In business, to be taken seriously, you have to take yourself seriously. It’s not easy being in the arena with heavyweight corporations and people with more experience than you. The only tactic that winning companies use is to fundamentally punch above their weight.
Robert Kiyosaki taught that brilliantly in his book, ‘Retire Young, Retire Rich’. When David kicked Goliath’s butt, his influence was the catapult. That made him look extraordinary. Many of you think that because of my success, I am not an ordinary person. I love my uniqueness, but I’m just like everyone else. What separates me from most is that I think one step ahead, most of the time. As if he was always playing chess. But those guys think 3-5 moves ahead, and that’s early on. Thinking about the future makes you smart. It is a sign of above average intelligence. Let’s use this in the context of running an online business.
Follow all the steps in the previous posts and you will have no problem being taken seriously. Now, when it comes to competition, how do you stand out? My advice is this: use them as leverage. If the free market is such that the biggest pocket wins, then find a way to get into that pocket. Here is an example. In 2010, I wanted to venture into the world of online publishing using my work on comics and research on gender inequality. I knew that the industry, both online and offline, is ruled by ivory towers that crush everything below them. What did I do? I jumped into the World Summit Youth Award contest to freely promote my products and company to a global audience, when the opportunity presented itself. Now, I’m considered not just an elite youth ezine content developer, but an expert in my niche, in general. I did all of this without a marketing budget because I am a grassroots entrepreneur who relies on free internet marketing tools. The result is this: When you search for specialist listings on Google, you get my LinkedIn profile, Twitter and blog indexed on the first page of at least 40 million international search results. As I did? I hit above my weight.
Google recognizes the achievements of experts. I used the Youth Award as my platform to break into the online publishing industry. To this day they are still my platform because they care about their winners. I used free internet marketing tools/services and many free google products to promote my achievement through viral marketing. That, in turn, connected me with a natural fan base who I keep informed about my work. You are part of that community, my friend. SEO success and page rank increases are a medium to long-term strategy to deliver solid, quality marketing and traffic results. The Google search results page ranks my profiles and my site with one of the largest corporations in the world – SAAB! I think we can both agree that they are a couple of sumos above my weight class. Where have I been clever in the process? I’ve been thinking ahead on the viral marketing aspect. I knew that by keeping the web up to date on my job news, I would ultimately be ranked among the big players. This is the extreme power of internet marketing tools and services – you can do it for free! Offline, I have yet to find out which marketing team can rank it among the multinationals for free. Let me know if you find any.