Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

Want to get more marketing juice out of your business blog? 

Don't tell me - the answer is... Yes!

Ha - knew it!!

Sooooo... what should you be doing on that good old blog of yours - BESIDES blogging? 

Here are FIVE big ideas you can implement in FIVE minutes or less... and generate some pretty serious results FAST. 

1. Optimize past post titles. Based on your keyword and search engine optimization strategy, you probably have some great blog content with titles that are not optimized. For example, as a marketing speaker and marketing coach, two of my SEO key words (in case you couldn't tell!) are marketing speaker and marketing coach.

Sometimes, I'm good about including those keywords in my blog titles right when I post them. For example: 

Marketing Speaker: 5 Books You Oughta Buy NOW  

and

Marketing Coach: 17 Ways to Drive More Traffic FAST  

And sometimes, I'm not. For instance: 

23 things to say when you're asked for 'free consulting'

17 great answers to 'How much do you charge?' 

So if you go back to some of your older posts and change the titles to be more in line with your SEO keyword strategy, you'll attract new traffic and more traffic to your older (and probably underappreciated!) posts.

2. Add or update Calls to Action on your posts - including adding or updating the calls to action on your most popular posts which continue to generate a healthy volume of regular traffic.

A call to action is NOT a sales pitch - it's a way to OFFER value and INVITE engagement. For example, good calls to action for your business might include: 

• Subscribe to get regular updates
• Download this free eBook
• Get a free assessment
• Contact us for a No-BS initial consultation
• Take an interactive quiz
• Register for this free teleseminar
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes

This is the simplest and fastest path to convert visitors to leads to sales.

3. Reblog your golden oldies. If a topic worked really well, got a lot of comments, inbound links, and social media love the first time around, it may be time to revisit that topic.

Grab your old content and use that as a starting point for an updated new post - using 80% of the proven material from before and simply adding to it, enhancing it with newer examples, adding video, audio or other multimedia enhancements like Slideshare or Animoto. 

Add links to resources from other experts that relate directly to your content. Make sure to optimize the post's title, tags, categories and metadata to get some zesty Google juice, choose an eye-catching photo or graphic from Shutterstock.com or your favorite stock photo site and boom - you're done!

4. Use your blog to test new offers. Sometimes you want to put an offer out there to see what kind of response it might generate WITHOUT hitting your email list with a blast that might send more of your subscribers scurrying for the "Unsubscibe" button.

Your blog is a great place to send up "trial balloons" for new products, new services, new programs and new investable opportunities that you're not 100% sure are ready for major promotion via your ezine or email marketing efforts.

It's perfectly OK to "soft sell" occasionally - or even better, launch a short 3-question survey - on your blog to gauge your audience's interest in working with you in a new way.

5. Review older posts and find places to cross-promote your newer blog posts, your social media postings, your Flickr photos, your YouTube videos, or your other multimedia assets.

This is a great opportunity to build what are called "internal links" - links from one of your web pages or blog posts to another - to create a "web" of interlinked content and to boost the SEO of your overall site using anchor text that describes the content you are pointing people to.

For example, you might add the following to your older blog posts:

• Check out this YouTube video on effective business card design
• Here's another post you might like titled "What is inbound marketing?"
• Here's a screencast about How to Generate 10X Traffic on LinkedIn
• Want to get better at generating referrals? Read this post on Building Your Referral Blurb

Tags: blogging for business, business blogging, doit marketing, marketing speaker, marketing coach

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Use the COMMENTS area below to leave your advice, insights and recommendations on these ideas to breathe new life into your blog...

As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, I'm often asked to review my clients' proposals to help them land 5- and 6-figure training, speaking, and consulting contracts. 

The #1 most powerful strategy that will increase your hit rate no matter what you're selling is to be clear and explicit about your client's expected Return on Investment (ROI) -- using their OWN numbers. 

For example, take a look at this suggestion I made to one of my amazing management consultant clients last week... and see how YOU can model a similar section on page ONE of every proposal YOU send out... 

As you may know, I just finished recording the audio book version of the Do It! Marketing book.

