You guys, we had such a fantastic turnout for the All Content Matters event last Friday!

Sold-out crowd, tons of interaction, great work by everyone in the room on their Target Audience Personas. Big thanks to Austin’s favorite connector Sherry Lowry for having the vision to pull the event together, and the All Content Tribe for all their hard work getting Tech Ranch ready for our group!

Here is the presentation from the event:

I put together a little video earlier this year to help businesses owners understand the role of content marketing and how it can help their bottom line:

If you spent any of this weekend watching college football, you know that much of the halftime talk was about the coaches – who got fired, who’s moving where, who has the ticket to a winning season in their back pocket.

No matter how great the players, everyone knows that at least part of the win comes from the sideline. Talent without any strategy and coordination is dead in the water.

With our big move from San Diego to Austin, I knew that 2011 needed to be a coordinated and strategic year, so I ended up joining 3 separate coaching groups. These groups serve three very separate needs for me, and I realized that many of the businesses I work with struggle in one or more of these areas. I thought I’d share some insights in case you’re one of them:

Mastermind Groups – Accountability & Support

The first group I joined is a casual mastermind group hosted by financial coach Jennifer Jaime. If you haven’t been a part of a mastermind before, don’t be scared off by the word – anyone can put one together, and the format is whatever the group prefers.

I like to joke that a mastermind is the business equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous – our small group of business owners (we have 5) shows up each month to talk about their challenges, confess this month’s slip-ups, get ideas and support, and make a plan for improving next month. Everyone gets equal time, and we end with our commitments – things we’ll accomplish before we meet again.

A mastermind group is one of the best places to find accountability – as business owners we usually know what we need to do to grow our business (write that blog post! Make that sales call!), but we don’t have a boss to breathe down our necks and make sure we do it. For me, my mastermind group is that boss.

Group Coaching – Vision & Goals

The second group I joined was the Big Fish Yearlong Adventure by Lorin Beller Blake - Lorin’s expertise is helping businesses take things to the next level, and I was ready to do that in 2011. This group is about turning the magnifying glass on yourself, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. In this group, 6 other female entrepreneurs and I work on understanding what’s really standing in our way, getting rid of what we don’t want and adding more of what we do.

This is the place where I’ve planned out the 10-year vision for my business (as well as my life), and started putting concrete metrics in place to make sure I’m tracking in the right direction. I’ve found that if we spend our time looking at the yellow dotted line instead of the horizon, it’s really easy to get lost. Goal-oriented groups like these keep me on the road I’ve chosen.

Group Coaching – Business Process & Structure

The third group I’m part of is the ThinkBIG! Program by Swiss Avenue Partners. Originally, Swiss Avenue Partners main service was helping get businesses ship-shape so they can be sold – everything from stabilizing revenue numbers to formalizing channel partner relationships and getting Quickbooks in order.

What they didn’t expect was the clamoring from small & medium businesses to share that same knowledge, even if selling the businesses wasn’t part of the plan. They created ThinkBIG! to do just that – help businesses put processes in place so that their back office and sales efforts run like a much larger company.

If Big Fish is the group that keeps me up at night dreaming of the future, ThinkBIG! is the group that helps me sleep at night, knowing that every number is in place and everything is ticking along without me checking on it every 5 minutes. Mastermind is a great place for me to try on some of the ideas from the other two groups, see if they fit and make a commitment to getting them done.

How about you? Where to you find accountability, goal planning, and business process improvements? Are you part of any groups that make these easier for you?

P.S. – In 2012 I’m launching a yearlong coaching group of my own that covers all three – helping small businesses with their goals and structure for marketing success, and keeping them on track. If you’re interested, join our Better Way to Say It Meetup group for a preview or contact us for more info.

Everyone who works with me or hears me speak will at some point get referred to the Content Marketing Institute - I really consider it the definitive source for clear, action-oriented advice on how to target your audience and write content that will attract, engage and endear them to your brand. (disclaimer: I’m a CMI contributor)

If you want your marketing to do more for you, I highly recommend you sign up to “get the daily blog post by email” in the upper right corner.

A recent post on CMI on the 7 Business Goals of Content Marketing had a couple nuggets of wisdom I couldn’t help but share. The first is the most clear definition of Content Marketing I’ve seen in a while:

“Content marketing is the practice of creating relevant and compelling content in a consistent fashion to a targeted buyer, focusing on all stages of the buying process, from brand awareness through to brand evangelism.”

And the second was this fantastic video on the history of Content Marketing – did you know it had roots all the way back to 1895? Awesome.

That was the subject line of an email I sent to my contact list last Thursday. We had let our email newsletter hibernate for far too long so we decided to send a re-opt-in campaign.

Our goals were to let our existing subscribers know that they could expect to hear from us again soon, and to ask permission to add our new connections to to our subscriber list.

This email went to 648 contacts, and so far we have 130 new subscribers – that’s a conversion rate of 20%! 

I wanted to share it with you so you can send a similar one to your list! Let me know if it works for you.

To: everyone@myaddressbook.com
From: Jenny Magic, Jenny@betterwaytosayit.com
Subject: Can I ask you a favor?

