GarthBox

It’s awfully easy to tell when someone is lying if you’re focused on their responses to your questions. This goes for interviewing, talking to coworkers, and asking friends what they think about your shirt.

What I love is when people respond with “I don’t know.”

Their response and what they do after it says more than a piece of truth or a lie ever would. “Not knowing” falls under two categories.

The first is simply because no one told them. They haven’t read it online. They haven’t sought out a teacher for it. This is fixable thanks to Google and the connection economy. If you want to find someone to teach you the guitar, you’re just a Google search or FB status away.

The second response is the “I don’t know”…”and I don’t care to find out.”

At first it may sound rude of them, but ask yourself what’s the reason they don’t want to find out. What are they afraid of? Why don’t they care? Would it be your job to motivate them? Because that’s your job as a marketer, to practice motivating people to overcome their fears.

While it may be best practice to hand-pick the talented, perhaps you yourself can become a bit more skillful by providing the pressure, the support, the care to get your friends, your coworkers, your candidates to turn their “I don’t knows” into “I cans,” I wills,” and maybe even “I now knows…thank you.”

 

Stay Positive & Beggars Can’t Be Choosers, But They Can Be Teachers

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If marketers tell the right stories… If the stories resonate with the right people: the target, the boss, the friend, the client, then we consider our work a success. What is the story you’re telling yourself about yourself?

I’ve read so many times how the most successful people have something they’re working toward. I’ve talked to successful marketers and what has stood out most is the story they have about themselves.

This isn’t to say it’s easy. In fact, telling stories about others will get a lot easier once you take the time to craft your story about yourself. However, you’ve learned so many tactics as a marketer, why not use them on yourself?

 

Stay Positive & Make It A Story You Look Forward To Listening To Each Day

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It’s fun to brainstorm a great launch, to think of making a giant splash at the start of a new product’s life, to get media validation that your creation will be successful at the start.

However, it’s not worth the extra time, the extra money, the extra resources to do.

 

Stay Positive & Best To Invest In The Long Run

 

Free is an excellent tactic for getting initial attention.

What many marketers fail to incorporate into their overall strategy is that once free is used as a tactic, it has to be repeatedly used in fresh ways while still marketing something of greater value for a price.

When it comes to content people will expect it to be free unless it meets one of these three criteria.

1. It’s so special that they can’t get it anywhere else
2. That it makes their bond to others like them stronger (connects to their tribe)
3. They benefit by being the first to have it

Great content marketing is a weave between free and each of these three pieces of criteria.

 

Stay Positive & Free For Now…

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If you’re in the marketing world of creating similar content again and again for the same target, then you’re like me.

If you’re like me, then you also have trouble writing that content because you feel you’re being repetitive, that you’re saying the same thing in a different way, that you’re sending messages to a target that has already received those messages but chose not to respond.

It has taken me awhile to work my way through the mental battle of repetitive content creation. Here’s two ways I see it:

1) Every piece of content is a reminder.

Sometimes I need a reminder to not use so many hand motions when talking. Sometimes a kid needs a reminder to say please. Sometimes your target needs a reminder to…?

Think of your repetitive content as reminders. We all need them from time to time.

2) Speaking of reminders… when it comes to repetitive content, I remind myself people may be reading the content for the first time.

I subscribe to the BeerSmith newsletter. Each newsletter has a lot of basic information. The thing about beginner info is that there’s a limit. There’s a point when BeerSmith has to repeat himself, and I’m thankful he does. That newsletter about “the properties of yeast” helped me a lot and I couldn’t imagine someone else not benefiting from that information simply because I’ve gotten it once already.

Repeat content is effective. When you find yourself creating more of it, pause and remember the benefits of writing the same thing in a different way. It’s not a waste of your time.

 

Stay Positive & Feeling Refreshed? (So Are Your Readers)

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“What is it you think they do for a living?”

It’s a remarkable question my significant other often asks when we’re driving through an area of land that looks so foreign, so far from any city, so open. Really, how do they survive?

Figuring out what people do for a living tells a lot, but it doesn’t tell us enough. Bernadette Jiwa recently wrote about a man she saw scratching a lottery ticket off and wondered what he does and why.

It would be very telling and insightful for a caring marketer, however, I still wonder if it’s not what people do for a living that matters so much as what they see themselves doing if they didn’t have to “do for a living.”

It gets straight to the heart of their long-term motivations, which are, I think, often more rewarding to market to than short-term needs.

 

Stay Positive & Appeal For A Lifetime Or Appeal For A Moment

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