Entries Tagged 'General' ↓

Video this month is the Chinese pianist Lang Lang.  Watched his 2 hour concert at the Proms last week.  He’s credited with encouraging 40 million Chinese children to play the piano…as well as performing at the Olympics where he looked like Liberace with his white piano.  Don’t ask you’re probably too young to remember Liberace.

In a completely different way from Oscar Peterson last month, he lives his music.

I know I always talk about headlines but they are so important.

One of my clients sent me drafts of two press releases recently to check out. They did have a headline for each but the problem was that… Continue reading →

If you have any interest in online marketing then you’ve probably seen all the buzz about Frank Kern’s latest marketing venture.  If not then I’d advise you to check it out.

I have to say that I’m way past the surfing, live on the beach type of lifestyle.  Not the beach but the hanging out with the surfing crowd.  But you have to admire Frank for nailing his target market so exactly and for working out how he wants to do business and taking his market with him.

How he writes and markets may not be to your liking or style.  However I’d advise you to look at what he’s doing and the way he’s doing it.  Head over to his blog and check him out.  Or just type in Frank Kern or Mass Control in your search engine and see what you come up with.  I’m hanging on his every word even though I haven’t bought into his material.

I haven’t updated you on Humphrey for a couple of weeks because of technical problems on the blog – don’t ask!

However it’s been fairly quiet.  No visits to the vet(keeping fingers crossed as I write) and no dead bodies on the doorstep.

The most fun we’ve had with him is trying to avoid him when he comes in wet from the garden.  Being long haired, the moment he gets wet he becomes a danger zone.  The number of times he washes the kitchen floor for us with his paws and leaves muddy prints on our feet as he clambers over us to reach the food!

Despite our best efforts to keep him in one rainy, or do I mean storm like night, he would stay out.  When he came in the following morning he brought in half the garden with him.  He had leaves sticking to his fur, soil on the underside of him.  I spent five minutes trying to clean him off before I could feed him.

Not that he appreciated my efforts of course.  But I worry sometimes about him licking all the dirt and it making him sick.  He can be sick all by himself without any help from the garden!

There I’ve said it… 

But it’s true because you could transpose one company name for another and still be reading the same things.  Quality guaranteed, personal service, bespoke service.

All very fine in their way but what do they mean?  

Is it the personal service that has me thinking about my clients when I walk around W H Smith’s looking at magazine headlines and wondering if I can use a similar approach for one of them?

Is the type of service that includes watching soaps to think how I can use the way they construct the drama to keep watchers on the edges of their seats and start the gossip next day in the office.

That’s the passion that drives me to read what I do, listen to all kinds of things looking for approaches that will bring out the true individuality of my clients.  Because I know that all my clients have a passion for what they do.  And I want to transmit that because that’s what we buy as consumers.  We want someone who cares about us, about our businesses, about our results.  As a writer I have to feel that enthusiasm for my clients or what I write will end up boring, standard and won’t transmit any joy to the reader.

I wrote some time back in the blog about the power of mastermind groups and this year I feel my biggest steps forward have come in the company of like minded colleagues along with the plodding, well that’s how my steps feel to me sometimes, I do by myself.

I’ll let you into a small secret, since I’m feeling generous on my birthday.  With two of my colleagues, Tracy who sends out my newsletter for me, and Kirsty who’s been helping me with a site for my book writing courses, we’re planning a new service we feel passionate about to start later in the year.

It’s the combination of all our talents and we believe that our individual and combined energy makes this a project we know will succeed.  And the most important part of the foundation we’re building is that what we do together has to be fun and passionate.

It’s difficult to enjoy your work if you don’t like it.  It becomes a chore.  Which is stupid given we spend so much of our time doing it.  So for our new venture, our primary criteria for working with anyone will be, can all of us enjoy it with the clients.  If not, we’re not the right fit.  If we are and can create that passion together, the results will be spectacular.

