Far too many people think the amount of money they have in their bank account determines whether or not they’re a success. If they don’t have much money, they feel that reflects personally on them.

But when you attribute the amount of money you have to your own worth, it can cripple your self-esteem to the point that it’ll make you feel like you can’t do anything. When you attempt to determine what you’re worth, how you feel about yourself and your success, you’ll always feel like you fall short.

That’s not because something is wrong with you. The problem is that you’re trying to give your self-worth a monetary attachment. When you feel like you have enough money, enough success, you’ll feel worthy and act like you can accomplish anything.

But when you don’t, the opposite will happen. And, as your money fluctuates, so will how you feel about yourself. There are consequences to making your success all about the money.

You can build an entire life and belief system that rests on feeling good because you’re wealthy. But if something happens to tear everything out from under you, the emotions will hit you hard and you’ll find it difficult to be able to function because the foundation that you stood on, that you based success on, changed.

You want your self-worth, just like your success, to be based on what doesn’t change. What doesn’t change is your character. Your character is who you are as a person as evidenced by your character traits such as you’re fair, responsible, optimistic, honest, and so on.

Your character is your true value. Your moral path is similar. You exhibit outward signs of the good that’s within you. This might be loyalty, having a strong sense of empathy, being courageous, or choosing to do what’s right even when it would be easier to do what’s wrong.

That should be figured in as what makes you successful. You want to look at the entire person that you are, not just your career, the amount of money that you have and where you are successfully versus where someone else is in life.

Measure who you are by defining what’s important to you and let that line up with your success. Because this is who you truly are. When you seek success based on what your personal values are rather than just chasing wealth, then you will find success.

By taking a look at who you are and what matters to you, you’ll be able to measure every aspect of yourself. These measures can easily be tracked in a journal. For example, you can measure how you experienced emotional growth and see how that intersects with your success.

By tracking your whole person, you’ll be able to see your own growth. But on the other hand, you’ll also be able to see areas where you can improve.

Journaling can be a great way to find clarity with your success or to develop self-improvement. That’s provided that it’s used as an effective measuring tool. But you do have to be careful that you don’t use it like a hammer to pound yourself harshly.

Sometimes when people journal to track their lives, they tend to have an agenda and that agenda doesn’t always leave any wiggle room. Instead, it’s strict and creates an either/or way of tallying maybe what they need, but not in the best way of getting it done.

When you journal so that you track success, it’s okay to have a goal for something that you want improvement on, but it doesn’t always have to be that strict. If you want to accomplish something such as taking your income up another level, the steps that you journal to get there don’t have to be rigid and leave you feeling like there’s no other alternative.

When you have an agenda for personal growth, that’s not a bad thing as long as you don’t make it one. It’s okay when you journal to just sit down and let your thoughts go in the direction that they go.

Don’t have a destination in mind. Just free your thoughts. Don’t give them a label of good or bad, just pour out what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling and whatever it is that your hopes or dreams are.

Give yourself love and kindness when you journal. You don’t have to always push yourself to take action. You don’t have to have a plan. You can just put into words what you’re dealing with or what you want to get out of your system.

Don’t force yourself to fit into a certain success box when you journal. This can happen when you fall into the thinking that if you’re going to track your success then you need to make sure you write down what is or isn’t working, what you are or aren’t doing every time you journal.

Just write whatever you want. Even if you just write something like how the scent of a candle made you feel like working or not. Or it reminded you of something you’d like to have in your life.

There are no rules to journaling for success or personal growth. What you might not realize is that when you’re doing a free-style type journal, it is a form of self-growth. That’s because you’re giving yourself the freedom to be who you are and what you feel like doing in that moment.

That doesn’t mean that the moment won’t change the next time you approach journaling. You can take the thoughts that you wrote when you were writing without an agenda and look them over.

This will let you revisit what you wrote when you’re in that working state of mind. You might look back and find nuggets of wisdom in what you wrote that will help take you in a new direction when you’re rereading the words.

