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7-Figure Small with Brian Clark
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer
Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing
Get More Clients With Smarter Email Marketing
Hack the Entrepreneur
Members Only
Rainmaker.FM Elsewhere
Site Success: Tips for Building Better WordPress Websites
StudioPress FM
Technology Translated
The Digital Entrepreneur
The Missing Link
The Showrunner
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Youpreneur with Chris Ducker
Zero to Book
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer
hosted by Sonia Simone

New Mini-Series: Things I Love / Things I Hate

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Previous Episode:Getting Clear on your Metrics and Benchmarks: The 3 Lenses to Look Through More Episodes Next Episode:Getting to Freedom and Business Clarity: A Conversation with Sonia Thompson

All Episodes:

July 25, 2016

The 2 Points of Clarity that Will Make You So Much More Productive

July 18, 2016

Launching Your First (or Next) Digital Product

July 11, 2016

A Quick, Enjoyable Way to Sharpen your Vision, Goals, and Values

July 4, 2016

Q&A from Twitter, Independence Day Version!

June 27, 2016

The Difference Between Mindset and Wishful Thinking

June 20, 2016

Things I Love / Things I Hate #4: Trade Secrets, Transparency, and Lemonade Stands

June 13, 2016

Should You Swear on Your Blog?

June 7, 2016

Up All Night to Get Lucky: Sonia’s in a New Documentary!

May 23, 2016

The Context of a Successful Content Strategy: The Harpoon and the Net

May 16, 2016

My #1 Time Management Tip: Don’t Multitask; Compartmentalize

May 9, 2016

The 7 ‘Escape Pod’ Principles (Help Me Write My Book!)

May 2, 2016

Things I Love / Things I Hate #3: Nerdy Nummies and Crummy Content

April 25, 2016

Leadership, Categories of One, and Purple Rain

April 18, 2016

Make Better Mondays! 6 Minutes to a Happier, More Productive Week

April 11, 2016

5 Idea-Generating Techniques We Use on the Copyblogger Team

April 4, 2016

Blog or Podcast? 5 Questions to Help You Decide

March 28, 2016

Two EQ Hacks: A Nifty Trick for Making Big Changes, and How to Handle Hurt Feelings

March 21, 2016

Things I Love/Things I Hate about Health & Fitness Marketing

March 14, 2016

A Simple, Powerful Creativity System to Capture and Generate More Ideas

March 7, 2016

Anniversary Edition! On Finding Your Stubbornness and Going the Distance

February 29, 2016

Q&A: Cornerstone Content, Creativity, and the Future of Our Businesses

February 22, 2016

Getting to Freedom and Business Clarity: A Conversation with Sonia Thompson

February 15, 2016

New Mini-Series: Things I Love / Things I Hate

February 8, 2016

Getting Clear on your Metrics and Benchmarks: The 3 Lenses to Look Through

February 1, 2016

The Untethered Society: Scary or Liberating? (Or Both?)

January 25, 2016

Deep Creative Focus, the Long Haul … and, Yes, David Bowie

January 11, 2016

Motivation and Creativity: A Conversation with Mark McGuinness

January 4, 2016

Vision and Goal-Setting for Your Digital Business

December 21, 2015

Encore: How to Avoid Getting Sucker-Punched by Internet ‘Facts’

December 14, 2015

To Craft Content Marketing that Works: Avoid Silly Fads … and Do this Instead

December 7, 2015

How to Work from Home: Getting Stuff Done when No One is Looking Over Your Shoulder

November 30, 2015

5 Work Habit Hacks from 12 Creative Geniuses

November 23, 2015

Encore: Productivity for Flakes, Head Cases, and Other Natural Disasters

November 16, 2015

What You Need to Know about Guest Posting

November 9, 2015

7 Straightforward Steps to Superior Blog Posts and Podcasts

November 2, 2015

Self-Help for Business Owners: Useful or Useless?

October 26, 2015

The 7-Minute Content Makeover

October 19, 2015

7 Commandments of Professionalism for Content Marketers

October 12, 2015

Staying Grounded on the Road to Success: A Conversation with JB Glossinger

October 5, 2015

Minimalism, Success, and How to Be a Big Shot

September 28, 2015

Finding the Balance Between Pragmatism and Your Ideals

September 21, 2015

What Happens at the Crossroads of Content and Social Media

September 14, 2015

But Facebook Doesn’t Work For … (waily waily)

September 7, 2015

Marketing for Writers and Other Creative Souls

September 1, 2015

How to Turn Bad News into Happy Customers

August 25, 2015

How to Avoid Getting Sucker-Punched by Internet ‘Facts’

August 18, 2015

Bringing More Emotion into Your Writing — From the Inside Out

August 11, 2015

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Rainmaker.FM Digital Business Podcast Network

August 4, 2015

My Favorite Tools of the Trade for Writing, Content Planning, and Creative Collaboration

July 28, 2015

How Long Will It Take for My Business to Start Making Money? And Other Impossible Questions

July 21, 2015

5 Things I Learned from Minecraft about Community, Ecosystems, and Business

July 14, 2015

Call to Action: The Awesome Power of Asking for What You Want

July 7, 2015

A Question of (Writing) Voice: How to Strengthen It, How to Shape It

June 30, 2015

Deviance, Obsession, and Sharing Your Gifts with the World: A Conversation with Bill O’Hanlon

June 23, 2015

Is Hypersensitivity the New Fascism?

