Are you ready to tap into an unending stream of creativity for your business, blog, or third thing that also begins with a ‘B’? The same skills improv comedians use onstage can help.
“Seriously?”
Seriously.
Unlike stand-up comedy that’s written, rehearsed and performed by a solo comedian – improv comedy is created by an ensemble, entirely on the spot, right in front of the audience. You may not have your own ensemble (or the same massive need for strangers’ approval that I do), but here are three improv performance techniques you can use on your own to squeeze out more creative juice.
1. SAY ‘YES!’ TO YOURSELF!
Agreement is king in improvisation. Multiple actors = Multiple ideas driven by multiple egos. Even if the characters argue, the actors must agree. Are we brothers in a coffee shop? Fancy ladies in a park? The audience doesn’t want to watch actors negotiate – they just want us to be Fancy Ladies!
How many of your ideas never flourish because they don’t make it out of your head? That voice inside that says “NO”, “HARD”, or “DUMB” – that is your internal editor. Turn them off. Better yet, slit their throat and silence them forever. (Too graphic? Apologies. My internal editor’s been dead a long time.) With that nagging voice shut down, now you can get to work.
Write out all of your ideas. Not just the reasonable ideas – ALL of them. Even the dumb ones. No, ESPECIALLY THE DUMB ONES! There’s a reason you’re an entrepreneur and not wasting your genius in a boardroom. Dream up a thing or two that’s too unwieldy to implement. We aren’t making decisions yet – we’re creating. SAY ‘YES’ TO YOUR OWN IDEAS!
2. TAKE IT FURTHER!
In improvisation, the companion to ‘Yes!’ is always ‘And…’. ‘Yes!’ gets us on the same page, but ‘And…’ gets us to the end of the chapter. When I bring my dumb idea to the stage, I rely on my performance partners to agree (Yes!) and then add something (And…) to make me seem brilliant.
To harness this for yourself, simply look at all of the ideas to which you have already said Yes in Step 1, and then make them work. (I know, “is that all?” Stick with me…) There are a million reasons why they won’t work. So? Focus on a million (I will settle for one) ways in which they can work. Say “What if…?” a lot. Be open to new avenues and different arenas. Velcro, Superglue and even pacemakers were all invented by frustrated scientists who were trying to create something else entirely. This essay began as a recipe for Chicken ala King. Your idea is often merely a starting point.
“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” – Thomas Alva Edison
3. KEEP IT SIMPLE.
Improv comedians strive for an honest emotional core in our comedy – characters and ideas that resonate and draw the audience in. I don’t have to travel to Mars in a unicorn-drawn carriage to entertain someone. The audience will not care about my comedy if they cannot relate in some way.
Who cares if your idea has been done before? I’ll pay cash money for your take on it. Chickens were around a long time before Colonel Sanders gave us his delicious version. Keep it simple and tell your truth. Especially if that truth is Original Recipe™ with a side of slaw…Yum!
“The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.” – Thomas Carlyle
BONUS STEP!!!
Improv innovator Del Close admonished improv comedians to exalt each other and their choices on stage. Start doing the same for yourself. Don’t think you’re creative? You are. Start thinking that you are. Then know that you are. Then just…BE.
“If we treat each other as if we are geniuses, poets, and artists, we have a better chance of becoming that onstage.” – Del Close
You won’t implement most ideas. Ideas you do implement won’t always succeed. (Be thankful it isn’t happening in front of a demanding, semi-drunk audience.) But ideas you dismiss before they wriggle out of your brain have no chance whatsoever. Don’t say ‘NO’ until you’ve said ‘YES’. Further your own ideas. Keep it simple.
Jay Olson brings improv-based training and creative energy to entrepreneurs, universities and corporations. He performs and coaches at the iO and ComedySportz theaters in Chicago, IL. Visit Jay at jayolsonimprov.com and connect on Twitter and Facebook.
Watch this video to see what past Creating Famers are up to and how have their businesses changed. You’ll also hear the story of how I went from a struggling web designer to the business that I have today.
Putting your eggs in one basket is a risky move. Putting your business marketing efforts into one network that you hold no control over is riskier.
You must create your own social network of fans and connections with your brand. Social networking was created to help you share, connect and converse. Think of using your website the same way.
Your website allows you to bring all your connections to one place. You website is Your Social Network. You just don’t need $100K to start it.
We know how quickly the latest trend can switch to the newest has been. This is why it is important to create your social network.
