Friday, February 28, 2014
Who are you sneezing for?
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Get Smart - Immerse Yourself in Online Courses
There's been a huge growth in online learning in the last few years, fuelled by faster broadband, better Web technology, and ease of publishing. If you want to brush up your skills in your area of expertise - or want to learn something new - take an online course or two. This is especially relevant and useful if you're a teacher, speaker, trainer, coach, consultant or some other form of educator. Enrol in online courses yourself as a student, and you'll see the standard expected of you when it comes to providing online education.
Coursera is the best-known provider.
There are many universities, colleges, and independent organisations offering online education. Probably the best known is Coursera.org, which offers online education in the form of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). When you enrol in a Coursera course, don't be surprised to be one of thousands doing the course at the same time. You can interact with other students through discussion forums, marking their assignments, and even meeting up in person at a local cafe.
The Coursera material is presented by experienced lecturers, often associated with well-known academic institutions. You'll get videos, written material, assignments and other resources during the course. The courses run over a number of weeks, and you'll be expected to do 3-5 hours of work each week.
A better starting point is Open2Study.
That last point - the time commitment - is the biggest drawback to Coursera, especially if you're doing the course to experience the process rather than necessarily learning the content. So if you're just getting started with online courses, I recommend you start with Open2Study, which is backed by leading Australian and New Zealand academic institutions.
Over the last couple of months, I experimented by taking three online courses:
I chose them with particular goals in mind:
- The first was Financial Literacy, which was pretty basic stuff about budgeting, handling a credit card, good and bad debt, etc. I knew the content would be easy for me, so I could focus on the process - in other words, how they delivered the course.
- The second was Big Data for Better Performance, which was about the new buzzword "big data". I knew some of the content would be familiar, but it's also such a new topic that I knew I would have to concentrate more on the material. So I did this one to test both the process and the content.
- Finally, I did Food, Nutrition & Your Health, a topic I didn't know well and genuinely wanted to know better. So this one was definitely more about the content.
You've got to try this yourself!
I could share with you the lessons I learned from this experience, but that wouldn't be very useful. I would much rather encourage you to do one of these courses yourself, so you can immerse yourself in the learning experience. If you're thinking about providing your own online courses, I think you'll be surprised at some of the things that are already available (free of charge, no less!). I'm sure you will also see some things that you will do better in your own courses. Either way, it's well worth the effort.
Monday, February 24, 2014
The great stress reliever
"Stress is caused by being 'here' but wanting to be 'there.'"
Eckhart Tolle
"The greatest definition for concentration I ever heard is, 'Wherever you are, be there!'"
Jim Rohn
Concentrate this week, one moment, one action, one situation at a time. I guarantee you will experience less negative stress and live a more productive life. And the people who encounter you will be glad that they did because you paid real attention to them.
Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian
"If you're in the room, be in the room."
Nigel Risner
Thursday, February 20, 2014
A key reason why employee engagement strategies are failing miserably and what to do about it
Monday, February 17, 2014
Life is as much about creating yourself as it is about finding yourself
Thursday, February 13, 2014
The Seven Biggest Mistakes Business Owners Make With A Membership Site
For experienced and established businesses, a paid membership site can be an obvious next step. In fact, over the last 18 months, I've noticed a renewed interest in clients wanting to create paid membership sites. But I've also noticed a number of common mistakes that people make when planning and building their membership site. If you can understand - and avoid - these mistakes, it greatly increases your chances of building a powerful asset for your business.
The most common questions I hear about membership sites are about tactics, such as what software to use, what payment system to use, how to integrate it with your main Web site, and so on. But the most common mistakes are about strategy, as you will see from this list.
1. Starting Too Soon
Membership sites are hot at the moment, but they take a lot of work to create, sell, and maintain. Before you decide to commit, be sure you have these three things in place:
- Value: A track record of providing real value (that people are willing to pay for) to customers and clients
- Resources: The ability to deliver ongoing products and services for your members
- Network: A database of potential customers, access to other experts, and enough staff to manage the site
2. Overestimating the Value
When you stack up the value of everything in your membership site, it's easy to convince yourself that it offers huge value. After all, you're offering 100 e-books, 3 webinars a month, and unlimited access to you for just $47 per month! And yes, that is good value compared to paying for everything separately. But nobody else is thinking that way. They are weighing up what else they could do with that money - and that's your real competition.
Even those who understand the value are wondering how they will put it into action. They already know they don't get full value from their gym membership or Foxtel subscription. Why should your membership site be any different? The fact is, it's not - unless you can give them a clear path to getting results.
3. Selling to Strangers
If you've ever tried to sell anything online, you'll know just how difficult it is to convince people to buy. It's not that people are scared to buy online anymore - it's that you just don't know how to market to strangers who stumble across your Web site. Now multiply that difficulty by 100 when you think about asking them to buy an ongoing subscription. "You want permission to charge my credit card every month for the rest of my life??? No way, Jose!"
If you're already really good at Internet marketing, this doesn't apply to you. But if you're not, the easiest way to solve this problem is not to target strangers in the first place. Offer your membership site to past clients, or bundled in with other offerings, or to everybody who buys your book, or whatever. It's far easier to sell it first to people who know, like and trust you.
4. Running On Empty
This leads to the next issue: It's difficult to run a membership site with only a few members. You only have a few people attending webinars, hardly anybody contributes to the forum, you never get any positive feedback, and so on. And, of course, you have to keep doing a lot of work in exchange for very little income.
The solution is to do whatever it takes to build the membership fast. Offer it at a discount to "foundation members", give it away to your 10 best clients, offer it free with every workshop, give 3 months' access to people who buy your book, ..., whatever. It's better to have some members, even if they aren't all full-paying members. These first members will participate in your webinars, road-test the site, give you feedback, and give the site momentum.
5. Expecting a Lot of Interaction
That said, don't expect your members to interact a lot on the site - especially with each other. If they do interact, that's a bonus, but don't expect it. It takes a lot of work to get people involved in an online community unless they are really passionate about it (and most of your members are not passionate about your community).
Rather than spending a lot of time trying to build interaction and participation, focus on giving them high-quality resources and access to you. That's probably why they joined anyway.
6. Underestimating the Administration
You can get membership site software to do most of the heavy lifting for you (taking money, creating usernames, resetting forgotten passwords, scheduling release of modules, etc.). But you might be surprised (and frustrated!) at just how much you still need to do. Members will ask about time zones for webinars, special payment terms, forgotten passwords, tech support problems outside your control, and so on. That's just human nature. They're not dumb; they're just busy.
The best solution is to just allow time to handle these administrivia. Eventually you'll be able to delegate this to somebody else, but it's a good idea to start by handling it yourself, so you get a good feel for what your members need.
7. Waiting Too Long!
Wait ...... Doesn't this contradict #1 above???
No! It's true that many people jump in too soon, but many wait too long as well. A membership site can be a very profitable - and enjoyable - part of your business. It provides steady cash flow, loyal clients, a growing asset, and a powerful way to keep in touch with your market's needs. So understand - and avoid - the mistakes I've described above. But if you're confident you can make a membership site work, don't wait forever!
Workshop: Build Your Membership Site In Two Days: Sydney, 7th and 8th April 2014
Membership sites have become hot Internet properties in the last few years, and can be a highly profitable source of recurring income for speakers, trainers and other infopreneurs. For an established and experienced business, a paid membership site can be the obvious next step. But you have to know what you're doing, so you can make the site operate smoothly and efficiently, while still providing ongoing value for your and your members.