14 Things To Do This Year

1 – Use a 3-level goal setting approach:
- What is the minimum result that I could be happy with?
- What kind of result would make me really happy?
- What kind of result would generate fireworks?

2 – Measure success against yourself; your own past performance, not against others’ performance.

3 – Test and measure your marketing activities. What’s working? What’s not working?

4 – Give as much as you can, right now, in all areas of your life.

5 – Publish lots of content, wherever you can find a place to publish it. Be heard above the noise.

6 – Do lots of networking. Lots of it.

7 – Remember how awesome you are.

8 – Be insanely brave. Only good can come from it.

9 – Spend more time with friends and family.

10 – Make a NOT TO DO list of the things you’d like to STOP doing.

11 – De-clutter your life, your living space, your mind.

12 – Know your desired outcome.

13 – Surround yourself with positive people.

14 – Take consistent, focused action.

Reasons to Blog

There are tons of reasons to have a blog. Here are a few.

Blogging helps establish you as an expert in your field:

If you write extensively about topics in your field, people will come to regard you as an established expert; the more you write, the more that will be true. And in marketing, being an “expert” is gold. This, in my opinion, may be the single most important reason to maintain a blog.

Blogging gives users a reason to come back

If your website content never changes, visitors will read what they want to once and leave and probably never be back. But if you’re writing new content all the time, they have a reason to come back. And if your content is interesting, they may even become loyal readers (and fans).

Blogging gives you a reason to create new content

Once you’ve established a blogging habit, you’ll want to keep doing it (the definition of a habit, after all). If you don’t have a blog, adding new content is difficult and may involve redesigning your site. Blogs are simple; they manage themselves. All you have to do is to keep pouring content into them.

Blogging helps you think and improves your creativity

By disciplining yourself to blog frequently, you are making yourself create new ideas, think new thoughts, and explain things in new ways. Blogging will keep you out of mental ruts. New ideas will emerge, and you may even find yourself changing or redefining your business model.

Google loves activity

Did you know that Google gets bored easily, and if it finds nothing new when it checks your site, it probably will stop checking? But did you know that Google sees each new blog post as a separate page, and more pages and more content equals more attention from search engines? Want to get found? Write more stuff, and do it often!

Web Stats for 2012

In 2012:

The audience of internet users in the U.S. will grow to 239 million, about 75% of the total population.

Social Media:

Facebook will reach 143 million US users in 2012, up 8% over 2011.
About 2/3 of Internet users will use social networks in 2012.
More than 90% of social network users will be on Facebook.

Online Video:

Online video viewers will reach 169 million in 2012.
53% of the population and 71% of Internet users will be watching online video.
Mobile video viewers will reach 55 million.
Smartphone video viewers will reach 51 million.

Ecommerce:

88% of US Internet users ages 14+ will browse or research products online in 2012.
84% of Internet researchers will make at least one purchase via the web during 2012.
Online shoppers will reach 184 million, up 3% from 2011.
Online buyers will reach 155 million, up 4% from 2011.

Mobile Marketing:

Smartphone users will increase by 18% to 107 million.
94% of smartphone users will be accessing the Internet on their phones.
Mobile shoppers will reach 73 million.
Mobile buyers will reach 38 million.
Smartphone shoppers will reach 68 million.
Smartphone buyers will reach 36.4 million in 2012.
Tablet users will reach 55 million, a 63% increase over 2011.
iPad users will grow to 42 million.
76% of tablet users will be iPad users.
Adult eReader users will reach 45 million in 2012, up from 33.3 million in 2011.

Maybe you should get more involved?

Expensive Business Cards

A few pennies each. Maybe a dime. That’s all business cards cost. But there’s another kind of “business card” that is much more effective than those little 2″ x 3.5″ slips of paper, and proportionately costlier. Would you be willing to spend $2 each for business cards? How about $5, or more?

I’m talking about things like books (physical ones, not ebooks). And CDs and DVDs. Books are sometimes described as “very expensive business cards”, and I rather agree with that definition.