June 16, 2015

Q&A: Duplicate Content Worries, and Other Questions from the Audience

June 9, 2015

Business and Marketing for Artists and Creative Workers, Part Two

June 2, 2015

Business and Marketing for Artists and Creative Workers, Part One

May 27, 2015

The 3 Types of Trolls You Meet Online (and How to Deal with Them)

May 19, 2015

The 7 Circles of Belief that Drive Customers to Your Business

May 12, 2015

The Difference Between B2B and B2C Marketing (and Other Questions)

May 5, 2015

Annie Pratt on Resilient Leadership: How to Build a Smart, Agile Business by Crafting an Incredible Team

April 28, 2015

How Not to Be a Dirty, Rotten Spammer

April 21, 2015

4 Deep Marketing Questions (with Answers!)

April 14, 2015

How to Uncover What Your Audience Wants to Buy: An Interview with Ryan Levesque

April 7, 2015

Productivity for Flakes, Head Cases, and Other Natural Disasters

March 31, 2015

8 Harsh Truths about Social Media (and 1 Pretty Awesome One)

March 24, 2015

3 Juicy Marketing Questions Answered

March 17, 2015

How to Strengthen Your Talents

March 3, 2015

The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Business, Part 2

March 2, 2015

The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Business, Part 1

February 15, 2016

New Mini-Series: Things I Love / Things I Hate

All-caps, all-me Twitter accounts! A fabulous police department Facebook page! It’s time for Things I Love / Things I Hate.

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This week I’m launching a new regular mini-series on things I think are awesome and … the other stuff. Let me know if you find it useful!

I’ve found it’s often easier to see a principle when you can work from examples, so that’s what this series is intended to do.

In this 20-minute episode, I talk about:

  • Finding the right self-promotion balance on your Twitter stream — without turning into a shouty bore
  • The key factor that I think makes the Bangor PD’s Facebook page works so well
  • Thoughts on creating engaging content that isn’t stuffy or fluffy, but focuses on goals
  • My advice on choosing and working with editors and copyeditors
  • Letting you know about a place to find super-qualified professional writers and content marketers

Note: February 29 will be a special Q&A episode — drop a burning content, business, or work/life balance question in the comments below, or you can grab me on Twitter @soniasimone.

Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ...

New Mini-Series: Things I Love / Things I HateSonia Simone
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The Show Notes

  • The Bangor, Maine PD Facebook page
  • A bit more on Sgt. Tim Cotton
  • A link to the individual Bangor PD post I read on the podcast
  • Our Certified Content Marketers listing (there’s also a sign-up box if you want to join the waiting list for the course)

The Transcript

Sonai Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.

I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should.

I have an idea for a regular series here in Pink-Haired Marketing Land, and that’s “Things I love and things I hate.” I think it’s easier to learn by example, so I thought I’d come up with just one or two things that I think are fairly disastrous, and then balance that with something fantastic that I think is hitting the exact right notes.

All Me, All Caps

In order to protect the pathetic, I’m not including this person’s Twitter handle, but let me just read to you from a Twitter stream that I ran across:

People can’t stop talking about my podcast!

I only have worlds BEST entrepreneurs on live.

People tell me they learn more from my podcast than they do from expensive colleges!

People say [another podcaster’s] podcasts are boring and stuffy — They are all switching to [my podcast]!

An added bonus is how many of these words are in all caps. The person best known for this style is Donald Trump, and let’s just say … if you aren’t Donald Trump, just don’t. Maybe even if you are Donald Trump, just don’t, but that’s a matter of opinion.

This person literally posts nothing else on Twitter but shouty bragging about his podcast and the occasional story about his business. No one else is successful. No one else is worth listening to. No one else has a book worth reading or a podcast worth listening to. It’s the All-Me, All-Caps show. There’s one volume: high. There’s one topic: How awesome he is.

The only reason it isn’t boring is that it’s kind of hilarious — and not in a good way.

By the way, someone on our team met this individual at a live event, and he did the exact same thing in person. So.

It’s ok to toot your own horn — intelligently

I have no problem with letting people know you have good stuff. You need to do that. But when you’re coming across as a parody account of yourself, you may have a problem.

For one thing, let’s talk about the exclamation points. As Terry Pratchett wrote, “Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind.” Cool your jets a little there. More is not better.

There are a lot of good ways to use social, but every good social account is in some way part of an ecosystem. You’re sharing something that has value for others — insights, links, cute pictures of baby animals, whatever it is. An ecosystem of one is not a healthy ecosystem.

I don’t mind some bragging, if you have real accomplishments! A lot of folks listening to this show need to brag a little bit more. But that shouldn’t be the only thing on your stream.

A constant stream of I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF HOW AWESOME I AM is not going to help you meet your goals, because it just isn’t convincing. Show people how awesome you are, don’t just shout it.

