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Feb 15 2013
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In a Time When Authors Rule the Web

About a year and a half ago I warned bloggers and content creators to take author markup and authority and Google+ seriously.

Google was making under the hood noise about attaching authority to content published by individuals based on a variety of factors.

I advised bloggers to follow Google’s instruction to link their blog posts and about us pages to their Google+ profile in order that Google might start enhancing search results with goodies like profile pictures as below.

Here’s a tutorial on how to get author markup added using one of my favorite plugins.

And in this tutorial Brian Gardner explains how to add author markeup in the Genesis framework (the theme used on this site.)

By asking authors to add the attribute rel=”author” to their content Google was creating a way to beat spammers and duplicate content to a degree by attaching the real author to the original content.

author authority

Google adds images and social data taken from Google+ to search results with author markup

Now I ask you – when doing a search, which result are you drawn to – the first one or the one with a friendly looking, smiley guy next to it?

This fact alone makes taking the time to add the required elements a no-brainer.

More recently Google has admitted that they are testing author authority in a much bigger way and actually choosing content to index based on this ranking.

Author authority is, like most things Google, a bit of a mystery, but you can bet that content that is found, shared and +1’d in Google+ is helping an author’s authority. This dollop  of search fairy dust is why you cannot ignore Google+ or rel=author attributes.

If that weren’t enough Google is also allowing you to tell them where you contribute content. Think about that one for a bit. Now that brilliant post you submitted to Mashable, Huff Post or Social Media Examiner is going add to your author authority in some meaningful way perhaps.

contribue

Edit your Google+ profile with sites you contribute to

By creating an authority ranking of sorts Google is creating another way to beat link spam and assign authority and importance to all manner of things left about the web such as comments, Quora answers, and Retweets.

So now we have an entirely new networking landscape. Instead of simply networking for links, we’ll have to get good at identifying and networking for author authority.

But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself – first things first, it’s time to go to work on your own author authority.

  1. Get your content linked to your Google+ profile
  2. Optimize your Google+ profile with links to your articles
  3. Get to work creating and sharing great content
  4. Build your Google+ engagement and following
  5. Hmm, I wonder if a Wikipedia page would help?
  6. Make a list of potential sites/publications to submit guest posts

You can also start the process of signing up for Google Authorship here.

Plenty of authors and SEO types are covering this top these days and you would do yourself a favor to start your research with these two pieces from Copyblogger. Brian Clark on why you need to get on Google+ and 64 Google+ Content Strategies.

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: , ,
Feb 14 2013
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Get Good at What You Love and the Money Will Follow

You’ve certainly heard all the talk about the need for passion in your work. There’s no doubt that doing what you love is essential, but getting really good at what you love is how you turn it into a profession. Passion alone isn’t always enough when it comes to creating a mutual exchange of value.

So here’s my love note to all the business owners, entrepreneurs and would be cubicle escapees. Never forget this in your search for work that feeds your passion! Happy Valentines Day.

Love Your Work

Feel free to share, print, post, embed or otherwise internalize this message.

Embed code for this image:

<a href=”http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/lovesmall.jpg”><img alt=”Love Your Work” src=”http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/lovesmall.jpg” width=”600″ height=”393″ /></a>

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing Tagged With: ,
Feb 8 2013
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How to Be Quiet and Why You Must

A few weeks ago I started a series of posts I’m calling Recover You. The series is focused on practices and habits that I believe lead to a healthier mind, body and spirit, a healthier business and ultimately a healthier economy.

You can catch the entire Recover You series here.

quiet

photo credit: emdot via photopin cc

Business is noisy. A typical day might involve dozens of conversations, meetings, decisions, tasks and insights.

Every thought, conscious or otherwise, roars through our heads like the intersection of trains headed into the station.

We get pretty good at muffling the noise, become almost use to it, but it takes its toll no matter what we think.

In fact, in response to dealing with the noise we often lose our ability to actually think, to consider the vision for the business, to make conscious decisions about the impact of every act.

One of the best ways to return our focus to things like purpose and vision is to practice being quiet long enough to turn down the noise.

This isn’t as easy at it might sound. Try this right now. Close your eyes and just sit for five minutes and see how noisy your brain is. Most people can’t do this for more than 30 seconds without beginning to fidget.