Benefits of using your website to create a social network:
Drive traffic to your site
Grow email list and increase sales
Help build an audience and following
Position yourself as an expert in your niche
Here are some ways you can turn your website into a social network:
Increase your groupies with social sharing
People are now accustomed to looking for those key social sharing buttons when they read something they like or something that helped them! Don’t be left in the dust by not having this simple feature loaded to your website. Facebook gives you all the tools you need when you are connecting on its platform. Make sure you give your readers the same! Installing this feature on your site will help attract a new set of members for your network.
Build your list to build your network.
Send your fans, followers and friends to a sign-up page on your website. You can set up a separate page or a squeeze page on your website that snags their email addresses in exchange for your big banana freebie. Adding your connections from your social networks will help bring them to one place: your social network.
Call to Action
We know that an important step in marketing is creating that “Call to Action” to direct your buyers to the next step in the process. You can use your call to build your network. When you send out your weekly email message to your list, direct them to what you would like them to do next. Ask them to share with friends that could benefit from the information, have them leave comments on your blog, or encourage them to like, tweet, share with their social networks to bring their friends to the party. When you provide unique information that has helped them, they will in turn help you — just be sure to ask!
Conversations with Comments
Comments are not only a great way to receive feedback on your content and to hear from your readers, but are also a great way to build your network with conversations! Social conversations are a huge part of social media. Use your comment sections to allow your followers and readers connect with each other.
When you create your own social network, you become a community leader. I invite you to join my social network!
Alicia Rittenhouse is the Geek Goddess of Online Empires. After five years of success as a virtual assistant, she is now the media-maven who women entrepreneurs have manage their online empires while growing their online presence using savvy marketing tactics. Alicia lives in a smaller town in Ohio but has reached entrepreneurs all over the world with her weekly social media and online presence tips.
Check out how my site got hit with a burst of traffic all originating from ONE social media message on twitter that was spread over and over again.
When I say that social media marketing is easy this is what I mean – it doesn’t have to be difficult to gain a following. This sort of thing happens on social media all the time.
On the most basic level, the only “trick” to this is to give away FANTASTIC content that will get people talking. Oh, and no one is going to tweet about you if you aren’t on twitter!
Hey, this is Laura Roeder. That’s me right here. I just wanted to show a really quick real-life example that just happened to me of how your name can get in front of thousands of people and your message can get in front of thousands of new people, not repeating the same thing over and over to the same people but new people really instantly with social media.
Okay. Did that sound high-D enough for you? Because it’s true. I’m about to show you exactly how it just happened for me.
So last night, Brad Howard sent this really nice tweet. Here is the original tweet right here. It says, “How to Create Fans Out of Thin Air” by LKR video, and then he has the URL, and he wrote, “This is very cool info. RT please.” And RT means “retweet”. So he is asking people to repeat this message on Twitter to spread this around to others. Okay. I have to tell you Brad does not work for me. He is not even an affiliate or anyone like that. He is not someone that I have much of a relationship with. He is just someone who saw the content, thought it was great content, and thought other people would want to see it.
And I do want to point out a little side note here. People are only going to do this with free content. People aren’t going to spread the message about something that you have to pay for. But of course free content can be a great lead-in for selling your paid stuff. So just keep that in mind.
Okay. So Brad sends out this tweet, and instantly there’s a ton of retweets, a ton of people repeating this message. And I want to point something out to you. These are not people — they might be following me now, but they are not people who were following me before. They are not people who had ever seen my content, who had ever heard of me. These are not people that I have any kind of existing relationship with. They agreed that it was great content and so they wanted to spread it around to others.
I don’t know how many people are following each of these people, but let’s just say they have 100 each because that would be a low estimate for Twitter. A lot of people have more than 100 people following them on Twitter. So 100 new people, 100 new people, 100 new people, 100 new people, 100 new people, do you see how quickly this is adding up? You can get your name in front of a lot of new eyeballs really quickly because of course each of these people at the last minute might get retweeted, and you can actually see if you go up a little that it does get kind of funny, kind of convoluted where people are really tweeting retweets that have been retweeted. That’s sometimes three levels, Dawn Bunner who is retweeting zaibatsu who is retweeting from Brad Howard. Sometimes people just cut it out when it gets to that many levels because it’s kind of funny to see when it’s left in.
So as you can imagine, this was a great little surprise traffic spike for me. Well, not really; a little traffic spike, a really great traffic spike for me, and it’s a way that I can get my name and my message in front of a lot of new people, which is really important because I see a lot of people that are just marketing to the same group over and over again but you always need, if you really want to build a following, if you really want to build a fan base and get to that level of becoming known in your field, you need to always be bringing in new people, putting your name in front of new people.
