Working as a screenwriter in Hollywood, I can tell you there are a lot of opinions on story structure and development. Some people save the cat, other’s delve deep into formula and break everything out into minute by minute guidelines, and some swear by Aristotle’s Poetics.

But the most consistent and persistent story structure that all of them follow, to some extent, regardless of their stated approach, is one discovered a little over 70 years ago. I say discovered because the prevailing belief is that it was there all along, it just wasn’t fully examined until this century. It starts with psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Jung was originally a protégé of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology, but after a long collaboration, the two split off. In fact, Jung eventually redefined his system of psychology separate from Freud’s approach.

One of Jung’s prevailing beliefs was the concept of a shared subconscious or collective unconscious mind. Jung believed that the consistency found in various mythologies and folk tales across cultures and generations came from the fact that our minds all drew from a universal well of thought and idea.

Later, mythologist Joseph Campbell proposed that Jung’s theories were proven by a concept called monomyth – all stories follow a specific pattern of development. Campbell wrote the definitive text on the subject, The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

May The Force Be With You

When George Lucas was studying film at the University of Southern California (USC) he became enamored with the study of mythology and Campbell in particular. So much so that when he was working on drafts of the script that would eventually become the original Star Wars film (now subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope”), he modeled the entire story on Campbell’s monomyth structure.

Other movies and books follow the pattern – after all, it wouldn’t be a universal pattern if they didn’t.  But some stories go about it differently and sometimes you have to wrangle a bit to make the pattern work “perfectly.” George Lucas, along with his editor and ex-wife Marcia Lucas, followed Campbell’s pattern to a “T.”

And the beauty of that is, I can simplify Campbell’s overly complicated 400+ page book by just pointing to Star Wars. And what I want to do today is walk you through the monomyth approach to telling your stories – by making your customers the heroes.

The Ordinary World

This is where we meet Luke Skywalker. Space battles on the horizon aside, Luke’s life is pretty consistently standard. He works on his Uncle Owen’s moisture farm. He negotiates and buys droids. He’d rather hang out with his friends and/or join the Rebellion, than stay one more season on the farm. But Uncle Owen needs him, so he stays.

Your potential clients live here. They think everything is fine; it’s the way it’s always been. They don’t consider that there might be a better option. They might be in pain, but be so used to it, they can’t imagine there’s a solution that could fix the problem. They’re numb to the pain and to change – or even the possibility of change.

The Call to Adventure

In Star Wars, Luke’s call to adventure is literally that – a call. It’s not directed at him. Princess Leia has encoded a message for Obi Wan Kenobi. Luke wonders if she means Old Ben Kenobi, but doesn’t pursue it until R2-D2 disappears into the night. And once Luke connects with Old Ben after finding R2, the Jedi master tells Skywalker, “You must come with me to Alderaan.”

Your customer’s call to adventure isn’t quite so obvious most of the time. Although it could be, if your company does a lot of cold calling. But anything that gets your customer’s attention and connects you with them is a call to adventure. It might be a billboard or radio ad. It might be a useful blog post. More likely than not, in our world, it’s a Google search that leads the burgeoning hero towards his journey. Or the referral of a trusted fellow business owner.

Meeting the Mentor

Luke has met Obi-Wan Kenobi, the man who would teach him the ways of the Force, so he can become a Jedi, “like my father before me.” But he just sees him as an old man. Sure the light saber and the man’s ability to make the Tusken Raiders scatter are both amazing, but… In Star Wars, the call to adventure is intertwined with meeting the mentor – just as it is with Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, and often the hero realizes it when she is granted a new perspective.

In a business sense this is often the case as well. The introduction of your potential customer to your small business may seem incidental. It is often connected to that call to adventure, because the call also conveys how your company can relieve their pain. But they don’t see it, or don’t trust it quite yet, which leads them into…

Refusing the Call

Luke immediately responds to Ben Kenobi’s promptings, saying he can’t possibly go to Alderaan. He needs to stay on for one more season. He doesn’t even realize he’s using the source of his earlier frustration to justify his resistance. Even when Ben points out, “That’s your uncle talking.”

By and large, humans are resistant to change. Even if we suspect it may make our lives or businesses better, we sit on our hands and make excuses, and dwell in the pain. As I mentioned before, we have become numb. And sometimes even pleasure can seem painful when you’re not used to it. Routine has its own rewards. Simply knowing there is a problem doesn’t mean they’ll embrace the potential solution.

Crossing the Threshold

It doesn’t have to be, but this often can be one of those all or nothing moments. Luke doesn’t just return to the moisture farm. Because he sees the inherent danger – even though he wants to ignore it – he races back. To find the homestead gutted, and the burning corpses of his aunt and uncle left by the Stormtroopers.

Your potential customer crosses the threshold when they schedule the first exploratory meeting, or 30-minute free consultation. This may seem like a poor comparison to what happens to Luke Skywalker, but think about it. In order to accept help, to even consider that help, a part of the customer’s ego must die. They must admit that what they are doing now won’t fix the pain they feel and/or it’s not something they can accomplish on their own. They must die to the concept of doing everything themselves.

Tests, Allies & Enemies

This is exactly what it sounds like. The hero has met the mentor, now he meets the other players. Luke & Ben fend off goons in the cantina, after Ben uses the Force to manipulate the simple minded Stormtroopers. The droids have already encountered Darth Vader, to some extent, but Luke hasn’t, so the Stormtroopers represent the Empire.

After the initial altercation in the cantina, Ben hires Han & Chewie. The Stormtroopers appear again, chasing the heroes off Tatooine. And the Empire somehow beats them to their destination – arriving to see an asteroid field and a moon that isn’t one.

They get trapped on the Death Star, find Princess Leia, almost killed in the trash compactor and Luke faces the loss of his mentor.

In the storytelling world, this is often a longer section, and may be referred to as the “fun and games” portion of the story.

For your clients, it can be any number of things. Their investors or advisors may not see the value of what you are offering, or at least enough value to justify the cost. Your client may not see results right away – if you’re providing a service, it may be something that takes time to grow or to show results on – like Google rankings or social media.

Fellow business people or the board of directors may be just as numb to the pain of change as your new customer was. They didn’t have an answer before, or a sufficient one, but they also haven’t gone through the same change as the client did. Often times they can derail efforts.

At the same time, they may be allies who are helpful and excited about the new possibilities. Tests, allies, and enemies. It all leads up to…

The Ordeal

This is the final battle. The elixir or treasure has been brought back and now we have the final test of the hero. Will she win the battle, or die trying? Luke has the plans to the Death Star – had them all along, but didn’t understand what they were until they encountered the battle station for themselves. He must use the knowledge of the engineering design flaw to save the Rebellion and their home planet.

In many instances, you may not be around to see this moment for your new client. Or you may learn about it much later, after they have successfully navigated the ordeal, and blown up their small business ‘planet killer.’ Hopefully, they’ll share the story with you. Maybe they’ll post it on Yelp or in a Google Review. Or maybe, hopefully, you’ll learn how much the treasure you brought them has become valuable because they referred a new client to you.

Resurrection/Master of Two Worlds

In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi is the one resurrected, from a certain point of view. He returns as the voice of faith in Luke’s ear, telling him to trust what he has learned about letting go. Luke remembers his trial with the test probe in the Millennium Falcon and shuts off the targeting computer. He’s relying on faith.

But he’s also relying on R2 and the X-Wing fighter he’s flying. Much like the droids and the moisture vaporators when we first met him on Tatooine, Luke is still utilizing technology. He has become a hero by embracing both of his worlds/identities. The mystic and the mechanic. Sometimes we call this ‘entering the new normal.’

We know a little too much about ‘new normal’s’ these days, I think. In an example from our own business, we’ve learned to embrace the usual model along with the virtual, work from home model, and attempted to fuse the two. Like a phoenix rising from the COVID ashes.

But for your client’s, this is the moment that your product or service really comes into its own. The client is so happy with it, and/or understands it so well that they use it all the time. It becomes part of their new normal.

