What is Feng Shui

Feng Shui is an ancient art and science that was developed by the Chinese more than 3,000 years ago. It is a complex body of knowledge that if practiced properly will assure the person good health and fortune.  

Feng Shui is made of two words. The first is wind while the second is earth. Its teachings are based on Taoist vision and understanding of nature on the belief that the land is alive and is filled with energy. This in turn could make a kingdom successful or bring it to its downfall.  

Aside from the water and the wind, Feng Shui is influenced by the theory of 3 other elements namely wood, fire and metal. It is this that also guides Chinese astrological sciences including the times, dates of birth and years as well as colors, seasons, directions and the planets.  

The main tools for Feng Shui are the compass and the Ba-Gua. The Ba-Gua is an octagonal shaped grid containing the symbols of the I Ching which is the ancient oracle on which this is based. 

Those who believe in Feng Shui say that those who know the Bagua of their home will be able to understand specific areas of their life. 

The feng shui compass is also called lo-pan. This is used to access deeper information about a site or a building. It consists of bands of concentric rings arranged around the magnetic needle. "Lo" means "everything" and "pan" means "bowl", which can be interpreted as the key to the mysteries of the universe. 

Through the years, several different schools of feng shui have emerged. If you are able to master the basic level, it is said that you will start to see powerful results which could be to your advantage both at home and in business.  

Those who practice Feng Shui see it as a double edged sword because it can be mutually productive and also destructive.  

In a productive cycle, fire produces earth which produces metal which produces water which produces wood and the fire again. In a destructive cycle, wood destroys earth which destroys water which destroys fire which destroys metal and then destroys wood.  

To give you an idea what this all means, letís say you were born on a fire year. Too much water in the home is not good because water destroys fire. On the other hand, if you put a lot of wooden dÈcor into your home, then things will be good because wood produces fire. Aside from that, experts say that you will more likely prosper if you sleep on the south side of the house or apartment.  

But the ordinary Joe does not have time to understand that. This is why many people these days consult Feng Shui experts when they are building an office or their home. By being able to have someone who understands these cycles, harmony and productivity is achieved.  

So what is Feng Shui? For those who donít believe in it, simply one way of making sure that you will get good fortune. As for those who take it seriously, it is what creates the essence of life around us. There must always be a harmonious balance between these elements so that you can live a healthy and meaningful life. 

Advantages of Applying Feng Shui in Your Life

Many people are fascinated with Feng Shui and with many good reasons. While others generally believe that it is just some oriental superstitious set of paradigms on interior design (but that is just part of the extensive definition for Feng Shui), the Feng Shui that we know now is actually comprised of various schools of learning and incorporates the different cultures under which it is housed.  

The good thing about the different options pertaining to Feng Shui is that even the layman can actually be able to understand and apply it immediately in their homes without having to spend too much. And apart from that, there are other advantages that only Feng Shui can bring if you can actually open up your mind to try it.

Advantage Number 1: It brings balance to oneís life 

Have you ever found yourself completely overburdened with clutter and unnecessarily stressed out of your wits? Chances are, you are suffering from a visual imbalance of some sort in your surroundings. Now, the best way to introduce some sense of balance is by incorporating elements that provide you with a sense of control in the outer balance of things. If you are able to get some semblance of balance even in things as menial as your furniture, you are bound to find balance in other aspects equally manageable.  

Advantage Number 2: It helps you become more mindful of the little things 

Mindfulness in the little things can actually be a good thing. Some of us tend to be heavily focused on the big things of life that even the minor details like home arrangement and office ergonomics no longer come to play. When these ìminorî aspects of life continue to take a backseat, they tend to accumulate and produce a very stressful environment which can add up to other problems and worries of life. 

Advantage Number 3: It opens up possibilities of meeting new people 

Meeting new people is another bonus of being a Feng Shui enthusiast. When you are applying Feng Shui, chances are, you will be able to find another person within your social network who likes the same stuff and can even help you expand your knowledge on Feng Shui, no matter how limited it is to begin with.  

Advantage Number 4: It gives a fresh perspective on things 

At any given time, a fresh perspective is always welcome. This positive perspective can invite changes for the better. A new way of looking at home arrangement, for example, may actually serve to benefit you in the long run. The fresh perspective brought about by Feng Shui can actually bring about an enrichment of oneís mind.  

