Day Six: 3 Tips for Growing as a Leader

 

Your promotion to leadership isn’t the end of the line…You’ve only just begun the leadership journey. Becoming a leader qualifies you to lead others, but your skills will grow over time making you more and more effective. Growing as a leader should always be the goal whether you’ve just begun or you’ve been leading for years. 

 

The best leaders have things in common. They are generally:

 

• Confident
• Considerate
• Consistent 

 

Being confident, considerate, and consistent are not static things. They change all the time. Being confident wanes from time to time when life throws curve balls. Being kind and considerate of others can be a challenge when you’re overly stressed or worried. Consistency gets jeopardized when life is overwhelming or underwhelming. That’s why great leaders are always working on these areas of their lives. 

 

Here are some practical ways to keep growing as a leader in the areas of confidence, consideration, and consistency.

 

Confidence. Pay attention to what gets you down. We all have the triggers that affect our confidence. It’s possible to be highly confident in one area of life and completely wrecked in another. Pay attention to what gets you down at certain points of life. Your confidence might need to be bolstered here and there, even when you’re leading. Life’s circumstances can trigger areas where you don’t feel strong. Seek to find solutions when you feel your confidence get weak and you’ll be able to overcome your insecurities and become a more effective leader in the process. 

 

Consideration. Pay attention when you feel foul. When life’s firing on all cylinders it’s easy to be kind and considerate. People respect leaders who are fair and decent. They resist leaders who are harsh, unrealistic, and mean. Your off-duty life could be affecting your on-duty leadership. If you’re going through a tough time, it’s a great time to stretch and grow and learn new stress management techniques or how to overcome overwhelm. Whether you are leading your family, a community project or a team at work, being considerate is a primary character trait of successful leadership. 

 

Consistency. Pay attention when you are erratic. One of the key characteristics of great leadership is dependability and consistency. That how you show up is the same today, tomorrow, and down the line. The surest thing to breach trust with others is to be erratic. When it comes to leadership, consistency is key. If you find that you are going through a season where you’re dropping the ball or you are acting in unpredictable ways, it’s a great time to grow as a leader and learn how to manage yourself and get back on track. 

 

Leadership is not a destination, it’s a journey. Being an effective leader includes the commitment to grow. The issues you face today, won’t be the same tomorrow. The people you lead on and off duty will cause you to need new skills. Keep focused on your confidence, consideration, and consistency so you can grow and maintain high-quality leadership skills. 

Day Five: Mentoring Others Makes You a Better Leader

 

If you’re in a leadership role, you didn’t get there on your own. Someone at some point poured into you and helped shape you into the person you are! Having a mentor can make all the difference when it comes to being an effective leader. Being a mentor helps pay forward the help you’ve been given and the lifetime of knowledge you’ve accumulated. 

 

Mentoring others makes you a better leader because it helps you 

 

• Teach a wider range of skills
• Motivate new leaders
• Keeps you grounded 

 

Mentoring teaches more than the obvious. Mentoring an up-and-coming leader requires more than basic skills. Mentoring someone to do a task in and of itself is a great thing to do. Passing on traditions and skills has been a form of teaching for generations. Mentoring someone in leadership surpasses practical skills and includes esoteric skills that go beyond the technical aspects of a trade. Mentoring leaders teaches the psychological and inter-personal skills that make great leaders. 

 

Mentoring motives new leaders. Part of the role of leadership is motivating others. Getting them excited about the possibilities and feeling confident about what they can accomplish. Mentoring new leaders is the epitome of motivating. Sure, you’ll have to cover the challenges of leadership- which are many, but overall you can help motivate a new leader to be their best. This in turn, motivates you and helps remind you of the benefits of being a leader as well. 

 

Mentoring keeps you grounded too. Being in leadership should be humbling. Serving others is what leadership is all about. Being a leader has perks and advantages, but it also has tough realities those who aren’t in leadership don’t have to face. Mentoring others keeps you grounded and reminds you that leadership is an important responsibility and that the well-being of those you lead is in a leader’s hands. 