This is also when they freely give referrals, just by using the product or service. In court, testimony is presenting evidence. For Christians, it’s always being ready to give an answer for the hope they have. When your client is that happy with your product or service, they can’t stop talking about it. Or it’s so much a part of her life, that others see it and ask. The circle is now complete.

Now It’s Your Turn

You can see The Hero’s Journey as the one you are on. And that’s fine; I encourage that. In fact, I recommend utilizing this story structure as you build and tell your small business’ story. But if you can also use it to tell your potential customers a story that resonates with them – that’s where the gold lies. It’s great to be the hero of your story. But if you can make your prospective clients into the hero of your story, you’ll truly see your business change. You can be the entrepreneurial Han Solo or Obi-Wan Kenobi encouraging and guiding hero customers to win the day. That’s what we like to call a win-win situation.

I challenge you to reverse the perspective of how you see your clients and how they see you.

If you’d like help identifying those prospective clients – the perfect customers that you can serve best and bring the most value to – or help connecting to them, please reach out. We’ve built our small business helping other businesses succeed, and we can help you too. Let’s Grow The Dream together!

Just can’t help myself. I crave knowledge and can become obsessive at times, filling my brain with facts and miscellaneous information.

One lesson that was consistent across all my sources was something that seems counterintuitive on its face. A $100 investment made in your 20’s, and never added to or touched again, can, over time, grow to dwarf the results of making weekly $1000 investments in your 50’s or 60’s. The power of compound interest causes the tortoise to beat the hare every time – assuming the tortoise starts early enough.

Sadly, this is a lesson we fail to teach our children in high school or college. (Along with balancing a checkbook and doing their taxes. But that’s a discussion for another time.) Too often they struggle to get ahead early in life, thinking they can always invest later.

Now take it one step further and imagine they don’t stop at the initial $100 deposit. Instead, they add $100 every month, and when they make more money, they progressively increase that monthly, weekly, annual amount.

The Content Connection

When you’re looking at content creation – especially doing a periodic content blog targeted at your ideal customer – it’s easy to think that it’s some sort of magic bullet. A one-size fits all solution that will guarantee the growth of your business.

And, in all honesty, it can easily and quickly cause a spike in your customers, sales and reach. One that easily justifies taking the time to plan and build strategically. It thrusts digital marketing head and shoulders above many traditional marketing efforts. When properly executed, it can vault your results high enough to create an illusion of instant gratification.

But, sadly, while it does work quickly, it doesn’t sustain that growth over time – not unless you take some additional actions. Content creation is not one of those “set it and forget it” tasks.

But just like the early investment I talked about earlier, content can compound. In fact, in many ways, content creation can be sustained and create continuous growth over time. Some small businesses would be content with that spike at the beginning and then slow, gradual increases year over year.

But I know the readers of our blog tend to aim higher. Their businesses were established, in some form or fashion to enact true change in our world. The goal is to make this world or life better. So why would you be content with minor changes, when a little more effort and strategy can lead to more global results?

To truly get the most out of your content creation investment – and it IS an investment in time and effort – you need to think like Warren Buffet or Peter Lynch. You need to create content like an investor.

Customer Experience Rules

At first this may appear to be pretty boilerplate advice. Of course you want to focus on delivering a good customer experience rather than making quick cash. But in this case, we’re not talking about customer service or CX or similar.

Specifically, we’re making sure the customer – and potential customer – get the best experience within the context of your blog posts. You need to make sure every post has value to your ideal customer. You can vary a little on subjects and angles, but you need to consistently create content that they find useful.

The stock market has its ups and downs; you win some, you lose some. But if Warren Buffet consistently made poor picks and his hedge fund dropped over and over, he would get booted. By the same token, your customers have limited patience for rabbit trails and content of little or no use. Fool them once, shame on you – you won’t likely get to fool them twice, cause they’ll go looking elsewhere for information.

And guess what? Google doesn’t send searchers to you if the content isn’t of value and authority either. And the algorithm is more ruthless than people are. It has to be.

So make sure what you’re posting is valuable to your ideal customer.

Long-Term Outlook

This is the most obvious parallel between investing and content creation. Again, one post won’t launch your business, no matter how clever your title or how valuable the information. Here at Grow The Dream, we recommend at the very least posting once a month. Realistically, though, if you want to see growth, you’re accelerating your posting to every two weeks minimum. The biggest bang for your content buck? Once a week – every week.

Depending on your product or service, the long term approach can also connect to repeat business.

You build relationships over time, and the same is true of content. The more content, going further back, builds solid credibility on Google search results and in your professional life. A track record builds on itself – that’s the content version of compound interest.

Follow the Numbers

The best investors will tell you that data rules. Despite the fact that our customers make decisions based on emotion, we must limit how they influence us. Yes, you’ll still make emotional decisions, but you need to let numbers and logic dictate whenever you can.

Of course, this is part of your strategic work as well. In profiling and targeting your ideal customer, you’re using whatever data you can to hone the final picture. The more detailed and specific you can aim for, the better your initial results will be. And the more likely you’ll still gather in the outskirts of that target customer.

Peter Lynch might deal in mutual funds, but that doesn’t mean he just rides whatever wave or crest is happening in the market. You don’t get 30-75% returns by indexing to the average. He follows the trends, tracks the data and makes picks based on past performance and strategically reaching for companies to invest in that haven’t hit yet.

Again, yes, he makes some mistakes. But he’s secure in the knowledge that he’s following a plan, based on the data and his interpretation of it, based on his skill-set.  

Always Diversify

No, this does not fly in the face of my customer experience section. All of these points build on each other. You do the strategic work. Make a plan for the long term. You follow the numbers. And, yes, you take a few “chances.” But they are always calculated risks.

We all know not to put all your eggs in one basket. And while you are always focused on your ideal client, there is room for different approaches to gain their attention. And to gain a stronger Google ranking.

So some posts are short, to the point – but valuable. 300 words or less.

Some posts are longer, more impactful, maybe even more evergreen – 500-1000 words.

And some are pillar posts – the ones that rank higher on the Google SERP scale – reaching for the Zero Position of search engine results. They become the paragraph that the searcher can read without clicking to your website – but that’s often what it leads to.

This is also where social media and email blasts fall. Both can be used as solo advertisements of your product or service. But they can also point back to your site, to significant articles. Diversifying means you can draw more eyes onto all of your posts, which, again, compounds your credibility and authority, which raises your Google ranking, and on and on. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Accept the Call

When you make the effort to approach your content creation with an eye of an investor, you will compound your efforts and outreach. But again, only when you’re creating consistent, regular content. If you don’t have the time and the resources to do that, you’re not going to grow – not very quickly anyways.

Let us help you. We can get you on the right track with a strategic approach – something no small business should be without. We can also help you implement the strategy, from the smallest efforts and planning all the way up to creating and posting the content for you. Our writers are qualified and experienced, ready to engage with your ideal customers.

There are no guarantees in life. But I can promise you – if you’re not taking a strategic approach, your business isn’t likely to grow to its full potential. If you’d like help with any or all of the above, please reach out. We’ve built our business helping other small businesses expand. Let’s Grow The Dream together!

I’m not going to rehash all of the particulars. I just want to look for a moment at bare facts. The emotions of this ‘adventure’ have been all over the place and in many ways have distorted our perception of time. While it seems so much has changed, and so many things have happened, this apparent lifetime-length journey really has only been 18 months.

Even though it has only been 18 months, because of these seismic shifts – Coronavirus, social changes, political upheavals – our world will never be the same. It’s not just a feeling. We literally have either stunted the growth of or rapidly advanced many expected developments. And regardless of how you feel about it, as small business owners, you need to adapt – and there is a lot less time for dithering or thoughtful consideration.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t take the time to make an informed decision. But you absolutely need to adopt a strategic approach to your business – and you need to do it quickly. Otherwise, it’s way too easy to get overwhelmed by the options, the decisions, and to lose sight of the future.

We’re in a brave new world. Even the futurists have lost track of what’s coming.

But there is good news.

While there are new decisions to make and approaches to consider, the principles of small business strategy are still the same as they were decades ago.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

You may be approaching your business as more of a remote entity. Yes, you may be employing more gig or freelance workers from all parts of the country. More of your business may be online than ever before. And, sure, Google is changing their algorithm one more time.

