I had two interesting experiences at my Toastmasters meeting this morning. The first was when one of our club members, who has been absent for a while, approached me and said, “whenever I think of you, I think ‘WebStores'”. That’s good – it means my branding is working!
The other experience was that I had to give a speech about a topic that is not my normal subject matter. I give lots of presentations about Internet marketing and selling your products online, so I am comfortable talking about this. But I had to step outside of my comfort zone. In Toastmasters, we work on specific skills, such as humor, vocal variety, body language, or even technical presentations. I incorporated a number of these items into the speech, and was pleasantly surprised! Everyone loved the speech. I have gotten to the point that I can do a decent job of speaking regardless of the topic.
This did not come overnight of course. I’ve been giving presentations for years and working diligently on this in my Toastmaster Club for the last 2 years. But it is paying off, and this got me thinking about (what else?), Internet marketing! If you keep applying the basic principals of Internet marketing – trying to become seen everywhere, from Facebook and YouTube, to your blog and product reviews on other websites as well as your own, eventually people are going to start to notice you. It takes practices and a continual effort to be good at anything, and the same is true with Internet marketing.
Of course, even after going through my 12 week coaching session, some people still don’t have time to do everything it takes to become successful on the Internet. Sometimes they just don’t want to step outside of their comfort zone, doing the things they know the best. that’s fine – at least now they know what it takes though and they can hire me or another marketing firm to help them accomplish their goals.
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