So this is how it just happened for me just within an hour, I mean really less than an hour, instantly of Brad sending the original message, and then since last night I just keep seeing more and more people coming to the sight and people retweeting this message. So really cool stuff. I just wanted to show you a quick example.
Cyber world is indeed a magic land that can do wonders for your wholesale business. Unfortunately though, this magic land does not offer you a magic wand that you can wave and turn your business into a success story. However, there are some tried and true marketing techniques and strategies that can help you get more business and increase your business exposure. Both of these things are vital for just about any business, especially the one operating on small scale.
Effective marketing on the web has its perks. One of the biggest advantages of social media marketing is that it helps you save or steer clear of huge costs, which are generally associated with traditional marketing mediums. Most of the techniques and strategies discussed in this post are free of cost, which means they are a ‘must’ for small wholesale businesses.
1. B2B Marketplaces
For starters, it is a good practice to get your business listed in one of those online B2B marketplaces, out there. These websites serve as Yellow Pages for businesses and can prove to be helpful for expanding your business. While some of these B2B networks are free, there are others that may charge a small fee. These platforms are very popular amongst wholesalers who do not want to spend any money.
You might ask if there’s a need to pay for becoming a member when there are free networking platforms available on the internet. That is a very valid question, but it also has an equally simple explanation. Since free platforms do not charge any fee, they do not really care whether or not their listings and members are dependable. Paid services, on the other hand, take due care in making sure that they are featuring only verified, credible, and authentic businesses.
2. Search Engine Optimization:
The Internet is huge, and the only way to find some specific and relevant information is to search via the search engines like Google. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help you increase your online visibility to a great extent. Various SEO tools and techniques are used to help you drive more traffic to your website, and helping more and more people find your business.
In order to help people find you on the search engine, you should optimize your wholesale business website and acquire some back links to get on the first page for your targeted keywords. Remember that no one bothers to go beyond the first 10 results. There are various tools and techniques that can be used for this purpose. Bear in mind that these techniques keep on changing since the search engines are constantly working on ways to improve their service. So, you must always try and stay abreast with the changing SEO techniques.
3. Social Networks:
The various social networks on the web are turning out to be the next big force after Google. As per an estimate, Facebook alone has over 600 million active users! The count for Twitter may not be as big but still, getting to the mark of 200 million users is no mean feat. Social networks, such as the ones mentioned above, carry huge marketing potential. With a bit of effort and effective marketing, you can reach out to any number of targeted customers.
The ease with which these social networks provide access to the multitudes, often dupes businesses into thinking that they have got the license to go crazy with the idea of mass advertisement (spamming). Spamming is repulsive and it backfires. Rather than just flooding irrelevant people on such platforms, it is advisable that you engage only targeted or potential customers such as retailers or eBay users. Social networks can prove to be a useful resource for finding partners.
4. PPC
Pay per Click or PPC is a popular form of advertisement on the web. It is widely used for generating traffic and is employed by small and big businesses alike. In a typical PPC program, you will have to bid for your desired keywords and you will have to pay for each visitor who lands on your website by clicking on your ads. There are many platforms offering this service but Google AdWords is easily the most commonly used one. For small businesses, this model can be a bit expensive but if you’ve chosen your keywords wisely, it is definitely worth giving a try.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is another, very effective way of engaging your customers. It is an effective method to reach new and old customers alike. Wholesale is a dynamic business where you are constantly offering new products and promotions for your clients. If you have got an opt-in list of subscribers, you can use it to let your customers know about new products and promotions.
By this technique, you can also regain some of your old customers who, for whatever reasons, have stopped purchasing from you.
Avelina Marshall is the director of Wholesale, Drop Shippers and Wholesale Suppliers. She has 18 years of experience in the marketing and trading industries and has been helping retailers and startups with their product sourcing, promotion, marketing and supply chain requirements.
Hey, I’m Laura Roeder. I have a quick social media marketing tip for you to use for your small business. Always, always, always drive people from social media back to your website. Your website is so crucial to your social media marketing plan and here’s why. Social media hasn’t had a long history, but the history has never involved any sites sticking around, right? First we had Friendster. Then we had MySpace. Right now Facebook and Twitter are the big sites. They could stick around forever or they could go away or become totally unpopular in a few months. I can’t predict the future. I don’t know.