The audio book will be published by Gildan Media - the same folks who publish audio books from Brian Tracy, Simon Sinek, and Mark Goulston... and distributed through Hachette Audio - the same folks that distribute audio books for authors like Malcolm Gladwell, David Sedaris, and Scott Turow. Not bad company... and who knows, maybe they need someone like me to carry their luggage!

It was a great experience - and you can see some photos from the studio recording here on Facebook... 

My audio engineer on this project was the fabulous Joel Metzler at Milkboy the Studio in downtown Philadelphia. Great facility and Joel was the consummate pro - a total pleasure to work with! If you need a killer studio facility and you're anywhere near Philly, Milkboy is the place to go. Just sayin'.

17 Tips to Create Audio that Rocks

I've done a lot of homebrew audio - on my laptop - with a Zoom H1 digital recorder - and with my trusty Blue Snowball microphone and Audacity on my Mac. And I've also done a fair amount of studio recording in studios ranging from the scary to the awesome (aka Milkboy).

Here are 17 tips for speakers, authors, consultants, and independent professionals who want to create better sounding, more professional audios for their podcast, radio show, audio products or voiceovers. 

1. Stand up when you record - it makes a HUGE difference to the way your voice sounds. For example, I recorded the entire 12 hours of the Do It! Marketing audio book standing up. (Wear comfortable shoes!)

2. Speak close to the microphone - you want to get right up in that bad boy's face. Somewhere between 4 to 8 inches from the microphone. If you're doing this at home, test different distances and use the one that sounds the richest, warmest and most clear. 

3. Use a pop filter. You will totally thank me later. It's going to be the best money you spend if you're serious about creating great audio.

4. Don't overinvest in equipment. You don't need a lot of fancy gear to sound great. A good USB microphone, a mic stand, a pop filter, and some basic recording and editing software like Audacity (free at this link) will go a long way. 

5. Don't skimp on studio time, either. If it's an important project where production quality counts, find a great local recording studio near where you live. Top notch studio time is surprisingly affordable these days. Expect to pay between $75 and $125 an hour for a top-notch facility and technical staff who can help you produce top-notch work.

6. Don't overprepare. If it's a big project especially - it doesn't make sense to overprepare. You should be familiar with the material (if you wrote it, you will be!) and that's about it.  

7. Don't underprepare. If you've never done an audio recording before, paid studio time is not the place to learn the ropes. Invest a few hours with "practice recording" at home. Your studio time will go that much more smoothly and quickly. 

8. Read - but don't "read." In other words, don't make it SOUND like you're reading. Speak naturally. Pretend you're talking to a friend so it's not boring.  

9. Mix it up. Use vocal variety - just as professional speakers and seasoned storytellers know how to vary their pace, tone, pitch, and volume to keep an audience engaged in what they're saying... YOU should use the full range of your vocal variety to emphasize key words, transition between points, and underscore important ideas. 

10. Use your body. Since you're standing, you'll have the ability to do more physical movement. Use it! It's amazing how the voice and the body are connected. Have you ever seen actors like Robin Williams or Whoopi Goldberg or Tom Hanks in those "Making of" special features on the Disney movies that they do voice acting for? They are gesturing wildly with their hands, bouncing on the balls of their feet, making silly faces, leaning into the microphone, sometimes even jumping up and down. And it's for a VOICEOVER. That's because your vocal energy is tied to your physical energy. Use it - and your voiceover range and variety will improve dramatically.

11. Remember the art of the pause. Listeners need a pause to comprehend the last thing you said. Think of pauses - some short, and some not so short (for dramatic effect) - as the punctuation in your audio. If you never pause, you exhaust your listeners who lose the thread of your long sentences or complex ideas. If you use pauses to insert "natural phrasing" into your script, it makes it much easier for your listeners to understand, absorb, and they WANT to keep listening!

12. Take it one page at a time. For the Do It! Marketing audio book, I had to get through 60,000 words and 280 pages. If I had thought about it that way during the recording sessions, I might never have made it! I took on the task one page at a time. Do longer recordings with this mindset, and you'll sail right through faster than you ever imagined. I cruised through 150 pages on Day 1 (6.5 hours) and 130 pages on Day 2 (5.5 hours). And it was fun!

