One of the things that you can do to create an effective video that could get people to use your company or buy your products and services is a video marketing campaign featuring customer testimonials. You want to use actual customer testimonials if at all possible. People can tell when the person is not being genuine and besides, you have to identify actors as such when you make a video for profit. Here are some great tips so that you can use customer testimonials in your video marketing strategy and can get views and traffic.

First, you want the testimonial to feel as natural and as genuine as possible. That means that you are going to want to use actual customers who have enjoyed your products or services and don’t mind talking about them on camera. In order to capture that natural and genuine spirit on video you probably are going to want to write them a script either. A much better idea is to let them talk and then use editing to create a concise testimonial that will keep the viewer’s attention.

Second thing is you want the video to be interesting. This is done many different ways. First, make sure that you choose a background or setting that is interesting to the eye but not so interesting that it detracts from the person on the screen. You can ask them to where a colorful outfit or something that will contrast nicely with the background. Obviously, you also want to make sure that what they are saying is interesting. Storytelling comes into play here. If you can get them to tell a story with her testimonial it will have much more of an impact than if not.

You also want to make sure that the video is relevant to whatever it is that your marketing and that viewers go away with a message that they’ll remember. In fact, this may be the most important part of creating a good marketing video. If you can create a message in a video that resonates with people they are going to share it. On the other hand, if you don’t make an emotional connection with your video you are going to have much success with it no matter how many views you get. Make sure that the video has an impact emotionally on every single person that watched it.

If you’re getting in the video marketing, you should definitely look around the Internet and find out what the pros are doing. The people who are being the most successful when it comes to marketing their videos and getting views are the ones who will teach you how to grow your own video marketing strategy so that you can start to get the traffic that you want. Here are a few strategies that have worked well for some of the biggest video marketing campaigns out there.

The Dove Campaigns

The beauty brand of has been making viral video content for several years now. They have a team that is put together several winning campaigns based upon the idea that all women are beautiful no matter the size, shape, skin color or other attribute. One recent campaign had them placing signs and then allowing people to choose between two different doors that they had to enter through on a busy building. One sign said ‘beautiful’ and the other ‘average.’ It was such a fascinating social experiment, and the people that actually walk through the doors and then were interviewed afterward were touched so much that the campaign went viral, which is what Dove intended.

Google Earth

Recently, Google Earth had a campaign where they used a person that was searching for his family. This story had all of the ingredients that would make up a viral video campaign and it was definitely designed to be talked about and get shared. That’s because people felt like they could relate to the person that was searching for their family and because the story was so touching. Of course, at the climax of the video, users could share in the joy that the person the video featured was experiencing. This is a perfect example of using human emotion to create a viral video.

American Greetings

You might remember the American Greetings campaign where they posted a video that said it was seeking a candidate for a particular job. This job, the interviewer said, was 24 hours a day and required things like the equivalent of a medical degree, a degree in culinary arts and many other requirements. In fact, the job didn’t even pay anything and you would have to work overtime on Christmas and other holidays. This was obviously a brilliant campaign that made everyone who watched it think of their mother – the person who actually does that job and meets all those requirements.

One of the big types of marketing videos that are out there is tutorial videos. Why does this video type get made so often? Because it works; people are always looking to learn how to do something and creating a tutorial video that is either the only one out there that shows them how to do this particular thing or is the best out there of all of the ones available will allow your tutorial video to rise to the top and be an effective marketing video.

What Can You Make a Tutorial Video about?

You can make a tutorial video on anything that you can solve within your industry. You may be an expert in other areas as well, and can easily make tutorial videos in that area, but unless you stick with your niche you’re going to have a hard time naturally incorporating marketing into the video which is the entire point.

So, you can make a tutorial video about common problems that people have with some product or service within your industry. For example, if you have created a technological product and you know that some people have had trouble with a particular feature, you could make a tutorial video on this feature and how to resolve it and this will build your brand as well as create customer loyalty. It may also advertise to people who don’t have that particular product, but need it.

