Content marketing tools and training.
You’ve seen us talking a lot about authority — authority with your audience, with search engines, with colleagues, with other web publishers.
Why do you want it? Because given the noisy, cluttered state of the web right now, it’s the authoritative site that earns the business.
Did you know there is a direct correlation between who you spend time with and what your life looks like?
True.
You tend to be happier if you hang out with happy people, more successful if you hang out with successful people, more pessimistic if you hang out with pessimistic people.
So if you’ve got some audacious goals and want to nudge them closer to reality, one thing you can do is spend more time with the people who have the qualities you want.
Owning a business can be heaven.
Freedom to call your own shots, manage your own risk, live by your values, and spit in the eye of all those nay-sayers who said you’d never be able to do it.
Owning a business can also be hell.
Endless hours, time spent on tasks you don’t enjoy and aren’t good at, financial insecurity, struggles to find customers, and the weight of responsibility that comes with ownership.
The truth is, owning a business can be both of those things on the same day.
Have you ever been kept awake until 2 in the morning having an imaginary conversation with one of your blog readers who thinks you’re great and left a long comment telling you so?
Or spent hours obsessively trying to figure out how to do better work, spurred by a fan letter from a customer about the terrific job you did?
Or is it maybe more likely that your late-night solo conversations and obsessive problem-solving go to the trolls, the complainers, and the folks who just plain can’t stand you?
There’s a lot of back and forth about the value of online “engagement” for businesses.
Do customers want more engagement with the businesses they frequent? Do they care about it? Does the word engagement actually mean anything at all? Or is it just another feel-good buzzword?
A recent article from Harvard Business Review asserts that customers don’t care much about interaction with businesses — instead they feel most engaged (and buy more) when they believe they share values with the company.
“If you write it, they will come,” right?
You’ll pour your heart into writing the very best content that you can. And in the middle of the night, the traffic fairies will bestow upon you a massive audience that knows, loves, and trusts you, and you will live happily ever after.
As the man says, How’s that working out for you?
In the real world, those blasted traffic fairies are inept and lazy, and magical content dust is hard to come by.
Fortunately, you have an option. You can effectively promote your content.
