In this week’s newsletter:
- A thorough checklist for keeping your website in tip-top shape.
- How to bring your newsletter fully in-house.
- Another reason to dive into Twitter for personal brand growth.
- Seeking clarity and saying no more often so you can accomplish your goals.
Something about seeing other people take a huge risk gives me a jolt of motivation. Both in my close circle of friends and the people I follow online there has been a lot of people making big changes. Watching this happen has spurred me into action as well (thus seeing this newsletter for the first time in many months).
No big changes on the horizon for me… Yet. But as I’m fond of saying, luck is when opportunity meets preparation.
What are you preparing for? Hit reply and let me know! The more we talk about what we’re up to, the more allies we find and the more likely it perseveres.
Just show me where to start
I love this guide, even though you have to jump through some serious hoops to get it. It is thorough and extremely helpful, especially for people who are managing their companies website, either as an owner/operator who just needs it to work, or someone tasked with making updates as necessary. It is definitely worth your time to check it out.
My other takeaway is this is what anyone you work with for digital marketing should be doing when you contract with them. In order to truly drive traffic and convert more prospects any digital marketing needs to have a holistic strategy behind it. Simply updating a page or churning out 400 word blogs twice a month won’t magically make more customers appear, no matter what the freelancer is selling. Marketing work isn’t a turnkey process.
If you don’t have plans to update your website, but work with an outside company or agency to manage it for you, look at this guide. If they haven’t gone through a process like this for your company, you should find out what exactly is their strategy.
Website Review Checklist for Solopreneurs & Small Businesses
Building a newsletter with nerds
This guide is not for the faint of heart. With Substack, Revue, MailChimp, and others it is mind-boggling easy to get a newsletter going. However, if you are thinking of bringing everything in house so that your data is owned by you, this is the place to start.
Keep in mind that if you are a small company who sends less than a few hundred emails a month, going through all this work may not be worth it right now. Just bookmark and save for later. But if you’re growing and want to own your customer experience 100%, it is time to get to work.
You Don’t Need Substack To Build an Email Newsletter
I want to talk about Twitter on any day ending in “y”
It is absolutely no secret I am bullish on Twitter. Now with Fleets, Spaces, Revue for newsletters, and soon professional profiles, Twitter is turning into a powerhouse for brand development.
Before you dive in, re-think using it for branding for your company with a business profile. Brand engagement on social is atrociously hard and Twitter has the absolute lowest performance. Don’t think about your company profile, Twitter is the place for your personal brand development. The biggest opportunity is for you or your sales team connecting with new clients in a natural, fun way. It is the place to get introduced to new communities and make connections across your industry.
Hot links
- 15 Engaging Ways to End Your Next Blog Post
Opening and closing blogs is hard. Probably the hardest part. - How to Build a WordPress Site in 24 Hours
I’m hesitant to even share this one. It is not possible without serious planning. If you spend a week planning, you might be able to stand up a solid site in one day. I’m sharing this because it is a good list of all the stuff that needs to be done, whether it is in 24 hours or 2 months. - B2B Marketing News: Influencer Ad Budgets Rise, B2B Buyer Report, Stellar US Ad Market Spending Increase, Zoom’s Immersive View, & LinkedIn’s LXP
- The Keywords Mapping Cheatsheet For Different Types of Sites with a Google Sheets Included
You know me, a sucker for pre-made checklists and Excel spreadsheets!
Get better everyday | Leadership – Coaching – Life
The single most important step we can take in any scenario is to seek clarity. This is something I focus on in all my work and personal life as I think it is what will put me in the best opportunity for success. Over the course of the last few months I’ve been obsessed with thinking about the future and our “new normal”. In March I made a task that everyday I would write down what it is I want. Doing this will help give me clarity on where I should be spending my time. Knowing what I want will position me for success in my work and emphasize what makes me happy in my personal life.
One of the first items on my list was this:
“I want my hobbies to be fun again.”
Soon after I found the blog below about stop spending time on things you hate. There are a thousand ways to look at this concept, including saying no more, automating as much as possible, and eliminating the reliance on will power. But before you can get to any of those steps you need to identify what it is that you want and what is in the way of accomplishing it.
For me I realized I needed to stop using my hobbies as a way to earn money. I also needed to stop thinking of how I could optimize my hobbies so I only did things that were productive. When I was always measuring my productivity it sucked all the fun out of my hobbies.
This process works for everything. Seek clarity for what you want. Then, identify what it is you are doing in your life that you truly dislike that way you can make more time for what matters. This doesn’t mean getting off of Facebook, watching less TV, etc. What is it you really dislike doing? Why do you keep doing it? What can you do about it?
Often we want to eliminate the things we dislike without also attaching it to why. Knowing why you are saying no will help give you the power to say it again and again.
Stop Spending Time on Things You Hate