Struggling to Write That Marketing Content? Try These Productivity Joggers

Writing is hard -- and I say that as a professional writer with a quarter-century's experience under my belt. Some of the world's greatest wordsmiths have found themselves paralyzed by writer's block or otherwise unable to produce the material they need in a timely manner. Why do we struggle with this particular problem? I mean, you don't hear about people experiencing accountant's block or insurance agent's block. (Plumbers, of course, must deal with blocks of a different nature.) I think it's a combination of intimidation and time management trouble. Writing requires focused creativity for a specific period. If you don't do it regularly and efficiently, you may feel overwhelmed by its demands while also falling behind in your marketing content production quota, which only increases the perceived burden.

Fortunately, you can employ a variety of clever tricks to get yourself pumping out that materials for your website, blog, newsletter, or email marketing campaign. You don't have to resort to the drastic antics of a Friedrich Schiller, who kept stinky rotten apples in his desk drawer to inspire his creative mind. you may benefit from the following smart strategies to turbocharge your productivity.

Optimize Your Workspace

A cluttered desk area is like a cluttered mind: It makes finding specific things impossible. Those bills and tax forms only distract you from the job at hand, while constant incoming emails and online news updates help to ensure that your word processor screen remains blank. Clear all that paperwork away until you've completed your writing session. Look into "minimalist" writing apps that fill the whole screen, banishing all other electronic distractions.

Give Yourself 25 Minutes

Don't beat yourself up if you can't create for hour after hour. Research indicates that most of us can only focus on concentrated mental efforts for about 25 minutes at a time before we run out of steam. Franscesco Cirillo responded to this challenge by creating the Pomodoro technique, named after the tomato-shaped timer he sells as part of his online productivity program. But you can try a basic version of this technique using any handy timer that will alert you at the 25-minute mark. Set the timer, think and work as hard as you can for 25 minutes, and then stop and take a break when the alarm goes off. You'll keep your mind refreshed and feel less intimidated by that next session.

Set Yourself Free

Many writers and non-writers alike feel as if every sentence they set down must be a shining jewel. But if you've ever seen gems in the natural form, they're pretty rough; they need plenty of cutting and polishing before they make their way into fine jewelry. if you insist on creating a perfect phrase before you can move on to the next phrase, you'll probably just get stuck. So stop worrying about spelling, grammar, or flow. Just bang out a draft that you can polish later so at least you'll have something to polish. (Ray Bradbury famously posted a note above his typewriter that read DON'T THINK.) If the beginning of that blog post stumps you, then don't start at the beginning -- write any part of the article that you've got rattling around in your head. That bit will help you figure out the earlier and later bits, and before you know it you'll be done.

I hope these tips prove useful for you. If you still can't muster the time, energy, or creativity to produce a steady stream of marketing content on your own, you can always enlist my services. Contact me today so we can get started!

Celebrate Independence Day by Building Your Personal Brand

Independence day, a.k.a. the Fourth of July, can mean more than just the date of the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. You might see it as a day to celebrate everything America stands for, a time to bring friends and family members together, and/or a welcome day off for fun and sun. (If you're a pet owner or someone who values a good night's sleep, you may view it as a time for shaking your fist angrily at the fireworks-illuminated clouds.) 

If you've stopped working for someone else to establish and run your own business, Independence day may have its own special meaning for you. In fact, I first started working as a full-time freelancer so close to the Fourth that I traditionally celebrate my anniversary as an independent contractor on this date. Even if you work with a national or international franchise, you may take pride in your status as an independent representative. But ask yourself this question: How much effort does that mega-corporation spend marketing you as opposed to marketing their enterprise?

I've worked with many independent representatives of major brands, from the leading insurance providers and realty firms to janitorial services and long-term care companies. They come to me with pretty much the same complaint along the general lines of, "The company I represent has all the marketing it'll ever need, and none of it helps me differentiate myself from the thousands of other reps selling the same products or services." The blog posts, print marketing collateral, and other materials the franchise gives them are all cookie-cutter templates with maybe a small corner dedicated to the "independent" rep. 

If this frustration applies to you, what's the solution I usually suggest? You need to create your own personal brand -- for instance, "John Doe, Your Healthcare Concierge" instead of "John doe, Your Local ABC Insurance rep." ABC insurance has all the visibility it could ever need and want. What you need and want is to promote your own business, not theirs. You also want to build a whole marketing platform around this personal brand, including a website, blog, social media array, and print marketing strategy.

This approach offers a ton of advantages. For starters, you don't have to get approval from Big Brother, Inc. on every little piece of personal marketing you want to implement. It's your brand, and you can market it however you like. Additionally, by throwing the focus on you and your own brand, you relegate the franchise to your line of products and services -- which means that if you want to add more products, services, and referrals from multiple providers under the umbrella of your personal brand, who's to stop you? You're now free to offer a wider range of solutions to your target market than ever before. That's independence!