Oh, yeah. Did you miss that? It was supposed to happen this time last year, and the folks at Alphabet opted to delay it in light of everything that was happening. But it’s still coming – it’s on the horizon now, and businesses everywhere are scrambling to prepare.

If it feels like you’re suddenly overwhelmed with too many things going on, you’re not alone. That’s kinda been the theme of these past eighteen months – scrambling. Trying to keep up. Working to adapt. Trying to do anything. But most importantly, trying not to do the wrong thing. Cause there’s just not time, right?

We talk about strategy a lot at Grow the Dream. Not just in these articles I post every week, but overall strategy. Strategy for our small business. Finding ways to connect and communicate. Are we helping others? Can we assist ourselves?

There’s an old English idiom: “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.” And we struggle, like many businesses, wondering if we’re helping or educating others on our principles, at the expense of not following them ourselves.

We love to help entrepreneurs define and share their stories – but we need to share ours too. Our success is a direct result of us helping your business succeed.

Brass Tacks

I could go on for a few hundred more words (and have in the past) justifying and explaining why companies in general, and especially small businesses, need to adopt a strategic approach. But I know who our target audience is. I know that they will take action when informed of what they need to do. Even if they sometimes often wait ’til the last minute.

There’s a reason I waited until today to do this article. And a reason for last week’s call to action. Last week I needed to make you aware that an event was coming. Today, I’m banging the drum, letting you know – sign up, because it’s only a couple of days away.

It might feel random and precipitous. It might feel like that moment when the preacher is giving a message and it seems like he’s staring into your soul and his words are only for you. I’m all about letting God work – but the twinge you feel in your stomach is the result of well-executed strategy.

I wish I could invite everyone to this – but we are limited in space and time. So if you live and work in the Sarasota-Bradenton area – or you’re willing to get up early enough to drive there – I have a special treat for you.

Saturday, June 5, 2021 (yes, this weekend), Grow the Dream is hosting a face-to-face strategy seminar & workshop. You’ll learn all about that Google update and how to leverage it for your business. You will learn how to tell your story – by actually working on it in the moment. You’ll get hands on literal experience as David G. Johnson deconstructs one of the participants’ website – maybe even yours – and shows how to make it work better. And we’ll even do some social distance networking.

Now Is The Time

I know your inclination is to wait, to be cautious, to get to it tomorrow after you’ve thought about it. I get that – I am probably more guilty of uber-overthinking everything than most. But as I’ve mentioned, the workshop is only a few days away. The Google changes are right on the workshop’s heels.

I have two quotes by my desk. One is anonymous – “When there is a hill to climb, don’t think that waiting will make it smaller.” The other is from the Biblical book of Habakkuk. It seems to contradict the first one, because it mentions waiting for the appointed time. But the first part defines the waiting – write down the vision, that he may run who reads it.

My deepest desire is to motivate people with my words. I want to help as many incredible, world-changing small businesses succeed as I can – and that starts this week with our “Strategic Marketing Workshop: 2021 & Beyond.” If it helps convince you to attend, breakfast is even provided!

It’s time to get back to business, and that means getting ahead of the changes – online or otherwise – that are coming. It means knowing and telling your story effectively. You owe it to yourself, your family and the people whose lives you hope to change with your business to be there.

The future is now. Don’t be left behind. Sign up for the workshop today. Let’s Grow the Dream together.

Return on Investment.

And if you’re more of a creative type like I am, you may have grumbled a time or two (or sixteen) about the difficulty of quantifying the ROI on an artistic venture. My go-to for those arguments is a quote by author Kurt Vonnegut:

“The arts… are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward.”

Unfortunately the people holding the purse strings usually want a more monetary return on their investment. So these days I point them to the ubiquitousness of Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, etc. – the services that got us through the pandemic shutdown without losing our sanity or murdering someone – all filled with creative endeavors. Pieces of art that the platforms have (and continue to) pay a pretty penny for.

But that’s not what we’re looking at today. While we’ve all considered ROI, for the money lenders and our retirement accounts, I’m betting most small business owners haven’t considered the corollary: the Cost of Inaction.

What Are You Waiting For?

I can tell you, from my time educating people about retirement options, that bankers and investment specialists also focus on the flipside of ROI – COI. The most poignant example is the one where you take a look at how compound interest works. A dollar properly invested at age 20, even if it’s never touched again, after 10 years is worth nearly 100 times what investing $10 is at age 30. Even during the recent recession.

Stock Brokers and Mutual Fund salesmen are fond of pointing out that when the stock market crashed in 1929, the people who survived and thrived in the Great Depression were those who didn’t panic. While the average consumer was pulling their money out of investments and savings and loans, the Rockefellers and Carnegies “let it ride.”

Opportunity Cost is defined as “the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action.”

Opportunity cost can be positive or negative. Cost of Inaction is the negative side. In Tim Ferris’ “Fear Setting” exercise, he calls the Cost of Inaction possibly the most important consideration you can take. For him, understanding the emotional, physical and financial costs for you and the people in your life is what truly drives us to take the uncomfortable action that moves us out of the status quo.

Put simply, every choice is in fact two choices. Every time you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else. And every no is really the choice to prioritize another yes.

Investing Your Time

In many ways, building credibility and visibility online is like investing for retirement. We don’t have an exact formula with marketing like they use in calculating compound interest, but it’s a similar mindset. The more you do now, the more your results will build on each other. The longer you wait, the smaller your potential returns could be.

Brokers will also tell you, the more consistent you are at putting away a few dollars every week, the more your investment will increase, not just compounding, but growing exponentially.

And just like investing for the future, consistently producing valuable, actionable content blog posts will exponentially grow your search engine visibility – regardless of how often Google changes their algorithm. Consistently providing extra worth to customers and searchers boosts organic search traffic. Adding value will always yield a profitable return.

Trust Doesn’t Rust

I’ve written extensively on the fact that 99% of the time, you won’t make a sale from a first visit to your website. In nine out of ten cases, searchers will never return to your site after the initial visit. I wrote those articles a few years ago, and I think if someone studied it, those numbers may have adjusted slightly since the pandemic began, but for the point I’m making they’re still valid.

You exchange valuable information like Lead Magnets for the potential customer’s contact information. That way you can keep in contact with them on a regular basis and when they’re ready to make a decision, hopefully you’re top of mind.

Online, there are seldom opportunities to do the old Tom Hopkins sales presentation to build company credibility. Even if you tried, people don’t have the patience for it, and often distrust the presenter, even if they appear interested. But every time someone visits your site and finds the answers they’re looking for, it adds to your trustworthiness in their minds.

The more often, and more consistently you provide value to the people who find you on search engines, the more you build credibility. And it’s an even stronger, more emotional connection, because they’re making the decision to trust you – not just taking your word for it. And as ol’ Tom has often told us, emotions make sales.

Investing in Emotional Impact

Psychologists tell us that as human beings we are more emotionally affected by losing something than by gaining something. We like to win, but we hate losing even more. To the point that if we worry that upsetting the status quo will cost us, we’ll sometimes ignore the fact that it can also greatly benefit us. Even with a track record of knowing change has been beneficial, we can still be stymied by the fear of loss.

The doctors call this “Escalation of Commitment.” But you might know it better by the economic take on it – the sunk-cost fallacy. Fear of losing, especially after we’ve invested so much time, money, resources, causes us to justify throwing good money after bad. To remix a couple of metaphors.

But as small business owners, we must resist this urge. Or better yet, counter it with emotional regulation. Emotional regulation strategies employ cognitive skills to redefine the meaning of a stimulus or situation. For example, both therapists and Weight Watchers employ and teach a technique called  “reframing.”

In therapy, the counselor helps you see things from a different perspective, presumably allowing you to put yourself in another’s shoes and see the behaviors you experienced as negative in a positive light. Weight Watchers, its own form of therapy, you look at why you overeat. In many people’s cases, the root cause is stress. So the program teaches you to look for alternative ways to relieve stress and try one of them.

The end result is the same – changed behavior due to a redefined emotional state.

