What makes a reputation?

Your reputation is what people say about you, whether verbally or in writing.  To build a good reputation you need to influence two groups of people:

• Those who know you and have experienced your expertise
• Those who don’t know you yet

Customers

This includes clients – or whatever you call the people who pay (or have paid in the past) for your expertise – if you’re a speaker, it might be your audience.

In order that they have positive thoughts about you after they’ve been on the receiving end of your (or your company’s) services, you need to deliver excellence in everything you do – whether it’s the actual advice or produce you deliver or the invoice process.

Unfortunately, people talk a lot more about bad experiences than they do about good ones.  That means that good is not enough – it’s what people expect.  The delivery has to be exceptional in some way.

The best way to achieve this is to talk to your customer, ask them what is important to them and deliver exactly what they want, efficiently, effectively and with enthusiasm.

Contacts

These are people who you may have connected with networking online or offline, who only know what you tell them.

If you’re lucky, other people will reinforce your message, if they know people who have actually been your customer at some point.  But mostly their knowledge of you will be gleaned from social media posts, your online profiles, blogs you’ve written and newsletters or email campaigns they receive.

That means that every word you write has to help to make your reputation shine!

Systems to enhance your reputation

How often do you call your customers for a chat - outside work you’re doing together?  Find out how things are going, check that the problems you started out solving for them are still important.  Discover what their current challenge is.

How often to you make contact with former customers – apart from your newsletter?  Calling up old clients is one of the most effective ways to get them back as a live customer.

How many of your online contacts have you had a 1-2-1 with?  You don’t have to live locally, a 1-2-1 works just as well using Zoom or Google Meet or MS Teams.  Once you’ve had a 1-2-1 the door is open for business and referrals.

All these strategies are not magic – but they do need to be part of your process, a system that will not only shine your reputation as someone who makes an effort and cares, but also as a means of filling your order book!

Blogging to enhance your reputation

A good reputation boosting blog shares your expertise and shows off your depth and/or breadth of knowledge.  

If you’re thinking ‘But that means I’m giving away all my secrets’, that’s OK.  Very few people will try to follow your advice – not because they don’t want to, but because it’s not their ‘thing’ and it’s too much hassle.  But those people still need the skills you have and, now they know how knowledgeable you are, it’s an easy choice for them to call you.

Of course, there will be people who don’t want (or can’t afford) to pay someone to do the work – and they’re the ones who will try and follow your advice.  They’re not potential customers, but could be great advocates for you.

Headlines that attract

The late Ted Nicholas (a massively successful American copywriter) used to say that you should spend 80% of your writing time on the headline!  I wouldn’t go quite that far, but your headline is important – it’s the first point of engagement.

Here are a few ideas:

• How to …  [solve your customers’ biggest problem]  
• The 3 biggest mistakes [your target audience] make – and how to avoid them
• Your [subject] checklist for success
• 27 Hot Tips on … [subject]
• 5 ways to … {do something your target audience want to do]

Questions work well too, e.g.

How do you create a blog that gets engagement?

Content that keeps people reading

Subheadings are good – better still if they’re numbered.  If you’ve used a number in your headline, that will give you the subheadings.  But if you’ve chosen a ‘how to …’ approach, subhead each step – it makes it easy for the reader to follow and keeps them reading.

Deliver value

Don’t ramble – people like to get to the point.  No long explanations, keep everything simple.  You don’t have to give all the minute detail, either people will be able to follow it and apply common sense or they need your help – and you’ve recruited a new customer!

Make sure that you give information that your target audience will find useful.  

Keep going

One blog article won’t get attention, you need to write them regularly – at least a couple each month.  This will:

• Build and confirm your reputation as an expert
• Keep you visible and in people’s awareness
• Position you as the go-to expert in your industry
• Give your website fresh content regularly, to attract the search engines
• Provide material for your newsletter that is of value
• Give you material for good social media posts

3 Top Tips

1. Write in short sentences and short paragraphs to give your copy energy.
2. Add a good image that enhances your message at the top.
3. Say what you have to say and then stop – blogs don’t have to be any particular length.

How to achieve your goals

Find a quiet and undisturbed environment.  With a large pad of paper and plenty of pens, pencils and coloured markers, get comfortable and start writing.

List all the goals you would like to achieve in your life, no matter how outrageous they may appear right now.  You should consider every area such as:

Career goals - positions you would like to achieve; how you would like to develop within your company; where you would like to see yourself in two, three and five years...

Personal Goals - write down everything you have ever wanted to achieve - the places that you would like to visit and everything you have always wanted out of life.  This can include financial goals for savings, holidays, etc.

Domestic and family goals - what you would like to achieve for your family; what the family would like to do together (improved relationships, going on holidays as a unit, etc.); plans for putting children through college....

Educational goals - your further development; courses you would like to attend; qualifications you would like to attain...

Material Goals - things you want to obtain - cars, sporting equipment, things for the home or the office, new stereo, TV, laser disc player, etc.

Physical Goals - improving your fitness, attaining a particular weight or measurements, developing a skill (e.g. to be able to run 10 kilometres, lift 100kgs)...

Business Goals – all the things you want to achieve from the business.  The financial - turnover and profit per month/year and what you want to do to bring in that amount; what type of work, how much of it to hit your financial targets.

Use one sheet for each category.  Don’t worry about importance or order just get everything down – quantity is the key at this stage.  You might want to do this in two sessions – to allow other goals to surface.

Next steps

Take each sheet and using a coloured marker or an ABC system categorise every item as:

A Top priority, very important

B Quite important, but not critical

C Would be nice, but not that important

You may have several ‘A’ items on some sheets and none on others.

Take all the A items and put them onto a single list – now reprioritise it – 1 for the most important of all, 2 for the next most important, and so on.  Create a ‘to do’ list for each objective – individual actions with dates for completion.

You can’t ‘do’ a goal – you do things that get you closer to it.  The next step is to create a to do list and attach dates for completion of these tasks.

Transfer the tasks into your diary and place the complete list on your desk or somewhere you will see it regularly.

After three months review all the goals you originally identified and re-make your list.  You should have achieved many of the goals or be well on the way to achievement.  Some of your B list may now move up to the A list and you may have found some new goals.

Repeat the original exercise.

HOT TIP:  Ask yourself every day ‘What have I done today towards achieving my goals?’  It will keep you focused.

Remember – a goal is only a dream you are prepared to take action on!

How to get your book written

If you’re happy hitting the keyboard writing a book is simply a bit of planning and then scheduling in writing time, but not everyone is a natural writer.  This outlines some alternatives.

Planning pays off

Regardless of how you plan to get your book out of your head and into manuscript form, you’ll need to plan.

• Create an outline with chapter titles and a bullet point list of what you want to include in each chapter.
• Create a format for your chapter so each chapter is structured the same.

These two steps will make the writing process much easier as you have a route map and framework.

Alternatives to writing

Record it

You can record your manuscript and get it typed for a small fee by using a freelance site like ‘Fiverr’.

Work with an editor

There are several ways to work with an editor.

• Some book editors will literally listen to your ideas and type it as you speak, then go away and tidy it up.
• Some editors will take existing content you’ve created – e.g. blogs and articles and construct the book from that.

Work with a ghost writer

A ghost writer will interview you, perhaps a number of times and then create the book from those interviews.

Final thoughts

Regardless of how the book is written, or by whom, it will need editing.  If you’ve had an editor or someone else who has helped you to create the manuscript, it should go to a different editor for the final edit.  

Writing a book takes time whether you’re writing it yourself or working with someone else.  Block out time in your diary to ensure it’s not one of those projects that keeps getting pushed down the list.