Archive for How to…Tips – Page 6

5 Goals for Your Blog & Website…
and One Big Challenge

A venn diagram showing dreams overlapping with reality to illustWhat goals have you identified for your blog and website? What do you want your blog to do for your business? No really, it’s not as obvious a question as it might at first appear.

I’ve been working with executive coaches and consultants for well over fourteen years now, helping them improve how they show up on the Web. In that time, I’ve seen a number of changes to the way websites look and function. It doesn’t matter if you use a traditional website, or a blog, or a blog as a website, the principles are the same.

Yet many professionals aren’t clear about their content marketing goals; their website and blog goals and expectations are vague. I made some notes for one client and thought I’d share them with you here.  I came up with 5 goals your site should strive to accomplish in the first minute or two. One of them is a big challenge… Read More→

Simplify Your Blog Writing:
Shortcuts to Publishing a Leadership Blog

mazeHow’s your blog writing going? Snap, crackle and publish? Or are you a little blocked, maybe even constipated?

Do you feel dread and overwhelm when it’s time to post on your blog?

You may offer great solutions and services for your clients, but if you don’t simplify your blog writing tasks and publish frequent, compelling content, you won’t get great content marketing results.

In a blog post last week I shared that the two most common statements I hear about blogging are: Read More→

Blog Goals: 5 Tips to Keep Your Blog
Focused and on Track

Blog-Goals

Is your blog focused and on track? Do you find yourself saying, “I don’t have enough time to blog,” or “I don’t know what to write about?”

Guess what? These two questions are related to the same problem: not enough clarity about blog goals. Here’s how I help my clients solve this problem of clarity:

  1. Define your business Ps & Q – (3Ps + 1Q):
    => What Problem do you solve?
    => Who are the People you serve?
    => What Products and services do you offer?
    => What makes you uniQue??
  2. Create a course outline or a table of contents as if you were writing a book or teaching a class on this problem, i.e., your expertise.
  3. Make a list of keywords, categories and topics you’re qualified to write about and that must be addressed to solve the problems of your readers.
  4. Make an editorial calendar for each day of the week you’re going to be blogging. Make sure you cover all the topics and categories, and that your keywords are repeated frequently in posts and titles (search engine optimization).
  5. Make a weekly blog schedule to include writing the content, sharing it on social sites, researching and commenting on other blogs, and formatting, editing, linking, etc.

Don’t underestimate the time it takes for all the peripheral upkeep of blogging. Maintaining a successful blog takes more time than just writing a post. And it almost always takes longer than the 30 minutes required for writing.

Are you focusing on client needs?

Read More→

Content Marketing Graphic:
What’s Missing in this Visual?

Content-Marketing-StepsI ran across this great slide share about how content marketing works on Vizedu from Sandeep Arora, but there’s something missing. Don’t get me wrong, I love this explanation of what content marketing is, how it works, and the difference from traditional marketing.

In order for your readers to find you, read your content, and remember you, you’ve got to grab their attention, spark an emotional engagement, and get them to take action.

How do you do this? Read More→

How Winning the French Open is like Writing a Business Blog

Rafael NadalSuccess, whether it is winning the French Open or writing a business blog, is half persistence, half-sweat.

Rafael Nadal dominates on clay courts and has the world record number of wins: the last eight of nine French Opens. Earlier this season Nadal was struggling, and some are saying that he won’t be successful with a win this year. But consider this:

  1. Nadal has a superb serve: 177 aces and 83 double faults in the last nine years.
  2. He is quick on the clay and can get ahead of the best shots.
  3. Nadal was trained early in life on clay courts and knows how to use the slow speed and the unpredictability to surprise his opponent.
  4. He has a winning fore-handed topspin.

This is very similar to writing a successful business blog. You’ve got to:

  1. Start with a strong serve –Include a keyword in the title and first sentence of your blog post, and make it compelling. Your title and first sentence may be the only thing a reader sees in a feed.
  2. Be agile and quick – Anticipate when it’s time to move on to a new topic. If you don’t, your readers already have.
  3. Mix it up – Write with a different voice or perspective. If you’re always positive and cheery, write a negative post and criticize some commonly held practices or beliefs. People won’t keep reading if you don’t surprise them.
  4. Deliver winning shots –Stay on topic, be relevant, and always keep your reader and their needs in mind.

