5 Things to Think About Before Creating a Marketing Plan

 

Setting a marketing budget before defining a marketing plan is like putting the cart before the horse. Although there are plenty of online resources that can help you get a general idea of how much your marketing budget should be (depending on the number of years your startup exists, the industry in which it operates, etc.), preparing a marketing roadmap should come first.

Your marketing budget may change during the budget year, but to make it feasible, it should be built together with a plan that fits the goals of the company and one you could work with on a daily / weekly / monthly basis.

Before creating a detailed marketing plan including budget allocation to the various channels, deadlines, owner and more, there are 5 things to consider:

1. Audience

Startups are agile, and the answer to the question “who is your target audience” may change over the lifetime of the start-up. However, when you initiate your marketing efforts and build a plan and budget, there must be a clear answer to this question. For example, is your product an innovative a/b testing widget aimed at marketing executives in Fortune 500 companies? Is it an app targeted at teenagers ages 12-17 who live in English-speaking countries? Generic marketing targeting e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e (or “anyone who would want to buy the product”) is bad marketing. Even if you want to target multiple audiences, you must define them and often will need to narrow the list of audiences down, depending on your available capital and human resources.

Some would choose to build a persona (or persons) of the potential audience, to better understand who the potential client is and which pain they have that your product can solve. There are several excellent guides online to help build a persona and a free Persona builder by Xtensio.

2. Objectives

Once you defined who your target audience is, set your goals for the period of the marketing plan. One goal, for example, can be positioning yourself as an expert in the industry (thought leadership). This can be done by guest columns written by the founder/CEO in relevant blogs (for example, Bessemer Partners mapped Israeli cyber security startups for TechCrunch to position themselves as experienced investors in this industry). Another goal can be increasing sales. This may lead to focusing your budget on paid advertising.

A goal can also be recruiting new employees, and for that you may want to reach out to tech blogs who cover cool office spaces like this article in Fortune. There are additional goals you can have, and the answer to the question what are your goals could be “all of the above.” But, in order to prepare an effective and executable marketing plan, I recommend prioritizing these goals.

3. Marketing Channels

After you set your audience and goals, the next question is where can you find the audience. Going back to the example of targeting marketing execs in Fortune 500 companies, the chance of them reading an article mentioning your company at AdAge or AdWeek is higher than them reading such an article on Mashable. If you target the 12-17 age group, are they on Facebook, or like all of us, moved to Snapchat? Try to understand where your target audience spends most of its time online. Often, the chances of finding good and targeted leads will be higher in niche industry blogs. I worked with a company that targeted c-level executives in the hospitality business. The best leads we got was from an article on a small blog, but one that all c-levels in this industry are subscribed to. Sometimes, being featured in a large publication is a matter of ego more than ROI.

4. Team

While building the marketing plan, ask yourself if there is currently someone on the team that will be able to carry the plan out. If not, is there a need (and budget) to hire a full-time marketing person? If you have an existing team, do you need to hire more people or would outsourcing services like Fiverr and UpWork make do? There are opinions supporting and opposing hiring freelancers, but from my experience, it depends on the person. You can hire an employee with zero dedication and a contractor who gives 120 percent into the project.

5. Budget

This point is derived from the four points above. Only when you set your target audience, objectives, optimal marketing channels and structure of the team will you be able to better understand what budget is needed. The marketing budget should be consistent with the growth to which you aspire. If you decide on a fixed monthly marketing budget throughout the year, it will be difficult to expect that it will support a growth. Start with a realistic budget – both in terms of available resources and also you in terms of your goals (it’s difficult to demand a 10 percent MoM growth with a fixed monthly marketing budget of $1,000). Consider long-term and short-term factors. For example, investing in content and SEO is a long term investment (Google will kill any tricks you try ;-)). In contrast, a PR campaign can and should be limited in time, so you can allocate only a few months out of the budget to it. If you decide to work with a PR agency, you can limit the work to 3-4 months. In addition, as the company’s general budget may vary due to external factors (drop in revenues, declining recruitment, etc.), the marketing budget will vary too, and that should be taken into account as well.