Sacrifices Must Be Made

I know I got a bit technical with the last section, so let me bring it back around. Our topic last week was delegation and outsourcing.

There are only so many hours in the day. Even if you try to drive yourself 24/7, you’ll discover, as I did in college, that after about 72 hours of being awake, your brain starts sleeping for you, whether you want it or not. The phenomenon of microsleeps (mentally sleeping while awake) can occur in some subjects after just 48 hours without sleep. And after you pass 96 hours – awake for four days straight – your perception of reality is severely distorted.

Not the best situation for running a business.

Even if you’re the type of person who only needs four to five hours of sleep per night, you’ve still only got 19-20 hours to work and live life. Something sometime has to give. No one, no matter how talented, can do it all, not all the time.

One of the things we encourage our clients to do is to focus their attention and efforts on the things they do well. The places they succeed and get energized and do better than anyone else. It just doesn’t make sense to sacrifice your best time and effort – in areas where you are mediocre at best. I’m not saying that to be insulting, just asking you to face facts.

Spending time on one thing means less time for other things. Trying to do everything is not only untenable, it’s costing you the success your business could have. You’re wasting resources to save a few bucks – when it’s really costing you much more in the long run.

I can’t tell you how to run your business, but I can tell when you’re stretched too thin.

Faith Without Works is Dead

About halfway through this article, I repeated a phrase I’ve used often in the past five years of writing this weekly blog. You need to be “consistently producing valuable, actionable content blog posts.”

Valuable. Actionable.

I work very hard to research and write interesting, valuable content that will help your business succeed, even if you never once consider hiring Grow the Dream in any capacity. I do it for a variety of reasons. The most important being that I believe we should operate our business the way we recommend others operate theirs. So giving added value to every article is important to me.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t offer a call to action. In most instances, I try to be somewhat subtle. I encourage you to reach out, if you need help or want to learn more. I remind you that we built our business helping small businesses and entrepreneurs scale up their businesses.

But today, I want to, at the risk of coming off as “salesy,” be very direct. You could read every word we’ve written in these blog posts, going back nearly 20 years. You could memorize them. Tell them to others. But unless you take action – it’s all pointless. You get nothing out of it.

So I’m going to tell you very bluntly. We can help. Grow the Dream has taught and executed small business marketing strategies for more than 20 years. We get results. Our work is successful and we are very talented at what we do.

On June 5, 2021, we are hosting a LIVE, face-to-face Strategic Marketing Workshop.

This workshop will provide you with the tools you need to succeed in the digital marketplace – and how to manage your time and reduce your stress. It’s an amazing morning, breakfast and coffee provided, worth at least five or six times the amount we are asking from each business owner.

And we only have 30 slots.

We have to limit attendance due to COVID Safety Parameters, but also because we want to give you very detailed, hands-on attention. You’ll walk away with the top strategies and most up to date information. No question will be left unasked – and you’ll know exactly what steps to take next.

This is a program you cannot afford to miss.

This is your opportunity.  Don’t miss out. It’s time to take action.

Sign up here.

It’s an entrepreneur’s problem, typified by statements like “It’s just faster if I do it myself.” Which is something I hear a lot. And my response usually is, “is it?” I can say that, because I’ve both suffered from the perfectionist (and economical) drive to do it all myself. And I’ve dealt with supervisors who would suddenly offload – or try to – a huge project with an unrealistic deadline that they’ve suddenly run into.

And because of my own personal proclivities, I usually all but kill myself to try and relieve their emergency. But that’s a discussion for a later time.

As David says later in the podcast, “There’s only so many hours you can work in a day, or a week or whatever… You’ve got to be able to hand off the things that keep you from delivering your best value.”

I’m going to repeat that last phrase again… “delivering your best value.” You see, I think that most entrepreneurs and small business owners really do believe that they’re responsible for giving the best value to their customers. But at the same time, they often lack the perspective to see that they’re unable to do that. They’re spreading themselves too thin, trying to do too many things – and things they are not best at.

Expect the Ineffectual

Next week, I’ll talk about the specter of opportunity cost – and the cost of lost opportunities. But today, let’s look at an old analogy from John Maxwell. Or maybe it was Warren Buffet. Doesn’t matter. What’s important is the lesson, not the teacher.

Suppose that your earning potential is $100 per hour. You’re working from your home office and go to refill your coffee mug. Suddenly, you notice that the lawn is getting a little too high. Or the laundry basket is starting to overflow. Or those dishes need to be done. Maybe it would be good to run the vacuum…

Now for me, those tasks have the added “advantage” of being easy procrastination techniques that make it appear as if I’m being productive, while I’m just avoiding the work I should be doing. But that’s not why I’m bringing them up.

Now, if I spend an hour washing the dishes or vacuuming the house, that’s $100 of earning potential I’ve just thrown to the wind. Or – I can hire a maid to come in for 3 hours, pay them $75 and focus on the things that make me and my company money.

Now, instead of dishes, suppose I’m spending time tweaking the design on my website or posting social media posts. Or maybe minor accounting and spreadsheet work – things I am not very good at, which inevitably take more time to do than writing – which I am damn good at – and could outsource to a capable, qualified professional for a lot less than my hourly rate.

You’d balk at spending $100 an hour for a landscaper to mow your lawn – but you’ll spend 2 hours doing it, essentially wasting $200. That’s kind of the definition of “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

“Investments” Past the Point of no Return

As much as it pains us to delegate, outsource, let anyone else touch our stuff – and maybe screw it up – we have to look at it as an investment. We have to look at a cost-benefit analysis. I’ve discussed it many times before, but it’s relevant to revisit the Pareto Principle here.

The Pareto Principle, simply stated is this – 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. So which parts of your work are you spending the most time focusing on? Are you earning less because you’re spending too much time on things that don’t yield the greatest income?

Let’s put it this way – if your greatest skill is your ability to close potential clients and bring money into the company coffers, why would you reduce the time you have available to do that? You have an already honed skill – an advantage that cannot, so far, be replicated within your business. But, instead of closing customers, you’re spending an inordinate amount of time trying to learn a different skill. You’re struggling with a learning curve. Maybe you’re frustrated by the lack of progress from your efforts.

You’re putting off meeting with potential clients because you’re trying to get better at attracting new clients.

Of course, you’d never do that – except I see it happen every single day. Business owners put off the things they are super skilled and talented at, to focus on learning whatever the next new thing is that supposed to help their business.

Now, shiny object syndrome is a real thing – but I’m saying even proven techniques like writing and publishing a consistent content blog can be a waste of valuable time if you haven’t got the skill. And many entrepreneurs don’t.

Time is Money is Time

Let me use a simpler example. Suppose you launch your business and a large part of the daily activity is fielding incoming calls. Is it more cost effective for you to spend your $100-an-hour-value answering those calls – including the ones that will never yield customers or income?

Or would it be better to pay a secretary $20 an hour, plus benefits, to take those calls, freeing you up to create and develop the business? The only time you’re on the phone is for valuable tasks that yield $100 or more income per hour you spend on them.

Going back to the beginning of this article – there’s only so much time in the day. I’m an employee of Grow the Dream, so my hours are paid. But because I’m in California, I can work while David sleeps in Florida. And he can quickly prep things for me in the hours before I’m awake, so I can hit the ground running.

By using employees and freelancers in different time zones, Grow the Dream as a company is working 18-20 hours per day. David is talented and probably gets less sleep than he needs (I know I do), but he can’t consistently be working 18-20 hours per day, 5-7 days a week.

Neither can you. I don’t care how motivated and talented you are as an entrepreneur or small business owner, our bodies run out at some point. Are you limiting your success? Are you hurting yourself and your business (not to mention your significant others)?

Successful business owners leverage their time and resources.

If you want to be one, you will too.

Entrepreneurial Fulcrum

For more than 20 years, we’ve taught small business owners how to leverage their digital marketing efforts. Ignoring “conventional wisdom” about search engine optimization, and focusing on a strategic approach has led to faster than normal success. And the rest of the world is catching up to our methods, as Google and Facebook algorithms increasingly hamstring the old approaches. I’m not going to belabor that here.

