Month: May 2017

One of the biggest secrets to success, no matter what business you’re in, is good communication. If you can communicate your ideas clearly and effectively, you’re miles ahead of the pack because, sadly, it’s something that too many people struggle with.

Below, we’ve assembled a handful of hard-hitting tips designed to make you a better communicator. If you start putting them into practice today, immediately after you finish reading this article, then by the end of the day tomorrow, you’ll begin noticing an unmistakable shift as they begin to work their magic for you.

1) Develop better email habits – There are two pieces to this one. Firstly, don’t be one of those people who responds to a single point or idea in an email that contains multiple ideas.

You probably interact with at least one person who does that on a regular basis, and you know how annoying it is. When someone mentions three major points in an email, respond to all three points.

Secondly, when you ask someone for information, close the circuit when you get what you asked for. Send a quick, “Okay!” or “Got it, thanks!” message back to the other person so they know it didn’t wind up in your junk folder or Limbo.

2) Learn to listen! – Listening is the other half of effective communication, and if you’re not a good listener, then by definition, you’re not going to be as effective at communicating as you could be. The biggest single trick to becoming a better listener is that when someone is speaking to you, stop what you’re doing, put your phone down and look them in the eye.

This forces you to turn most of your attention to the person who is speaking, which automatically means you’re going to absorb more of what they’re saying.

After they’ve finished talking, ask a pointed question or two about the information you just received. Not only does this convey that you’ve understood what you heard, but it also forces you to think more deeply about what you’ve just been told.

3) Write stuff down! – You can’t communicate what you can’t remember. Save your brain cells for doing creative thinking and don’t overburden them with having to try to remember every detail of a conversation you’ve just had. Make notes and reference them later when you’re communicating that information out to others. That way, nothing gets lost in translation.

There are other tips that will enhance your communication skills, of course. Whole books can and have been written on the topic, but if you start with these three, you’ll see an immediate, notable improvement!

A lot of people have been talking about how the internet is changing and about how these days, it’s all about video and graphics. A lot of people believe the humble text article is going the way of the dinosaur.

While it’s true that it may happen one day, rest assured that day isn’t just around the corner. Take the text out of the internet, and all you have is a collection of videos and pictures without context. Like it or not, a great deal of our communication happens via the written word, and just like TV shows and movies didn’t kill text, the fact that we’re now uploading video to the web isn’t going to kill it either.

Text is still the undisputed king of the Internet, and if you want to build an active and engaged audience on the web, the sooner you embrace that reality, the sooner you’ll start finding success.

So, what makes a good website?

Images and video certainly help, but they’re the icing on the cake. They enhance the text-based content you have, and in terms of text based content, you need two basic flavors: the timely, and the timeless. These are very different kinds of content, and you need to be able to produce both well.

Timeless content pieces are also called “Evergreen Articles.” These are longer pieces of anchor content on your site that serve as authoritative references for specific topics. These articles may start out as shorter, timely pieces about a trending topic, and over time, morph into Evergreen Articles as you keep updating and expanding them.

While it’s entirely possible that you’ll get other bloggers linking to a timely article you’ve written, in practice, you’ll find that most of your external link love comes from those longer authority articles, and if you do a deep dive into your site’s statistics, you’ll find that your readers tend to spend the bulk of their time on those pieces as well.

The timely pieces, though, those are the things that tend to initially attract reader interest and attention. Those are the articles that draw them in to begin with. These are typically shorter, snappy pieces on a currently trending topic that are offered with some kind of unique twist.

Whether that’s your quirky and engaging writing style, supporting photos with creative captioning, or something else, each timely piece you create has to have a unique angle and an innovative approach to lure people to your site to begin with.

Then, once they see all the other awesome content you have to offer, it’s the overall quality that will get them to stay!

rap•port

noun

a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other’s feelings or ideas and communicate well.

A lot of people use the word “rapport” but relatively few of them sit down and ponder its deeper meaning.

When you think about it, building rapport is the heart and soul of effective communication. You don’t have to be a hostage negotiator to gain real value from building rapport with everyone you meet in your everyday life. The simple act of taking the time to do so will make all your communication more effective.

The question, then, is how? Why is it that you feel as though you connect easily and effortlessly with some people, while others remain forever at an arm’s length?

The answer is much simpler than you might expect, and there’s an easy solution to be had as well. That solution is mirroring.