We’ve trained our brain to be on and that leads to constantly talking, considering what to do next and reaching for our phones whenever we have a down minute to fill.

I believe we need to retrain ourselves to be still or run the risk of losing touch with why we do what we do.

Here are some of the ways I’ve found to turn down the noise in my head.

Go analog

Set up an area in your office with crayons and paper and other crafty kind of materials and every now and then unplug and go draw, cut and paste while taking your mind off your to do list.

Journal

Get a big notebook or use any text editor and get in the habit of free flow journaling. When I first started doing this is was so goofy what spilled out of me, but I didn’t edit a word or judge what I wrote in any way and eventually it became an outlet for releasing thoughts that were somewhere rolling round blocking my intentions.

Meditate

I’ve written about this before and certainly many now agree on the benefits of a meditation practice. It’s hard for people to do I think because they believe it is supposed to be this path to enlightenment. If you put that kind of pressure on anything it won’t be enjoyable. Think about it as five or ten minutes a day to simply witness your thoughts and experience first-hand how noisy it is up there. Then you can take little steps.

Get outside

I am amazed at the healing power of nature. Every single one of us should get outside and lay on our backs in the grass and watch the white puffy clouds go by for about ten or fifteen minutes a day minimum. If you really want to experience the power of nature take a daylong hike or pitch a tent in a forest near a stream. The bigness of it all is one of the most quieting tonics available.

Sit and listen

Try this one for a little different perspective. Close your eyes and sit and listen to all the sounds near by. Don’t think anything just notice. Then slowly move your perception out farther and farther picking up sounds just outside, traffic maybe, and then a train off in the distance. See how far you can tune in. I don’t know why but this little exercise seems to open up pathways in my thinking and quite the noise that’s right around me.

Retreat

Of course the biggest, scariest and most awesome things you can do is lock yourself away for a weekend retreat with no computer, phone, TV or need to make any conversation at all. I realize this is pretty impractical for most, but what if you tried it for even half a day? I would write and read inspiring passages but mostly I would slow down and think about the things that really matter, the things I know I’m meant to do, the things I’m grateful for, the intentions I have for my business and my life.

It’s a shame in some ways that being quiet is so hard. Part of this is just the world we live in and part is self-inflicted. The good news is we still have the ability to dial it up and down as a choice in the infinite number of choices we get to make.

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Recover You Tagged With: , ,
Feb 7 2013
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Will No Saturday Mail Delivery Hurt Business?

As you’ve likely heard the U.S. Postal Service has proposed ending 1st class mail delivery on Saturdays. It’s also no secret that the Post Office is hemorrhaging money and needs to find ways to stem the losses.

Reaction to the idea was both swift and in some cases emotional. Opponents cite the negative impact on small business. (As they always seem to do when it suits the cause.)

I would love to get your take. Vote below with a simply thumbs up Yes it will be bad for business or thumbs down No it won’t hurt business.

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing Tagged With:
Jan 29 2013
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7 Essential Elements to Small Business Growth

Business plans are great, useful even, but the planning process and a growth oriented plan of action is where it’s at for the small business.

A growth strategy planning approach forces you to focus on customer based strategy, high priority objectives and measurement of the things that actually impact your ability to reach your growth goals.

Every business that has growth in mind should make quarterly planning the practical and useful vehicle that it is.

The following seven elements and associated questions make up the foundation for brainstorming, questioning and organizing your growth planning strategy sessions.

growth strategy planning poster

Divide a white board into seven segments and pass out post it note pads to all participants involved. Then, just start asking questions. Let everyone vote with their ideas in private then start posting and discussing the thoughts as a group.

1) Ideal customer (IC) – How would someone spot our ideal customer? What do they look like, what do they think, where do they live, work and play? How do we locate them? What is their pain? Is there a behavior that signals they are ideal? What triggers their desire to solve their problem? What do they get when they hire us?

The goal of this phase of planning is to complete a picture of the ideal customer – one that values your unique approach. Look to your most profitable clients that also tend to refer business for clues.

2) Value proposition (VP) – Why do people buy from us rather than our competitors? This is a hard one for some companies to nail and you might have much better luck spending some time asking your customers why they buy from you, stay with you and refer you. Listen very carefully to the stories the tell for clues to your value proposition. There are a handful of proven value propositions, but the key is for you to find and commit to something that clearly differentiates.