Again, there are a lot of ways to use social media. You don’t have to spend hours every day having in-depth interactions with strangers. But you do have to deliver some kind of value. This ain’t good.

Things I love: The Bangor, Maine Police Department Facebook Page

Because I’m so awesome (see what I did there), I was a somewhat early adopter to this page. In other words, I found out them before the page got featured on NPR and The New York Times. Go me.

Anyway, Sergeant Tim Cotton of the Bangor, Maine PD writes a completely amazing Facebook page that really shows someone using content in a way that’s very fresh and very different, and at the same time very sustainable, at least until he retires.

There are about 33,000 people who live in Bangor, and more than 100,000 fans of the page.

The page works mainly because it has a very, very distinct voice. The writer is a veteran cop, and the page isn’t a LOL-fest, but it always features a nice dry humor from someone who you can tell has seen a lot.

I’ll give you a link, but sometimes the links go south for specific posts on Facebook, so let me just read you an example.

This year the heavy snow and cold, winter weather seemed to avoid hitting our little piece of paradise.
But, like an attractive young lady tries to avoid the kid with the Rubik’s Cube at the dance right up until he mentions that he was accepted at MIT and received a 911 Carrera 4S for his 8th grade graduation, things can change in a moment.

If you want your Porsche to be located in your parking space tomorrow morning, we suggest that you move it to a safe location that does not include a City of Bangor street.

That’s correct. From 11 pm tonight until 6 am tomorrow morning we are under a parking ban on ALL CITY STREETS.

There are no exceptions. We do not want to tow your car. We do not want to ticket your car. We do not want to plow your car under a snowbank. We want you to be happy. Really, really happy. That is exactly why we warn you in advance in several different ways.

The men and women of the Bangor Police Department will be here. We do not have a Porsche.

Sergeant Cotton is a great example of letting a writing voice develop from real experiences, a real point of view, and a willingness to not be super stuffy. The page isn’t “professional” in the sense of being dry or official sounding. But it’s not clowning around — he’s just added in enough personality that you’ll actually read it and get the information. It’s relevant, it’s interesting, it’s engaging. It’s really nicely done, in a space where you don’t get a lot of excellent content happening. Bravo.

Listener question!

One of the things I love is answering questions from folks like you. 🙂 Leave me one at PinkHairedMarketer.FM so I can answer in a future show!

This one is from Bruno Winck, who has a very nice presence on Twitter, might I add:

If you had to find someone to edit/copywrite your writing, how would you choose between several?

Just off the bat, one thing I’d recommend is that you want to have a few people that you can tap for any critical business function. So don’t find one editor, maybe have two, and split the work. That gives you bandwidth if people take a sick day or go on vacation or just get really busy.

To quote super old-school grumpy marketing cat Dan Kennedy,

One is the worst number in business.

Always make sure you have backups in place for people or processes that are critical to your business.

Editing is a real blend of talent and practice — and of course there are editors at all levels. In my experience, with anything along these lines there’s one way to find out how good they are, and that’s to give them some work. The person with a monster resume may or may not be the most excellent.

Don’t ask people to work for free, that’s lame and all the good people will tell you to go away. But take 3-5 out for a spin by assigning them a piece at their requested rate and seeing what comes back. Obviously this is a process that will happen over time, unless you want to write 5 pieces and do a trial all at once.

Pay attention to:

  • How are they to work with? If the person is talented but they get on your nerves, or skilled but flaky about deadlines, you’ll want to keep looking. They’ll be on their best behavior with this sample piece, so if they’re not good to work with now, they never will be.
  • Do you like the writing you get back? How much transformation are you looking for? Do you want help just catching errors, or do you want someone who can help you sound just better? The latter will cost more.
  • Have they left a typo or some other outright error? This for me would be a cardinal sin. It does happen in day-to-day work sometimes, no one is perfect. But in an “audition” piece they should be a little obsessive, IMO. Good editors are usually perfectionists.

As far as where to find this person, one place to look is our community of certified content marketers. They’re not going to be the cheapest option, but if getting a pro isn’t the cheapest option.

You can go to Copyblogger.com, and under products we have an option for “Certified Writers.” That’s both a list of the folks we have certified and a box where you can sign up if you happen to be a content marketer or writer yourself and want to go through the training and then apply to be certified. Some of those folks will also do editing and copyediting.

If you do want to get on the waiting list to sign up for the program, just realize it’s not a given that you’ll pass — a member of the editorial staff looks closely at a selection of your work and ranks it on a 100-point scale. It comes down to, Would we feel professionally comfortable staking our own reputations on recommending you.

By the way, to be clear on our financial relationship with those folks, although it’s in “Products,” we don’t receive any cut of the fees from the certified writers — they just pay the cost of the course they take to be certified. They’re just people who have elected to get more advanced education on content and then have applied to be certified. They also need to stay current in our Authority community, which has an annual membership fee, so they stay up to date on the latest information on topics like SEO, content strategy, and the other stuff that they need to do a really excellent job for you.

Ask your own question!

February 29 is going to be a QA podcast, so let me know your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter! I’m @soniasimone.

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