Work Better, Not Harder

There are no 3-easy-steps to becoming a millionaire. If magic bullets and passive income really existed, we'd ALL be sitting around enjoying the view from our yachts. Cambridge Dictionary defines a 'magic bullet' as "a quick and simple solution to a difficult problem". None of the major dictionaries offer a definition for 'passive income'. These are marketing myths. They will cost you more money than you'll make. Or you will give up doing the work that is your expertise to spend your time doing marketing work. It's nice to dream but then get back to work. PS: There are no unicorns in real life either. Click to Tweet this Article

Search engine optimization (SEO) has been low on my own priority list throughout the 15 years I've been marketing my own services. Yes, I freely admit I've been mostly ignoring it while doing just the basics. This may seem like a blatant disregard for something that's portrayed more and more frequently as essential. It's actually been a strategic decision for my business... not an oversight. Why? SEO is complicated, time-consuming and expensive. It's a skill I've never desired to acquire. It's technical and behind-the-scenes, whereas I like doing work that can be seen (and yes, sometimes admired). Hiring help for SEO would be a big expense. The goal of SEO is generally to attract strangers. Over the years, I've wasted time with a few 'tire kickers'. Those are people who have stumbled across my website, know nothing about my experience or the quality of my work, and have focused on price comparisons. I have never competed on price - my ...

You've just finished editing (and proofing!) your latest blog post. You pause for a mental happy dance, then you click Publish. Ahh. And now the rest of the work starts. Because, of course, you need to let people know about this new useful and interesting article you've just laboured over. You'll want to share your new article out on your social media feeds multiple times, especially when it's new, and then tapering off over the coming months. And to be efficient about it, you'll want to schedule all of those posts now. So let's start writing the text for those social media posts. What will tease people into clicking and reading? (I'm not talking about lying; teasing is good marketing.) You can write your teaser from scratch. But the fastest thing is to do is to copy text snippets directly from your blog post. That is usually what I do for my own posts. And it's often when I realize I could have done a better writing job. I could have writ...

But all of our marketing words are not important in every context. We have to pick and choose. When I first started my business almost 15 years ago, I remember struggling with the distinction between features and benefits, and with talking about my potential clients' pain. Years later my collection of words and phrases has grown to include keywords, calls-to-action and testimonials. This month I've been working with The Phone Lady to develop a plan and process for prospecting... even more words! It can be confusing to know... what are the best words to use when? A website is a great example of seeing our words in action (or inaction as the case may be). It will contain features and benefits, pain points, broad and specific solutions, calls-to-action, keywords and testimonials. But we should never just toss them in somewhere and hope they'll work. Think alphabet soup. We need to use our words appropriately to lead our visitors to take some action. It might be a...

Is this you... ? When you watch TV, you can't wait for the ads. On YouTube, you let every ad play fully. You open your email inbox eagerly every morning, anticipating all the emails with this week's sales or next week's webinars. You read the newspaper for those big black and white ads. You check out every promotional link that Google places in your search results. You go for the ads first when you log into Facebook. You're entranced by the billboards on the Bedford Highway. So, is this you? No? It's not anybody . There is no one eagerly anticipating your sales pitches. (Your mother doesn't count.) We keep on doing these things, even without an eager audience, because they work sometimes. That perfect timing, or perfect graphic, or perfect wording, sometimes gets people's attention. So we keep doing what works sometimes. Eventually, though, what worked sometimes starts to work even less frequently . As more and more marketers adopt the same st...

Did you realize there's a difference between being found and getting found? The words suggest a subtle difference but, really, there's a huge distinction when it comes to online marketing. Many new and experienced small business owners make critical -- often costly -- mistakes by not understanding the difference. I'll start with 'being found' because this is my own strategy (and my area of marketing expertise) so it'll be easier to explain. Also, I think you'll be able to appreciate the difference more when you read down to the 'getting found' description. Being Found Someone searches for your name or the name of your company because they know you in some way or have heard about you. These people already know something about you or your business. They have a perception that you might be able to solve their problem and they are looking for evidence. Hopefully, they are also looking for how to contact you. In sales lingo, these are war...

