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How to show respect for your audience's time and attention
Content marketing helps people become aware of your company, what you offer, and specifically how you can help your ideal clients.
And if you’re showing up authentically and consistently (regardless of what platforms you choose to prioritize), your follower or subscriber count is likely to go up.
Your work isn’t done when someone joins your audience though. In fact, maybe even more important than the initial follow, is how users are responding to and interacting with the content you’re producing.
Small But Mighty Episode 21: Tanya Parker Wallace on uncomplicating divorce and helping families in transition
Tanya Parker Wallace has wanted to be a lawyer since she was a child. With 15 years of family law experience, she loves helping people and her work as a family mediator enables her to do just that. Her journey into mediation came with the realization that litigation is not in her personality and that her strength was in making the process of divorce a little easier for families. Listen or read to find out how family law “peacemaker,” Tanya helps families going through divorce stay out of the courtroom and reach family agreements in a peaceful and in the least-stressful way possible.
Goal setting: Know where you're going so you can make a plan to get there
Having a clear process for establishing business goals and scheduling time for a regular reassessment of them is almost like figuring out the driving route you’re going to take for a vacation.
Without directions, even if you have a destination in mind, you’re likely going to end up lost, frustrated, and late, because the trip will most certainly take longer than if you had simply sat down long enough to figure out your route before you start.
And without regular reassessment, you might end up moving towards a destination that’s of no value or interest to you anymore.
Instead, if you set strategic goals that make sense for your business and your marketing endeavours, you can break down the steps it takes to accomplish them and will have a clear path towards success.
Stop planning and start doing (or vice versa)
Are you planner? I am. At its best, planning is an incredible tool for gaining clarity on the next steps you need to take in your business. At its worst, it can lead to analysis paralysis, stunting your ability to take action.
On the other hand, you don't want to put something out into the world before it's ready to go. You need a minimum viable service (or product), and a plan to launch it to your ideal customers.
Sometimes a shortcut doesn’t seem like a shortcut
Advice and ideas come from so many people and places, with promises of great results. But the routes they want you to take can be so much longer and hurt your business by not working as expected.
In truth, strategic planning is a shortcut. It just doesn’t seem like one. It takes time and thinking and it can even be a difficult investment in your business.
Small But Mighty Episode 20: Robin Whitford on running a textile art business that breaks all the rules
Robin Whitford is creative by nature. After selling her machine embroidery business she knew she wanted to have a creative business again. But it wasn’t until she saw a piece of rug hook art online that her business, Hooking Outside the Lines, came to fruition. Robin offers online rug hooking classes, sells supplies and teaches women all around the world how to be creative and express themselves through textile art. If you have ever thought about starting a business that focuses on expressing your creativity, you will want to tune in to hear Robin’s unique story.
5 benefits of having guest contributors on your blog
Are you the only person blogging on your website? What about having other people guest blog on your site?
There are multiple ways you can bring people on your blog, including interviews, allowing guest posts from subject matter experts relevant to your business, and talking about someone's work (with or without their knowledge).
And, similarly to guest blogging yourself, there are quite a few benefits to hosting guest blogs on your website.
Small But Mighty Episode 19: Simone Givney on the importance of strategic partnerships and evaluating the long-term value of business opportunities
Simone Givney believes in life-long learning. Her businesses, Ingredior and Skill Fault, focus on business connections and partnerships, and knowledge and growth in business and in life. Through her work, Simone helps business owners raise their self-awareness through education and challenges them to think outside the box. In this episode, Simone and I chat about her fascinating journey into entrepreneurship, why she didn’t like the constraints of corporate life and shares how businesses can grow through connections and the right business opportunities.
Crush content fears: What you have to say matters to your people
When it comes to creating content, a lot of business owners get paralyzed by fears: fear of rejection, fear of imperfection, fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of not connecting, fear of feedback. These fears are all totally understandable given some of the stories we hear and what we see in our feeds every day.
The challenge with this thinking is it keeps you from even trying.
If you're always doing, you never have time to think
In a very busy world where we are connected to what everyone else is doing at all times, there’s a certain pressure to be busy.
And where there’s this need to always be productive and busy (and to have something tangible to show for it), blocking off time to essentially “do nothing” can seem absurd.
However, time and time again, research reveals that mental rest is just as important as physical rest.
If you’ve ever had a great idea in the shower or on a walk, you know the power of uninterrupted, intentional reflection and thinking.
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