Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

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.

Where to Get Free Content for Your Website or Blog

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We all know that readers and search engines love fresh content, and lots of it. But keeping a fresh supply of content flowing is hard, especially if you have more than one blog, or you have a website and a blog that need frequent updating.
One option is to hire writers to provide posts and articles. However, paying for content—good content—can get expensive.

So what’s a blogger to do? Here are some ideas for adding fresh, free content to your site.

Solicit guest posts. There are many writers who would be glad to contribute a post to your site. Why would they write for you for free? They get exposure to your audience, plus a link to their site. It is a great way for a new blogger to build an audience and credibility, but even experienced bloggers can benefit from guest posting.

So how do you find these generous souls? View the Local Viking website for the steps you take.

  • Let your readers know that you are looking for guest posts. Your best prospects for guest posts will come from among your readership. Add a page to your blog with instructions on how to submit a guest post.
  • Submit a request for guest posts to Blogger LinkUp (BLU). BLU is a free service I offer to bloggers. Just sign up at http://BloggerLinkUp.com/ and you will get emails (currently three times a week) with notices from people who are looking for guest posters, offering guest posts and more. You may also submit your request for guest posts at the site.
  • Approach other bloggers and ask them to guest post. The biggest bloggers in your niche may not agree, but there are lots of great bloggers who would be flattered to be asked, and happy to contribute.

Use content from article directories. Article directories are repositories for content submitted by writers. Most article directories allow publishers (that’s you!) to use articles from their directories at no charge. If you choose to republish articles from directories, there are a few things to keep in mind:

  • Know the terms of service. You are usually prohibited from making any changes to the article, and you must include the author information including any links. You may be required to credit the article directory as well. Some directories may limit the number of articles you may use from them. For example, EzineArticles has a limit of 25 articles per site per year.
  • Look for quality. Some articles found in directories are very good, others are unreadable. Only use the ones that add value for your readers.
  • Don’t overdo it with republished content. The search engines want to see unique content at your site, not just a bunch of stuff they can find elsewhere, so use republished articles here and there, but do not make them a significant portion of your site. They can, however, be a good way to fill in once in a while when you do not have time to write something yourself.

Some of my favorite article directories are:

http://EzineArticles.com/

http://www.Amazines.com/

Post a video. YouTube and many other video sharing sites allow you to use their videos on your site, and even make it easy. To add a YouTube video to your site, simply go to YouTube and do a search for videos using some of the keywords for your site. When you find an interesting video you want to share, look for the “Embed Code” on the right side of the page, near the top. Click on the button next to the embed code to customize the display options. Then copy and paste the embed code from the YouTube page to your site. You may want to add a few sentences of commentary or an introduction, or just post the video.

Repurpose your existing content. Have you written a book? Magazine or newsletter articles? A handout for a speech or seminar? I wrote a newspaper column for more than three years—that is more than 150 columns that could be posted on my website after they were published in the newspaper.

What are your favorite sources for free content?

Teleseminars for Fun and Profit

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Teleseminars can educate prospects before the sale, and support customers after in an easy, user-friendly way. Not only can they help you attract and retain customers, teleseminars can themselves be a profit center.

Teleseminars are, as the name implies, seminars provided over the telephone. Special conference calling lines are available that will handle hundreds of callers at once. You simply provide the call-in number to everyone you wish to invite. At the scheduled time, they dial in and everyone is connected in a giant conference call.

As the host of the call, you have control. For example, you can mute everyone except yourself, or yourself and a guest you are interviewing. This helps to keep background noise down. At times during the call, you can open up the line for questions, or you may choose to take all questions via email or instant messaging.

A teleseminar is different from an in-person seminar in that you do not have the visual cues between presenter and audience as you do live. However, with just a little practice, you can become very comfortable presenting teleseminars.

You can use teleseminars to:

Provide information about your products and services to prospective customers. You can present information to educate prospects to help them make a decision to buy.

Support customers after the sale. Regularly scheduled teleseminars can answer customer questions, or address things that will help them to get more from their purchase, such as explaining how to use features of your products they may not currently be using.

Create new revenue streams. Instead of (or in addition to) using free teleseminars to educate and support customers, charge people to participate on the call. Typical pricing for a one-hour teleseminar ranges from $20 to $97 or more. A series of several one-hour calls could range in price from $59 to well over $500. Doing one fee-based teleseminar a month can add hundreds or thousands of dollars in revenue.

Create new products. In addition to selling access to the live call, you can produce audio products that you can sell on CD or as online downloads. Pricing is usually the same as for the live call, although some consultants offer free teleseminars, but charge $10 or more for a download of the recording.

You can get a free conferencing line that will handle up to 500 people. Many free services offer a web panel for managing the call, and most allow you to record the teleseminar. You can find several suggestions on this list of free conference call services.

Get a feel for teleseminars by attending a few (search for “free teleseminars”) then start using free and paid teleseminars to grow your business and your revenue.

