Needs Updating

Not all customers are created equal. There are some that your business can’t live without, and there are others who are more trouble than they’re worth. Are you selecting the right customers—the one who provide more value than they extract?

There’s no milestone more important to your business than finding the first person who will actually pay you. This episode is about really focusing on whom you are trying to serve and making your content work towards the singular goal of earning your first customer.

Small business owners are extremely busy, so one of the single biggest things you can do to impact your business is to become more efficient with your content strategy. Here’s how to treat your content as an investment in a reusable business asset, saving you time in the process.

How can brick and mortar businesses make the most of social media? On this week’s episode, I interview Laura Nunemaker about her specific strategies for offline businesses, clever cross-promotion opportunities, and careful automation to help make you more efficient.

Why are you waiting for permission? Walk straight past the Gatekeeper and connect with your audience directly. There’s nothing holding you back anymore, and there are no excuses. Your audience is your greatest business asset—it shifts the power in your favor.

The right information, delivered at the right time, is powerful. The opposite is true, too. Get it right, and your posts are not just welcome—but even anticipated!

How do you get media coverage for your business? On this week’s episode, I interview Chris Well about his strategy for how to build your media kit, identify the right outlets, craft the perfect pitch, and set up a series of appearances that can help boost your authority.

When you’re seen as an authority, it opens up all sorts of possibilities to you. Trust in you builds, which accumulates as an asset for you and your business. The value you create sticks with you, and can even transfer to your next business, your next project, or your next job.

Getting found and getting heard are a huge challenge in today’s world. Here’s how to set yourself up to be searchable and discoverable so that you have a better shot at it. Smart tactics with no tricks.

A story is at the root of trust, and a good content strategy gives your brand advocates the language to use on your behalf. Since it’s more believable in their hands, you should be doing all you can to make it easier for them.

This week’s episode is about two new projects for 2016. I also ask a favor: For those of you who are writers, musicians, or visual artists, I invite you to talk about how the Web and social media has affected you and your creative business.

Looking back at the first 30 episodes of this podcast, I have an epiphany about what content marketing is really about. It’s an antidote to the lies, micro-lies, and lies of omission that marketers have forcing on us for years.

Content marketing is about shifting from you talking about you to customers talking to other customers about you. It’s a lot of work at first, but the only way to see rapid, self-replicating growth.

Articulating your solution in your customers’ own language is a much more powerful way to connect than just throwing me-first marketing-speak at them. First, you have to know your audience.

Building an audience is difficult. But the rules have changed, and they are in your favor now. In this episode, I make a case for why your business needs a cohesive content strategy.

You can’t have content marketing take over your life – you just need it to deliver meaningful results for you and your business. Here’s how to focus on the one or two social media channels that will yield the best results for you.

Social media is easy enough for anyone to use, but getting the nuances down is the challenging part. Once you get it, you’ll be building awareness, attracting the right people, and engaging in valuable discussions.

This week’s episode gives an overview of how to optimize your post image, post title, and post meta so that people are more likely to click on the links you share.

Building trust is the ultimate goal of content marketing. Here’s how to move up the “payment scale,” from attention to advocacy to earning—and keeping—a loyal customer.