Want to know the secret to losing weight? It’s diet and exercise.

We all know that’s the truth. And yet we pay tens, hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of dollars to hucksters who tell us they’ve found a miracle pill that will have you shedding pounds while you sleep. Why? Because we want to believe it will work, and the payoff sounds so good, we’re willing to turn a blind eye to reality.

Sometimes those miracle pills or that miracle diet may even work for a short time. You eat nothing but shellfish for a few weeks and lose 20 pounds. But as soon as the diet ends, as soon as you stop taking the pills filled with some sort of homeopathic amphetamines, you gain the weight right back.

There are no shortcuts, the only way to really lose weight and keep it off it diet and exercise.

The same holds true when it comes to marketing your business. The only way to market and advertise for your business consistently is by building a brand through hard work. You’ve got to provide value through the content you share on social media and your website, and good customer service.

We’ll go over topics related to marketing and building your brand through the next several blog posts. Organic marketing, online reviews, search engine optimization, social media marketing, content generation, there are dozens of tools available to help you grow your customer base, generate leads, and increase your profits.

There are a lot of marketing agencies, seminars, white papers, and ads on Facebook and the internet that will tell you they have the shortcut that will allow you to leverage these tools for explosive growth. But the truth is, they’re all just like fad diets. They may work for a short time, but in the end, the weight will come back. The only way to really grow your business and build brand is through providing value to your customers and taking the time to properly show that value creation through your website and social media.

Take search engine optimization as an example. Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm in order to provide the best, most honest search results possible. They’re looking for websites that provide value through accurate information on a given topic. There are those who may figure out ways to trick Google’s algorithm into thinking your website is more informative than it is, but that’s why Google is constantly changing the search algorithms. They’re ferreting out these tricks and backdoor means to rank your page.

So why not put your brand building efforts into simply providing good content that will naturally boost your page rank? Of course you need to make sure Google’s crawlers can find your information and there is some honest work that needs to be done for good SEO but the bulk of the work lies in creating great content.

That’s one reason we’re writing this blog post, as a matter of fact. We’re providing you great content. We hope you’re getting value out of the tips we’re offering on how to optimize your website. When you search Google for search engine optimization, we want you to find this post. Sure, it may tell you how to do SEO yourself, but we’re betting there are a whole lot of people who don’t have the time to do this themselves and they want help. That’s what we’re here for.

You can do the same with your business. Provide valuable content. Give knowledge away for free on your website. Give value to your followers on Facebook. Teach them, provide good information, give away the tips and tricks. If you do it right, you’re building your brand and they’ll still wind up customers.

And doesn’t it feel good to know you’re doing it right? You’re not tricking people into wanting your products, you’re not using fancy graphics and shinny objects to lure in unsuspecting clients. You’re providing value. You’re the wise man building a business on a solid foundation instead of the foolish man building his house upon the sand.

Wether you build that house yourself, or ask us to help you out with the framing and construction, we want you to succeed. We want to provide you with value, wether you get it for free from this blog or you become a client and ask us to help you out.