The Marketing Mix | official blog of the Marketing Mentor community

How to Inspire Creativity

Welcome to Week 13 of my adventure of following the Start Up Version of the Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar. In my posts, I talk about my voyage down the road of self-employment as a VMA, my achievements and roadblocks along the way, and I include a weekly recap at the bottom of each entry.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately.  I’ve been writing content for websites, articles, newsletters, and press releases.  And I love it.

What a great feeling to produce a finished product that really rocks, especially when it took some actual thinking to get there.  I love that feeling of accomplishment.

But writing sure does require a lot of creative juice.

I’ve noticed lately that the more writing I do, the more aware I am of my creative resources—as abundant, or drained as they may be at the time.  I know there’s a big creative audience out there at the Marketing Mix.  I have a lot of respect for people who create, (I’m awed by artists, designers, song writers, novelists, and anyone who produces something from nothing) and I’ve always wondered, how do creators stay…well, creative? 

I’m trying to figure out how to keep my writing juices flowing.  Here’s what I’ve noticed helps me so far:

All signs point towards poor marketing?

PAMPARED PETS

This was the headline on a sign I saw for a dog walking service when I took Charlie to the dog park this morning to play with his buddies.

My first thought was, "These people can't spell; how could I let them walk my dog?"

Now, logically, there is no connection between spelling and dog walking. I'm sure there are plenty of excellent dog walkers who can't spell. So why did I jump to that conclusion?

Because I am very quick to judge and the sign is all I had to go on to make my judgment. And I believe this happens a lot on the World Wide Web. When what you see on a web page about a company isn't perfect, it's ever so easy to make a harsh judgment. (Do you do this too?)

I think we need to be a little more forgiving on the one hand, and a little more attentive on the other. Spell check doesn't catch everything (although "pampared" is not a word, as far as I know). But when I think about how quickly I'm typing and how tempting it is to multitask, I do hope others will be more forgiving of me than I often am of others.

I know I'm not alone. At least once a week, I hear someone say they won't work with a resource because there was a typo on their web site. Have you ever done that?

How long should your email newsletter be?

Clients are often asking me how long their email newsletter should be and I usually say, "Shorter is better."

In fact, when people tell me they love my Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor, I ask them why and the first thing I almost always hear is, "Because it's short."

So you would think that an effective email newsletter should be short, right?

Not necessarily. I know several people who put out longish email newsletters that people do read because they are either really well written or they have useful information (or both!). Colleen's newsletter, communicatrix | focuses, is one of them. Bob Bly's Direct Response Letter is another. It's chock full of tidbits every month. You can read as much or as little as you like.

I always recommend you start with something short. Then, as you get more ideas and as people become accustomed to your writing and your style, lengthen your text as you see fit.

And remember, you can always write a bit then link to a place on your web site or blog where those interested can keep reading.

Who are those ladies behind the curtain?

If you're interested in a peek under the hood of Marketing Mentor, this post is for you.

Last week's tip took much longer to write than usual. What readers actually received was a complete rewrite of the original tip I sent to my "testers" -- the 5 colleagues who generously provide much-needed feedback to me every week. (BTW, if you'd like to be part of that group, send an email message to me at ilise at marketing-mentor dot com and I'll tell you how it all works.)

Anyway, here is the original tip and Colleen's question to me that I was having trouble answering. I thought I'd throw it out to the blog, to see what you all have to say. So please comment.

Here's my original tip:

Last week, when I gave my presentation, "Is Your Personality Preventing Your From Moving Ahead?" for the RGD Ontario, I suggested telling success stories to describe how what you do helps your clients.

Afterward, a few people asked me the same question: how can I tell success stories without bragging?

Here's what I said: focus on the facts.

If you say that something you created won an award, that's a fact, isn't it?

If something you wrote or designed achieved a 20% response, that is also a fact, even if saying it feels like bragging to you.

If I tell you that I drank champagne with a client recently to celebrate the biggest job he's ever won -- and he got it as a result of a cold call, is that bragging?

And if I say he won it because I taught him how to make those cold calls, is that bragging?

And what if I say this: "A client won his biggest job yet because of a cold call and he credits my mentoring for teaching him how to do it right." Is that bragging?

Here's Colleen's response:

(Is there a better way to) ramp up to a statement like that? If I can see the progression, it might not seem like such a sell. Right now, it feels inorganic: like you're selling (which you are, but it seemed to me like you wanted to say the selling can be invisible.)

The only way I can see this line working organically is if someone has specifically said, "I hate cold calls. I can't imagine you'd be able to teach *me* to do them."

And then you could reply, "I don't know. That's what another client of mine said two months ago. But last week, he..."

Like that. It's the windup. Out of nowhere, all the lines feel bizarre to me. In the right context, they can all work.

What do you think?

Post your articles on Biznik

Remember last year, when we introduced you to Biznik, the great new networking web site for independent professionals with the extremely memorable tagline: business networking that doesn't suck?

Well, they've just launched a new section on the site called "Learn," where members can not only read but also post their own articles.

So for anyone with material to recycle (especially the clients I've been nagging about re-using all that great email newsletter content into articles that can get more visibility and therefore increase your search engine rankings), check  out the how-to. or the section itself.