Of course, an even better way is to create a tutorial video on solving a problem that your product or service actually fixes. If you can create a tutorial video and show people that are trying to solve an issue that it can easily be resolved by buying your product or service you will make sales. This is the most effective way to use a tutorial-based video marketing strategy.

How Do You Make a Tutorial Video?

Making a tutorial video is rather easy. If you are using an actual product make sure that you can set it in front of you so that people can see what you are doing. If the solution to whatever problem they’re facing is a service then you can use an approach where you simply talk to the camera. Look at some of the more successful tutorial videos on YouTube and use the same techniques that they use if you want to create the most successful tutorial video possible.

If you’re getting into video marketing, you’re going to want to create a strategy that will get you results. But how do you do that exactly? How do you know what sort of things make up a good video marketing strategy? Here are some tips to help you know what your strategy should include and ensure that you will be effective at video marketing.

First of all, you should definitely stick to a publishing schedule. There are multiple studies that show that the most effective video marketers – or marketers of anything else – are those that publish on a regular schedule. That includes Twitter, blog posting and much more. People just like to see regular content when they expect. This is a great way to grow your followers and make sure that your video marketing is reaching an audience.

The second tip is to keep your video short. A period of 3 to 5 minutes is the ideal links for a video that you want to be shared and viewed as often as possible. If you make your video to short, it is going to make an impact in people’s minds when they watch it. If you make your video too long, they aren’t going to finish it. You need to make it within the optimal window the people have gotten use to watching.

Third, you should definitely incorporate customer content into your video somehow. People respond much better when is other people making videos than if there is a company behind them. People simply distrust videos that are obviously made by companies and so it takes a lot more good content for them to get shared easily. If you can get some of your customers to help you with your viral marketing efforts, you’ll be much more successful.

Finally, you should always include a call to action. The call to action is a vital part of video marketing – or any other type of marketing – but many people skip it for some reason. If you provide a call to action people are going to know what to do next. That means that you are going to prod them in a certain direction and some of them will go that direction and do whatever it is that the video was asking them to do. If you don’t provide a call to action, there is little chance of that happening.

There are many businesses out there that could benefit from video marketing but there are some that definitely could use the strategy more than others. Here are some of the types of businesses that should definitely try to incorporate video marketing into their advertising strategy.

Healthcare Businesses

Healthcare businesses should definitely invest in video marketing. The thing about this industry is, people like to know where they’re going to be treated if they should get sick – or where they’re going to be treated for regular doctor visits. Video marketing can definitely showcase some of that and allow people to be impressed by an organization’s technology or facilities. Healthcare organizations can also take patients on a 360 tour of their entire facility quite easily, and this is a very useful thing for any business that is going to be having people in their facility for any length of time.

Hotels

Hotels are another type of business where people stay for a particular length of time. People want to see in advance what they are going to get if they check into that particular hotel. Video marketing using high-quality footage of the hotel can be very impressive and even if it is a budget motel, people are going to see that they’re getting a clean, comfortable room for a budget price.

Restaurants

Restaurants are another great type of business to use video marketing with. The reason the restaurants should use video marketing over all of the other types of businesses that are out there is that video marketing can easily showcase your food. If you’re giving a tour of your dining room, for example, there will be several different dishes and each shot – assuming that you take the pictures or video when there are people in the dining room. Either way you can incorporate pictures of the food that you serve and this will make people want to come in and try it.

Beauty Salons

Finally, the last group of people who should use video marketing to promote their business are those who work in or own beauty salons. People like to know what the salon looks like, what the stylist looks like and of course, they want to know that the service is good, so featuring customers who have had great hairstyles or other services is the key to video marketing within this industry. Of course, these are just three of the many, many businesses that could benefit from video marketing.

