Work Better, Not Harder

The young cashier at Walmart grinned at me and said, "Joke's on them then." I had just told him to keep the printer cartridge separate as my business was going to pay for that. I grinned back and said, "The joke's on me then since I'm the boss. And I'm also the one who had to drop everything and dash out when the printer ran out." Oh, the joys of owning your own business. I'm on vacation this week. Yet this newsletter is getting sent, along with five others. I emailed a handful of clients to reassure them I would still be reachable and delivering on deadlines. I've been doing paperwork and will meet with my bookkeeper. I'll even attend a networking event. My husband is on vacation, so I need to find time to spend with him, too. And oh yeah, I need to get a tooth pulled - something I've been saving for the vacation. What I will NOT be doing this week is setting my alarm clock. In fact, I have a goal to not wake up to an alarm... ev...

One of the best things I ever did was to take Anita Kirkbride 's advice when she told me I should post daily enewsletter tips on social media. It was a very specific and fairly easy task to do. I ended up with an Excel spreadsheet with about 350 short tips... all prefaced with #enewsletter. I joked that when I got to 365 tips, I'd make a calendar. Now I didn't sit down and spend several days making up this list - ugh! But I started it and then every time I wrote a blog post that included a tip, I copied it into my spreadsheet along with the post link. This started back when Twitter allowed only 140 characters so I finagled words a lot. You can see in the graph below that it had an almost immediate effect on blog traffic - note the big jump in readership SEPT 2012. This was tedious work. I spent many hours copy/pasting and scheduling individual messages in Hootsuite, a month at a time, for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Eventually, I started uploading...

Simple is powerful... and a recent tough decision reminded me of that. I'd been sitting on the fence for about 2 weeks with a marketing project half completed. I couldn't decide whether to keep going or to stay with Plan A - and so, I wasn't accomplishing anything. I had an investment in time and money that was just sitting, doing nothing for me. Talking the problem through with someone seemed like the best idea and I finally pinned down the right opportunity with the right person. The night before we were to chat, I decided I'd better make some notes so I could present my problem in an organized way. I grabbed a sheet of paper, drew a line up the middle, and labelled the halves PROS and CONS. Within 5 minutes I had put my finger on my "sticking point" - the biggest CON. After a little research and math, I made my decision. No discussion needed. When I put my pen to paper, all the conflicting pieces of the problem suddenly became clear - instead of sw...

Marketing analytics can be confusing. You need to learn how to use the software to get data. Then you need to figure out what information you want from the data. Then you need to figure out what actions to take now that you're wiser. Here's a simple statistic for you to discover and use to your advantage - most read blog posts. Regardless of which platform you use, you should be able to access some basic info. Here is a screenshot from this blog: screenshot Now that I know which post is the most read on my blog, what actions will I take? I can use it for marketing by adding calls-to-action for current promotions to the footer. I continue to share it on social media because it's obviously still relevant. I know I need to maintain it , to make sure it has no broken links and to keep it relevant. I have clues about other blog post topics that may have similar success. (I can use Answer the Public to research more .) You're working hard to create ...

If you think writing blog posts about what you do is your best content option, you might be sorely mistaken. The popular approach to content marketing usually includes some combination of blogging (podcasting, video, etc) + email + social media. (I love that equation!) The thing is, well, writing articles (or recording) is not for everyone. I've spent several hundred hours convincing (disguised as training) small business owners that blogging is a worthwhile endeavour. Some have success, more don't - for a variety of reasons. What I know is this: if you don't like the work involved, you won't be successful. Your momentum will wane over time. So, what the heck do you do if you don't want to write or record? (And maybe even if you do.) Identify something your target market wants and that you can provide easily through the activities you're already doing. For example, if you do lots of research and reading online, curating and collating others' conte...