Because life can get pretty hectic, it’s easy to overlook the importance of reflecting on your day. By taking the time to think about what happened, you can discover more about yourself, your goals, and the dreams that you have.

Doing this will allow you to create a foundation of self-growth that will help you to be more successful. Most people don’t even recognize that conscious reflection is needed to reach their goals.

Journaling using conscious reflection allows you to grow and stretch yourself every day. And with each of the realizations you experience, you see more progress. Look back on your day and allow yourself to examine it critically, to look for ways that you did improve and ways that you still have more growing to do.

This acts as a kind of performance review that helps to push you to do better things each day going forward. The best way to reflect is simply to question yourself as if you were giving yourself a performance review.

Start by asking what you could have done differently to improve your success that day. You’re not going to have a success streak without ever having any failures. Because you’re human, you’re going to make a mistake.

You’ll waste time, miss an opportunity, or mess up something that’s vital to your success. These failures will hamper your productivity. They’ll make your progress take twice as long and might even impede the completion of your project to the point you feel that you just didn’t have time to give it your best effort.

When you’re using conscious reflection, think over what happened and the steps that led to the failure. By understanding what happened, it helps you to be more aware of how to avoid having the same situation happen again.

Decide in advance what your reaction is going to be if there’s a similar situation in the future. Maybe during the day, you reacted badly when dealing with a loved one, a colleague or an employee.

If your goal is to be a more effective leader, then you need to make sure that your emotions don’t lead you regardless of what happens. By determining your behavior beforehand, you’ll not only be in control, but can improve relationships as well as connections that can be important to your success.

Look back over your day to see if there was a time when you should have spoken up, when you should have taken the lead but didn’t and you shirked the responsibility. Even if you didn’t mean to, not stepping up can affect your success.

As you’re reflecting on your day, think over all the tasks that you had to do and see if there were any areas where improving your skill level would have led to better performance - which in turn produces success. Though at times painful, true reflection can help you to be more successful.

All You Need To Know About Instagram Story Ads

Instagram Story Ads were only introduced in March 2019. This caused a lot of excitement among advertisers as the story format is very immersive. Around 50% of brands that use Instagram have made story posts. Time spent on Instagram rose to around 28 minutes when they introduced the story format.

What are Story ads?

Stories are available to Instagram users at the top of their news feed. An Instagram Story Ad will display inside Instagram stories. Usually you will see a Story Ad as you are transitioning from one story to another. It is not easy to tell a Story Ad apart from a normal story post so they tend to work very well and be accepted by the Instagram community.

As with all ads on Instagram a Story Ad will have the word “Sponsored” on it. Whether you go for an Image Story Ad or a Video Story Ad they will be full screen to the Instagram user. There are around 500 million Instagram users looking at stories every day so you have a huge marketing opportunity with this ad format.

It is best to use Story Ads if you want to promote a limited time offer. Why? Because all stories will disappear from Instagram after 24 hours. You can use a number of different call to action buttons with Story Ads and here is the complete list:

• Apply now
• Book now
• Call now
• Contact us
• Download

When you create a Story Ad you will be able to create a target audience (or use a previously saved one) and also specify how often your audience will see your Story Ad. You can enhance your Story Ad with filters, video effects and add text to make your ad really appealing.

Stories Image Ad

If you choose to go with an Instagram Stories Image Ad then you will be able to add up to 6 images and a swipe up facility that will guide your viewers to a destination URL (your website or online store). The ad will last for five seconds.

Here are the important specifications for a Instagram Stories Image Ad:

• The recommended resolution for an Instagram Stories Image Ad is 1080 X 1920 pixels
• The resolution should be a minimum of 600 X 1067 pixels
• The correct aspect ratio is 9:16
• Image format can be either PNG or JPG
• The maximum size of any one image is 30 MB

One of things that you need to be careful about with Instagram Stories Image Ads is the amount of text that you overlay on any image. If you go to far with this then Instagram will not accept your ad.

