Content Mastery Guide

Let's turn down this thought leadership pressure cooker!

Since last week's Wealthy Thought Leader conference (I attended via simulcast this year), I've been thinking about innovation. It started when we were watching a very creative presentation from Jennifer Lee of Artizen Coaching, when one of my colleagues declared that she's simply "not creative."

Then, we heard from Michael Port that as entrepreneurs, we are already being creative.

That brought me back to a question I asked previously about writing thought leadership posts: "Do you need to be a thought leader?"

If you're feeling pressured to come up with something new and exciting every time you post to your blog, no wonder you're having trouble keeping up.

Let's turn down this pressure cooker and take a reality check!

Consider your readers:

• Are they really expecting or wanting to read something innovative every time they hear from you? Or are they are looking for concrete and practical information that will help them solve whatever problem they're experiencing right now?

• Are they exposed on a daily basis to the newest work from all of your industry colleagues (like you are) or are you their only link to these ideas?

So relax, please. When it's time to write a thought leadership post, you'll know it (and here are some tips that will help). In the meantime, just keep building your mountain of content, one solid, boring, helpful post at a time.

How to Write For Different Learners

While I was researching and preparing for the presentation call "How to Write So People Will Learn," I was thrilled to find Marcia Conner and the resources on her Ageless Learner website.

Most people love taking self-assessments, and I'm no different. I tested and wrote about my own learning style in this previous post, How Do You Like to Learn?

Thanks to Marcia, we've got four new juicy assessments to help us learn about and improve our own learning process.

Here are the four assessments, along with my suggestions for how to gear your writing to people with different learning styles.

(1) What's Your Direction Style?

To make sure your content appeals to both global and linear learners, balance your blog with both thought pieces and "how to" pieces.

(2) What's Your Engagement Style?

Think-to-talk learners will probably appreciate the opportunity to interact with your new ideas by studying them alone. For talk-to-think learners, you may want to offer additional opportunities for them to discuss the ideas with you one-on-one or in a group.

(3) What's Your Motivation Style?

For readers who are goal-oriented, remind them of the results they may see if they apply what you're suggesting. For people who are relationship-oriented, give them the opportunity to share their learning with others. Or remind them of how your solutions will improve their business or personal relationships.

For readers who are learning-oriented, offer plenty of links for them to continue reading and learning.

(4) What's Your Learning Style?

For visual learners, consider incorporating graphs, images or video into your blog posts. For audio learners, try recording your post with Audio Acrobat. For tactile/kinesthetic learners, close your article with active ways they can implement what they've learned.

While you won't apply each of these strategies to every blog post, there are plenty of ideas here to help you stretch your writing to appeal to a wider range of learners.

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These four assessments were published in Marcia's 2004 book, Learn More Now: 10 Simple Steps to Learning Better, Smarter, and Faster. Marcia has continued to write and teach about the topic of learning, including a blog on the Fast Company website  and a new book, The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media (with Tony Bingham, forward by Daniel H. Pink).

 

A Passionate Case for Educational Content Marketing

In a shining example of how a high-quality blog post can generate attention for years to come, I want to share something I found when I was researching "How to Write So Readers Will Learn," the Content Mastery Action Day Presentation call.

Tech writing expert (and fellow Typepad user) Kathy Sierra posted Marketing should be education, education should be marketing back in February 2007, and actually stopped posting to this blog just a couple of months later (but that's another story).

Kathy's blog, Creating Passionate Users, was designed to explore how the science of learning could help tech writers (and others) make "users" (of products/services) more passionate about the product/service, as well as the rest of their life.

I really loved the case that this post made for marketers and educators to borrow from each other's techniques for the good of all. I can certainly see the potential for getting kids excited about learning.

I also appreciated the reinforcement of the idea that educating readers about our services and products will help us to make a deeper connection.

Check out Kathy's post and let me know what you think!

Marketing should be education, education should be marketing

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Update (September 16, 2011): Here is a new video by Kathy Sierra, that I found on Tim Grahl's website about online marketing for authors.

Blog Posts Help Turn Social Networking Into Business Networking

Last week at the Barrie Public Library, a group of business owners gathered (face-to-face!) to learn more about how to use social media tools to grow a business.

My contribution to this panel discussion was Content Counts, an updated version of my manifesto about the quality of online content.

One of the points I made to the group was that when you have high-quality information posted to your blog, you can link to that from your social media accounts.

Why would you want to do that?

Benefits of posting your blog links on social media

• You become a more valuable connection - one who has useful information to share.
• Your friends, followers and fans can easily pass along your link to their own networks.
• It's a way to stay active on your social networks, even if you're shy about starting or jumping into conversations. The more you blog, the more active you can be.
• Once they're at your blog or blogsite, it's easy for people to read more articles, join your mailing list, or check out your services.

Corporate blogging expert Debbie Weil says, "If you can't link to it, it doesn't exist." That's why if you're using social media to grow your business, being social isn't enough. As brilliant, inspiring, funny and helpful your tweets may be, linking to a single tweet is a bit of a dead end if there's no link back to your blog or website.

Inviting people to your site is the key step that helps them get to know you better and decide whether to hire or refer you.

 

 

How to Make a Three-Dimensional Connection on a Two-Dimensional Blog

A blog is a special kind of website that is (hopefully) frequently updated with text, images, audio or video. Each of those updates is a post.

As a business owner, you update your blog and hope that your current and future clients will visit, look at your content, and like it enough to start or continue a relationship with you.

By their essence, blogs are really impersonal things. You're over here, your reader is over there, and there's no live interaction between you.

Here are three tips for shortening the distance between you and your readers:

1. Put a little love in your blog. When you sit down to write, think about the positive difference you'd like to be making in your readers' lives. Think about one ideal client, and how this might help him or her.
2. Reach out and touch somebody's smartphone. Here's one more reason to be focused and brief in your blog posts: You never know where and when people might be connecting with your content. Make it easy for people to grasp your message quickly when they're on the go. If you make that connection, they'll come back when they have time to look more closely.
3. Teach your readers well. If you help your readers learn something that's useful and valuable to them, that leads to positive feelings about you. The next time they see your name in their Inbox or social networking account, they'll remember that feeling and build from there.

If you'd like more tips about how to write so people will learn, join the next Content Mastery Action Day presentation call on Thursday, May 12th from 9:30-10:00 a.m. Eastern.

Content Mastery Guide subscribers, check your Inbox for call-in details. Or subscribe now on the Secrets of Content Mastery page.