Now, given the current explosion of ebooks and digital-everything-else, you could ask, why even bother with physical books for any reason? And CDs and DVDs? Are you kidding? Whatever it is, just put it on a website! Physical media of all kinds is on its way out.

Maybe so, but not just yet. It remains true that if you want to get a business prospect’s attention – if you want to make an impression, and have them remember you and hold you at some level of esteem – just hand them a book that you wrote or a CD that you authored and recorded. Being a “published author” can carry a lot of weight.

Business is competitive, always has been, always will be. And what we’re all really competing for is something called “mindshare” – to get someone’s attention, then keep their attention. To have them remember you. To have them think, “Well, I’ve got two people I can possibly buy this service from, and both claim to be good at what they do, to be experts in their field, but this person actually wrote a book about it, and the other person didn’t.” All other things being equal, the person who wrote the book will win. That may sound a bit simplistic, but I think it’s true.

It takes some effort to produce a disc, or write and publish a book. But it’s well worth the time, trouble, expense, and whatever stresses it may bring about.

So get yourself some expensive business cards.

Repeat performance?

So this is the time of year that we prepare for the next year. We think back about what we’ve done (or more likely what we have NOT done) in the year just ending, and resolve that “next year things will be different”. It’s an annual story that we tell ourselves.

But do we even believe our own story anymore? How many years have we told ourselves that story, only to have another year pretty much like the previous one? As one of my Facebook Friends stated, are we just “getting ready to get ready to do nothing all over again in the coming year”?

This is not about years. Or any other time periods. There are no time periods. There is nothing magic, special or different about January 1. Every day is like every other day. Every day is January 1.

This is about STARTING.

If you’re not going to start on THIS day (today), why should anyone (including you) believe that you’re going to start on any other day?

But it’s not even about days, let alone years. It’s about minutes, which, when you combine 60 of them together, create an hour. And hours create days create weeks create months create years create lifetimes.

But wait, it’s not about minutes either. It’s about moments. You can measure a minute, but not a moment. A moment lasts for the duration of a decision; a decision to START. NOW. Since there is no other moment than “now”, it shouldn’t really be a difficult decision.

Whatever is going to make your Next Year better than your This Year can’t wait until January 1.

So START.

NOW.

It’s about Quality

We have all grown up in a world where we were constantly advertised to. We have been assaulted by promotional messages from every possible angle at all hours of day and night, screaming at us to “buy their stuff”. And we’re tired of it. We’ve been tired of it for decades now, but until recently we had no choice.

But the revolution has arrived. Now we (consumers) are tuning out the screamers. We’re now in control. We decide what we want, and we seek it out, rather than having it shoved in our faces. Not all advertisers have woke up to this fact, but they will. In the meantime, we (businesses) who are aware of this need to once and for all stop advertising. If we don’t like being screamed at, then we must stop screaming at others. The age of “Buy My Stuff” is gone, and the age of relationships is here. The age of quantity (how many readers does this magazine or newspaper have, or how many people watch this TV show) is gone, and the age of quality is here (how many people do I have on my list who Know, Like and Trust me?). We can no longer afford to “blast” a message out to the masses, and hope that a few people will see it and buy something from us. Now we must reduce the number of people who hear our message and increase the depth and quality of the relationships we have with those people.

Mindshare (another’s awareness of you) can be fleeting, which is what traditional advertising usually achieved, or it can be sustained, which is what deeper and higher quality relationships achieve.
Build your list. Nurture your list. Talk to your list. Care for your list. And they’ll end up buying your stuff. And it will start to become effortless on your part.
Tom Harris

What do you want them to do?

So you’ve got a lot of marketing “stuff” happening – a website, a blog, business cards, brochures, videos, your Facebook profile and business page, Twitter, and on and on. But is it causing the people who look at it to DO anything? Doesn’t matter that it’s all very beautiful and well-designed, that your message is loud and clear, that your writing is clean and concise, your videos are professionally produced and edited, and so on. If it all just sits there and doesn’t produce any activity on the part of your audience, then it’s all for naught.