  Source : http://bit.ly/2bYpD2m

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10 Ways to Update Your Online Marketing Efforts

Marketing methods for small businesses are constantly changing. You need to be able to keep up with customers who are using technology that’s always evolving.

To update your online marketing efforts, take a look at the following tips from members of the online small business community.

Use These Tips for a Great Social Media Marketing Campaign

Social media marketing is more complicated than just posting the occasional Tweet or Facebook photo. If you’re going to use social media marketing campaigns as part of your online marketing strategy, take a look at these tips from Anita Campbell on the SBA blog.

Write Headlines That Catch Fire

Headlines are often the first impression that potential customers have of your online content. To make them as catchy as possible, you can learn from the songwriting techniques outlined in this post by Merrill Shane Jones on the Copyblock Creative Blog.

Use Blogging More Effectively

Whether you want to do it as a career or use it as a promotional method, blogging presents multiple upsides for your business. To learn how to be a professional blogger, take a look at this post and checklist by Ginny Dwyer on Modgility. Then see what BizSugar members are saying about the post.

Use These Best Practices for Pinterest A/B Testing

In order to get the most benefit out of Pinterest, you need to learn the best practices that will work for your business. That means you need to do some testing. This Blogworthy post by Sara Tetzloff includes some best practices for A/B testing on Pinterest.

Optimize for Ecommerce Sales with Information Bias

When selling online, it’s important to give customers enough information to make a decision. But more isn’t always better, as Jeremy Smith explains in this post on the JeremySaid blog. You can learn more in the post about how to optimize your selling strategy by using information bias.

Analyze Your LinkedIn Data

As the business social network du jour, LinkedIn can be a great place for you to connect with other professionals and potential clients or collaborators. The platform also lets you access data about who views and interacts with your profile. To learn how to best utilize that data, take a look at this post by Nancy A. Shenker on the Bad Girl, Good Business blog.

Follow These Social Media Do’s and Don’ts

When it comes to social media, there are some practices that can be beneficial for businesses and others that can be detrimental. For help deciphering between the two, check out this Dyer News post by Jonathan Dyer. Then you can read thediscussion on BizSugar.

Use Mobile Marketing to Reach Millennials

Millennials love their technology. If your business is one that you want to appeal to millennials, then you should probably be utilizing some form of mobile marketing in order to get your brand in front of your target customers. This post by Kristina Waters on the Candybox Marketing blog includes an infographic with some facts and statistics about millennials and technology.

Learn How to Promote a Podcast

If you’ve decided to take the leap into podcasting for your business, then you need to learn how to promote your podcast so that it gets heard by as many people as possible. This post by Lyndsay Phillips includes some tips for promoting podcasts online.

Make Sure Your Landing Page Forms Don’t Ask for Too Much

Landing pages can be a great way to catch the attention of potential customers and collect leads. But if you try to make them do too much, it can be detrimental to your business, as Elisa Silverman explains in this PageWiz post. 

Source: http://bit.ly/1oj75LT

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Effective Ways to Build Your Social Media Presence

Social media has an extreme appeal to users of all demographics, as 2.1 billion people have accounts. It provides you with the opportunity to hit the largest audience in the world, something that has never before been a possibility. Building up a social media presence isn’t as simple as making an account, throwing out a few status updates, and hoping for the best.

It takes time and effort. This guide is going to introduce you to some of the most effective ways to build your social media presence.

Make Your Content Have a Goal

You should always know what you want to do with your content before you post it. There must be a point beyond you believe that people will like it. Identify your target audience and figure out what your content is going to achieve with them.

Always think about what impact your written content or videos are going to have. Are they going to help you achieve your short and long-term goals?

Get Involved and Interact

Interaction is the essence of being successful on social media. To do this effectively, you must go out of your way to interact. Naturally, any content you post should be designed to foster this interaction. On the other hand, you can use currently ongoing discussions to connect with your target audience.

If you come across an interesting discussion, go out of your way to join in with it. Don’t just advertise your brand. Genuinely help someone. Speak as you would on any personal social media account. People want genuine they don’t want to be sold to.

