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Blogging in the Dark

October 9, 2014 by jennifer mcgahan Leave a Comment

Blogging in the Dark

Blogging is easyThere was too much to say, and not enough to say, so I said nothing.

As much as my blog was on my mind, I couldn’t go there.

In spite of telling others – clients and customers – that once or twice a week was optimal; still, I couldn’t put one word down here on my own blog.

The dearth went on for months. I’m cautiously assuming it’s over now.

Late summer and early fall were heavy, with too much going on personally and professionally to pen two words together to see if they stuck. Meanwhile I took notes every time I was on the phone, or heard someone speak, or listened to a podcast or radio show. I took notes constantly, just to get some words down and to practice my handwriting.

[Incidentally, practicing my handwriting was something a handwriting expert advised me to do around the time everything shook loose. You might say I was desperate.]

I never lost a connection with words because I haven’t stopped writing for customers. Sales pages, opt-in pages, emails, blog posts, Facebook posts and tweets leading to launches, courses, webinars, and infoproducts. I’ve never stopped learning and writing about new things…

My Google calendar stacked my days with blessed structure, although I couldn’t write for myself.

What do you do if you can’t write your own blog?

If it ever happens to you, I say go with it. Don’t write. Other writing experts will tell you to keep writing if you’re a real writer. They say, “push through.” And of course you will want to think of yourself as a real writer, so instead of writing, you will feel guilty for not writing.

If keeping content on your blog is important to you, as it should be, then hire someone to write for you. Make a video, talk to your camera, and post it somewhere. You could hire me, even.

But if it’s important to you to write your own stuff, but can’t, for whatever reason, at least publicly — then don’t.

A few months ago, I had a conversation with a WordPress expert in Cape Cod who followed a blogger who stopped blogging about WordPress things and months later emerged with a change of heart, resulting in a change of direction for his blog.

My Cape Cod friend considered that this blogger had experienced “some kind of breakdown” because he was tired of blogging about WordPress. I made a sympathetic noise, and thought about all the blogs I’ve ever read where the writer divulges a desire to switch tack, a need for a break, a come-to-Jesus moment regarding his posts. It happens frequently in my blogosphere. Maybe there is something to the idea that the bloggers I follow are having regular breakdowns.

But that’s a blog, isn’t it? A log of stuff someone wants to write about and share with readers on the web. They might throw out a curveball, but it usually fits into the big picture, and winds up making perfect sense. Like a house full of eclectic furniture, your blog reflects what you like and care about. You go with the flow. If you tried to plan it out too far, your blog would suck. If you’re daring enough to start a blog, and keep it fed, it’ll shock you how wild it is.

Blogging is like keeping a lion.It’s like keeping a lion. Although I’ve never kept a lion.

I’m back, I think, but I’m not sharing. This stuff is mine, all mine… for now.

I will write about it some day, just like all the other topics that died and floated to the top temporarily, then rotted at the bottom of the lake of my memory. I will wish I’d written something sooner. It will be messy and illegible at first (as my teenaged son says, “the nari-est of the nar”) It will have chunks of loose details stuck to it, pulling in the current, swaying like flotsam and jetsam. Other memories will swim by and hungrily peck at it. I will wish I had written something when it was plump and shiny and fresh.

[Newsflash! I like blog posts with the words “flotsam and jetsam” in them. Now I have two, I think. This post is not wasted.]

I wrote lots of letters during this time. Letters to my daughter, and as I said before, letters to myself, but I prefer to think of them as notes. This collection of loose pages is waiting like an unformed collage of napkin-worthy ideas, but not quite so romantic as napkin scrawls. Most of them are written on legal pads. “Maybe I’ll do something with them someday.” (That’s what writers say when they are not really writing.)

I say it too; but not tonight.

Tonight, I end this silliness, and post something here to break the spell…

Sweet potato, blog potatoThe other day I found a shriveled up sweet potato in a hanging basket full of wine corks in my pantry. I had forgotten about it there, but it sprouted without my attention anyway. It sprouted in the dark. I felt a surge of undeserved relief because somehow its secret photosynthesis (yes, tiny red leaves were beginning to unfurl) was a sign of mercy for my long lapse from blogging. I took a picture and considered it a sign.

I am lucky, as writers go. Forgiveness these days looks like the discovery of a root vegetable hanging on for dear life, birds flying dangerously low over my minivan, and a schedule so full I sleep like the dead. It’s something I can at least write about.

Anyway, this blog isn’t the first one that’s seen inaction. What did you write about, that time you came back from whatever it was? What was your first post back from an absence? Did you jump right in or explain where you’ve been?  I’m curious how other bloggers have handled this. Feel free to comment below.

Typewriter photo: flickr CC: zeitfaenger.at

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: Blogger, blogging, email blog posts, Facebook posts, infoproducts, launches, sales pages, small business, tweets, webinars, website, writer's block, writing

How To Bring Down The #1 Competitor Sucking Away Sales

February 24, 2014 by jennifer mcgahan Leave a Comment

How To Bring Down The #1 Competitor Sucking Away Sales

Who is your competitor?Imagine toppling the king of them all!

Envision your competitors mingling in one room. Picture the face or logo to go with the title “Biggest Competitor.” Do you have one in mind? 

