by Marvin Kane | Apr 27, 2013 | Blogging, Business, Sales and Marketing
It may take a few tries but hang in there
I was privileged to attend a conference a few weeks ago presented by Merrimack College as part of it’s 2012-2013 Leadership Series entitled “It’s Time to Create Your Digital Platform!” As a perk of membership in the Peabody Area Chamber of Commerce, admission was free. I gladly would have paid. Two of the three speakers, Michael Hyatt and Brian Halligan, are best selling authors. Halligan also happens to be co-founder and CEO of Hubspot, a marketing software company that helps businesses transform the way they market their products. The third, Sally Falkow, is a highly respected public relations guru. I took notes, scribbled down links to websites, wrote down recommended book titles, sent out real time tweets and, giving in to my inner geek, got my books signed by the authors. Later, when life had slowed down some, I looked over my notes. One phrase jumped off the page. Each of the speakers said it during their presentations. Some said it more than once. It took on the aspect of a mantra. To get noticed in a noisy world, you have to write remarkable content.
Sound Scary? It Doesn’t Have To Be
I started thinking about my clients – you – the good people who sometimes read my blog. I’ve heard you say it. “I’m not a writer. I can’t write remarkable content.” Well here’s how my trusty Oxford American Dictionary defines the word “remarkable.”
re • mark • a • ble (ri-mahr-ka-bel) adj. worth noticing, exceptional, unusual.
If you’re not a professional writer I understand why you would be intimidated at the prospect of writing exceptional or unusual content.
It’s All About Your Audience
My point is this. If you sell concrete, your website should be geared to people who want to know more about concrete. Since concrete is your area of expertise I’m betting that you can produce content that, if not exceptional or unusual, is at least worth noticing? That is to say worth noticing to your audience. Don’t get me wrong. No matter how much expertise you have in your field, a professional writer will always do a better job at crafting your web copy than you will. But if you focus more on the worth noticing part of the definition of remarkable and less on the exceptional and unusual parts, you just might be surprised at how remarkable your content is.
Some Helpful Resources
If you’d like to dive a little deeper into the world of remarkable content, here are a few links that are favorites of mine. I hope you’ll find them helpful:
Now Back to You
Did you write your own copy for your website? How did that go? Or did you hire someone to write it for you? Were you satisfied with the result?
P.S. To my writer friends and colleagues. Don’t be angry with me for suggesting that clients on a limited budget might want to try writing their own copy. My intent here was to give them some helpful advice if they want to go in that direction. Know this. They will never replace you.
by Marvin Kane | Mar 6, 2012 | Sharing
Here’s something I’ve struggled with for a long time. Maybe some of you have too. Balance… that state of being where the pieces of your life exist in some reasonable proportion to each other. I’ve long believed, long hoped really that I would get to a place in my life where my skills, talents and interests would all be in play at once resulting in a fully formed me. Instead, at a point in my life where there are certainly more yesterdays than tomorrows, I’m still chasing balance. I’m not sure it exists. Or maybe balance simply means different things to different people. When one considers the great masters of art, music and literature it’s hard to imagine their lives being balanced. More than likely they spent disproportionate amounts of time perfecting their craft… and neglecting everything else.
Balance For the Rest of Us
But most of us aren’t masters. We’re regular people with diverse interests and varying degrees of talent. So how much time do you spend doing the different things you love to do? Perhaps the more important question is why? Why do you do the things you do? I suspect that if you asked someone who has talent, whether it’s knitting, playing a musical instrument, filling a canvas with color and shape or painting the Sistine Chapel, why they do it, the answer would simply be “I would not feel alive if I didn’t.” Passion. But how do passion and balance coexist? I don’t know.