Choose Your Group with Care

One benefit of social media is that any group you have control of has a closed door policy. In other words, you can kick someone out of the club if you don’t feel that they are contributing anything meaningful. Rather than making impulsive decisions regarding those members, do some research and figure out who is best for your group.

Many social media managers monitor new members with a phantom probationary period. If they are inactive or unhelpful during the specified period of time, they can remove them if they see fit.

Channel Quality Over Quantity

It may be tempting to go wide in order to increase your range. While this can work from time to time, only larger companies have the resources to target a huge number of social media channels. Smaller companies should opt for the ones that are most relevant to them.

For example, a management consulting firm may decide to target Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. A private art gallery may decide that they want to target Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. By spending more time on a small number of channels, you are increasing the quality of those channels.

No channel should be an afterthought.

Review Your Content

If you are determined to get the best content, you need to be willing to review your own content. The worst thing you can do is post anything you think works and then receive lots of public negative feedback. You can control the flow of negative feedback, but you can’t alter the negative impressions left on your customers, as a result.

Go through regular content reviews and ask your most loyal brand ambassadors what they think of the things you are posting. By asking someone impartial, you are guaranteed to get an honest opinion, even if the truth hurts.

Consider the Competition

The competition will always be an important factor in everything you do. You need to pay attention to them without becoming obsessive. This is one of the best ways to maintain that competitive edge because you can continually counter what they are doing.

The competition will give you ideas for what content is working and what isn’t. For example, if a competitor makes a mistake and they receive a negative backlash, you will learn what not to do.

Just beware of getting carried away with this.

Stay Polite

Nothing destroys a social media presence like coming into conflict with people. You will receive negative feedback, but the answer isn’t to fight back; no matter how justified you may or may not be. You will always come off looking worse.

Always stay polite and endeavor to be helpful at all times.

Conclusion

Building a social media presence is mainly about research and perseverance. If you know what you are doing through research and you are willing to invest the time and the effort, you are going to get the results you want.

  Source : http://bit.ly/1plfgYY

8 things successful people do every single morning

How you wake up in the morning could make or break your day. In a new LinkedIn post, psychologist Dr. Travis Bradberry, a coauthor of "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" and president of TalentSmart, has revealed the eight things he believes successful people do before 8 a.m.

Here we go.

1. Drink lemon water

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“Drinking lemon water as soon as you wake up spikes your energy levels physically and mentally,” Bradberry wrote. “By improving nutrient absorption in your stomach, it gives you a steady, natural energy buzz that lasts the length of the day.”

Does lemon actually boost mineral absorption? According to Dr. Mike Roussell, a nutritional consultant at Shape, it could due to its high levels of Vitamin C, but so would any food with Vitamin C like kale or bell peppers.

The more important component here appears to be the water, which many successful people like NextDesk Director Dan Lee start their morning by drinking.

But unless your stomach lining is sensitive to citrus fruits, a squeeze of a lemon certainly couldn’t hurt. 

2. Exercise

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Exercise in general is healthy for you, and getting it out of the way in the morning is a smart way to start the day.

“A study conducted at the Eastern Ontario Research Institute found that people who exercised twice a week for 10 weeks felt more competent socially, academically, and athletically," Bradberry wrote. "A second study conducted by researchers at the University of Bristol found that people who exercised daily had more energy and a more positive outlook, which are both critical for getting things done.”

There are lots of benefits to exercise and famous CEOs who also work out in the morning include Disney's Bob Iger, Virgin Group 's Richard Branson, and Apple's Tim Cook.

3. Disconnect

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"When you wake up and dive straight into e-mails, texts, and Facebook, you are far more likely to lose focus, and your morning succumbs to the wants and needs of other people,” Bradberry wrote.

Instead, read a book like AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, meditate like the CEO of Twitter and Square Jack Dorsey, or spend time with your family and pets like director of NextDesk Dan Lee.

4. Eat a healthy breakfast

Deena Jones/Flickr

Eating a well-balanced breakfast will not only help you stay focused, but also improve your waistline since you’ll most likely eat less throughout the day.

