Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Publish the process: Field Offices

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field offices, change scenery,

In the early days of the blog, I’d often share a look behind the scenes at my working day. It’s something I call publishing the process and today it’s back!

Just as before, I’ll share ideas I’m working on, the tools I’m using, useful new resources, the way I collect ideas… as well as things like sources of inspiration, etc.

Let’s kick things off with: Field offices

Lots of readers have asked me about how and why I use field offices. It’s something I’ve mentioned in passing in recent blog posts and newsletter articles. But never in any detail.

It’s a relevant topic to start with, as I sit in a field office right now; sipping espresso, with my MacBook Air finally connected to the coffee shop’s WiFi.

“[…] We get into ruts at work by following strict routines. That’s the problem! […]”

Dr. Todd Dewett

How many times have you had a great idea or flash of insight, when you’re in the shower, or when you’re at the gym or stuck in traffic?

It happens to all of us and it happens a lot.

One reason for this is that the change of scenery disrupts your routine and provides you with multiple, different inputs. Fresh sources of stimulation. And each of these influences how we think and feel, to a lesser or greater degree.

Like thousands of others, I’ve found that the same thing happens when I deliberately choose to break the routine of working from a non-traditional working environment.

Field offices offer 2 major benefits

  1. Field offices provide you with the same valuable, fresh / different ideas and insights, that often come randomly in the shower. However, by deciding to deliberately kick-start the process, you have far greater control over when it happens.
  2. Because you’re equipped with the tools you work with, for me it’s a laptop or a notebook and pen, you can capture the idea or insight and instantly get to work on it.

I also find it helps to use multiple different locations and settings. Here are the ones I’ve used recently.

  • A bench on a the Chesterfield Canal.
  • A coffee shop (in the above photo).
  • The grounds of Lincoln Castle and also Conisbrough Castle.
  • My garden.
  • Sherwood Forest.

As with anything like this, some people will find it extremely useful, others will find it a lot less useful. I strongly recommend you, at least, to give it a try. See it it helps and how it helps.

How it helps?

Yes.

Field offices work in different ways for different people.

I find that they’re of most use to me when I’m stuck with an idea. Other people I know, find field offices most useful when writing reports. Whilst others, still, use them exclusively when they’ve spent too many days at a desk, and feel they ‘just need’ a change of scenery.

I hope you found this look at field offices useful. Moreover, I hope it inspires you to give it a try the next time you’re looking for a creativity boost.

Discover the NEW way to destroy your sales results

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marketing tips

When it comes to creating a powerful marketing message and attracting new customers, ‘new‘ is overrated. It can also destroy your marketing results.

There are 3 core reasons for this.

  1. The newest product or service is always a riskier bet. At best, it’s a bigger gamble than the trusted incumbent. At worst, the customer feels like a paying guinea pig.
  2. The newest product or service is seldom the best. It lacks the improvements that come from years of feedback. It lacks the robustness that comes from stress-testing.
  3. New doesn’t last for long. This makes it a short-term marketing message. Anything that’s new is only new for now.

A dozen better alternatives

Instead of relying on new, offer your marketplace something more compelling. More motivating. More attractive. For example, instead of offering them a new way to do something, offer them:

  1. A faster way.
  2. A more enjoyable way.
  3. A greener way.
  4. A proven way.
  5. A stylish way.
  6. An original way.
  7. A premium quality way.
  8. An ethical way.
  9. An exciting way.
  10. A safer way.
  11. A more reliable way.
  12. A cost effective way.

In short, be extremely careful about how and where you use the word new, as you put your 2022 marketing strategy together.

Get more client enquiries by being approachable

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marketing approachable

How easy is it, for your prospective clients or customers to get in touch with you?

I’m not talking about how visible your phone number, email address or contact form are. I’m referring to something that is just as important and yet seldom written about: How approachable you seem to be, to a prospective client or customer.

For example.

  • When a prospect is reading your newsletter, how approachable do you sound to them? The best newsletters are written, so that the author comes across as friendly, informed and interested in helping you. The least effective are written by people who come across as impersonal, distant and only interested in what’s in it for them.
  • When a prospect reads your comments on social media, how approachable do you sound to them? Some business owners can appear patronising or sarcastic when people dialogue with them or ask questions. This is a really, really bad move, if you want prospective clients to feel comfortable contacting you.
  • When a prospect reads the about page on your website, how approachable do you sound? Many small business owners write their about page in the 3rd person, rather than speak directly to their reader. Instead of saying; ‘Hi, thanks for stopping by. My name is Jack and…’ they start with ‘Jack has worked in web design since 2012 and… ‘

Why does this matter to you?

Here’s what we know for absolute certain: The less comfortable someone feels about approaching a potential service provider, the less likely they are to contact them.

By building the human touch into your marketing, you start to nurture a positive relationship with your prospects long before you ever speak with them. This helps them feel far more comfortable contacting you, hiring you or buying from you.

Content marketing: It’s all about pressing the publish button

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marketing

Image: Danielle MacInnes. 

Hannah just emailed me with a question. She wants to know what’s the secret to publishing content marketing more frequently. Here’s my reply.

