Going Solopreneur

For years, marketers have told you that you need to be everywhere. Have a website, start a blog, build your email list, do a podcast, get a YouTube channel, post on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and don’t forget LinkedIn! That’s a lot to wrap your head around. A more effective strategy is to focus on one marketing channel at a time.

When I started The Brand Sketch I tried to do it all. I was blogging, building an email list, making training videos, recording podcasts, writing articles on LinkedIn, and using every social media platform at my disposal. It was dizzying work, but I wasn’t making any traction. I felt overwhelmed and I was getting burned out. I had to change something.

I was reading Joe Pulizzi’s book Content Inc. where he outlines a pretty solid content marketing strategy: build your audience before you create your product. I’m not going to dive into that topic today, I’ll discuss that in a later episode, but he mentioned something in the book that caught my attention.

He said:

“In the beginning, it’s important to focus on creating amazing and relevant content with mostly one content channel (podcast, video, blog, etc.).”

“Over the long term, you’ll be distributing your content through a number of channels, but right now you need to make a decision about the “core” channel.”

That was a lightbulb moment for me. I realized I was trying to do too many things all at once, and I wasn’t doing any of them very well.

I needed to get laser-focused on one marketing channel. I needed to pick a core channel and master it before moving on to the next one.

Today, I’m going to dig into this idea of focusing on one marketing channel at a time. Why should you use only one marketing channel? How will this help you grow your business? Why is this a better strategy than being everywhere?

Content marketing channels

Content marketing is any type of content you’re creating to promote your business. Content can be in the form of words, audio, images, videos, infographics, presentations, etc.

Channels are the platforms that you choose to distribute your content. Your website, blog, email, podcast, YouTube, Instagram, and other social media platforms are all considered marketing channels.

Why you should focus on one marketing channel at a time

1. You get to focus on your passion and your strength.

When you adopt a one-channel marketing strategy, you don’t have to spread yourself all over the place, and you don’t have to use something if you don’t want to. You get to pick which channel you want to use as your core channel.

Let’s say you love doing video. Maybe you’ve been creating videos on Facebook Live or a YouTube channel for years. You already understand video, how the platforms work, and you’re already good at it.

So then if you decided to start a blog, you’d have a bit of a learning curve. And you might not even like blogging, in fact, you may hate it. My advice is don’t do it!

Stick with what you know and what you like.

If you’re a passionate writer then, by all means, start a blog. If you love taking photos, Instagram might be a great place for you to concentrate your marketing efforts.

Do what you love and you’ll love what you do.

2. You will get really good at your core channel.

Have you ever tried learning a musical instrument? It’s usually a slow and tedious process. It takes a while to get good at playing the piano, for example.

Can you imagine trying to learn two or three or even four instruments at the same time? If you want to play the piano, focus all of your efforts on learning the piano.

If you’ve been in business for a while, you may have given some thought to rebranding. However, you may not have thought much about the benefits of rebranding your business. Read on to learn some of the powerful results you can expect from a rebrand.

A while back I did a podcast episode outlining why you might be ready for a rebrand. Here are a few of the reasons you might be considering rebranding that I mentioned in that episode:

* Your logo is outdated

* Your website is outdated or it’s no longer working for you

* You’re offering something different in the way of products or services

* You want to reach a new target market

* You’re not different enough from your competition

* Your business has evolved

Whatever the reasons to go through the rebranding process, there are some very powerful benefits that you can achieve if you do it right.

And by doing it right I mean you should probably work with a branding expert. It’s difficult to do this kind of work by yourself, you really need that outsider’s perspective of your business. An expert will guide you through the rebranding process and keep you pointed in the right direction.

The process doesn’t have to be painful, lengthy, or even expensive. I’ve helped scores of small business owners create beautiful, effective new brands; it only takes a few weeks and it won’t break your budget. Let’s talk about it.

The benefits of rebranding should more than pay for the cost of working with a branding consultant.

The Powerful Benefits of Rebranding Your Business

Rebranding creates consistency

One of the benefits of rebranding is creating an overall more consistent look and feel for your brand. Whether it’s consistency in your marketing messages or across your social media profiles, when people see a more unified look and hear the same messages, your brand becomes more easily ingrained into their memory banks.

Your brand will be the one they remember the next time they’re in need of a product or service like yours.

Some areas to consider when creating brand consistency:

* Marketing materials. Consistency in your marketing materials includes things like business cards, your website, brochures, product packaging, direct mailings.