What do you want people to DO? Sign up for your mailing list, call you, buy something online, subscribe to your blog, contribute to your cause? Well, you have to ACTUALLY ASK THEM. And the little thing that does the asking is called a CTA, a Call-to-Action. A CTA will basically say “Sign up now for our mailing list!” rather than a lame and limp “Here’s our mailing list signup form; just in case you might be interested.” If you’re not excited about it, they’re not going to be excited about it.

A better CTA will say “Sign up for our mailing list and immediately get a FREE REPORT about _______!” Or whatever enticement that you can think of, because it can’t be a one-way street. If you want something from your audience (in this case, their email address and permission to market to them), then you have to give them something in return.

So are you asking? If you HAVE NOT, maybe it’s because you ASK NOT. What do you want to ask for, and what are you willing to give in return?

Tom Harris
tom@tomharris.us

Be a starving author.

Most people who write a book plan on selling it. And making some money from it. Maybe not a LOT of money. But at least SOME money. OK, at least they want to generate enough cash to cover the cost of editing, cover design, printing, etc.

If you’re planning on profit from sales of your book, there’s a really good possibility of disappointment. Very few authors make much money from book sales. Being an author is like show business – a few at the very top (Grisham, King, Ludlum, Rowling, Roberts, Patterson, et al) make insane amounts of money, and the rest are waiting tables hoping their “big break” will come soon.
But why are you writing the book? Could it be that you’re trying to deliver a message? Is there a larger plan than book revenue?

If that’s true – that you just want to get your message out – would it be a good idea to CHARGE PEOPLE MONEY for your message?

Welcome to an aspect of the “new marketing”, where you take your best information and give it away for free. Why would you do that? How about to create awareness of yourself and your business, to create buzz, to establish credibility as an expert in your field? The list of reasons goes on. And giving away books for free is a small price to pay for those benefits. But if the out-of-pocket costs of creating a printed book are a bit much for you, then write ebooks – they will cost you almost nothing to produce, and absolutely nothing to “manufacture” and ship, and the public will still view you as a “published author” if you brand yourself correctly.

The marketing value of being a published author can be incredible. It can bring you business in unexpected ways. It can land speaking, coaching or consulting gigs for you. It can be the factor that makes people buy YOUR stuff over someone else’s stuff, because YOU are the expert because YOU wrote a book.
So get started on your book. The sooner you’re done, the sooner you can give it away. And you won’t be a starving author for very long.

How about writing a little book?

I mean a really little book; like 3.5″ x 5″. They’re called “minibuks”, and you can get them at http://www.minibuk.com. They’re super cute, inexpensive, and attention-getting.

Inexpensive? Yes, a 96 page, perfect-bound minibuk costs only $2.24 each in quantities of 250 (the minimum quantity).

Sell them, give them away, your choice. But if you want to write and self-publish a book, this is one quick and painless way to do it.

All minibuks are black-and-white inside with a full-color cover. Binding is either perfect-bound (must be minimum 64 pages, and can be over 200 pages), or saddle-stitched (maximum 48 pages).

I have not utilized this service yet (just discovered it yesterday), but the process looks super simple.

Imagine being able to drop a cute little book that YOU wrote into the hands of a client or prospect, and it only cost you a couple of bucks? Think that might set you apart?

Get all the details at http://www.minibuk.com.

Whose website is it?

Your website is not about your organization.

It’s about your users, your constituency, the audience or market that your organization serves. Every decision related to design, content and function of a site must be made with the needs of your audience in mind.

Your website is not about you.

It’s not about your personal likes and dislikes and tastes and preferences. Your personal opinions do not matter, and should have no place in determining what your site looks like or how it acts. Only business considerations matter. Everything must be decided with the user’s needs in mind. Get your ego the hell out of the game. Got it?

It’s not your website – it’s your users’ website.

Your site should not be designed for your benefit. It should be designed for the benefit of your users, your constituents; your customers, your prospects, your members, your contributors, your volunteers, your whatever.

Your benefit comes from serving the needs of your users.

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