Social Traffic | Social Media Marketing

There is an educational methodologies-adjustment going on in the world today. A lot of countries are implementing project-oriented and facilitation-based teaching models, rather than the typical classroom style lectures. The old models resulted in encouraging kids to rote-learn, and gave precedence based on marks rather than analytical and cognitive abilities.

Project based learning is now being implemented to the basic primary level all the way up, in most developed and developing nations. Some countries have made it mandatory to switch to this new system. I think there are certain European nations who already have such project based learning systems in place.

This is good for the overall education level of the world. By encouraging people to learn how to think well, they will become better decision-makers and consequently more erudite members of society. This will give them a chance to build their brain muscles – and most of the problems that we see around us will cease to exist.

We use our brain and senses in order to receive and retain information. What we see and what we hear is received by our minds and hearts and stored in our brain. If we hear a story, we will most likely remember it more by repeating it to someone else. Repetition reinforces it in our memories. Furthermore, if we actually act on the story it will become embedded in our minds for all times to come (in usual and normal circumstances).

This is why the best ways of learning something is by teaching it to others. There are some people who learn things and pass it on immediately just so that they can retain it in their minds. Doing what we are taught completes the learning process.

Similarly, when we’re learning something about online businesses or social media marketing, we need to be able to practice in order to learn. You can’t be expected to know how to climb a mountain just by looking at it or being told how to do it. You can only ever effectively climb it if you have someone who has done it before, by your side instructing you step for step. Sure this can be achieved through the use of learning aids like books or videos but these methods are designed to keep the cost per student down.

We are conditioned to accept these practices as a part of the learning process but real learning is achieved on the battle field. In fact, my most valuable asset in business today is my ability to sell my vision and the ability to make the right decisions when it comes to executing it. These assets were not learned in a book or a video training course, nor were they learned through my successes. Succeeding in business is easy when its happening. There aren’t a lot of lessons to be learned in success without failure. My greatest business assets were born out of failure. Not in failure itself but the lessons learned whilst handling a mountain of challenges that bear down upon you before failure is eminent. Lessons in hindsight can only be enjoyed by people who have failed.

This insight is what gives this community of business people the confidence to act again, only the next time “knowing” what can go wrong. Experience which cannot be purchased cheaply anywhere on earth. You cannot learn it from a text book or a video learning center. In fact I believe the reasons 9 out of 10 new online business ventures fail because these lessons are not being taught properly.

You see, a teacher putting their knowledge into a book or video and selling lots of copies cheaply is the quickest way for them to earn loads of money with least effort or time invested. It’s also perceived as the quickest and cheapest method of learning too. I have paid close to $80,000 in consulting and learning products to learn what I needed to know in internet marketing and social media marketing over the past few years. That’s money invested to add to my existing knowledge base from actually building businesses offline. Some of you will think that’s a lot of money to invest in learning. If you retain or learn nothing else from me ever again, please at least remember this valuable lesson:

If I succeed in my endeavors to build an income base online so I can work from home in my tropical acreage and if this success amounts to me building a successful business that earns my family millions of dollars over the next 5 years… how expensive is $80,000 in the overall scheme of things? If I only spent $5000 on learning and I failed to build not only an income stream online, but a successful business that I can sell for millions, would the $5000 I spent not be a lot more expensive than the $80,000?

The lesson here ladies and gentlemen is that unless you succeed you cannot compare the cost of achieving success. It’s not about cost , its about risk. You don’t reduce risk by spending less, you simply reduce the amount of money you loose if you fail. By spending less you are only reducing your chances of succeeding. To increase your chances of success throw away your guidebooks and training videos, hire the best guide you can who is willing to sell you their time, pay them as much as you can afford to ensure you have their full attention and don’t let them go until you have climbed your first mountain with them guiding you. Only then can you call yourself a mountain climber, only then have you succeeded in building your business online.

Sure the right personality types can fumble their way through one ebook or training video to the next and they will eventually get there (10% in fact). Be realistic though, will you? Look at the odds, do some research before you spend a cent. For a grounded perspective on some real figures being earned online go to the site point market place. You can buy and sell any number of website businesses at this site. Before a business can be sold they must disclose traffic, earnings and profit. I urge you to take a look at whats on sale. Note how much time some of these people spend running their sites and compare this time investment to earnings. Look for sites that earn real money, study them. Get in touch with the site owners. Speak to them. Offer them a deal where you will pay them 25% of the purchase price up front, only if they will train / mentor you to drive the site in your first 6 months. Offer to pay the balance + a 20% bonus if the sites earnings have increased whilst you have been trained. These people make real money doing this. Run the business or sell it again it doesn’t matter because you have become a mountain climber in the process.