 

Mentoring is a wonderful way to sharpen your leadership skills and transform you as a leader. Teaching up-and-coming leaders, the nuances of their roles can help them become better leaders in a shorter amount of time. Remember those who taught you along the way and be sure to pay it forward to the people you are fortunate enough to impact. Your teaching time can be learning time for you too because your mentee will surely have something new to teach you as well. Celebrate your mentees and help them achieve their best by mentoring them and pouring into their futures. 

Day Four: Serve Others - Even When You’re the Leader

 

Most leaders started out as followers. Leadership comes from mastery of a concept or idea and inspiring and motivating others to achieve a common goal. Good leaders have spent significant time in the trenches and never stop, even after they’re promoted. 

 

Being a leader means more than being the boss. It requires a willingness to take on more responsibilities than the team and to be willing to work just as hard, if not harder. Sadly, leadership can get a bad name. The imagery of someone sitting at a desk with their feet up while others do the work that they claim for themselves leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The idea is that leaders have paid their dues and don’t have to work hard anymore. Sadly, this is a way that leadership gets a bad name. In addition, some leaders lose touch with what it takes to be on the front lines and diminish or discount the hard work of the people they lead. In both cases, this can cause a rift between leaders and teammates. 

 

The best leaders have a heart for service and never stop. No matter how high their leadership title, great leaders serve others and seek to better understand the needs of the people they are leading. Here are some easy ways to continue to serve, even when you’re the leader.

 

• Don’t be afraid to do the work too
• Seek to determine what others need
• Ask more questions

 

Delegate, but be sure to do the work too- The best leaders make time to get alongside the people they serve and do the work too. Delegating is an important function of leadership. You can’t lead if you are doing all the work but it’s important to keep morale high and keep your skills polished too. You can do both by working alongside the people you lead and showing them there’s nothing you aren’t too important to do. 

 

Find out what people need to make things easier. The people you lead have a lot on their plate. They have on and off duty lives too. Keeping your finger on the pulse of what they need offers opportunities for you to serve them and build their trust and respect for you. Great leaders know when their teams need something to make their work easier or to offset troubles they have off the clock. Stay in touch and in tune with your teams and you’ll transform your leadership skills exponentially. 

 

Always ask questions. Leaders have to hand down a lot of policies and procedures that their teams have to follow. Whether it’s your family or people you lead for work, asking them questions and getting their input can help everyone feel heard and valued. Sometimes someone you lead might have an idea or a process that is better than the one you came up with. Great leaders include their wealth of resources in their leadership. This includes asking questions of the people they lead. 

 

Serving others, even when you’re the leader, is vital. There’s no title too high that excludes someone from service. There are many ways to lead and many ways to serve and the two always go hand in hand. 

Day Three: Treating Others Well is the Sign of Great Leadership

“The people with the greatest love, not the most information, will influence us to change.”- Bob Goff

 

Bob Goff is the New York Times best-selling author of the book Love Does. His quote reminds us that it isn’t what you know that matters as much as how you behave. You may have all the knowledge in the world on important subjects which will make you an expert, but if you don’t have the social skills to lead others with love, you won’t be very effective. 

 

Goff shared a story in a blog post about Galileo, a scientist who used a telescope to determine that the Earth and the other planets rotated around the sun. At the time, this went against the standard beliefs in science and caused Galileo to be arrested and jailed. What Galileo discovered was truth, but his truth threatened those in leadership and instead of listening, they reacted defensively.

 

As leaders, it’s important to realize that information changes and what we think we know might be proven ineffective or wrong at some point down the line. As a leader, how you treat others is more important than what you know. Here are some keys concepts to keep in mind- 

 

Being challenged doesn’t require defensiveness. Some leaders feel that their authority should not be challenged. It’s true that a leadership role holds an expectation of authority and in most cases deserves respect; however, respect is best when it is earned. If your authority is being challenged, hold your peace and your maturity and determine if the challenge is worthy. If so, embrace the challenge and work together to seek a solution or remedy or embrace the new information with gratitude. 

