Forward Steps Self Improvement Blog

There is a major shift happening in the world of content marketing.

But first, what’s “content marketing?”

It’s what bloggers and marketers do when they put up content that they want the search engines to rank and readers to flock to in order to build recognition.

Basically, anyone who uses content to attract search engine visitors and has the ability to get real people linking to and buzzing about their site is a content marketer.

In the past few months a certain type of content marketing has started to get very popular. It’s called “curation” and it has many benefits over traditional content marketing models.

Click here to learn more…

1. Curation allows content publishers to create a lot more content around a lot more keywords in the same amount of time they currently spend on content development.

2. This enables you to score for a lot more keyword rankings, leading to more daily site visitors.

3. It also enables you to keep readers engaged and loyal to your source of information because you filter through all the information on a topic and present them with the best of the best info on the topic.

4. You write less original content yourself and, often, put together more valuable content to readers at the same time.

5. Enables one-writer-sites to look and feel like they have a small staff of writers.

6. Posting more often gives more opportunities for something to go viral on social networks, which gives readers more to “Like”, Retweet and +1 on Google+.

7. Increases your authority score with Google because of the increased social signals Google finds for your site.

(There are many more benefits to adding curation to your content marketing campaign)

Since everyone is buzzing about curation, I wanted to get clarification on the tactic from an expert.

Jack Humphrey is going to explain what curation is and how he developed an amazing software which helps him to create pages which rank really high in the search engines.

Click here to learn more about Jack’s amazing software

You can actually download and test it for free!

Following, is some sample information about the topic of “content curation” that I collected using the free version of Jack’s tool, it gives me a chance to have a play with CurationSoft. Mind you, it is super easy to use!

What Comes First, Content Creation or Curation? | Beth's Blog

www.bethkanter.org1/24/12

This is definitely not a chicken and egg question! A debate in content marketing circles is whether or not you should simply focus on creating original.

Content curation is the wave of the future

getmarketzing.com1/25/12

eContent Magazine defines content curation as the act of discovering, gathering, and presenting digital content that surrounds specific subject matter. Unlike traditional content creation, curation does include generating …

Get to terms with Content Curation: Pro's and … – Velocity Partners

www.velocitypartners.co.uk1/18/12

Is it the blessing bestowed on every marketing manager starving for content, or is it a fig leaf parading like thought leadership?

6 More Content Curation Examples Illustrated – Content Curation …

www.contentcurationmarketing.com3/18/11

Following on the popularity of my original post "6 Content Curation Examples Illustrated", here's another 6 examples of outstanding content curation for different uses cases aross the web. 1. Content Curation for Recruiting …

Content Curation – Best Practices | E-Learning Council

www.elearningcouncil.com1/11/12

Content curation has become a hot topic in 2012. Corrine Weisgerber, an associate professor at St. Edwards University, has an excellent presentation on content curation. She differentiates content curation from content …

You might see me using this excellent service more often, for enhancing future Forward Steps blog posts. I am fairly sure that I’ll take up CurationSoft’s low cost paid version, it really is a fantastic add-on for including relevant and latest content.

If stress is a choice, then we can choose not to have stress. If you feel like your stress levels are off the charts, author David Zerfoss has a new perspective for you that can change your life.

Stress is a Choice provides ten rules that provide an inspired road map to simplify life and to choose less stress.

Less stress in life is a goal for many and the “Stress is A Choice” movie offers concrete tools on how to simplify life and relieve stress.

The following of my tips, make a difference when experiencing stress. I have included links to a few tools that could support leading a life of inner calm. Many of the ideas you have heard before. It’s great to be reminded again and again, so that these might become habits that feel as automatically a part of your day as brushing your teeth.

1. Simplify life by getting clear about the distinction between a “need” and a “want”. Often we might reach for “having things” or achieving targets that are not at all necessary. Check in with yourself and see which of your desires are driven by expectations outside of yourself, by external forces.

2. At every opportunity “be present”, “in the moment”, in the “here & now”! When you stop the automatic mind chatter, what do you see around you? Did you even notice that stream of sunlight across the room, the color red in a nearby flower, the sensation of a breeze across your arm? Look for opportunities to exchange stress, for moments when you could choose to feel gratitude or joy.

3. Include meditation in your morning routine. You’ll find that it has a flow on effect throughout your entire day. To get you started, here is a handful of meditation and breathing exercises you can use to quiet the mind and increase your level of energy, health and enjoyment of life.

4. Take care of health the best way you know. Drink plenty of water, exercise, eat nutritional meals, sleep well. When your energy reserves are depleted, so is your resistance to unpleasant events or moments of tension.

5. As situations arise, slow down and choose to “respond” rather than “react”. Give yourself permission & room to think. When requests are made of you or invitations extended, allow for a time buffer by entering it in your calendar or GoodToDo and let the person know when you’ll get back to them with an answer. Better yet, get them to ask you again within a certain time frame so you can check your current commitments.

