Five Reasons to Have Someone Else Write Your Business Blog

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I recently spoke with a business owner who admitted she loved having a blog to promote her business but that she doesn’t love having to write blog posts. This woman is amazing–an expert in her area of business, an educated and talented business owner who provides great products and services.

Is her dilemma common? You bet! In the past twelve years, I’ve met hundreds of entrepreneurs and small business owners who excel at running successful businesses but have made the decision to hand off writing their business blogs to someone else.http://katefeatonwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/NaNoWriMo-Computer.jpg

Here are five reasons why it makes good sense to have someone else write your business blog:

TIME is of the essence to any business owner, isn’t it? You’re probably serving your business in multiple roles, especially if you’re just getting started. You may be handling finances, marketing, web design, product selection and, most of all, providing the services your customers require. And that’s on top of your roles outside of business–mother, father, partner, coach, friend, and so on and so forth. Handing off the writing of your business blog is one thing you can do with confidence to relieve the pressure for making your company succeed.

 

MONEY earned and money saved are the two ways a business succeeds. If you’re charging by the hour for your services, consider the amount of time it takes for you to write each blog post and multiply that time by your hourly rate. Add in the business-running, business-building tasks you’re not able to do when you stop to write. Chances are, the rate charged by a professional writer will still save you money when you consider the true cost to your business.

 

STRENGTHS, your personal and professional ones, are the best building blocks for establishing a successful business. Like to sell? Fantastic! Make sure you’re able to do that for your company. Love to meet new customers in your store? That takes a special kind of person. Excel at finding solutions for your customers? Then that’s the thing you should be spending the most time doing. If writing blog posts is a chore, not something you enjoy and at which you excel, why not hire someone who loves to write and is an expert at making your business look good in print?

 

CONTROL of your blog content is still your prerogative, even when someone else is providing the posts. Any professional content provider should give you the final say over blog posts, articles and other marketing materials written on behalf of your company. Useful, interesting content, written in your voice for your audience, is the goal when working with a copywriter.

 

PROFESSIONALISM is enhanced when your blog posts are well-written (or well-edited) to avoid typos, awkward sentences and confusing information. You can provide the basic information and theme for each blog post on your marketing calendar, and trust that your copywriter will provide the content that builds your company’s professional image.

Working with an experienced content provider can save you time and money, allow you to work from your strengths to build your business, let you maintain control of all marketing content and enhance the professional image you’re hoping to project.

Don’t those sound like good reasons to stop agonizing over your company blog and allow a copywriter to make your life simpler?

If they do, you know where to find me!


Hot Cars, Great Business Owners

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For this week’s post, we’re taking a quick field trip to explore something dear to my heart – custom cars. These beauties not only please the senses, they’re also the nectar that feeds custom builders, pinstripe artists, performance engine builders and a tankful of small business owners who help create these works of art.

My favorite part of attending shows like Wichita’s  Blacktop Nationals (tied with the hot cars, of course) is meeting these savvy business men and women. When hundreds of street rodders, rat rodders and their cousins, the custom bike builders, come together, plenty of vendors are sure to follow.

small business owner

Creeped Out Customs Creation

Our pick of the night?  Mark Robinson of Creeped Out Customs. His low-slung creations, dark and just a wee bit creepy, definitely captured the crowds. He wisely chose prime display space in the center of the car show action and brought two trucks, two bikes and some kick-butt T-shirts to snag the eye.

We saw every kind of vendor, inside the “Million Dollar Car Show” and outside on the sizzling August street. Creeped Out Custom Cars, in particular, combined location, novelty, technical genius and consistent branding. I hope he made plenty of solid contacts and goes on to build edgy creations for years to come.

And that brings up a topic that’s perenially discussed on business blogs  – the ROI of attending trade shows and exhibitions. Is it possible to know whether the cost of displaying your products will be rewarded with increased sales?

The answer is as variable as the vendors who populate trade shows. Your company’s transportation, space rental, increased inventory, physical display and staff time expenses all go into the mix.

Weigh that against the potential of being in front of a large number of people at a single show, some of whom may need your product or service. Sales, no matter how large the trade show audience, aren’t always a given. But there are several ways you can increase the odds that contacts made at shows and exhibitions turn into sales.

One obvious factor in whether or not trade show leads turn into sales after the show is whether or not your company’s presence was memorable. That’s why I believe Creeped Out Customs will see sales result from last weekend’s show. Their unique, well-branded displays and obvious expertise as custom car builders should stick in the minds of many show-goers.