 

Seek to inspire not command. Leadership should inspire others to want to take action on behalf of the leader or the common goal the leader represents. How you treat others will determine how willing they are to serve the cause. Great leaders inspire people to go beyond what they might do on their own. By serving as an example, doing the work alongside others, and being the hardest working member of the group, leaders can encourage others to give their best as well. 

Surround yourself with people smarter than you are. Great leaders know that life’s an ever-evolving thing and it requires life-long learning. No one person can know everything in all areas. Strong leaders surround themselves with people smarter than they are in certain areas and empower them and support them to shine. They aren’t threatened by someone else’s knowledge or the fact they don’t know everything. True leadership includes the humility of being less knowledgeable and making no apologies. 

 

What you know isn’t as important as how you operate. Being a great leader includes knowing your stuff, but more importantly it includes being kind, compassionate, and treating those you lead with dignity and respect. 

Day Two: 3 Habits to Break That Will Make You a Better Leader

Some people set out for leadership. They want to be in a leadership role and take charge. Other people find themselves in leadership roles reluctantly. They don’t necessarily see themselves as leaders but circumstances or necessity dictates that they’ve got to step up and lead. Either way, both potential leaders bring more than positive skills to the plate. 

 

We’ve all got habits that we need to break. Too much fast food. Binge watching Netflix and other habits don’t always serve us. Leaders have bad habits too, even when they are leading others. Breaking bad habits can make you a better leader. Breaking bad habits does more than reduce the negativity in your life, it molds you into a better and more effective leader. Here’s how-

 

Losing the bad habit is one thing, but what you learn in the process is a secondary benefit. Dropping the bad habit itself will make you healthier but overcoming the mindset and behaviors that accompany the bad habit is equally beneficial. Example: Dropping the fast food habit will make your body healthier. Dropping the thoughts and behaviors associated with buying and eating fast food goes even farther to making you a better leader because you can model and teach these skill sets.

Here are 3 bad habits you can break that will make a you a better leader

 

Break the complaining habit. Complaining is a form of passive aggression. Complaining has no room in a leader’s took kit. Complaining is an immature way to manage stress. Sure, recognizing that something isn’t right is important. Analyzing things for their merit matters but going on and on about it without making changes is worthless. Venting has its place in the right context but complaining wears people out and gets them riled up. Solving problems and finding solutions to whatever needs to be changed is the answer. Great leaders don’t complain about things, they tackle them and do what needs to be done. 

 

Break the gossiping habit. The surest way to sabotage your leadership is to gossip. Talking about others behind their backs doesn’t do anyone any good. As the saying goes- snuffing out someone else’s light doesn’t make yours shine brighter. Dropping the gossip habit is a bad habit that all good leaders let go of. You can avoid gossip by refusing to speak negatively about others as part of your personal standard. You can avoid gossip in groups by removing yourself from conversations that include gossip. You can also set the standard with the people you lead and those you influence on and off duty by making it a policy not to gossip. 

 

Break the avoidance habit. Leaders get things done. That’s why they’re leaders. Leaders don’t wait to be told what needs to be done. They recognize and see what needs to be taken care of and take initiative to do it. If something is difficult, they find help. If something is too complicated, they seek guidance. Leaders don’t procrastinate and they don’t avoid anything. This includes avoiding tasks, avoiding difficult conversations, and avoiding challenges. Dropping the avoidance habit helps make leaders more consistent and effective. 

 

Whether you are asking to lead or being pushed into it, you might have some habits worth breaking before you do. Breaking these habits can help transform your effectiveness as a leader on and off duty and make your overall life experience much better. 

