Tag Archives: Mental Health Issues

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I Write…

We’ve talked at length about the importance of creating content that people can easily share and make use of. But what importance do images play when creating good content? Do images really matter? Can they increase the click rate of your article? Of course, they can—check out these great image tips to get the most out of your content!

Make Sure Your Images Are Relevant 

When you’re creating a blog or website, it’s important that the images you use are relevant to the topic. It has been said that content with relevant images get 60% more views than content without relevant images. Be careful, choose wisely and go for it!

Originality… But Not So Original People Can’t Understand

Okay, we all know that picking the right image can be tough. You need to find the right balance between clichéd images that might make your content look dated, and something too unique and obscure that will leave your visitors confused. Start with relevant and move onto interesting. Don’t be led astray by the wild ways of internet image sites.

Try to Use People…

As humans, we respond to faces, so using images of people in your content can be a simple way of boosting engagement. Choose people who are relatable to your audience, think about your content and keep the people relevant to the theme. If you are talking about working in the creative industries, don’t use an image of someone in a corporate office in a suit. Try to lead people to your content with an eye toward being exciting.

Use Images to Keep Interest

Now that we know which kind of images you need, we need to discuss something else. How many images should you include in your content? It depends on how much text you have, but as a general rule, try and insert an image every couple of paragraphs. The more images, the more you will interest the reader.

Use Good Quality Images

Don’t fall into the mistake of using poor quality images. When adding images to your blog, website or campaign, it is important that they are high resolution images that are going to look sharp and not pixelated. Seriously… the better the images, the better you will look.

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fear11We’ve talked at length about the importance of creating content that people can easily share and make use of. But what does that entail? What makes content worthwhile? Well… the secret is to know how to spread your content and make it noticeable. For example, a great title makes content useful. So do the right images and the trust level you have with readers. Have you wasted their time too often? Where are you sharing your content initially? Wait… why don’t we run through the list together?

Titles Matter More Than You Think!

Your title needs to be both engaging and relevant. Maybe that means making it something that hooks people from the start. But do keep in mind that there’s nothing more disappointing than being hooked by a title, only to be let down by the rest of an article. Don’t lie… but do grab.

The Right Time, The Right Place… The Right Look

There’s a science to including effective, attention-grabbing images in your blog posts to get more engagement. Did you know that if you mix text into the graphic, people are more likely to look at your image? This explains why infographics are so popular and bring such great rewards.

It’s Not You… It’s Me… I Don’t Trust Your Content

As a content sharing company, you have a hard life to lead. Did you know that you need to come off as credible and trustworthy source of information to your audience? Your readers will engage with content that seems genuine, speaks to them, and reflects your brand. You can do that by citing trustworthy sources, helping readers feel like you understand them well, or even by challenging industry norms with more enlightening ideas. Remember the old sales mantra: To sell is to help. The more you help, the more successful you will be!

Don’t Let Me Down

There’s nothing better than being able to share content with others—but finding that content is getting harder and harder. I hate to share things with my followers that are dull, misleading or boring. This should factor into the design of your content. Try to avoid putting anything together that will bore, mislead or make people regret sharing your content. You have to make sure you are not letting your audience down.

Sharing Is Loving

My advice would be to do a little research. Your goal is to find out which social channels can give you access to your designated audience. If you know that your audience hangs out on Reddit, you should most definitely share it there. Don’t be shy. Start sharing where your audience is caring.

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coachWe’ve discussed content marketing—its failures, its successes—but we haven’t discussed some of the finer points of making your content work. This article is a series of points. Points that, if used properly, will help you fine tune your content marketing. Try these little tips to create a big response…

Create Content That Is Readable, Shareable and Hilarious

Some of the most popular viral campaigns have had the above ingredients. Being funny, making content worth sharing and making your content extremely readable are key steps towards success.

Longer Length Is Better

Yes, it’s hard to write a huge blog article—but try to write something that has some substance to it. Don’t just push out short articles. Write to inform and make sure your longer blog articles are easy to read. Break your content into paragraphs and allow your reader to scan through your content.

