Playing the Long and Short Content Game

Playing the Long and Short Content Game

Is it better to focus on SEO-friendly long-form content, or short, more digestible content that audiences seem to have a preference for these days? If you only play the short game, and all of your content lives only in social media posts, it will be invisible to anyone searching for your expertise online or visiting your website to vet you as a service provider. If you only post short-form content, will search engines find you invisible?

The truth is you have to do both if you want to be truly effective—the short game AND the long game. The nice thing is, one overlays against the other.

How (Not) to Use LinkedIn as a Business Development Platform

How (Not) to Use LinkedIn as a Business Development Platform

I don’t think it’s wise to approach LinkedIn as prospecting “CRM” software, wherein you go trawling for leads, playing the spray-and-pray numbers game.

Instead, I think there’s a more genuine, human approach you can take to the world’s largest business-to-business social network in a way that will almost assuredly result in business-development wins, but will not have you pounding the proverbial pavement, cold calling and knocking on doors.

How to Structure an Effective Thought Leadership Article

How to Structure an Effective Thought Leadership Article

If you are in the business of selling expertise, a professional service, or consulting engagements, one of the best ways to earn the confidence of a prospective client is to consistently and convincingly demonstrate domain authority and subject matter expertise.

Here is my formula for structuring written content that will earn the interest of your clients, referral sources and prospects, and ultimately, establish you as the preferred candidate for anyone looking to hire a service provide in your particular domain of expertise.

What is Content Business Development?

Most people are familiar with the term "content marketing" as it relates to thought leadership. But what is "content business development?" Recently referenced by prior guest Adrian Lurssen of JD Supra, this is (as the name suggests) content that lives and operates further down the sales funnel.

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To be specific:

  • Refresher course: What is a sales funnel?

  • How content and thought leadership now operate across the entirety of the sales funnel.

  • How can professionals use various formats of content for business development purposes, in addition to its marketing uses?

  • A handful of specific examples of content being used as business development tools for listeners to consider.

  • An invitation, not a solicitation. The offer, not the cold call.

  • How should professionals be thinking differently about their content marketing strategy in 2021?

Reading & Resources

What is Helpful Content?

What is Helpful Content?

Google’s recent algorithm update provides guidance on writing content that is deemed “helpful.” This is not only good SEO practice, this is just sound advice. This is who will win the content game, now and apparently into the future: real people who can distill complex subject matter and serve it up generously and consistently to help real people solve real problems.

Learn how to write helpful content…

Know Your Value. Then Sell It.

Know Your Value. Then Sell It.

Follow your passion?

Maybe. But I’ve always found that to come off as a bit hokey. It’s easy to say if you’re one of the 0.1% of people who hit it big, strike it rich, or achieve fame and fortune. “Follow your passion. That’s what I did, and now look at me!”

But you know who else followed their passions? The 99.9% of people who you’ve never heard of. Following a passion wasn’t enough for them. Most who pursue stardom fail, then move on to something else as Plan B.

That something else is known as “the real world” by many. Myself included.

Here’s what Kenny Loggins suggests…

You Won't Get Hired for Your Expertise

You Won't Get Hired for Your Expertise

The Surprising Reasons People Actually Buy from You

The above is the title of a podcast I recently listened to called “7-Figure Small,” a podcast hosted by Brian Clark. Of course, it caught my attention, as any good title will. “What is the surprise, pray tell?! I just HAVE to listen to find out!”

So I did. And you know what? Brian was right on.

This somewhat counterintuitive and, dare I say, provocative headline is 100% true. And it runs counter to what most people think…myself (in the past) included.

Professional service providers like to think we get hired for our expertise. But that’s not the case…

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Who's the Hero in Your Story?

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Who's the Hero in Your Story?

Too often, the language we tend to use in marketing and advertising puts ourselves as the hero in the journey — the one coming to the rescue of the client or customer.

When, in reality, the client, customer or prospect truly only cares about his or her own journey…their own challenges, aspirations and coveted conquests.

Continue reading to see how this story can have a happy ending for you and your marketing efforts…

How Memento Will Change Your Marketing

How Memento Will Change Your Marketing

If you want to design a successful marketing program, watch the movie Memento.

(If you’ve never seen the Christopher Nolan classic, Memento is a story that is told in reverse chronology. The first scene of the movie is actually the final event in the story. The second scene depicts the events that immediately preceded the first scene, or final chapter. The third scene depicts the events that immediately preceded that. And so on it goes, all the way to the final scene, which depicts the first event in the storyline — the one that kicked off the chain of events, told backwards, from back to front.)

Here’s how that would work…

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To Sell a Story, You Must Tell a Story

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To Sell a Story, You Must Tell a Story

What’s more convincing: If I told you how many times I’ve helped a client out of given problem, or if I told you a story about the person I helped yesterday?

Too often, we litter our marketing copy with statistics—facts, figures, bullet points, specs, product lists, empty promises—when we should be telling stories. Stories are magical tools that convince people that what you claim to be true is actually rooted in reality. Stories make people feel. They make people care.

There is an old quote, often misattributed, that is taken from a work of fiction: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” Here’s how you can apply that logic to your marketing messaging…