Now, this is a colour I can get behind - Classic Blue. This shade of blue is great when "any shade of blue will do", which happens more often than you might think. Did you know blue is overwhelmingly the world's favourite colour? "We associate blue largely with the sky and water (as well as more mundane, but neutral-to-positive, items such as ballpoint pens and blue jeans), raising the average preference for blue higher than the remainder of the rainbow." -  Why Blue Is the World’s Favorite Color PANTONE 19-4052 TCX Classic Blue  colour values: RGB 15 76 129 HEX/HTML 0F4C81 CMYK 100 76 25 0 Will you be using more blue in your marketing in 2020? Click to Tweet this Article

Small business owners can spend a lot of time and money on marketing initiatives. Sometimes we're successful and sometimes not so much. I think of marketing as an experiment because - really - there are no magic bullets. There are best practices, there is good and bad advice, there are lots of experts and gurus. But we, the business owners, have to make the final decisions and... live with the results. Marketing isn't cheap (even if it's our own time) and poor decision-making can hurt more than our wallets - our reputation may also be at risk. So, how do we make decisions about things we have little experience with? How can we possibly know what all of our options might be when it comes to getting a new website? Or knowing which social media platforms will work best? Or building a content strategy? We can't... unless we put some extra effort into it. Step #1: Clearly identify the decision that needs to be made. Sometimes it'll be staring you in the face ...

"Yes, it's an old marketing trick to "accidentally" make a mistake in an email campaign so you can resend an email shortly thereafter to increase the number of times people see your message." This was the lead message in an email I received recently which included a correction to information which I had indeed received a couple of hours before. Making a deliberate mistake is a darn poor excuse to get into people's inboxes. Making ANY mistake doesn't reflect well on you, deliberate or not. Do your marketing well and you won't need to resort to tricks. And you won't need to fix mistakes. If a *real* mistake happens, here is my advice about how to deal with it . Let's avoid those made-up mistakes completely. Click to Tweet this Article

Every small business owner struggles with their messaging from time to time and this is especially true when developing content for a new or refreshed website. I - and you - can sit and make a long list of words and phrases that describe the way we work with customers. That's a good idea, of course. Here's a more powerful option and, in some ways, it makes the task easier. Search your words and phrases online. See what others in the same line of work are saying about themselves and the way they do business. Start a list of the words and phrases that are NOT like you and your business, that are clearly not ones you would use. They will practically jump off the screen at you. Using that NOT list, write a list of 'opposites'. If this is how you're not , then change it to the way you are . Now you can use these new words and phrases as you develop your website content and marketing messages. And you could easily include a bullet list of "This is not .....

Did you know that a third to a half of the total time spent working on marketing implementation projects is spent communicating with clients? That communication usually takes the form of informing, consulting, decision-making and tracking action items. Depending on the scope, it may also include educating and training. That's a lot of communication! And it may be why price quotes are higher than you expect. Effective communication is absolutely essential to pulling off any marketing project successfully. Planning and budgeting for that communication are also essential. You want to work with creatives who will guide you through the process without wasting your time or theirs , who will ask for feedback frequently, who will skillfully mine your ideas and apply them to the project. I  want to work with clients who aren't concerned with hurting my feelings , who will tell me when they don't like something. No one can solve a problem they don't know exists. No on...

Social Media Day Halifax 2019 was an amazing day of learning and networking. I've been spending hours on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram reliving the day through other people's posts... laughing, crying, and feeling the love. ( Cue the angles... er... angels singing. ) There is so much I want to write about but, oddly enough, first I'm going to write about one of the sessions I didn't get to attend - Mike Tanner's Beyond The Mic: The Real Work of Podcasting . Here's the thing - Mike recorded his session and posted it to his podcast (the same day!) Mike talks about starting a podcast in the same way I talk about starting a newsletter... What's the best way? What do you want to do? What can you do? Taking on too much can be a quick path to failure. If you can figure out how to fit it into your regular activities, you'll have more success. It's an important message for all of our small business activities. I encourage you to li...