Day One: You are Always Leading - On and Off Duty

 

Being a leader isn’t something you take on and off like a coat. Leadership skills and operating from a leadership perspective is something leaders do on and off duty. That’s because the skill sets that make a great leader also make great

 

• Spouses
• Parents
• Community partners
• Volunteers

 

AND

 

• Mentors

 

Great leaders don’t go to work and put on their leadership hats only to take them off when they leave. Great leaders lead in all that they do. They lead by how they 

 

• Solve problems
• Approach conflict
• Prioritize their schedule 
• Treat people in their lives 

 

AND 

 

• Much more! 

 

Great leaders succeed in their leadership because their leadership skills are engrained in their everyday life. How you see them when they lead is also how you’ll see them when they’re behind closed doors. 

 

In the truest sense, everyone is a leader one way or another. Your title might not officially place you in a leadership role, but you are leading. Whether it’s leading your family, friends, or a small group of people volunteering in the community, you are leading. Taking on a leadership mindset on and off duty can help you be a more effective leader that people willingly and enthusiastically follow. 

 

It’s important to realize that people are always watching, and in doing so they are evaluating one another’s leadership skills and getting behind the people who are leading the way. People feel comfortable with others who are confident, considerate, and consistent in their behavior and their attitude. 

 

Not all leaders desire to lead. Some people are placed in situations where they are required to lead despite their preference to blend into the crowd. Leadership is important though, and having the courage to lead…even when you don’t want to…is important too. Sometimes you’ve got to take the reins and do what’s best for the situation. 

Whether you plan to lead or find yourself leading unexpectedly, you are going to lead at some point. Everyone is leading somehow and making things better for others in the process. Be aware of the importance of leadership and having a leadership mindset whether you are at work, at home, or in the community. Be aware of your impact on others and be sure that your leadership style is motivating and encouraging so you aren’t overrunning others or making them feel inadequate. The best leaders consistently make those they lead feel empowered and capable of whatever tasks need to be done. 

SEO Basics For Evergreen Traffic

One of the most important things you can do to improve your traffic in a sustainable way is to work on your SEO or search engine optimization. While there is a lot to say about SEO and some things are always changing, the basics will be enough to get you by. 

 

It all starts with keywords. These are the words and phrases your customers type into their favorite search engine to find what they are looking for. Your goal is to optimize various pages on your website for some of those keywords. Choosing the right ones is your first task. Don’t go for board main terms like “vegetable gardening”. You don’t know what exactly this person is looking for and it will be hard to rank for a general term like this. Instead, your goal is to choose a few good long-tail keywords like “why are my tomato plant leaves curling” for example. 

 

One of your best sources for these types of phrases is Google. Head on over to google.com and search for something you know your customers are looking for. Then look at the suggested searches at the bottom of that page. Keep trying and keep looking through those suggested searches until you find something that’s a good fit for you and your visitors. 

 

Your next step will be to create a piece of content around this keyword phrase. Use it in the title, the url, and the meta description of your post. Sprinkle the phrase and related phrases throughout your content. Do the same with the names and alt-tags for images you use. Most importantly though, write the content and the alt tag description for your future readers, not for the search engines. In other words, create quality content that earns your audience’s trust. Working in the keyword should always be a secondary concern. 

 

Why? Because no amount of traffic will do you much good if the people who make up that traffic don’t become your customers. Once you have your draft written, it’s time to start thinking about links. You want to link from this post to one or two older articles or blog posts on your site. It’s also a good idea to link out to a trusted source or authority site. Going back to our plant example, you could link to a university article about treating tomato diseases for example. 

 

Take another look at everything you’ve put together. If it looks good, go ahead and hit publish. You are almost done with your basic SEO. There’s one more piece of the equation - incoming links. You want to link from a few older pages on your site to this new content. Then go out and link to it from social media posts. Create a few pins, write a couple of tweets and Facebook posts. Send some social signals to encourage the search engines to index this new content. Then sit back and wait. With a little luck, the traffic will come. 

