A lot of time is spent identifying the right audience for one’s message, and rightfully so. It’s important to target a receptive audience. Sometimes, though, a person doesn’t have any control over who is in the audience. The person then has to deal with different types of audience members, something I discuss in my latest video.¹
Communications
How Clear is Your Call to Action?
I hate making a hard sale. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I avoid it at all costs. I prefer to do a soft sale – let people get to know me, to develop a level of trust, and to know that I’m not going to swindle them out of their money. I then make suggestions and let what I can do for them take care of itself. It’s been my strategy since the days of selling shoes. It worked, too. I sold many a pair of shoes in my days as a Nine West salesperson.
The E-Book is Here!
Over the course of a few months and conversations with several people, I realized I needed to add additional resources to Write Right. I have a couple of posters about how to survive the writing life, but they aren’t sufficient nor are they necessarily something that someone new to Write Right might enjoy. Thus, I went down the e-book path. I deliberated between a few ideas and finally settled upon one: principles of effective communication.
A Dull Knife Won’t Do
If you ever have tried to slice a tomato with a dull knife, you know the inevitable result: a smushed tomato and pulpy tomato innards all over the cutting board. You now have to choose whether to be content with the pulpiness or to try again. You know, though, that the results will be the same, so why try again? Doing so won’t make any impact on the flavor of the tomato, only on the presentation of the tomato.
The Real Building Block of an Effective Content Marketing Plan
I was reading an article about effective content marketing the other day. I was slightly alarmed when I read the following line: “Creating and maintaining personas are building block number one when it comes to an effective content marketing plan.” The statement didn’t sit well, and it wasn’t the fact that the “are” should have been an “is.” It was the fact that the statement seemed to argue personas were a thing to be created and discarded as needed. It neglected the real building block behind any effective marketing plan: a good product or service.
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Perfectionists Demand Too Much
The problem with perfectionists, albeit not the only one (This line is becoming a theme.), is that they’re demanding. They demand a lot from themselves. They sometimes demand a lot from others. They demand, demand, demand.