The rest of the equation for creating sales from trade show leads is up to your sales force. Here’s a quick list of tips for making the most of contacts made at trade shows:

Capture the leads in one place –  a spreadsheet, your CRM program (NOT in a stack of sticky notes)
Follow up on all trade show leads within a couple of days
Include new contacts in future marketing campaigns
Track which trade show leads result in sales
Use the information gathered at this show to calculate your ROI for the next one

I wish that I could say all of the above is obvious post-show strategy, but I’m still surprised how many companies fail to deliberately capture and follow up on show leads once everyone’s back in the office.

Being out among the population, especially a population primed for your kind of product, can be a big boost to this year’s sales. As a business owner, it’s up to you to calculate ROI on shows and events, decide whether it is worth the extra expense to attend and, most of all, to make sure that your sales force is maximizing the leads you gain if you go.

 

So – what’s been your trade show or event experience? Has it resulted in increased sales? What new strategies will you employ at your next show to improve the possibility of new sales?

Creeped Out Customs Slammed Chevy

Creeped Out Customs Slammed Chevy

 

 


Are You Waiting for Perfection to Start a Business?

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I knew a woman who lost her husband at age twenty five and never remarried. She feared anything new would be less than the ‘perfect’ marriage she’d enjoyed for less than two years. She never risked dating or even connecting deeply with men until she died at age seventy-four.

Take a Risk

Take a Risk

Here’s the part of the story that causes a dull ache when I think of my friend. She confessed when I met her late in her life that she’d hated living alone all those years. Her fear of imperfection caused a lifetime of loneliness.

Now, choosing to live alone isn’t always  a bad choice…I know plenty of folks who have lived full, vibrant lives without a partner. But a life lived in unresolved fear is not vibrant and it won’t  accomplish what we’re put here to do.

At this point you may be asking how any of this relates to starting a business. Here’s the thing: if we fear being imperfect, we may never start a business that could have real impact on the lives of others. Refusing to risk that your business won’t perform perfectly to your projections keeps your product or service out of the hands of people it could benefit.

Same goes for freelancing. If we fear we won’t create the ‘perfect’ manuscript, we may not write at all. But what if our story was supposed to be read by a specific person at this exact time so that they were encouraged, challenged or enlightened? Not only are our lives diminished by our fears, that reader may not be moved in the same way by someone else’s writing.

About Perfection and a Lot More about Reality.

Perfection is always, always, always in the eye of the beholder. Maybe in Olympic gymnastics we can get a ‘perfect’ score, but the rest of life is flooded with imperfections. The salesman who seems to give a ‘perfect’ pitch is really just someone who has found a way to relate deeply and persuasively to his customers.

The small business owner who seems perfectly in tune with the needs of his customers is actually someone who has watched and listened and shifted to meet the needs of his audience.

The writer who writes with  ‘the perfect blend of mystery and edgy cynicism’ probably is spot-on with prose, but is her writing really ‘perfect?’ What if the reviewer didn’t care for edgy mysteries? Would a less-than-perfect review invalidate her months spent writing? Should she no longer be in the business of writing? Or could it just mean that particular audience wasn’t moved?

Let’s make our way back to letting fear of imperfection prevent us from starting a business. When we’ve done our research and found our funding and perfected our product offerings, can the fear of a less than perfect product launch keep us paralyzed? It could, or we could choose reality. And the reality is that every single thing a human being has ever created, launched, dreamed up or built could be nitpicked. But the really good things, the things we’ve done our best to perfect, need to be released to the world anyway.

So let’s just do it. Let’s focus on ‘excellence’ rather than ‘perfection’.

Let’s encourage those we know who’ve let fear freeze their dreams to do their very best and watch what happens. And you know what? It may not turn out perfectly.  But those stories, not the ones about what was never risked, are the ones I want to hear.

 

I’m curious…what fears have you allowed to keep you from starting a business or career? In what ways has the pursuit of perfection, rather than excellence, hampered your success? What kind of help do you need to move forward with your dreams?

 

photo credit: Greg L. via photopin cc

 

 

 


Rising Above – Ending Client Relationships

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Ending Client Relationships

Rising Above

There comes a time for every freelancer (and small business owner) when a client relationship no longer works. Ending client relationships shouldn’t be taken lightly, because every bond we form with a customer has the potential to benefit us, and them,  long-term. But when it comes down to constant tension or haggling, it may be time to rise above and end the relationship graciously.

Grace vs Grief

The temptation, when a client relationship hits a snag, may be to protect our own interests. As professionals, however, we know that working through the rough spots with grace and patience is the smarter route.