“People who eat breakfast are less likely to be obese, they have more stable blood-sugar levels, and they tend to be less hungry over the course of the day,” Bradberry wrote.

Not sure what to eat? Here are some healthy ideas.

5. Medidate

RelaxingMusic / Flickr

Bradberry said practicing “mindfulness meditation” can be good for your productivity and stress levels.

According to Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar, it can also increase gray matter concentration in areas of the brain, which can lead to less stress and more awareness of both yourself and outside forces.

CEO of Twitter and Square Jack Dorsey meditates every morning at 5 a.m. — maybe you should, too.

6. Set goals for the day

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Benjamin Franklin was obsessive about planning his days,” Bradberry wrote. “When you plan out your day as carefully as possible, your chances of successfully accomplishing your goals skyrocket.”

Science supports this. Checking off goals is a mini reward and can help you be more productive, according to Kelly McGonigal, a psychologist at Stanford University.

7. But make sure your goals are realistic

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Look no further than studies on New Year’s resolutions to find that we all have a really hard time keeping lofty goals.

Being realistic about your daily goals will help you feel more accomplished and get more done, according to Psychologist Peter Herman, because you won’t be setting yourself up for “false hope syndrome.”

“There’s no point in setting goals if they aren’t realistic,” Bradberry wrote on LinkedIn. “Take the time to ensure that your schedule for the day is doable by assigning times to your to-do list. A good rule of thumb is to make your day as top heavy as possible.”

8. Say "no"

Flickr/Martin Lain

“No is a powerful word, which will protect your precious mornings,” Bradberry wrote, adding that you’ll be less likely to “experience stress, burnout, and even depression.”

Science may support this — researchers at the University of Californina in San Francisco found you’ll be less stressed and less depressed if you say no and don’t over-commit yourself.

     Source : http://bit.ly/1oEXCiD

5 Digital-Marketing Tactics to Ditch in 2016

Keeping abreast with what works in digital marketing can be a constant catch-up game. Fickle consumers jump from channel to channel. Google updates its search algorithm. Keeping up with Facebook’s monthly changes requires constant education. Because of all of this change, it can be hard to keep on top of which digital tactics still work -- and which are no longer relevant.

Read on to understand which digital-marketing tactics you should consider ditching in 2016.

1. Having a desktop-only accessible website

The mobile website living separately from the desktop website no longer flies with Google. The dominant search engine has made it very clear that a traditional website that doesn’t adjust to the user’s screen size won’t be as visible as one that does.

Google knows its users access their search engine while on the go and wants to serve its users in the best way possible. To make itself look better, it must reward the websites most accommodating to how customers search the web today -- in the car, the Starbucks line and even in the corporate meeting.

Websites must be fluid not only for the user, but for the business owner’s convenience as well. Having a mobile website built on a separate platform runs the risk that information from site to site will be inconsistent. Contradictions erode consumer trust. Handling social media and directory updates creates enough extra work. Having to upload new information to additional sites become cost and time ineffective. The bottom line is that the traditional desktop designed website will lose rankings and visibility.

Despite Google’s clear messages that websites must be mobile-friendly, many small and medium-sized businesses have not converted their websites to mobile-friendly design. To check if your website is mobile friendly, enter your url into Google’s “Mobile Friendly Test Tool.”Google will quickly tell you if and why your website does not render in an effective way on tablet or smartphone. Small fonts and links put too closely together are a few factors that make a website impossible to navigate and access on a small screen. Get your website mobile today to keep customers coming in.

2. Not updating your website.

Beyond mobile accessibility, Google also closely watches how often users click and convert on your website. While it was once speculated that Facebook channels would overtake websites, research tells us that consumers return again and again to a company’s website for in-depth information on the corporation, product and contact details.

Google takes this habit seriously and wants company websites to serve visitors’ needs. Again, like the mobility demand outlined above, Google is laser-focused on delivering quality answers from quality websites.

The place-holding or basic website that acts primarily as a two-dimensional, digital brochure doesn’t win higher rankings from the search engines. The site must be attractive, easy to navigate, timely and constantly updated with quality content.

