Make Your Ideas Sticky


Click here to download this quick reference sheet by Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick. It'll help you make your ideas and communication 'sticky'.

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Home Office Holiday Party

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In preparation for our office party this year, I wrote a poem. Then I gathered together the things I would need to have a party with Romeo and Danielle. (The Temptations were for Romeo, the phone for Danielle, and the coffee for me.) Romeo, my cat, is used to hearing me talk out loud as I proofread and he was unusually excited about hearing the poem. Danielle, who lives several time zones away in Saskatchewan, also works alone (and helps me out lots) so I invited her to my office party by phone. It was a good move because she's a master at rhyming words. After much anticipation, I started to read the finished poem aloud to them. As you can see in the photos above, I had their full attention. Ode to a Midnight Blog Silent night, late at night, I've still got my blog to write. My laptop propped up on my bed, I'm hoping ideas will fill my head. Yawns escaping, eyelids drooping, Neck is stiff, my thoughts are looping. My brain is sore, I th...
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Reducing the Noise

One problem with the current social media soup is the high noise to relevant signal ratio. The most effective way to deal with this problem is to find accepted and popular experts in your field of interest and subscribe to their feeds. This will lead you to relevant online communities from which you can find and share pertinent advice and draw new customers. This approach will work much better than broad monitoring of many social media services because it will greatly reduce the noise you will need browse and therefore, the time you need to spend building your online reputation. Click to Tweet the Article
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Eliminating Waste and Ageism from My Writing

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In today's society... in today's busy world... our current technological society... and so on. I've written phrases like that more than once. And I've stopped because: 1. These phrases don't add any value to my writing. If I'm writing about the past, I'll say, "In the past..." or some such thing. Similarly if I'm writing about the future. Otherwise isn't the perception it's current? 2. Lots of people don't know a different society , don't remember a time before computers. Technology is hardly new. Anyone over 50 like me has actually been using it longer than anyone younger. Reserve space in your writing for words that really count, that add meaning to your writing. Eliminate what's left. Make sure every word works. Your readers will thank you for it and show you by coming back to read more. photo by Street matt / Flickr Click to Tweet this Article
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Bragging Writes

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You'll see in this newsletter that success stories make great marketing content. There's positive emotion around a good story - we like to read them and share them. It's a bonus that they come in many different forms: testimonials, case studies, photos of happy customers or completed work, statistics, even video. Success stories can also be assembled in a lot of different ways. For example: written by you, or by your client spontaneous (such as on Twitter), or solicited about your products and services, or about your business itself (for example, a 10 year anniversary) short or long (useful for different purposes) numerical or graphic (such as statistics) Don't stop at collecting testimonials. There are many more ways to tell your story. originally published in Work Better, Not Harder March 30, 2016 Click to Tweet this Article
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Is Your Canadian Small Business Compliant with CASL Yet?

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It's that year - the Canadian Anti Spam Legislation comes fully info effect on July 1, 2017. Wait, before you roll your eyes and click away, read the next paragraph. The average small business in Canada has nowhere near the list size to trigger an investigation under CASL. And the reality is most small businesses aren't yet CASL-compliant... and that probably includes yours (and even mine). There's no need to get alarmed. Here are the 4 most obvious ways businesses aren't yet fully compliant. #1. Subscription process is missing a description of what content the subscriber can expect to receive and how often You don't want to be misleading and you also can't be too vague. Simply "Sign up for my newsletter!" is not good enough. Besides, you want a killer call-to-action ; it makes good sense regardless of CASL. Offering a free download? If you plan to add the contact to your regular mailing list, you still need to say that. #2. Maili...
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Quick Tip - Avoid Hidden Format Problems

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When you're inserting content into your newsletter, website or blog, you're often copying it from other documents.  I suggest you always compose in Word (or similar) to take advantage of its spelling and grammar-checking functionality. Your formatting in Word may not be the same as your default formatting in these various applications.  While there are a raft of applications that make it easy now to do your own newsletter, website and blog, most of them are converting your content to html code in the background.  When you copy in text that is already formatted, you're possibly creating problems behind the scenes .  As well, you'll end up with differing fonts and sizes that all have to be corrected before you publish. You can avoid the potential for problems by stripping off all formatting before you paste into the application.  An easy way to do this is to use Notepad (or similar).  You simply open a blank notepad document, paste your con...
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Trying to Unsubscribe

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We often talk about the importance of making it easy to unsubscribe. I thought I would share with you my recent experience demonstrating the frustration that can occur when it is not. I decided to unsubscribe from Air Canada's onAir newsletter several issues ago. When my issue arrived, I clicked to unsubscribe and landed on a 'No Update' error page. No big deal, the internet can be glitchy, I would just do it the next issue. This went on for 4 or 5 issues at which point, I started to feel like they were sending me to the error page on purpose. I was getting a little hot under the collar. Last week, on a bad day for me, the current issue arrived and I landed on the same error page. I then went back to the newsletter and clicked the "contact us" link which took me to a form on their website called 'Let Us Know'. It was a lengthy form and the first section was my contact information in which I had to fill out my address, email, phone number and ...
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Get a Head Start

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Start thinking about your next newsletter issue as soon as your last one has gone out. Set up a place to gather your content ideas - an 'idea catcher'. I use a folder on my Windows desktop. If you're not always sitting at your computer when inspiration hits, there are other more flexible tools: Evernote , Dropbox ,  Google Docs , and many more. (Along with everything else, Evernote even allows you to capture all your tweets, which are usually a good source for content ideas.) Load up your idea catcher. When you have an inspired idea about something you want to include in your next issue, plop it in. This works really well if you regularly include popular quotes, blog posts, book recommendations, and other resources. As soon as you come across ones you want to use, 'catch' them. By the time your issue date rolls around, it won’t seem like such a chore to assemble your newsletter. The bonus of this approach is that you have less stress trying to rememb...
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Newsletter Ideas for Real Estate Professionals

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Your goal is to provide useful and interesting info which will make you a trusted resource. And you want to be top of mind when one of your subscribers decides to buy or sell property. There are a lot of ideas you can incorporate into your newsletter strategy. Here are a few to get you started... and some of them don’t even require you to write! Neighbourhood profiles Visit a neighbourhood and talk to people who live there. Check out the schools, shopping malls, and places to eat. Drive the main routes to understand the traffic. Take pictures and videos. You can include the best of it all in your newsletter. Community event listings Ultimately useful, this strategy is a real winner. It’s also very time consuming. You’ll want to connect with all of the organizations in your community that put on events - this can have other benefits too. Industry information It’s easy to include content like trends in mortgage rates, property sales, and house design. Also consid...
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Let's Play like Adults

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Yesterday I politely wrote asking to be removed from a mailing list after receiving a promotional email that was ugly, far from CASL-compliant, and for products I’m not interested in. I even included links to CASL info in an effort to help. I received this response a few moments later: “Please do the same for me.” This childish reaction came from an older man who had attended a free email marketing training I put on last spring at the request of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce. He sells products to my target market. Do you think I’m ever likely to recommend him to anyone now? Email marketing isn't a game, it’s a business strategy. I firmly believe we should unsubscribe from mailings that aren't of interest to us. I read many newsletters from people who don’t read mine. It’s not a “tit for tat” thing. Email marketing costs money. Why would we want to waste our efforts sending messages to people who don’t want them ? Go ahead, unsubscribe from the things you don’t w...
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