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,...
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...
While I’m hopeful content marketers are working to extinguish the “content is king” nonsense from the vernacular, content is, nevertheless, important. It’s beneficial on our websites, in our outreach, in our presentations and in conversations, both online and offline. But if content is so important,...
Most small business owners focus on building a better product. They’d see better results by creating a differentiated product. Different is better when it comes to products and services in competitive verticals. It’s why one of my first tasks when working with small business owners...
Many small business owners don’t think branding is essential to their success. They think of branding as something big companies do. They assume that their customers know who they are based on what they sell or the services they provide. That is, until a prospect,...
The story of how I learned that going viral is overrated is as painful as it is vivid in mind years after the incident. It begins with a Midwestern friend and fellow angler who was enjoying a comfortable retirement until I chose to fish with...
I learned to appreciate the priority of proofing and editing my work the hard way: by making a careless error in a popular local newspaper. Dot Barrett seems like an easy enough name to remember, but thanks to my carelessness her name ran as “Dott...
A popular refrain goes, “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.” The saying is as true in life as it is in business. The statement is also true for content strategy, for it is talked about more often than it’s used effectively. Everyone...
In college, I studied Disruptive Innovation, the theory pioneered by legendary Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen to describe how new entrants to a sector initially thrive to meet the under-served parts of the market but quickly move upstream upon gaining traction. When they move...
Last year, I visited a small tackle retailer in Branson, Mo., near Table Rock Lake. Though it was spring and the fish were biting, this was a business trip. I was there to find out how his 1,200-square-foot store was able to weather the onslaught...