Forming the habit of giving clients grief is deadly. It changes how we feel about ourselves and our own abilities. It changes how clients, and the people they talk to, see us. It can kill a freelance career or a megabusiness. It’s simply bad business.

But what to do when the relationship with a client requires time and effort way beyond the potential return? We step back, take a breath, set aside the snarky response we’d like to unleash and graciously suggest our services are no longer a good fit.

This response allows the client to save face. And it’s true, isn’t it, that if they find it necessary to fuss and finagle each time we do business, we probably aren’t the best fit for them?

Lessons from Ending Client Relationships

When the dust has cleared, this type of client has lessons to teach. Lesson one is learning to recognize a problem client ahead of time. Clients who simply can’t be made happy aren’t that hard to spot, if we let go of the need to please everyone.

Think about it – when too many clients become a problem, the problem could be our own filters. We’re most likely opening our filters far too wide and letting in business we don’t have any business taking.

Here’s an example: I once contracted with a client who fussed about my rate for “an easy project” but agreed to my terms. From the first set of articles forward, his need to “get his money’s worth” by requiring endless rewrites dropped me down below minimum wage.

Had I not been in a dry spell, my filter would have picked up from the get-go that this was not a client with whom I needed to do business. I had to bite the bullet, suggest we were not a good fit and refrain from responding to the verbal abuse that came next. (And he never did pay for the last set of articles.)

Lesson learned, move on and recognize that someone who doesn’t recognize the value of my services at the beginning isn’t likely to change. And here’s the tie-in to our original topic – if I hadn’t chosen the gracious route and chosen instead to start an argument, it probably would still have ended with not being paid, just a lot more money and whole lot more grief later.

Rising above and graciously ending client relationships is always the better path. It allows us to maintain our dignity, allows them to move on to a better fit, and strengthens the control we have over the way we do business. Win, win, win. What could be better?

Have you had to let go of a problem client recently? What do you wish you’d done differently?

photo credit: triggzBb via photopin cc


Surviving a Dead Calm – Resisting the Urge to Force Sales

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Have I mentioned that I’m married to a salesman? Yep, two people in our household dependent on the approval of others to make a living. I could say a lot here about the insanity of that, but the truth is, it works for us, except when we let the pressure to make a sale take over.

This was a topic of heavy discussion as we wound down from a tough day recently. Long drive, no sale. Blank computer screen, no sale. Over no-sugar-added, fat free vanilla frozen yogurt sundaes (by the way, it sucks getting healthy) we acknowledged the temptation to forget who we are in order to make a sale.

Here’s the picture – you’re out in a sailboat and suddenly the wind dies. I’ve never been sailing, but I hear you deal with that phenomenon by waiting out the wind. When your monthly budget depends on a constant breeze of new sales, it’s hard to be that patient.

dead calm no sales

Dead Calm of No Sales

We acknowledged we could maybe make things happen faster by cranking out more appointments, more ads, more pitches to editors. We could hurry through the appointments/inquiries we do have, looking over their shoulders to the next one. After all, sales does comes down to numbers at some point. But does a frantic flurry of new activity always equal more sales? No, and here’s why.

Whether it’s the words/tone we use to persuade or our eagerness to shift the pressure to the client, giving in to the urge to force sales is rarely  successful. Someone said once that the best salesman is a hungry one; we would submit that signalling, however subtly, that you’re a starving artist or salesman isn’t a great sales tactic.

What can we do, then, to stir up the wind again? The logical answer came to me this week in the form of Jeff Goins’ Writer’s Manifesto. Brilliant little ebook, everyone in sales/writing/artistic endeavours should read it.

Because he tells us we should “stop writing to be read and adored” and simply write to the best of our ability, because that’s what we do as writers. Insert “selling” or “painting” or whatever your art is, and it makes sense. We may be dependent on the approval of others to sell our products, but if their approval (and the need for more sales) is the whole reason we do what we do, we can’t help sounding a little desperate.

Stay with me here. The discussion I had with my husband about surviving a dead calm really has more to do with who we become when sales slow down. If we switch from offering our best to the world, best writing, best connecting with customers and finding out what they really need, etc., into panic mode, it just doesn’t work. We cut corners, we crank out garbage or we offer things we can’t deliver when it comes down to it. We get that whiny edge to our voices that says “You need to feel sorry enough for me to give me money.”

Not an attractive way to build a client base. I am a writer. He is a salesman. We are good at what we do. It isn’t helpful to forget that fact every time we hit a dead calm. We’re fortunate enough to hold each other accountable to keep doing our best every day, no matter how little wind seems to be hitting our sails.