But one thing we realized as we taught is that there was a need to assist small business owners with some of the more skill-based marketing efforts. A lot of entrepreneurs who went through our courses embraced the principles! But they lacked the ability or time to execute them most effectively.

So we pivoted a bit. We began offering our clients the option to not only learn the techniques – but also help implement them. We started with developing our unique model buyer personas. Other digital marketing services have adapted or ‘borrowed’ our methods, but didn’t focus as clearly on the specifics. Our clients get extremely detailed profiles to use for targeting their ideal customers – the ones that are a win-win for the client and their customer.

Then we went one step further. We offered clients who needed it the writing and graphics services we already utilized in house. Some clients have us write their content blogs. Some have us edit their writing into a clearer, more focused presentation. They leverage our highly-skilled, capable, talented staff for their benefit.

Which is more cost-effective… Spending valuable time learning a new skill, or utilizing a team with nearly 100 years of combined experience writing compelling copy targeted at a unique audience? This isn’t calculus. By taking advantage of what we do best, those small business owners were freed up to focus on what they did best.

“Automate” by Delegating

David is fond of telling our clients that our motto is to “train our clients til we’re out of a job.” And we do try to do that. But it’s irresponsible to not consider additional options when you need skills and talents that are outside your area of expertise.

Your business is your passion. But can you explain that passion or educate people on the necessity of your product and service effectively? Passion and speaking passionately go a long way. But at some point, you need to adapt or adopt captivating, effective communication techniques – especially if you’re doing it on paper.

Your passion is evident in your voice, your body language, your enthusiasm. But is that conveyed on the page? In my experience, often it’s not.

My passion is storytelling – and conveying it on the page. Words are my stock and trade. I know how to evoke visuals, emotions and engage readers. So does Betsy Dane, our other talented senior writer. She’s also top notch when it comes to grant applications and some of the business writing I find more mundane.

I can tell you, ‘you need to write consistent, targeted content posts,’ til I’m blue in the face. But if you don’t know how, or worse, are one of those people who hold off until it’s precisely perfect, but never published… that’s not doing anyone any good.

We may not be working our way out of a job – but we do want you to have the best chance of success. If writing or editing frustrates you, you’re less likely to do it. Hiring us to fill in that gap is not only a good investment, it may be a necessary one.

In this way, you can automate the important – by letting us help your business grow.

Areas of Expertise

The best way to grow your small business is to focus on the areas of your expertise. I know that’s hard when you’re just getting started. Even if you’re not a solopreneur, everyone in your business is likely wearing multiple hats. And that’s great when you’re getting started. For some, it’s that excitement that drives them.

That’s great if you want to be a serial entrepreneur. But what if your business idea isn’t one that Microsoft or Google or Facebook is going to pay millions of dollars for? What if you don’t want to start over and over and over again? What if you do, but recognize the value in having a strong business to sell off to the highest bidder?

Whether you want to create one awesome business that serves the world and eventually offers you more freedom, or if you want to create multiple world-changing entities… You still only have so much time.

Don’t you owe it to yourself and your family to leverage the best means at your disposal? Our services aren’t for everyone. But we are the best at what we do for the people we do it for. We have market proof of growth for our customers’ businesses year over year. Proof not only of the success of our strategic approach – but also success of the content we write for our clients.

We’re so confident that we’ll give you 25 minutes free of charge with our top consultant to see the difference. Just reach out and test the waters. We’ve built our business helping small businesses expand – and we can do the same for you.

Let’s Grow the Dream together!

But I don’t want to assume you’ve read everything I’ve written here. Hell, I don’t remember with crystal clarity everything I’ve written in this blog. I can’t expect that everyone who reads the latest post has reviewed the close to 240-thousand words I’ve written in the past 3 years, not to mention the rest of the posts since we started Grow the Dream 20+ years ago.

Which is, of course part of today’s discussion. In case I haven’t made it clear, repeating yourself is completely fine – and often required. For example, I try to end every blog with approximately the same call to action and catch-phrase, for lack of a better term. One thing you should absolutely be repeating always and often, is your branding story. Every chance you get to repeat your narrative should be taken.

Always Be Growing

Just as I indicated above – you can’t assume that all of the readers who encounter the article you’re about to post have read the previous articles. Or even that people who have been reading your posts for a while have read or remember each post.

There’s an old saying, attributed to countless folks that I mentioned a few posts back. “First you tell people what you’re going to teach them, then teach them, then tell them what you just taught them.” I’m not in favor of treating your readers and potential customers like children, but the fact is repetition does build knowledge. Even people who claim to have photographic memories don’t recall everything, especially since we know that the majority of people do more skimming than reading.

But even more so, if your content blog is doing what it’s supposed to do – building your audience and your ranking on search engines – you will always have more and newer people coming to your blog. And even returning to it. So it never hurts to repeat the key lessons or points of your content.

Just don’t do it too often. While there are several minor points I repeat in the majority of our articles – like you need to think strategically about your marketing – I don’t post the same articles week after week. I’m always looking for a new way to present the information or explain a concept that may resonate with someone differently.

So, yes, you can repeat, you should repeat, because your audience should be ever expanding.

Call of the Wild Action

As I alluded to earlier, one of the primary places you should repeat yourself is your call to action.

Psychologists tell us that our brains automatically scan material for themes and patterns. That’s why you get nervous at certain points when you’re watching a horror film, or you suddenly realize what’s about to happen, moments before the characters on screen come to that conclusion. Director Wes Craven even developed camera moves and audio cues that cause the audience to feel the dread coming. Even without knowing why, your brain “picks up on” subtle clues in sound, lighting and physical tension that guide you to a conclusion.

It’s a learning tool and a defense mechanism. It’s programmed into our consciousness to look for repetition, because it helps us learn and process things quicker. In the past, it was a way to protect ourselves, even going back to the cavemen. They told stories – live and in pictures – to teach people what to expect. And our brains learned to realize and react quickly to survive, say a lion attack. Just like our fight or flight reactions, it’s a core part of us.

In recent years, that tendency has been manipulated by everyone from salesmen to politicians to the news media to further their ends. There’s a reason we’re prone to look for ways to label or compartmentalize people. Your subconscious brain doesn’t delineate between using patterns and repetition positively or negatively – it just looks for them.

By repeating and reinforcing certain phrases and points, you can guide readers towards your call to action even before you state it. And, of course, repeating it, more or less verbatim, plants that call to action in their mind. Each article moves them closer to that “Big Yes” that you’re hoping for.

Cycling Through

One of the things that comes naturally once you’ve done the strategic work to figure out and target your ideal customer is developing a taste for the kinds of posts they’re going to be looking for. You know what they’re typically searching for and, often times even when they’re most likely to search for certain aspects of the product or service you provide.

So it’s easy to transfer those persistent, important topics into a calendar schedule. It’s one way to make things easier to sustain by essentially automating the selection of some of your topics. This solves part of the “what do I write” problem many small business owners face.

I’ll say it once more – you don’t want to repeat yourself too often. But if you know your best or most searched for topics, you can add those into your calendar at the appropriate times, or maybe once every couple of months.

Again, the schedule depends on your ideal customers. I can’t offer a one-size fits all solution, because the best strategic marketing is specific to your target customers. But there’s no reason you can’t discuss the same topic several times over the course of a year, let alone the life of your business.

DRY County

There is a productivity principle you might have heard about in certain business circles. The DRY principle – standing for “Don’t Repeat Yourself” – was developed by computer programmers. It’s an elegant solution to make sure you’re not doing excess work and leaving more potential for mistakes to occur.

Many small business owners “waste” time – more than they realize. Often they’re doing the same thing repeatedly, whether it’s rewriting the same emails over and over again, or spending hours on repeat operational admin tasks.

While this seems, on its face, to stand in opposition to the point I’m making here, the DRY idea is to minimize repetitive tasks, whether they’re mindless, or drain your energy because they’re not your keying on the areas of your passion and excellence. I’m actually going to be addressing that more specifically next week. Looking at how you can streamline aspects of your business – whether through automation or outsourcing. Allowing you to do your best work by taking advantage of other people’s skills and talents.