See, when you meet someone with a personality type that’s very different from yours, it’s natural to get defensive, but doing so only highlights the differences between you.

If you look at video of an interaction between someone who is behaving aggressively and someone who is acting defensively, you’ll notice striking differences, even if the tape is muted. You can tell right away that there’s no way these two are ever going to get along, much less build any sort of rapport.

Next time you encounter someone you can tell you’re just not clicking with, here’s the secret: mirror them.

Adopt a similar posture and tone of voice. Match them move for move, even down to paying attention to their breathing and adopting the same rhythm. The effect is almost immediate, and you’ll be amazed at the results.

Within seconds, you’ll feel the beginnings of a connection, and after just a few minutes, you’ll find that you no longer have to concentrate to keep mirroring. Once you’re in sync, it maintains itself automatically.

It’s a small but incredibly powerful trick, and by mirroring the other person’s behavior, you’ll find it much easier to understand their feelings and ideas, which is, after all, the essence of building rapport.

In a world filled with 24/7 noise and flooded with a continuous barrage of 140 character Tweets, listening is becoming a lost art. In fact, being considered a “good listener” is almost quaint these days, and that’s too bad, because learning to listen effectively can not only improve the quality of your decision making, it can also make you a better leader.

If you’d like to learn the nearly lost art of being a world-class listener, start with these simple steps:

1) Put your phone down – When someone is talking to you, set your phone aside so you’re not tempted to glance at your newly incoming emails and Tweets. Maintain eye contact with the person speaking, which requires your brain to turn the bulk of your attention to that person.

2) Actually listen! – This seems like it should be obvious, but think about how most of your interactions go. They’re probably conversations where you spend at least as much time talking as you do listening.

The idea here is to spend most of your time not talking and really focusing on what the other person is saying. Sure, you may have a few pointed follow up questions, but even then, the goal is to get more information or to clarify, not to chit-chat.

3) Read Between the lines – Sometimes, what’s not being said is as important as the words being spoken, and this is something that poor listeners miss all too often because they glance away at the wrong moment to check their phones and such.

When you start really paying attention, though, you’ll notice that body language fills in a lot of the gaps the spoken word leaves out. The specific words chosen to convey a message can often be quite telling as well. Once you’ve upped your attention-paying game, all of this will become readily apparent to you.

There’s more to good listening than just these three things, of course, but if you start here, you’ll find that your listening skills improve significantly, and that is an excellent beginning no matter how you look at it!

Work-life balance.

It’s a buzz-phrase that almost everybody has heard, most people aspire to use and almost nobody succeeds at. Why? Why is it so hard to find the right balance, and how can you break away from the pack and succeed where so many have failed?

The answer is both easier and harder than you might think, but if you use these simple tips as starting points, you’ll be miles ahead of the pack.

Take Yourself Offline

You’ve undoubtedly heard of supply and demand. The more there is of something, the less valuable it is. The less there is of something, the more valuable it becomes.

That’s true of literally everything under the sun, including you.
We now live in an “always on” world, where just about everything is available 24/7, and we try to live up to that unspoken expectation ourselves. We stay at the office late in an attempt to get more done. We take work home. Sometimes, we even take work on vacation!

Here’s the thing, though: no matter how much you do, even if you could stay awake and be productive 24 hours a day forever, there will always be more. The work just keeps coming in and piling up, relentlessly.

It’s a sucker’s game to be available all the time, so don’t be one of the suckers. Unplug. Make yourself less available when and where you can. When people see that you’re not at their beck and call 24 hours a day, they’ll come to value the time you are available even more.

The end result will be that you’ll be seen as a more valuable commodity, which will translate into more respect, and it’ll also see you receiving less in the way of mindless busywork. Because you’re not available “whenever,” you’ll tend to be handed more important, more meaningful tasks.

Prioritize

Figure out what the most important tasks of the day are, make a list and get them done. Once the mission-critical stuff is done, either delegate the less important stuff (if you’re able), or prioritize it, and keep working on the most important remaining stuff. Always give yourself a clearly defined stopping point and stick to it!

The critical thing here is to carve out some you time, every day, no matter what. How you use that time is up to you, and you can make that decision once you have it, but it matters. Give yourself the space and time to breathe and enjoy life a little, then do that. You’re worth it.