* Marketing messages. A consistent message is a powerful thing! Be sure your messaging is consistent across all of your platforms.

* Social media. Rebranding is a great time to build more consistency in your social media profiles, posts, and ad campaigns.

* Brand personality. Make sure your rebranding project includes creating a consistent look, feel, and tone of voice for your brand.

Rebranding breathes new life into your business

Over time, your brand can start to feel outdated and a little boring. You might have the same logo, website, and business cards since you first started your business. You may be using the same stock images, the same marketing messages, and it’s all starting to feel a little ‘blah’.

Rebranding can breathe new life into your business by giving you a whole new look and feel.

Something as simple as updating your logo and website can get you excited about your business again. When you’re excited about your business, it shows.

Your customers will see it and they’ll feel it. They’ll be more likely to engage with your brand. They’ll want to learn more, they’ll feel more connected to you and your brand.

Rebranding doesn’t mean you need to change your logo every year. I actually wouldn’t recommend this. But you could revisit your foundational brand-building work and make the changes needed to get consistency.

I talk a lot about the importance of building and nurturing relationships with your customers, and how this is key to success as an entrepreneur. But what does that look like? How can you actively work on building better relationships with your customers? A great place to start is by getting inside your customer’s heads. What are those indispensable things your customers want you to know about them?

Don’t you wish you could just get inside your customer’s heads and see exactly what’s going on in there? You’d be able to feel what they’re feeling. You’d have a deep understanding of those problems that keep them up at night. You’d know just what to say and when to say it.

Since you can’t literally get inside their heads, I’m going to help you get into their heads figuratively.

There are a few common things that all customers want. These “wants” are pretty standard across business types and target markets. There may be some things that I haven’t listed here that apply specifically to you and your business, but I feel like these are the most universal customer “wants” across the board.

8 Indispensable Things Your Customers Want You to Know

1. Your customers want to feel important

Recently I walked into my favorite neighborhood coffee shop for an afternoon Americano. There was only one other customer in the place, and the barista was busy making her a latte. So I stood at the counter, directly in front of where the barista was working, and waited.

I tried to make eye contact, but she never looked up at me. I knew she was busy but I just wanted her to acknowledge my presence.

It wasn’t happening.

Your customers want to feel important. They want to feel like they matter to you. Sometimes, they may even want to feel like they’re the most important person in the world, if only for a moment.

I wasn’t expecting her to stop everything and wait on me instead, I just wanted, at that moment, to feel like I mattered.

She could have easily said, “Hey, how you doin’? I’ll be right with you”, and that would have been perfect. I would have felt like I was important.

Your customers want to feel important. So do something, even something really small and basic, and make them feel important.

2. Your customers want to be treated like human beings

When you call Zappos customer service, a real person answers the phone in less than one minute. Seriously. There’s no phone tree menu, no recording, no buttons to push. A real human being simply answers the phone.

Zappos also encourages their service representatives to stay on the phone with the customer as long as it takes to resolve their issue. There are no rules or time limits. Zappos’ current record for the longest customer service call is 10 hours, 51 minutes. That’s just crazy, right?

What Zappos gets better than any other large company out there today is that their customers just want to be treated like human beings. They’ve taken something as fundamental as a customer phone call with a rep and turned it into a truly remarkable and unexpected experience.

Since when did treating people like human beings become the unexpected experience?

3. Your customers want you to listen

I was in the restaurant business for around 15 years. I did just about every job you can in a restaurant, from dishwasher to general manager. During the time working as a general manager here in Cincinnati, I took my family out to have dinner at a different restaurant.

It was not a pleasant experience. They said it would be a 30-minute wait, it took over an hour. They got our order wrong. When I asked a server to help us she said, “sorry,

If you’re like most entrepreneurs, the thought of writing long blog posts every week keeps you lying awake at night. Here’s some good news – you can still have an impactful social media strategy by creating small posts called microcontent.

What is microcontent?

Microcontent is any small chunk of information, usually communicating one concept or idea, that can stand on its own. Think of an entire blog post condensed down into one or two paragraphs.

The idea behind using microcontent to boost your social media impact is that you can tell your brand’s story is bite-sized pieces. The average consumer’s attention span is only eight seconds, so using microcontent is a great way to convey your ideas quickly.

Microcontent platforms

Microcontent can be used in a variety of ways including social media posts, personal messages, emails, images, and live videos. You can create microcontent on any social media platform but some platforms are tailor-made for this type of content.

Platforms that are well-suited for microcontent:

Twitter: Twitter is probably the original and most widely-used microcontent platform. Your posts are limited to 280 characters or around 45 words. So you have to get right to the point.