What, faithful readers, are you doing to stay accountable when the wind dies? I’d love to hear your ideas for surviving a dead calm.

photo credit: Elsie esq. via photopin cc

 


About ADHD & Entrepreneurship…

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On this morning’s walk with the dogs, I had some time to think about the static that keeps us from succeeding as entrepreneurs. With a little thought, I decided that the same traits that keep us from succeeding in the corporate world may be the very things that get in the way of making it on our own.

Entrepreneurship & ADHD

Bored Employee

Here’s what got me to this point: I was thinking about how many of us leave the corporate world because of boredom. We may have uber skills in our chosen areas, but we find the environment stifling. We twitch and shiver and maybe stir the pot all day long in an attempt to relieve the anxiety that’s destroying our focus.

I’m convinced that many of the talented adults I’ve seen failing in highly-structured work environments are undiagnosed sufferers of Attention Deficit Disorder. We want to play well with others. We want to contribute. We simply can’t function in the same enclosed space, on the same old work details day after day without feeling the fallout of anxiety. Insomnia, compulsive eating, irritability, stress-related illness. Bosses aren’t happy, we aren’t happy. And then we leave and start the cycle over somewhere else.

That brings me back to the whole reason I’m writing this post. If we go through this frustrating cycle of starting and ending employment often enough, we may wonder if it would be better to work for ourselves. Freelance. Start a new business. But if we can’t figure out what’s triggering our anxiety about work and how to structure our lives in a way that reduces it, we’re back in the same muddle of unhappiness before too long.

So what to do if ADHD (or general anxiety about work) and entrepreneurship aren’t mixing well? I’ll give you my cure in one sentence: we structure our lives in ways that make sense for us. After all, we’re working for ourselves. We’re responsible to create the product or service that pays our bills. So it makes sense, doesn’t it, that the structure we create has to fit who we are, ADHD symptoms and all.

One of the biggies in my self-structuring list is that I don’t work in the same place every day. If my focus is wandering badly and I have a deadline to meet, I pack the laptop and walk to the corner coffee shop. That change in environment always puts me back on track (and the Mayan Latte adds spice to my writing!)

Another important way I compensate for what I refer to as “the buzz” is to work shorter blocks of time. I find I am more productive when I break up the day into two hour blocks – writing, walking, writing, working on website, etc. Maybe for you, it means walking out of the place of business you’re running and forgetting about it for thirty minutes. Could mean playing basketball at the Y in the middle of the day.  Maybe you take a nap at 2 p.m. or do fifteen minutes of Zumba.

Whatever it takes to break up the day and relieve the anxiety of maintaining focus, it’s okay for us to do it. We’re the boss, we know what makes us tick and we are not flaky. We have gained the self-knowledge to know how we are most productive. No apologies necessary.

I’ll ask a question to end: if you’re having trouble maintaining your focus during your adventure in entrepreneurship, what can you do to reframe your time? Here’s a bonus question: what will you build into your workplace as it grows to allow your employees the same freedom? It could become a movement – can’t wait to hear your ideas.

photo credit: RBorello via photopin cc

 

 


How Two Dogs Help Grow My Business

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Dog Who Grow My Business, Part 1

Dogs Who Grow My Business, Part 1

Believe it or not, walking my two rambunctious dogs each morning has helped to grow my business as a freelance writer. Getting dressed decently enough to greet the public, dragging out the leashes and forcing myself out the door with two highly energetic canines is a habit that has reaped rewards. Number one reward – my brain gets stimulated by all sorts of things that help make me a better writer. The river that runs a block from my house, the wild creatures the dogs send scattering and the stalwart walkers who brave the early hour. All those stimuli cause neurons to fire better when I sit down back home at my computer.

That’s the kind of habit I need to grow my business into a sustainable freelance writing career. And that’s one of the keys to success – forming habits that stimulate business.  So, what are some other habits we can form to keep us motivated, stimulated and well-compensated?

3 Habits that Help Grow My Business

While learning what it takes to sustain a freelance writing career, I’ve identified habits I’ve formed that could sabotage my business. Most of them center around self-structuring my time and workload. Depending on the type of business you’re growing, you may have a different set of regular bad behaviors that scuttle your ship.