So I say this not to discourage you from using social media. I say get in while the getting is good. Right now these tools are a free way to market to your audience, to connect with people to raise their hands to hear from you. They are really powerful. But you have to remember that the tools do come and go, and even more importantly, you don’t own those lists. You don’t even have access to those lists. So if you’ve built up 50,000 Twitter followers but everybody stops using Twitter or Twitter shuts down your account or whatever happens because you don’t actually own that account, you don’t actually own that list, you’re going to lose all those people. Ouch! Not very good for your business.
So when you’re on Twitter, when you’re on Facebook, when you’re on LinkedIn, you always want to send people back to your site. Posting lots of links, posting links to your blog is a good way to do that. Encourage them to go back to your site where you can then capture their email address in a database that is yours that you get to keep. Your email database is your long-term marketing goldmine that’s going to outlast any social media tools that may come and go.
So use social media. It’s a free powerful marketing tool. I love it. But make sure you’re driving people back to your site that you own to capture those email addresses.
I believe it is safe to assume that if you are reading this blog, you are an entrepreneur (or an aspiring entrepreneur) who is using the web to sell products and services, promote relationship with your customers and establish your expertise.
But whatever your business is – personal chef, acupuncturist or digital marketer – you know good design alone won’t keep you in business. You also need well-written content to attract your target readers to your site and convert them into clients.
So unless you’re prepared to hire a copy writer who will charge at least 1,000 U.S. dollars to produce a sales page (and that’s just a one time fee), you’ll be ahead of the game if you have strong writing skills. To develop and polish this valuable skill, look into finding a writing coach.
Here are some pointers to help you in looking for a writing coach:
1. Determine what kind of writing project you want to complete
List just one writing project that you wanted to finish for the longest time but for some reason have not done it. It could be an e-book, a script for a video tutorial, a press release or a series of pillar posts for your blog.
You have to stick to one project as writing coaches have different specialization. A writing coach who usually coaches memoirist and novelist may not be the coach that you want to hire if your priority project is to write a high-converting sales page.
2. Read first, decide later
I’m not talking about testimonials here or even their profile page. But instead, read the creative products of that prospective writing coach. Does he or she have a blog or have they published a novel? Perhaps they have articles in print publications that you can find online. Read them and see if you like his or her writing style.
3. Find out if you and the writing coach share the same “vibe”
Choosing a coach is deeply personal. You won’t like being mentored by someone who you neither respect nor admire.
You and your writing coach will work together to finish an important project. So it’s better to know beforehand if the prospective coach is the right fit for you. Invite the coach for coffee and see if the two of you share the same vibe.
Take note: if you both live in the same place and the coach refused to meet you, drop her from your list of prospects. If she can’t spare an hour to meet a client then it’s doubtful he or she will give you the time and attention you need to critique your work or motivate you to complete your project.
If it’s not possible to meet the coach in person due to proximity, then you can talk over Skype, read and comment on his/her blogs or follow his or her tweets. Bottomline: in today’s work environment, you need not live close to your writing coach. With skype, email, blogs, even Twitter, you can check out their vibe and find a connection.
4. Set parameters and writing goals
Once you chose “the one”, both of you need to set the rules on how the two of you will work. What are the goals that you want to accomplish and how will the coach help you in attaining that goal?
Are you looking for a detailed critique or do you need someone to motivate you because you are insecure about your skills?
You also need to work on a schedule that suits both of you. Do you have to contact her every day or is a monthly update enough? Does she have to be in every step of the project (highly recommended for people who tend to procrastinate)? If you’re quite disciplined, you can just contact her if you need to attain a certain milestone.
You also have to determine the mode of communication. Do you meet up in a café once a week, chat over the webcam, or send e-mails with each other? Choose what is the most convenient for both of you. My coach and I chose to communicate with each other via e-mail because of the huge difference in our time zones (she is in Europe and I live in Asia so skyping isn’t feasible ).
5. Be accountable
Learning something is useless if you don’t act on it. Your coach is there so you can be accountable to someone, gently pushing you to apply what you learned. So let’s say you are writing an e-book with ten chapters, you need to write and finish each chapter, and have each chapter critiqued. After getting a critique, be sure to apply what you learned in rewriting that chapter and writing a new chapter. Then let the coach look at both the revised and new chapters. You will then see if you improved as a writer.
As Laura teaches, when it comes to getting things done in your business, you have two choices, hire someone or learn how to do them yourself. Working with a writing coach early in your business will help tremendously with your long term growth.
Have you worked with a writing coach? How was your experience?