And the other power of the mastermind group is that it helps you take action.  Without action all the wonderful ideas in the world aren’t worth a row of beans.

So passion plus action equals results.

I’ve had a great year as far as my work is concerned – to be honest I shouldn’t call it work because I enjoy it so much.  It’s a privilege to build a partnership with my clients; they value what I do and it makes the difference to me.

I may not say this often enough to them but I’ll go public and say thank you to them all and I look forward to helping you be passionate about your businesses in the next twelve months.

This is the first blog I’ve written for a couple of weeks because I’ve had a problem getting into the site.

It’s funny that only a few months ago I wouldn’t have worried too much about it but it’s been very frustrating not being able to post!

Not that any of my posts are earth shattering but I’ve come to like sharing my thoughts out loud so to speak. And I know it’s helping me in all sorts of ways that I probably still don’t realise – ripple effect and all that.

Lots of interesting projects coming up workwise – I’ve been asked to put on some workshops about good clear writing.  In this particular case it’s report writing.  I’m looking forward to doing them.

The clearer you can write, the easier people can read what you write and the more likely you are to have a conversation.

Music often plays a part in creating an effective atmosphere for writing. 

In the How to Write a Book Workshop we looked at different types of music that people might use to create the right mindset for starting to write.

But there’s another way that you can use music.  Think about some of your favourite songs.  What is it about them that you like?

Maybe you like the beat, the rhythm or the fact that you can dance to it.

Or maybe it is that you like the story the songs tell.  Have you ever thought about the skill it takes to tell a whole story, create a mood and leave the listener feeling satisfied… all in about three minutes?

As writers, we can learn from this skill because songwriters are achieving what we need to do especially if we write for the web. 

Within seconds they’ve hooked you in and told you a story and you want to listen until you hear the end.  Yes of course the music is important.  But the songs you like often you relate them to what’s happening in your own life.

For example, if you hear a song on the radio that talks about the breakup of a relationship at a time when that’s happening to you, you’ll connect to it.  And the same is true if you’re just starting a relationship.

So constructing a song has a lot to do with direct response marketing:

1. Know your target market.
2. Make an immediate connection.
3. Satisfy a need.

In the case of songs the need often is emotional comfort. The sense that someone out there has been through a similar pain and while it can’t be exactly like your pain you still feel that you’re not quite so alone as you thought.

How about Ode to Billy Joe by Bobby Gentry.  Or the Boxer by Paul Simon.

Another by Paul Simon Homeward Bound.  That always takes me straight back to travelling around as a student.

And to get away from our British summers – there’s California Girls – a whole lifestyle in a few words:  California Girls

Isn’t it just teenagers huddled over computers and mobiles?

I’ve spent some time this month updating my very scanty knowledge about social media.  While it’s been taken up by many people as a personal technique, it seems to be the coming thing for businesses.  According to John Reese of Traffic Secrets 2.0, the top two ways to guide traffic to your website are e-mail marketing to your list, and Twitter.  I have no personal experience one way or the other.  If any of you are using any of the social media for your business and like to e-mail me with your experience I’ve love to hear from you.

Certainly having all your marketing communication methods linked up to reduce your time in promoting your business makes sense to me.  You can spend hours in front of a computer if you don’t have some kind of social media marketing strategy.

I’m working with a web designer and an email marketing specialist at the moment to co-ordinate our efforts and we’ll be offering strategies for businesses in the near future. Look for more details of that service next month.

Dan Kennedy is one of the foremost experts on selling – on or offline.  As far as he’s concerned it doesn’t matter that there is all this new media around – the principles of selling remain the same.

Dan Kennedy on selling

It’s reassuring though that even the experts make mistakes.  Check out the screen behind Dan as he’s speaking.

Had a quick look at what’s on over on the e-business club site.

I noticed there are still some places for the Advanced SEO planning course on 31 July in Nottingham. These free courses are excellent and if you still feel unsure about future tactics, the workshop could be a good place to begin. Check it out at the e-business club site.