Instagram: Instagram has become an awesome medium for microcontent. You can post a picture, include a short description, and convey an idea simply and quickly.

Snapchat: Snapchat is another platform created solely for microcontent. Snap a photo, record a short video, share it, and then in 24 hours, it’s gone.

Examples of microcontent

Here are a few ways you can use microcontent to boost your social media impact:

Micro posts

These are one of the most common types of microcontent. Micro posts are very short blog posts, maybe just a paragraph or two, and usually posted as the description of an image on Instagram. You can do a whole series of these and create a lot of great content in easily-digestible chunks.

View this post on Instagram

A funny post but very true!???????? We hear so many excuses daily why people “can’t” do yoga. Not flexible enough. Can’t sit still. The list goes on and on, but these are the exact reasons that you do yoga! Check out our page for tons of beginner friendly tutorials so we can help you ???????? Share with someone that could use a laugh or a friendly reminder ????????????Thanks for sharing @maryochsner #inflexibleyogis ・・・ ✨YOGA MYTH vs YOGA FACT✨ . ????????‍♀️It’s my goal to break down the barriers for people to start yoga. . This practice, that (for me) started as a “cool” workout ???? has helped me get in shape, but the biggest gain was the transformation it had over my mindset. . If you want to give yoga a try, but don’t know where to start, please let me know! I’d love to help you get started ✨????????‍♀️

A post shared by Yoga For The Non Flexible (@inflexibleyogis) on Aug 23, 2018 at 8:28am PDT

Whether you’re writing an article, an email, or a social media post, a great headline is the most important part of that piece of content. You have to start with a great headline. When you get the headline right, then the rest of the piece is stronger.

If you want to be marketing your business effectively, you need to be creating great content. Content marketing is the key to getting people to know, like, and trust you. So you should be creating useful, helpful, valuable information for your audience.

But the truth is, it won’t matter how amazing your blog post or video is if no one clicks on the headline to read or watch it.

Why a great headline matters

Great content is important, there’s no doubt about that. But I’d argue that a great headline is the most important part of any type of content you create.

On average, 80% of people will read your headline while only 20% will read, watch, or listen to the rest.

Let’s say you write an awesome blog post or record an epic podcast episode and then share that on social media. 8 out of 10 people who see your post will read the headline. That’s great! But only 2 out of 10 will actually read that post or listen to that episode. That’s a problem!

If your headline isn’t that interesting or compelling they’ll just keep on scrolling.

A great headline is a promise

Think about the articles or emails you’ve read lately. What is it about those headlines that made you stop scrolling and read the article or open the email? And I’m not talking about clickbait headlines like “When You Read These 19 Shocking Food Facts You’ll Never Want to Eat Again!”

Those headlines probably grabbed your attention because they made a promise to you. You clicked the headline because you wanted them to make good on that promise.

A great headline should make a compelling promise to your audience. Your content simply needs to deliver on that promise.

Always write your headline first

If your content is delivering on the promise of the headline, then it makes sense to always write your headline first.

Before you write your blog post outline or write your video script or podcast notes, spend the time to write a great headline.

Make a strong and compelling promise first, then write the rest of the piece.

Every time I sit down to write a blog post or record a podcast, I get the headline right first. Sure I already have an idea of what I’m going to talk about. I might even jot down some notes or talking points. But I always work to get a great headline before I actually write the article.

A great headline makes your content better

When you start with a great headline that acts as a promise to your readers, writing your content becomes easier because you simply have to deliver on that one promise.

Starting with a great headline also makes your content stronger because you get laser-focused on one thing – fulfilling the promise of the headline. Your writing is simpler, clearer, and more compelling.

What makes a great headline?

A great headline is one that gets people intrigued enough to learn more. Clickbait headlines do this really well so does that make them great headlines? Some would say yes, but I don’t agree.

I believe the blueprint for a great headline is emotion, search engine friendliness, and authenticity.

A great headline is emotional

Emotional headlines draw people in. They speak directly to your audience’s feelings like competence, respect, or sense of belonging. Emotional headlines help show your audience there’s a real human being behind those words. It’s for these reasons that emotional headlines tend to get shared more often.

Here are some examples of emotional headlines and the emotions they invoke:

Joining a mastermind group was a game-changer for me; my business has literally been transformed. I’m so excited about sharing this gift of transformation that I’m starting my own mastermind groups designed just for entrepreneurs like you!