It’s A Discipline Thing – I Think
When I was at Berklee College of Music in the mid seventies, I had a friend – a fellow guitar player – who brought a timer into the practice room with him. I don’t mean a metronome that helped him keep time to the music. I mean an egg timer he brought from his kitchen. You see he created a practice schedule for himself and the timer helped him stick to the schedule. Scales for an hour, improvisation for an hour, ear training for half an hour then back to scales. When the timer bell sounded he moved on to the next segment of his schedule. To me this sort of regimentation seemed more suited to an engineer than a musician. At any rate this technique never worked for me. But I’m not very disciplined. Are you?
It’s An Inspiration Thing – I Think
How can you schedule inspiration? How can you time creative surges? You can’t. But if you play music, or write, or paint, or quilt or knit only when you’re inspired, your passion will live in the shadows. That’s not where it belongs. Passion must be nourished. It has to be in the front of your being where everyone can see and feel it. What I think is that if you can pursue your craft when you’re not inspired, inspiration will come more frequently. And your passion will light you up. Isn’t that we want?
It’s a Sharing Thing – I Know
We don’t own our talents. We have stewardship over them. And when we don’t share them with others we are in breach of a fundamental, albeit unwritten contract. Thinking of my talents in this way helps me get unstuck. Would that work for you?
And Now Back to You
Do you have trouble finding the time to pursue your passions and interests? Does it feel like a waste of time when you do? How do you get unstuck? Talk to me.
Photo credit: Yogendra 174
by Marvin Kane | Feb 28, 2012 | Business
My introduction to blogging was through a colorful Canadian who hails by the moniker Yarn Harlot. If you like funny, then this is your gal – even more so if you have thing for wool, which I do.
The Yarn Harlot, aka Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, writes about knitting and life and yarn with such a unique perspective that she attracts even non-knitters. Her blog led to book deals. The books led to talks all over North America. Now, those books and talks draw in more readers for the blog, creating a sweet little loop toward ever growing popularity. As an indication of how many readers she has, each post draws more than 100 and often more than 200 comments.
Looking at this as a newbie blogger, it all seemed so simple. Start a blog, get a book deal, give some talks, watch the blog audience grow, get a bigger book deal, give more talks…you get the idea. I knew it really wasn’t that easy when I launched my blog, knitaway.blogspot.com, but in the back of my mind, I had hopes of at least building a small following.
After a lot of time and effort, that’s all I ever generated with that blog – a very small following. No book deals. No speaking engagements: Just a tiny audience that consisted of my mother and a couple of friends.
It wasn’t a total waste. I had fun. I connected with some people in other parts of the country that I would never have met otherwise and I have a great online journal. What I didn’t get, however, is something some people would call a “return on investment.”
That’s fine if blogging is a hobby, or something you want to do just for fun. But, if you want to blog to build your expertise or promote your business, you certainly have to get more readers than my mother, or your mother, or your mother’s mother, for that matter.
So do what my father says and “Do as I say, not as I did.”
The blog isn’t about you, even if it’s about you
The topic may be your thoughts and activities, but ultimately this is about your readers. What do they want to hear or know about? Maybe you’ll entertain them with funny stores from the shop. Maybe you’ll educate them about a particular subject. If you’re tempted to write about your root canal, that’s okay as long as you can answer the question, “Why would a reader care?”
Listen to others
This is actually one thing I did. I spent a lot of time on other people’s blogs. I read them and commented on them. Many of those people became a part of my small audience.
Blog regularly
Since mine was a hobby blog, I never felt a strong obligation to post on a regular basis. I’d go weeks without a post. This is a big part of why it never progressed beyond a hobby blog. This is a quick way to lose potential readers. Even if a reader is blown away by a post, he’s not going to keep coming back if there’s no new material. There are just too many other great things to draw his attention.
Know your audience
When I started blogging, I thought very little about who would read my blog. This is something you should think a lot about. Who do you want to reach? You may want a broad audience, but you are best off focusing on one specific person. This will help you tailor the blog and make it personal. Plus, once you know who that is, you will have a much easier time finding good material because you will be looking for things that will interest that person.
