Distillations

Small business owners can learn a lot from the nation’s most ubiquitous coffee retailer, Starbucks. The brand’s coffee is table stakes. Their real business is creating an enviable customer experience, high levels of customer service, and delivering the additional products or innovations customers have come...
There are few easy wins in content marketing, especially given how crowded most verticals and categories are today. But one word that comes up often when discussing successful businesses is consistency, in large part because consistency wins for small businesses. Here’s how to make it...
Most conversations involving content strategy begin with an explanation of what it is. I believe this is incomplete. The benefits of content strategy are best understood in relation to what it does— impacts brands’ bottom lines. Content strategy is the glue that holds together the...
Growing an audience around your product or service is one of the smartest strategies for small businesses. But focusing the lion’s share of your content marketing efforts on the creation of content for your current audience can be a rate limiter for your business. You...
Few things hobble businesses quicker than poor decision-making. That’s why I encourage businesses to employ the 90/10 strategy for decision-making. It boils down to making sure that nine out of 10 of your decisions are as sound as possible. This level of focus spills over...
The brands who win at social media have three things in common: They know how to engage with, entertain, and enlighten their audiences. That is, they see the medium for what it is, a way to interact with their audiences in a way that adds...
What is choice overload? Choice overload, which occurs when businesses needlessly inflate the number of options being considered while making a decision, is an albatross for small businesses. Having too many choices arises because small business owners refuse to focus on the areas of the...
Your content strategy ROI is an amalgam of your content efforts online and offline across the entirety of your business. Because content strategy is the glue that holds your content marketing efforts together, it makes sense to understand the invaluable role it plays in the...
Your brand story succinctly outlines your business’s reason for existing. An effective, compelling story creates resonance with your ideal customers and delivers top-of-mind awareness that drives return visits. Once you find your brand story, it helps cement in everyone’s mind—from owners to junior employees and...
Meaningful content helps your brand stand out in a crowded marketplace, one that sees millions of web pages and blog posts published each day. Creating content with meaning helps to grow your business’s reach, brand mentions, web traffic, and enhances your relevance online. In 2009...