Marketing | Words on the Page

Superbly Idiotic Marketing

Posted on by lwidmer

Win something already! Sign up for my occasional newsletter (usually once or twice a month), you’re entered to win a $20 Amazon gift card! Just click right on over there at the left where it says Want More? Everyone registered by Saturday, January 21 before midnight is entered for the drawing. The newsletter gives you…

Concentrated Marketing

Posted on by lwidmer

My best ideas come from you. This week proves that to be true thanks to our own Wade Finnegan, who was wondering out loud how to figure out his niche or if he even wants one. He has one of the best lines of the month: “2012 will be the year this takes off, I…

Why Marketing Isn’t All That

Posted on by lwidmer

Three more days until the LinkedIn Secrets & Success Webinar with Urban Muse Susan Johnston! Susan, author of LinkedIn and Lovin’ It, will answer questions on LinkedIn, social media, and e-publishing. If you join the Five Buck Forum, you can get the webinar for a mere $10. That’s $39 off the price for non-members. Plus…

More Bang-bang in Your Shoot-em-up

Posted on by lwidmer

Yesterday was a lesson in wheel-spinning. I got one article completed, then set out to get my new website put together. The one I have I really don’t like, so I’m revamping everything. Websites should show personality, not what you think clients want to read. So they’re getting me this time around. The copy is…

Knowing When to Switch

Posted on by lwidmer

Very weird day yesterday. Sitting here at nearly 2 pm, the house started to shake. At first I wondered why the stepson was running through the house. Then it continued, and I realized the blinds on the windows were moving. Not my first earthquake tremor, but certainly the strongest. Continued the marketing. If you’ve been…

Killing Your Image – Internet Style

Posted on by lwidmer

Yesterday was a good day. I finished a small project within an hour in the morning, tweaked another one, and got some really focused queries out the door. I’m excited because I know the queries are spot on. The only thing left is to hope the editors are buying. I managed to get a personal…

Better Client Contact

Posted on by lwidmer

It rained yesterday. Just a short rain – less than an hour – but I was thrilled to see it. I can’t remember the last real rain we had. Wait – yes I do. End of May. Wow. Really? I spent the morning on a tricky client project. Usually they’re easy, but this one had…

Time Management for the Unorganized

Posted on by lwidmer

Ah, timing is everything. I asked Anne Wayman to do another Twitter tweetup yesterday only to find out seconds before that I’d chosen the very time our President was tweeting. Nuts. I don’t know why I thought he was tweeting at 11:30. That time was stuck in my head. Oh well. Thanks to those of…

Simplifying

Posted on by lwidmer

Today’s the day! There’s still time for you to register and attend the Unlock Your Hidden Profit Potential Webinar, starting today at 1 pm PT/4 pm ET. Anne and I intend to deliver solid information and have fun in the process. Bring your questions and join us. Click on the link to your left. Busy…

Why Good Ideas Don’t Take Off

Posted on by lwidmer

Because of our technical issues with PayPal last week, Anne and I have extended the deadline for our early registration discount. Sign up for our teleclass today and pay only $44.49. Sign up link is to your left. I had an interesting conversation not long ago with a potential client. They have a great product,…

Jenn Mattern

I'm usually full of ideas, short on time. That's been the big reason good ideas don't take off for me. There are only so many hours in a day, and sometimes it means setting one good idea aside (a site, new tool, new e-book, new marketing strategy) to pursue something even better. Lots of good ideas don't take off. It's not that they aren't worth pursuing or following through, but simply that for every good idea there are probably half a dozen better ones.

Devon Ellington

Flat marketing. If there's not a hook that grabs potential new audience members, they'll move on.

Lori

Jenn, I'm with you. I've had too many good ideas go nowhere because I forget to send them out. Dumb!

Devon, exactly. Flat marketing kills any good idea before it starts.

Paula

One idea I had that went nowhere (for me, anyway): I pitched the local daily paper on an original TV column, something to set them apart from other similar sized papers who rely on AP feeds. This paper has a movie guy but there isn't a first-run movie theater in the city limits (population 150,000); it has so-called food reviewers, all who call food "yummy," "tasty" or describe food vaguely by saying it "tastes just right"; and it has sports guys who report on nearby big city teams as if they were local teams. Due to high unemployment more people in town watch TV than go to movies, eat out or go to out-of-town sporting events, so a TV column seemed like a better fit with the readership.

The EID called me thanking me for my interest, but said they had no need for a TV column at that time.

A few months later they added an (unpaid – I know because I know the guy who wrote it) TV blog to their site. A year or two later they had a young guy from their printing or layout department write a TV column/blog. Only problem was he couldn't write to save his life, and did a DS-quality "mash-up" of things he read online.

This paper didn't want to pay a nominal amount for a solid TV column written by someone who'd been covering the industry for more than a decade. The mash-up "column" was so bad it only lasted a few months. Earlier this month they ceased carrying the Sunday TV section.

When my subscription ends I'm not renewing. I want to help support the print industry, but I don't want to pay for the privilege of watching the once-good newspaper self-implode through a series of bad decisions. (I don't count not picking up my column as one of those bad decisions, but trying to foist a poorly written mash-up on subscribers was one of many bad decisions.)

EP

Those are all very good points, although I am sure there are many more reasons as well. It really is quite a mystery, don't you think? Why don't the better products prevail? Why don't the better candidates get elected? Why aren't the better teachers the ones who have the say at our schools? On and on it goes and where it will stop nobody knows. Something tells me it's ALWAYS been like this, though.

Anne Wayman

I'm like Jenn… and I suspect you Lori… more ideas than I have learned yet to handle… got a book idea and haven't yet made it go… yet my soul tells me a good one. So I'll wait and try it again or something.

Lori

Paula, I hope you send them a note telling them exactly that. They need to hear it. Too many companies are passing off trash as content these days.

EP, I'm sure there are other reasons, too. 🙂 Good ideas flop all the time, and yes, it's always been that way. Our job is to help these people find a way to make their ideas see the light of day.

I keep thinking Apple has made an absolute killing with the iPod because that idea was packaged and sold as hip and cool. Necessary – yes, I guess so. But there are so many MP3 players on the market that are hundreds less than the iPod. Yet what do we buy? Why?