Well, hello!
As someone I love, admire, respect and look up to… (or at least one of those, promise!), I’m hoping I can ask you a favor:

The Better Way to Say It team took a break from sending a monthly email newsletter (a break that stretched into a year!) but we’re revamping for 2012. New last name, new city, new staff, new services, new topics… time for a new newsletter!

I’m writing to ask if I can I send you 12 emails in 2012. If so… would you please subscribe to the Better Way to Say It monthly newsletter?

What’s included in this fabulous newsletter, you ask? We’ll be sharing stuff like:

• The most common marketing mistakes we come across (& how to fix them!);
• Our favorite technology tools & shortcuts;
• Answers to questions from the audience – you!;
• Tales of woe and procrastination as I finally finish my book on the “Hey You” marketing technique.

2012 should be an interesting year. I’d love to share it with you. If you’d like to spy on what we’re up to…. click here to subscribe. And I’d love to hear from you, too! Drop me a line sometime.

Thank you!
Jenny

P.S. – We’re looking for a couple more web design firms that might be interested in partnering with a Content Strategy team to keep their projects on schedule and under budget – if you’ve worked with a good one (anywhere in the country is fine) would you make an email intro?

P.P.S. – This is the only group email I’ll ever send you without express permission, so just delete it or let me know if you’re not interested.

–
Jenny L. Magic
Principal, Better Way to Say It
(512) 887-2803 office
jenny@betterwaytosayit.com
http://www.betterwaytosayit.com
Find me on: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook

 

 

I’m a huge fan of Michael Stelzner and his incredibly useful Social Media Examiner blog. He has a post today that I think is just “can’t miss” for those of you trying to keep a blog or your social media updated.

Titled, “11 Ways to Find New Content for Your Social Strategy,” it outlines some great ways to get content ideas, and these tips apply not only to social media strategy, but also to your blog.

The first tip is one I see most of my small business clients miss – use Google Reader (or another RSS feed reader) to follow, sort and scan top blogs in your industry. There’s simply no way I could keep on top of the 300+ blogs I regularly read if I didn’t have a tool to help me keep track of them.

Not using Google Reader  is like keeping your cell phone contacts on separate Post-it notes around your house – all the information is there, but you have to go hunt it down to use it!

There are 10 more tips in the list, a couple of which I hadn’t thought of in this context. This article is worth the read. Click for the additional 10 tips: 11 Ways to Find New Content for Your Social Strategy.

I’d love to hear what strategies you’re using to get content ideas. How do you save your ideas until you’re ready to blog?

If you’re not already taking advantage of the Recommendations tool on LinkedIn, you’re missing a huge opportunity to build credibility with the growing number of clients and customers who search for your profile before buying your product or service.

The idea of customer testimonials isn’t new. What LinkedIn changed was the trust factor. Each Recommendation on LinkedIn can either be displayed by the owner or hidden, but no edits are allowed.

This means is that the testimonial wasn’t reworded, changed or taken out of context in any way – you see exactly what the person writing it intended. Combine that with the fact that there is no limit to the number of testimonials you can display, and you have a powerful tool to build social proof, one of the six “weapons of influence” defined by marketing expert Robert Cialdini.

Ok, ok, you’re saying, I get it. I need to get Recommendations on my LinkeIn profile. How exactly do I do that? The mechanics are simple: log in, and on your Profile tab, click Recommendations. What isn’t as simple is figuring out how to ask. I’ve found three tips help immensely in getting great recommendations:

1. Get the Easy Ones First

We all have our biggest fans, the partners we work with over and over, that have become friends as much as colleagues. Getting glowing recommendations from these people will have two major impacts on the future, harder “asks.” First, you can honestly ask these easy reviewers to highlight specific skills and talents you’re hoping to highlight. (Obviously here, stay well within the bounds of honesty – just like being dishonest on a resume, fibs here will come back to bite you!).

They can help you build out an online portrait of your work with aligns with where your business is going. Second, these recommendations will probably be looked at by any future reviewers racking their brain to think of unique descriptions of your work. Your well-placed original recommendations will help jog their memory. Which leads me to…

2. Let Them Know What You’re Hoping to Convey

The key is to success here is making it as easy as possible for the reviewer to open the request and without any searching through emails, or poking through files, remember who you are, what you do and what talents they’d like to help you show off. By wording your request in a way that gives them this information up front, you dramatically increase the chance of getting a quick turnaround on a great recommendation.

3. Give Them an Easy Way Out

This one is, in my mind, the most important. Asking for a recommendation is asking for a favor and no one likes to be forced into doing favors. So give your connections a nice way out by including a “P.S.” in your request that gives them permission to opt out and not feel bad about it.

So, to Recap:

DON’T: Use the default text in LinkedIn

I’m sending this to ask you for a brief recommendation of my work that I can include in my LinkedIn profile. If you have any questions, let me know.
Thanks in advance for helping me out.
-Jenny Magic

DO: Write your own personalized request that makes it easy. Here’s one that’s worked well for me:

Dear John,
After our session yesterday, I hope it’s clear that I love helping small businesses get smarter about their branding. Client endorsements go a long way in building trust and I’d love to ask a favor: Would you write a brief recommendation for my LinkedIn profile?

