“Content is king” is nonsense. While I’m hopeful marketers are working to extinguish that phrase from their vernacular, it’s a lazy cliché that sets the wrong expectation. It makes content sound like a single, monolithic thing you must produce.That mindset reduces content to deliverables, when what small businesses actually need is a way of seeing. … Read more
Sometimes the hard stop is the only way forward. More than a decade ago, I sat in on a meeting where 10 people—agency staff and client representatives—spent over an hour agonizing about how the color of a homepage button might impact conversions. Every suggestion was met with, “Yeah, and we could also…” The energy was … Read more
The newly redesigned WordPress.com Learn Hub is the culmination of years of hard work by several talented teams inside the brand; I’m proud to have played a role in its execution. The hub now features a clean, intuitive design, more user-friendly videos, and a wealth of information tailored for its core audience: beginner and intermediate … Read more
In my experience of working with hundreds of brands over the last 15+ years, there are three things businesses get wrong when it comes to brand building. And these are businesses of all sizes, not simply small businesses. The No. 1 thing businesses get wrong is in not clearly understanding the value of having a … Read more
In a recent blog, I wrote about the need for small business owners to eat the frog, tackling their most important challenges early and often. Doing so helps better ensure their long-term survival, but it requires attentiveness to what kills small businesses and, more specifically, what poses the greatest threat to their specific business. The … Read more
A brand refers to the unique, intangible, and often indiscernible, association prospects and customers have regarding your products and services. That’s why it’s important for internal stakeholders to understand what your brand stands for, because there must be alignment between how customers perceive the brand and what the organization overall is working to convey in … Read more
If your local business struggles to come up with content ideas, look closely for the small data surrounding your brand. From sales statistics to customer success metrics and leads from social, there is a lot of data all around that your business can use to create content, including blogs. In this post, I’ll share some … Read more
In early June, a close friend and successful big-business consultant reached out for a mid-afternoon pep talk in advance of new product launch for his largest client. After nearly a year of work to get the product to the starting line, he sensed something was missing. “I’m struggling, Ronell,” he said. “This is a big … Read more
The key to a successful podcast is the host, not the guests. Amazing podcast hosts are facile interviewers able to pull the most pertinent information from subjects, even those who are interviewed frequently. If you want to become one of the best podcast hosts, focus on being thoughtful and interested in the person you’re interviewing. … Read more
Industry averages are important benchmarks used to help your small business make comparisons of key metrics to other businesses in your vertical. If you don’t understand industry averages for your business, it’s time to get educated on the numbers. An understanding of the topic can be game-changing, partly because one of the biggest mistakes small … Read more
To get at the truth of how customers view your products or services, learn to ask the next question. As a newspaper reporter with no formal training, the most challenging part of my job initially was accosting people for interviews. Within a few weeks, however, the most dreaded experience was sitting down with my metro … Read more
Part of earning and keeping the attention of your audience is having them trust that you won’t waste their time with verbosity. If you’re looking to write tighter, allowing your brand to keep the attention of your audience, spend less time laboring over what to write and more time thinking on how the audience can … Read more