13. Have a "keep going" mindset. Voiceover professionals know that their main task is to "get the job done" - and that momentum is their friend. Don't think about stopping. Don't take too many breaks. You're in the studio (yes, even your home studio) to crank out the work, not to obsess over minor details or do endless retakes. Keep going!

14. Flaws are good. Good professional audio editors will take out every inhale, smooth over every rough patch, edit out every vocal aberration. GREAT editors will leave in just enough of those same aberrations to make the voiceover pro sound human. When we chat in coffee shops, over breakfast or lunch with friends, or in front of prospects or clients in meetings, our vocal and verbal delivery is never 100% perfect. There's a difference between sounding professional and sounding sterile and robotic. So leave a few "personality flaws" in your audio. Maybe 5-10%. It makes all the difference and you'll sound like a REAL human.

15. Pause whenever you need to. Ah, the magic of editing. Whenever you screw up a line, swallow a word, stop to fix a typo in your script or for any other reason (sneeze, cough, get a drink of water) - keep the audio rolling and pause. Then pick up where you left off. Most professional audio engineers will mark the script at that point to help the editor, but you just pause as long as you need and jump right back in when you're ready. You don't need to ask permission, you don't need to apologize, you don't need to get flustered. Pause so you can GO!

16. Eat! And drink tea, bring lozenges, avoid dairy and coffee and bring water. Don't forget to eat breakfast on the day you're recording. Why? Because stomach grumbling is audible on good audio equipment. Yes, really. Avoid coffee - it dehydrates you. Drink tea - especially lemon tea or ginger tea that has a little bit of acid to clear and soothe your throat. Bring lozenges with you in case you need a midday vocal recharge - I like the Ricola classic Swiss herb cough drops. Avoid dairy products like milk or yogurt which tend to generate phlegm and block up your throat. Also, bring a water bottle so you have plenty of water available in the booth as you record. Water is your friend! 

17. Personality not included. No matter how great your script, it doesn't have any personality until you pick up the script and put YOUR personality into the words you've written. Don't be shy - in fact, if you don't bring your full personality to the recording, you'll miss out on the biggest opportunity that audio programs and products present - the opportunity to connect and build rapport with your listeners and have them experience what it's like to have a warm and personal conversation with you! If you're loud, be loud. If you're a little edgy, sound edgy. Don't hide your personality for the sake of a "professional sounding" recording. There's no such animal - the whole point of recording audio is so that you CAN marry your content with your personality.  

And then leave a comment below with your questions, thoughts, and advice on the ideas to create audio programs that rock!

Are you a DO IT freak? Welcome to the club!! Please use the social media buttons at the top of this post to share it with your network. YOU are a rock star!

Just came across this Slideshare - it was too brilliant not to share with you. Check it out:

Please use the COMMENTS area below to share YOUR advice, insights and recommendations on packing maximum VALUE into minimum TIME...

This video clip speaks for itself (you should have your audio/speakers turned on):

What can YOU do that will impress people with YOUR versatility and talent?

These days, "being good" (or even great) is merely table stakes - you need to MASTER your offerings so your audience knows they're in the hands of a professional good enough to deliver A+ work while being confident enough to have fun.

And then leave a comment below with your questions, thoughts, and advice on the ideas above.

Are you a DO IT freak? Welcome to the club!! Please use the social media buttons at the top of this post to share it with your network. YOU are a rock star!

This video is one of my all-time favorites.

And if you're an entrepreneur, you'll immediately see why:

Have a great weekend - and then next week, get back to the business of changing the world!

Here are my Top Five Business Books of the Week - but these are not just any old business books.

They are...

Fire starters...

Game changers...

Show stoppers...

Books that will transform the way you think about your work, about your business, and - yes - about your life.

Get your amazon shopping cart ready for some racing stripes - here we go: 

1. Be the Best at What Matters Most: The Only Strategy You will Ever Need by Joe Calloway 
    
2. Create Distinction: What to Do When Great Isn't Good Enough to Grow Your Business by Scott McKain
   
   
3. Fred 2.0: New Ideas on How to Keep Delivering Extraordinary Results by Mark Sanborn
   
   
4. Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change, and Grow Profits by Jeffrey W. Hayzlett and Jim Eber 
   
   
5. People Buy You: The Real Secret to what Matters Most in Business by Jeb Blount
   

You hate cold calling, yeah, yeah, I know BUT...

