Work Better, Not Harder

Does the thought of taking a vacation feel like work? Now that I'm my own boss, you'd think it'd be easy to take holidays. What I've come to realize is just the opposite. Lately I've been thinking, “I need a real vacation.” By ‘real’ I mean a vacation where I’m not thinking about work or checking email or wondering if a newsletter got out on time or planning my next blog post. I've discovered there are two things that stop me from taking more vacations. Money is an obvious reason. When I take vacation, I have to pay someone to work for me. For ‘billable’ work, this can mean that much of the revenue goes to expenses, and there is very little or no income for the vacation period. On top of that, I have to pay someone to do the things I do for ‘free’, such as responding to emails and phone calls. That quickly chews up any remaining revenue. And then there’s the cost of the vacation itself. Really getting away from work is the other challenge. I received an...

These three phrases come up repeatedly in newsletter content - I've edited them out many times. I bet you're familiar with them, too. “I want to tell you about...” This is similar to the verbal, “All I'm saying is...” which my husband has adopted lately, or “Here’s the thing...” In an email or newsletter, just go ahead and tell us. If you really want to set the stage for something important, try “I have exciting news...” (But don’t add “... and here it is!”) “Feel free to contact me...” Does this mean people aren't usually free to contact you? It sounds like you're giving permission. As a call to action, it’s very wimpy. Lacking something more creative, “Please call me to...” will be more effective. “If you have questions...” Often used with the line above, this one adds to the wimpy-ness. It’s more effective to assume people will have questions. Try “Call me with your questions.” or "I'm happy to answer your questions." Or pick a differen...

I admit to having a bit of fun with that subject line but I'm not BSing you. Here is the statistic given by Adestra: Using the word 'alert' in a subject line increases open rates by 38.1% (variance vs. average).  (Source:Adestra) You have just participated in an experiment if you opened this post in your email - thanks! If you can legitimately use 'alert' in your subject line, that's great. But beware - if your subject line is not relevant to the content within , you might get more opens but will lose credibility (and subscribers). Another way to lose credibility is to quote incorrect information as fact. I originally stumbled across that statistic in an article by Hubspot. This jumped off the page: 61.8% increase in opens when using the word 'alert' in subject lines. (Source:Adestra) It seemed a little too good to be true and I immediately started plotting to use 'alert' in a subject line. I'm glad I decided to check the origi...

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...

*** Click to listen in rather than read Are you confident about your voice? Even an experienced and articulate business person can use help with their presentation skills and could be speaking and communicating in a way that may be hindering their professional image. As a follow-up to my “Adding Audio to Your Content” blogs, Part 1  and Part 2 , I had the privilege of offering Presentation Skills Coaching to Linda Daley of Daley Progress. We took our blog theme of producing audio content one step further to help Linda add audio to her own webpage. What needed to happen before recording her audio was coaching on the presentation of the script she had provided. To Linda’s credit, she easefully recorded the first take of her script as a starting point. You can hear in her opening attempt, that she is reading from a page and that she doesn’t sound as passionate about her script as she probably feels. Listen to the take without any voice coaching. During the initial recording, I...

The reason for adding a subscriber's name as a form field to your messages is to make a closer connection with them. So what happens when you get something like "Dear {Subscriber}" ? The exact opposite, right? Unless you're prepared to spend time maintaining your mailing list, I usually recommend not to use form fields to insert subscribers' names into emails. First you have to get the name. Asking for a subscriber's name on your sign-up form is possible, but also not a good practice because the more info you ask for at sign-up, the less likely people will be to sign up . You could, instead, use another tactic to get the name of your subscriber. This is an example that came at the top of an email from Swiss Chalet: The only thing wrong with this is it arrived 5 days after Mother's Day. Click to Tweet this Article

Inspiring quotes about getting inspired – no better place to start when stumped. You can simply read this article, but I'd like you to grab a pen now and start a running list of content ideas for your blog or newsletter. Each of these suggestions can be accomplished in just minutes! “I think I'm a born storyteller. Inspiration is all around me. I can read a newspaper article and come up with an idea for a book.”  - Jackie Collins #1. Grab a newspaper, or find one online, and start reading. Scan the headlines for inspiration – a topic, concept or how-to that you can adapt to suit your target market. "Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas."  - Paula Poundstone #2. Look at what you do from the perspective of today's children.  What is the future - of your industry, products/services, target market - that they can look forward to in 10 years, or 20 years? Use your imagination and h...

