Did you know there’s a speed limit for pedestrians in Illinois?
Apparently it’s true.
I was kindly notified several years ago when a police squad car stopped me while I was walking in suburban Chicago one morning.
“Where ya headed?” the cop asked.
Stopping mid-stride, I answered, “Going to work.”
“Oh? And just where do you work?“ Maybe he thought I was telling a story.
“Starbucks on 154th. And my shift starts in 10 minutes.”
I knew exactly how much time it took me exactly 18 minutes to get from home to work because I’d timed it. And I left the house 20 minutes before I needed to clock in, so I could walk at a comfy pace.
Officer Friendly needed more information.
“Where do you live? And why are you in such a hurry?”
That’s when I started getting really nervous. It was pretty early, so there were no witnesses around…
“This is regular speed for me,” I replied, forcing a chuckle. “I just have long legs.”
The squad car idled forward a little, and the officer grunted “Whatever you say. Just be good out here.” Then he took off.
Thank God he didn’t knock me down and drive his knee into on my neck.
A couple years later, I had an almost identical conversation with a different cop in a different suburb.
That’s how I know about the pedestrian speed limit.
I was also tossed into the back of a police car for jaywalking one block from my house…
And I’m one of the lucky ones!
What’s my point?
This email is going out to a lot of people, and I don’t know your personal awareness level around this fact:
Being Black in America is… different
You can be accosted, arrested or asphyxiated for doing regular stuff.
To make it worse, it seems like it doesn’t matter.
The mental and emotional toll adds up over the years — and sometimes the pent-up frustration and anger can spill over.
There’s obviously a lot more to this conversation, but I want to switch gears into action steps. Because knowledge is just the first step. We all have to take action to make change happen.
For today, I’ll mention one thing you can do that I haven’t heard many people talking about in 2020.
Regardless of your ethnicity, you can show support for the Black community by moving your money to a Black-owned bank.
My personal favorite is Liberty Bank & Trust. I hear great things about OneUnited and Citizens Trust Bank, too.
Liberty also has an outstanding mortgage team. If you’re buying a home or investment properties, get in touch with them. (If you talk with Sheila, tell her I sent you.)
Right now, we’re living in a historic moment.
I encourage you to think about this:
When you look back on this moment… will you be proud of your words and more importantly, your actions?
Decide today to what you want the pages of history to say about you.
I’m still cleaning up the mess after having my mind blown at Content Jam last month. But it’s a good mess.
Besides expanding my thinking and learning some new tricks and strategies, I’ve already taken some action to step up my content marketing game. A couple of my clients have benefited from the tips I picked up, too.
Plus, I met some super-cool people. (That’s what happens when you come out of the cave and meet with other smart, creative people in real life.)
If you couldn’t make it to Chicago, you missed out BIG TIME.
Never fear! After the conference, I reached out to each of the rockstar speakers and asked them to boil down their presentations into bite-sized takeaways for anyone who couldn’t make it.
Here’s what they shared with me:
If you had 60 seconds or less, what’s the #1 takeaway from your presentation you’d share with anyone who couldn’t make it to Content Jam?
Tim Ash, about “Context and the Power of Framing – Biasing Your Offer with Irrational Neuromarketing”
The brain is the real ‘operating system’ for marketing. Understanding the evolution of it, as well as the strong and often irrational built-in biases will help online marketers a lot more than focusing on the latest technologies.
Note: All the “graphic recordings” in this post were created by Alphachimp.
You can see Tim’s full presentation onOrbit Media Studio’s YouTube channel here. As a bonus, I heckled Tim from the audience right around the 10:00 mark. To get the context, start paying attention at 9:22. Yep, that interruption is me.
Tim handled it like a pro. Threats of physical violence were made, but we were able to reconcile after the session.
Angie Schottmuller on “Holy Grail of On-Page Content Optimization”
“You can’t optimize what you don’t measure.” Jumping into content updates without data-driven insights is time consuming and foolish. The “holy grail” event tracking approach replaces guesswork with strategic wisdom for content optimization that confidently drives measurable results.
Nancy Goldstein, about her presentation “The Creative Brief: The Secret Ingredient That Will Make All Your Content More Powerful and Effective”
Creative briefs are critical. You have to make absolutely sure that everyone who has accountability for content – strategy, implementation, or approvals – is in agreement about how the execution is going to deliver on the strategy. The only way to do that is to get it on paper and have a conversation about it. If you skip this step, you risk going through round after round after round of creative approvals, debates, and frustrations.