Truth is, nothing beats having a voice-to-voice conversation with a real prospect. And when you reach prospects, you have less than 30 seconds to interest and engage them. Make a mistake and there are no second chances.

You need to have a solid, proven plan to engage your prospects by phone and consistently win them over so that more sales happen.

Join me as I interview Wendy Weiss, the "Queen of Cold Calling," for this empowering call where you will get specific answers to:

• Why cold call at all? Is it old-fashioned? Does it even work?
• Haven’t e-mail and social media replaced cold calling?
• How do I know whom to call?
• What should I say? 
• What is a good generic script?
• How can I convince prospects to speak with me without giving them the feeling I’m trying to ‘sell’ them something? 
• How do I deal with voicemail? Should I leave a message?
• Why doesn’t anyone ever call me back?
• And a whole lot more...

We'll have room on the teleseminar line for 100 people so take 10 seconds to register now so you don't miss out.

Awesome video - wanted you to experience this for yourself:

If you'd like to do better in your business... this post is for you.

If you're down in the dumps - no money, no clients, no prospects, no hope... this post is for you.

If you're doing great - and not sure exactly why or how long this "lucky streak" will last - this post is DEFINITELY for you...

There's a dirty word in business, especially among authors, speakers, and experts who, above all, feel that they should serve as shining examples of personal success and professional prosperity.

That word is shame. 

It's easy to feel shame when your business is doing poorly. I'm not saying that it's RIGHT - but it sure is easy. 

And yes, it's painful, negative, and unpleasant to feel shame. But perhaps there's an upside to that because it makes you feel uncomfortable to feel unsuccessful. 

At least THAT part makes sense. 

There's another kind of shame that is more pernicious, dangerous and much more common than you might think. 

It's the shame of success.

It's when you juuuuust start to break through... when your business juuuuust starts to take off... when the money juuuuust starts to flow abundantly. 

You're not only paying your bills, you're paying off debt (credit cards, home equity line, etc.), you're building up your savings, your rainy day fund is healthy, you're paying yourself regularly, you are even... GASP... putting away some nice money for retirement and/or your kids' college fund.

The it hits you... The Shame of Success. It's a little voice in your head.

You know what I'm talking about. I'll bet you even know what it's saying to you. Things like: 

• This won't last - it's just a lucky streak...
• You're one step away from being broke again...
• Don't count your eggs before they hatch...
• You're not that good...
• You're not that smart...
• You can't even handle this much client work
• You're going to blow through all this cash and be back at Square 1...
• Your clients will find you out...
• Your friends won't like your new level of success...
• Better not tell anyone about this success, they'll be jealous...
• They'll think you're lying...
• They'll think you're bragging...
• They'll feel bad that they're not doing as well as you... 

And on, and on, and on. 

Please... stop the madness. Kill that voice. Catch yourself every time you hear it and tell it to go take a hike. Refocus. Recenter. 

Remember once and for all - there is no shame in your success. 

If you have REAL friends, they'll celebrate with you. 

If you have friends who don't... guess what? They're not your real friends. 

If misery loves company, it has company enough. 

And it's time you quit that company.

You know who REALLY loves company? 

• Passion loves company
• Achievers love company
• Winners love company
• Success loves company

There are already way too many people and circumstances that make you feel weak, unworthy, and unsuccessful... they do NOT need your help!

FACT: You TOTALLY deserve to be successful.

FACT: This is ABSOLUTELY your time to crush it. 

FACT: YOU ROCK so hard, you don't even know it. 

FACT: You are insanely GREAT.

FACT: You ARE fabulously successful - so KEEP GOING!!!

In the immortal words of the great Zig Ziglar, "I'll see you at the top!" 

What do you think? Please leave a COMMENT below and let's hear YOUR advice, insights and recommendations on how not to get bushwhacked by the "shame of success."