Why Video Marketing Is the Way to Advertise Today

So, you might be wondering why video marketing is so effective today. The fact is, more people than ever prefer to get their information from video. Websites like Hulu and Netflix have replaced libraries and even written content on the web isn’t being read as much as it was in the past. If you want to appeal to your audience, and get the most potential for your marketing efforts, video is the way to go.

Today, when someone hears about a news story or some event that makes them compelled to look it up, some of the first results that come up in Google are always YouTube results. Not to mention the fact that if you click on the video search tab Google, you’ll get a whole list of videos. If you have a video on YouTube for particular keyword, and it is the only video based on that particular keyword, you have a good chance of getting ranked first in the search engines even if you didn’t do any sort of optimization besides the title, description and tags.

This is an important point because there are websites that have spent years ranking for the top spot on a particularly lucrative keyword and if you choose the right one you could outrank them just because Google likes to put video content on top. Of course, there are also a number of video marketing agencies out there that specifically seek out those keywords for their clients and then make videos they’re going to be at the top for those keywords. All that means is, you’re going to have to work harder to find the right keyword. But once you do you could make your video bring in traffic like from no other source.

So, how do you find these keywords? Unfortunately, it is a matter of trial and error. You start with searching the Google keyword planner for keyword phrases that are going to get a lot of traffic and then you search Google with the same keyword phrase to find out if there any videos already ranking for that keyword. You also need to check the video itself because even if a video is placed in that top spot, that doesn’t mean that it is optimized for that keyword and if you can create a video that is more optimized you will take over the top spot.

Make sure to learn how to grow your business with video marketing below

Success Mindset for Achieving Your Goals in Life

The world is made up of three kinds of people. Those who are successful, those who are not yet successful and those who will never be successful. You can see this simply by looking at people who try and try and just never seem to make it even though it’s clear that they possess the knowledge they need.

So why are there people in this world who dream big and have hopes for a successful future, but it all comes to nothing? The answer is that their mindset held them back just like the mindset of the successful propelled them to greater heights and the achievements of their dreams. If you want to make it in anything, you must have a success mindset.

Why a Successful Mindset Makes Your Goals Achievable

Having a success mindset is an important tool because what you think is in control of what you’ll do. If you think you can’t, you won’t. If you think you’re a failure, you are. If you think dreams come true for other people and not for you, then you’re right.

You’re creating your own version of mental roadblocks that then lead to physical roadblocks because you develop the mindset of “Why bother to try when you’re only going to end up failing?”

You think this way because you haven’t yet realized the power of mindset. It can guide or affect everything you do in your personal or professional life. The reason that it has this power is because you are the fuel that feeds into the belief.

Then you will act according to your mindset. You’ll act like a failure or you’ll act like a winner. You’ll act defeated or you’ll act triumphant. You might not have the same education as the next person.

You might not have the same level of talent. You might not have a lot of money. You might not have the same outgoing personality. But that doesn’t mean that your chances of success are any lower, because your mindset will determine that, not your station in life.

If you don’t believe that, do a quick search on people who became millionaires or who build a successful business from nothing. Your circumstances aren’t the chains that hold you back.

Your mindset is. But it doesn’t have to be. Only you can give it that authority. Once you step up and take control of your mindset, your days feeling like and acting like a failure are over.

Developing a success mindset leads to a change in how you see yourself. You’ll stop having a negative attitude about who you are and what you’re capable of. You’ll stop the thought track in your mind that tells you that you can’t succeed, that you don’t have what it takes.

Stopping that track then boosts your self-esteem. Whatever negative thought or belief that you allow to grow within your mind will grow and flourish like weeds choking out even the tiniest speck of good that you might believe about yourself.

When you develop a success mindset, it allows you to overcome self-criticism. This enables how you view everything to change. It changes your perspective, your ideas, bolsters your goals and gives new and fresh meaning to what you want to achieve.

How do you know if you have a success mindset? You view any failures as an opportunity to learn and grow rather than as stopping points. Every success that you want is doable by having a success mindset.