Dogs Who Grow My Business, Part 2

DogsWhoGrowMyBusiness Part 2

But let’s dwell on the positive (see number 1.)  No point in identifying bad habits if you don’t plan to change them, right? Here are three habits that can help us build business

  1. Keep it Positive – Staying positive in the face of business downturns, rejected proposals or shrinking funds is a choice. Take a practical, positive view of life by shutting down that voice in your head that says you’re going to fail. Whether it’s by surrounding yourself with a positive network or listening to podcasts that inspire, it’s your job as the business owner to keep your cynicism in check. Form the habit.
  2. Keep Your Day in Order – It’s tempting, given the heady freedom of self-employment, to let whatever comes each day rule the day. As freelancers/business owners, how we spend our time really is under our control. The many distractions that have nothing to do with growing a business don’t have to throw us off-track. Form the habit of asking two questions when interruptions come: “Will it help me grow my business?” and “Does it have to be done right now?”
  3. Stick to Your Plan – If you’re in the habit of taking out your business plan and checking your progress against it, congratulations! If you haven’t seen your business plan for years and have lost track of why you went into business the first place, you could be in trouble. Make an appointment with yourself to review the goals you set and whether it’s time to set new ones. It’s encouraging to see how far you’ve come and it’s energizing to refocus your efforts on solid goals.

Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, says, “Changing habits isn’t necessarily quick or easy. But it is possible.”

Are we going to let bad habits get the best of our businesses, or form some new ones that help grow my business and yours? Let me know what you decide to do!


The Ones that Got Away – Improving Customer Service

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Why Customers Disappear

DISAPPEARING INTO THE HORIZON

A conversation I had recently with a fellow writer left me wondering about the ones that got away. She was sharing her frustration about one-time customers who disappeared into the horizon, despite her very best efforts to serve them.

Closing the back door to her copywriting business had become a major issue. Her marketing is great, she’s bringing in new clients, but they don’t stick around to become regulars. She admitted it was causing her to doubt her talents as a content provider.

I began to wonder if common customer service mistakes were the reasons too many of her clients were getting away. With that thought in mind, I asked her about the way she treats new business. Sure enough, her answers revealed two ways her own habits were failing to capture repeat business.

Keys to Improving Customer Service

The first way my friend failed to capture the ones that got away was by disconnecting from them once the first project was completed. Ironically, her frustration with customers who disappeared was probably caused by her own disappearing act after the first transaction.

How to cure that problem, if you suspect your clients are disappearing due to neglect? It’s simple: stay in touch. With the huge collection of follow-up tools available, there’s really no reason why we can’t connect on a regular basis with folks who’ve done business with us. One of the easiest ways is by email.

Capturing email information really is easy, whether you’re selling through a website or a store on Main Street. Not long ago, my favorite Payless Shoe store asked me for my email address! Backed me up for just a second, but when the cashier explained I’d receive notice of sales ahead of time, I gladly gave the info.

Constant Contact, MailChimp and other tools for collecting email addresses for customer follow-up pretty much automate all you need to do. They’ll help you create newsletters, if that’s how you decide to stay in touch, and take care of all the messy no-spam details to keep you out of trouble. And while we’re on that topic, being given a customer’s email address is a privilege. Don’t abuse it by constantly barraging them with emails. Plan your strategy, automate it with your email tools and keep in touch without being a stalker.

One more thing I discovered in talking to my friend was that by failing to suggest additional services, she was allowing money to walk out the door. When they ordered ten articles, she delivered them promptly, but failed to mention that she also created web content and ghost writes blogs for other customers.

Especially for small businesses who may not update their content often, it’s important to tell them on your first contact the other services you can provide. One client she did hear from a year later told her if he’d known she wrote blog posts, he’d have asked her to do that all along. We can’t assume they read our websites; we have to tell them how we can help.

So if you’re watching your customers fade away with no return business, take inventory on how you follow up and what services you’ve failed to offer. By doing those two things, your customers could become frequent flyers instead of watching them disappear into the horizon.

 

 

 


Why I Love Writing for Small Business

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A Kansas business that started with a great idea.

There’s a lot to like about Corporate America. Seriously. If you have any doubt about what built our country, read the stories of its great companies. Vanderbilt, Dupont, Cessna – the sheer influence of these men and the companies they built is exhilarating. But they all started small and that’s the place that piques my passion.

Writing content to help small businesses grow is truly a source of joy. I get a ringside seat to the solopreneur who becomes an employer who becomes a regional success. I have the privilege of watching a novel idea become a successful company.

It inspires me every single time I hear a small business owner tell her story. Whether she’s out there on the internet selling her services as a life coach or here in my hometown baking cookies, the story is never, ever the same. That’s what makes small business great; a unique idea emerges and by the time it’s fleshed out, people have jobs, products are produced and the economy gets a little stronger.

So now you know why I spend my time writing articles and blogs for small business owners. I love watching them do what they do. Even more, I love helping them take the next step growing their companies. It makes me feel that in my own little way, I’ve become a part of their story.