech. It also helps to improve your written communication as well. This wont happen overnight but with little effort and consistency, you can enhance your vocabulary.

Pictures speak thousand words

Effective communication also plays very important when it comes to expressing your ideas if you work in a creative field. Feel free to use few tools to aid your communication (in this case, a presentation) such as a drawing, a flowchart or a Power-point presentation.  Picture speak thousands words.

Learn time management

Effective communication needs time management as well. If you are presenting a research paper, learn to manage the time and set your internal benchmarks for completing certain portions of paper. Aim to finish the presentation in allotted slot of time.

Participate

Try attending seminars where a seasoned speaker gives a speech about a topic. Observe his gestures and mannerisms. Observe his tone variations. Start putting your learning into practice. Soon, you will start noticing gradual changes in your communication pattern and an effective communication has positive effect in career and relationships.

Invest your time in learning effective communication skills.  It gives you unbeatable rewards.

Some people live life in fear of something. Either they fear that they may lose their job or they fear that they may fall sick. They fear of future. They fear of taking risk. They live their life in fear.

Is this fear really inevitable? What are we gaining from this?

Fear won’t help us in anyway for our overall growth. In fact it comes in the way of growth.

Fear won’t allow us to come out of our comfort zone. When we don’t come out of our comfort zone, we will not be able to experiment. When we don’t experiment, we can’t compare the results. When we don’t compare results, means the results we are achieving may not necessarily be great ones. In short, due to fear, we may not achieve anything extraordinary.

Fear and doubt are the two sides of the same coin. There is a quote which reads “Faith moves mountains, but doubt creates one “. So our doubts create mountains for us. Fear is the mountain.

Don’t get me wrong. You still need to have doubts but don’t doubt everything you see, touch and feel. A great opportunity can be lost because of your doubt.

Fear is the opposite word for courage. Why don’t you eradicate fear then?

How can you liberate yourself from fear?

Fear is natural but don’t let it come in your way of achievements. Believe in what you are doing. Tell yourself that you are capable of achieving the best and beat the fear. Try the new challenge which is in front of you. Trying may get you success but fear will never. Fear closes the door, trying opens.

To combat fear, first you need to eliminate doubt. For eliminating doubt, you need knowledge. For gaining knowledge, you need to gather information. Doubt breeds doubt when there is lack of information. Before attempting anything new, gather information and make yourself knowledgeable on the subject. Ask friends, search Internet or read books. Knowledge is the first step for eradicating fear. Once you are equipped with knowledge, you will know what action is needed to eradicate fear.

Example, if you often fear of public speaking, then you might consider enhancing your language  and presentation skills,practice speaking in front of family and friends. Ask their honest opinions for improving further. Slowly move on to the real stage. Don’t worry if your initial attempts fail, keep practicing. Repeat this till you are successful.

Fear will be vanquished once you treat the root cause.

You can also associate yourself with people who are adventurous and fearless. It helps. If others can achieve something, why can’t you?

Once you learn to deal with fear, you will be able to perform much better in your work and will be more adventurous to accomplish much more higher goals in life.

Reading books is my favorite hobby since childhood. I have been collecting hundreds of books and my mini library in home ever expanding. Books are kept in dedicated glass shelf and are well organized.

Off late, I have been traveling more often compared to earlier days and I get a comfortable reading opportunity during the journey which I never lose. I carry couple of paper books with me and usually finish reading at least two books during the journey.

I was hearing and reading much about Amazon Kindle and then I was also thinking it would be great gadget for me especially while traveling but was reluctant about buying it due to 2 reasons. First I have not actually seen any E reading device and wanted to know about the actual reading experience and second was I was not sure about shipping charges since I live outside of United States.

It was the Book Exhibition which happened in my city that actually converted my curiosity about Kindle into need. Thousands of books were displayed and kept for sale in the exhibition. I visited and enjoyed the event and bought several new books  (this time,  related to Yoga). What caught my attention in the exhibition was, even E Book readers were displayed as well. I went to the stall and asked the stall person to demo the reading device for me. He did it promptly. E Book reader (it was not Kindle) was pretty good and I felt it is indeed worth a try. I took his number and left to home.

One thing, flashed to my mind, if I buying an E Book reader, why not buy the best one? I have been reading about kindle so much and I am also convinced about the reading comfort now since I got an opportunity to touch and feel the E Reading device. I placed the order immediately and Kindle arrived to my home yesterday. Let me share my experience about the first look of Kindle and a small review of the device.

Looks
Kindle looks pretty cool. It’s slim, stylish and elegant.

Display
This is the best part. Kindle sports E – Ink Display. Unlike LCD display screens, Kindle screen is pleasant to eyes and looks like actual paper. Words are crisp, clear and with numerous adjustment settings, reading is more comfortable. I can save bookmark, write notes.

Battery Life
Here is another winning feature of Kindle. Since Kindle doesn’t have a LCD screen, its battery life is said to be pretty long lasting. I have read on internet that it lasts for one month with WiFi turned off and one just reads on Kindle. I am sure it will.

USB Support and WiFi
It has USB support and one can transfer files from computer to kindle. It also has WiFi support. Books can be downloaded from Amazon when connected in a Wifi network.

Text To Speech
Kindle can speak as well it reads the highlighted words for me. Though I don’t use this feature much but I feel it’s a good add-on and may come handy in some situations.

Kindle can sing
It supports MP3 as well. So music can be played through Kindle.

It has been just 2 days since I bought the Kindle and this amazing device already won my heart and it has all the potential to replace my paper books. With massive storage capacity of 3500 books, and offering me new way of reading, I can say that Kindle is my new companion.

Pretty cool stuff from Amazon.