Make Your Content Original

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How do you know that your creation is really your original work, and not just a regurgitation of the work of others? Most of us don’t intend to plagiarize anyone, but it’s hard to determine where the ideas of others end, and ours begin.

One of my favorite sayings is that when you “borrow” from one source it is plagiarism, but when you borrow from many, it’s research. This is a clever way of saying that most creations are the result of taking in ideas, concepts and words produced by others, processing them through our brains, making unique connections, and putting our own influence on them.

I heard someone say that we take lots of information into our heads, the thoughts and bits of data float around our brains, and when two seemingly unrelated pieces connect, a new idea is born.

It has also been said that there are only 14 plots possible in fiction. Every book, play or movie is simply a retelling or combination of these 14 plots. What makes each work unique is the choice of characters and settings, the dialogue, and the twists and spins invented by the author.

We are all exposed to many of the same stimuli, and we may independently develop similar ideas. How many times have you seen a movie or a new product and thought, “That’s my idea!”? You know that there is no way they could have “stolen” your idea, but somehow the same thing occurred to someone else.

That’s why it is important to take action when you have an idea. Sooner or later, someone else will have the same idea you did.

What should you NOT do?

Don’t take someone else’s work, and simply reword it. That is plagiarism. It is illegal and immoral. Visit https://copyleaks.com/businesses/duplicate-content-checker-for-seo-agencies to have a clear idea of whether or not your work is up to scratch.

Don’t try to duplicate the success of others by creating confusion between your product and theirs.  Using deceptively similar titles is one way this happens.

Don’t think that just because you CAN copy something, it is OK to do so. Computers and the Internet have made it easy to copy the words, images and sounds created by others, but that doesn’t make it right. Respect the work of others.

So, how do you make your work “original”?

Make unexpected connections.

Put a new spin on an old idea.

Use your own voice, and language which gives your work a unique sound.

Imprint your work with your life experience and values.

If necessary, stay away from works related to your topic while you are writing. That way, you won’t inadvertently copy from them.

Here’s an example from my own experience. Lots of people have written books about going into business for yourself. I took a different approach when I wrote about how I built a career for myself that helps me live the life I want to live, and shows readers how to do it, too. The lifestyle element is important to my book, but it is often overlooked by business authors. I used my specific experience in writing the how-to, and I created a new word, “Solo- preneuring,” to describe it.

Act honorably, and respect the work of others as you would want them to respect yours. But don’t be afraid to put your ideas into the marketplace as your ideas, in your voice with your unique insights and perspectives.

Detect Plagiarism on the Web

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Do you know where your content is? You work hard to create quality content, so you do not want others to republish your work without permission, perhaps even attaching their names to it. However, if you have put content online, chances are that someone has plagiarized some of it.

The first step in fighting plagiarism is discovering it when it occurs. It is a good idea to run your content through a plagiarism checker to see if anyone else is using it elsewhere. All of the plagiarism software listed below can be used free (Copyscape also offers paid options), and they work in slightly different ways.

You can also use these tools to determine where content you have syndicated has been published. For example, I post articles to article directories and these tools can find sites that have chosen to publish my articles. That is authorized use, not plagiarism, but it is good to know when and where my articles are being used.

Copyscape.com is perhaps the best-known service to detect where your content is being used. The free service allows you to enter a URL. Copyscape looks at the page, then looks for pages containing the same content. There is also a premium service that allows you to paste a block of text that they will check to see if it appears anywhere on the web. This can be useful for checking that content produced for you by paid writers in original, and not plagiarized. Their Copysentry premium service automatically scans the web looking for content copied from your site and notifies you when matching content is found.

Plagium.com allows you to enter a block of text or a URL and find anywhere else the text appears on the web. They go one step further, allowing you to sign up for alerts to be notified if they find a new instance of your content, a service somewhat like the Copysentry feature at Copyscape, but free.

FairShare.cc asks you to enter the RSS feed URL for your site, then creates an RSS feed for you showing where your content is used on the web. This is great for tracking where your content has been republished when you have released it for republication via article directories and CreativeCommons licensing.

CopyGator.com monitors your RSS feeds and looks for sites using your content on the web. You can set up your feed for monitoring by installing a badge on your site or entering the RSS feed URL at the CopyGator site. If you add CopyGator to your blog’s ping list, they will be notified whenever you add new content.

Google Alerts will monitor for phrases you enter. You can set up an unlimited number of alerts and tell Google to send you an email weekly, daily or as soon as they find an instance of the phrase. For example, you can set up alerts for your name, your URL, your article titles, or unique phrases found in your articles. When searching for multi-word phrases, be sure to enter the phrase in quotation marks so you get an alert only when the entire phrase is found, not any one of the words.

Each of these services can be helpful in tracking where your content is being used on the web, both in authorized usage and when it has been plagiarized. You may choose to rely on one tool or some combination that keeps you informed of where your content appears.