When It Pays To Pay For Traffic

So far, we’ve talked a lot about getting free traffic by tapping into existing sources, upping our social media game, and investing some time and effort into SEO. All of this requires time and often it’s time well spent. There is a second way to get highly targeted traffic. Paying for it. While there are many different ways to do this, I want to discuss two strategies with you. Paid advertising and recruiting affiliates to send new leads your way. Let’s take a quick look at each. 

 

I’m sure you’re familiar with some forms of advertising. The idea is to pay for targeted traffic. There are various different forms of advertising from space on websites or mentions in newsletters or pay per click advertising. Facebook and Google ads are good examples of the latter. 

 

Start by choosing one advertising strategy you want to try. Work on one at a time. This way you can monitor results reliably and you can master one strategy before moving on to the next. Start small and up your budget when you see it’s becoming profitable. Once you’re there, you can continually work on improving your ads to result in lower costs and bigger profits. Don’t turn on the tab too fast. Even with this slow, conservative strategy you’ll get traffic faster than if you build it organically. 

 

The biggest problem with advertising, especially when you are getting started, is the risk. Chances are you will lose some money before you figure out what you’re doing. Yes, you can mitigate this risk by starting small and upping your budget as profits allow, but it’s a risk, nevertheless. If that doesn’t sit well with you, or if you simply want an additional strategy to grow faster, consider setting up an affiliate program. 

 

With an affiliate program you agree to track traffic, leads, and customers that your affiliates sent you and to then pay them an agreed-upon commission for any sales these visitors generate. For digital products, the commission is usually 50%. In some cases, it makes sense to offer something higher, especially on a front-end product if you have a large funnel in place. For physical products, because of additional cost and overhead involved, lower commissions anywhere from two to ten percent are more customary. 

 

The big benefit of an affiliate program is that if you recruit the right people, you can instantly get your products and services in front of their large audiences. There is also no up-front risk. You don’t have to pay your affiliates unless they make sales, thus guaranteeing profitability for you. 

 

Give both methods a try and see how much traffic you can generate with ads and affiliates. 

Profitable Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing can be a great asset to your business. It can create quick boosts of traffic and get your message in front of your ideal target audience. It can also be a colossal waste of time. How do you make sure your social media strategy is worth your time? You do it with tracking. 

 

Start by tracking yourself. Social media is designed to be addictive. The main job of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and the likes is to keep you on their platform for as long as possible. It’s important that you protect yourself against their efforts to waste your time. And the best way to do that is by tracking what you’re doing on social media. It’s all too easy to convince yourself that you’re busy working on marketing and generating traffic when what you’re actually doing is procrastinating on things that would actually make a difference to your bottom line. And that’s without giving into temptation to watch cute cat videos. 

 

Now that you know why you should track yourself, how do you go about doing it? It’s simple. You start with a plan. For example, you may decide to post three new posts per day and spend ten minutes interacting with your Facebook fans. Put it in writing and keep this paper at your desk. Don’t overthink what the plan should be. Start with what you think might work. You will evaluate and adjust as time goes by. Set a timer, especially in the beginning. Anything outside of the parameters you set for yourself should be considered leisure activity, not work, and most certainly not social media marketing. 

 

Another great option is using automation tools. They allow you to post and share content on a regular basis without having to access the social media sites directly. Instead, you’re crafting your posts inside a different piece of software or website and the content goes out at the time and date you specified. One of the reasons why this can be very effective is because it allows you to batch your social media marketing. You spend an hour one day a week getting everything set up and you’re free to work on other marketing and product creation tasks. 

 

Last but not least, consider outsourcing your social media marketing. Not only does it free you up and save you from the temptation of wasting time on your favorite platform, it gives you real numbers to compare. Are you generating more revenue from social media than you’re paying this person? If not, it may be time to make some adjustments to your current strategy. 