  • Maybe it’s a local (or virtual) big shot who gets all the sales (or so it seems).  
  • Maybe you are thinking of a mega store or brand that outsells, outproduces, outdelivers every time — even though their service can’t hold a candle to your white-glove attention.   
  • Maybe you are thinking of a business that sells what you sell, only with a slightly different quality (or in a different location, using a different method, with a different technique or system). You’re neck and neck. The casual customer wouldn’t even know the difference between you unless he paid attention. Truth be told, he’s not motivated to comb through the differences. To him, you’re all the same. You can’t think of a way to stand out, even though you racked your brain trying to figure out a way to put distance between you and this competitor. 
  • Maybe you don’t even know who your competitors are…you just know you lack sales. You scrape by…even though you advertise, and stretch to market yourself in the time and budget you can afford. 
  • Or maybe you don’t think you have any competitors. Your uniqueness attracts plenty of qualified clients, but you know you want more. You just don’t know where they are, or why they are not sniffing around. 

Biggest Competitor

The truth is, every business battles one powerful competitor who turns your ideal client’s head in the opposite direction. You want to shout, “Hey, don’t you realize I’m perfect for you? Can’t you see I can help you?” But this gargantuan competitor consumes your customer’s attention and resources. Your voice is barely a whisper.  

Your customer’s radar doesn’t even detect your efforts to get her attention.  

Even stranger, this competitor beats up every business, in every industry! Health and wellness tribes, foodies, fahionistas, software companies, crafters, beauty suppliers, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers… they all compete with one, universal, monstrous force. 

This gorilla-competitor is a huge problem for you, too. Only you can’t see it because it is invisible. Your customer doesn’t even know she’s doing business with your #1 competitor, the King Kong of all forces stealing your business.  

This powerhouse of a trickster, always “cheating” you out the sales that are rightfully yours, and effortlessly pulling your customer off your scent, is simply: 

Anything and everything else your customer spends money on…that’s your #1 competitor! 

Before you dismiss the category as too broad, I’m the first to agree. “Everything else” is too big to fail. People are natural consumers. Sure, some people get by on a lot less, but most people search for experiences, products, gadgets, ideas that make them feel good! Everyone wants to feel good. And there’s always a bright, shiny thing that generates excitement and sends your customer running off in that direction…instead of toward you! 

How you get your idea customer to run toward you with their wallets wide open?  

If you’re doing what you’ve always done to generate sales, don’t assume anything will ever change. Decide first to alter your marketing strategy, and remember the sequence that stirs the “feel-good” pot and results in a sale… 

A-I-D-A: the classic sales and marketing tenet.  

As you read through each letter in the acronym, keep in mind your tenacious, invisible competitor — everything ELSE your customers desire — instead of you! 

A – Attention. If they don’t know that gap exists in their lives… they will choose the competitor. Get their attention. 

I- Interest. If your customers don’t see the gap between what is and what could be if they worked with you… they will choose your invisible competitor every time. Make them interested in how they would feel if the gap were closed. 

D – Desire. If they are unaware of the pain, discomfort, hardship, inconvenience, dull and uninspired situation they are in now, then they will never know the ease, enjoyment, convenience, prestige, enlightenment, and fun associated with closing the gap…and they will choose instead the invisible competitor that holds that promise for them. Create desire for your offer. 

A – Action. If they never receive a compelling and specific invitation to do business with you… they will choose to spend their money with your invisible competitor. Make an offer that inspires action. 

Can you do this in one fell swoop? Indeed! Direct response copywriters (the good ones) can achieve all of these components in one long page of copy.  You still see this a lot. All the elements of A-I-D-A unfold in a single, smooth, structured form. This kind of writing is tight as a drum. In fact, think of it like thumping on different points of the surface of a drum. Over one tightly stretched surface of hide, you get different sounds and tones depending on where you strike it. At any point in the copy of a long form sales page, you will hear a pitch-perfect copywriting element that either gets attention, increases interest, creates desire, or causes action. Copywriters and salespeople are trained in the A-I-D-A structure. While it takes years to perfect this kind of writing, long sales pages are worth studying! 

You can achieve a similar result affect another way. 

A content strategy that follows A-I-D-A rules 

Less intense, but equally disarming; content you float across targeted social sites strings together a powerful and unique value proposition. Organized, well-placed, smart content persuades buyers at every point along the sales funnel. Content marketing at its best now follows this same structure great copywriters have always knows and used.  

But you don’t have to be an A-list copywriter. All you need is a structured strategy and the determination to stay consistent in providing it. Effective content touches real people at different stages of the buying cycle. Words, and secondarily, images move them along from a state of casual oblivion to the point where they are frantically pulling out their credit card at the thought of working with you, or buying your product.  

You don’t have to be in their face with the full-out frontal assault of a hard-hitting sales pitch. Social networks, email, and blogs now function together to present a case to your customers and enfold them in your story.  Valuable content attracts and entices over time, in little bitty parts, so that by the time your customer actually calls you, clicks to order from you, or visits your bricks and mortar shop; your “Invisible Competitor” has withered away to nothing… 

Your customer has already made a decision to buy from you. 

Flickr CC photo: Wing_Clipper 

Filed Under: Content Marketing Tagged With: #1 Competitor, action, AIDA, attention, battling competition, Biggest competitor, competition, competition in business, competitor, content, content strategy, copywriting, dealing with competition, desire, interest, long form copy, long sales page, marketing, online content, sales, sales pages, small business competition, stopping your competitor, web content, who is your biggest competitor?, winning business from your competition, writing content

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