Advantage Number 5: It invites prosperity and success 

The main objective of Feng Shui is to invite all the good things to oneís life. Prosperity and success can be more easily within reach and a positive disposition may be expected if Feng Shui is practiced well.  

Advantage Number 6: It has aesthetic appeal 

On top of all the enumerated benefits of Feng Shui, the best would probably be its beauty. The physical appeal of a well-decorated home, interspersed with good Feng Shui techniques, is actually something that you can call a personal heritage that can transcend generations and promote beauty in all aspects, including design of the home and the office. 

The next crucial step in your influencer business plan, is to engage with your audience. That means building a lasting relationship with that audience, so that they will feel as though they are not just reading your blog and watching your social media, but as though they are actually invested and involved in what you are doing.

So how do you build a community around your brand?

Interactions

The first and most obvious way to galvanise a community is to interact with those people following you. To begin with, that means responding to the comments people leave on your posts and profiles, and it means answering direct messages and emails.One of the worst things you can do for your reputation is to ignore these, which makes it seem as though you don’t care about your audience or aren’t interested.

By interacting, you create a dialogue and you make people feel as though they actually know you. A single response can mean a great deal to the right user – so take the time!

If you find that you aren’t getting much action on your posts to begin with, then this could be partly because your audience has grown large enough yet. In this case, you want to try and encourage as much interaction as possible. One big way to do this is simply to invite people to comment in your videos and posts. Instagram has lots of stickers that allow you to invite interactions, while you can simply talk to the camera in YouTube.

One of the BEST ways to encourage your audience to interact with you as an influencer, is to invite them to help out or to get involved with some aspect of the creation of your brand. Let them vote on the content they want to see next, or let them make suggestions for names and the like.

By doing this, they now feel as though they have some ownership of the brand. While this might sound like a bad thing, it’s actually fantastic as far as emotional investment and engagement goes.

Different Mediums

Keep in mind that some forms of communication and some mediums lend themselves far better than others to the process of building authentic relationships with an audience. What works particularly well is live video, as well as stories.

Stories allow you to share moments from your day and your lifestyle, to give your followers a glimpse behind the curtain. You can also use these to run polls, invite questions, and more.

Meanwhile, live video lets you speak directly to your audience and respond to comments. It’s a great way for them to enjoy a little voyeurism and to show that you really are a real person. Use this to show yourself at exciting events, or just to chat with the camera over breakfast.

Engaging With The Community

Another option when it comes to building that initial community isto start by creating contacts in the niche elsewhere. Being active on a big forum or similar in your niche can make a gigantic difference when it comes to creating loyalty and recognition for your personal brand. 

One of the most important initial decisions when you start tocreate a website or new social media platform is which niche youare going to target. This decision will dictate the nature of the kindof content you're going to include, it will impact on the web designand the look of your site, and it will impact on the demographicand types of visitors you will be targeting and dealing with.

There are many factors involved in this decision, and of coursewe will mostly make up our minds here based on what we think islikely to be profitable. Thus we will choose a niche that is a) popular enough to provide a large marketing, but b) not sopopular as to be overcrowded.

But using just these two factors to make up your mind is a verybad idea, and doing so can result in your choosing a niche that isjust plain unsuitable for your site and your SEO. Here we will lookat why some topics should remain off-limits for your website andhow they could be a big mistake.

Example: Technology and Hardware

So let's take the example of technology. As you're looking to workonline you probably have a fair interest in technology and so itmakes sense to choose this as your niche right? Well not if you'reaiming to become a big technology site covering hardware.

Why? Because in order to compete with sites like the Verge andEngadget, you're going to need to have access to all the latestgadgets and tech as it comes out so that you can review it andtake attractive pictures of it. I've seen too many tech sites thatreview perhaps just one phone every now and then and thenwonder why they don't get many visitors.

Likewise, sites like the Verge and Engadget will also cover everypiece of breaking news in that niche as soon as possible. Theywill be able to tell you the specs for a new device long before a one-man site possibly could and that again leaves your tech sitewith no real purpose.