I’m a solo entrepreneur, and a little over a year ago I was feeling very alone in running my business. I would see other companies who had partners or teams working together, and I was feeling a little jealous. I would have loved to have a group of people to help me brainstorm ideas, or tell me if I’m doing things the right way, or help keep me accountable for reaching my goals. But I was all alone; it was just me.

Then I joined a mastermind group, and everything changed.

What is a mastermind group?

A mastermind group is a group of like-minded entrepreneurs who come together for brainstorming, education, support, and accountability. A mastermind group helps you achieve success in your business. Members challenge each other to set powerful goals and then hold each other accountable for reaching those goals.

A mastermind group can meet in person or online. The group I’m in has members in Ohio, Connecticut, Washington, and Oregon and we meet via Zoom every other week. Technology really helps with our group.

We’re not tied to a physical location, we don’t have to leave the house and drive somewhere, so our time is maximized. We’re all busy entrepreneurs so being able to meet virtually is super helpful.

How a mastermind group works

Most mastermind groups work roughly the same way – each person gets a chance to share their current status and follow-up on commitments made during the last meeting.

One person is typically in the “hot seat” each meeting where they get extra time to ask questions, talk about their challenges, and then get advice and direction from the other group members.

And there’s usually one person who acts as the facilitator, keeping the meeting agenda on track and helping to keep the conversation on topic.

How my mastermind group transformed my business

Since joining my mastermind group my business has blossomed. Here are a few ways my mastermind group has helped me transform my business:

I know where my business is going.

A year ago I only had a vague idea of what The Brand Sketch was all about, I felt a little lost. But with the help of the group, I now have a crystal clear vision of what my brand is and where I’m headed.

Everything I do in my business supports that vision. I have a plan, a destination, and now I know I’m always heading in the right direction.

I have an awesome team supporting me.

One of the biggest issues for me in my business was that I always felt alone. It was always just me making every decision on my own. Some decisions were good, some not so much, but it was difficult and stressful not having anyone to bounce ideas off of.

In my mastermind group, I can brainstorm ideas, ask for advice, and get help. Now I feel supported like I have a team working with me.

I’m making real progress in my business.

Setting smart goals and then actually reaching them can be very difficult for solo entrepreneurs. You get sidetracked when you get busy, and then you feel like you’re not making any progress. Since you don’t report to anyone, it can get easy to dismiss your goals.

In a mastermind group, you challenge each other to set powerful goals, goals that are outside your comfort zone. Then each time you meet, you’re held accountable. Did you reach your goals? Why not? What can we do to help?

I’m confident and unafraid.

This is probably the most significant way my mastermind group has transformed me and my business. I experience a lot of fear as an entrepreneur. Fear of being overwhelmed, fear of doing it wrong,

Marketing is all about getting the right people to know, like, and trust you. Building brand awareness, then, is the first step in marketing your small business effectively. You must build brand awareness before you can install desire and trust in your brand.

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness is how well your business is recognized and associated with a particular product or service. For example, if you’re a wellness consultant, you want people to know who you are and how you’re different from all the other wellness consultants out there.

When people in your target market think about a wellness consultant, you want them to think about you. You want your brand to come to mind first. You want your name associated with all things wellness.

Building brand awareness is more about creating association than it is about recognition.

6 proven ways to build brand awareness

So how do you build brand awareness? If you have a huge marketing budget, you can plaster your brand name on every billboard in town. But that strategy doesn’t always equate to brand awareness. And what if you’re trying to reach people in other cities? You’ll need a much bigger budget.

If you’re like most entrepreneurs (with limited budgets), you’ll need to be a little more creative when it comes to building brand awareness.

Here are six proven ways you can build brand awareness starting right now.

1. Establish your foundation

In order to build brand awareness, you need to start with a solid foundation. Why did you start your business? What’s the purpose behind your brand? People want to know your “why” so they can feel connected to you and your brand.

Here are two ways to establish a solid foundation:

Create a purpose statement. This is a simple explanation of why you do what you do. People want to know why you exist, so just tell your story.

Identify your big idea. What’s the one thing you do that no one else does? This is one of the easiest ways to differentiate you from everyone else.

2. Keep your messages consistent

Now that you’ve laid out your foundation you need to be consistent with all your messages. Share the same big ideas everywhere. You don’t have to use the same words, but you do have to communicate the same ideas.

One of the easiest ways to be sure you’re communicating a consistent message is to create a key messaging document. Your key messaging document is a list of your brand’s big ideas and a few supporting statements for each of those ideas.

