On Words and Business

Six great posts about business from this past year, in no particular order:

5 Things to Do Every Day for Success

Steve Jobs and the Seven Rules of Success

I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore

Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012

Marketing to Nobody

Content Marketing Tips from 5 People Who Know

Things to be thankful for this holiday…

• The family and friends who support me and my business every day
• The clients and prospects who remind me with their dedication, insight, and wit why I like what I do
• Social media, especially LinkedIn, that enables me to stay connected to colleagues, friends, and business partners

What are you and your business thankful for?

How are you at asking questions?

To write content, sometimes you have to interview an expert.

Here are some hints about finding the right questions to ask:

1. Consider the purpose of the interview; that helps determine the level of question to ask. If you’re writing an article for beginners or people who have no background in the topic, it’s okay to ask very basic questions. If you’re writing for a more advanced audience, you should do some research and know the basics so you can ask more specific and detailed questions.
2. Research. Prepare for speaking to an expert by looking at articles written by this person, reviewing the company website, etc. Even for an interview focusing on the basics, you need to understand who you are talking to and what that person brings to the table.
3. Write out a list of questions. Start simple–what would you want to know about the topic if you were one of your readers. Once you get the basics down, then elaborate with more detailed questions.
4. Go with the flow and don’t be afraid to go off-script. You spent a lot of time preparing questions in advance, but interview subjects quite often say something intriguing or introduce a new and compelling topic that you never considered. If it’s appropriate given the content you are creating, follow them down that path and ask follow-up questions (that you’ll have to make up on the fly).
5. Ask a final, wrap-up question. 98% of the time, this is when you’ll get one of the best quotes of the entire interview. My final question is always a variation of this: Is there anything I didn’t ask you about (this topic) or that we haven’t already discussed that you want people to know?

Outsourcing gets such a bad rap these days.

It doesn’t mean sending jobs overseas (that’s offshoring). Outsourcing means having someone outside your company do some work for you. People do this every day. Some overseas, but many right in their own backyards. For which, as an independent consultant, I am grateful.

Even sending jobs overseas isn’t as horrible as some people make it out to be. Yes, some people have lost their jobs as factories and other jobs have moved overseas, and for those people and their families and friends it is absolutely no fun. And yes, economic development and jobs here in this country are very important.

We are going through a worldwide adjustment period–a gigantic labor-related shimmy into a metaphorical too tight dress. Not everything is going to fit where it once did, so we might not like how it looks until we get used to it.

Not all the same jobs will be done by the same people anymore. Now instead of certain types of jobs being spread over three counties or five states, they’re spread around the world.

The adjustment to a global economy is not a bad thing. It is just also not easy or comfortable.

As someone who works for myself, I rely heavily on networking to meet potential clients and colleagues.

When I first started working for myself and attending networking events, I was terrible. I was looking for contacts and potential customers, so dollar signs were all I had in mind. It did not occur to me in those early days how little anyone cares about what I do for a living, and how little anyone wants to be thought of as a dollar sign. Until I started to meet people who communicated with me that way.

I forgot, or had never learned, that networking is just really meeting and connecting with people.

As I’ve progressed through almost six years of working for myself and networking along the way, my skills have improved.  Now I understand so much more about making connections, my elevator speech and when (and when not) to use it, my personal brand, and most importantly, how to learn about the needs and wants of the individuals I speak with when I am networking (and even when I’m not).

Am I perfect? Nope. And I don’t plan to ever be.

With the evolution of the market, technology, social media, and who knows what to come down the pike, I plan to keep fine-tuning my skills. It isn’t really that much work, though.

Because in the end, networking is the simple art of talking and connecting with people. I understand that now.

Some barriers to B2B marketing success, per MarketingSherpa’s latest benchmark report:

• Lack of resources (like time and money)–62% of B2B marketers said this was a problem
• Limited ability to create content–35%
• Lack of clear value proposition–25%

There are a lot more on the chart, but these seemed like the interesting ones to me.

Is it me, or are these basically the same challenges marketing has always had? With the fast pace of change in this space over the past few years…why aren’t we able to knock down these demons?