strategy – Page 8 – Michele Christensen

A simple strategy to generate blog content ideas

I was working with someone recently who wants to start a blog, but is concerned about having enough content. “How do you come up with ideas to blog about consistently?” she asked. We talked about a few strategies for having consistent blog material, but I decided to share my best one, which is actually one of the simplest.

Here is the strategy, summed up in one sentence:

Keep a list.

It really is that simple, but there are some caveats that make it really work.

First, keep your list on your computer in an easy-to-access format and location. If you’re a big fan of paper, you could use paper but the computer works better because of the ability to change, add and remove things as well as the ability to back up your list. You might start with one idea, and that one idea spawns off several other ideas. By keeping them together, you’ll have the makings for a series. You can use a spreadsheet, document or list-making software, just make sure it’s something you love to use. The list should be kept in a way that removes all barriers from using it regularly. If you want to use paper, make sure you use something nice that inspires you to update your list. Don’t use random scraps, and keep it all in one place.

Second, use your list. This is the one and only place blog ideas should be stored. Every time you have an idea, put it here. If you’re not near your list when you get an idea, make sure to capture it so you can add it later. Be ready to grab an idea wherever you are: dictate a voice note to yourself, send yourself an email, call your voicemail, even jot it down on a piece of paper you know you will deal with later.

Third, cross off or strikethrough ideas once you’ve used them but don’t remove them from the list. Someday, that already-used idea might trigger a new one, and you’ll have a sense of what you’ve written about.

Why does this simple strategy work?

By having an inventory of blog topics, you’ll be under no pressure when it’s time to write a post. Having a system to capture and store ideas allows your mind to work at your leisure, not under fire. It capitalizes on your awareness, i.e. by creating a system you’ve created a new area of focus for your mind. Did you ever have the experience of a friend buying a new car in a model you’ve never heard of and all of the sudden you see that car everywhere? It’s the same idea – creating a concrete system to store blog ideas helps focus you on those ideas and you’ll see them more often.

Do you keep a running list of blog topics? How does it help your blogging?

The key to implementing a lot of things

When I talk to new solopreneur business owners, a common theme is overwhelm at all there is to implement and later maintain. These new solopreneurs are right, there is a lot to implement and maintain to create a successful business. Just to name a few, there are:

A website
Other components of web presence such as social media profiles and directory listings
Banking, payment and billing systems
Print material such as business cards, brochures and flyers
An email newsletter
A physical filing system
Bookkeeping

These are just a few of the projects that new solopreneur business owners need to tackle – there are many more, which is why it can seem like a daunting work load.

There is one critical key to getting all of these projects implemented, and that is to do things one at a time. If you are anything like me and most people, you’ll want all of this done right now. We see people with robust, established businesses and start trying to create that for ourselves yesterday. The reality is though, that people with established businesses didn’t get there overnight. They started somewhere and chugged away at adding things to get where they are today. No matter where you are in building your business, this is one of the best ways to make sure you get where you need to be.

I realize that this is not a glamorous, exciting take on building a business. Some people may be able to jump right in and have all of this done fast but that’s not the norm. When you see a business you’d like to resemble, see how long they’ve been around before you start thinking you’re coming up short.

Along the way, it might be tempting to jump into things too soon. If you are drawn to entrepreneurship, you probably have “bright, shiny object syndrome” which means new ideas and projects pull you like a siren song. It’s especially tempting when you are in the thick of implementing something and it’s gotten boring but isn’t done. Along comes the next new thing and it’s fresh and exciting, and we’re tempted to abandon the half-done project for the new one. Don’t give in! Anything you take on will only produce results when it’s done, so if you keep jumping to new projects without finishing the old ones you won’t get the results you want.

Have you been tempted into a bunch of half-done projects? How did you get some of them done? What’s worked for you in building your business? Tell me about it in the comments.

How to get people to respond to your calls to action

As solopreneurs, we are often asking people to take action in some way. The most obvious way is to make a purchase, but there are other things we want people

How solopreneurs can encourage responses to a call to action — How solopreneurs can create a compelling call to action

to do such as enter an email, download a report, answer a question or take a survey. How do you get people to respond to a non-sales call to action?

