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March 27, 2017 by RonTester 1 Comment

How to Be More Human: Personality in Your Content

Ron and JamesYou know how sometimes you read a blog and it sounds professional bordering on uptight? I’m afraid my blog sounds like that too often. I like James Altucher’s blog better than mine. Here’s an excerpt from his March 27 post. Just under a picture of him with Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, you read:

I don’t think Craig wanted to talk to me. For one thing, I smelled.

I woke up late and rushed out to get to the “Women Entrepreneurs” breakfast where Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist was speaking.

There were about 40 women there, Craig, and then me. I crashed the breakfast.

I had some questions for him. But he kept angling away from me. Don’t think I can’t read the body language, Craig!

I’ve seen James speak at a conference. He’s rambling and personable. I am not always crazy about the rambling, but I love the personable. I aspire to the personable.

When creating content for your online products, services, and marketing materials it can be easy for us to become stale, boring, and out of touch with your audience (or mine) — to the point that they can no longer relate to you (or me). I hate that. So here are some ideas we can use to be more human in our content (or let our humanity shine).

Tell Your Story

Starting from your customer’s perspective, tell your story with them in mind. You can speak to them from the voice of a customer yourself. After all, why did you create the products or services that you did? Did you do it because you needed them yourself? How did you discover the need for your product or service? Why you? Stay in the perspective of the customer during the story and they will relate to your offerings better.

Don’t Be Pretentious

Instead of using jargon and “corporate” speak, talk to your audience members as if they’re your equals and you’ll become more human to them. You should do this because they are your equals, even if they don’t know as much about your product of service as you do. It will also give you a chance to show your personality to them. While you do want to be a thought leader and a teacher, you don’t want to appear as a know-it-all and boring.

Be Relevant

Stay up-to-date on your industry so that you can remain relevant. Don’t stick to the old ways of doing things long after it’s not being done any longer. Pay attention to what’s coming down the pike and you’ll always stay on top of your niche and be relevant to your audience.

Use Plain Language

Speak to your audience as if you’re talking to a good friend. Write how you talk. No need to use bigger words than you would normally use. If it helps, get some voice to text software and talk your blog posts and content. I write on a Mac and if you double tap the fn key, a mic will pop up and you can dictate. It works pretty darn well. Not perfect, but…

RANT: I’ve used the Dragon software, both PC and Mac versions, for years, and they consistently disappoint. Editing the transcript can take long as dictating. And each iteration they’ll advertise something like “30% more accurate than before.” That may be true, but they’re still below the minimal acceptable threshold for accuracy. This is true if you buy the most expensive versions or the cheap ones. I’ve tried several versions of both.

Focus on Your Audience

No matter what you are writing, blogging, vlogging, and doing, it’s always supposed to be about your audience. They need to know what’s in it for them, and to keep the focus on them over yourself. Instead of seeking to glamorize yourself and put yourself above them, put them on a pedestal and make it all about them at all times.

Make Each Word Count

Once you finish writing a piece of content, edit it for extraneous words. Pare it down so that your writing is concise and to the point. Try writing shorter sentences instead of long-winded sentences. In addition, don’t make paragraphs too long and keep each blog post to one narrow focus. This is such a struggle for me. I have a degree in English literature and went to graduate school in English lit. The writing’s not better, it’s just different, and I fall back into old habits. My WordPress plugin is always telling me to shorten my sentences, stop using big words. I do what I can.

Keep One Voice across Channels

Regardless of which channel you’re promoting your content on, it’s important that you know what your voice is. The tone, voice, and feeling of what you put out to the world should feel the same whether they read it on your blog or read it on LinkedIn. You need to be mindful of context, of course, but you want to sound like the same person. In literature, if the text tone/language is too different, we assume that someone else wrote it. You don’t want to sound like someone else is writing for you.

Include Appropriate Images/Imagery

With any content, you can get your point across easier if you use images. Sometimes a concept is just easier to express with an image and other times the image just helps set the mood and tone for the entire post.

You can incorporate more humanity and personality into your content by remembering who your audience is and who you are. Seek to be yourself, while also delivering great content to your audience. If you have other suggestions for keeping it helpful and simultaneously keeping it real, please comment and share.

Filed Under: Content Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Ron Tester

March 25, 2017 by RonTester 1 Comment

Nine Content Ideas for Any Niche

I’m participating in Connie Ragen Green’s Productivity Challenge right now (find out more by going here), and I’ve committed to blogging every day. It’s good practice for me and, to be honest, I’ve got plenty to say. But if you’re struggling to come up with ideas to produce content (blogging, social media posting, creating videos, etc.), you might need some ideas to get you started.

When you are trying to come up with content ideas for your niche, you can use a few basic starters for the content that will work for literally any niche. Once you have these nine ideas, you can break them down into individual points for blog posts, podcasts, videos, eBooks and more.