Stories Video Ad

When people are browsing through stories nothing captures their attention more than a video. One thing to bear in mind though is that when users are viewing stories they don’t usually turn on the sound. So you need to be able to deliver your advertising message with a Stories Video Ad with or without sound. The video length is 15 seconds.

Here are the important specifications for a Instagram Video Image Ad:

• The recommended resolution for an Instagram Stories Video Ad is 1080 X 1920 pixels
• The correct aspect ratio is 9:16
• Use either the MOV or MP4 movie format
• The minimum resolution of a Stories Video Ad is 720p
• Video size must not exceed 4GB

Avoid These Instagram Ad Mistakes

Many businesses are now turning to Instagram for new leads and customers. The platform is undergoing significant growth and using Instagram Ads is a great way to reach people that other methods can’t. But a lot of people make mistakes with Instagram Ads so we want to highlight these mistakes for you so that you can avoid them.

Not Aligning with Business Goals

A lot of people that use Instagram Ads do not align their advertising with their business goals. You can create some awesome Instagram Ads but if there is no alignment with your business goals then you are wasting your time.

So think about how your Instagram Ads can align with your overall goals. Do you want to increase the amount of awareness of your brand? Do you want to increase the amount of followers on your Instagram account? Or is your main goal to drive a lot more traffic to your website so that you can generate more email marketing leads?

It is not difficult to create goals for your Instagram advertising campaigns and you must do that. Take the time out to think about what you really want to achieve from your Instagram Ads. To do this ask yourself these questions:

• What results do you want from your Instagram Ads?
• Do you want new customers or existing customers to purchase again?
• Do you want to increase the traffic to your website?

Not Targeting the Correct Audience

You can easily identify your target audience when you use Instagram Ads. But to do this properly you need to have a good idea of who your audience are and what they are looking for. A lot of Instagram advertisers don’t spend enough time on this and end up targeting the wrong audience.

To identify the right audience for your business take a look at the products and services that you offer. Then ask yourself these questions:

• What needs do your products or services fill for people?
• What problems do you solve and what pain points do you alleviate?
• What kind of person would get the most out of your products?

Another good thing to do is to take a close look at what your competitors are doing. Who are their customers?

For your own customer base you need to know the demographics. This includes:

• Age range
• Gender
• Location
• Education
• Income
• Interests

Getting Ad Content Wrong

Even if you really know your audience well (which you must do) it is still possible to make mistakes with the content of your ads and a lot of advertisers do this. You must provide content in your Instagram ads that will connect with your audience.

Your content must accurately reflect your products and services and your brand positioning. Also it is essential that you do not over hype your content and make it too sales orientated. The aim is to provide value and inspire Instagram users.

Your Instagram Ads need persuasive captions. When you are creating your captions be sure that it reflects the image in your ad. Be sure to use the right hashtags and provide a compelling call to action.

Ignoring the quality of Images and Videos

It’s all about the visuals. Advertisers know that Instagram is a visual platform but a lot of them do not pay enough attention to the quality of their images and videos. There is no excuse for this as there are plenty of tools around to make your visuals great.

Pay special attention to the lighting. There are apps available to adjust this. Make your videos interesting by providing different perspectives. Consider what is in the background for your images and videos.

The Benefits Of Instagram Ads

Instagram now has over one billion active users and the platform is growing very fast. It was not so long ago that they announced that they had 700 million active users and now it is over a billion. Instagram is a very popular social platform and there is no sign of this changing.

This means there is a great deal of marketing potential with Instagram. It has the highest levels of engagement of all of the major social platforms at around 4.2%. Facebook and Twitter combined can only manage around 0.1% engagement. Here are the major benefits of advertising on Instagram:

Huge User Base that is still growing

Instagram is growing at an alarming rate and now has more than a billion active users. The estimates suggest that this growth will continue in the next few years so it offers you a huge potential audience.

It is connected to Facebook

Facebook owns Instagram so you will find targeting your audience a lot easier using Facebook data and tools. You can set up everything for your Instagram Ads through Facebook including audience identification, budgeting and ad creation.