Images, Images, Images

If you want to make a success of your content, you should use images. When sharing your content, you want people to be captured as quickly as possible—good images allow this to happen easily. Don’t shy away from funny images, either. People like to laugh.

Appeal to Emotions

This is another point that many content marketers forget. If something makes you happy, sad, or enraged, you are emotionally attached. If your content can cause this kind of reaction with your readers, then they are more likely to take action with your content. Try to cause emotion, and you’ll see response.

Aim to Get Shared by Influential People

If you can get your content shared by at least one social media influencer, you will be on your way to gaining a new audience. The virtue of being shared by an influencer will create a level of trust with their audience. You will become a trusted source of information. Try to attain as much action as you can with influencers—it can only help you.

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I Speak…

coach
We’ve been talking about speeches for some time now. You may have a pretty strong understanding of how to make your speech really work. This week, we are going to look at the delivery of your speech. You’ve written it, you’ve got a great closer… but you are nervous about delivery. How can you really push your point across and make yourself heard?

Keep It Real

If there’s one rule, it’s this one: Try to be as authentic as possible.  It’s well known that people can hear it in your voice when you are “real,” and they will love you for it. If you come across as fake, you will lose them.

Keep Learning

Regardless of how many times you’ve made a speech or spoken in public, there is always room for vast improvement. It’s great that you’ve got public speaking experience, but don’t become over confident and think that you can just turn up and present without doing your homework! You might get away with it a couple of times, but eventually you will be caught out.

Pack THAT power!

Your opening statement needs to be powerful. You need to hook those people.  Don’t be afraid to shock your audience, make your audience laugh or hook them with a story that really gets them ready to hear your point. Don’t just open with banalities… Go on the attack and make yourself heard.

Arrangement Is the KEY

Arrange your presentation and make it easy to digest, but keep in mind that you want to make your point. If you can tie everything back to the points you want to make, you will be doing well!

Slow Down… Don’t Move Too Fast

One of the most common faux pas people make when giving a speech, especially if they are new to public speaking, is they rush through their presentation. You need to slow down so that people can take on board what you are saying. If in doubt, record yourself and play it back. If you are speaking faster than the anchor person on the news, you know it’s too fast. Pace yourself to success.

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writingWe’ve discussed content marketing, but we haven’t faced one undeniable fact. A lot of content marketing strategies fail. But why do they fail? This is an autopsy, ladies and gentlemen. We are going to look at why content marketing fails. If you are squeamish, leave now… but if you really want to know the gory details, read on…

What? You Had No Strategy?

In content marketing, you need to strategize, strategize, and strategize some more. Without a strong strategy in place, you’ll be the Monday night quarterback who enters the playing field looking up at the stands and hoping for the audience to cheer – even when you fumble.  It doesn’t work.

Am I Blue? Am I Boring?

You don’t like talking to a stick in the mud. Why would you like reading a dry blog post that sounds like it was written by someone boring and dull? I don’t want to read it. Nobody else wants to read it. People love doing business with people. Humanize your content and make it fun to read. Don’t be afraid to let your personality shine! Your audience will connect with your content faster and appreciate the extra showmanship you offer.

What, You Don’t Want to Spend a Dime?

You can start a blog for free, make a podcast for free, and create videos for free. With so many free methods for creating content, it’s natural to think that content marketing is also inexpensive. Although it’s true that you can create content for a stupidly low price, you’re probably cutting yourself short if you promote on the cheap. If your content marketing isn’t working, you might not have the right team putting it all together.

P.T. Barnum Says… Promote! Be Extravagant!

Perhaps your content is high-quality but still, no one is consuming it. Are you doing enough to get the right amount of eyeballs on your words, videos and images? Probably not. Although you never want to be overly self-promotional, some promotion of each piece of content is necessary to let your audience know it’s available.

Know Your Competition

There’s a lot of noise in our daily lives. From TV commercials and radio ads, to a flood of new blog posts being published every day, you’re already competing with a lot of content. If your competitor is producing a healthy portion of that content, your job just got a little more difficult. You have to be competitive! COMPETITIVE!

