Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Getting Content Ideas

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get-content-ideas

To keep your business going, you may need to create content regularly. So what can you do when you need an idea and your muse is AWOL?
Do you get stuck trying to come up with topic ideas for articles, podcasts, blogs, books, newsletters, ebooks and other content? You may have times when ideas come easily and the words flow, and others when your mind seems to go blank.

Here are some ways to come up with ideas:

Look for something new. Check news sites, blogs, press releases and other sources of information about what is happening in your field. Subscribe to Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts to be updated by email when there is news involving your topic. For example, I get an email from Google whenever they index a page including information about mystery shopping, the subject of one of my books.  You can also subscribe to RSS feeds from your favorite sites to get the latest news.

Read articles written by others. Do NOT copy their articles or just paraphrase what they have said. However, even reading an article on a topic unrelated to yours could give you ideas. For example, “Six Ways to Get More Customers to Your Retail Store,” might give you the idea to write, “Five New Ways to Get More Patients for Your Dental Practice.” The ways will be different because the businesses are different.

Do a review. Talk about a new product, book, tool, web site or something else that would be of interest to your audience.

Do a keyword search. Use the Google Keyword Tool or Google Suggest to find ideas on your topic. In Google Suggest, you can enter a search term and, as the name implies, Google will suggest related terms. So if I enter “fly fishing,” I get terms including fly fishing knots, fly fishing equipment, fly fishing rods, fly fishing show, fly fishing reels, fly fishing tackle and more. Any of those might make a good topic for an article, podcast or blog post. Maybe even an ebook or book.

Look at pictures. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and a picture can certainly inspire a lot of words. Go to a photo site such as Flickr.com or a video site such as YouTube.com and search for images related to your topic. As you look through the pictures and captions, see what ideas come to mind. Clip art and stock photo sites are good, too. Try ClipArt.com or iStockPhoto.com.

Use a template. Create an article using a standard format, such as Top Ten lists, Q&A, common myths, step-by-step and others.

It doesn’t always have to be words. When I wrote a weekly newspaper column, each column had to be words, and a certain number of them at that. However, your blog post or newsletter item could be a video, a picture, an audio, a graphic or something else. Don’t assume that content always means written words.

Keep a notebook. When an idea comes to you, write it down. I used to think that I would remember the great idea I had for a product or an article, but I often did not. Or at least I could not recall it on demand. WRITE IT DOWN! Instead of a notebook, you can use an electronic form, such as a PDA, text messages, voice recorder or whatever you have with you all the time to capture ideas as they come to you.

Your Passive Income Plan

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You can create streams of passive income by solving problems for customers. Learn more!

Last week, I shared the idea of creating your own “lottery prize”: Passive income of $1000 a week or more for life.

This week, we will look at how you can get started.

The way to create your streams of passive income is to solve problems for customers. This is easier than it may sound to you. You may already be solving problems by offering consulting or other services. You may even be making $1000 a week or more (perhaps a lot more) by doing so. The problem with this model is that you are trading hours for dollars. That means that the moment you stop putting in hours, the dollars stop, too. And, there will always be a limit to how much you can earn.

However, when you create products that solve problems, the products can be earning for you 24/7, even when you are not putting in hours. And there is no limit to how much you can earn.

What product should you create? This is the thing that hangs up lots of people. They spend a lot of time thinking, planning and agonizing about what to do, and no time doing it. The answer is simple, though.

Find out what your customers want. You don’t have to be a mind reader to do this. Just ask. Do a survey, post questions to your blog or ask your Twitter followers. Get feedback about their questions and concerns. What is their biggest problem or obstacle?

Once you know what your customers want, create it for them. You might hold a teleseminar, then record and transcribe it. Or you could create an ebook. Or a software program. Or templates. Or videos. Ultimately you will want to have products in many formats, so don’t worry about which one to do first. Just choose a topic and format, and do it.

What if you don’t have a big mailing list or a bunch of Twitter followers to survey? Start building your list now. Today. But in the meantime, go to the forums or websites frequented by your target market. Read the questions and the comments there to determine what people in your target market want to know.

Get started on this now. Take one or more of the above actions to discover what your market wants. Then decide on a format. Then create your first product.

In an upcoming article, we will talk about how to create your first product, or your next product.

Winning Your Own Lottery

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What would $52,000 a year do for you?

A colleague of mine had an uncle who won a lottery prize that gave him $1000 a week for life. Now, $52,000 a year does not make you “rich,” but it gives you options. The uncle was a small business owner who never took time off because he believed he could not afford to close his store. After winning the lottery, he kept the business but started taking some time to travel, relax and even have surgery he had been postponing!

What would $52,000 a year do for you? Maybe it would cover your bills so you could take a year or so to finally write that novel. Or pay for you to go back to school to begin a new career. It could fund your kids’ college fund. Or enable you to quit a job you hate. Or pay for trips and other extras you don’t think you can afford now.

At the very least, having that money coming in the door every week could mean that you wouldn’t have to worry about paying your bills (unless, of course, you went nuts and started spending $5000 a week) even when other income slows or stops.

The bad news? You probably are not going to win the lottery.

The good news? You can create your own $1000 a week lottery prize. Although there are no guarantees about how much you can make, here are some ideas about how you can win your own lottery.

The lottery prize is just a form of passive income. Creating your own streams of passive income takes a bit more effort than buying a lottery ticket, but requires a lot less luck than winning the lottery.

First let’s define “passive income.” I don’t think of passive income as “money for nothing.” Passive income is money you earn by doing something once, but getting paid many times.

One good source of passive income is selling products. With products, you do it once (create the product) then get paid hundreds, thousands or millions of times.

What do I mean by product? It could be an information product, such as a book, ebook, audio program or multimedia course. Or something you invent and have manufactured.To make $1000 a week on a product with a $20 profit, you would need to sell an average of 50 every week. That’s about seven a day. Is that doable? Sure. Or you could sell 10 (three sales every two days) of a product with a $100 profit. Or one a week if the product had a $1000 profit.

But maybe you would prefer not to put all of your eggs in one basket. You could create a variety of products at different price points and even toss in a few other income streams, such as affiliate marketing, advertising income, etc. In fact, that can be a good plan because it can help to smooth out income fluctuations.

If you are starting from square one, you might not go from $0 to $1000 a week overnight, at least not consistently. You can get there, though, if you have a plan and follow through. And $1000 will be just the beginning. You can continue to grow your passive income streams until you are earning several thousand dollars every week.

So what should your first step be? I’ll share that with you in an upcoming article. Meanwhile, think about what you would do with an extra $52,000 a year.

Content Brings People to Your Website

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When people search the web, they are usually looking for the answer to a question or problem. When you provide the answer, you are rewarded with visitors. You can then create income streams from that traffic by offering products and services of interest to your visitors.

The first step is to figure out what people are searching for. You may think you know what search terms your potential customers use, but you could be very wrong. They may use different terminology than you, so start by doing keyword research. One free resource you can use is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Write strong titles. I have been guilty of using titles that were too clever. Don’t go for the clever title, use titles that are descriptive. Include your keywords in titles. Promise a benefit.

Make it easy to read. People do not want to read pages of dense type on the screen. Use short sentences, short paragraphs and bulleted lists to make it easy to read. 

Remember that content is more than words. Useful content may include photos, graphs and charts, audio, video, and more. Use multimedia to attract and engage site visitors.

Encourage your visitors to get involved. You may allow visitors to rate site features, make comments, post to a forum, write reviews, or even to contribute content such as articles, photos and videos.

Update your content frequently. Add new content to your site at least weekly, and more often if possible.

Put some of your content on other sites. Upload videos to YouTube.com, pictures to Flickr.com and articles to EzineArticles.com. All of these sites allow you to post your content there for free, and you can link to your site from theirs. But do not put all of your content elsewhere. Some should be exclusive to you.

Watch your stats. Your web host should provide some kind of information about how many visitors your site receives and where they came from, or you may prefer to use Google Analytics. Look at your site’s stats to see what works. What sites refer the most visitors? How many people are coming from search engine results, and for what did they search? Are you seeing spikes in traffic? Do they occur on certain days, such as the day you updated or the day your email newsletter went out? I always see an increase on the days when I send out an email newsletter.

Once you know what works, keep doing it. 

Walking the Expert Walk

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Do you walk the walk? Although it is possible to write about a subject based solely on research, if you want to present yourself as an expert you should not only talk the talk, you should walk the walk. That means knowing your subject through personal experience.

I got an email from a self-professed guru the other day, offering yet another money-making program. Although much of what he writes is good in that it provides useful information, it does not have a soul. What I mean by that is that his stuff is written as if he went to the library and looked up how to do these things. None of it is based on his experience, and it lacks the little insider touches that can make how-to information so valuable.

When you market yourself as an expert, prove that you know your stuff:

Show your credentials. Tell them why you are qualified. That might be through formal training, but it should also include real-life experience.

Tell your story. How did you acquire your expertise? What “war stories” do you have about learning what you know? Have you worked with leaders in your industry? Do you have clients we would all know?

Admit your mistakes. It may be counter-intuitive, but admitting to mistakes can make you a more credible expert. Anyone who has learned a subject has made mistakes along the way. Own up to your mistakes and tell what you learned from them. Let them see that you are human.

Share the details. Go beyond the broad overview to share some of the insider secrets that only an expert would know.

Don’t hold back. Tell them everything you know. As you do, you will learn even more.

Interact. Fake gurus do not want to interact with their “followers” because they risk being exposed. Answer questions and respond to the comments of people in your audience.

Be positive. Be successful by building yourself up, not by tearing down your perceived competition. You are unique and there is no one who offers exactly what you can.

Demonstrate you have more than book knowledge in your subject and people will look to you as an authority. Ultimately, being a credible expert is about being real. Being a real person and sharing real knowledge.