When you have that, your perspective shifts. You see obstacles as challenges. You believe you can overcome whatever obstacle is thrown at you. When you view problems, you might not automatically know the answer to them, but you believe that you’ll get the answer.

The vision that you have for your life shifts when you have a success mindset. It creates a determination within you that propels you forward and allows you to succeed regardless of the effort it takes.

You don’t quit until your goals are accomplished. With a success mindset, you don’t see circumstances that hold you back. You see chances to grow. You develop a strong can do attitude that allows you try where previously you might have allowed circumstances to keep you stuck at the starting line.

You have to remember that a success mindset envisions triumph, which improves your ability to reach the goals that you set for yourself. Think of your mindset as a gate that either opens for opportunities or closes to them.

​

Change Hopeless Negativity to an Optimistic Success Mindset 

One of the reasons that people develop a sense of hopeless negativity is because they view their life goals, their relationships, their dreams and their needs in light of what should have been instead of what is.

They feel a sense of disappointment that things haven’t worked out the way that they want, so they begin to close ranks around possibilities. People with hopeless negativity fail to see life as it can be and only focus on the bad or what’s prevented them from succeeding.

People who think this way don’t see their situation as ever improving. Their belief is that everything is bad. They live day to day expecting the worst to happen. It usually does because mindset leads to behaviors or habits that create the existence they believe.

So they end up not trying and they settle for the kind of life they don’t want, failing to see that the one they do want is only a mindset change away. Changing your hopeless negativity to an optimistic success mindset isn’t difficult.

It just takes some practice. Learn to view every situation though a positive lens. You can do this by seeking the positive in the situation, in the person or in your thoughts. What happens when you do this is it shifts your mindset away from what’s not good and puts it on what is.

Take the time every single day to reflect on the good that you experienced. If you look for the positive, you will find it regardless of whatever is going on - regardless of what did or didn’t happen.

You have to stop dwelling on the immediate and keep your view settled on the outcome. Every positive journey will have negative parts to it. If you stay focused on the negative, you can miss the bigger picture.

Your mindset can get so clouded over by the negative that you completely miss the good things that are waiting for you to take hold and move you ahead toward your success.

You can change hopeless negativity, but not holding onto those thoughts or attitudes. These are things that you usually dwell on. And wherever your attention is, your mindset follows.

For example, if you continually dwell on all that needs repairing in your home, you’ll start to dislike where you live. You’ll feel miserable and start wishing you could move. Then you’ll start thinking about how you can’t afford to move and you’ll feel trapped.

So the one negative thought mushrooms and becomes this huge thing that makes you feel hopeless. Then you feel helpless to change your situation - all because your mind says there’s nothing you can do.

But if you look at the repairs in your home as an opportunity to fix it up the way you want it to be, or to make improvements that you like better, you’ll notice that your attitude has changed about it.

The attitude changed because the mindset did. Examine any negative or hopeless thought that comes into your mind. Take charge of it and ask yourself what opportunities are hidden in the situation.

Then find them and focus on those instead. Make it a habit to seek the positive and let it be how you start and end your day. Begin your day by thinking a positive thought. It can be something about it being a beautiful day or something like you get to have your favorite cup of coffee.

End your day the same way. Start a habit of writing down at least 3 good things that happened to you that day, that you learned, that you accomplished. This habit is what teaches you to notice what’s good.

When you look for the positive, it makes you feel better and it changes your perspective from one that life is happening to – to something that you’re in control of. You discover that you make your own happiness and that it’s not determined by external haves or have nots.

You must keep in mind that whichever mindset you feed is the one that grows. If you feed the negative mindset, it blooms into something that can easily overwhelm the good. If you feed the good mindset, it blooms and gains control rather than the negative side.

Becoming Sure of Your Success Mindset Until You Follow Through

It’s one thing to talk about a success mindset. Another to live it. You might want a success mindset but not be sure about your ability to achieve it or unsure if you can carry on until you do follow through and reach your goals.