6. Revisit all the structures you have in place to help prioritize & organize your activities. Do you have the most effective tools and systems at your fingertips? I recently read Bit Literacy and I think it will make a difference to you also. In fact, that booklet and the “Stress is A Choice” movie, both prompted me to write this post for you.

7. Learn to recognize and to change limiting beliefs that have you pinned down and unable to act powerfully when faced with challenging circumstances. Check in with how much of a situation looks worse because your imagination has been allowed to roam wild, then determine “what IS actually so”! Decide on a specific action, just one for now, that will move you forward and out of the state in which you currently find yourself.

8. When times are great & you have some breathing space, take the opportunity to learn some strategies that you can “have at the ready” next time a not-so-positive situation shows up, or the next time your mind takes you down those dark alleys of fear and tension! The one I use most often is Thought Field Therapy (TFT), commonly known as tapping.

9. Remove the word “stress” from your vocabulary. Re-frame or relabel it, perhaps by using a term like, “challenge”. I cringed a little when writing this post and deciding on a title/topic. “Stress” is not a word that I have used for many years. I chose to use it for this piece because the term is still so widely used & recognized, visitors would immediately understand the purpose of this article. It doesn’t mean that we stick our heads in the sand, it just gives us a little more power to move beyond the currently undesired state and into a place where we might “see” something different and therefore be enabled to move forward & beyond.

10. Do those things that you know will boost your self confidence and self esteem. We all have our own little rituals and unique ways of lifting our spirit. The Quantum Confidence Method is a great place to start if you’re out of ideas for the moment. It also really helps to look outside yourself and check with where you could feel the satisfaction in having made a difference to another person.

There are thousands more ideas where those came from, however 10 seems a good number at which to end a list! Share this post with anyone you know, who could use it right now.

National Thank You Month Is January… I have a gratitude poem and a video about Learning To Dance In The Rain that you might enjoy sharing with friends.

If you woke up this morning
with more health than illness,
you are more blessed than the
million people around the world
that won’t survive the week.

If you have never experienced
the danger of battle,
the loneliness of imprisonment,
the agony of torture or
the pangs of starvation,
you are ahead of 20 million
people around the world.

If you have food in your refrigerator,
clothes on your back, a roof over
your head and a place to sleep,
you are richer than 75% of this world!

If you have money in the bank,
in your wallet, and spare change
in a dish someplace, you are among
the top 8% of the world’s wealthy!!

If you hold up your head with a smile
on your face and are truly thankful,
you are blessed because the majority
can, but most do not.

If you can hold someone’s hand, hug
them or even touch them on the shoulder,
you are blessed because you can
offer God’s healing touch.

If you can read this message,
you are more blessed than over
two billion people in the world
that cannot read anything at all!

Thank you for the image Pringle Hill Studio

Sharing with you, one of my favorite quotes, below. You might want to read it a couple of times, to really immerse yourself in its message – and here you can read a few more Top Inspiring Quotations…

“Life is a bunch of accidents that happen to you and somehow you survive them by taking advantage of them and then something magical happens and violá – you have the beginning of your dream. But the accidents are the result of an intention – an intention created from a dream you are passionate about.

If you enjoy the process, it is your dream! If you are enduring the process, desperate for the result, it’s somebody elses dream!” –Salma Hayek

There are some taboos on the Chinese New Year Day:

• Since everybody is in a festival mood under a joyful and hilarious atmosphere, people shouldn’t argue each other. Also parents shouldn’t scold or punish the children. Otherwise, you will have more argument in the new year
• Women shouldn’t use knife or shear in the kitchen, which indicates evil, anger, danger and cutting out the luck. As a result, women don’t cook new dishes on this day, people eat meals from leftovers
• Breaking a dish, plate, bowl or cup means bad money luck is coming. In case that happens, then Chinese put all broken pieces in a round container until the coming trash day
• A married woman shouldn’t go back to her mother’s home, otherwise her mother’s family will get poorer
• To sweep the floor or dump the trash will take away the wealth and luck from the house
• Don’t have a lunch nap at noon, otherwise people will be lazy year long
• To wash the hair will wash your good luck away
• Don’t wear in black or white to visit friends, because black and white are funeral colors in China
• People shouldn’t visit friends’ houses, if they have a family member newly passed away
• Don’t eat rice porridge in the morning breakfast, otherwise you won’t get rich because only poor people ate rice porridge in the past
• Don’t eat meat in the morning breakfast, because many gods who are vegetarians arrive New Year Day festival in the morning
• Don’t wake up people by calling their names, otherwise that sleeping person needs people’s push all year long
• Don’t take unnecessary medicine, otherwise you will become unhealthy this year
• Don’t wash clothes, because New Year Day is the birthday of the god of water
• If someone owes you money, do not ask for the money back on this day. Otherwise, you will do it often in the rest of the year

Source: www.chinesefortunecalendar.com

Last week I met for coffee with one of my Forward Steps readers & friends, she was asking me all about setting up her own online business. She had just bought a very expensive program which was meant to teach her just that & she didn’t understand most of it.

That friend wasn’t the first, and will likely not be the last person, to “pick my brain” about an internet business.

Many people are looking for personal, financial freedom by way of an internet business.