Prime Sarmiento is a journalist and freelance business blogger. She writes on learning and the craft of writing for online tutorial company. You can follow her writing tips and tweets at @GypsyPrime.
Curious about exactly how I drive traffic to my website? Where my traffic comes from? And how SEO (search engine optimization) comes into the picture?
Then you MUST sign up for this webinar. I’m taking you behind the scenes (and into my google analytics account) to reveal my personal SEO strategy. This is how I get 50-100 new FREE leads every single day.
Register to now for this free LIVE hour-long online workshop to get the full scoop. You’ll also learn more about my Zero to SEO program.
Before we dive into this, let’s define “on a budget”. It means you have some money to spend but not a whole heap. For what I will tell you now you’ll probably need around $300. Some would argue that this is not “on a budget” while others can sniff a cheapskate scam here, right?
I leave it up to you.
Let’s get to it.
Here is how you create an awesome e-course while watching the pennies:
Create a mastermind group with one or two of your closest entrepreneurial minded buddies and develop your initial idea into a fully blown e-course concept. I’m talking content here, not the technical details. Offer your mastermind buddies a spot in the e-course by interviewing them in an expert call. Or offer your e-course customers a free strategy call with your mastermind buddies as a bonus (which is very likely going to bring business back to your helpful friend). Always give and take, right?
Let’s spin this exchange thing even further. Are you a business or life coach? Or have something else highly valuable to offer? Find out if you can work with your chosen contractors (like copywriters, virtual assistants, graphic designers etc) on an exchange basis. This means no money will change hands. You will trade your hours for the hours they put in. This happens more than you think and again, it is mutually beneficial if done right and fairly.
If you can’t get all the work done through exchange arrangements, look on Elance for contractors. There are amazingly talented people living in the countries of Eastern Europe for example who charge a quarter or less of what a US contractor with the same experience charges. Yes, you have to consider time zone differences and language barriers. But if you take the time to select your Elance contractor carefully, you will soon see the financial benefits of working with someone talented from Romania rather than California. (Hint: Always pay attention to the Elance ratings. If there are a lot of completed jobs unrated, this is a glowing red warning sign. Stay away from those!)
To build your e-course learning environment, use free WordPress themes and free plugins like s2Member (a membership plugin that integrates seamlessly with PayPal).
There is no need for a shopping cart unless you’re planning to offer an affiliate program straight away. If this is the case, Wahmcart is the best option for anyone who wants a fully fledged shopping cart for less than $40 per month.
Host all your audio and video files as well as documents on Amazon S3. It’s free for the first 12 months and you can rest in knowing that your files are secure. Your audios and videos can be embedded in your learning environment easily by installing free plugins (check out WP Audio Player and Flowplayer).
And last but not least: Do you want your e-course customers to interact with each other in discussion forums? Consider Buddypress. A free WordPress plugin, it comes with great features straight out of the box and is dead easy to install (just add it like any other plugin). Who needs Ning when this powerful little helper takes you from zero to social network in less than 10 minutes — for free?
Can you see how easy it is to create an awesome e-course on a budget? There are plenty of free resources out there. There are talented people in countries where your dollar will buy you more time or service (thanks to dollar-friendly exchange rates). Plus, never forget to tap into the skill set and knowledge of your friends and biz buddies.
So, do YOU have a tool or tip up your sleeve that we can add to the list? Share it in the comments below. I’m curious!
Kat Csengo is the driving force behind Paperclip Fox, a virtual assistant business based in Berlin, Germany. She’s been helping wildly creative busy folk manage their online businesses as well as create e-courses with them since 2009. Connect with Kat by email, on Facebook or Twitter.
Should your twitter handle be your name or your company’s name? Logo or your face for the picture? Should you speak as your company or yourself? And how exactly does one get clients from twitter anyway?
These questions are especially challenging for the one-man-show who is toeing the line between “business” and “personal”. That’s why I created this free webinar specifically for solopreneurs – one-person businesses without a marketing team on-call to enact a complicated twitter strategy!
In this free hour-long webinar you’ll learn the smartest twitter marketing strategies that work for the very small business with less than 20 minutes a day to spend on twitter.
After all, you’ve got a business to run (by yourself!)
If you didn’t make this webinar live, go ahead and sign up anyway for instant access to the replay.
Want to write a rockin’ guest post about running a small business, entrepreneurship, personal branding or online marketing? Review our requirements and submit your proposed article along with your details and we’ll get back to you on whether it’s a fit!
Products and services that I mention or link to on this blog may be products that I have a financial interest in promoting or have received some other non-financial compensation for.