This is great news if you have used Facebook Ads before. There is no need for you to learn about Instagram advertising from scratch. You can just jump right in and create ads for both social platforms.

Non Intrusive Ads

Instagram Ads will not annoy Instagram users like ads on other social platforms do. They appear seamlessly to the user which helps with the level of engagement. This is a major benefit as your ads are less likely to be skipped.

Higher Engagement Rate

Engagement is everything with social media marketing and Instagram has the highest levels of engagement for any social platform. If you create your ads properly then you will receive comments, likes and shares like never before.

Success through Awareness

With Instagram Ad campaigns, success is measured based upon awareness. You will be able to see your follower counts and growth, the reach that your ads are getting and the level of likes and comments.

Instagram perfect for Mobile Users

These days everyone has a smartphone with a high quality camera included. Smartphone users are usually very interested in social media and Instagram is usually their number one choice. Many users will user their camera phones as an amateur photographer and post their pictures on their Instagram account.

Get the best results with Instagram Ads

Instagram Ads usually provide the best results in terms of cost and return on investment. It is a very effective marketing channel and it is quicker and easier to post compelling ads on Instagram than it is on other social media channels.

If you are not taking advantage of the marketing opportunities provided by Instagram then you need to start right now. You can set up an Instagram account for free and easily convert it to a business account so that you can place ads.

The user base is huge and will only get bigger. With the Facebook integration you can identify your target audience precisely and target them with your advertising messages. There are different types of ads that you can post depending on the needs of your business.

When you know your audience really well you will be able to provide them with exactly what they are looking for using Instagram Ads. The cost per click is cheaper than other platforms so you will get the best bang for your buck.

The Different Types Of Instagram Ads

More and more businesses are turning to Instagram for their advertising these days. Not only does Instagram have a very large user base but it is also the social platform with the highest level of engagement. Instagram have made it easier for businesses by offering a number of different types of ad:

Instagram Photo Ads

Photo ads are the most common type of ad on Instagram. This is not surprising as sharing photos and images is the most popular thing to do on the platform. A number of business are taking advantage of photo ads to promote their brands, their products and services, their upcoming launches and events and a great deal more.

When you use a photo ad the image must be relevant to whatever you are promoting. You can add a compelling caption to your photo to persuade users to take the action that you want. Use the right hashtags in the caption and you will extend the reach of your ad. Many large and small brands use a lot of photo ads for their campaigns.

Post Boosting or Sponsored Ads

If you have a business account on Instagram then you can boost posts that you have already made to extend the reach of the posts. Boosted ads will appear in the home feed of their target audience and they can contain a direct website link, an online store or the user’s profile page.

Some businesses use sponsored ads to promote giveaways and contests. They do this to increase the amount of participation that the original post achieved. This can be very successful with increasing engagement levels too.

Instagram Story Ads

Stories are very popular on Instagram and around 80% of the active users post a story at least twice a week. You can generate a great deal of traffic through stories as they are popular with Instagram users.

When you create a story ad it will usually appear when an Instagram user is switching between one story and another. You can add a direct link to your website from a story ad or a link to your profile. Stories will only appear for a few seconds and once they are gone that is it. They are still a good ad choice though.

Instagram Video Ads

Video is an immensely popular choice of media with social users and this is certainly the case on Instagram. The view rate for videos is much higher than it is for other media types. You can post a 30 to 60 second video ad and these can be full ads or teasers.

If you create the right kind of videos then video ads will probably bring you a lot of success. You can get some really high viewing numbers with the right video ad and you can add direct links and a call to action in the caption.

Instagram Carousel Ads

If you want to showcase a number of different products in your ad then you need to go for a carousel ad. Instagram users are used to swiping through a number of different images in a carousel and this usually means higher engagement levels.

As with the other type of ads you can add a captivating caption with a call to action and a direct link back to your website, store or profile. So use carousel ads when you want to get the word out about a range of your products.

