Shiny, happy people

With a lovely unsullied year ahead, now is a great time to give your reputation marketing plan either a makeover or a shiny polish.

You can never underestimate the power of what people are gossiping about – and, while the public seem to focus on the negative, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have some stand out positive things to feed the chatline.

The question is what will get people talking positively about you and your business?

The more value you give, the more fans you’ll gather.  This can be in the form of:

• Tips and advice in social media posts
• Great content in groups where your community hangs out
• Useful information in blogs
• Valuable guidance in newsletters
• Free webinars explaining how to do something
• Live Q&A sessions
• YouTube channel featuring video information
• Free ecourses
• Short presentations at networking meetings that educate, rather than sell
• Conference keynote speeches

The more you can give, the more people will hear about you and appreciate your knowledge sharing.

When do I get paid?

If you’re looking at the above list and thinking ‘that’s a lot of free stuff to give away’, you’re right – but, if people have sampled your amazing-ness, they’re much more likely to want to pay for more of the same.

In today’s world, where knowledge is available at the click of a mouse, you need to build a horde of raving fans.  These are the people that follow you, rate you and will recommend you.

If you get your reputation marketing system running on high octane fuel, you’ll find that payment comes on its heels.

The secret of success is in the plan

One thing that is important, if you’re not going to spend hours doing all this, is to know what you want to do, how often, when and how.  Then it can become part of your marketing routine – and/or outsourced to experts.  

You can’t abdicate all responsibility, as nobody can BE you, but you can get help with content generation.

A well-planned marketing system will pay dividends in the long-term with a shiny reputation, people talking about you positively and that should put a big smile on your face!

I’m just a big show off!

Many business owners I meet feel uncomfortable about marketing.  They don’t want to be ‘pushy’.  But marketing doesn’t have to be selling or pushing products or services at people who don’t want them.  

In an ideal world marketing is about finding the people who are actually interested in your products and services and then impressing the socks off them!  

This is where blogs come in.  They’re a wonderful way to show off your expertise and give your readers an insight into your considerable knowledge and let them experience your approach, without having to part with any hard cash.

Use your blog as a guide

Your blog should deliver massive value.  And if you’re thinking ‘I’m not giving away all my secrets’, park that thought.  If someone is going to use your blog as a DIY guide and try and eliminate the need for your paid services – they’re probably never going to be a customer anyway.

Most people do what they like and are good at, but when it comes to things that sit outside their comfort zone, they’re more likely to outsource to someone.  If they’ve been impressed with what you have to say – there’s a high likelihood that will be you.

Use engaging headlines

Ted Nicholas (the late and great copywriter), you should spend 80% of your writing time crafting the headline.  If you are looking for headlines that capture attention these might be useful:

• 5 steps to [achieve what?]
• 17 hot tips on [subject]
• 3 [subject] mistakes [target audience} make – and how to avoid them
• Your [subject] checklist

For instance:

• 5 steps to make bookkeeping simple
• 17 hot tips on managing your inbox
• 3 marketing mistakes small business owners make – and how to avoid them
• Your health and safety checklist

Publish everywhere

Add an interesting image and upload your blog to your website – but don’t stop there.  

Unless you have a big following, people won’t see your blog so make sure to:

• Share the link on social media – not just once, but several times at different times
• Use it to lead your newsletter with great value
• Upload it as an article to your LinkedIn profile – and on any other platform where you can post articles.

When you know you’re sharing great value, it doesn’t matter that you’re showing off – people will appreciate it.

How to write a non-fiction book

A book is a great way to set yourself apart from your competitors.  Being an author gives you a certain kudos – as long as you’re working with a good editor/writer who will take your amazing ideas and polish them to a fine shine.

If you’re planning to share your expertise a book is a great way to get interest and attract potential clients.  A book can become a seminar, a speech or an online course – the opportunities are there if you’re ready to leverage them.