UPDATE Dec-9-18: LinkedIn no longer allows exporting of your contact's email addresses. Are you still confused about what ‘consent’ means under the Canadian Anti Spam Legislation (CASL)? There are mixed messages as to whether it’s OK to add your LinkedIn contacts to your mailing list. And there’s a reason for that – it’s only OK in certain circumstances. First, if you sell only to consumers, stop now. You need express consent, so the rest of this article doesn’t apply to you. Implied consent is relevant for businesses that sell to other businesses. There are three key requirements for implied consent: The contact’s email address has been ' published conspicuously ' and has no disclaimer that they do not accept commercial electronic messages. The message you are sending is relevant to their job at the company they work for. (Example: You can email a university professor to sell her textbooks, but not clothes.) There is an unsubscribe mechanism so the recipie...

Are you struggling when you sit down to write? Do those first couple of sentences elude you? Recently I learned a powerful technique for dealing with this dilemma. During a coaching session on writing with Neil Everton , I was asking him for help with closing my articles. Neil directed me back to the top of the examples I had brought and suggested we start at the beginning. You want your reader to nod and think “yes” , Neil told me. That first sentence needs to connect with the reader and bring them along for the rest of the article. One way to do this is to ask a question, as I did at the start of this article. Whether it’s a question or a statement, try to elicit feelings about the topic and empathize with the reader’s situation. Did I also figure out my endings? I learned that getting the beginning right made writing the closing so much easier. I simply need to answer that opening question. When you're stumped at the start, write out the question or problem that you w...

Want to get people to read more than one post when they get to your blog? There's one tactic that's worked great for me and it's really pretty simple. After you write your article and before you publish it, review it looking for opportunities to add links to past posts. You will see at least one example in this article once I've finished it. Ideally, you'll have several go-to articles for important topics in your industry. You may even want to save these links in a Word doc or Evernote, or use them as a resource page on your website . Once you have written a few hundred posts , it'll be harder to keep track of in the back of your mind. These go-to articles should themselves have more links to other posts. And so you encourage deeper reading . This really doesn't take very long and you will see the impact on  your statistics  very quickly. Aside from starting to use this tactic now, you can benefit by: making a list of your go-to posts for easy ...

This is our fourth installment of content creation wrap-up posts - a library of links to all of our articles about creating interesting and useful content from January 2014 through April 2015. Planning is an important process because it forces you to think, to research, to consider, to brainstorm - to be creative. Our Yearly Content Planning Worksheet will help get you organized. I'm a big fan of repurposing content and infographics will appeal to a different audience than text. Read  Repurpose Articles into Infographics to get tips on how to do this. Your content strategy wouldn't be complete without having a look at what others are doing. Read Research to Develop your Content Strategy  for activities you can engage in regularly, perhaps quarterly, to keep current. We all get stuck for ideas now and then. I've found some tools to help me get past that. You can get links to them in Idea Challenged? Here's 3 Tools . When looking for images to go with my ...

Digital colour trends will often follow the fashion industry. Here are the colours for Fall 2015 from Pantone. click to enlarge "An Evolving Colour Landscape: This season displays an umbrella of accord that weaves earthy neutrals with a range of bold colour statements and patterns to reflect a landscape of hope, fun, fantasy and all things natural." source:  PANTONE® FASHION COLOUR REPORT FALL 2015 Missed the Spring 2015 colours? See them here. Click to Tweet this Article

Natasha working in her studio *** Click to listen in rather than read Creating and sharing audio content makes good business sense for me as a voice actor. In Adding Audio to your Content, Part 1 , I mentioned that ALL business owners and sales people could benefit from adding the element of audio, not just those of us who are selling our voice. What to say? Introduce your business, or yourself, with a recorded greeting. ( Here’s an example. ) An elevator pitch - a compelling 30-60 second story of what you do... A call to action - something you would like the listener/reader to do – sign up for your blog, call you, order your product... A summary, or explanation, of your services. But where and how do you add audio content? Your blog site will (likely) allow you to add an audio file anywhere in the body. Sharing your blog will then share your audio, too. Want to share it in your newsletter or on social media? Upload your audio to SoundCloud . You can share it dire...

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....