Your environment can often determine your ability to follow through. The rule of thumb is always negative in, negative out. Spend enough time in a negative environment and you’ll end up affected.

If all the people you have in your circle practice a negative mindset and they seem to see the problems instead of the hope in even trying, before long, you’ll be spouting the same words they’re speaking.

You’ll see gloom and doom. You’ll see all the reasons why you can’t accomplish your dreams. You’ll think about how success is for others, not you. You’ll look at their lives and see how they too, are just like you.

They didn’t succeed, so what makes you think you can? Everyone has their own personality. They’re the sum parts of the way they were raised, the friends they have, the habits they perform.

But what carries the a lot of weight in anyone’s life are the people that you hang with. These are the people that you look to for advice. They’re the ones that you complain to on the phone.

They’re the ones that influence your decisions. If your environment is made up of negative influences, it has to change in order for you to succeed. You can become sure of your success mindset by reframing what you’re up against.

You might feel that there’s no way you can succeed. So reframe that what you’re up against isn’t something insurmountable. Instead, it’s something that’s going to offer you a learning experience.

What this does is take you out of your comfort zone and allow you to push beyond self-imposed mindset limitations. You’ll be able to see the accomplishments rather than the failures.

You must push past the limits that you’ve set for yourself in the past. As you stretch your mindset, it lets go of the mental blocks that hold your success hostage. It frees you up to take risks, to step beyond what you thought you were capable of.

Instead of thinking that there’s no way you can succeed, you’ll begin to view yourself as someone who’s in control of his success. You follow through by welcoming mistakes as an opportunity to learn and rise above the issues.

When you practice a success mindset, it lets you choose to move. It also lets you acknowledge that you need to learn with grace rather than allowing it to be the thing that holds you back.

You become sure of your success mindset when you change your thought processes. When you stop going through life saying, “I can’t” or “I might fail” and instead saying, “Good things are going to happen for me,” then by your actions, you make that positive outcome a reality.

Action Steps You Can Take to Develop a Success Mindset

Practice positive affirmations. Doing this will help you realize that you’re good enough and that what you need to succeed, you already possess. Positive affirmations can help you see yourself as worthy and strong as well as capable.

These affirmations can help you break free from a negative mindset that leads to self sabotaging behavior such as not even trying to go after success. Your brain reacts to repeated positive affirmations and accepts them as truth.

When you speak them, use the present tense. Choose affirmations such as, “I am successful and talented. I recognize my abilities and other people recognize my abilities.”

Your brain then begins to create positive thoughts based on that affirmation. Your body and your attitude then follow along. Your action steps will be based in the belief that you can achieve your goals.

Follow success stories. Find the stories that motivate and inspire you. Watch documentaries of people that have similar goals that you also want to reach. Study what they did and how they overcame obstacles.

Watching other successful people in action fills you with a can-do attitude. You start thinking that if that person can do it, then so can you. Create a vision board. When you create a board that uses a selection of images representing what your success is, it creates an image of what can be.

The board is a tangible view of what you want to achieve. When you have a vision board, you use the power of visualization to prompt a success mindset. The board sinks into your subconscious mind and lets you see things you may not have realized before.

A vision board acts as a reminder that success is yours. Having one can help you choose action when fear creeps in. It can also help you remember to believe in yourself and to keep your brain focused on the positive, which is the outcome of your goals.

The board should be a visual representation of your success story unfolding. Practice the law of attraction. Know what it is that you want to attract to your life. Believe that you have it in you to make all your dreams come true.

CB University

If you want to become an online entrepreneur, there’s never been a better time to learn how to do that than right now. If you’re ready to launch your online career as a marketer, you can do so by enrolling in a course like ClickBank University.

You can learn how to become an online entrepreneur on your own, but you’ll spend a lot of time trying to piece together all of the information that you need in order to be successful.

