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What’s your Ikigai? And how to Ikigai?

In a TED Talk, Tim Tamashiro delights us with the Japanese secret to Happiness. It was such a pleasure listening to Tim. He says it takes work to find your Ikigai. First, let us understand what is Ikigai. Before that how to pronounce it? It is pronounced as Eeky-guy. You lift your cheeks like you are smiling and say Eeki-guy, he says.

C’mon, say “Ikigai”. That’s Good.

Tim was a Jazz musician who finally found that his Ikigai is “to delight people” and he does that perfectly well. If you don’t believe me, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk-PcJS2QaU

Ikigai, he says, is like a treasure map. It can help you find your way to finding wonderful things about yourself that you can share with the world and the world will say “Thank you” for it, he said.

He says, Work is different from Job. A Job is something that you do as a regular form of employment where you get money to pay for your house, food and things like that. On the other hand, Work is something that you do to achieve a result, something like a product or a purpose, he says.

Ikigai comes from Okinawa, where the world’s most 100 year olds live.

Iki = Life

gai = Purpose

Ikigai = Life’s Purpose

Ikigai’s Directions:

Do what you love
Do what you are good at
Do what the world needs
Do what you can be rewarded for

It is the intersection of the above four items.

Best Wishes to you for finding your Ikigai!!

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Do you want to create original content?

Photo Credit: Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash

Having read as well as written blogs & books [yes, I have one book to my credit, yay!], I can confidently list down some ideas for you to create high quality content that others find really interesting to read, in one breath:

  1. Be Human. Your readers aren’t interested in reading some canned reports. They are interested in reading something that they can relate themselves to.
  2. Write about your difficulties and how did you overcome them. That helps people a lot.
  3. If you are an expert in something, you can help people with your ideas, thoughts & expertise. But don’t write at your expert level. Instead write for an elementary school student. Keep it simple and interesting.
  4. You can write about your recent experience with one of your clients. How you delighted her / him will simply motivate people and help them take action.
  5. Your failures. There is a lot to learn from failures. People are failing. They want to know what to learn from failures and how to get up and running once again in no time. Your thoughts on this will be of great help.
  6. Success stories. Who doesn’t like to hear success stories. But Storytelling is an art. As long as you keep up the momentum and build up the scenes leading to the climax in a way that keeps the readers in the edge of their seat, it is fine. People learn and get inspired from success stories. It propels them into action as well. Isn’t that what you wished for?
  7. Problem solving: Take up one problem at a time. Your ideas, thoughts to solve a problem will make a good content.
  8. What books you read last month and what did you like in them and why.
  9. What is your plan for improving customer relations in your Industry. By writing on this, you can become a thought leader in your Industry.
  10. Tools you use to become more productive.
  11. Latest in your Industry: Write about the latest happenings in your Industry.
  12. Don’t ever write for Traffic or SEO or Conversions. It’s boring.

Happy Creating!! [I will follow these ideas as well :)]

Happy Selling!!

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E-mail Marketing

The runaway success of social media is great news for us as marketers. Social Media has the potential to engage your customers like never before. And Email Marketing is still one of the best options to engage your customers. Email from a trusted source get higher open rates; faster, better response rates; and quicker conversions and higher ROI. Hence you need to have a Social Media Strategy in place if you are interested in connecting with and engaging existing customers and finding new customers through the existing customers.

Your email marketing campaigns should have the ability to enable your recipients to post your message across many social media platforms such as – Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr etc. Social Media helps you to expand the reach and maximizes the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns, it provides a better way to engage with the customers and get feedback, it improves Search Engine Optimization [SEO].

It builds your brand, drives your website traffic, helps you to build your opt-in list organically and last but not the least it offers a fresh perspective on customer service and loyalty.

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Positioning

In an overcrowded market, it would be difficult to position a product or a service unless you stand out with a unique communication strategy addressing your target market. The communication should create a niche for your product or brand in the minds of the clients. Let us get the facts straight. If there is a market leader we need to acknowledge it first. Then we should relate to the market leader on how your product or brand is different in spite of not being the market leader. Enough and more examples can be discussed how you can relate to the market leader and still make an impression with the clients. Clients usually remember the market leaders and if you can create a niche for your brand and relate it to the market leader, you have more or less achieved your goal. After all, clients need an alternative to the ones they are used to for a variety of reasons. The reasons would differ for a consumer market and a Business to Business market. Ultimately, it is possible to create a niche for your brand if you do soul searching and come out with that Unique Selling Point [USP] why at all clients need to buy your product or brand. May be since you are not a market leader, you would work harder [which is good for the clients], you would be flexible [which means you can customize], you can be a trusted partner [while the market leader is busy acquiring new clients, expanding markets, launching new products] etc.

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Target Market

After Segmentation you are more likely to address the Exact Target Market you actually wanted to than before segmentation. Addressing the target market is more important on two counts – one you don’t want to address customers who are either not interested in this particular campaign or customers who are not likely to open or not likely to click on the links in your email, two you don’t want your deliverability to take a hit and hence losing your reputation as an email marketer.

Essentially your deliverability will improve, your reputation as an email marketer will improve, your conversions will improve if you make sure your emails are reaching those people who are more likely to be interested in the products that you are selling.