A/B testing can help your site win better user engagement and sales or other conversions. More, Google interprets users quickly bouncing away from your website back to the search results as a signal the site offers content that’s irrelevant to the search query. To succeed in digital marketing, make sure your website fulfills a need and constantly addresses that need with timely, relevant content.

3. The spammy link

Google changed the determination of quality in 1999 when it decided that, rather than have an editorial team review websites and make subjective judgments, it would derive value of a website by the number of other websites linking to it. In other words, the digital thumbs up in the form of backlinks provided a more accurate reflection of a site’s usefulness.

Unfortunately, business owners and unethical search agencies sullied Google’s trust of backlinks as indicators of the authority of a website. These entities gamed Google’s system by creating backlinks from artificially created sites with poor-quality content and irrelevant information. Google’s strong staff of PhDs and computer engineers rectified this black- hat SEO with the Penguin update, which penalizes websites without authentic backlinks coming from relevant and reputable websites.

Today, Google rewards the quality, robust content that earns backlinks naturally. SEO companies have become big content generators. Keep in mind, too, that in addition to signals from other sites, Google’s staff of editors spot-check a website’s content to make sure it’s relevant to certain search queries. Companies without meaningful and helpful content, products and backlinks drop in the rankings quickly. After all, Google doesn’t want to deliver a poor product.

4. The superficial social channel

Social media marketing progressed so quickly, many companies were thrilled to get cover images and some content -- any content -- up over the past few years. They felt convinced having a presence on social media would prove their credibility.

Companies that overlook the opportunities social media provides to connect one on one with customers do so to their detriment. Studies show that social media has become one of the big three of customer support, alongside telephone and email.

But where those emailing a company expect a response within a day or so, a study conducted by Edison Research reveals that 42 percent of those contacting a company through social media expect a response within 60 minutes, and 24 percent expect a response within 30 minutes. Further, consumers expect the social-customer service team to work all night and through the weekend.

Long gone are the days when companies avoided social media for fear of negative comments. We’ve all learned negative comments happen whether we’re there to address them or not. Now, most marketers view criticism as an opportunity to educate customers and showcase a committed, responsive customer-service department.

5. Single display and Facebook ads

Typically just 2 percent or fewer website visitors convert on the first visit. Sales professionals have always known that it takes seven to nine contacts before the sale is closed. If the website is the digital salesperson, shouldn’t it have the opportunity to follow up on initial contacts?

Google and Facebook have made this possible through re-targeting -- which Google calls re-marketing. When a visitor lands on a website, a cookie or short piece of JavaScript is placed in their browser. After they leave your site, this cookie pings the re-targeting platform to put certain ads on the next pages the visitor goes to.

That’s why, when you spend some time on a hover-board site or when you next go to WebMD or Facebook or your favorite blog, you see an ad for the hover board. It follows you around the web. WebMD, Facebook and some blogs also have a relationship with the re-targeting platform that acts as a clearinghouse or middle man to deliver ads to appropriate publishing platforms. The WebMD page you see won’t be the same WebMD page a friend sees even if you use the same URL. Ads served to your friend will be different and based on her previous Internet activity.

When done right, re-targeting helps move the prospect down the sales funnel. It re-engages them after they leave your page. The era of a single display ad that shows up on one blog in the same place every time is coming to an end. Today’s technology enables advertisers to target one customer at a time and lure them down the attention, interest and desire path to action -- the sale.

Each digital-marketing tactic a business chooses must depend on the size of the business, its unique selling proposition, its audience demographics and its ideal buyer’s journey. No digital-marketing technique is a one-size-fits-all solution, but we’re confident that if you avoid these tactics and mistakes, your digital marketing efforts will be improved in 2016.

Source : http://entm.ag/1K1PzRc

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8 Tips You Should Know If You Want To Start Your Business Successfully

As Scott Belsky said, “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” It’s really not that the success of an idea depends on its uniqueness and potential foremost. Rather, it depends on how you bring the idea into action.

You may have heard, as an entrepreneurship enthusiast, people calling an idea a “billion dollar idea”. However, ideas in themselves are of negligible worth. It’s hard to sell just an idea for even a few thousand dollars, unless you’re an expert salesperson.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to undermine the value of an idea at all. In fact, a concrete idea is the first and foremost thing that you need when starting your business. However, there are plenty of other variables which determine whether you transform an idea into a successful enterprise or not.

Here are some tips to help you if you want to get your business of to a successful start.

1. Identify strengths and weaknesses

A common fallacy among young, enthusiastic entrepreneurs is the invulnerability regarding their idea. It is convenient to believe that your idea is impeccable. This however is not always the case. No matter how brilliant an idea is, it will have shortcomings.

A proper analysis of strengths and weaknesses of your idea will help you understand its actual value. It can help you identify risks and difficulties in implementing your ideas. Furthermore, it can reveal opportunities that you are unaware of.

Once you identify the strengths and weaknesses in your plan, you can decide how much time and money you will need to put into the endeavor.

2. Create a business model

Your idea is not going to earn money by itself. You need to find the best ways to milk money from your idea. You will need a proper business model for that.

A proper business model will help you figure out elements such as who your customers are, which demographic your idea appeals to, what marketing approach you should take, what are the company’s capital and resource requirements, and how does the company plan to manage its operations as it grows.

A business model helps you to set clear financial goals and develop a proper implementation strategy to achieve those goals.

3. Take feedback from experts

One of the biggest mistakes young entrepreneurs make is that they don’t care to take any suggestion from experts. They feel their idea is solid and see no need for any feedback.

However, with years of experience under their belts, experts can understand the multiple aspects of your enterprise in a much more dynamic and realistic manner.

Taking feedback from experts will help you to take a better approach towards implementation of your project and will also introduce you to difficulties or problems you might not have considered previously.

4. Form an alliance

If you think you alone can successfully grow a huge enterprise, you are wrong. If it’s a small scale enterprise, you could do it on your own. But even in that case, teamwork helps a lot.

You need to find a group of likeminded individuals with compatible skills who add to the value of the group. It’s best to go for people with different skill sets.

It’s always better to form a group that includes a developer, manager, designer, marketer and business analyst than one consisting of all developers.

5. Know your competitors

You might think that your idea is one-off and never thought of before. But there is a high chance somebody else has already thought of it in one way or another.

Whether the idea is a novel one or quite common, you will always have competitors, both new and those with years of presence in the industry.

You should give plenty of thought towards contending with the competitors, existing and potential ones alike. And, outsmarting the rivals should be more than displaying more captivating ads or glossier banners on your building. Here are some great ideas on where to put those vinyl banners. The main focus should be on providing better customer experience than your rivals.

6. Earn your team’s support

Just increasing the number of heads in your team doesn’t achieve anything for the success of your enterprise. You need to build a solid team.

You need to build a cohesive team where individuals add up to each other. For that, the most important thing is to build a sense of trust and belief within the team.

You need to earn the support of your team. You need to instill belief in them that your enterprise is going to succeed. You might even need to make compromises in doing so.

7. Focus to boost skills within your team

For the continuous growth of your business, the team members also need to grow constantly. That requires continuous increment of individual skills.

Even when the business is not really succeeding, you need to find ways to aid in the boost of individual skills of team members. The members should constantly upgrade themselves for the betterment of business as well.

It might be hard to do so in the beginning, but you should set aside some amount for training of the members, their recreation and also challenge them at every step.

8. Expand your idea 

Ideas often arise from that sudden spark, when you feel you have come up with something big. At that point, you could even explain your idea in a sentence. But ideas continuously grow. You might start with something elementary but, after lots of brainstorming and planning, you add more aspects to your idea.

With the growth of your business, you should continuously work on reforming your idea. You should regularly refine it, adjust requirements and try to continually assure that it is relevant.

Source : http://bit.ly/1NQuhHt

Why You Will Never Be Successful If You Cannot Name Your Passion

"Without passion, success doesn’t exist."

