Business and Finance

When most people think about marketing, they think advertising. While advertising is a part of marketing, marketing is much bigger than advertising. There are lots of different marketing methods floating around out there, and the challenge as a business owner is figuring out when it’s appropriate to use each one and the best way to use it.

Public relations, or PR, is the art of getting someone else to write or talk about you or your business. Preferably in a favorable manner. Traditionally, “someone else” was the media. In this day and age however, someone else can also be a blogger, a freelance writer, an e-zine publisher or even an owner of a big Web site. For purposes of this article, I’m using the word “media” to refer to all of those folks.

PR is also being able to get yourself on a big talk show to talk about yourself or your business, or writing your own article that’s published in a desired outlet. (Not your own newsletter or Web site.)

PR is one of my favorite marketing methods, but it can also be one of the more frustrating ones. Even when you do everything right, you still might not get the publicity you want. Or for that matter, ANY publicity at all. When a PR campaign doesn’t work, you can find yourself wanting to pull out all your hair in frustration.

Continue reading ‘Is PR Right for You? Six Questions to Ask’ »

According to Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, the fear of being a bad speller is a remarkably common fear for people who want to write but are creatively blocked.

It doesn’t matter that the fear is irrational, it doesn’t matter that every single word-processing program out there comes with a spell checker, the fear of not being able to spell still haunts those would-be writers. And thus, those people remain blocked.

Many people who are blocked creatively suffer from some sort of fear. Some fears are based on creative “myths” (all artists are broke, crazy, alcoholic, dying from AIDS, etc.), some are based on things adults said to us as children and some, like the fear of being a bad speller, appear to be based on nothing at all.

Regardless of where the fear came from, there’s no denying its power. And the harder it is to admit to a fear, the more potent it becomes. After all, imagine trying to explain to someone that you can’t write because you can’t spell. You would sound like an idiot. So you don’t say anything. And because that fear goes unvoiced, it burrows deeper and deeper inside you.

Continue reading ‘Is Fear of Spelling Getting in Your Way?’ »

The other day, a colleague of mine told me about a new marketing agency and sent me a link to their Web site. I checked it out.

Needless to say, it was dreadful.

Oh, it was pretty enough. Very nice graphics. And what little copy there was, was very artfully placed (although so tiny it was difficult to actually read).

Why do I say it was dreadful? Because, even though it was pretty, it had absolutely no personality.

The copy was boring (not to mention full of “we’s” but that’s for another day). The graphics were pretty but boring. There was no life, no energy. Just flat.

It was as though the Web site was trying so hard to appeal to everyone, it ended up appealing to no one.

You see, people want to do with business with people. And they want to do business with people they know, like and trust.

Continue reading ‘How Your Personality Can Grow Your Business’ »