For example, as a wellness consultant, one of your big ideas is that you believe we should all be eating organic. Being an advocate for organic is one of the things that sets your brand apart, it’s one of your core values and beliefs.

This becomes one of your key messages.

Next, you can create a few statements that help to clarify and support that key message:

* Eating organic has been proven to be better for your body and better for the planet.

* Eating organic helps support local farmers and the local community.

* Eating organic means no chemicals or pesticides, so your food tastes better.

* Choosing organic means you don’t have to worry about what’s in your food; you’ll know what you’re eating.

Now, whenever you, as a wellness consultant, need to share a message about organic, you can refer back to your key messages document. It’s a great way to stay consistent and build brand awareness.

3.

As a small business owner you may understand the importance of injecting personality into your brand, but actually doing it, well that’s a whole other story. Today, I want to share three examples of brands who are crushing it with personality. I’m hoping you get inspired and see how easy it is to add a little personality to your brand.

There’s no magic involved

Brands with well-defined personalities tend to stand out from the rest. They seem to have something magical about them, some otherworldly status that we mere mortals could never achieve. But that’s almost never the case.

The brands who are crushing it with personality are simply the ones who have done the intentional work of defining and communicating who they are.

Magic is rarely involved.

So what is it about these brands that’s so attractive? Why we love brands with personality so much?

Why do we love brands with personality?

It’s good to get intentional about defining your brand’s personality, but you also have to communicate it in a way that works. When you do these two things well, your customers take notice.

Here are some reasons why we love it when a brand is crushing it with personality:

You’re more authentic. When you communicate a well-defined brand personality, you feel more human and more real.

You’re more relatable. A brand with personality feels more approachable and more accessible. Your customers will feel like they’re interacting with a friend.

You’re easier to understand. A consistent personality means your  messages are easier to understand. Your clients will “get” you and where you’re coming from.

You stand out. Businesses who do the work of defining their personality will stand apart from their competition. Customers will be naturally attracted to you and your fun, quirky, elegant, or charming personality.

Find your personality first

Before you can communicate your personality, you first have to define one. I’ve covered this topic in a few other posts: Choosing Your Brand Archetype, Finding Your Voice, Choosing The Right Images.

Fingure out your brand’s personality first, then come back here learn how three brands are absolutely crushing it with personality.

3 simple ways brands are crushing it with personality

Thug Kitchen

If you’re not familiar with Thug Kitchen, it started as a vegan recipe website and has grown into a cultural icon. They use their brand voice in a very distinct and very powerful way. In fact their brand voice may be the most identifiable and certainly the most memorable part of their personality.

Here’s how visitors are greeted on their website:

“The only website dedicated to verbally abusing you into a healthier diet. That’s where the Internet bus driver just dropped your ass off. Welcome to Thug Kitchen, motherfu*ker.”

Their tagline: “Eat like you give a fu*k.”

And if you want further proof of their ability to grab their reader’s attention, here’s a snippet from a typical recipe:

“There are two kinds of people in this world: people who like enchiladas and people who have no fu*king taste. Which are you?”

How Thug Kitchen is crushing it with personality

Here’s why I think Thug Kitchen is crushing it with personality: They own their voice.

They’ve adopted a brand voice that is completely different from anything else out there. It’s truly one-of-a-kind. It’s also extreme, irreverent, and for adults only.

As a small business owner, you spend a lot of time creating products or services you want people to love. So you’re always working to make your thing better. But sometimes, it’s not your thing that needs work, it’s your packaging. In today’s competitive market, the wrapper matters more than you think.

A brand that gets it

I ordered a Simple Modern insulated water bottle from Amazon recently. It got good reviews and was the right price. Two days later, it was on my front porch.

Pretty average experience so far.

The reason I’m telling this story is because of what happened when I opened the box containing the water bottle. I was very pleasantly surprised.

The outside of the box was beautifully printed, and the box itself was very sturdy, much sturdier than it needed to be. The box felt expensive. Upon opening the box, I noticed how perfectly the water bottle fit inside. And then as I was removing the water bottle, it reminded me of the care and detail that Apple puts into its product packaging.

I didn’t know what to expect from Simple Modern, but I was pretty blown away by the attention to detail they put into their packaging.

I know it’s just a water bottle, but that experience stuck with me and lifted their brand up in my mind. Simple Modern gets it, the wrapper matters.

And one that doesn’t

A few years ago, I ordered some business cards for a client. At the time, I was having trouble finding a printer that could do square business cards (they’re pretty common today) at a reasonable price.

