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Giving Is The New Advertising

Garth Beyer

Here’s advertising I think we can all get behind: advertising that gives viewers what they want.

PostIt follows you around so banner ads become a list of things you want to remember.

Businesses like McDonalds are now buying the ad space of Pandora to give you 30 minutes of no-ad listening.

Even podcast advertising is seeing the benefit of giving. It’s a podcast norm that hosts advertise products and services they use and care about – no pre-recorded voiceover here.

I did lead you astray with the title. Giving isn’t necessarily new advertising as it has always been the best kind of advertising, we’re just slowly catching on.

 

Stay Positive & No One Cares About Being Interrupted If They Get A Gift For It

A Riff And Reward For Reading (Self-Promotion On Twitter)

Garth Beyer

I use Twitter to interact with people and it peeves me when people use it to spam. I can deal with the links and self-promotion in my feed. What I can’t stand is when I get a direct message that is so obviously programmed. There’s a picture of a person, but the message is robotic. The latest is from Alex Mathers who is exceptionally smart and produces really sweet content, but his promotional methods are…questionable.

So impersonal

Occurrences like this remind me of my post about Pandora advertising its alarm option even after I had set the alarm up.

If you’re going to promote, then quit promoting once your customer does or buys what you’re promoting. Think of the last thing you sold to someone. Once the exchange was made, you didn’t keep telling them that they should buy what is now in their hands. Right?

Anyway, to thank you for reading this rant, I’ve taken the common questions asked by working creatives that Alex answered on his blog and have answered them in my way here.

1. How do I find my first clients if no one knows me?

Try making a better product or service first. If that doesn’t work, then you need to create something different. Skip all this hassle by figuring out what people in a tribe want before you establish a product or service.

Getting clients isn’t hard. Creating something people want is.

2. Should my style appeal to what is in demand or be about what I enjoy?

You know the answer to this. Both.

3. How do I earn more?

Easy things aren’t scarce. Hard things are scarce. Scarce things have value. By doing something hard, you’re creating something of value. The more value, the more you can earn.

4. How do I know what to charge for my creative work?

Charge what you would pay for it. It’s damn difficult to sell something for $1,000 if you don’t believe it’s worth that much.

5. How do I move from full-time employment to going freelance?

Slowly. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to work your ass off for it. Wake up earlier. Go to sleep later. Cut the little things out of your life until you make the transition.

6. How can I sell more of my stuff without being too pushy and ‘salesy’?

Read one book on sales. That’s all you need. They all say the same thing. After you read it, go take a job in sales. I did for a month and practiced what I read in the book. The only reason you don’t know how is because you’re not forcing yourself to figure it out.

7. I don’t have any time to spend on my creative career. What do I do?

Quit lying to yourself. We all have 24 hours in the day.

8. How do I network with people if I’m introverted?

 Watch this

9. Do I need to understand the basics of running a business to succeed?

Do athletes need to understand the basics of their sport in order to perform at the Olympics? That’s where you want to go, right? To the top?

10. How long do I need to spend working to become an expert at my craft?

If you simply won’t move forward without knowing, they say 10,000 hours. How long isn’t important though. What matters is how well you work to become an expert, not how many hours.

11. How do I balance my job, social life and creating in my spare time?

Understand that you’re on a teeter-totter and you’re on it with someone who weighs a bit more than you. No one consistently balances. Prepare for the constant give and take. It’s what makes it worth it.

12. Why can’t I get motivated about what I do?

You’re afraid of something. Figure out what it is and proceed to dance with it. (Also search “fear” on my website, I write a lot about it.)

13. How do I freelance without getting lonely?

By creating something that makes people feel less lonely.

14. I never get any jobs through social media. What am I doing wrong?

You need to use social media to make connections and meet people. It’s when you meet people that you get offered a job. More people get jobs from people, not tweets; they get them in person, not online.

15. How do I get more likes on Facebook?

First ask yourself if that’s where most of your revenue is coming from. If it’s not, then spend more time where the revenue is coming from, likes will follow from that.

If you do get most of your revenue from likes on Facebook and want more likes, then offer more on Facebook, showcase people who use your product or service by giving shout outs or uploading photos (people love sharing photos that they are in) and be entertaining. Most Facebookers go on to escape the real world. Ask yourself what you have to offer.

16. I have disrespectful, crappy clients. What do I do to change this?

Fire them.

17. I lack the confidence to share my creations with the world. How can I increase belief in my work?

There’s no solution to this. Don’t listen to people who say there is a solution, all they are setting you up for is an uphill battle. What you can do is start by not caring who believes in your work – so long as you do. Build it and they will come.

18. How do I get more traffic to my blog?

Ads work. More content works. Multimedia helps. Getting content published elsewhere will guide others to your blog. The two best steps you can take, though, is to connect with more people outside your blog and to wait (but don’t stand still, that’s not what I mean by waiting. People die standing still).

