Posts Tagged ‘dianejdavis’

A friend of mine, known for his thought provoking, often amusing observations wrote this recently on twitter:  

“Green grass may be artificial.  Green grass may only appear to be greener.  Green grass may well be truly greener but inconsequential.”   

As usual, he struck a chord in me. 

We’ve all heard from childhood that “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence”… i.e. not YOUR side. 

Personally, I believe that even if the color is  artificial, or the real thing inconsequential, you can still greatly appreciate what you perceive, learn from it, and aspire to make your own grass green. 

(By the way, I love artificial grass.  Have you seen the new stuff?  It’s beautiful, looks surprisingly real, durable even for dogs, and feels great on bare feet.  It’s also pricey.  But we’ve used it in shoots, and I want some!  Sorry, had to toss that in.)

The truth is that all green grass, on your side or not, has some faded patches, some yellow and maybe some brown.  That’s actually desirable…some growth just needs to take place.  That may mean…

 -  a hefty dose of fertilizer, 

 -  pulling everything up and planting new seed,  

 -  finding totally new soil.   

In businesses, especially on the internet, the idea of “the grass is greener” is rampant.   Most of us continually chase after the next new “shiny thing” as my friend Lisa Angelettie put it.   Never really putting down roots on our marketing methods, we don’t wait long enough to see any results.  And then we skip off to the next method, and/or business, spend a bunch of cash, and hope that this will be the “magic” method. 

Part of the problem is, ( a really big part) is that we are such a microwave society:  60 seconds or less.  We expect magic.  This is the “grass is greener” syndrome; a back lash of living in a time when we can make everything happen now.  Or so we think.

It usually takes YEARS to build a business.   Restaurants take 5  years to make a profit, and might go out in 3.   Traditional retail brick and mortar businesses can take anywhere from 3 to 10 years to produce a profit, depending on the type of business.

Internet businesses can and do take off much quicker, but contrary to frequent hype, there is no magic button that you can push on your computer that will ensue a constant stream of dollars into your bank account.  It takes time and work, and I happen to see that as a good thing.

Why?  Because nothing in life is free.    It all comes with a price… either in time, energy or money.  A high price simply means that the thing worth pursuing is of great value. 

The good news is, everything you do for your marketing,

 - articles,

 - press releases,

 - videos,

 - blogs, and tweets, matters. 

Once you publish an article, it’s out there. The work is done.  You will continue to get leads from that one piece, if it has value for others, for months, even years.  You’ve planted some new seed.  Add to it with more, and you’ve fertilized, watered.

Another way to think of it is like buying a little piece of real estate in cyperspace.  You own it, and you can build on it.   

In your marketing, know there will be brown spots, just like in real grass.  (Glitches and setbacks)  That doesn’t mean you should quit or abandon it.  Unless the whole lawn is brown, keep going, watering and weeding; fertilizing.   If the whole lawn is brown from neglect or bad seed, re-evaluate, take action and change your direction.

We all want lovely, healthy green grass.  And the truth is, the color green is a reality, even if it’s not in our possession yet.

With a little work and focus, possibly change in direction, it doesn’t have to be out of our reach. 

I have a cat that bites me every time my hand gets near her head, sometimes daily. Her name is Gracie, and I put up with this because she is special, in that she’s been abused.

Gracie found us as an adult, hungry and cold. I saw her sleeping in a corner of the barn on the concrete floor. She seemed to be tame and very sweet, thin; obviously abandoned. The biting thing took me totally by surprise, and drew blood. But when you look closely, you can see she’s blind in one eye, and both ears look to be shaped by pinking shears. Small wonder. This had to have been done to her as a docile kitten, and it kills me.

So, I take my chances. Every day, Gracie rubs my knee as I kneel down to feed her. Staying glued to my leg, she looks up at me sweetly with her one eye, and purrs as I pet her back and stomach. But if I forget and get too close to her head, she gets me every time. And then she draws back and looks to say “Are you going to make me leave now?”

Like Gracie, we all such creatures of habit. While Gracie will probably never change, sometimes I think it’s just as hard for us humans. Ideas are introduced or episodes occur in childhood that we never forget. They replay over and over, even though we may not realize it. This affects how we think and who we chose to be around as adults.

So the question of the day is, what are you replaying in your head that is holding you back from your goals?

Was it your idea, or someone else’s? And, is it really the truth?

