Just had to share this story I read. Pablo Picasso credited his mother with much of his success. She believed in him from the beginning. She told him, “If you become a soldier, you’ll become a general. If you become a monk, you’ll end up as the Pope.” In Picasso’s own humble way, he ended the story, “Instead I became an artist and wound up as Picasso!”
You Just Can’t Beat Email Marketing
One of my clients had a great story this week about email marketing.
She met a woman at a luncheon. They exchanged business cards and had a good talk. My client put the woman on her email list.
20 years went by!! TWENTY!
The woman signed up for an event my client was hosting last week. She said, “I’ve always read your newsletters but never had a need for your services until now. But I certainly knew who I was going to call for help! The expert!”
Keeping the woman on the email list for 20 years had a zero cost. My client has over 30
00 emails on her list. So there was no cost. No special effort. But the woman came to the event with a friend and both are planning purchases!
Review your office procedures to be sure you are gathering every email possible. Add them to your lists. Make your content valuable so people will stay on the list. Watch your traffic reports to be sure the content is working with your audience. Build long term relationships!
Don’t Buy a Mac
I’m trying to do a new website for a MAC user. She’s not super computer literate so everything she tries to share with me takes her twice as long. Her Pages and Numbers files don’t convert to Word or Excel cleanly. What she thinks is a graphic file, isn’t.
There are 4 times more Windows users than MAC users. So chances are REALLY good that MAC users are going to need to share files with a Windows person.
Why make your computer life harder? Unless you are working in a graphics related industry and the only people you share files with are other MAC users, stay away from MACs.
Sure you get free support from the Apple store. How much time do you have for standing in line during regular business hours? But don’t try googling a question for a quick answer because chances are slim you’ll find the answer. Have a Windows question? There are hundreds of answers in blog sites, YouTube videos and forums.
Want some training on the software? There are hundreds of YouTube videos and articles about Windows. Not so much on the iOS.
So unless your goal is to be a full time computer whiz who can rock all those graphics programs, don’t buy a MAC.
Writing Your Elevator Speech
The American Family Business Accelerator program had an excellent presentation on writing your elevator speech. Even if you have an elevator speech I suggest working through this tool to see if it spotlights any fine-tuning you need to do.
In a nutshell:
F – Find their pain point
A – Answer their problem
R – Reasons why you’re different
M – Make them want more
In theory, it’s easy to tell someone what you do. You’re asked that question all the time. But in reality, it’s hard! And it is so important! You want to wordsmith your answer so that it can be stated in 30 seconds. The words have to be clear and concise to give a total stranger the picture of what you do. It’s that pivotal “first impression.”
Beyond answering “What do you do?” your elevator speech plays a major part in your entire marketing plan. It is the first step, the foundation of the whole plan.
- When you create a company brochure, you would start with the elevator speech and expand to share examples and details to support the speech.
- When you are writing content for your web site, each page should support and expand upon that basic elevator speech.
- If you participate in any review sites such as Angie’s List, Yelp or Kudzu, your elevator speech would be the content you fill in for their format.
- The elevator speech would be the starting point for your Summary section on your LinkedIn profile.
Take the time to write a good elevator speech. Use this excellent tool. Call Your Computer Lady for help if you need it. We’ll brainstorm with you and help edit the speech until it’s just what you need!
10 tips for an awesome and SEO-friendly blog post
“Writing blog posts requires skill. To keep readers interested, you should think about the structure of your content and keep it enjoyable. If people like and understand your post, they’re much more likely to share it with others, which will increase your rankings. So, if you want to improve your writing skills and rankings, start with these tips on writing an SEO-friendly blog post!
It might sound like writing for SEO and writing to attract and engage your audience are two conflicting goals. But that’s not true. To write an SEO-friendly post, you should feature the words you want to be found in a prominent place. However, over-using keywords severely damages the readability of your text. A high keyphrase density can even signal to Google that you might be stuffing keywords in your text, which can negatively affect your rankings.”
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