First, make it obvious what you want them to do and why they should do it. I cringe when I see someone I’ve never heard of saying “Like my Facebook page.” They got the first part right – it’s very clear what they want. But why would I do that? If I’ve never heard of the person why would I waste even a few seconds checking their page out without more information? A better choice might be something like “Like my Facebook page for daily tips on training your rescue dog.” Now I know what they offer on the page and can make a quick decision as to whether it’s for me. The only exception to this would be celebrities, sports figures, politicians, etc who are innately interesting to their fans.

Second, make it easy. People don’t have the time or attention span to read complex instructions on your calls to action. What you are asking them to do should be easy – click a button, enter an email, fill out a survey, etc. The most difficult request I’ve seen was someone asking for 5 questions to be submitted via Twitter direct message. The person was gathering information, so other than helping him or her there was no incentive to the reader. They didn’t ask for only 1 question, they wanted 5. Twitter direct messages are one of the more inconvenient way to submit questions as well. If you’re asking for help or feedback, make it really easy for people to jump in and do it.

Third, offer a thank you for their help. Don’t make it too enticing or you may get people doing what you ask just for the reward. If you are trying to survey your market, this might skew the results or you might get people just slopping their way through whatever you ask for just to get the reward. For ideas, you could offer a free downloadable product or one of my favorites, offer to mention them in a tweet. I was thrilled to complete a survey for someone who offered to thank you in a tweet to her tens of thousands of Twitter followers.

Don’t be afraid to ask people to help you or to do something. Just make it obvious, easy and rewarding for them to do so.

Have you ever had a successful call to action? What made it a success?

Contact management for Solopreneurs

Michele Christensen explains how solopreneurs can manage contacts for free — Solopreneurs need a way to collect and organize their contacts

As a solopreneur, your contacts are a very valuable business asset. By contacts, I mean all the people you know and have relevance to your business such as customers, prospects, networking contacts, colleagues and opt-in subscribers to your newsletter. Some of these groups should be handled by specific software such as a newsletter service for your subscribers and a shopping cart or subscriber list for your customers. But what about all the rest of the people you meet? You probably have hundreds of people you’ve met at networking events, trade shows, live training events and just being out and about, but what do you do with them?

For starters, DO NOT add them to your newsletter without their permission. It’s possibly illegal under the SPAM laws, makes you look bad and generally annoys people.

You do need a way to keep track of these people though. You may need to make a referral for a client of yours and you don’t want to be searching scattered piles of business cards trying to remember where and when you met that one guy who might do what that customer needs. You also may want to occasionally touch base with this network of people you’ve worked hard to connect with. Otherwise, they’ll forget about you and you’ll never even have a chance of being the go-to person when they need what you offer. You may need a service yourself, and want to hire that really great person you met if only you could remember who it was.

There are lots of free and paid CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools, but you may not need one. I’m a fan of using simple, free tools as long as they suit your needs. Unless you have specific requirements that indicate otherwise, I recommend Google contacts. It’s what I use and I’ve been in business for 3+ years. Here’s some of what I love:

It’s free and syncs with my Google email account, which I use to manage all the email that comes to my domain-specific email address
It works great with my Android phone
It’s simple to use, and you can add any fields you need
There is a generous notes section where you can write freeform notes to help you remember someone, e.g. “Talked with her at the bar at the September networking event. We both have rescue mutts and like kayaking.”
Your entire contacts database is searchable so if all you can remember is that they had the word “Yellow” in their business name you can search on that
When you are ready to upgrade to a different contact management or CRM tool, your entire contact database can be exported into several formats with just a few clicks, or add on one of the free or paid tools available

Should solopreneurs say yes to every opportunity?

Strategy helps solopreneurs choose events wisely — Think strategically when choosing which events to attend for your solopreneur business

I was with a friend over the weekend, and she mentioned an event that she was going to and thought I’d be interested in attending as well. She had told me about it a few years ago and I checked it out and decided it wasn’t for me at this time. When I told her so, she was absolutely stunned! Here she was, presenting me with what seemed like a golden opportunity and I was turning it down. Her thinking was that my business must be at capacity or otherwise I’d be going, but that wasn’t my reason.

