Missing out on networking opportunities? Now is your chance to target audiences with tailored content and establish yourself as a thought leader.

We are in the middle of what is traditionally conference season in many industries. This is the time of year when your company’s key salespeople might be stuffing their laptop bags with sales materials and boarding planes to city-sized hotels across the globe, all with the aim of reconnecting with established contacts and impressing new ones. Long days of presentations, demos, and working breakfasts, lunches, and dinners spilled over into yet more shop talk over saucily-priced cocktails. …

How to sell your product without plugging it

Sick of being sold to every time you go online? Afraid you might come across as pushy and aggressive in your own web content? Don’t worry: It is possible to promote your business and help your customers without being too salesy.

Be relentlessly helpful

If everything you put on your website is inspired by your desire to solve problems for your customers, you will never come across as too pushy. …

Content takes time, but it can also be expensive to make it look professional. Use free versions of my favourite tools (including Canva, Hemingway, Hootsuite, and Screaming Frog) to create beautiful free content.

Canva

One of the great things about is that you don’t have to hire a graphic designer to produce excellent content on a consistent basis. Blurry images and poor formatting make the best content look terrible. with easy-to-use features for creating a variety of engaging, shareable content.

Notion

A huge issue for many small businesses is that you don’t have the luxury of specialisation. There is no department for…

How to do content when you’re doing everything else too

The Importance of Content for Startups

Content for startups can be way down your list of priorities. After all, you have a business to launch. But engaging content is one of the most effective ways to draw people to your business.

It’s generally not about jumping up and down, waving your arms in the air, and shouting “Look at me! Buy my stuff!” It’s more subtle and a lot more helpful than that. Think of it less as a pitch and more as being useful and educating people.

If your content is super helpful to your…

I’m helping a client with the kind of email campaign he would never have imagined a year ago. This man has to tell people who have signed up for an event next week that he wants them to stay away. And some of them are not at all happy.

When Success Goes Wrong

This client has done all the right things to build his business over the years, and he’s finally seeing his hard work pay off: For the first time, one of his events has sold out. Cue triumphant applause and fanfare. Except that the (Irish) government’s surprise decision to continue restricting the…

Creativity took a hit this spring. Even the most fertile minds have admitted they’re struggling to produce anything worthwhile right now. But whether you’re just ticking over, or you’ve been spouting content all year, at some point you will get to a stage when you stare at the screen and think “What now?”

You know your content marketing is working, and you also know that the only way to keep it working is to continue generating content that resonates with your audience. But your idea machine is running on empty.

The next time your mind freezes up, take a break…

A step-by-step guide to standing out in your field

If branding didn’t work, the idea of an entire supermarket aisle for breakfast cereal would seem ridiculous. Cars would come in three or four different models. The fashion industry just wouldn’t exist. However many times your mother told you how special you are, genuine uniqueness is pretty rare. We really don’t need the vast array of choices available to us.

That’s why branding is so wildly successful. It differentiates products that perform very similar functions and turns customers into devotees. If you want to stand out in your chosen field, sure…

Tips on using targeted content to develop valuable relationships

When I was preparing for final exams in school, teachers were always warning about the dangers of throwing mud at the wall — regurgitating everything you could remember about a subject and hoping for a pass. Decades later and it looks like many companies should go back to school: Undifferentiated, blanket campaigns that offer the same information to anybody who expresses an interest in a product or service are all too common.

There is an alternative to throwing everything you have out there and hoping some of it will convert into sales: You can position yourself as an authority by…