  1. Make a List of Good Points – Every niche has some good points about it that your target audience might find interesting. You can write Seven Awesome Things about XYZ and it always fits. Seven Awesome Things about Eating Veggies works, so that means any type of idea will work.
  1. Make a List of Bad Points – Just like the good points will work, you can twist it and write the opposite. When you’re known for being for something, being against it can grab your audience’s attention. Using the veggie idea from above, assuming your niche is a vegan blog, you can turn it into Seven Reasons You Don’t Want to Eat Veggies – then make it a funny article saying things like “You hate being healthy” or something like that.
  1. Ask (and Answer) a Question – This is a great way to come up with ideas to create content. You can use questions actually asked directly of you, or you can search for questions on any website, blog, forum or social media network that you’ve seen within your niche.
  1. Make a List of Facts – This can work really great for content ideas since in reality there are going to be far more than seven or ten facts about your niche. You can literally do this trick as often as you can come up with a list of facts in relation to your niche.
  1. Make a List of Misconceptions – Just like there are facts, there are almost always misconceptions about your niche. Perhaps you host a niche website or blog about the subject of bird watching. You can write many articles or create many YouTube videos addressing misconceptions about various breeds of birds or even misconceptions about equipment used in bird watching.
  1. Give the Best Advice for Solutions – For each niche there are various problems with corresponding solutions that you are likely offering to the audience. You can use this fact to help create content focused on the best solutions and the best advice for using the solutions properly.
  1. Give the Worst Advice for Solutions – Conversely, there are always some solutions that don’t work or that are a bad idea. Why not write about the bad ideas, the bad solutions, and the answers that don’t work, and then turn it around to offer your own solution after talking about what’s wrong with the other ideas.
  1. Tell the Top Three Beginning Ideas – In any niche there is a very basic beginning to consider. Starting at the very beginning is often forgotten because it seems so elementary to you, but to someone who is new to the niche it will not seem like minutia, it will seem super interesting and important.
  1. Be Controversial – Sometimes, being controversial is a great way to get more ideas for content. You can find a blog post that a mover and shaker talked about and tell why you agree or disagree. You can also connect some content with current events. A word of warning here—don’t be controversial in a way that will turn off your audience. In the end, some people may agree with you and others may disagree, but the people that disagree are more likely to remember the negative association. So be controversial, but be careful. For more about controversial marketing, check out this article on Forbes.

These content ideas can work for any niche. Just plug in your niche to the ideas and see for yourself. You’ll soon have a plethora of ideas and will never run out of them, so that you can generate content on a regular basis for your niche.

If you have other ways to generate ideas for content, please feel free to comment and share.

 

Filed Under: Content Marketing Tagged With: Content Ideas, Ron Tester

March 22, 2017 by RonTester Leave a Comment

Developing a Content Marketing Mindset

Developing a content marketing mindsetI just finished rereading Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, and it got me thinking about developing a content marketing mindset. Today, so much of marketing is about online content. For almost all businesses, marketing online can be used to support marketing offline. And for many business, online marketing can become the primary way to market a business.

As I’m sure you know, most people don’t run to the phone book anymore when looking for a business. (Side note: last time I asked someone if they had a phone book (which I was going to use to prop up a projector, not look up a number), they laughed!). Instead, they look for a business online. They ask their friends online. They research online before making their purchasing choices. Whether you have an online business or an offline business, developing a content marketing mindset can help you market your business more effectively and increase your sales exponentially.

Build Your Credibility

The first step toward developing a content marketing mindset involves using the online world to build up your credibility. Use your blog, release white papers, and participate in social media and more to ensure that your reputation is well represented online. Work to perfect every social media profile (it will take time and experimentation) and don’t start an account unless you are willing to keep it up to date at least weekly.

Seek Out Thought Leadership

Getting to know thought leaders in your industry can actually rub off on you and make you into a thought leader – eventually. Find and follow thought leaders in your industry, comment on their blogs, offer donated original content, review their products, and ask them to review yours. Interview them on a podcast. Do what you need to do in order to become part of their circle.

Understand Your Business

As you are building credibility and hobnobbing with thought leaders, study your niche and your business. You need to know everything there is to know, inside and out. That way when someone asks you a question you’re ready with a good answer and “sound bite” that can be used, makes sense and is true representation of what you do and what you stand for. Plus, you’ll have more to say (blog) if you know more.

Become a Strategic Publisher

Learning to think like a publisher is essential today in the online marketing world. Developing a publication calendar will go far in helping you know what information you’re going to share with your audience over time. If you take the time to develop a calendar, you can match product launches with the content. Doing without a publication calendar is a huge mistake. Planning in advance from day one will ensure that everything you do has a purpose.

Develop Your Own Online Space

In the old days of marketing, content marketing consisted of sending out duplicate articles to article directories. But, today content marketing consist of filling out your own online real estate with content before you even think about donating to any other sites. There are some people who disagree, but generally speaking I think it’s smart to establish your credibility and authority on your own site before you shift your attention to other people’s sites. The more relevant, useful and enlightening content that you can put on your own online real estate, the better for SEO, and the better for your audience.

Remember That You Are in Control

Sometimes, as a business owner it can be hard to remember who is in control. But, if you can accept that you’re in control of your own business and your own destiny, you’ll have a better chance of successfully developing and following through on your ideas, as well as meeting your goals.

Build Your Lists

One way to remain in control is to always be building your lists. Your email lists are the difference between success and failure when it comes to online marketing. Set up sign-ups for your newsletter or lists on your content and on your websites in ways that your audience cannot refuse. Plus, provide value by using the lists appropriately to build relationships and provide information.

Build Communities

One way to build relationships is to build online communities through your content marketing. Using your content, lists, and social media networks to build a community is an essential component of content marketing today. Because just producing the content isn’t enough; you have to push it out to your audience, too. Although I focus primarily on my own websites, I do use social media to help build community among those I serve.

Online marketing, and specifically content marketing, is an essential element of marketing today for almost all types of businesses. Developing the right mindset will help you develop the right marketing plan and that will move your business forward.

If you’d like to discuss how to implement a content marketing strategy, please email me for more information.

Filed Under: Content Marketing Tagged With: Mindset, Ron Tester

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