Instagram Ads 101

Instagram Ads are fast becoming the number one choice for businesses that want to get the word out about their brand and their products and services. There are a number of good reasons for this including the staggering growth of the social platform and its high levels of engagement.

How does an Instagram Ad look?

There are different types of Instagram Ads but the good thing is that they look a lot like regular posts. They will have the word “Sponsored” on them but apart from that they look and feel like a normal post.

With ordinary posts it is not possible to add external links to your website. You can add direct links in Instagram Ads as well as a call to action button to persuade a user to take a specific action. The different types of ad have different call to action buttons available.

How do you create an Instagram Ad?

Facebook now owns Instagram and you can use the Facebook Ad tools when setting up your Instagram Ads. This is good because you can use the advanced tools in Facebook to target your specific audience based on demographics, interests, location and more.

You can satisfy a number of business objectives with Instagram Ads. These objectives are:

Brand awareness

If you want to increase the awareness of your brand then you need to select this option. When you do this you will maximize the number of impressions for your ad among the audience that you have specified.

Reach

If you want your ad to be seen by the largest number of people in your target audience then go with the “Reach” option.

Traffic

This is the best objective to choose if your goal is to increase the number of clickthroughs to your website or online store. You achieve this by using persuasive call to action buttons.

App Installs

If you have an app and want to increase the number of installs then select this objectives option.

Engagement

Increasing your engagement levels is always a good thing to do on social media so choose this objectives option if you want more comments, likes and shares or you want users to show up for a specific event.

Video

If you want to increase the number of views to your videos then this is the best objectives option. You can use videos to put out brand messages or showcase your products. Do this in an inspiring and creative way and you will get great reach and high levels of engagement.

Conversions

This is the objectives option to choose if you want to increase the level of conversions on your website.

Identify your Audience

Once you have chosen your desired objective you can now identify your target audience by selecting users based on their age, gender, interests, behaviors, location and more. Once you have create an audience you can save it for use with other ad campaigns.

This is a very important step. With 80% of the users on Instagram following a business you want to make sure that you get this right and that your advertising message will resonate with your target audience.

Choose the right Ad Type

Instagram offers a number of different types of ad and these include:

• Boost or sponsored ad – you can extend the reach of an existing post
• Image Ad – use a single image for promotion
• Video Ad – use a video for promotion
• Stories Ad – base your ad on a story
• Carousel Ad – use multiple images in your ad

Microsoft Leaders Are Asked to Showcase 3 Skills. Recent Psychology Research Says You Should Too...

Everyone knows about viral videos. They dominate the news when they happen and they spread like wildfire on social media. But how do these viral videos get started in the first place? Are they designed that way or is it just a happy accident? The fact is, both are true. There have been viral videos that were carefully designed to have as high probability as possible of going viral, and the effort succeeded. There are also other videos – in fact the majority of videos that go viral – that do so against all odds and completely by accident.

How to Know If the Video Will Go Viral or Not

If you want to know if a video will go viral or not, you need to look at the characteristics that make up the video. This doesn’t mean the production value, nor does it really mean the subject matter. Instead, you want to see if it has the characteristics that make it impact you emotionally and want tell your friends about it. When something changes someone’s life, even in a very small way, they want to tell her friends about it. A viral video touches someone either in a good way – or sometimes in a bad way – it makes them want to share it.

Tips to Give a Video the Best Chance of Going Viral

If you want to give your video the best chance of going viral you should start with creating a short but effective video. You don’t want a video that is too long because people are going to want to sit through a 10 minute video even if it’s good. You should keep your video about the same length of the song – 3 to 4 minutes.

Make sure that your video conveys some sort of message you want the viewer to come away with something when they leave – something that is going to be simple enough for them to easily share with others.

You also want to make sure that there is some sort of emotional connection – some sort of human touch that works on emotions. As mentioned, viral videos work because people have an emotional connection with them and they want to share it with others.

These things may not make a viral video at all. In fact, you could follow the exact same steps that other viral videos followed and not have your video go viral because much of it depends upon chance.