I’m hoping to highlight how fun it can be to work on marketing and your brand, and how a few simple action items can really change your business.

If something doesn’t immediately come to mind, then it’s probably not the right time for a recommendation – don’t worry a bit about it!

Your honest words help others decide if our firm might be able to help them, and we really appreciate your time.

Thank you,
-Jenny

PS – If there’s a way we could have served you better, *please* let me know!

I’d love to hear if these work for you! Please share any other tips and tricks in the comments below.

(I am not affiliated in any way with this service, nor am I being compensated for my support)

I don’t usually plug tools too heavily here, but I have to share one that has lately become a staple for me – Plancast.com.

Described by Techcrunch as “Foursquare for the future,” Plancast is a tool that lets you tell friends and followers where you’re going to be rather than where you are right now.

This may seem like a minor tweak but as someone who just moved to a new town (hello Austin, Texas!) it has been a real game-changer when deciding where to spend my networking time.

By adding all the people I follow on Twitter and my Facebook friends to Plancast, I can easily see what events they have RSVP’d to recently. On any given evening here in Austin there are often three or more events that seem like good bets for meeting the kind of people I’m hoping to connect with. By browsing Plancast, it’s easy to see which one “wins” among the people I’ve chosen to connect with already.

I’m crowdsourcing my calendar to people I already trust.

And the best part is, I don’t have to think about adding my events – by connecting with Facebook and Eventbrite, any events I RSVP to automatically show up in my Plancast, which means that mine and my friends’ plans are usually pretty accurate and up-to-date.

If you spend time out networking, check it out! It’s a great way to know which faces to look for when you walk into a new event. Happy Networking!

Click for photo credit

I hear this all the time from my small business clients.

Even though we write volumes of emails, articles, speaking presentations, proposals and spend hours discussing the merits of our particular field or expertise, when it’s time to sit down and actually put 500 words down “on paper” we often find ourselves stumped.

I’m guilty myself – I seem to have channeled any creative writing energy into the relatively simple 140-character limits of my Twitter stream.

So I started thinking, “What am I so afraid of?” because I’m convinced that it really isn’t about the time it takes. It has to be something else…

• I’m Afraid Everyone Else is Doing it Better
  When you read a ton of blogs like I do, inevitably a number of those are professional (as in revenue-generating) blogs. They have full-time staff and resources to pay for the cool tools and great photos. Without realizing it, I think many small business owners hold themselves to this high standard even when the playing field is pretty uneven.
• I’m Afraid it’s All Been Said Before
  This one comes from not knowing your niche. Before I really started focusing on talking to small business owners, I had all these great ideas for general posts about content marketing, but once I started doing a little poking around, I’d find the exact article I had in my head already done perfectly. But realizing that there is a group that I enjoy working with (small businesses) that still have specific questions gave me more ideas than I know what to do with.
• I Don’t Know Where to Find Pictures
  This one is a big deal, but an easy one to solve. We don’t want to infringe on anyone’s copyright but who has time to both run a business and take lovely photos for their blog? I’m personally a big fan of the search engine at Creative Commons – it allows you to sift through the photos on Google Images, Flickr and others but it ONLY shows photos that you are allowed to reuse, as long as you give credit. I like to do this by linking back to the original source and putting the caption. “Click for Photo Credit” under the picture.
• I’m Just Out of the Habit
  Sometimes it’s not about fear as much as just forgetting to add this to our daily routine. I’m committing this week to post every day before I do anything else, just to prove to myself that it’s easier than it looks. Maybe a calendar reminder and the joy of a comment or two will help keep me on track!

How about you – What keeps you from blogging more regularly? Any tips for getting back in the habit?

I often get asked for great examples of content marketing, and today I found one in my mailbox.

I just moved back to Texas and in the packet with my new Allstate Auto policy information was this handy little guide titled, “What to Do in Case of an Accident.” Because, let’s face it, a checklist is a helpful thing to have around when you’ve just had a little fender-bender. The shaky hands and muddy thinking that come along with adrenaline don’t always lead to the best decisions!

Along with simple instructions like “Stay Calm” it also reminds you to limit discussion of the accident to only the police and your Allstate contact. Saying the wrong thing at the scene of an accident can change the outcome of the event, and that reminder will probably save someone thousands of dollars.

Finally, the document has a list of all the information you need to collect at the scene, with places to write it on the form. Allstate customers won’t to worry that they missed collecting some crucial piece of data.

The reason this is a win for Allstate’s Content Marketing strategy is that they were clearly thinking of the needs of their customer when they created this. It’s not a marketing piece but rather a truly helpful checklist that not only provides useful information but peace of mind that you’ve covered all your bases in the middle of a stressful situation. It’s the kind of document I might share with someone who might not even be an Allstate customer – now wouldn’t that be nice for word-of-mouth referrals?

So what content could you create that is truly useful to your audience? Start your content marketing efforts there!