Two Basic Skills
31 Jul
If you are trying to make money online there is a good chance that you will soon come to the realization that there is a huge learning curve as far as skill sets go. Rather than dive head first into the mountain of technical skills that you will inevitably learn in the near future, it might be preferable to think about the basic skills that you already possess as well as how you will expand and refine these skills to suite your online business. There are two basic skills that your online business will benefit from: critical thinking, and effective communication. Some of you may shy away from these two skills and immediately click the back button on your internet browser (please don’t) but try and hear me out. As far as critical thinking goes let’s just say I’m not referring to the ability to interpret the works of William Shakespeare. And by effective communication I don’t necessarily mean you should be good at sharing your feelings and thoughts with people (your online business may not be the place for that). So what role will these skills play in your online business? Let’s discuss each of these skills one at a time to give them the appropriate amount of attention they deserve.
We will discuss why effective communication is important to your online business first. Generally speaking there are two scenarios where you will benefit from effective communication skills. The first scenario you will need effective communication skills is when you are interacting with your clients. Whether you are sending them an email, making a post on your blog, tweeting, or providing information to them via your website content you will need to reach an understanding. To reach this type of understanding your communications should be clear and concise. If your message is unclear it will make it difficult at best and more than likely impossible to profit from the potential client. Your communication should be to the point (which means that it makes a point) as well or at least makes efficient use of the medium (i.e. writing, video, or audio). People tend to have this sort of “instant gratification” mindset when it comes to behavior that occurs online. If it takes you too long to tell people what they need to hear by the time you are finished they will have moved on along with your chance to make a sale. When it comes to the online business world assessing the feedback of your communication can be a challenge. Your clients may not directly communicate with you to provide you with said feedback. For starters if part of your communication process isn’t working properly the only indication might be a general lack of sales. This is why tools that provide you with metrics/reports are so important to your online business. These tools will help provide you with a way of interpreting what your clients are trying to tell you. Is your website traffic leaving your homepage after two seconds? After your third email are the majority of your clients unsubscribing from your list? Do thirty percent of your buyers return the product you sold them? These are the types of questions you can answer using metric tools and understanding this “feedback” is the online equivalent of “listening.” The second scenario where effective communication is important is when you begin to outsource. Outsourcing will require a more direct form of communication but unlike the first scenario you will benefit from direct feedback. Later in your online business you will not be able to carry out every task and as a result you will outsource some of your work. Being able to manage your tasks will require that your workers understand what you expect from them. If you fail to reach an understanding the result will end badly with a great deal of wasted time and money. One of the best ways to avoid this situation is to ask the person that is charged with this task to repeat the instructions in their own words. This tip alone has saved me hundreds of dollars.
Have you ever heard the phrase one size fits all? Well when it comes to online businesses this phrase couldn’t be further from the truth. First of all the internet is constantly evolving when compared to other areas of business. What worked yesterday might not work today, and what works with one market/product might not work with another. In order for your online business to survive you will need to learn how to adapt. This is why critical thinking is one of the most important skills you can learn to utilize in your online business. For example one of the first steps you will take in your online business is selecting your business model (how you will make money). You will have to put that model into action, and then critique how well it works for your business. In order to make effective decisions you will have to gather information, analyze that information; and then make modifications to the processes involved, or examine competing models and repeat this procedure. If you apply this skill to almost every part of your online business it will be difficult for you to fail.
When considering an online business it’s important that you take into consideration the skills necessary to succeed. Stereotypically people will be frightened at the prospect of failing because of their lack of technical skills, but really it’s the basic skills that will carry your online business. After all, you can learn the technical skills over time. You might not realize this but if you have these two skills you are actually already ahead of the competition. You should also be aware that effective communication and critical thinking skills aren’t completely unrelated, often times you will be coordinating these skills to reach the same end. By now you should be feeling pretty confident about starting your online business and ready to face the challenge of learning some of those technical skills.
