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Killer Taglines

James at Copyblogger has a great post on taglines.
Two points I especially love are
to keep it simple (“Be clear, not clever”)
and to pick a focus and stick with it.

The last is the most difficult.
According to T V Mohandas Pai,
chairman of Infosys BPO,
the latest generation of IT professionals “get easily bored.
They do just one project and
they get bored and
they want something else.”
This is not isolated to the IT field.

Taglines are part of branding
and the key to branding is consistency.
That means picking a tagline
and sticking with it.

Doing Despite What They Say

I’m starting to get feedback
from the book release.
Some of it… good.
Some of it… not-so-good.

Both were expected.
There is a reason that
Roosevelt’s The Man In The Arena speech
is so beloved of entrepreneurs.

“It is not the critic who counts,
not the man who points out
how the strong man stumbled,
or where the doer of deeds
could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man
who is actually in the arena;
whose face is marred by
the dust and sweat and blood;”

The reason being that all doers face critics.
And, as being a critic is easy and safe,
we face many of them.
At every step of our journey.

Don’t let them stop you.

What NOT To Say To A Reporter

In Media Training 101,
Sally Stewart explains what NOT to say to a reporter.

What are some of the phrases to be avoided?

“This story will really help
me/my company/my sales”
A reporter is writing about you
because you are news,
not to help you.

“What’s your angle?”
Angle=Ulterior Motive=Bad Reporting

Any headline question
You’ll look like a jacka$$.
Reporters don’t write headlines.

“Let me send you free XYZ”
Freebies=Bribes=Bad Reporting

“Can I see the story before it is published?”
Doesn’t happen and is insulting to the reporter

and

“To Tell The Truth…”
implies you weren’t telling the truth
throughout the interview.

Wasting Time

An author asked a marketing loop
“Should I waste time on Myspace or not?”

Without even attempting
to evaluate the effectiveness of Myspace,
I would have to say
“or not.”

Why?

Because if you immediately associate
marketing with “wasting time”
then it is not going to work for you.
Marketing is an investment,
not a waste.

Watch the words you use.

The Over 50 Target Market

Tom Peters has a great post
on the power of what he calls
the boomers and the geezers.

A big eye opener as to
why you should pay attention to this market?

“The average American buys 13 cars
in the course of a lifetime.
She-he buys seven of the thirteen
after the age of 50.”

You read that right,
7 cars after the age of 50.

He also makes a good point
that selling to this market
is easier
if you have staff IN this market.

Who To Fire

You’re told you have to downsize
your department/division/company.
Who do you let go?

Harvey Mackay in We Got Fired! advises
“When a smart boss fires someone
the first question they should ask is NOT:
How do I feel about this person working for me?

The first question they should ask IS:
How would I feel about this person if
he or she were working for my competitor?”

He also points out that the
“best time to hire people is during a downturn
when everyone else is firing them.”

How To Take A Good Photo

In
How To Become Famous In Two Weeks Or Less,
Melissa de la Cruz and Karen Robinovitz
share their tips on
how to take a good photo.

The highlights?

Clenching teeth together
enhances the jawline.

Using Visine before posing
makes eyes whiter.

Standing at an angle
with one leg slightly in front
of the other
makes you appear slimmer.

And standing to the left of
any photo opportunity
ensures your name appears first.

Support The First

I remember my first kiss.
I remember my first boss.
I know I will always remember
my first fan letters
(from my first novel).

Nothing is ever quite like the first.
If you can be part of that first,
you, your product, your company
will be remembered forever.

How to do that?
Seek out the new
and then
support it.

Bill Gross, Advertising, And Accountability

Bill Gross, Founder of Idealab,
tells John Battelle in
The Search
“The more I [thought about it],
the more I realized that the true value
of the Internet was in its accountability.
Performance guarantees had to be
the model for paying fo media.”

That accountability has spoiled me.

Having paid for the first wave of marketing,
all internet based for the eBook launch,
I’m now looking at
print based advertising for the print launch.

With the web ads,
it is easy to track where traffic is coming from,
it is all done automatically by software.
With print,
I’m using “tricks” like special coupon codes
and even that is very unreliable.

The decrease in accountability
is painful.

Blogoversary Thoughts

Today is my one year blogoversary
on this new domain name.
(As some of my readers know,
I guest blogged for a few years
on the now defunct Road To Forbes domain.)

What have I learned over this past year?

The blog business has gotten tougher.
It used to be that you could write some posts,
ping technorati, and
watch the traffic come in.

Not any more.
Too much competition.

This is a normal part of the product cycle.
Usually around this stage,
you’ll see a clear split
between the have’s and the have not’s
traffic-wise.
Eventually the gap widens so much,
it becomes a barrier to entry.