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Little-Known Ways to Cook Up Great Content

Computer keyboard with coffee key

This is a guest post by Adrienne Erin When writing for your blog, it isn’t always easy to come up with new ideas. Posting four to eight times a month means finding effective ways to create content that will engage and entertain readers on a regular basis. When you need to cook up great writing, questions can [...]

How To Write Fun and Engaging Survey Questions

Question of a menu

Did you know that online surveys don’t have to be boring? Gathering feedback is a necessary part of running a business, but the process doesn’t necessarily have to be dull. Instead, surveys can be fun, engaging platforms where businesses talk to their respondents on a human level. After all, someone who’s enjoying the process is [...]

This Week’s Marketing Dish: Beef Stew

Marketing-Dish-Beef-Stew

Gloria Miele, a small biz coach from Camarillo, CA, emailed this week’s suggestion while she was cooking up a pot of beef stew over the holidays. Here’s what she had to say: Most of the women in my family make stew this way (with some variation, like deglazing the pan with wine, peeling the potatoes, not [...]

Speak Up! Why and How to Find Your Voice

zeus experiment logo

This week I quadrupled sign-ups for my mailing list, and re-taught myself some valuable lessons: Trust yourself. Be original in voice. Put quality first. Tap into your existing community. Write what you know. Here’s what happened: My guest post, “Welcome to the Nuthouse:  How Private Financial Fiat Creates a Public Farce” got over 20,000 reads on two [...]

Don’t Read the Instruction Manual: It’s Time to Improvise

Lustrous Wooden Cabinet with Recipes File Label in Dramatic LIght.

As a young girl in a Mormon family, I was encouraged to learn things that would develop me into the perfect wife and homemaker. How to make jam. How to sew. How to play with barbies. You know, girly things. And there were always lots of instructions for these things. A recipe. A pattern. Even [...]

The Manifesto: Why Your Business Needs One and How to Write It

write your manifesto

One of the exercises I always encourage my branding clients to do is to write a manifesto for their business. And no, I don’t want you to write something creepy a la The Unibomber. This isn’t about blowing people up. (Just their minds.) What I’m talking about here is clarity. Clarity for you. Clarity for [...]

The Nemesis: Tell Your Marketing Story Better with a Character (or three)

timethief

One of the things I have my branding clients do over the course of our time together is find ways to personify the problems of their own customers. Why? Because it helps them tell better stories about how they fix those problems. I’ve done this for my own business, and was able to identify almost [...]

The Doctor Who Guide to Content Regeneration (and more!)

Dr Who the Ultimate Timelord and Content (Re)creator

And now, for something completely different… Most of you know I’m a bit of a sci-fi geek. Usually, I keep that kind of stuff on Twitter and Facebook. Afterall, you’re here for the food porn photos, am I right? Well, sometimes, you gotta break the routine just a bit. So here you go: I just [...]

Biggest Business Lesson of 2011: Be (Gasp!) Human

pattern

Earlier this month, I talked about the Bears (and how to keep them from eating your business). That post sort of explains the comeback to small biz ownership I made last year. But it’s not the whole story. Nope. See, this is the anniversary of something pretty darn huge for me. Something that — on [...]

Feed Me a Story

story

Stories are food. Feed everyone and be willing to let them feed you. Remember humans love stories — it’s hardwired into how we learn and grow. Why did you start your business? That’s a story. Who are your best customers (and what makes them the best)? That’s another story. How does your product work? That’s [...]