I can't think of a more fitting holiday to embark on this exciting new career phase. Best of all, you already know a skilled, experienced professional copywriter who can help you craft the content for your personal brand. In addition to creating that written content for you, I can also connect you with top-quality webmasters, digital marketing providers, logo designers, and other marketing experts. Contact me so we can make your personal Independence Day a reality!

The Two Smartest Ways to Pay for Marketing Content

At some point or other, many of us see the value in offloading a difficult or time-consuming task to a professional who specializes in that task. I could do my taxes (for better or for worse), but I don't -- I let a CPA do it so I can enjoy an optimal outcome with no sweat. I could learn how to fix my car, but I'd rather let a skilled technician do it so I can feel confident about taking that car on the road. 

My copywriting clients come to me for similar reasons. They don't feel good about their own writing skills, or they can't spare the time to write their own content, or they simply can't stand writing at all. You might have the same struggles, leading you to ponder the prospect of hiring a professional to handle your written marketing content creation. But if you want to make sure you get what you're paying for, you need to understand which payment processes will give you the best bang for your buck. Allow me to suggest the following two smart options.

Per-Project Rates

You've probably seen freelance creative types who charge by the hour for their services. On the surface, this method seems sensible enough. The freelancer gets paid for the amount of time they put in, no more and no less. The problem is: How do you know what the final price tag will be? Your freelancer might toss out a vague estimate, only to break the bad news that they spent more time on the project than anticipated so would you mind forking over some more dough? Additionally, if you've never worked with a particular writer before, you have no idea how quickly or slowly that writer works -- in which case, you could receive some nasty sticker shock at the end of the day.

A writer who charges flat per-project rates can give you exactly what you want at exactly the price originally quoted, with no monkey business. A sales letter will cost you a flat $X, while writing for a five-page website will cost you $Y and a set of blog articles will cost you $Z. This approach offers three major benefits. First, you can actually budget for what you need. Second, your payment amount has nothing to do with how fast or efficient your writer happens to be that week. Third, if you're a marketing agency, you can simply roll that number into a larger bid, marking it up to suit your preferences, and know that your copywriter will deliver the goods at that set price.

Monthly Retainers

Flat per-project rates may make infinite sense when you know exactly what kind of marketing content you need. But what if your needs vary unpredictably from month to month? What if you suddenly decide you need some kind of writing that wasn't listed on the per-project "menu?" What if you'd rather just drop X amount of money each month to keep a writer on call instead of processing a fresh invoice for each and every job that comes up?

That's where a monthly retainer can come to your rescue. In a typical monthly retainer agreement, you might pony up one lump sum at the beginning of the month to lock in your copywriter's availability for any combination of marketing content jobs, including items that don't quite fit the standard list of fare. Yes, you'll be paying your writer by the hour, but the number of hours is capped right from the beginning, with only one invoice to mess with. If you need more work than that retainer covers, you can then purchase more.

Anyway, those are the two marketing content payment methods that make the most sense to me. Not coincidentally, they're also the two payment methods I offer as a professional freelance copywriter. Contact me today to learn more about how you can get top-quality content without paying top dollar!

3 Reasons to Create as Much Marketing Content as Possible

You may have breathed a huge sigh of relief once you'd created the core content for your website, blog, print marketing, and social media channels -- and rightly so. Without those pillars in place, you can't establish and build a visible brand. However, some business owners make the critical mistake of resting on their laurels after that initial effort -- and then they wonder why their marketing isn't making the right impact on their audience.

The inconvenient truth is that you can't just create a big marketing push and call it a day. If you want to keep up with the competition and generate more revenue for your business, you must pump out a steady stream of fresh, meaningful content. That means regular blogging, frequent social media updates, periodic print marketing and email touches, and ongoing tweaks to your website as needed to keep the information accurate and compelling. Consider the following three reasons to keep creating that marketing content.

Reason 1: To Reinforce Your Message

You make quite a stir when you put out that big announcement or unveil your new online presence -- or you might not. Even if your efforts capture eyeballs, how long can you expect that initial splash to spread ripples? Consider a real-world analogy: When you tell a child to do something, how likely are those instructions to land if you only issue them once? Well, busy adults can rival children for a short attention span and vulnerabilities to distractions. That's why messages need constant reinforcement. Regular blog articles, email messages, direct mail pieces, and other bits of marketing content repeat your message until it truly sinks in and your audience finally responds. You might worry that you're repeating yourself, but if your audience wasn't paying sufficient attention the first time around, it'll be new to them, right?