Plus, you’ll make a lot of mistakes through trial and error, especially if you’re starting a business that you don’t know anything about. You also need to understand how marketing works so that you build it the right way from the very beginning.

If you’ve never known frustration on a grand scale, you’ll get plenty of that when you’re trying so hard to create a career in online marketing but it takes weeks and sometimes months to learn what to do and what to avoid.

When you take a course that teaches you how to do it from start to finish, that training puts you ahead of the game and does away with the frustration of testing and failing. You get to take the information that you garner from people who’ve been carved a path of success before you.

Once you know what these leaders have done, you can apply the knowledge they used to create their success in your own business. You’ll get insight so that you’ll know which steps you need to take right now, which steps to wait before trying, and which steps you should absolutely not take.

So while you might be spending money to learn, you’re also saving money because you’re not throwing it down the drain with devastating mistakes. Earning an income will happen faster for you because you’ll be able to jumpstart your career with the information that you learn.

So what is it exactly that you need to learn with online marketing? Well, you may want to create a product to market. One of the first things that you can learn when you take a course or program will be on the topic of product creation.

Make sure that this course or program is well-versed in the area of digital products. The type of digital product that you can create to sell online is really up to you. You can use the knowledge that you gain to create your own information eBooks.

You can write these books (or hire a writer to save yourself time) and teach people about pet care, gardening, weight loss, fitness - whatever it is that you have an interest in and where the market or the niche is hot.

When a niche is trending, there’s a high demand for information about that topic and that’s the kind of stuff that you can learn through comprehensive training. Remember that any class that you take that teaches you how to become an online entrepreneur will give you the knowledge but leave the direction afterward up to you.

So if you want to start a business about relationships - dating, marriage, or navigating divorce, then you can do that. If you think that you don’t have any information that you could use to create a digital product, you’re probably just not thinking hard enough.

Everyone is an expert in something – or at the very least, you know more than someone else. It might be canning and preserving. It might be fishing. Maybe it’s decorating a home or playing poker.

All you have to do is take the knowledge you learn from the marketing course and apply it to whatever you’re good at or what interests you. The course that you take can also teach you about affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. But in order to be successful, you have to know which products and tools are best to use for that business model, how to get started, what to avoid and more.

Once you have the knowledge to succeed as an online marketer, you can create your own courses teaching others what you did and that opens up yet another income stream for you.

But you have to take the first step and get started with the right course. There are numerous benefits to becoming an online marketer. You get to be your own boss. You decide your schedule. You choose your time off. When you want a vacation, you simply go. If you don’t like working with a client, you don’t have to.

The business is online 24/7. So you can make money even when you’re not actively “at work.” Online marketing is a low cost start up. You can bootstrap your way to success. Because of this, it’s the perfect career for people who are struggling financially right now.

You don’t have to quit your job to get started. You can begin your career as a side hustle and grow it to the point where you can quit your job. The business has a low overhead because you can do the work yourself.

You get to choose the projects that you want to work on versus having them assigned to you, which means you don’t ever have to work on something that you dislike. Goals will be something that you can set yourself.

You’ll get to decide where the bar is - how much you want to make and what you want to do with your business. The personal growth factor is also up to you. You get to decide what skills you want to enhance or which ones you’d like to delegate.

You can change direction at any point with an online marketing business. If you don’t like the way you’re headed, you can redirect easily. You can grow multiple streams of income through online marketing.

You can add multiple niches if you want to. You can grow your business and develop your skills to the point where you become an expert speaker or teacher of online marketing and lead others so that they can change their lives just like you did.

Why Getting Better at Goal Setting Will Make You More Productive

Being productive is a skill that many successful people value. The reason is that when you are productive, you get more done, make more money, and still experience freedom in your life. One way to accomplish more is to get better at goal setting.

• Goals Provide Focus – When you set goals properly using SMART goal setting practices, you will end up being very focused on the results that you want to see. When you are results-focused, it’s easier to concentrate on getting it done.

