Creating a Onesheet? Read This First

If you want a great promotional "leave-behind" for those sales calls, networking meetings, and promotional events, then you want a onesheet. Even if you've never created one for yourself before, you've probably seen plenty of them in your everyday business dealings. These handy one-page print pieces (also referred to as one sheets, one-sheets or one-pagers) can market both yourself and your brand at a glance by showing off your company colors and logo, talking about how people benefit from what you do, and including a bio spotlight for yourself or any member of your team. 

But just as a professional-quality onesheet makes the impression you want to make, a sub-par onesheet can shoot you in the foot -- especially if it gets passed around from one cringing viewer to the next. Yes, there is such a thing as bad publicity! So, how do you produce the kind of onesheet that grabs attention and gets results? First, take heed of these important tips.

Decide on the Scope of Your Onesheet

A onesheet can vary widely in the scope of its messaging. You might want a comprehensive document that devotes one side of the page to your brand's UVP and includes a detailed professional biography or "About Me" statement on the reverse side. This kind of onesheet makes a useful all-round introduction piece. Or you might only need to promote one specific product, service, or event, in which case you can probably get away with a single-sided sheet. I generally recommend the double-sided approach wherever it makes sense, if only because once that sheet gets placed face-down, it just looks like a blank piece of paper not worth flipping over. Oops! But whichever format you choose, don't try to shove a manifesto down your audience's throat. A successfully-written onesheet includes enough empty space to maximize readability and give the images a chance to shine.

Make It All Flow

An experienced graphic designer can create an intuitive visual architecture for your onesheet -- one that leads the eye naturally from one key point or element to the next. But at the same, time you need to make sure your written content does the same. The most natural progression of ideas in most marketing pieces involves three sections: (1) a pain or empathy statement that expresses your target audience's need, (2) a solution statement where you describe how you can help, and (3) a call to action that urges the reader to respond. On the bio side of your onesheet, you might start with an arresting introductory statement and then backtrack to give a brief history of your work. Along the way, sprinkle in your motivations for doing what you do. Finally, invite your reader to connect with you and learn more.

Go Out Strong

With any luck, your onesheet's beautiful design and compelling content have hooked your audience from the top left of Side 1 to the bottom right of Side 2. At this point, the worst mistake you can make is to go out with a whimper instead of a bang. Always add a call to action, whether you want the reader to contact you, place an order, visit your website or whatever. Include your contact information in the footer on both sides, just in case your readers either forget to flip the page or feel ready to act after reading only Side 1. Better yet, use your onesheet as a giant coupon delivery device. Build a barcode or tear-away section that the reader can use to redeem some extra perk or discount.

If you want a onesheet that will deliver your message and sell your products or services, you may want to leave both the content writing and the graphic design to the professionals instead of laboring over them yourself. I've written content for countless onesheets over the years, and I can hook you up with a brilliant graphic designer if you don't have one already. Contact me to learn more and get started!

The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Smart Ways to Repurpose Your Blog Content

Let's face it, blogging is hard work. Not only do you need to craft relevant, entertaining content that compels your target audience to action, but you have to do it again and again, cranking out posts like clockwork, to reap the full benefits of this form of content marketing. If you're going to put that much effort into the task, you might as well get as much out of your labor as possible -- and that means finding lucrative ways to repurpose that content. Take a look at a few smart ways to make your blog the gift that keeps on giving.

Compile Your Blog Posts Into a Book (or Speech)

One of the simplest and most popular ways to repurpose blog content involves dropping them together into one longer manuscript, "massaging" them until you have an honest-to-goodness eBook or printed book. Go back through your previous posts and look for an overall theme that might lend itself to this treatment. You can even blog with this end goal in mind, posting a series of related articles that naturally come together to convey a single major point. Are looking to put together a speech you can deliver to groups and associations? Look no further than your blog for source material -- or sell your blog-derived book at your presentation.

Turn Your Blog Posts Into a Course

Do you regularly dispense guidance, advice, or educational content in your blog posts? If so, you just might have the bones of an online course that you can upload to one of the major online education platforms. This strategy doesn't just open up a new potential income stream for you; it also reinforces your reputation as a problem-solver and an expert in your field. You can expand on the source material as much as you like to turn it into a series of valuable lessons.

Turn Blog Posts Into Videos

Everybody's consuming online video on a massive scale these days, with youTube serving as the most obvious example. Uploading useful, entertaining videos to your company's YouTube channel can boost your online footprint, reputation, and visibility. Since that's also the goal of regular blogging, why not use one to produce the other? Simply read your blog text into a microphone, add that audio to some relevant images, and presto -- you just made a Youtube video that's just as meaningful to your target audience as the original blog post. Why bother with this kind of redundancy? because some people are primarily readers, while others are primarily viewers. You want to grab the attention of both camps, right?

Of course, you have to have the original blog content before you can morph it into something else. If writing those original posts still stands in your way as a bottleneck to successful marketing, why not enlist the aid of a skilled freelance copywriter? Contact me today to get the creative ball rolling -- and then watch where it takes your business!