The sober reality is that overhead tasks involved in running your business will soak up at least 40% of your time. Since that’s such a significant portion—let’s make sure that we use that time efficiently. 

One of the most common problems I’ve encountered, as I’ve consulted creative business owners, flows out from a basic mis-allocation of their time—based on wrong assumptions about the amount of overhead time involved needed to run a business. This week, I’ll share some specific breakdowns for your overhead time—so you can reevaluate your overall business plan, and plug holes that may be slowly sinking your ship.

If I had to list the two most fundamental parts of a marketing program for creative entrepreneurs they would be PinPoint Positioning and Prospecting on LinkedIn. In today’s episode I’ll share even more practical advice for leveraging LinkedIn and organizing your marketing program.

LinkedIn is far and away the most effective platform for engaging in marketing a creative practice. Because of the professional context of LinkedIn, users are more open to making professional connections. But there’s even more power to the LinkedIn platform, and in this episode I’ll reveal some of my best, hard earned tips for using it effectively.

All the many and varied strategies you might employ to market your creative service, can be categorized under one of two main heads. Outbound marketing and Inbound Marketing. These two approaches are often pitted against each other as combatants in a winner take all competition. But in reality you don’t have to choose just one approach, in fact, by turning these two into allies, rather than enemies, you can benefit from the advantages of both.

There is no question that online advertising has changed the marketing world. And there’s also no question that it works. Online advertising 100% measurable. When you get it right you can start counting the clicks and conversions—and when you misfire, that failure has nowhere to hide. While online advertising absolutely can work for certain kinds of products and services, it’s not the best fit for marketing a creative practice—in your case it’s almost always a complete waste of money.

Of all the channels where you can and should engage in marketing your creative service, social media is the most debated. Your own professional experience and opinion of social media’s effectiveness likely corresponds with how much you engage with it in your personal life. But using social media professionally is different from how you might use it personally. And your expectations for how social media fits into your marketing plan may need to be adjusted.

Marketing in today’s complex world requires the use of multiple channels and platforms. And with channels and platforms multiplying as fast as they do, it’s hard to keep up, or to even evaluate which ones are worth investing in. But there is one platform that’s tried and true, and though it’s not the latest and greatest it’s still a necessary and fundamental part of your any marketing system—that platform is good ole fashioned email.  

One of the benefits to writing is the occurrence of “long tail” search traffic. These occurrences have extremely high value, but they often fly under the radar, and therefore remain sadly underappreciated. As a result, we may neglect the opportunity to build up our content libraries, which deliver these serendipitous but powerful engagements.

There are number of benefits that come from writing for your business—including how written content helps potential clients discover your work through search. In order to increase these valuable discoveries you have to give some thought to how search engines work—so that you can optimize your content and be found by prospective new clients.