The reason I wasn’t going comes down to the #1 thing business owners must have to succeed: strategy. Strategy is everything in a business. It means that everything you do is intentional and has a purpose that contributes to your success. For live events, strategy doesn’t mean going to any and every event that is open to you and hoping that it will help. Strategy means having a specific aim in mind for attending events, and a specific type of person you want to meet. To show how having a strategy guides decision making, I’ll tell you why I turned this event down.

For my business strategy, if I’m going to an event to meet potential clients then the event audience should have some correlation to what I do. There should be something about the event that attracts people who have or want their own solopreneur business. The event my friend invited me to was more or less a random assortment of the public. There was no attraction specifically for the people I feel most called to serve, solopreneurs.

The second factor that led to my decision is that this event required 5 to 8 hours on a Saturday plus prep time. This is a massive chunk of time to spend in an untargeted manner. There was also no guarantee you’d actually get any time in front of anyone. The event is run in a very free-form manner, and people may or may not enter your room when you give a talk and they can come and go as they please during the talk. This isn’t conducive to sharing anything of value with anyone.

The final factor to consider is that I live in the Los Angeles area, and there are dozens of events every week. I haven’t even begun to attend all the events I could that would possibly have people interested in what I do. Until I’ve made a considerable showing at those events, it simply doesn’t make sense to go to an event filled with random people.

It’s easy to pulled off course if you don’t have pre-set goals and strategy. Having those in mind helps guide your decisions and give you something to measure your success.

Have you set your goals for the year and your strategy for achieving them? Tell me about it in the comments – I’d love to hear how strategy helps you or if it doesn’t. If you don’t have a strategy yet, let’s talk and start setting one up. Click here to schedule a call with me.

Realigning my solopreneur business priorities

Solopreneur priorities will evolve over time — Your priorities as a solopreneur will change over time

Over the long haul, your solopreneur business will change. You’ll go through phases, changing interests and maybe even a change of focus. Instead of being surprised, try to expect this and know that it’s normal.

On of my ongoing evolutions is how I prioritize my time. I’ve spent many, many hours learning in the last two years. I absolutely love to learn new things, and as a coach and consultant it’s vital to my business that I keep my knowledge current. I’ve sampled the work of dozens of coaches and mentors with both paid and free information. Something has shifted for me in the last few months though. I’ve become impatient and felt a tug to be doing more. When I looked at how I spend my time, I realized that I was spending too much time learning and not enough time implementing. Sound familiar?

Many solopreneurs fall into this trap. Sometimes it’s fear of moving ahead because we think we don’t yet know enough. Sometimes learning can be a procrastination tool – it’s easy to sit and listen to a webinar or recording but actually creating something can be hard and tedious. For me, I think learning is just so exciting and inspiring that I want to do a lot of it because I love it.

When I first started to prioritize learning about 2 years ago, it was the right choice. I did need to up my skill set and knowledge both for my own business and for my clients. There came a point in the last few months though, where I would get impatient during my daily study sessions. It was almost a feeling of “enough already, go do something!”

It wasn’t until I set aside some quiet time and took a look at my time and priorities and did some realigning. The main thing I shifted was to change the balance between learning and doing. Up until now, it’s been mostly learn with a little doing. Now I’m aiming for mostly doing with some learning.

The reality is that you’ll never know everything about running a solopreneur business. There will always be lots more to learn. There will come a point though, when more learning needs to be balanced out with more doing. Continuing to study without using what you are learning will not help your business. I think sometimes the sheer volume of information available to us plays on our insecurities. It seems like since we know such a small portion of what we could know that we couldn’t possibly know enough to run a business. Don’t believe it though!

Have you been learning without doing? Is it time for a shift? Tell me about it in the comments.

Solopreneurs, what’s your theme for 2012?

Solopreneur business owners can focus on one theme for the year — What's your theme for your solopreneur business in 2012?

What is next year about for your solopreneur business?

Like many successful solopreneurs I know, I choose a theme for each year. Some people pick an inspiring word like growth, action, or fearlessness. I’ve been choosing one big, overarching area that needs improvement for my big project of the year. In 2011, my theme was “expand my online business.” Before this effort, I had a website that functioned as more of an online brochure and newsletter sign up. I was getting one-on-one clients and group gigs mainly via personal connections. Beginning in 2010, I began to learn how to use the internet to promote my business. By the time 2011 rolled around, I was ready to get to work.