So while we here at Grow the Dream absolutely embrace the DRY principle, it doesn’t exactly apply here. At least, not in reference to the subject matter of content blog posts.

Resurrect & Refresh

The final thing I’ll talk about is not just repeating yourself, but finding ways to boost your existing articles. Because we’ve been talking about and teaching strategic marketing principles for a couple of decades, there are a variety of articles, going all the way back to our days as Epiphany Marketing, that still have value.

Not to toot our own horn, but the lessons we taught 20 years ago are not only just as pertinent now, in many cases, they’re even more relevant. Especially as Google refines their algorithm. So I will often link to those articles within new articles. It adds value and credibility to what I’m writing today, and at the same time increases those older articles’ relevance on the search engines.

The other technique you can apply is to go back periodically and update information. Or you can add more content to an existing article. If you’ve been consistent with your content, publishing every week or two, the Google bots know to audit your site on that periodic basis. When they do come by, they will note and update the information for your site. This will usually cause a slight bump in the Google rankings for those articles and your site.

The best way to choose which articles to update and refresh is to look not only at your strategic work, but also at Google analytics. Any article that’s more than a year or two old that’s still getting lots of traffic is fair game for this technique.

Not to Repeat Myself…

So to recap – repetition is fine – in moderation. And it should definitely be a part of your ongoing strategic digital marketing efforts, especially your brand story. Use it, repeat it, shout it from the rooftops – it’s what’s going to make your business unique and successful.

If you’d like help identifying or targeting your ideal customer – or creating content for them that delivers – please reach out. We’d love to help however we can. We’ve built our business helping small businesses and entrepreneurs succeed and expand.

Let’s Grow the Dream together!

I’ll even tell you what the title is, so you can see how/if it changed as I wrote the article: “Creating Content: Headlines.” As you can see, that is almost painfully generic. And yet, sometimes those end up being the best headlines, because they tell you exactly what you’re going to get.

Some writers work hard to come up with exotic, creative, interesting headlines. I’ve done it. I wrote an article titled, “What is BERT and How to Engage Ernie with It?” BERT is a one of the code names for a Google algorithm update, and of course, I was playing off the popular Sesame Street characters so many of us grew up with.

But… the title was a little over the top. The final article was titled, “Why Google’s New Algorithm is Better for Your Business.” More to the point, but it also probably led to more reads and relevant rankings by not confusing people searching for the Children’s Television Workshop.

Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. And sometimes, you end up with the clever title, then add the subtitle so that it makes more sense – i.e., “Choose Your Own Adventure – Using Your Customers’ Stories to Market Your Business.”

Ultimately, you have to make the decision – and any decision is better than not deciding and procrastinating one more day. But let’s look at some solid tips on how to write better, attention grabbing headlines.

You Won’t Believe What Happens Next!

I can’t tell you what to do. But I’m begging you, please use this type of headline sparingly – and usually in an ironic way.

Truly ironic – not Alanis Morissette ironic. Yeah, I know it’s catchy, but irony it ain’t (as she so humorously pointed out years later with James Corden). Irony is defined, in a literary sense, as a “situation in which there is a contrast between expectation and reality. For example, the difference between what something appears to mean versus its literal meaning.”

So in content creation, irony would be using a click-baity headline to prove your point. Emphasis on “proving your point.” As a trained journalist, I loathe headlines that are just there to spark outrage or confusion by just getting eyeballs on your article. Further, as history has proven, you have to be very good at this type of writing. For every The Onion or Wittenburg Door, there are countless disposable satirical sites that have fallen by the wayside. Or sites like Babylon Bee that do great headlines, but can’t deliver similarly strong content – in my opinion.

But titling an article, say, “The 5 Things You Must Do to Alienate Your Customers,” and using irony and humor within the article to highlight what NOT to do in your type of business works well. Again, in limited quantities. If every headline is click-bait silly, and you’re not The Onion, you run the risk of…. alienating your customers. See what I did there? (<– also, calling attention to your puns and other wordplay like this can get annoying.)

Promises, Promises

In a similar vein, don’t advertise something in a headline that has little or nothing to do with the actual content of the article. Just like false advertising, if you promise something, but don’t deliver, people will get frustrated. And these days, they’re far less likely to be forgiving or offer second chances.

Don’t be the used car salesman of content creation, throwing a bait and switch between the headline and the article.

1,000 Ways to Die

I’m not the only writer in my family. My youngest sister plied her trade as a copywriter for many years for a major advertising agency. She wrangled the job after graduating towards the top of her class at Creative Circus in Atlanta. One of her most challenging classes was solely about headlines. For this class, the students, many of whom already had careers in advertising, were tasked with coming up with 100 headlines for every project they were given.

I get 300-5000 words to get my point across with a content blog article. When I worked in TV & radio, I got 30 seconds to sell whatever I was assigned. In that class, my sister got 10-15 words. So every one of them HAD to be the best, most impactful language it could be.

So, yes, for every assignment, 3 days a week, for a semester, each student came up with 100 different headlines apiece. The key is less in the number and more in the habit. Writing takes as much muscle memory as running a marathon or driving a precision race car. Different muscles, of course, but the same attention to repetition and drilling as those other tasks.

Once you get into the habit of writing 100 versions, it’s easier to discard the chaff and the mundane and drill down to the truly good, relevant headlines. Do I do it every time? No. And no, I’m not perfect or even close to perfect a majority of the time. But the more you do, the better it can be.

So, yes, my recommendation when you’re getting started is to do at least 10-30 off the top of your head. Do the work to find the better title and you’ll see a definite positive result.

Paint By Numbers

This tip is less about skill and craft and more about what works for marketing. For whatever reason – I’m sure Neil Patel or Seth Godin has a post about it somewhere – when you add numbers to your titles they work better for people and for search engines.

So I’ve written about 11 tips, 8 reasons, 7 questions, 6 codes, 5 things, etc., etc. People love lists.

Part of the appeal is the specificity of the promise. If you say you’re sharing “9 Inspiring Ideas for Social Media Videos,” guess what? People know what they’ll get, how helpful it will be and approximately how long it’ll take to peruse the article. Of course, this is assuming you follow my earlier advice on following through on those promises.

Lists feel definitive – this is the final word. And numbered list headlines help build credibility and expertise. If you can define these lists as helpful – “3 Ways to Retarget & Reengage Without Creeping People Out” – and they are helpful, it’s a shortcut to our primal, “I want to trust,” authority seeking part of the brain.

Additionally, using a number in your headline helps with the final tip…

Keep It Short

Yes, I violate this tip ALL the time. And since I also build the graphics for most of our posts, I should know better. But sometimes I do it anyways.

From what I’ve read and seen, typically a good headline is no more than ten to twelve words. Add too many more and it’d hard to read as a headline. It’s harder to define the promise of the premise. And it’s easier to fit on the page/graphic/search engine results. Brevity is the soul of wit, and all that.

Do yourself a favor and keep the headline short and to the point. It’ll also help manage that tendency to be overly clever and pop-culture-y. Save that for the clever page dividers. It’s ultimately more entertaining and gives attentive readers a few Easter eggs without annoying the people who don’t get the reference.

So there you have it, 6 Tips for Attention Grabbing Headlines. Yes, the title changed – as I wrote the article. It bubbled up sometime between tip 4 and 5. No, I didn’t number them. LOL. Even before I got to writing the section on the idea that having numbers is helpful, I had an inkling that I would use one. But when I had finished that section, right before I wrote about being concise, I scrolled up and fixed the headline.

Succinct, numeric and to the point, as I think you’ll agree, keeps its promise.

If you’d like more advice on writing content like this to drive your strategic marketing – or, hey, hire us to do it for you, I hope you’ll reach out. We’ve built our business helping small businesses thrive.

Let’s Grow the Dream together!

Those six inquiries are great for police investigations, although they get translated a little differently. Why for a news reporter becomes motive for a detective. For most small businesses, creating content is less about strictly ‘reporting the facts,’ but the funny thing is – the five W’s work for marketing content too.

Just not quite the same way…

Who Am I Writing For?

If you’ve read many of our posts here at Grow the Dream, you know I usually cater to this question last, because it has a huge impact and it’s one of the central tenets of our process. In fact, I’ve written several articles just about the question of Who.