19. Is it better to be a jack of all trades, or a master at one?

People will ask you what you are an expert at or what your superpower is. Have one. Then know a little about everything else. Enough so you can make friends with people who are experts in all those other things. Now you’ve built a team. Now no one will ask what you’re good at. They will see you as a leader.

20. What is your single biggest tip for succeeding as a solo creative?

Know what success means to you.

21. How do I develop a unique style?

It’s a pain, but writing as much as possible helps. And try caring just a little bit less on whether people approve of your unique style. I laugh when someone calls someone else weird. They make it sound like it’s a rare thing. We are all weird.

22. Do I need a university degree to succeed in this game?

Not exactly in this game. But, in the game of life, it helps a ton.

23. There is so much competition out there. How do I stand out?

You don’t need a million followers to make a million dollars.

24. Why does no one follow me on social media?

Well, I would follow you if I’ve heard about you and like you. If this is the same for others, then either they haven’t heard about you or don’t like you.

 

Stay Positive & Follow Me @thegarthbox (but don’t expect spam messages)

More On The 2nd Part Of Being Scared

Garth Beyer

There are two parts to everyone being scared.

The second is my favorite because it has the potential of making you feel better than you ever have before. At my work, I have evaluated applications from students that have put in more than 2,000 hours of community service over a span of four years. But when I think of the second part of fear, I can’t help but realize that more empowering results can be created by talking to someone for two minutes.

Online example

Despite Twitter’s popularity, it’s far from perfect. In fact, I gave their ads a try and was revolted. They gave me $50 to start running ads and I quit before it was spent.

They also required you to have a debit/credit card on file before they gave you the money. Once I quit my ads, I wanted to delete my debit card information. I could not find any place to do this. So, I emailed them.

Within a day I received an email saying that the feature I requested was not available and that they would work on it – in the mean time I would basically have to deal with it.

Since then, a few weeks have passed. The other day, I opened my email to find this:

Twitter

There is always room for improvement

Whether the person, company, or client you’re talking to follows through with your suggestion – or in Twitter’s case, takes your unfulfillable request and turns it into something real – it’s still your responsibility to make that suggestion.

Out of the millions of Twitter users, I have no clue how many will be happy that they can delete their card from their account. I have no clue how many employees it took, how much red tape it had to go through, or how successful their actions really were. What I do know is that they took a request, an idea, and made it happen. And for that – although I still can’t stand the ads, – I will stick by Twitter’s side.

Personal examples

An old friend of mine wanted to start a blog about teen dads. I gave him roughly five lines of hard encouragement. I told him exactly what he needed to do. He never did. I didn’t let fear get to him, he did.

Another friend of mine was applying to law school and asked if I would review his personal statement. I gave him a few suggestions but explained more about human personalities and how those reviewing the application are real people. He understood, realizing that there was fear that the person reviewing his application might misjudge him. Because of fear, he wrote a safe statement. Once I called him out on it, he made some changes and while he has yet to hear back, I’m sure he will get in.

I shared a speech I wrote with a respectable entrepreneur. She critiqued the staleness and boredom out of it. Because of her, my speech became more remarkable. I also gave the original draft to a friend who said it was good, providing a couple grammatical corrections. You can guess which one had more of an impact.

Criticism is tough work

So is encouragement, accountability, and inspiration – all of which are required to back up another’s dance with fear. I’ve always thought that doing your own work is easy, well, maybe not easy, but always easier than helping someone else do their own work.

I suppose that’s why I love giving people feedback. Maybe, just maybe, they will see how valuable it is to them, that they give feedback to someone else.

 

Stay Positive & Let Others Know What You Think And Feel

Garth E. Beyer

The Single Most Rudimentary Lesson About Advertising That People Don’t Realize

Garth Beyer

It’s been a great holiday with a lot of traveling and for once, watching some television. Making it an understatement, I saw a myriad advertisements. After seeing each one, I thought to myself, “absolutely no one will buy that because they saw this sign,” “no one will call the number because of the poster,” “no one will request the free information because the commercial tells them to.”

I had my advertising epiphany.

Advertising isn’t about creating action, getting someone to call, to buy, to request free information, even though it appears that way. No. Advertising is about creating a sense of familiarity because one day the world will work it’s weirdness and someone will need to call a lawyer because they know someone who suffered a heart attack from taking a specific type of doctor prescribed drug.

When that time does come, they will search for lawyers and notice one specific law firm. It will stick out for some reason, possibly stir some memory. It’s unlikely they will remember they saw an advertisement on a billboard for it, but that doesn’t matter, the sense of familiarity is there.

That familiarity, that’s what advertising is all about. That’s what creates profits. That’s why it’s okay for advertisers to blow money like crazy on what appears to be a pointless billboard advertisement.

Familiarity.