It’s been a great year and I’m really happy with the results. I’ve got a full website that functions well, my online presence is fleshed out and ready for more, and I’m finishing my first information product that will be sold from my website. Mission accomplished!

Even though I help others improve their business, I regularly get help too! Nobody can be as successful by themselves as they can with the guidance of a coach or mentor. Expanding my online presence was something I definitely wanted help with and I used two main sources for that help.

The first person I got help from was Kathleen Gage in the form of her 1-year Street Smarts Marketing VIP Club. You get one lesson a week covering just about everything you need to know about online marketing, and the lessons build on each other. At $27 per month, it’s very affordable and the value is great. If you’re interested, here is the link: Street Smarts VIP Club.

The other person I got help from is Alicia Forest. I first purchased her “21 Easy and Essential Steps to Online Success” in the spring. This is like a handbook for setting up the online part of your business. I had so much success with that program that I attended her live event the “Online Business Breakthrough Workshop.” This was an inspiring, motivating, action-oriented 3-day workshop where we learned in-depth strategies to building an online business. By the way, I’m an affiliate for both Kathleen and Alicia since I love their work so much.

2012 is the year of my signature system. I first sketched out my unique signature system at the Online Business Breakthrough Workshop in the fall. Since then, I’ve added lots of details as they come to me, but this year the goal will be to write all the text and have it for sale. Once that happens, I’ll probably add some more products and programs that use my signature system. If you’re curious, my signature system lays out the steps to set up a successful solopreneur business, i.e. to take what you know and make a profitable business with it.

If you’re not familiar with the idea of a signature system, it’s a way to package the knowledge you use with every client. Some of what you do is unique to each individual, but if you give it some thought, you’ll probably find that you say and do some of the same things with each person you work with. It was really enlightening to discover those steps in my work. Now when I’m working with someone, I can often see more clearly what they are missing in their business.

If you haven’t already done it, why not pick a them for 2012? I’d love to help you with this – click here to schedule a Quickcall with me. If you have a them for 2012, share it in the comments.

Internal deadlines help with solopreneur time management

Internal deadlines can help solopreneurs get more done — When working alone, solopreneurs can create their own deadlines

I was working on a sales page for a product I’ll be introducing soon, and was reminded again of how important it is to use internal deadlines for projects that tend to creep. You see, I took an amazing copy writing and marketing course last year and wanted to apply all the elements of the thorough process I learned. But that would have required 1 or 2 days of work and this is a very low-priced product. I though about slapping up a quick few paragraphs but that didn’t feel right either. I decided on a deadline of 1 hour for an initial draft and committed to using just some of the techniques I learned not the entire process, and low and behold I finished it.

What is great about internal deadlines, whether they are a date or a length of time, is that they force you to access how important a project is and how much income potential it has. In my case, I realized that I would have to sell a lot of copies of my product to make those extra hours spent writing copy to pay off. Sure, my less-polished copy probably won’t sell as much as really great copy but I’m betting that I’ll come out ahead with my approach.

When I started this project, I quickly saw myself slipping into a quagmire of continuous improvement but never getting done. With some projects, you have a clear idea of “done” but with something like this the temptation is to keep investing time because it keeps getting better. At some point, you have to look at the trade-off of quality and time and see if it’s really worth it. Will 5 more hours spent generate enough additional sales to make it worth it? Often, the answer is no.

This is valuable for almost any project. Start with a clear idea of what you hope to accomplish by doing the project and then decide how much time is appropriate to invest in it. Make sure the time is proportionate to the benefit, then stick to your limit. You can always go back and put more time into something and make it better, but once time is spent it’s gone. Don’t overestimate how much impact something will have and invest too much time in it. At the same time, don’t do a half-baked job on something critical. In this example, I spent a lot of time on the actual product because people are paying for it and I want them absolutely wowed. But the sales letter? That needs to be good enough to communicate the value of the product to the people for whom it’s right. It doesn’t need to win awards or be the best ever.

What do you spend too much time on? Come on, be honest and tell me about it in the comments.

