Content marketing tools and training.
“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.
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Online publishing and content creation is a full contact sport, complete with black eyes, shattered hopes, and dislocated egos.
Pam Slim is a fearless writer, speaker, and martial artist, who dropped by The Writer Files to share her experiences in the ring.
She is the award-winning author of Escape from Cubicle Nation, a book that offers readers the tools and training for finding a meaningful career in this “new world of work.”
Ms. Slim took time out of her busy writing schedule to talk to us about her techniques to beat writer’s block, the merits of coffee, living inside of a Stephen King novel, and her solution to all of life’s problems.
The buzz about Pinterest seems to have calmed down a bit in the last few months, but it’s still a very powerful tool for content marketers.
According to a study by the social media analytics firm Simply Measured, 69 of the world’s top 100 brands now have Pinterest accounts, and Pinterest is still driving more traffic to websites and blogs than Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, or YouTube.
We recently concluded an entire series of articles by our Chief Copywriter Demian Farnworth on the topics of Authorship, Author Rank, and Google+ for the online content creator.
It was a smashing success, which indicates that writers and other online content creators are excited about these topics. And you should be.
But let’s be clear – as best as anyone can tell, Author Rank has not been implemented yet. And that means there’s some chance it may never become an algorithmic aspect of the way Google ranks web pages.
Srinivas Rao graduated from business school in 2009, straight into one of the worst U.S. job markets we’ve faced since the Great Depression.
But, instead of getting frustrated at the lack of opportunity in corporate America, Srini reinvented himself as a content marketer.
Srini’s interviews on his podcast, BlogcastFM, are legendary.
He’s hosted Chris Guillebeau, Danielle LaPorte, Tim Ferriss, and Seth Godin, and his site has become a sought-after stop for authors during any successful book launch.