3) Strategy Hourglass (SH) – Where are our gaps in customer engagement? I believe that process of growing a customer centric business lies in developing a mindset that focuses on the act of logically moving customers and prospects through seven stages of engagement – know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer. The Marketing Hourglass is a tool I’ve used with hundreds of business owners to help create a focus on customer engagement.

4) Primary objectives (PO) – What are our 2-3 highest priority objectives for growth? One of the things the derails growth most often is too many goals and objectives. Most business can only focus on a couple of initiatives at any give time. You must identify and commit to no more than three priorities and then go to work on creating the projects and tasks needed to pull these off. And, you must say no to the idea of the week that shows up to knock you off course.

5) Revenue streams (RS) – How can we create more streams of revenue? There are only three ways to grow: add more customers, increase the average transaction size, increase the number of purchase per customer. It’s actually easier to sell more to existing customer than add new customers. What services or products could you add? What packaging, pricing or promotion could you realign? What new markets or segments could you enter?

6) Strategic relationships (SR) – What relationships do we need to develop? This is probably one of the greatest untapped opportunities for growth. What marketing partners could be motivated to promote and co-market your business? What joint ventures would allow you to tackle new work? What vendors or suppliers could help you grow? What competitors could become cooperative partners for new venture, markets or work?

7) Key indicators (KI) – What metrics impact our growth most? Most businesses can tell you how much revenue they did last month and how much money they have in the bank. By tracking things like % or leads converted, % or business via referral, cost to acquire a new customer and % of customers likely to refer you can take control of the things that actually impact your growth in near real-time. Here are 7 key indicators that I believe should be part of the picture.

When asked to come into a business and evaluate it for growth or help develop a marketing plan – this is where I start because this is where all the answers reside.

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Vision Tagged With: , , , , , ,
Jan 28 2013
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5 Attributes of a Can’t Miss New Product

This post brought to you by Grow America. Grow America announces its $35,000 Innovative Product Competition for passionate entrepreneurs. Enter the competition to get going and get growing.

innovation

photo credit: Ric e Ette via photopin cc

There are lots of great product ideas floating around out there. Perhaps you’ve even scratched out you own invention and are waiting for the perfect time to get your big idea off the ground.

Many start-up businesses are founded on someone’s big can’t miss product idea and, unfortunately, far too many fail before any part of the dream is realized. Yes, launching a new product can be risky, but if you take stock of the following attributes before you start thinking about creating your blockbuster, you might stand an even greater chance of turning your idea into a sure-fire success.

1) The inventor is the customer

Understanding the characteristics, desires and behaviors of a narrowly defined target market is very hard work, but essential to your success. Every marketing book or expert will tell you this, but few can give you the magic tablet that allows you to go deeply in the psyche of your prospect.

You can acquire some measure of knowledge from various research techniques, but nothing beats living, breathing, and feeling the same things your potential buyers do. Some of the surest successes in history have come from founders who created a product to meet a personal need and discovered a business by virtue of doing so.

2) The market understands the offering

Some entrepreneurs dream of locking themselves in a padded room for a year or so and emerging with the world’s greatest innovation. Sounds romantic I know, but if your innovation simply solves an incredible problem people don’t yet know they have, you may wind up burning through the money before they get it.

Better to innovate around a proven market, borrow genius from an unrelated industry, or discover an unmet need in a mature market crying for a solution that your product addresses.

3) The market already spends money here

Sometimes marketers shy away from competition and product innovators always want to believe that nobody else has ever conceived what they’ve dreamed up. If your market research shows that there are already a handful of competitors you might decide to give up.

To that I say nonsense. While it may be true that your proposed market couldn’t possibly stand another widget, I’ve found the success of several businesses in an industry, even in the same direct market, can spell opportunity.

If people are already spending money on a product then two-thirds of your work is done. They understand and value the offering enough to whip out their wallets. All that’s left for you to do now is show them how much better your mousetrap or your way of packaging or delivering your mousetrap is. It’s easier to steal market share than it is to create an entirely new category.

4) It’s an innovation that simplifies

Much of this post has focused on entering proven markets. While that’s absolutely the advice I’m giving here, know that you must do so with a significant point of differentiation that the prospective market for your new product easily understands and appreciates. In most cases, this can be done by looking at the way most folks in the chosen market operate and find a way to simplify your offerings around breaking the mold.