But I’m constantly amazed at entrepreneurs, small business owners, and even large corporations that have no idea for whom they’re creating their content. And, yes, you guessed it, it all comes down to strategy.

Every small business has one to three ideal customers. They are the clients who get the best results for a reasonable price they’re willing to pay. When we figure out who those potential customers are (often based on the existing customers we have), we place them, figuratively, in the bullseye of a target.

You always aim for the bullseye. Yes, it’s the smallest, often hardest to hit area of the target. But that’s the point. If you aim for the outer rings and miss, your arrow goes awry – or into some unsuspecting squire. If you aim for the bullseye and miss, it’s much more likely you’re still hitting the target.

So who do you write for? – your ideal customer! If you pinpoint your content to that perfect client, you have a great chance of hitting their pain points. And you stand a very good chance of reaching and connecting with people on the outskirts of the ideal. Both are acceptable marketing results. But if you cast a wide net (to really confuse metaphors), there’s a better chance you miss the perfect client – or any client.

What is the Purpose of The Post?

I know what you’re thinking – the purpose of the post is to make sales! That was easy. And yes, the purpose is to make sales – assuming profit and income are important to your business. But if it was that easy, you’d just do a post that says “here’s your thing, buy it”. (Which is kind of what the rest of your website is for.)

The purpose of your posts has to be more than just a call to action. There are a lot of different angles to take. One we’ve found that works well is an educational approach. This is how something works; this is how you do this; here’s the bigger picture.

But it’s far from the only one.

You can do testimonials – here’s what other people use it for, and here’s the success they’ve had. Or just straight up, I love this company or product and here’s why.

You can talk about pain points and how your product or service makes people feel. Decisions are always made from an emotional point – embrace that and talk about how your thing makes people’s lives better.

And, yes some posts can be very blatantly about how great your thing is and why you should invest in it right away. A call to action can be a post unto itself.

The most demanding aspect of a content blog post is that it does several things at once – educates, builds credibility, elicits an emotional response, and calls to action. It takes an effort and some practice to master, but if you are willing to put in the time, these posts can be the most effective.

Why Will the Intended Audience Care?

As I’ve pointed out before, decisions are made from an emotional point. Business decisions are made by people. People hate pain. If your thing means less pain or gives them more pleasure, they’re in.

Further, if your potential customer is searching for information, anything you can give them that makes their search easier, more assured, or less stressful will be successful.

Even if they ultimately choose not to do business with you on the first encounter (and most don’t), you establish your credibility as an expert in the field. And, you can display assurance and confidence by being okay with that – even pointing them to a competitor that better fits their needs.

Blog posts can isolate and inform your potential client – and by the same token, the less frustrating your content is the better. For example, a spammy post that announces by the headline that it will answer their question, but doesn’t – or tells them they need to check out parts 2 and 3 coming down the line to get the full answer, irritates people.

Think about how annoyed or angry you get when you click on the top Google result for your question only to find it’s misleading or a keyword farm with zero relevance. That’s not the emotion you want.

When Should I Post Content?

This question gets more into the nitty gritty behind the scenes. It is less about the customers and more about the impact. And unfortunately, there isn’t some one-size-fits-all answer.

For decades, Tuesday and Thursday were the best days to send email newsletters and post new content. There was some flexibility in times and whether Tuesday or Thursday was actually better, but overall, the previous sentence was true. And true for virtually all businesses.

But a strange thing happened when the majority of Americans suddenly started working from home. The whole apple cart was disrupted. There are now far more stratifications of businesses, client approaches and times and days that work. For a little while, Wednesday reigned supreme.

And my guess is eventually things will settle into clearer patterns. I’m not calling it the new normal anymore. Business and office situations have changed and evolved more in the past 12-18 months than they ever have. The closest comparison is maybe the shift in the 1920’s, as Madison Avenue became more important for the post-depression era after World War II. But the truth is, things are still in flux.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the need for consistency. Ideally, we recommend our clients post once a week – at the same day and time. Some spread it out more – every two weeks or monthly. But I wouldn’t recommend posting less than once a month. Otherwise, you lose momentum and what’s worse the Google bots can’t read a pattern and don’t scan your site as often.

How Does Your Content Stand Out?

Really, I’ve covered most of this already. Your content stands out because it’s written for your ideal client, posted on a consistent day and time and addresses the client’s pain in some way.

You get bonus points by addressing the audience directly, in your voice. In that way, you diverge from traditional journalism. Shifting from “all the facts, ma’am,” to explaining things in your own personality and personal style makes the content more accessible.

Personally, I always try to start an article with some sort of story or anecdote that draws the reader in. Sometimes, I have to pull back from that a bit if the story is getting too complicated. But story engages your reader. And if the story connects to what you want to talk about and already generates an emotion in the reader before you get to the “meat” of the post, all the better.

The other benefit is connecting to the person or personality. Remember, you want to address your content towards your ideal audience. This can even come into the voice of the writing. In addition to what I write for the Grow the Dream blog – for our ideal clients – I also ‘ghost write’ posts for several of our clients. My name isn’t on them – and if I’ve done them right, you don’t see my fingerprints on them. Rather, I write in the voice of the client, addressing their ideal clients.

Where Do I Go From Here?

Creating good quality content is not an impossible task. Once you’ve done the important strategic work, you’ll have a better handle on who needs and wants your thing and how to reach them and speak to them.

There is always more you can write about, and you shouldn’t worry about repeating yourself – I do it at least once a month. As the old adage goes, “In the first part I tell ’em what I am going to tell ’em; in the second part—well, I tell ’em; in the third part I tell ’em what I’ve told ’em.” Regardless of who came up with this particular pattern, the lesson of repetition stands. People often need a reminder of what was said or taught before. And it doesn’t hurt your Google ranking either.

But if you’d like some ideas for a variety of other posts, you can find some here.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that in addition to strategy work, Grow the Dream also offers content post writing services like the one I described in the above section. And I’m certainly not the only one – we have a team of great people working behind the scenes – including the amazing Betsy Dane, who delivers incredible copy for our clients as well.

We built our business helping other small businesses grow and expand. We’d love to help you too. If you want to learn more about any of our services, please reach out. Let’s Grow the Dream together!

And Facebook users are paying the price. Unclaimed domains are used daily on the site to promote fake shops, surplus providers and going out of business sales. The practice has increased dramatically since the pandemic lockdowns, costing users countless dollars when items don’t show up on their front porches. And no way to contact to the now non-existent seller.

In 2017, in an effort to curb fake news claims from both major political parties, Facebook introduced domain verification, and outlets claimed their sites were verified and designated by the tiny “i” on the preview Facebook posted. Clicking the “i” offered users a history of the site, the article and a few other details.

They quickly expanded the process to offer it for all websites. Those who claimed their site gained the exclusive ability to manage the image and information offered in a preview post. Now only the verified website owner could make changes to the thumbnail image, article title, and link description when sharing the link to their own Facebook page.

With the impending Apple upgrade to iOs 14, Facebook will utilize Domain Verification to adapt to Apple’s new AppTracking Transparency policy.

Framing the Argument

According to Facebook, iOs 14 will “impact how it receives and processes conversion events from tools like the Facebook pixel. Businesses that advertise mobile apps, as well as those that optimize, target, and report on web conversion events from any of our business tools will be affected.”

In other words, the new AppTracking Transparency will restrict Facebook’s ability to process certain analytics. This data allows Facebook ads to function at the level so many small businesses have taken advantage of. As disastrous as Facebook wants their business users to think the problems will be, it’s really just the latest in an ongoing shift towards privacy and away from data mining.

I talked earlier this month about similar changes that Google is implementing. And the writing’s been on the wall since Europe passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California followed suit with their Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

As much as we’d all like short cuts and an easier flow, you can no longer rely on the data from the silicon valley giants to make finding & selling to customers easier. The only reliable solution? Have your own website and use content posts to answer questions, establish authority, target and convert your ideal customers. You need to develop a strategic digital marketing approach.

However, social media cannot be ignored. It remains a viable portion of most strategic marketing approaches. This is especially true if Facebook ads figures into your approach – or may in the future. Once the changes go into effect, anyone who advertises on Facebook will need to have verified their domain.

Trust, But Verify

There are three different methods to implement domain verification on Facebook.

1. Add a DNS TXT entry to your DNS record to confirm that you own the domain.
2. Upload an HTML file provided by Facebook to your web directory and confirm domain ownership in Business Manager.
3. Add a meta tag to the <head> section of your domain home page.

Start in Facebook Business Manager. You’ll want to hit the Business Settings button in the upper right corner. Click the Brand Safety tab (right below Data Sources), and select Domains from the expanded left side navigation list.

Click the blue “ADD” button in the middle of the page. In the pop-up add the domain you want to associate to your business. If you have more than one domain listed, select the domain for which you desire to confirm ownership. Choose the method you wish to use to verify your domain: DNS Verification, Meta Tags or the HTML File Upload. Again, you only have to select one.

For DNS Verification:

You’ll need to log in to whatever service you use for hosting. Under the DNS Verification tab on Facebook, you’ll see a unique text record that needs to be copied and pasted into your DNS configuration. Each hosting platform has a slightly different approach, so check if you’re not sure. Once the changes have propagated across your site’s domain servers, you can click the green “Verify” button at the bottom of the DNS Verification area. Tis can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 72 hours. Facebook recommends leaving the DNS TXT entry in place, as verification will be checked periodically.

To Upload an HTML File:

To the right of the DNS Verification tab is the HTML File Upload tab. Click it, then download the HTML Verification file. You’ll need to upload this file to the root directory of your website. Once the upload is complete, you can click the green “Verify” button at the bottom of this section. Just like DNS, Facebook recommends leaving the file in place for future verification checks.

Meta Tag Verification:

Navigate to the Meta Tag Verification tab. Copy the meta tag with your verification code, then paste it into the <head> section of the HTML of your domain home page. Confirm that the meta tag is visible by visiting your domain home page and viewing the HTML source. Once confirmed, click the green Verify button at the bottom of the Meta Tag Verification tab for the selected domain. And, you guessed it, leave it there. Facebook will be checking.

Now you’re all set to keep creating Facebook ads. There are some other restrictions, like number of conversions you’re able to track and new limits to discriminatory data, but once you familiarize yourself with them, you’re good to go.

I cannot stress this enough – Facebook is not an end all and be all for digital marketing. You need a solid strategy to find and attract your best customers. If you’d like help building that strategy, training your team to develop and enhance it, or just ongoing periodic posts to stay on top of the Google algorithm, please reach out.

We built our business helping small businesses build theirs. Let’s Grow The Dream together!

Alan Turing was the mathematician famous for breaking the Nazi’s original Enigma code during World War II. But years after the war ended, he theorized that at some point artificial intelligence would develop the ability to think on its own. He proposed something he called “the imitation game” (yes, also the movie title), where an artificial intelligence could be interviewed blindly and appear to be human. The film Ex Machina also borrowed from this theory.

Despite Turing’s efforts – illustrating nine different significant objections to artificial intelligence – since his death in 1954, scientists and engineers have worked to develop true machine or artificial intelligences. The most recent work has been with neural networks. And they’ve come a long way, at least in theory.

Bert, Engage With Ernie

Back in November of 2018, Google released a new open source algorithm on GitHub. They named it “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers,” or BERT for short. BERT was a neural network that utilized Natural Language Processing (NLP) to, for all intents and purposes, “learn” users languages.

Essentially, the algorithm, instead of just sending out a search for a string of terms, started looking “both ways.” By examining the search string and trying to determine the relationship between words, it learns what users are ‘really’ searching for, and how they speak.

The BERT neural network algorithm radically improved search results. And the underlying algorithms and updates Google made continued to help BERT learn and improve. Every day, BERT’s ability to understand what it thinks you’re looking for does provide better search results for most people. And it made other aspects of our lives easier too.

Hey, Siri, Call Alexa, Okay, Google?

While SIRI dates back to 2010, a funny thing happened on Christmas morning, 2017. A LOT of people found smart speakers under the tree. Amazon Echo’s, Google Home’s, Google Assistants, and more. And as I talked about in detail last year, these voice-activated personal digital assistants have revolutionized search. Additionally, they “speak” in more normal human language. BERT uses NLP to better comprehend what you’re asking for, calculates the best response, based on its programming and what it knows about you, and spits out a response formatted to sound more human-like.

And while the system is still based on data and number crunching, the algorithm comprehends you, uses its knowledge of you, and answers you. And it’s not giving you a menu of possible answers – it gives one response – or asks for more information. That seems much more like thinking than a lot of people on social media are prone to.

While no one will mistake Alexa or Cortana for being human, they are closer than you may think. In fact, the mechanical sounding voice may be there on purpose to disguise how well they DO understand our queries.

By the time we hit 2020, an estimated 3.25 Billion smart speakers were in use across the globe.

Revolutionizing Marketing Mock-Up

Despite literally hundreds of changes to the Google search algorithms and operations ranking each year, some marketers are still under the impression that keyword farming is the best approach. Keyword farming or blasting is focusing on words and small phrases that identify your business – or at least you think they do. But search engine optimization in the 21^st century is so much more than that. And I hate to keep harping on this, but I still see it happening so much, I want to make things clear.

In the old days of search, search engines, including Google, were limited to offering results that exactly matched the keywords plugged into them. But that changed twenty years ago! The reason Google survived and the majority of other search engines disappeared or were absorbed by companies like Microsoft, is because they actively looked for ways to deliver better search results to the end user.

One of the things that really advanced them ahead in a race they had already jumped several laps ahead in was machine learning. They analyzed what people searched for and why. They realized, as we pointed out nearly 20 years ago, that average people weren’t stringing together keywords. Nor were they always searching for businesses. They were looking for solutions.

A few people search for “obedience schools in my area.” But there are FAR more people searching for “how to stop my dog from barking.” I should also point out that in the past, “in my area” actually meant “in Austin, Texas,” or “in Sarasota, Florida.” But now thanks to BERT, Google understands “in my area” to be literally within a certain area around where you physically are when you ask. You don’t have to specify.

But Wait, There’s More

Before BERT came RankBrain, which analyzed past searches and identifies which words and phrases best match that search, even if they don’t match exactly or have never been searched. It couldn’t understand the context of the search phrase, but could estimate the efficacy of the results. Using that, it “knows” the likelihood of its response being what you were looking for.

And guess what? RankBrain is still in effect. It works both in conjunction with and separately from BERT. By uniting the two algorithms, Google can judge your website – does it answer the question being searched for? Or does it just have a few of the random terms? Guess which one gets top billing on the search results page…

Now, Google is leveraging all of that for its most ambitious new code ever. RankBrain cranked the knob to 9. BERT took it to 11. But this summer, the knob is getting ripped off. Subtle changes are already being rolled out as I type this. But come May 2021, Page Experience takes center stage. Google wants to make sure the search results you get are the best – especially if you leave their page.

So Google will now factor in load speed, size of graphics, responsive design (for mobile access), and most of all – usefulness in your website. A landing page is not good enough. Your design can be simple, but it must be robust and beneficial to the searcher. So the address and phone number of your obedience school and some puppy pictures are not enough.

Now more than ever, YOU NEED CONTENT.

You need to be posting on a periodic basis, value adding content that answers questions your ideal customers are asking. You can start by asking them! You’ll need to develop a profile of that ideal customer – demographics, psychographics, as much specific data as you can muster. You need to speak in a language they understand. And you need to do it again and again and again.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re in luck. We’ve built our business helping small businesses find and target those ideal customers. We can help you build a profile or teach you how to begin the process. We also have expert writers on staff who can take your ideal customer, and start answering the questions they’re asking.

So when Google’s bots crawl over your site, they mark it as useful, valuable, essential. We’ve literally had clients who, in just a couple of months, moved to the top of Google search results for their ideal customers. And that was in the old days – now our methods work faster and harder for you.

Let us help you prepare for the new Google rollout, and excel in all of your digital marketing. Please reach out for more details. Let’s Grow The Dream together!