There are lots of reasons for not publishing more of our ideas, to more people, more often.

  • I just can’t think of anything useful to say right now.
  • Maybe no one will bother reading it.
  • I know what I want to say, but I can’t figure out how I want to say it.
  • This needs to be really, really good and I’m not sure I can write something of that quality today.
  • I don’t have enough time.

Those are totally valid reasons. I know because I’ve experienced all of them more than once over the years. However, I don’t think they address the primary reason why so few people, regularly create and publish their own content marketing.

In my experience, as someone who has mentored hundreds of people on content creation and delivery, the main barrier is pressing the publish button. Moreover, their concern regarding the response they might face, after publication. The fallout, criticism and possible confrontation.

It’s certainly true that if we choose to publish nothing, we don’t need to worry about unleashing a wall of potentially hostile responses.

It’s also true that we miss out on all the opportunities that could come our way, if we were to press publish and share our ideas or observations.

But tragically, by failing to press the publish button regularly, we never learn how other people manage to publish regularly.

Here’s the thing. By repeatedly pressing the publish button, we become perfectly, totally comfortable, publishing our original content whenever we have something useful to share.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

  • My first blog post took several days to write, edit, re-edit, format, re-edit… then publish.
  • This post was written on my phone and published on WordPress in around 15-20 minutes.

What was the difference between the two posts?

The experience I gained, from pressing the publish button several thousand times.

Google indexing scraped content from my blog: Part 2

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Image: Mitchell Luo

My recent problem with stolen content seems, for now, to have stopped. No, Google hasn’t stopped the crooks from scraping my blog, or the dozens of other sites these people attack daily. Google hasn’t even responded to my request for help. And the scraper’s sites are still packed with freshly stolen work.

Just not mine. For now, at least.

In case you missed the previous post, the reason these particular scrapers are such a problem, is they’re able to steal my work, AND get it submitted for indexing by Google in seconds.

Their scraped copy of my work was then selected by Google as canonical (the original version). My original work was regarded as a copy and wasn’t indexed. This means it can’t appear in Google Search Results.

Scraping my content by RSS feed

It’s a bit drastic, but I’ve had to remove my RSS feed, which the criminals use to steal my copyright protected posts, publish them on their sites and stuff them with ads (yes, Google Ads).

There’s a big downside though. Without an RSS feed, there’s no easy way for people to subscribe to this blog via feed reading services like Flipboard or Apple News.

I tried several less severe alternatives, but these people use very sophisticated software, which bypassed all the solutions the various experts I spoke with were able to suggest.

Google indexing scraped content is a huge issue, which very few victims (original content producers) are even aware of. They certainly see that they get way less organic search traffic from Google.

But most will have no idea why. They won’t know that none of the content they’ve written (since they were scraped using this ultra effective scraping software) can appear on Google Search.

Content scraping is easy money

Google pretty much owns search. So there’s little or no motivation on their part to finally start taking content scraping seriously. The problem has been here for over a decade.

Yes, Google asks people not to scrape sites. But Google do very, very little to proactively stop ranking the stolen work. The processes involved in reporting stolen / scraped content is, at best, arduous; especially when there’s a lot of content to report. And even if successful, Google will not ban the scraping site. You have to keep on filling in forms… which is why many victims simply give up.

Whilst there’s little motivation for content producers to keep on reporting the criminals, the content thieves have huge motivation to carry on. They can set up a site, pack it with scraped content and Google Ads, and literally make money automatically. They don’t have to do anything once it’s set up, other than watch the advertising revenue flow into their bank accounts. Easy money is an understatement.

The huge Google problem, which they don’t give a rat’s ass about

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Goolge content theft, crooks

Image: Pawel Czerwinski  

This brief post is unlikely to be indexed by Google. Although it’s written for humans (like you), it’s value will be determined by Google’s famously incompetent bot. The bot needs a minimum of three hundred words in order to get a handle on what the topic is.

That’s why lots of blog posts and articles read so poorly. They’re deliberately written over-long. The author is playing the Google game. If they want search traffic, they have to add unnecessary fluff. They also need to keep repeating certain words and phrases, or Google’s bot won’t know what to rank them for.

Google’s stolen content problem

The Google game is like most games. The vast majority play by the rules. Others don’t.

My posts are stolen by criminals within minutes (sometimes seconds) of publication. They use software to publish them and submit them to Google’s index.

In many cases, their illegal copy of my copyright protected work is chosen by Google as the original ‘canonical’ version. My original is then seen as a copy. I could even be penalized by Google, for Google’s own mistake. There’s no workable recourse. The bad guy wins.

Google search is broken. And for the foreseeable future it will stay like that. They’ve trained writers how to write for their extremely limited Google bot. The bad guys know how to profit on autopilot. It costs Google nothing. So, there’s no motivation for them to put their house in order.

When an service is as huge as Google, it’s beyond reproach. Yes, if a major publication complains, Google takes immediate action. The rest of us need to live with it. We need to play the Google game and accept theft of our work. That really sucks, but they’re Google… so!

BTW: This was 299 words.

Here’s an update: Google indexing scraped content from my blog: Part 2