I’m often contacted by friends AFTER they have invested a few thousand dollars (not just a couple hundred dollars) in either a web developer or a program, that promises the world. Please don’t do that again! Several programs out there are truly excellent, HOWEVER…

…many internet business training programs were NEVER designed for people who are completely NEW to ‘business on the internet’, let alone new to ‘business’ or for people who are completely new to the ‘internet’!

I also know one person who bought a very expensive program which did not teach her how to set up a web site (and she did not know the meaning of “URL”, for example) – there was precious little support once she was in the program. By the time she really understood the program’s content, and woke up to the “what was what” inside the member site, it was also too late for a refund. They too, came to me for help because I was a friend who could answer their questions.

I wished that these friends had asked me BEFORE taking major steps & spending big money.

This blog post is for you, if you are in a place of considering an internet presence for yourself and have NO IDEA WHERE BEST TO START!

1. Get clear about who you are serving, what ‘problem’ you will solve for them or what value you will provide, then select your preferred format(s) e.g. book, series of lessons, a PDF report, audio lessons, videos? The I Create Profits program takes you through that process of discovery, in a very effective way with an exercise of questions, a video and helpful lists.

2. Now, try BlinkWeb, it’s one of my favorites for complete beginners. Or, open up a blogger.com account …and play! If you’re not a beginner, you will love the resources at XSitePro.

At a future date, you can always export the content and import your blogger content to a self hosted WordPress blog, or you can simply delete the blog. Messing around at blogger.com is a great way to learn with a user friendly blogging tool and BlinkWeb is really fun and super easy with video lessons, you can transfer your own domain name to it later, also. Both are free!

3. Keep handy this list of the following tools and bookmark this blog post!
(However… DO NOT buy any of them until you are ready for that step).

By the way, these are affiliate links of mine. Be sure to clear your cookies & cache when you are ready to use any of these (it will help me too and I thank you for your support).

Aweber autoresponder service for building your own email following
Clickbank as a service for selling your product(s) & having affiliates for your product
Paypal merchant account that’s solely for your business & accepting payments
PDF Printer Pro for writing PDFs with a host of features available as your business grows
PDF branding tool that helps affiliates to share your content
Lulu is a great place to sell physical books or CDs
Vista for your business card & stationery needs
Cool Record Edit for editing audios
Audioacrobat for podcasting, videocasts, audio notes, MP3 files etc.
Book Cover Editor for creating great book or CD cver images
Poll Daddy Survey tools for creation surveys and questionnaires
PDF Locker to protect files that you want to sell and not be published freely on the net

Download A FREE PDF OF THIS POST Here!

4. Lastly, and this one is a MUST DO…

Join Christopher & Josh’s I Create Profits Membership.

It is the nearest thing to the course that I would create, if I were to build an online internet training course.

I do have it in my long-term “ideas list” to create such a program, however until then, I will always recommend Christopher’s I Create Profits Membership.

I would trust Christopher with my life and we’ve been friends for many years (we’re not related, that we know about).

This is THE COURSE for you if you are a complete newbie and also if you are not (I still find lessons in there that are useful to me now)! PLUS… Christopher hosts your own FREE and REAL website for you as part of the deal. That domain can later be transferred to your own hosting, if you ever want to do that, with Bluehost or another.

Do each step, in order & exactly as the I Create Profits course tells you. Move through it slowly so that you become expert at each of the 100 segments.

Oh yes… as “they” say: SUCCESS comes before WORK only in the dictionary! So get moving.

Have you ever done something so out of character—acted a certain way or made a hurtful comment—that you literally questioned yourself afterwards: “Who am I? Why would I have done that???”

Well, we all have . . . although it doesn’t make it right!

The trouble is we don’t all know how to stop that “nasty version” of us from unknowingly appearing—most often hurting ourselves and others.

My friend and colleague, Crystal Andrus, one of the world’s most beloved coaches and Founder of The SWAT Institute (Simply Woman Accredited Trainer) says, “Inside each of us is both our Wounded Self and our Real Self. When we are unaware of ‘who we really are’ we can be easily fooled into believing that the actions of our Wounded Self are uncontrollable or unavoidable. This is simply not true.”

Crystal is offering a magnificent 60-minute deeply healing free teleseminar, including a downloadable meditation, on Monday, January 30th at 8pm ET / 5pm PT that I think you are going to absolutely love.

This free call is really a game-changer!

Click here to sign up for Crystal’s free 60-minute seminar

During this teleseminar you will learn how to:

• Identify the voice of your Real Self from your Wounded Self

• Heal your Wounded Self so that she can stop reacting—sabotaging your relationships, finances, health, hopes and dreams

• Reconnect with your Real Self and give her permission to ‘run the show’

• Feel confident and empowered about your future, knowing that you can create the life you were destined to live

And, if you can make the call live, you’ll also have a chance to win Crystal’s upcoming 12-Week Total Transformation Telecourse, beginning Wednesday, February 1st!

Who is Running Your Show? Click here to sign up for the teleseminar

This will truly be a life-altering hour!