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I Speak…

coachThey stare at you. You stare at them. The silence is deafening. You fidget. You can hardly breathe. You’ve delivered a speech that has kept your audience interested—yet now you are faced with closing it. How can you end your speech as confidently as you opened it? Is it possible? Of course, it is! Try some of these tips and close your speeches with the power of Kennedy, King or Obama.

Close with the Title

Use the title of your speech as your closing words. Last words linger, crystallizing your thoughts, galvanizing your message and mobilizing your audience. Leave them with a seed, a thought, an idea, and they’ll go forward to do great things.

The Invitation

If you want to motivate your audience to do something—invite them to succeed. Close with something that gives them a goal. This is a good way to bring about rousing applause from your audience.

The Circular Close

Refer back to your opening anecdote or quote and say: “We have arrived now to close where we began.” Reiterate the message you want your audience to remember. Summarize the main points and leave them knowing what you talked about.

The Challenge

If you were concluding a speech on the importance of acting, you could rouse them with the importance of participating. Take spectators and turn them into doers. Make them the center of attention, and give them a reason to go out and change their lives.

End with a Quotation

Find a famous quotation relevant to your message and use it like a lever to lift the close of your speech.

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I Speak…

sleepI would like to talk today about structuring a speech. It’s important to put together the right speech, in the right way. In this blog article, I describe five structures. I hope you take them and run with them. These five structures should cover most of the situations in which you find yourself speaking.  Each of these structures can be built to fit your purpose. Let’s look at them.

Problem-Solution Works In Your Favor

Persuasion. That’s why you are giving a speech. Begin by framing the problem. Then go as deeply as you dare into the problem, making both intellectual and emotional arguments for the severity of the problem.  Then go for it! Give the people your solution!

Going Through the Motions

If the subject has strong arguments on all sides of the issue, you may want to use this technique. Explain the problem, and then go through the possible solutions and thoughts of others. Try to give people as much information as you can and then go through all the arguments for solutions as carefully as you can. Give credit, show that you take all sides of the problem and all solutions seriously, then give people your own solution. This will give you credibility and people will listen to your argument with more care.

Tell the Story…

Yes, we are all interested in your new idea and your new product. But why don’t you tell us about it in an interesting way? Try to begin by describing the basic situation, giving only the relevant detail. Introduce a problem. A rival business? A problem in your sector? Then give people the resolution they truly want. Resolve the crisis and become the hero.

Stay in Order

Some hate chronological, some love it. But I think it’s best to start at the end of something. The result. Did you sell 8 million dollars’ worth of product? How did that feel? It must have felt good. Then go to the beginning and explain the situation you were in to start with. Then tell the story in order and bring people back to the success you ended with. This way you have “WOWED” your audience and showed them your path. It’s a winning speech strategy.

Demonstrate Like a Pro

Some businesspeople can do this better than anyone else. It’s salesmanship. Start with the reason. Why is this product or idea important? Why do people need it? What does it solve? Demo the idea and give people a reason to really root for it. Is it cool? Is it something that will save lives? Hint at the future and leave people wanting more.

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I Write…

coachWhen it comes to writing content, there are hundreds of avenues you can take. From lists to articles about news events; from current issues to product reviews, the world is your oyster. But whatever you do, you would be well advised to follow some of the rules of content writing. Let’s take a look at this list and see what you can do with your content.

Make Your Content Valuable and Relevant

When internet users type a topic into a search box on any search engine, they expect the search engine results to provide information relevant to their search. If they click on your site and find irrelevant or outdated information, they will bounce from your site to the next result to find what they need.

Keep Your Content Concise

There is no need to belabor your point. Website visitors are skimmers and prefer to quickly review information. Don’t tie them down with reels and reels of information.

Keep on the Right Track

Visitors usually search very specifically and become frustrated if forced to work through a lot of information to find what they are looking for. If you have a very broad topic, consider breaking your content down and introducing one topic per paragraph so your readers can find specific information easily. You can also add links within your page content to related topics on other pages of your site rather than trying to include all your information on a single page. This will make your website infinitely more user-friendly.