When it comes to winning the open or writing a successful blog, the most important thing is to never give up – stay in the game. Your ability to refocus your writing and get back on track even when you don’t feel like it, will pay off in the long run.

Nadal knows this. He won’t let his past struggle undermine his current focus.

 

 

 

Out-of-Office: 4 Time-Saving Social Media Tips to Keep Connected

How can you use Social Media tips when you’re away from the office for a week?

What can you do to stay in touch with your clients when you’re out of town on a trip or vacation? I’ve been playing hooky: I went to a tennis ranch in Texas where we played tennis six hours a day. I was able to schedule publishing on my client blogs ahead of time, but my own blog suffered.

The good news is that it got me thinking about shortcuts and what can be done to extend your reach of online content marketing using social media tips.

Many of my readers are busy professionals who don’t have a lot of time. The danger of sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn is that they can suck you in and spit you out hours later… and time is money.

For those of you who have the bare minimum of time, and still want to get results, here are a few social media tips. Please feel free to join in and add other tips in the comments section. I must be doing something right: these tips have resulted in new clients directly from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Read More→

How to Make Yourself Blog When You Just Don’t Feel Like Blogging

boomHere’s a tip for how to make yourself write a blog post when you’re totally uninspired. Use other people’s inspiration to motivate you.

For example, take a look at what you’re reading on the Web right now. If it’s good enough to catch your interest, maybe you can use that spark to create something new for your readers?

Here’s how I went from barely awake blog procrastination to publishing this morning.

You can tell a lot about a person just by reading the titles of the web pages they’ve got open. Right now I’m reading posts on Harvard Business Review:

  1. “How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want to”
  2. “The Daily Routines of Geniuses”
  3. “Stop Trying to Control People or Make Them Happy”

And one on Hubspot: “12 Inspirational Writing Tips from History’s Greatest Authors.” Read More→

Blog Writing Tips: How to Become Productive and Prolific at Those Tasks You Hate

Manage-Your-TimeHow can you develop more productive blog writing habits? When are you going to stick to your content marketing calendar? What’s it going to take?

I know many small business owners who purposely procrastinate on writing and finance tasks they hate. Are you one of these professionals who work better when you have too much to do and not enough time to do it in? Think about it. Read More→

A Checklist for a Good Blog

Blog-checklistAfter I got home from our Publishing at Sea cruise, I checked out the good blogs of our amazing group of authors, including those of our experts, like Judith Briles! Of course, as writers, they all had important things to say on their blogs. But some weren’t really optimized for best results.

Here’s what I look for in an optimized, good blog (one that gets Google search and reader results):

  1. A good blog title with a tag line that says what people will find on this blog (benefits to reader)
  2. An email subscription sign up button such as an RSS icon
  3. A good blog post title that makes me want to read the full post
  4. A compelling image with each post
  5. Hyperlinks – at least one per 120 words so that posts are identifiable to search engines.
  6. Recent posts or no date on them: If posts aren’t at least once a week (twice is better) then I don’t want to see a date on the posts -which alerts me to the fact you haven’t posted in a month … or six! Read More→

Start an Expert Ebook with an Outline:
11 Steps

Experts-Stuart-MilesAre you an expert? Then you need to write and publish an expert ebook. Now. Before your field gets flooded with too many on the same topic (if it isn’t already). Trust me on this one.

Just as business blogs caught fire in 2004-2005, expert ebooks are what smart professionals use as a key marketing tool to get found, get known and get clients.

If you’re an expert and want to get found online, there’s no better way than to give visitors to your website or blog a free report that shows your expertise, builds credibility and starts conversations.

An expert ebook is a longer version of that report and can easily be sold on Amazon. Traditional publishing barriers have fallen. All that’s standing between you and published author status is a little time and work. So let’s get busy. Here’s why:

This is one of those opportunities on the rise. Don’t miss being on the early crest of the wave.

  • The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) reported U.S. wholesale ebook sales for January, 2010 were $31.9 million, up 261 percent from the same month a year earlier.

  • Ebooks are now outselling hardcover books at Amazon, selling 180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers. Read More→