Reason 2: To Boost Your Search Rankings

While nobody can really predict where Google's capricious algorithm will go next, you can bank on the search engine rewarding what it perceives as authority and relevance. How do you establish those qualities online? You keep producing more and more high-quality content to build a critical mass of evidence to that effect. You want your online footprint to grow until the search engines see you as the 400-pound gorilla of your industry or profession, at which point you can expect to rise in the search rankings. At the same time, you'll be creating more informational resources that your target market can put to good use, reinforcing that message even as you make that message more easily visible.

Reason 3: To Help Manage Your Brand's Reputation

Here's an odd anecdote, but an illuminating one. I recently got a request to create a huge amount of content for a legal professional who was incensed over some negative publicity that had gone viral over the web. This negative publicity should've made little or no impact, but it stood out like a sore thumb because anytime anyone Googled this professional, that negative publicity would leap to the top of the search results. Why? Because the legal professional had no other online presence to compete against that one unhappy article. So the guy's marketing agency engaged me to write, not just a rebuttal article, but a whole mass of favorable content. We created a website for his practice, a professional bio website, a personal website, you name it -- all with the primary goal of diverting attention from the negative publicity. Content creation also helps with reputation management by rebutting complaints from dissatisfied customers, but only if you stay on top of those comments and respond to them promptly.

As you can see, you can never have too much of a good thing where marketing content creation is concerned. Of course, all that content takes time, skill, and effort to produce. But all you have to do is contact a professional freelance copywriter and offload that work while you continue working on other aspects of your business. So contact me today, and let's get started!

If You Can Write a Letter, You Can Write Your Own Marketing Content

Anyone other than me remember Coronet Films? I was subjected to countless of these short "educational" films during my years in school, instructing young people on everything from why they should drink more water or eat more vegetables to how they should dress for different situations. Well, maybe it's because i'm frequently doing research related to my writing work, but somehow or other my YoutTube feed presented me with a 1950 gem entitled "How to Write Better Social Letters." (You know, back when people actually wrote letters by hand, on that ancient substance known to the elders as paper.) Dated as the film may be, it makes some legitimate points about how to organize your thoughts for readability and write with a specific audience in mind. You know -- like you have to do when writing marketing content.

Do you find marketing content creation intimidating, confusing, or simply alien to your experience? If you enjoy writing letters to people, you might know more about this discipline than you give yourself credit for. Think about how the following letter writing tips can apply to your copywriting efforts.

"Write how you talk." You can't expect a high-handed tone and scholarly vocabulary to come across as warm, natural, or relatable to most B2C or B2B audiences., any more than you'd expect these choices to resonate with a friend or family member reading a letter from you. In this case,  when I say"you" I mean "your brand," which will have its own distinct personality. Think of a business as a person writing a letter to someone who needs and wants that person's help, advice, and reassurance. Try to picture both your brand and your audience as individual human beings on both ends of that communication. The right tone will naturally follow.

"Tell a story." Effective storytelling and effective marketing go hand in hand. When you're recounting a memory or anecdote to someone in a personal letter -- or even talking about it over the phone -- you naturally begin at the beginning, don't you? You set the stage, introduce the events in the order they occurred, and then reach a slam-bang conclusion. This structure gives your story a logical, easy-to-read flow that keeps the audience's attention and prevents confusion. Simply follow this same kind of structure in your marketing content. Introduce a problem, throw in enough details to engage the emotions, and then segue into the solution (which, of course, is your product or service).

"Put a bow on it." It's easy to wrap up a personal letter -- you just summarize the gist of what you were talking about, add some compelling final comments, and then invite the recipient to reply, come visit sometimes, or whatever will keep the relationship rolling along. Well, that's exactly what you do when you conclude a piece of marketing content. you wrap up your points and then encourage your audience to take the next step based on what you've just communicated. It's as clear and surefire an approach as appending that final "Sincerely Yours."

See what I mean? If you know how to write a letter, you know how to create marketing content. but of course the fact that you know how doesn't mean you're obligated to do it yourself. Contact me if you'd like to hand this task over to an experienced freelance copywriter. After all, even a casual letter requires some time, effort, and skill!

What Is Your Business Doing This Summer -- and How Are You Marketing It?

Officially, we greet the first day of summer on June 21st, although here in Texas the summer heat arrives long before summer itself. We've already seen Cinco de Mayo come and go, and Memorial day will be here soon enough. When you're already out in the sun grilling and partying, you're pretty much doing summer, right? And we'll get a glut of other bg events coming up. There's Mother's Day, Memorial Day (if we're letting May sneak into the summer schedule), Flag day, Father's Day, Juneteenth day,  Independence Day, Labor Day....even such "niche" holidays as National Hot Dog Day, National Mountain Climbing Day, and National Watermelon Day. 