Beyond Google - Pinterest & YouTube Are Search Engines Too

When you think about search engines, Google probably comes to mind first. You may also think of Bing, MSN and maybe Yahoo. But you probably aren’t thinking about two of the biggest search engines out there. YouTube and Pinterest. You may not think of them as such, but at their core, that’s what they are - Search Engines. 

 

What do you do when you’re looking for a tutorial for fixing something around your house or a music video? You go to YouTube and you search. What if you’re looking for inspiration for your daughter’s fifth birthday party? You search for relevant pins and create a Pinterest board based on what you find through those searches. It’s not just you. Everyone uses these sites as search engines. Isn’t it about time you started treating them as such and using them as a source of evergreen traffic? 

 

The question then becomes what to do with that new insight. I’m going to assume that you have a basic understanding of search engine optimization. The idea is to apply the same ideas when you create pins or upload YouTube videos. Create this content with a purpose. Start with a particular key phrase in mind. Use this word or string of words to name your video file or image. Of course you want to also make sure the content applies to the keyword. 

 

Now that you have your content, it’s time to upload it to YouTube or Pinterest. Use the keyword (or key phrase. I will use the two terms interchangeably) in the title and description on the site. You can also use them in appropriate tags. Of course you want to write the title and description for your visitors first. But if you can work your keywords in, great. And don’t forget to take advantage of channel and board titles and descriptions as well. 

 

From here you can help your new content in several different ways. Your best strategy is to create fresh, optimized content on a regular basis. Encourage engagement via other social media channels. Respond to and encourage comments. All of this will help your videos and pins become more searchable. As your channel and boards grow, so will your audience. Not every video and every pin will rank well and get you lots of exposure in those channels. SEO or YouTube and Pinterest optimization is a big of a gamble. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. That’s okay. Each and every piece of content will help you in the long run and if you add a call to action and link that leads back to your website, you’ll be generating a steady stream of evergreen traffic as well. 

Need More Traffic Now? Do More Of What's Working Already

Traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. There are a million and one different ways to get more visitors to your website. There are hundreds of courses and books that teach you about the latest and greatest traffic generation schemes. But none of that does you much good when you need more traffic sooner rather than later and don’t have the time or the funds to experiment. 

 

Instead, I suggest you look at what’s working already and do more of that. Getting a steady stream of traffic from Pinterest? Create five new pins a day to your most popular posts. Ranking for a couple of long-tail keyword phrases? Optimize more pages, or create optimized content for your site. You get the idea. 

 

Yes, it’s deceptively simple and not very sexy, but it works. If you put in the work to analyze what’s working, discover why it’s working, and then are able to replicate it again and again. Let’s talk about how to do that. 

 

Start by looking at your website analytics. For the best data, you want to pull info for at least three months; more if you can and at least a year’s worth if you have a seasonal business. Take a look at your biggest traffic sources and where that traffic leads. Can you see patterns? Make a list of everything that’s working. 

 

With that list in hand, take a look at your best source of traffic. Where is it coming from? How are you getting this traffic? Get out a piece of paper, or open a document on your computer. Start brainstorming at least twenty-five ideas for getting more traffic from this source. Then step away for a little while. 

 

When you come back, look through the list you’ve made. Which of the items on there get you excited? What are you looking forward to working on the most? Start with that idea and get to work implementing it. Make a short list of everything you need to do from start to finish. Maybe that means writing a new article or blog post and then creating several pins for it. Maybe it means working on evergreen social media posts that you can load into a program that shares them to your page. Maybe it means interacting in Facebook groups or finding new ones. No matter what it is, work through each step from start to finish. Then get to work on the next item on your list. Rinse and repeat until you’ve completed each of the twenty-five project ideas. 

 

Don’t forget to look at your traffic stats again in a few weeks. Make note of what’s working. Start doing more of that. Give the rest a little more time. Sometimes even the best laid strategy doesn’t pay off right away. Keep working at it and the traffic will flow.