Amy Schmittauer on “How to Develop and Execute an Effective YouTube Strategy”
Do not waste any time. When your perfect viewer stumbles upon your content because they wanted to discover more about a topic you’re covering, the worst thing you can do it make them wait for you to get to the point. The more time at the beginning of a video with extra stuff YOU think is is important are precious moments wasted that you could be proving to your viewer that you are the resource they need to stay subscribed to for the long-term.
Mana Ionescu speaking about her “Guide to Results-Driven Email Marketing and Automation”
Stop worrying about making emails pretty and start thinking of how to make them quick to read and easy to click on mobile devices. Shorten paragraphs (have an average of one link per 8-12 words), increase font size and increase size of links and calls to action so it’s easy to tap them with your fingertip.
Jeannie Walters on how to “Become Your Company’s Customer Experience Investigator™”
Understand your customer’s entire journey to improve how your content is relevant to them. Think about your customer on his or her worst day, struggling with whatever product or service you offer, and understand your brand is not what they think about 24/7. Make sure your content strategy supports their true goals. It’s not just about who they are, it’s about where they are in their journey with your brand.
Andy Crestodina, speaking about “Fortune and Glory: How to Make Friends, Rank High and Get Famous”
Social media isn’t just about sharing links and hoping for clicks. It’s not about counting likes and favorites. These things are nice, but they don’t help your marketing very much at all. Maybe you’ve noticed.
Yes, social media CAN drive traffic, but the quality of that traffic tends to be low. So the DIRECT benefits of social media are often very small.
So try this: focus on the INDIRECT benefits of social media. If you use it to build relationships, the value of those relationships are often huge.
Use social media search tools to find very specific content creators in your niche
Follow them, read what they write, get to know them
Interact with them within their content, in comments and through sharing
Connect with them on multiple social networks, keep interacting
Offer to COLLABORATE with them, pulling their voice into your content
Take the conversation offline, coffee, phone calls, handwritten thank you notes, etc.
What happens next is often magical. If you great something high value and email it to them, or if you create something together that is truly original, they’re extremely likely to share it, or better yet, mention it (and link to it) from something they’re writing.
When this happens, you just got a search optimization benefit from social media. And it’s durable, increasing the likelihood that you’re content will rank forever after.
The recording of Andy’s keynote presentation can be found here. Side note: Andy’s presentation is what inspired me to write this post. Thanks Andy!
Jill Pollack, on “Feeding the Beast: How to Keep Your Content Flowing, on Point and Endlessly Entertaining”
Focus on the details when telling a story.
There’s nothing worse than having to listen to generalities and jargon about the state of Internet marketing across the global platform and the influx of impactful and non-impactful content that reaches multiple demographics including those in the 24-35 age range when searches are conducted with an unmet expected outcome.
BOO!
How about saying: “There’s nothing worse than searching for history of Thanksgiving and winding up with ads and fake listicles about pilgrims and Black Friday sales.”
(Also, “impactful” is not really a word!)
Susan Silver, from her presentation “Great Content Starts Here: Positioning is More Than a Statement”
Before you write a single word of content, you need to take the time to stop and think hard about your company or product’s very specific value proposition. You need to be able to succinctly and clearly answer five questions in layman’s terms:
1. Who is your primary target
2. What is the unmet need your target has that you fill
3. What is your competitive set
4. What is your unique point of difference
5. What are three real, no BS reasons that your point of difference is believable
Make sure to check out Susan’s presentation slides on Slideshare here.
Keidra Chaney’s advice on “How to Start (and maintain!) a Blog That Doesn’t Stink”
Be thoughtful and intentional when it comes to thinking about your blog. Think more about providing meaningful conversation, cutting through the clutter of content that’s already out there, by providing a perspective that you can give.
James Ellis speaking about his “13 Non-Obvious Content Promotion Tricks”
Content that you promote is wasted content, so you need to build systems that force you to promote your content. They don’t have to cost you a thing, but if you treat promotion as a “oh yeah, I guess I have to” add-on to content instead of an integral process, no one will ever hear your message.
Joel Harvey doing his best to encapsulate “Mobile Optimization Essentials: Tips for Increasing Mobile Conversion Rates” in 60 seconds
“You should never just make changes to your site without testing them. If you can’t or won’t A/B test the changes, at least make sure you have a rigorous, data-centric methodology for doing a pre-post analysis to assess the impact of any changes you make. Beyond that, I would encourage everyone to think deeply about what kind of goals they should optimize their mobile site for. What are the questions that people at the top of the decision making funnel will be asking? Identify those questions and make sure your mobile site answers them quickly and clearly.”