It’s interesting to me that one would not think of letting someone else come into their house with a big green garbage bag and dump it all over the living room floor.

Yet we let other’s “dump” into our brains, almost on a daily basis. I’m not necessarily talking about the wealth of people on the internet, although it certainly applies. This is a little more targeted, although it does include our internet friends.

The five people we interact with every single day, that are in our “circle” have the greatest influence on our success or lack of it. People we work with, we live with, we listen to, we visit.

“Well, you know that’ll never work…”
“Total waste of time.”
“No one’s doing that…”
“It’s always been done this way.”
“You can’t…”
“It’s not…”

This can be family members, a spouse, boss, co-workers, friends, anyone else we consistently let into our daily world.

One of the things I love about the internet is chancing to meet bright, interesting people.

Comments and conversation that challenge you to think and explore, make you laugh or smile…that’s the sort we need to be around, follow, interact with and learn from.

On the other hand, people who churn out a constant negative stream on the internet or in real life need to be pulled back from. Even well meaning family.

Now we all know this, but when you’re actually in the situation, it’s hard to do.

If you are what you think about…wouldn’t it be best to surround yourself with those that challenge you in a positive way, and cause you to become the best version of yourself?

So the next question is, is the “habit” you currently have worthy of you and your goals? Has it held you up or pushed you forward? Do you hit the replay button simply because it’s familiar and easy?

A new habit takes at least 60 days to become engrained in us. If we are going to make excellence a habit, we have to guard closely where we go and who we listen to and who we allow in our living room.

So change the tape, and change the people if you have to …

“Of course it will work.”
“Excellent use of my time…”
“I’ll blaze a trail …”
“Let’s try something new…”
“I’m ready…”
“It absolutely is…”

Your goals are worth it, and so are you!

In part one, we talked about “the secret” to writing.  Now that you know that writing is a skill that can be learned, let’s start.

Let me make one disclaimer first, because I know several “gifted” writers.  And they can lead you to places you might not go otherwise, almost without your realizing it.  (When did you last read something that you had trouble putting down?) These talented people go on and become professional authors, and we are so grateful that they do.

What I’m talking about here is not to minimize that talent, when I say writing is a “skill.”

For our purposes, however, which is to market, there is a difference.

You don’t have to be a professional author and be working on “your book”  to become a professional marketer who writes articles for marketing….that’s the difference.  Professional authors write based on experiences, or research of their choice.  Professional marketers write based on keywords that they want to rank for; their audience’s choice.

As a professional marketer, you will always be “writing” something.  An ad for pay-per-click, (short) ads for ezines (long) articles, posts, tweets, auto-responders, headlines, and, once you get going, sales letters which can be turned into a landing page.  And then, of course, there are your bio lines.

With some practice, you will be amazed at how quickly all your marketing tasks go, and you will be better able to outsource when you need to. You will know what you’re looking for.

Now you still may be thinking that you don’t know what to say, even if you had a keyword, or topic.  And that’s ok. 

Here’s a tip I learned:  if you can talk to others, you can write articles and share your expertise with others.  It can be like having a conversation. 

So in thinking about what your audience is asking, and what you could say back to them, break it down in steps.  Like this:

1) What does you audience want to know?   What did you want to know when you first learned about your subject?

2)  Take that question, shorten it, and do a keyword search.  Look at your numbers.  Then branch off.  (more about the how-tos of this later.)  The google wonder wheel is great for this, and it’s free.

3) Create your first draft with questions and answers based on the keyword.

4) Break that up into Intro, Body and Close. 

A friend of mine put it this way:   “Tell them what you’re going to tell them. (opening)  Then tell them.  (body)  Then, tell them what you told them.  (close)

A little simplistic, but easy to remember. 

5) Create your title, in the form of a question.  You don’t have to always do this, but a question will generate answers in your mind. It actually helps you keep going…you might find yourself adding more to your body.

Later, you’ll start creating your title sooner…but for starting out, it sometimes causes a shut down.  The object is to keep moving.  Keep writing.  It will come to you.

Writing is not as hard as most people think…it’s simply a process of looking at it differently,  then breaking it down in steps.

Remember, you don’t have to be a professional to do this; you are already an expert in something.  If you’re not an expert at what you’d like to be, read up on it.  Ask your questions, then write about what you’ve learned.  

 In marketing, writing is a skill that can be learned, and like all skills, it gets better with practice.