Can you win without trying? Can you come out on top with minimal effort and focus? Can you take the trophy without having that need pushing you to become better, stronger, faster, smarter?

Yes, you can. But you cannot — I repeat, cannot — become successful in an area about which you are not passionate. It is impossible. In fact, it’s a logical contradiction that can’t be overcome.

If you are never passionate about anything, then you will never be successful in anything. Think about that for a minute.

To be successful is to achieve a desired aim.

That’s one of the more common definitions of success: achieving a goal or desired aim. I, for one, believe that this is an insufficient definition, or at the very least, a deceiving one. It makes it seem that as long as it is wanted, any goal or aim, can result in success.

This simply isn’t true. Achieving that which you desire is a success, but that does not make you successful. You may be successful in achieving that aim, but you won’t necessarily be successful as a person.

It is important to differentiate between what it means to succeed and what it means to be successful.

I succeeded in waking up this morning and getting out of bed. However, I didn’t go celebrate afterwards – it’s a success unworthy of praise. 

To be a successful individual, you must succeed in something that you and others will deem as something worthy of mention.

In other words, you have to succeed in something that most others cannot accomplish.

It’s winning a competition and beating others to the finish line. Many may argue that this sort of competitive approach can do more harm than good, which in part is true, but you can’t change the true definition of success to make yourself feel better.

The pursuit of success itself isn’t harmful; what is harmful is pursuing the wrong purpose.

Most people fail because they are pursuing the wrong goal. Growing up I was, apparently, a very talented dancer. On a national level, I was one of the top two dancers in America. However, dancing was a hobby and not a passion.

Whatever passion I did have at first faded away over time, and that’s okay. Thankfully, I was brave enough to drop it and move on to something more worthy of my diligence and intellect. Countless people pursue things that they don’t particularly want to pursue.

Parents or friends are the influencers pushing many people. Others push themselves because they believe in an idea that holds little validity. Many of us create a dream that cannot exist in our reality, but pursue it blindly because we either don’t know all the information or refuse to accept that information as truth.

It may take time to find the right cause, the right pursuit, but that’s simply the way these things work.

As human beings, we don’t enjoy experiencing uncertainty. We try to avoid it as much as possible and hide from it whenever we can. Life itself is nothing more than an array of uncertainties arising from and followed by more uncertainty.

We don’t like leaving things open-ended; we prefer to have a direct path of travel mapped out ahead of us. Unfortunately, finding what you ought to pursue, finding that passion, takes time. It takes research, experience and many mistakes and detours.

In fact, one of the most difficult, and most important, parts of life is finding something to devote yourself to; finding that passion that will give your life both meaning and happiness.

One of our saddest moments is the moment we realize we spent too much time doing something we shouldn’t have been doing; we spent our most precious currency on things unworthy.

Mistakes and poor decisions are only that if you don’t learn from them and bounce back. The mistakes we make in our lives are the bricks that pave the road to our success.

It’s what we learn from those mistakes and what they teach us about ourselves and the world that allow us to become the successful and passionate people we are meant to be.

If you don’t screw up, then you can never succeed. If you never make mistakes, then you simply aren’t trying hard enough to do anything worth doing.

Without passion, you will never feel successful, not because you didn’t succeed in achieving an aim, but because that aim wasn’t worthy of your effort.

Success is entirely and completely subjective. What I consider a success you may consider as nothing deserving of praise – the same goes vice versa. What really matters is what you believe.

Are you proud of yourself? 

Did you push yourself to go beyond your limits or did you just coast? Were you hungry to do more, to learn more, to create greater creations?

Did you change yourself in order to be capable of achieving the things you wished to achieve?

Most importantly, what is challenging and did you love it?

The best definition for passion is “a challenge that you look forward to conquering.”

Passions aren’t passions because they are easy to accomplish. That would make your passion short-lived, as well as unsatisfying. People are passionate about things because they see questions that remain unanswered.

People are endlessly curious creatures, as long as they find something they are curious enough about. Finding this curiosity is the goal of our lives because, without it, there is no passion. Without passion, success doesn’t exist.

Source : http://bit.ly/1OSJeOT