For example, if the traditional operating method is custom work, come up with a series of pre-packaged product offerings that meet most people’s needs without the custom hassle.

There’s a popular pizza restaurant in Berkeley California that has one unique pizza on the menu each day. They make it up in big batches and serve thousands a day at $20 per pie. They’ve effectively innovated the delivery of a product where little innovation seemed possible.

5) Nothing is precious

Here’s the one that can snag many product innovators. If you’re in love with your bright shiny baby and all that it offers, you may become blind to the reality the market suggests.

Keeping an open mind and a willingness to discover what the market really wants and adapt accordingly is one of the core principles of innovation – remember to use it.

Talk to your customers, talk to your competitors, talk to your employees and remember nothing is precious but what the numbers prove to be so once you put it out there.

growamericaGrow America announces its $35,000 Innovative Product Competition for passionate entrepreneurs. Enter the competition to get going and get growing.

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Strategy Tagged With: , ,
Jan 23 2013
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12 Month Total Online Presence Action Plan

Last week I wrote a post that addressed the overwhelming amount of things you need to focus on in order to build a Total Online Presence. I broke it down into 12 months of action themes to make it easier.

I received so much feedback on this approach that I decided to conduct a live online seminar and reveal a set checklist of steps for each month.

The Total Online Blueprint Seminar was a hit!

We had over 1500 people sign up for the session and during the live program the hashtag for the event #dtmTOP trended globally.

The overwhelming consensus of those that participated is that there’s a great deal to do when it comes to building a Total Online Presence and the highly practical nature of the action steps I shared was just what people wanted.

Consider a few comments from participants:

 

 

Replay the online seminar in its entirety below.

You may also view and download the slides I used here.

During the session I also introduced a new small group coaching program where I will take up to 10 coaches and consultants through an 8-week intense program aimed at helping them build a Total Online Presence. The program also includes a complete online portal of training and resources for each participant.

If you know you need to invest time and resources into enhancing your effectiveness with online marketing or you would like to obtain more knowledge and resources to share with your clients, this could be the perfect answer.

Check out the entire Total Online Presence coaching program here: (Don’t wait, we start Feb 5th!)

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Social Media, Total Online Presence Tagged With:
Jan 15 2013
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Change Your Context, Change Your Results

The context in which an idea, thought, sales pitch or even piece of music is received has a great deal to do with the value or importance we place on it.

For example, one of the greatest benefits of being able to call yourself an author is, in that context, people trust you must know what you are talking about and they are willing to pay more to gain access to it. Of course, there may be no truth this idea at all, but perception makes it so.

By now you’ve probably encountered the Washington Post experiment that involved master violinist Joshua Bell playing in a subway.

On a cold January morning a hidden video camera captured thousands walking by hardly noticing the difference between Bell’s virtuosity and that of an everyday subway musician.

Just days before, and again a few after this 2007 experiment, Bell performed to sold out theaters, filled with expensive ticket holders and receiving numerous standing ovations.

In this incongruous context, ordinary people did not recognize his genius.

The point I’m trying to make today is that while your genius or point of view may be important, the context in which your ideas, introductions, pitches and education is delivered is equally or, sometimes, more important.

You’ve likely attended a conference where someone with an important sounding title was asked to speak and everyone in attendance claimed the talk he gave was shear brilliance. Only, you know that you’ve made many of those same points dozens of times in blog posts read by few.

Change your context, change your results.

  • Get yourself invited to speak in front of audiences instead of simply attending
  • Earn the trust to be introduced to referral prospects instead of simply given leads
  • Interview industry luminaries instead of simply downloading podcasts
  • Ask what you can give your clients instead of what they can give you
  • Form and lead an industry group instead of mindlessly joining every one you find
  • Make your educational sales pitch to a packed room instead of cold calling
  • Build a strategic partner network instead of waiting around to be asked to partner
  • Write for respected industry publications instead of just putting them in your RSS reader
  • Take your most important contributions and write a book instead of cursing successful authors that aren’t as smart as you.

When you change the context of any form of communication you change the way it’s heard, received and perceived and that’s how you much your genius far more profitable.

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Vision Tagged With: