Always sharpen the saw

Posted on April 03, 2013 by Sandy Rees, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

I’m a big believer in continuing my education.

I don’t mean going back to school. Actually, you couldn’t PAY me enough to go back to school! But I’ll attend conferences and webinars and read books all the time. I love learning things that are applicable to my business—always sharpen the saw!

I spent this past weekend at a conference called NAMS in Atlanta. It was my first time at this event, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. As always, there’s stuff to learn, people to meet, and food to eat (if you know me, you know that a visit to the Cheesecake Factory was on the agenda!!). I thought I’d share with you a few of the nuggets I took away.

In the opening session, I learned that my business style is Mentor/Creative. (No big surprise, right?) This means that I love teaching and sharing, and I’m really good at coming up with ideas. It was good affirmation that I should be leading workshops and writing books.

I was reminded by Jeff Herring that prospects are attracted to your “voice” and the way you approach and solve problems. When you blog and engage in article marketing, you’re giving people a chance to get a taste of who you are and how you do what you do. Jeff also reminded us not to marketing to everyone. “Look for those mot hungry.” Makes total sense to me. You can’t help everyone, so why not help those who want it, need it, and are willing to pay for it?

The afternoon session, led by Karon Thackston, was about copywriting and creating personas for your target audience. I was able to sit down with Karon on day 2 and get her input on my personas to firm them up. These will become the basis for the website makeover that I’m planning for my website. When you’re thinking about personas, be sure to include behavior, history, wants/needs/wishes, and struggles/issues/roadblocks in addition to demographics and psychographics. I other words, don’t set your ideal client profile to “small nonprofits.” Heck, there are over a million of those! Get more specific about the ideal small nonprofit. How long have they been around, what keeps them awake at night? The more you can refine this, the easier marketing gets.

On day 2, I learned a lot from Ellen Britt as she led a workshop on content marketing. She said that quality content = current, actionable, and informative. It’s a good reminder that we need to provide our readers with good stuff, not just stuff. She went on to show us a 10-step process for taking one article and re-purposing it over and over to get maximum exposure from it. She included on that list sharing the article on social media, recording in and sharing on iTunes, and making PowerPoint slides and sharing on SlideShare. It’s a way to reach multiple audiences with one piece of writing.

I sat in on a couple of sessions that talked about Amazon and selling ebooks for Kindle. I’ve resisted doing this for a while, but I finally see how this fits into my overall marketing strategy. I got lots of ideas for turning my current ebooks into Kindle and audiobooks, and gleaning other things from my current product inventory that I can monetize. I’m so excited to get some of these out there and see what happens!

I have pages and pages of notes, with action items starred and key phrases highlighted. My next step is to go back through and pull out the action items so I can work them into my calendar. This is how I make sure that I get my money’s worth from the events I attend. Otherwise, it was just a fun weekend. If you and I don’t implement what we learn, it’s a waste of time.