There are more advantages these sites have too: such asreceiving press releases and getting invited to tradeshows.There's just no way that you could start off with that kind ofprivileged access and so your site would always be a second-best. And it's not just technology either: if you create a footballsite then people will expect you to cover what all the teams aredoing and to get interviews, and if you create a comic bookwebsite then you'll need to buy every comic each month. Andread them all...

The Solution To A Saturated Market

So does that mean you can never write about technology or anyother niche that is fast moving? Of course not - it just means thatyou need to recognise your own limitations and specialise.Sidestep the problems mentioned above by writing not about“technology,” but about “indie games,” or “'Kickstarter gadgets.”Or alternatively pick a topic that doesn't need to always beupdated with the latest news like fitness. This allows you to create“ever-green content.”

Better than fitness of course is “fitness for over 50s.” Or “hardcorebodybuilding.” Or “fitness lifestyle for Mums.”

By honing in on a specific area within a niche, you will be able tospeak to a far more specific type of person. You will have asmaller audience, but that audience will be far more engagedbecause you will be targeting them directly with something thatreally speaks to them. Your marketing will become far easier,because you will be able to use the “go-to market” strategy(identify where they spend time) and because you’ll know how tocreate something that your “buyer persona” will respond to.

So don’t just pick a big niche, pick a niche that is more specific toyou. And pick one that will allow you to speak to a particularaudience.

Choosing a Niche You Love and Know

One word of caution is that you should ALWAYS choose a nichethat you know, love, and fully understand. One of the biggestmistakes that companies and “wannabe” influencers will oftenmake, is to choose niches that they don’t really understand orhave any stake in.

It is extremely common for someone with no understanding orinterest in fitness to hire someone to write about fitness for them –who is also a generic writer with no fitness knowledge – and thento hope their content soars.

Firstly, you cannot become an influencer if you don’t practice whatyou preach and demonstrate the lifestyle that you’re promoting.No one wants to follow a fat and out of shape fitness influencer, ora makeup and beauty influencer who doesn’t wear any makeup!

Not only this, but the quality of content will always be FAR higherwhere the writer or creator actually understands and loves thesubject.

THIS is the real key to becoming an influencer. To be aninfluencer, you need to be a thought leader. That means you needa message, and one that is interesting, challenging, andengaging.

The best writer in the world who doesn’t fully understand thefitness niche, will write articles such as “how to get abs” and “howto build big biceps.” These are entirely un-exciting subject mattersthat have been tackled countless times before across hundreds ofwebsites. Suffice to say that this is not enough to build a big andengaged audience.

What’s worse, is that the writer might well rely on resources thatare now out of date – not being fully aware of the most recenttrends and developments in the fitness space.

Conversely, writing yourself as someone who knows and lovesthe subject will result in content that breaks new ground, that ischallenging, and that offers value for other people who know andlove the topic. THIS is how you build a following.

Finally, you need a niche you love simply because you need towrite/talk/post about that thing every single day for years to come.If the topic is bland to you, you won’t manage this.

Creating a Mission Statement and a Logo

Finally, you also need to create a mission statement and logo foryour brand. You’ve chosen your niche, and you’ve honed in on

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HOW TO BECOME AN INFLUENCER

one angle to make it unique and specific to you. Now all that is leftis to create a brand from that concept.

You are the brand remember, so there’s no need to come up witha company name (probably). But what you might also considerdoing, is creating a mission statement.

A mission statement is a statement of intent. This is what willdefine the purpose and message behind your content. What areyou trying to say? To who? And why?

In other words, is your content about “getting filthy rich online andliving the baller lifestyle – wearing suits, getting women, andkitting out your apartment” or is it about “making money onlinedoing something you love, so that you can spend more time withyour family and kids.”

There is a HUGE difference here in the way that you will thereforemarket yourself, that you will promote yourself, and who you willtarget. What’s more, is that this will change your “valueproposition.” That’s the kind of lifestyle you are promoting andoffering, the kinds of benefits that someone should be able to gainby acting more like you and by following you.

Your logo should then speak to this. That is to say that your logoor at least the design choices you make around your website andyour social accounts should all reflect this. If you handle your branding correctly, then someone should be able to look at yoursite or your social media account and instantly know if the contentyou are putting out is right for them!