My Content Jam Regrets
I wish I had taken more pictures!
It would have been great to have a clone so I could have attended all the breakout sessions. Choosing whose presentation to attend and whose to miss was BRUTAL. (Thank God for these 60-second recaps!)
Not writing this round-up article sooner.
Not being more purposeful in connecting with the other brilliant attendees.
Content Jam 2015 was incredible.
I took 17 pages of notes, filled with great ideas and insights that will benefit my business in a major way. If you didn’t make it, I hope this post gives you a little taste of what you missed.
I also hope you’ll start following the speakers who’s advice you read above. Each of them will help you sharpen your content marketing “axe” to make you more effective at your craft.
I bet it’s not who you think it is. In fact, it may be the last person you’d consider.
And I’ll be happy to tell you…if you attend Blue Top Marketing‘s workshop tomorrow (Saturday, June 7th) in South Holland, IL.
We’ll be talking about how to create irresistible offers. This will be my most in-depth treatment of this topic to date. We’ll talk about persuasive techniques as ancient as the human race, cutting-edge discoveries in neuroscience and the secrets behind blockbuster Hollywood movies.
Here are a few of the specific topics we’ll cover in this 2-hour long session:
a method proven to “transform insignificant objects into significant ones,” so much so that people happily pay as much as 132.5 TIMES their original value. Your “significant” products and services can skyrocket in perceived value in exactly the same way.
why the truth isn’t good enough and how you can fix that — without the slightest bit of deception
what kind of marketing messages are magnetically repulsive
how one sentence changed the entire TV home shopping industry, breaking sales records left and right — and how you come up with a similar sentence to revolutionize your customers’ perception of your business
3 biological reasons the human mind rejects most perceived attempts at persuasion and
how to flip the mind’s resistance using its own force.
I’ll take a look at your marketing materials and make suggestions on how to make your offers irresistible. You’ll leave the presentation with specific advice you can put into practice the same day.
Not sold yet? Let’s sweeten the deal a little bit.
All attendees will get
a DVD of all 3 of the Marketing Strategy Implementation sessions courtesy of Boss Lady at Blue Top, Stephanie Walters,
a free copy of my book Stealth Selling: Non-Pushy Persuasion for Professionals
a second round of sales copy critiques any time in the next 90 days. I normally charge $200 for critiques, but attendees will get a freebie.
When an offer is strong, saying “yes” is easier than walking away. During this workshop, we’ll help make that a reality in your business. Register now
I took a picture of the sign above at a dentist’s office in my Calumet City neighborhood. (That’s in Chicago’s south suburbs, if you’re curious.) What’s wrong with this sign? On the surface, nothing. But think about the wording “Same Day Appointments” for a moment. Is this dentist so efficient that he can guarantee to look at your teeth the same day that you call? Or is business so slow that there are always open slots in the schedule?
(To be fair, I’ve never visited this office, so I can only speculate about any specifics about the business and it’s success.)
Speaking of slots, The next sign is a doozy.
This photo is from a bar, also in my neighborhood.
The bar changed the sign after about a week. Must not have worked as well as they thought…
Either that or the slots really do pay out too much and they started losing more money than they made in drinks…
In which case the lead generation method really was brilliant. The lifetime customer value was just too low or the owners were too short-sighted.
Like the dentist’s office, I’ve never been inside this bar, so I’m speculating again.
A few people told me I took the whole thing too seriously; the sign is probably just a joke. And maybe they’re right. (I could just walk down to the bar and ask the owner.)
But even so, marketers have to be careful; if customers feel misled, they’re not going to be happy.
That’s one of the reasons humor is risky in marketing.
What do you think?
Don’t miss these related posts (with pictures from my neighborhood!):
We had our first real snowstorm in the Chicagoland area yesterday.
While I was outside removing snow from the sidewalk and driveway this morning, I felt a little pride. Shoveling is not my favorite activity, but I think I did a pretty good job. I took care of it early so that the kids waiting on school buses wouldn’t have snow invading their shoes, making their Monday morning socks cold and wet. (Mondays are tough enough on school kids anyway, right?) The walkways are well-cleaned and salted to prevent slippery ice patches.
Yeah, I did a pretty good job. I don’t like to brag, but I might even be the best on the block.