A few months ago I found a new best friend when I started working with a client who uses Trello. While the client is indeed a friend, the free Trello app is what I'm talking about here. Trello is visual like a bulletin board and, the more things I use it for, the more organized and productive I'm becoming. I have no shortage of content ideas and I'm pretty good about catching them but, well, not necessarily all in one place. I have a notebook, Word docs in a folder in Dropbox, and as of right now, 22 draft posts on this blog. Recently I discovered a recorded message I'd made for myself last year on my phone. Catching ideas and organizing them into a content calendar are two different things - and both can be handled easily with Trello. Here is a link to a public board I created and which you can copy and make your own. If you've used Trello before, you might find this overly simplistic but, well, I'm all about simple. If you haven't used Trell...

When I received Pantone's email announcement of their Colour of the Year for 2019, I didn't rush to blog about it as I usually would. Mostly I thought, "Huh?" And ever since, I've been wondering if I'll have the opportunity to use it in any of the digital marketing I do. Don't get me wrong, I love  Pantone 16-1546 Living Coral . But it feels a bit feminine for my purposes - which are marketing-related, of course. I decided to have a look at possible colour schemes using Living Coral... I'm kind of liking that triad combo! What do you think? Will you be using Living Coral in your branding this year? Click to Tweet this Article

It's always useful to check in on your blog stats so you can see what people are interested in reading. This year I'm a little surprised with some of the posts that have been read the most on Work Better, Not Harder. Here they are: #1. 7 Out Of 12 Small Business Bloggers Agree On This When I teach marketing courses, the group eventually tires of seeing this list of key reasons for publishing a blog or newsletter come up on the screen in every class. Focus on only 2-3 main goals. #2. Social Media Day Halifax 2018 Marketing Conference For the first time, Halifax celebrated Social Media Day in grand style this year. I'm proud to be one of the organizers of the first Social Media Day Halifax conference which took place on June 22nd. #3. 3 Ways Having a Social Media Strategy Will Save You Time Guest blogger Anita Kirkbride says, "If your paralysis stems from social media, the best way to get moving is to create a social media strategy and plan out what you need to be do...

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 ...

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

Writing a series of articles is a great way to connect related content together . It is also an attention-getter, encouraging readers to subscribe or return for the next installment in the series. And it can be a showcase for demonstrating your expertise on a particular topic. A topical series of blog posts should be planned in advance to maximize its effectiveness. Here’s why: The finished series will flow more easily from one post to the next when you’ve created and edited a bullet outline of the entire series in advance. You can determine your link strategy and execute it seamlessly. You can promote the upcoming series in advance to generate interest and anticipation. Suggested Workflow to Create Your Series Determine your topic and create your series outline. Create and post some teasers on social media with a call-to-action to subscribe. Determine your link strategy and gather all relevant links. Paste them into your outline or create a separate text doc to put...

(Guest post by Mike Tanner) I recently (like, earlier today) had the pleasure of speaking to a room full of close to 50 people on a topic near and dear to my heart: podcasting. Now I’m not going to sit here and give you a recap of that talk. If you want the VERY basic details you can find them on my website but you’ll never recapture the magic that we all shared in that room that day... Instead, I’d like to talk about three questions that I was asked during the talk and how they relate to running your own business, podcasting or otherwise. How Much Do You Charge Someone To Sponsor a Podcast? Pricing is complicated. It’s a fact. Ask anyone who does consulting or coaching or training or anything where there’s not a defined cost or supply and demand issue, and they will tell you that pricing is one of the most difficult things to figure out. Whether you’re trying to figure out how to price your course or how much to charge for web copy or how much to charge a sponsor to be a...

Do you, like me, cringe if someone points out something about your marketing they don't like? Recent chats with other marketers have me realizing... I don't get enough complaints. How are complaints useful? Disqualifying prospects: If complaints are from people who aren't in your target market, you might be doing something right, rather than wrong. Don't water down your message to try to appeal to everyone or it will resonate with no one. Differentiation: Thinking about "the opposite of" or what something is NOT is extremely helpful in developing your marketing messages. Recently, when receiving feedback from friends about a landing page I have under development, the "negative" comments specifically led me to think about what my new program is not. And listing what my program is not has helped me to focus in on why it's different. Feedback: Complaints are just one form of feedback - and like all feedback, should be evaluated for the...