However, putting together a successful book requires planning.  I’ve written more than 20 books and have developed a system that doesn’t just work for me, but can work for you too!  Here are the steps I follow:

1: A clear summary

Don’t worry about the title yet, but it is important to know what the book will cover, who your readers are and what will be of value to them.  This will help you to create an overview of your book.

2: A chapter overview

Make a list of what content each chapter will cover and sort them into a logical order.  This can then be developed into key content for each chapter, whether this will be anecdotes, case studies, quotes, models, etc.

3: Develop your chapter ‘recipe’

Every chapter should have a common structure, so the reader knows what to expect.  You can decide what your chapter recipe looks like – whether you start – or end – with a quotation, a summary or bullet list or a story.  And, perhaps, how many words your target is for each chapter.

4: Schedule writing time

If you don’t do this, your book will progress when you have time, but other things will get in the way and it’s easy to find a few months have passed and you haven’t written anything.  Treat it as a project (because it is!) and write regularly.  You’ll be surprised how quickly your manuscript will grow.

5: Work on one chapter at a time

Being a left-brain systems freak, I actually write my chapter recipe down as a series of headings and save it as a template, then I use this template for each chapter, replacing the generic headings with subheadings and filling each section out.  It’s like having a skeleton to flesh out.  It means I don’t ever get blank page syndrome!

When you’ve got a completed first draft of your manuscript, it’s time to talk to an editor who will review it, make suggestions for improvements, tidy it up and polish it up generally.

When your second draft is done and you’re happy with it the last stage before publication is to have it proof-read for typos, spelling and stray punctuation.  Generally, the proof-reader is not your editor – they fulfil different roles and your proof-reader really needs to be a fresh pair of eyes.

Some books go through more than two drafts (the most I’ve ever worked on had ten), but if you have a clear plan to start with and follow the first steps, you’ll be reducing the number of drafts needed. 

Home sweet home

How fast does your website visitor understand what you do and how it helps them?

You’ve got about 7 seconds before they give up and go elsewhere, so that first thing they see had better tell them what they need to know.

That means that the first screen they see:

• Needs to have an explanatory headline
• Should feature a message that is about them, not about you
• Has images that support the message – not just be random eye-candy
• Has your contact information visible (some people want to talk to you rather than read)

If the message is targeted at your ideal customers more of them will explore further.

Make it easy to get around

A menu (navigation) should help your website visitor to find what they want.  There are two aspects to great navigation:

1. Idiot-proof titles on the navigation tabs
2. Logical organisation of pages and groups of pages

If I had £1 for every website I’ve visited that has menu pages called – Our work; Our approach; Company profile; What we do; Who we are; etc. I’d be rich beyond imagination!

The words ‘our’ and ‘we’ have very little place on a website, especially on a menu – it’s not about you, it’s about your reader.  Frankly, I don’t care about you and what you do – I want to know if you’ve got what I want.

Think of your products and services and sort them into key categories.  You’re probably not in the same situation as Amazon where a menu is almost impossible as there are just too many categories.  You don’t want more than about 7 or 8 tabs on your navigation – and that includes ‘Home’, ‘About’, ‘Blog’ and ‘Contact’.  However, you can group all product selections or service offerings as sub-pages under a main category.

As different people approach the process of discovery in different ways, it’s also wise to offer people alternative routes to where they want to go.  The simplest additional option is to add your core categories to the main area of your home page as clickable links, boxes or images.

To blog or not to blog

A blog has a few benefits.  Firstly, it means you’re adding new content (hopefully, around your key words and phrases), which is good for search engine optimisation so your site appears more in searches.  

Secondly, a blog gives you an opportunity to show off the depth and breadth of your knowledge, which influences the reader to want to work with you as an expert.

A blog also provides material to use on social media and in a newsletter to keep those people who are on your list conscious of the massive value you offer.

Featuring two or three recent blogs on your homepage as an image and headline and, maybe, a one line summary is a great way to attract people.

Make everything work for its place

Your home page is where you keep – or lose – new visitors.  Make sure that everything on that page earns its place.  If it doesn’t help people to connect with you it shouldn’t be there.