Their online ordering process was a bit clunky. I wasn’t sure I had successfully placed the order, so I had to email customer service a few times. They assured me that the order had been placed properly and that the cards would be delivered soon.

About a week later, a rather large box arrived at my client’s house. It was like 14″ x 16″ or something close to that. Pretty large for business cards, we thought.

When she opened the box, she found her 500 printed business cards, loose in the box. No smaller boxes containing her cards, not even a rubber band holding them together. They were just all loosey-goosey floating around in a strangely large box.

The cards looked great, but the packaging was a hot mess.

I have never done business with them again. This print company doesn’t get it. They don’t think that the wrapper matters.

Why the wrapper matters

The hard truth is that these are competitive times we’re living in. There are a lot of businesses doing what you’re doing, offering the same kinds of products or services, and some even do it better than you (gasp!). Just having a great product won’t cut it. It also has to be presented in a way that feels good to the customer.

The product you’re selling might be unique and functional, but if the package is shoddy, no one’s ever going to pick it up off the shelf.

The service you provide might be top-notch, but if it’s presented by a bitter chainsmoking complainer, you will never see a repeat customer or a referral.

I know we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but we do it all the time. We’ve been trained to think that if it looks crappy on the outside, it’s probably crap on the inside too.

The bottom line is this: If the wrapper doesn’t matter to you, you won’t matter to your customer.

Wrappers to consider

The two stories I shared are about physical product packaging and shipped goods, but there are all kinds of wrappers that you use in your business, and they all matter.

Here are a few other types of wrappers you might want to start thinking about:

Website. The content of your website is more important than its design,

One of the keys to marketing your small business is to create valuable content on a regular basis. This strategy is called content marketing. But coming up with “valuable content” is one of the struggles every independent entrepreneur faces. Sometimes you don’t know what to create; you get stuck. Today I’ll share 10 ideas that might help you get unstuck with your marketing content.

We all get stuck sometimes

I believe that every business can reap the benefits of content marketing. Whether you’re a solopreneur or a large corporation, a neighborhood plumber, or a huge law firm, content marketing can help you grow your audience and increase sales.

The problem though is coming up with new things to talk about on a regular basis.

You may have written a bunch of blog posts when you first started your business, but now you feel like you’ve run out of ideas.

Maybe you’ve created some inspirational videos or effective social campaigns in the past, but these days you feel uninspired and lacking in imagination.

If this sounds like you, I have some good news–you’re totally normal! Sometimes we all get stuck coming up with new ideas.

You just need a few strategies to help you get unstuck with your marketing so you can keep creating that valuable content your audience wants and needs.

10 ideas to help you get unstuck with your marketing content

Here are 10 simple prompt ideas you can work through right now to help you get unstuck with your marketing.

You can use these ideas to come up with topics for blog posts, videos, social media posts, podcasts, ad campaigns, emails, or any content marketing channel that you’re using.

1. Keep an idea journal handy. One of the best tips I can offer is to keep a running list of all your ideas. Use Google Docs or Evernote so you can easily add to your list no matter where you are. Or, if you’re old-school, you can use a paper journal. Just make sure it’s always with you since you never know when inspiration will strike!

2. What is one question you get asked all the time? This can simply be a long-form answer to a question that a lot of your customers ask. Keep a list of all the questions you get asked and when you feel stuck, pick one to talk about.

3. Share something you’ve learned recently. I’m always learning new things or new ways of doing things. Whenever I learn something cool (and relevant) I try to share it with my audience.

4. What is your ideal customer worried about? If you’ve created a detailed ideal client profile, you should have a good understanding of what she’s worried about or what she’s afraid of. Create content that alleviates her fears.

5. What are you reading, watching, or listening to that might inspire your audience? Write a book review, talk about how a movie changed your life, or share your favorite podcasts.

6. What is it like behind-the-scenes? Pull back the curtain and show your audience what it’s like to do what you do.

7. Share your unique perspective or opinion. You may look at your topic differently or have a differing opinion. Take a stand and share your thoughts.

8. Share your success stories. Everyone loves a good success story. Share a satisfied client’s story or a recent win. Interview a customer and let them share their experience in their own words.

9. Share a failure. You could also share a recent failure and the lesson you learned from it. A story of how you overcame a difficulty can be very powerful.

10. Get away. Seriously. Take a walk, go for a run, grab an espresso, do some yoga. Getting away from the work will help you get unstuck with your marketing ideas.

Once you try a few of these ideas,