actionable marketing guide

Dear ,

Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers among our readers!

Fathers play a special role in our lives. With love and the best intentions dads show us how to live. They set us on the path to our future.

We still need to make the most of the life they gave us and discover on our own what we want to make of it, even if it’s not what our dads or we anticipated.

I was lucky.

Despite his big size, booming voice and vice grip handshake, my dad was my biggest fan. My dad was proud of every mention or business success I got no matter how small.

When I started my business and couldn’t afford help, my dad drove into New York City to grind through the paperwork that always piled up. Then we’d get Jewish deli at Arties on Broadway.

While it didn’t seem like a lot to me back then, it was special. My dad took the time to be with me and help. It was his way of showing his love.

Making the most of the life you have is difficult. I get it.

No matter who you are, you’ve got lots of demands on your time and attention.

To create a meaningful life and reach your full potential you have to take responsibility for and control of it.  I’m the first one to admit this is difficult. 

But you have the power to accomplish it no matter where you are in your life path. You have to proactively schedule time to do the things that are important to you everyday. It doesn’t have to be hours but rather focused time putting one foot in front of the other to reach your goals.

To appreciate how you can accomplish this as well as improve your content marketing chops, take a page from marketer, Eric Lutz. Lutz followed his passion for knitting onto YouTube. (This also has lessons for those of you hoping to take advantage of the video explosion.)

Lutz epitomizes the lessons in Mark Schaefer’s book, Known. (Here’s our book interview with Schaefer.)

I met Lutz at my local yarn store Knitty City where he gave an informal talk to promote his magazine, Rib. Rib is a print magazine disguised as a book. For knitters who like to download patterns onto their smartphones and tablets, he includes a code. (BTW—Joe Pulizzi talks a lot about the importance of print media.)

Despite the crowded knitting category, Lutz built his Sticks + Twine video following. He attracts between 8k and 12k views for his videos.  In his opinion, he accomplished this by providing a male voice in a largely female category. (You need to find your content tilt according to Joe Pulizzi in Content Inc.)

Recording his videos on his smartphone, Lutz approaches video like a podcast. He creates a set of show notes and ad-libs the rest as if he’s talking to you while you’re knitting together.  As he developed a more consistent format, he’s attracted more viewers.

Sticks + Twine is a passion project for Lutz. While he’s never tried to discover how his viewers find him, listen to a few videos and you’ll see how he supports the knitting community and the small yarn producers. As a result, he’s building his community. Lesson for marketers: Be genuine!

Out of this community, Lutz and 2 other collaborators decided to publish a knitting magazine focused on making things men want to own and wear, a gap in the marketplace. They tapped into their community to get help in terms of patterns and yarns for the first issue of Rib.

Rib’s first issue sold out. Now, they’ve got a following and are planning ahead. While Lutz isn’t giving up his day job, the venture is reinvesting the money in future editions.

The lesson is you can create a life that brings you fulfillment. Even better it gives you a way to connect with people around the world. (Note: Lutz is fortunate to travel a lot and uses his videos to connect with people in the places he’ll be.)

As Schaefer points out in Known, we don’t always grow up to live the lives we dreamt of as kids. But we can build meaningful lives by embracing our interests and special talents.

Admit it—you didn’t dream of becoming a marketer. (I know I didn’t.)

Ask yourself:

• How do you show your family, friends, colleagues and customers you care?
• What’s stopping you from getting outside of your comfort zone to create the life that will give you satisfaction? Recent research shows that it’s satisfaction of achieving our goals that makes us feel good not being a coach potato.
• How can you create content that sets you apart and builds a community?

Go on just do it!

Happy Marketing
Heidi.

Heidi Cohen
Actionable Marketing Guide

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Psyched Up – Book Interview

In case you missed it, Kantar MillwardBrown announced the top 100 global brands. (Don’t worry I’ve got you covered.) It’s ungated and packs a dense 150+ pages (actually it’s a book on branding—my suggestion: read the summary). Here’s the Top 50 listing.

• Heidi Cohen gave her top link building advice in this roundup. What is your top link building tip?
  
  
• Heidi is also one of 17 Digital Marketing Experts Share Their Most Successful Lead Generation Strategies in RealPhoneValidation roundup post.
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• Heidi Cohen was one of the experts tapped in JohnTP's roundup post: How To Skyrocket Your Blog Traffic: 31 Experts Share Their #1 Tip