Content marketing tools and training.
There is nothing more effective for building your audience than face-to-face communication.
Social media posts can’t compare with the ability to see your audience blink, follow their hand gestures, or witness their eye movements and facial expressions — all key components of what’s been called human media.
Human media is an emerging layer of social media, and it uses real-time video chat technology to help you build a closer relationship with your audience.
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.
Nearly 14 years ago today, some of the greatest advice in the history of online publishing was dispensed.
Twas May of 1999 when the chart-topping modern day philosopher Terius Gray (better known by his apt stage name ‘Juvenile’), applied his lyrical genius to the Internet, imploring website owners everywhere to “back that thang up.”
For those of you not up on the latest slang definitions, “thang,” of course, means “website.”
Listen …
Just because you got people to read your headline doesn’t mean your job is done.
Nor is your job done if they read the first sentence. Or the second.
This article is a case in point.
I might have hooked you with the headline … intrigued you with the first sentence … lured you with the second, third, and so on, until you and I meet right here, at the ninth.
“Hmm,” I say, kicking a pebble with my shoe. “What to do next?”
I’ve got an idea.
This week on The Lede …
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“I’m not hungry,” I told my grandmother one night at the dinner table.
My stomach was in a knot. Food lost its taste a long time ago, but this was the first time in my 28 years that I’d turned down my grandmother’s meatballs. For an Italian grandson, this kind of behavior can get you condemned.
I had a blank, vacant stare, but my mind was racing a mile a minute. I was obsessed with my business.
More specifically, I was obsessed with finding new customers.
Let’s face it, you already know the answer to that question.
Instinctively, you know whether you belong with the black-clad Bohemians sipping coffee and absinthe in the cool cafes, doodling in your moleskine and staring into space as you dream up your latest creation …
… or whether you’re more at home with the gadget-toting geeks, crunching numbers, running tests, comparing data sets and outputting conclusions robust enough to survive rigorous peer review.
It’s not a conscious decision or something you can change — you know in your gut which tribe you belong to.
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.
