Mid July is the most challenging time
for me as an entrepreneur.
Most of my employee buddies
spend their weekends at the cottage.
I spend it marketing.

How to stay productive,
especially when results are delayed?

I employ Yaro Starak’s technique.

“One of the things I did and still do
whenever I feel less than enthusiastic
is to focus on output,
rather than the external elements
that bring me down.”

If I do the same thing
that other successful marketers do,
over and over,
I SHOULD get the same results.

Until real results come in,
I base achievement
on what I do.

Kim T. Gordon at Entrepreneur.com
shares her top 5 tips
for great copywriting…

1) Write one-to-one.
2) Make your message “outer-directed.”
(about your reader)
3) Lead with benefits.
(to your reader, not to you)
4) Follow the rules of engagement
(use direct, short words).
and
5) Provoke a reaction
(Most common way? Ask a question)

1) Write one-to-one
applies to any sort of writing.
When I write my novels,
I write for a specific single reader in mind.

As Gordon states
“People read marketing copy as individuals,
not as a group.”

Online review sites expect
eBook copies of books to review.
It doesn’t matter if the book
will only be in print,
they wish to review it in eBook.

As a blogger,
I dislike it when advertisers call me.
When readers call me,
okay,
but when advertisers call me,
it tells me they want to do business
on THEIR terms, not mine.

eCulture has its own etiquette.
If you’re asking for favors online,
it helps
if you respect it.

In a brilliant interview with Fast Company,
Ram Charan talks about
why killing ideas is necessary…

“…because the success rate of innovation
is not going to be 100 percent.
If it’s 100 percent, you’re taking no risks.”

He says that deciding what ideas to kill
is easier if there is a portfolio of innovation.
Ideas can be ranked by priority.
“…if you take one idea,
it’s going to be almost impossible to kill.”

Agreed.
If you have a product development team
and only one innovation in the pipeline,
killing that one idea
will put them out of a job.
Highly unlikely they’ll support that move.

In March’s Men’s Health,
Matthew McConaughey says

“I don’t like to leave crumbs.
I like to do things right,
and not cheat to get ‘em done.
That’s what a man does.
I don’t owe anybody anything.
I never go anywhere
and worry,
‘Oh shit,
so-and-so’s here.’
I don’t have crumbs in my past.”

That’s what smart women do also.
Don’t do anything you’ll be ashamed of
later.

Ever wonder why you see
clusters of antique stores
side by side in a mall?

Because grouping like stores
drives more traffic.

In Sharon Harvey Rosenberg’s
The Frugal Duchess,
Adele Meyer,
the executive director of the
National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops
says
“Consumers will drive further
if they have more than one store to visit.
I’m seeing more of it happen.”

Can you team up with your competition
to drive more business?

In his book Word Of Mouth II,
Dave Balter talks about
an experiment described in the scientific paper
Effort Of Payment.

A research subject asked people
to help him move,
offering them different rewards.
People were least likely to help
when offered money.

Why?

Because money made the helpers
evaluate their assistance
as work for hire
rather than helping a friend.

In fact, people will make more of an effort
for no payment
than for a low cash amount.

Make cash rewards significant
or don’t offer them at all.

In the June/July edition of CMA Magazine,
Colin Payson, a designer for Pylon
says
“Five to ten years ago
a company could build a website,
leave it alone, and
expect people to see what is on there.
Now, it’s quick -
you’ve got to move with it,
and you’ve got to add more to it constantly.
You can’t just leave it.
I don’t think there’s such a thing
as a static website anymore.”

I don’t think so either.
The reason I use a blog format
for my writing site
is because I update it daily.

Keep that in mind
when you’re designing your site.

With 6,400 romance novels published a year,
review sites are swamped
with requests for reviews.

As a result,
the smaller publishers,
the smaller authors
often get neglected.
Without the publicity,
they stay small.

So when a big review site
placed a call for volunteer reviewers,
I put up my hand.

What do I choose to review?
Only small or e- press.

If you want to make a change,
BE the change.

A writer friend of mine
tossed her manuscript.

Why?

Because a well established author
recently released a novel
with a very similar plot.

If I tossed my manuscript
every time a similar one was released,
I would have never gotten published.

Tom Peters has a great quote from
Howard Mann’s Your Business Brickyard
“Your competitors have never paid your bills
and they never will.”

In other words,
focus on your customers,
not your competition.