• Goals Enable You to Measure Progress Better – When you have a specific goal set, for example, if you’re writing a book and your goal is to write 1000 words a day, you can measure your progress based on that goal.

• Goals Allow You to Overcome Procrastination – When you set goals correctly, you’ll also end up with steps to take to reach the goal you set. These action steps can be transferred to certain days in your calendar. When you are overwhelmed, just look at today’s entry and do only that without a thought about the rest.

• Goals Are Motivating – When you write out all your goals on paper, and you can look at what is happening, as well as track your progress, it can be very encouraging to keep ongoing.

• Goals Make Even Hard Processes Easier – As you are setting a goal if you’re doing it right, you’ll create steps to accomplish the goal too. You’ll know how you’re going to do it before you start.

• Goals Fuel Your Ambition – The inspiration you’ll gain as you create your goals, and the steps to achieving the goal, will help you believe in yourself even more than you already do. You can see right on paper how things will happen.

• Goals Hold You Accountable – When you set up goals and put the steps to achieving in your schedule, you can then see where you’re falling short or where you’re going forward.

• Goal Setting Shows You What You Really Want – The cool thing about developing goals is the ability to look at the finished goals that you create and see what you really want out of life. It’s what you focus most on.

If you want to learn about how to set clear goals, do some research about setting SMART goals. This type of goal setting will be even better for your productivity, as they are better thought out and follow a transparent process.

Be More Assertive When You’re Shy

The very first thing you need to do if you want to be more assertive in your life is to understand what assertive is and what it isn’t. Being assertive does not mean that you are aggressive. You don’t have to be rude to be assertive. To be more assertive simply means that you stand up for yourself, speak up at the time that it’s needed, and respect the rights of others.

Prepare and Practice

Whenever you want to be better at something, the best thing you can do is overprepare and practice. You can practice by doing assertive things in a small way, such as practicing saying no. But you can also use visualization to practice so that when you find yourself in specific situations, you can fall back on the way you visualized it.

Find a Few Seconds of Courage

You don’t really need to be brave for very long to speak up for yourself. You simply need a few seconds of courage to stand up and say what you wanted to say calmly, clearly, and directly.

Choose Your Communication Channel Wisely

When you have something to say that is important to you think about your audience. What is the best way for them to receive the information from you? Is it best heard in person or best in a letter or an email? How about a text. It’s important to think about what you want to say and how you want to say it before doing it.

Act Confident Even When You’re Not

Your granny likely told you to “fake it until you make it” and there is a lot of goodness and truth in that advice. However, don’t think that you’re being dishonest when you act confident, even if you don’t fully feel it right away. Most people aren’t really going to know you’re nervous. Just speak up anyway. The more you do it, the more it’ll feel natural.

Speak Slowly and Remember to Breathe

When you do finally speak up at the right time, take a deep breath, and say what you need to say slowly and clearly. Speaking fast might make you trip over your words and cause miscommunication.

Make Eye Contact with People

A lot of people have issues with eye contact, but they are completely honest people. Even if you have an issue with it, understand that most people in the USA, at least find it off-putting if you don’t make eye contact. But remember you don’t have to make eye contact all the time, just part of the time. It’s not a staring contest.

Know That Saying No is Okay

Learning to say no is part of being assertive. If you’re a people pleaser, it’s easy to get into the habit of always saying yes and being that quiet person that everyone counts on. Try saying no to some of the things you don’t want to do or really don’t have time to do as practice.

Learn to Make “I” Statements

When you speak, since it’s not an academic paper, use “I” statements. I think, and I feel are the ways you can express yourself to others in a way that makes them hear you. Because what you think, and feel is important.

If your issue is genuinely shyness, or about being an introvert, practicing will help you become more assertive. However, if you think you have deeper issues such as social anxiety you may want to speak to a professional to help you move past it. Hiring a counselor or a life coach can help you break through if you’re having issues getting there.