Work Better, Not Harder

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

"No longer are we padding our metrics with vain, inflated subscribers who ultimately harm our deliverability and email performance. Instead, we're keeping our email list smaller, but way healthier and more effective." - Hubspot,  What Happened to Our Metrics After We Stopped Sending So Much Email , March 30, 2016 Apparently their metrics are more important than goodwill, mistake or not. Click to Tweet this Article

Your reputation is what people are saying about you behind your back. Shouldn’t you have some control over what is being said? Reputation and trust are two words that are often intermingled. There is a big difference though. Your reputation is a backward view of what has happened, while trust is forward thinking. One affects the other. Trust is based on positive expectations of what you or your company can deliver in the future. If I decide to do business with you, I'm going to check your reputation. What are people saying about you? What did you deliver? How quickly did you resolve problems? Now with a quick search, I can find out a lot about a person's reputation in business by looking at reviews that were posted. Everything from eBay to hotel chains to pizza deliveries are judged in real time and this will affect buying decisions. Imagine you are working with a client who has paid a good sum of money to have you train their staff. So far your sales have all been fro...

Readability is defined as the ease with which a written text can be understood by a reader. ( The Free Dictionary ) While this definition certainly includes your words, sentences, grammar and writing style, it also has to do with the overall look of the text. Here are some tips to make your content look good, whether it's a newsletter, blog or website. #1. Use a slightly larger font size than you typically would when using Word, unless your content is lengthy. This ensures it will be easy to read on small screens and for those whose eyesight isn't perfect. Also consider using black or a dark colour as your font colour for the same reasons. #2. Avoid too much bold. Use bold sparingly to highlight the really important things, perhaps no more than once per paragraph. #3. Include whitespace around text and images, and between sections. Pictures look better and text is easier to read. #4. Use bulleted or numbered lists to simplify complex information. This provides ...

When you're buried in details, it's hard to see the big picture. That's not news to you or anyone else. To get out of the trees and above the forest, consider adding one final quality control check to your content creation process. Whether you are writing for your blog, newsletter or social media platforms, before you hit that PUBLISH button, ask yourself: "What value will my target market get from this?" If you can't articulate the value , your target market is unlikely to be able to, either. Think about it from your reader's perspective. How would they describe your article to someone else when they're (hopefully) raving about it? It might be something like: "Check out this blog post about xxxxx. It's got great tips you can use right away." What if you can't articulate the value? Start editing right away, or put it aside and come back to it with fresh eyes later. I have a folder of article drafts that I've rejected ...

A sequel to  My Essential Small Business Tools (Part 1) , I hope you haven't been holding your breath waiting. I compiled my list a year and a half ago and, after pulling it out to write this article, was happy to discover that it hasn't changed. I'm still using the same applications and that speaks to their real usefulness. Here are the remaining items on my list of handy dandy tools I use daily or weekly. Canva for Work This program intrigued me right from the start. It makes simple graphic design easy for the inexperienced. While I’ve been doing digital designing of some form for close to 20 years, Canva saves me time with its Abracadabra Resize. It’s not robust, like Photoshop, but it’s not meant to be. Simple and fast, I use it every single day. Hootsuite I use this as my primary Twitter interface. It also helps me manage my planned posts when it’s convenient for me. I use it to schedule my daily enewsletter tips for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Googl...

It's surprisingly difficult to write a blog article without using the word "I". Removing "I" completely is not your goal. But whittling down its use could be. How do you know when you have a problem? When every paragraph starts with "I", that's a good signal. (Guilty here.) We want to connect with our readers and that will involve sharing our thoughts, feelings and experiences. Hard to do without using "I" sometimes. But remember,  this is marketing and it's not about you . Here are a few things to consider: Bury the leading "I" , especially at the beginning of a paragraph, by reorganizing the sentence. Don't substitute the "I" with a past participle. For example, "I wrote in my journal" is still better than "my journal was written in". Put yourself in your reader's shoes. Come at the topic from a different angle. Think about how a reader might retell your message to some...