I remember the hope merchants when I started training online. They promised to turn me into a success story overnight, they would promise to make me more powerful that a locomotive, I would build a huge lists in a single bound and earning massive income faster than a speeding bullet,… but I had to sign up now, now, now, quick, quick, quick or I would miss out?

The stark reality is this. Unless the people selling these courses are prepared to work with you in an environment where you are building an online business together over time, they can’t know who you are, the can’t know what you are capable of as an individual. They therefor cannot honestly hook you with a sales pitch based on projected results?

If its hope you’re looking for buy a lottery ticket. Information marketers who peddle hope are focused on one thing. Taking your money. Lottery tickets are usually a lot cheaper and the end result will be the same. That’s not to say all information marketers peddle hope either. My point in this note is focused at you, the purchasers, not them the information sales people. A budding mountain climber who has a mindset for success will be attracted to the challenges, they want to understand why they may not succeed. They want to understand the challenge, they will ask how to read the risks and how to assess them. They don’t want to be shown how. They want to understand how, so they are capable of overcoming the odds themselves. The right students ask the right questions. They only listen to people who give them answers others don’t want to hear, they know the key’s to success live within these answers.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

People capable of leading you to success start by telling you how difficult it’s going to be. The first thing they do is ensure that you are prepared for the massive challenges ahead before they will invest any time into you. These people are winners, they don’t compromise their reputation for dollars. If they take you under their wing it’s because you are ready to succeed. Anyone telling you that earning money online is easy is selling you hope. Hope comes from within, you don’t have to pay for it.

Let me tell you this for FREE. Success online is not easy! You can achieve it, you should hope for it, but you have to fight for it. Do not walk into a fight thinking its going to be easy, or you will get beaten.

Social Traffic are teaching people social marketing strategies by guiding them through a real campaign. It’s the same as hiring your own team of experienced mountain climbers except this journey does not cost any money, just time. If you don’t have time to invest or if you don’t honor your commitments you should not apply. We won’t waste time helping people who do not make the necessary commitments for their own success. If you are not sure, it’s best you don’t apply.

The course that we have designed for evangelists comprises of 6 weeks theory mixed with a participation in the practical execution of campaigns that will raise money for charities. Our first campaign is to promote Earth Day and it starts this Wednesday. The course comprises of interesting activities, learning sessions, training videos, project-based tasks on all important aspects of social media marketing and most importantly it’s anchored to relationships within a community of people who are all going to become experts in this field.

We’re covering strategies all the way from mind set, search engine optimization and social bookmarking, building audiences, content creation, content syndication to networking on social sites such as article marketing sites, Facebook and Twitter. Each evangelist will have a dedicated mentor to facilitate, help and guide him or her. Such levels of engagement cannot be found online in any domain or field – let alone on the social media web.

Just to give you an update: our first evangelist wave has begun and is slowly picking up pace. We had 150 sign up but we filtered this number down to just 40 participants who have proven they are committed enough to warrant their mentors investment of time. That’s right, we delete people off our lists. We have no interest in volume based networks filled with people who don’t act. We are building an army of people trained to distribute content across Social Media. The collective influence will be like no other network on earth. Within 2 years this community will pride itself on it’s ability to syndicate information to more people then some television networks, quicker.

This will not happen by building subscriber lists of millions who we don’t know. It happens by filtering through 1000 applicants to find 50 people of a mind set that understands what it takes to be a part of a community of influence like this. One network of good people, connected to another network of good people who all share strong relationships across space and time. If new applicants cannot show us they are capable of growing with us long term, as a cog in our communities Social Media content distribution network they will not be asked back for week 2.

Its not going to be easy. If it was, everyone would be doing it. Success wasn’t meant to be easy. I can assure you of one thing though, success gets easier if you are surrounded by successful, committed people with a common vision and goals which is our end gain here.

Our vision is that by the end of this, those people left standing will come out like sharpened and polished gems in the social marketing space connected to one and other by a bond that cannot be broken. These relationships are where the value lies because its these relationships that translate into success, it’s not in the knowledge. The catch however is that these relationships must be earned and it’s this understanding that will bond us because its something we all share, it’s something our other relationships don’t. It’s something those people who do not see the process through will not.

Watch a 4 minute preview of our Twitter Strategies training video (14 min’s total) here. This is one of 50+ Social media training videos our evangelist work through and will apply to our Earth Day Birthday campaign next month.

Join Social Traffic’s second training wave here.

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

Visit my “event line blogs”

Social Traffic – The book

Today’s tip! One stop shopping for all your event marketing in social media needs you can’t go past my Events Listed networking and marketing platform. It’s invite only, here’s a backdoor pass on me.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.