Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

It’s Not What You Know…

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who-do-you-knowIt’s who you know. And, who the people you know know, and who they know, and so on. You might be closer than you think to getting a meeting with the decision maker at that client you’ve been trying to land, or a celebrity endorsement, or other contacts that can build your business.

The first step is to identify the people you know. Do any of them have something in common with your target, the person(s) you are trying to reach? Perhaps they share an occupation, they have the same hobby or interest, they live in the same area, or they went to the same school. Or, do the people you know know someone else who has something in common with your target? They may lead you exactly where you want to go.
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Create Interesting Content for Boring Niches

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bored-puppyYou hear the advice time and time again – write great, interesting, exciting, sharable content. But what if you’re in a boring niche? Or writing for a client in a boring niche? How do you get readers excited about mundane topics like locksmiths or plumbing, or topics like personal injury lawyers or rash creams?

Here are ten tips to help you create interesting content ideas for any niche, even the ones that seem, at least at first glance, to be boring.
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Social Media Explained by Cats

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With the proliferation of social media networks, it is understandable if you are a little confused about what they are and how to use them. Well, we know that the Internet is run by cats, so we might as well turn to our cat overlords friends for an explanation of social meowdia…I mean social media.

This great infographic suggests how you would use (from left to right) Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Yelp, Google+, Spotify and Foursquare to share posts related to your cat.
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10 Twitter Post Ideas

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things-to-tweetTo keep your Twitter followers engaged, you need to keep a stream of tweets coming their way. Unlike blogging or social media, on Twitter you have to come up with something new several times a day. Active Twitter users may post 10 to 20 times a day or more. So what should you tweet?

Here are ten ideas you can use to come up with things to share on Twitter.

1. Recommend a Useful Resource
Is there a particular article, book, workshop, DVD, YouTube video, magazine or other resource that you’d recommend? Post a link to that resource, along with a description of what you liked about it.
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How Personal Should You Be?

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revealing

How much personal information should you share with customers and the world? That question has become more important than ever with the proliferation of social media sites and a tendency to overshare when it comes to things that traditionally were kept private.

If you are willing to give customers a peek into your “real life” it can help to build relationships with them. The trick is figuring out how much to tell and how much to keep private. Telling too much can make you appear unprofessional and damage your reputation. And too much personal information will turn off people who are following you or reading your blog to learn about your expertise.

One way to manage this is to have separate business and personal accounts. That can be difficult to manage (How do you make sure that business contacts are in the business account and family and friends are in the personal account?) but keeping things separate can be a good choice.

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