You can draw people in with your creativity. Or you can repel them with annoying ads. We have a choice, and my strong belief is that the storytellers and artists will win, while the aggressors and interruptors will lose. Let’s commit to making every interaction with your audience either educate, inspire, enlighten, or entertain.
Advertising Offset Credits: Calculating the Cost of Ad Pollution
If we look at advertising like pollution, could we make the worst offenders pay a price for making us suffer bad ads? In this week’s episode, I explore the concept of Advertising Offset Credits and the cost of aggressive, self-serving advertising.
More Speculation About Facebook’s Future
There are some big changes coming to Facebook. Continuing the thread from last week’s episode, here is some speculation on how this might affect the Facebook Ad platform and a major change to the News Feed that Facebook is currently testing outside of the U.S.
How to Start Writing a Book
Writing a book is a huge undertaking, not to be taken lightly. But it can be incredibly rewarding too. In my experience helping hundreds of writers become authors, here are the considerations for if and how to start writing a book (for beginners).
Facebook Is Headed for Trouble: The Coming Storm
As the harsh spotlight illuminates dark posts, Russian ads and who-know-what-else, expect a backlash against Facebook. It may come in the form of regulations or user revolt, but it’s going to change Facebook a lot. It’s not a matter of if, but when. So if you use Facebook to promote your business or connect with customers, what can you do to prepare yourself?
From Adversity to Acceleration: Business Growth Strategies from Kelly Roach
Acceleration is something that most entrepreneurs seek, but often find to be out of reach. My guest this week is Kelly Roach, a former Fortune 500 executive who has an amazing story of career acceleration – both in her corporate career and in running her own agency. Kelly shares her story, along with strategies that you can apply to your own business.
How to Make Sure You Actually Own the Rights to Your Content
Do you have someone creating content for you? A writer, designer, video producer, or developer? If so, you want to make sure that you have clear ownership of the rights to that content. Episode 112 is about the risks of not having an IP clause in your vendor contracts.
The Customer Is Always Free to Go
You can’t force me to be loyal – that’s something you have to earn. Yet you see companies use a variety of methods to lock us in or make it difficult to leave. These cheap, short-term tactics may guarantee today’s revenue, but they will never add up to tomorrow’s loyalty.
The Basics of Content Marketing for Writers
Writers hate marketing themselves – with good reason. Who wants to be annoying, aggressive, and always selling? Thankfully, there is an alternative that’s much more effective anyway. It’s content marketing, and writers in particular are finding its soft-touch methods to be a relief – and a lot more in tune with the buying behavior of today’s readers.
Contracts Are Not a Trap
Signing a contract is often a big commitment for a client, and I want them to feel like the investment is low-risk. Here’s my counterintuitive approach to writing a contract that is clear and simple, fair to both sides, and starts from a point of mutual trust.
Build Your Author Platform: A Requirement for Today’s Writers
If you hope to be a published author someday – or to self-publish and sell your books yourself – your author platform is absolutely critical. In fact, it’s almost impossible to achieve any measurable success without an author platform. Here’s a quick overview of how to get started establishing your platform – for new writers and experienced writers too.
Hourly Rate vs. Project Rate: Which Is Most Fair for Both Sides?
Everyone advises to bill by the project (not by the hour) when you run a consulting business. In the 4 years that I’ve been doing it, I’ve found that the opposite is true. But it requires a few important principles to make sure that the exchange of value works – for both sides.
When to Ask for the Sale: Not Early and Often
Conventional wisdom is to ask for the sale early and often. With today’s consumers, it turns out that the opposite is true. Exhibiting a little patience and providing a lot of upfront value gets you away from the icky parts of self-promotion – and it’s more effective too.
How to Make Money Writing
Today’s writers are empowered in ways that were simply not possible in years past. The writers who know how to take advantage of the new strategies and tools are reaching readers directly and charting new paths to success. Here’s an overview of the strategies and skills you’ll need to work towards financial freedom as a writer.
Non-Disclosure Agreements: Mistrust Is Not a Good Starting Point
It may seem counterintuitive, but the NDA request is always a red flag to me. Mistrust is not a good starting point for any relationship – plus it betrays a lack of self-confidence in your ability to execute. Is this really the message you wish to convey? Let’s take a deeper look at Non-Disclosure Agreements: Pros and Cons.
Execution Is Everything In Business
We tend to overvalue our own ideas – I do it too. But it’s always the execution that counts. This week’s episode is about how to pick the right idea to bank on, how to develop it with continuous customer input, and how to assess whether or not the idea is actually succeeding.
Creating Content as a Business Asset
In short, running a good content strategy is a huge time investment. It takes a lot of effort, and let’s face it – it takes a long time to start seeing results. The only way to make it worth it is to treat everything you produce as if it’s a renewable asset.
Tweeting Is Believing, Tweeting Out Is Not
Twitter is the best social platform for connecting with people you DON’T know already, making it a critical tool for finding new potential customers. So, why is it still not taken seriously? Episode 106 is about making a shift in mindset so that you can up your game and get more out of Twitter.
Social Media Cannot Exist in a Vacuum
If your plan is just to start “getting the word out there” by posting to Facebook or Twitter – stop now. The outcomes will never be worth the time you put into it. You need a complete content strategy in order to make social media worthwhile. Here’s a simple way to adjust your approach – and the three advantages to doing so.
Marketing and the Experimental Mindset
One of my favorite quotes is, “If you’re not measuring, you’re not marketing.” This has never been more true than it is today. What worked yesterday is not guaranteed to work tomorrow. Learn, measure, and iterate so that you can continue to optimize your marketing efforts.