Check and Recheck for Grammar and Spelling Errors

Nothing says unprofessional like a website full of spelling or grammatical errors. After you are finished copywriting, walk away from the content and come back later with fresh eyes. You may notice errors that might have otherwise been overlooked.

Use the Tried and Tested Method

Many bloggers and content writers swear by using the same technique. Put your conclusions at the beginning of your page content and work backwards from there. This puts your most important information front and center.

Write for Your Audience

You have probably heard of the importance of making your website content search engine friendly by using keywords, links, and other SEO techniques. This is important, but so is making your content readable and engaging for the humans visiting your site. After all, your goal is to convert visitors into customers. Use a conversational tone to connect with your audience, and avoid using too much fluff and marketing language.

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I Write…

writingAs we’ve been talking about content over the last few weeks, I’d like to discuss creating good content this week. The kind of content people will actually want to read. The fact is that you can hire a great content writer, but you still have to understand the rules of content—you have to get the basic marketing facts. And some of them can be found below!

YOU Not Me

People love themselves. It didn’t take the advent of the selfie for that to be evident. So, create content that is customized to your audience. Use their names, their faces – anything that makes the content about them. Make everything about the people you want to sell to.

Everyone IS Listening…

One of the most overlooked sources of content is your customers. They ask questions about your brand everywhere. The content might not go viral, but your customers will appreciate being heard and responded to, and it will lessen the burden on your content writer. Plus, the feel-good factor will really please your customers. A company that actually listens to people? Who’d have thunk it?

We’re Only Human

Try to capitalize on the human side of your brand by being human in your content. And remember, just like humans, brands are not perfect. They make mistakes, and they can laugh at themselves. It’s okay to make fun of yourself—seriously!

Content Is FREE

Creating content that is free does not mean endless self-serving, evergreen articles replete with shameless plugs and links to your product pages. It means investing the time to create something of value to people. It can be as simple as one piece of useful, well-designed content, like a cooking cheat sheet or in-depth, brand-free buying guide. Become a trusted resource for valuable information first. For example, look at the toys McDonalds gives away—those are useful gestures that bring kids back again, and again, and again. Think of your content in the same way.

Cute Is GOOD

It is never more evident that we are sold by sentimental content than when the ads with cute turtles, kittens, or doggies come onto your TV. Cute means sales.

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I Speak…

sleepSo, we’ve spoken at length about public speaking and ways to excel as a public speaker—but we haven’t spoken about actually getting work as a public speaker. This blog is all about ways to find work. It’s not easy to convince someone to pay you to speak—sometimes it will seem impossible—but if you truly want to be a paid public speaker, you should be exploring these avenues.

Universities, Colleges and Schools

Look around you. Chances are, you live close to a university, college, state school, technical school, or some other educational institution. Team up with a professor or department head to hold a forum a subject relevant to you and the educator’s interest group. Invite people from the community to attend, as well.

Network in Your Business Groups

These lead exchange or facilitated networking groups are designed to be a tightly knit group of individuals from diverse businesses who meet regularly for the purpose of bringing business opportunities to the other members. Popular groups are Le Tip, Business Networking International (BNI), and Local Business Network (LBN). Join your preferred group and let the members know that you’re interested in speaking opportunities.

Clubs and Special Interest Groups

Music fanatic? Mother of a child? Coder with mad skills? No matter what your interest or circumstance, there’s a group for it. And if you can share information on a topic that’s relevant to its members, they’ll welcome you as a speaker.

Local Publications

Most areas have a magazine or newspaper devoted to area business news. Check out the periodical’s Events page (in print or online), then contact the organizations who have listed presentations and pitch them for speaking.

Your Clients

No need to get all fancy and overlook one of your most highly qualified sources! Ask your clients which groups they belong to and whether they accept outside speakers.

Other Professionals Who Speak Professionally

Look around at your colleagues, competitors, and other professionals who target the same audience you do. Check their websites and LinkedIn profiles to see where they’ve spoken. You can follow in their footsteps.

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