The biggest asset in your solopreneur business

Sometimes I post about things that aren’t strictly business. It may seem that this post is one of those times, but I can assure you it is related to your business even if it’s not “strictly business.” As a solopreneur, you ARE the business even if you have help. As a result, your biggest business asset is you. As a business coach and consultant, I’d be remiss if I didn’t advise you to care for your biggest asset. So, today’s post is about self-care or insuring your biggest business asset continues to create prosperity for you.

2011 was a turning point in my own self-care. I got much clearer on what I need to do to feel great, and made strides toward accepting that I’m a little “high maintenance.” By high-maintenance, I mean all the things I need to do in order to stay healthy, active, sharp and productive, which is a lot! The details of my self-care regimen are not that interesting, nor are the relevant to what you need but the basics include sleeping, eating, physical activity, relaxation, socializing, fun and maybe a few more.

For most of my adult life, I tried to skimp on these things. After all, you can get yourself an extra hour or two a day by skimping on sleep. Grab a convenient, processed something in a wrapper, eat it in your car and save some meal time. Even the gym, which I love, was a place to cut corners. I spent years trying to get by on less self-care, and what I did do I resented as a “waste” of “valuable” time.

This year, just for an experiment, I decided to practice radical self-care because what I was doing wasn’t working well. To me, that means striving for what will make me my best, not just what will enable to drag myself through the next day. Some examples of this include planning to be in bed early, taking breaks during the day, not missing my workouts, and taking more time off than I used to.

It hasn’t been easy. Like most people, I have more on to-do list than I’ll ever get done so every day I’m making decisions about what to leave undone so I can take care of my well-being. Of couse I want to stay up later than I should (2 year olds everywhere, I sympathize!). I want to spend less time preparing and eating food. I wish I didn’t have to stretch every day to feel good. This is where the acceptance comes in – what you need to do to be at your peak is not disputable. Whether you accept this and act on it is up to you. It’s also about priorities – is what you are doing instead more important than making sure you live long and well?

Caring for yourself isn’t self-indulgent or a luxury if you’re a solopreneur. Caring for yourself fills your tank so you can do the work the world needs of you. You can’t fill someone’s cup if your pitcher is empty.

In what ways can you take better care of yourself? Leave a comment with something you want to do.

Your site has 3 seconds to grab new visitors

You have 3 seconds for your website visitors to know if your solopreneur business is for them — Your solopreneur business site has 3 seconds to convince new visitors to stay

I was at a training recently and the instructor was reviewing the websites of some of the people in the room. One rule that kept coming up is that you have 3 seconds to grab a new visitor. When someone comes on to your site, you have about 3 seconds to tell them what your site is about, what it does and for whom it is intended. If it’s a fit, you have a chance of keeping them on your site and if not they’ll leave. If they don’t know, you’ve lost them even if they are a perfect client for you.

It’s definitely challenge to create a website that grabs people, even your perfect clients or customers. That’s true even if your purpose is clearly stated, but if you don’t clearly state your purpose, your chances have gone from “challenging” to “zero” because you’ve lost them.

3 seconds. Wow. That’s fast. Here’s some of what we learned:

A bold headline featured prominently will make your purpose more clear
Be clear about what your site does – is it for sales, information, sharing, connecting or something else? Consider it from the perspective of your visitor – why should they stay?
Mention in the headline something to tell your visitor whether this site is for them – examples might include moms, vegetarians or golfers. A person knows immediately if they are in or out of that group
Don’t try to be everything to everyone. You’ll end up reaching nobody. If you’re specific, you’ll at least have a chance of reaching the people you want to.
Test your site on people – give them a quick glance and ask them what the site is about. This was very informative! You’d be surprised at how different something can seem to different people.

I think all of these ideas are really helpful in making your site an irresistible beacon to those people you most want to reach but the testing takes the cake. In our group, we did testing by having a few people provide their first impression on each site. The range of answers and interpretations was really eye-opening. One word or phrase can mean something totally different than you intend. For example, one site we looked at had nothing to do with dating but had the word “match” in the headline. That one word would have caused me to leave the site even though the actual subject was interesting to me because it sounds like a dating site and I’m married. You can easily test for yourself – just ask people what they think. Remember to consider whether they are your target market or not though.

Keep this in mind when you design or update your site. I know I’m going to look at my site soon and see if I pass the 3-second test everywhere!