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Distilling Experience Into Advertising for Your Small Business
As a small business owner, how do you create marketing that is potent and persuasive without breaking the bank? From advertisements alone, your target market is exposed to thousands of messages every day. Putting a number to it is difficult. Researchers have said anywhere from 100 to 5000 ads per day. When you think about it, almost everywhere we go, physically or digitally, there is advertising. Corporations have entire departments with seasoned professionals devoted to winning your attention. They employ research and data firms to find out as much about you as possible. Then they spend thousands, even millions on buying ad space in all the places they think you’ll…
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Bill Gates’ Secret to Being Useful From 1996
In 1996 Bill Gates said that content would be the future of the internet. Nearly 20 years later, we can see that he was bang on. In fact, the internet is flooded with content: games, articles, cartoons, videos, memes, podcasts, music, streaming audio and video, and web apps. To the annoyance of many, corporations have begun to catch on to this as well. We get bombarded with content that just doesn’t matter to us. But any smart organization knows that if they are going to provide an attractive user experience, they have to provide content that matters to the user.
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Rhythm In Your Content Marketing Mix: Creating an Engaging Content Strategy
The traditional marketing mix follows the 4 P’s model: price, product, place, and promotion. But marketing within that model requires some finesse. Especially in your content marketing mix. So give your marketing some rhythm.
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Create Advertising People Want to Read; Think Like a News Editor
In advertising, relevance is king. The message of the ad has to matter to your audience. The same goes for news agencies. If the news story isn’t relevant, it won’t get ratings or readers. How news editors pick stories for each issue will teach you a lot about how to develop your next advertising campaign. You can make your advertising sound like “breaking news” or a big announcement, but I’m talking more about how news editors pick stories that their audience wants to read or see. How do you craft advertising that your audience wants to see?
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Small Business Marketing – The Coffee Shop Principle
Whether you like it or not, you don’t have a business without the right attention. Small business marketing fails when trying to grab everyone’s attention all at once. It’s like being in a coffee shop, shouting at everyone to buy your product. It can work if someone there is desperate for what you’re offering. But mostly you’re going to piss people off.
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Gritty Faith
Why are most Christian magazines so cheesy? In the process of writing a profile about a local Christian leader, Jade was helping me look for Christian magazines that might run the article. She messaged me while at work about how cheesy it all was. I usually try to defend Christian media, but there’s no defense for this. Christian media is typically cliche, predictable, buried in fluff, and straight up cringe worthy. Am I wrong?
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When Waiting Looks Like Working
If there was a test at the end of this life-course, I’ve failed. “Waiting” and “Rest” were repeated themes over the past few months. In the time that I was given to rest and “learn of Jesus,” selfish ambition and weeds of worldly worries strangled my peace.
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What He Couldn’t See
** This short story was written for a Writer’s Digest Prompt: When a man takes lunch to his wife’s office, he’s told that she hasn’t worked there in weeks.** White hot anger oozed from his eyes like puss. A small piece of paper quivered in his hands. Why hadn’t he noticed the signs? They showed up a couple months ago. * * *
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What the San Bernardino Shooters Share in Common With the Zuckerbergs
When someone my age decides that massacring co-workers is the logical next step in their life, I wonder at how drastically different their life must be from mine. Sayed Farook and Tashfeen Malik were married and had stable jobs. They left behind a 6 month old baby girl when they gunned down 14 people at a Christmas party. My wife and I are about to have a baby. What would have to happen in our lives to leave our brand new baby behind, destroying our family and 14 others?
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Creating a Horcrux
Become a parent. Become immortal. You can live forever by splintering your soul and placing the shards into objects or other people so that a portion of you will always live on. If you’ve amassed enough power for yourself, you may even be able to come back from the dead. There’s horror though. Tearing your soul apart requires murder. You must take someone else’s life if you want immortality. But it’s not a guaranteed plan and you loose your humanity in the process. There’s another way. It’s more like an investment, like planting a tree. But it still requires a death. I discovered this when my daughter was born. If…