What summer holidays pertain to your business, what are you doing to draw customers on those days, and what marketing measures have you taken to let us know? Here are some ways to get your target audience's attention.

Festive videos - TV commercials have traditionally advertised summer sales and events, but they generally require elaborate planning, production, and editing. If you want to show the world what you're up to this summer, you'll find it quicker, cheaper, and easier to hit YouTube and other video channels with short, exciting, funny, compelling clips. You might already have some footage left over from previous summer promotions that you can cobble together in support of a high-energy scripted voiceover. You can also run some sort of video submission contest related to your upcoming summer spectacular, with creative fans sending in their own video essays or examples of fun in the sun. A lucky winner gets a prize -- and you get free promotional content!

Article-based promotions - Do you send out periodic email blasts and/or newsletters? Do you keep your business top of mind on the internet through regular blog posts? Now's the perfect time to plant announcements about your huge summer sale, fundraiser, or public gathering in the form of short but sweet articles. The articles can focus on the promotion itself, or they can be skilfully written to incorporate that information as tidbits within larger topics. If you blog frequently, you can touch on the subject multiple times without necessarily jamming the promotion down your target market's throat -- especially if the larger subject of the article deals with some other issue that naturally segues into your exciting news.

Direct mail - Don't let today's digital world cause you to ignore good old direct mail. There are always some folks who will respond better to a tangible ad, coupon, or announcement in their mailbox. The right combination of high-voltage written content, vivid graphics, and an offer they can't refuse will help ensure a big turnout or big sales figures. Better yet, targeted distribution techniques such as EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) can help you send exactly the right pieces to exactly the right neighborhoods.

I've only scratched the surface of the many ways you can market your summer activities. There's still time to get the word out, of course, but your window of opportunity is narrowing. If you need help creating the right marketing content to make your summer sizzle, contact me and let's turn up the heat!

How to Make Your Content Creation Easier

So you're stuck with the task of writing your own website, blog, sales letter, press release, or email marketing content. Maybe you don't have a professional marketing person on your team, or maybe you just like doing things yourself. But there's no getting around the fact that marketing content creation can challenge your wits, patience, and sanity even under the best of circumstances. Sooner or later you'll find yourself staring at a blank screen without the slightest clue on how to move forward and produce the content your business urgently needs in a crowded, competitive marketplace. If you're already sweating creative bullets, here are some things you can do to make the process a bit easier and less stressful.

Start with a Plan

You can't know what content to write without first knowing who you're writing it for, what they need and want to read, and how to push their buttons so they'll respond to your call to action. That means doing your research and coming up with a buyer persona -- that imaginary person I've talked about before, one who fits all the demographics and characteristics of your ideal customer. Okay, now that you have your audience in mind, you can plan your content creation accordingly. If you intend to blog regularly, that means coming up with an editorial calendar (which I've also harped on in the past). Block out a whole year's worth of topics if possible. you can always tweak it as you go, but have some kind of plan in place to guide your way.

Use Topic Brainstorming Techniques

Do you hate having to come up with an endless stream of ideas for blog, email, or newsletter content? Talk about a brain drain! But fear not, because a few little ideation tricks can help prime the creative pump. For instance, you might start by thinking about your target audience. What nagging problem did they probably have recently? What aspects of your business seem to interest them the most? What's the most helpful advice you could give them right now? Answers may pop into your head with startling speed. If you can't dream up whole articles out of thin air, what about titles? Ray Bradbury used to type out title after title and then let each title suggest an entire story to him. Worth a try, right? 

Streamline Your Style

Do you tend to launch long, elaborate sentences and then get sort of lost halfway through them? Are you always struggling for just the right word? Maybe it's time you simplified your marketing content style and vocabulary. Focus on clear, simple statements in everyday language. Even if you work in some specialized technical field, your audience probably doesn't want to sift through a lot of technobabble. They just want the answer to that all-important question: "What can you do for me?" So streamline your style, clarify your points, and you'll find that your content becomes both more effective and less of a pain to write.

Draft Now, Fix Later

"Analysis paralysis" can strike anyone at any time, making even the most straightforward decisions needlessly agonizing. Unfortunately, it's especially common in the world of content creation. As long as that screen stays blank, you haven't made any mistakes -- and so the screen stays blank. If you're a perfectionist, you may stare at that blank screen forever, terrified that you'll write something that doesn't meet your lofty standards. But remember this: You can't fix what doesn't exist. Barf out that hopeless word salad of a draft, accept that it needs revision, and then revise it. Launch the ship, and then correct the course as needed.

I hope these tips help you move forward with your marketing content creation. If you'd rather engage professional assistance for this chore, put me to work as your freelance marketing copywriter. What could be easier than that?