Despite the high quality of my work historically, no one’s walked up to me and offered to pay me to shovel the sidewalk in front of his house. I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen, either.
The same is true for your business. No matter how great what you offer is, having a customer randomly approach you with cash in hand is not very likely. Your product or service may even be the “best on the block.”
This is why marketing is so important. You have to tell people who you are, what you do and how choosing you will improve their lives. They need to know why they should do business with you.
A few other thoughts popped into my freezing cranium while I was taking care of my winter duties this morning:
There’s never a shortage of people willing to pay to avoid pain. I can’t think of any surer way to position yourself to win in the marketing game. I mean, who likes to have people ringing their door bells early in the morning? But when he’s offering to relieve you of the necessity to face frostbitten toes, he’s a pretty welcome sight. Think of ways to solve problems or erase pain for your prospects, and you’re well on your way to success.
You don’t have to be the best. You don’t have to be the only person who does what you do, either. How many industrious individuals are out there making money cleaning up snow for other people? Quite a few. There’s plenty of action to go around. Don’t let the fact that you’re not one of the “big dogs” stop you. Davids beat Goliaths every day. Even if they don’t wipe them out completely, lots of them get big enough pieces of the pie to make it worth their while. Never let competition scare you off from chasing your aspirations. Find a chink in their armor, and go for it.
Finding a “hot” market is the best way to go. A snowstorm like this one produces all the ingredients of a hot market. There’s a large group of people facing an ugly problem. Almost no one wants to deal with this problem (who doesn’t hate shoveling snow or scraping ice?), but it has to be resolved. The few people willing and equipped to take on the task have an immense potential to profit. Do you provide an solution to a pain, problem or fear that your core audience feels acutely? Are there enough people in that group for you to generate the kind of revenue you are looking to earn? If so, you have a very solid foundation.
December is a funny time of year. Depending on your seasonality, this could be the busiest time of year or your slowest. But no matter what, targeted marketing gives you opportunities to gain ground as a business, even if it’s just planting seeds that will begin sprouting a few months down the line. Keep at it.
(If I’m honest, writing is always painful for me. Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann noted that “A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people.” That makes me feel a little better.)
It’s painful because it matters to me. Because YOU matter to me.
Sounds cheesy, but it’s the truth.
I can’t just throw some words together and send the email out. I want to give you something of worth, something you can use.
Very few of the emails I receive live up to that standard. They’re thinly-veiled sales pitches — if veiled at all — or totally fabricated stories told in an attempt to get me to take some course of action.
Excuses to stay in my face… and sorry excuses at that.
Don’t get me wrong. You should sell. When you write an email, you should have a profitable end result in mind.
But please… PLEASE… if you’re emailing your list or producing other content, say something valuable.
The profitable end result you have in mind should be mutually profitable.
Let me get to my point…
I can feel you drifting.
Last Tuesday, I gave a presentation at an entrepreneurship training program on Chicago’s west side.
During the Q&A segment, one gentleman asked me what he could do to get people to open his emails.
Good thing he asked that question because quite a few others in the room have the same difficulty.
Here’s what’s interesting. Every time Old Navy sends an email, my wife opens it and I end up spending money. Every time Ulta Beauty sends an email, she opens it. More money changes hands.
My wife opens emails from Old Navy knowing full well that there will be a sales pitch. But she also knows there’s a good chance she’ll get a good deal on products she likes. She’s getting a deal: coupons, lowered prices, preferred customer discounts and/or a chance to see what’s hot and new.
That’s valuable to her.
(Keep in mind that not everyone feels like my wife does about Old Navy. Most people don’t open 100% of their emails.)
If you want to get people to open your emails, that’s where you start.
Develop a reputation for delivering value to the people you’re reaching out to.
Remember, value is defined by the reader. If your Dad sent you a birthday card, you’d open it right away. I couldn’t care less about it; he’s not my dad. There’s nothing for me inside that envelope.
That’s Why the Email’s From Line Is More Important Than the Subject Line
It only takes half a second to know exactly what this restaurant specializes in. You already know what they’re about, even though you’ve never been inside. You’ve never seen an ad for the place. In fact, most of you have never even heard of this joint. But you can tell a whole lot from the sign.
Question of the day: do your prospective customers know what you do? what you’re about? How clear are they about what you have to offer?
What condition makes for a better customer: confusion or clarity?
(This picture was taken at a restaurant not too far from my home in Calumet City, IL.)
