Work Better, Not Harder

Some people still think there’s a scarcity of information in the world, to be hoarded and divvied out carefully. It's true that information becomes less valuable the more it proliferates... but there's definitely no scarcity. If you are ever concerned about sharing too much information, consider this: someone else is sharing it. If it's your area of expertise, shouldn't you be, too? As information becomes increasingly cheaper, the voice of experience becomes much more valuable. That's because it takes more than information to make a good business decision. Experience and sound advice thoughtfully applied to specific situations are what can make the difference between a success and a big mistake. Give away information for free (the milk) so readers can peek at your secret sauce and realize the extra value they’ll get from working with you (the cow) on their problem. Click to Tweet this Article

There are many marketing benefits to regular blogging or writing for a newsletter. But other - perhaps more important - benefits may not be clear until after you've been doing it a while. Regardless of how much you know, sooner or later you're going to need to do a little online research. Does that article you just wrote really include all the important facts or items? Especially for checklist type articles, you want to make sure to include everything relevant. An item missed from a list of items to take camping in the winter could have dire consequences, not the least of which is your reputation. Does your article agree or disagree with others' advice or information? Finding other references that support your message is good - you can grab quotes or link to it. Finding others who disagree is important if there are a lot of them - you may need to justify your message in that context. Do you know the latest developments in your industry or affecting your target ...

Are any of these your reasons for publishing a business blog... ? to be found (on Google or anywhere else) to build your reputation to be seen as an expert to be useful to start relationships All of those are great reasons to blog! But, regardless of why you've been writing, your efforts will only pay off if people are reading your stuff. Aside from creating content, does your content strategy also include a plan to both distribute your content and attract new readers ? Create the content, then promote the content. It's an ongoing process that you need to keep alive - both for your own benefit and for your fans. photo by wallyg / Flickr Click to Tweet this Article

... is the one you don't have to learn yourself. You don't know what you don't know. Hire an expert and go do what you do best. Click to Tweet this Article

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This article by Debi Hartlen MacDonald ( New Life Business Solutions ) was published in our newsletter in 2012. I keep having to go find it to refer to - yes, it's that good - so I asked Debi if I could share it with you here on our blog. Here goes... 1. The Pain or the Challenge - What is the pain that your prospect wants to address, as it relates to your product?  My example: "I help small business owners who are working their buns off and not making the strides in their business that they want to."  2. Desired Outcome - What result does your prospect want?  My example: "I help clients attract more clients, make more money, and have more free time."  3. Solution - What do you do that helps them solve this problem?  My example: "I help clients create focused, well thought out, and clearly defined sales and marketing strategies."  4. Why Choose You - What makes you different from your competition?  My example: "Unlike other ...

Whatever your specific goals are, your content needs to get read to have any impact and be valuable . It must be useful and interesting to get read. It must get read many times ( consistency ) to be trusted. You want to be that trusted resource. I have a trusted resource for social media updates which is a great example of valuable curated content. Do any of us have time to keep up with all of the changes to the social media platforms? Yet we use them every day. I like to know about new functionality and new apps, but I don't have time to keep up. Getting a point form summary of all the changes in my inbox once a month is extremely valuable. It saves me time, I can dig deeper if I want, and I can use the information to make decisions about my social media strategy. Curating content is a great strategy for providing timely updates about things that change fast. ( Tweet This ) social media update section in newsletter Want to see this great example? Click here to view Twi...

You might be thinking I'm off my rocker using that subject line, since I regularly dish out email marketing advice . The thing to remember is that almost all the advice you'll read is situational . One expert will say that subject lines like "Wow" or "Hey" work best, while another will tell us to avoid them at all costs. Because I have experience with informational marketing for small businesses in particular, I evaluate all of the advice I read in that context. Sometimes I get great ideas that I can use with one or more clients, but rarely do I read anything new that would apply to all of them. That's because a really successful email campaign needs to be specific in its strategy . Here are some of the things that will affect your strategy: if you sell to consumers or to businesses, or both your very specific target market if you have a small or large list if you know your subscribers or don't how new subscribers get on your list how...

Just because you can Google something doesn’t make you an expert. (I just love those Realtor ads!) That line is so true of anything that involves skill and talent. Recently I learned how true it is of audio recording and voice overs when I had the pleasure of a coaching session with voice actor Natasha Marchewka . I didn't think it would be too hard to make my little recording, but I was a bit nervous when I arrived at Natasha's place. We started by making a recording to use as a baseline. Then Natasha coached me about how to improve my delivery - posture, breathing, intonation and so on. Finally I did 3 more recordings. Those last recordings were so much more difficult than the first one. I was hyper aware of all the things I needed to be doing as I spoke, sounding ‘natural’ being one of them. Here are a few things I learned: Talking in person is way easier than talking into a microphone, at least for me. It’s hard to use my hands and get expressive when my mouth is...

I advocate sharing your best with your audience if your goal is to be seen as an expert. Give them your best advice, express your opinions, share your top tips and tricks, tell them about great tools you have found and share the benefits you gained by using them. I regularly encounter resistance to this strategy. The worry seems to be that if you share your best, they won't need you. This is a false worry. When you are expert at anything, you will lose a layman pretty quickly - always before the point where they could accomplish the same results they would get if they hired and worked with you. It is usually beginners that sharing your opinions will help... to a point. There will be a certain number of followers that will read everything and use your advice to follow your plan. Content is published in very small packets so it would take a lot for someone to be able to piece a whole plan together. Those people will find someone else to follow if you are not publishing the content....