We encounter so much information daily—it’s easy to get lost or confused. One of the best ways to combat this is to have a good note-taking approach. But how do you take effective notes and keep them organized enough to be useful?

• Our brains are quite fallible.

• The two big ones are meetings and books, for different reasons:
  • Meetings, to remember what we said and serve our clients appropriately.

• For many people, just writing notes down is a huge first step.

• I’m digital all the way, mostly for the ability to share with others and do some great cross-referencing on my own.

1. Handwriting slows you down, in a good way. Handwriting forces you to write about the topic rather than copying verbatim, which makes you think more. Be careful not to just type word for word.

1. I can be more present. Depending on the environment, a laptop may not even be appropriate, but manual notes are always find.

• It goes back to the two core reasons:
  • For clients and meetings, you want to know what they said and remember what you promised.

The best marketers are constant learners. We must keep up with plenty of trends to remain relevant. To help with that, let’s take a look at the six most popular ways to stay on top of digital marketing professional development.

• It’s always changing.

• Books are undervalued.

• Podcasts are easy to listen passively.

• Conferences are more active and offer an experience

• They’re making a comeback

• They help to shortcut experience.

• Make learning a regular habit

Did you create a strategy before building your business website? Perhaps you skipped this step to save time or because you weren’t sure why it was needed. However, creating a website without a strategy can leave it aimless and ineffective. Let’s talk about why you need a website strategy and what it should look like.

• So you build the website for the right reasons.

• Absolutely, but that’s ok. 

• It’s a deeper process, but it comes down to understanding who you’re trying to serve.

• One, clearly, is the content. Speak to them in the right way—don’t use internal jargon (unless it helps with your audience).

• We get a lot of clients that come to us with sites that you can tell were solid when they started, but they didn’t have a clear direction. 

What are your business goals in the new year? You don’t have to wait until January to set new goals—but you should take the time to make sure these goals are effective. Join us as we examine the best way to set goals for your marketing this year.

• It can be hard to follow multiple visits all the way down to your bottom line.

• Layers. Bottom-line revenue is often the main one, and work up from there. 

• SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound

• Eg. Increase revenue for next year.

• Set about 2-3 goals each quarter to stay focused.

• People take email for granted. It’s kind of boring and reliable.

• You own your list. Not the platform it’s on.

• Everything should point back to your website.

• Email open rates are less reliable with Apple’s auto-open rates.

What is the magic email?

• It’s a way to get people’s attention in their inbox, but it’s kind of a last resort.

When do you use it?

• When all else has failed. This is your Hail Mary.

When should you NOT use it?

• Use it sparingly because the message is direct and snarky.

Why do you think it works?

• Puts a bit of time pressure on. And some guilt, too.

• Why waste time communicating with someone else?

• Thinking everyone is their audience; the more focused, the better

• Think about the people you serve? Who are your best customers?

• Creating audience personas is a helpful shortcut to processing this mass of information

Quick—describe Twitter in less than 140 characters. It’s not easy to be succinct, but that brevity is one of the major advantages of Tweeting. Twitter might be great for influencers or debating politics, but does it have a place in business marketing? #GoodQuestion

• It’s more short form, micro posts with limited characters

• It’s still a large and active social platform

• Many of their users are bots and fake accounts

• Use it mostly for quick updates and news content

• They already went from 140 → 280, next is “articles”?

If you’ve ever built a website before, you’ve probably heard about sitemaps and wireframes. But perhaps you’re not familiar with either, or why they’re important for custom website development. Let’s unpack the role sitemaps and wireframes play in creating websites and why to consider using both.

A sitemap is a flowchart depicting the pages that need to be created for your site. Essentially like mapping out the chapters of your book before you start outlining the content.

Like a book or school research paper, you need to create a content outline for each page. What topics need to be highlighted on each page? What is the main action a user should take on each page? A content outline gives you a good framework to start writing.

Great question—many UX designers debate this very thing. Having a first draft of content is always ideal when starting your wireframes, but referencing the content outline is adequate.

Think of a wireframe as a page blueprint before you add design elements. The black and white drawing (sometimes a hand sketch) of the page layout before you start thinking about the visual brand elements. More complex websites (and apps) require more complex wireframes.

You remove the guessing game from your website strategy. You have a strong outline on to base the content on. This forces you to think about the purpose behind each page and slows you down enough to consider all of the details.

Storytelling is a term plenty of business leaders use—but are they actually prepared to tell stories? Finding the right stories in your company is one of the biggest challenges. In this episode, we’ll discuss what business storytelling looks like and where you can begin.

• Stories are far more captivating than data or information

• Context: setting and platform

• You’ve got to start listening to tell the stories of your audience

• Humans of New York blew up when they started adding stories to their photos

• Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller