I recently had the opportunity to give my first TEDx talk at TEDxNormal in Normal, Illinois. For once, I gave what I believed to be an unselfish speech. I didn’t talk about my business or try to elevate my personal brand as some subject matter expert or brilliant writer.

But I wanted to.

That’s right, I wanted to promote myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t going to plaster my name and Twitter handle on the screen or wear a t-shirt with my name on it, but it’s only natural to try to personally gain from the efforts we put time, money, and hard work into, and my TEDx talk was certainly that.

As someone who’s mainly self-employed, monetizing life is a necessity. The problem is that I often miss opportunities that lie far outside of what will help me and my family financially. We all do.

My TEDx talk is titled “The Importance of Being an Unselfish Storyteller.” It details my embarrassment, regret and shame stemming from a missed opportunity to selflessly help a girl who was in need of someone to share their story with her, and what I've done since to never let that happen again.

Using public speaker and inspiration Lizzie Velasquez as a model of what can be accomplished when stories are shared unselfishly, I talked about how she turned a painful bullying experience into a story that helped millions of others. One thing said in her TEDx talk stood out to me beyond everything else. “I don’t think people realize the power one person can have to change a situation or impact someone’s life," Lizzie said. 

We all have this power, but few of us realize we have it, and even fewer realize that it comes from our stories.

When you think of helping others and making a difference, what do you think of? Volunteering, picking up trash, giving someone a hand. We think of the physical and far too often forget about helping people emotionally, which is just as important if not more important in some situations. 

Sharing your tough stories, things that you would normally keep inside, helps people connect with you and realize that they aren't alone. The information gained can change their perspective on a whole situation or possibly their entire life. 

So when do you share unselfishly? Whenever you believe it may have even the slightest ability to help someone else.

These opportunities appear daily, but we miss them. For example, have you ever heard two people discussing something in a coffee shop and known the exact answer to what they were talking about? Instead of being labelled as rude or nosy, we keep quiet and don't share. Sometimes someone who is right in front of our face is practically begging for us to help and he zone out or decide to keep something to ourselves for no reason other than to avoid risk and because of fear. 

When presented with the chance to help another, will you rise up to the challenge and do whatever you can to help? Have enough courage to harness the power you have to positively impact others by being an unselfish storyteller.

--

Michael Luchies is a writer and entrepreneur. He is the Founder of TrepRep, member of the Kahuna Business Group team, Co-Host of the Entrepreneurs on Campus Radio Show, TEDxNormal speaker, and Co-Host of the Trepidemic Podcast. Connect with Michael on Twitter and email him to discover how to increase your personal and business brand’s reach and revenue at[email protected].

Hosting a Twitter chat is a great way to engage your network, but how can you use this content to provide value to your audience and capitalize on the time and effort you spent organizing and hosting the event? The answer is by creating additional content.

As a writer and content marketer, I salivated after seeing how much information we received from a simple one-hour conversation during our first ever live Twitter chat about entrepreneurship education for the Trepidemic Podcast using the hashtag #TrepTuesday. The amount of information is great, but it's completely useless if we don’t do anything with it.

Don’t waste all of that effort; make the most of your live chat by quickly transforming it into valuable online content. Here are ways to use tweets and data from live Twitter chats as content.

Create Recap Post

If people participated in your event, it’s very likely that those who weren’t able to make it could benefit from a chat recap post. Create a blog post to publish on your website and send it out to your email list the day of or day after your event. Include the topic, questions asked, top responses and information about the next event.

Expand on the Best Tweets

If you aren’t using tweets from your followers as ideas for future posts, you’re missing a great opportunity. Not only can you give credit and engage one of your participants by highlighting their tweet, you’re using information directly from your audience, which is likely to resonate with your entire target market.

When looking through tweets from your chat, single out several of the most interesting to consider writing full articles or responses as a blog post. These could be comments, questions, or responses to one of your scheduled questions that deserves further discussion and are worthy of sharing with others.

Interview Contributors

It’s hard to know who’s going to participate in your chat, but you should always know who did participate in your chat after it’s over. Look for the most active members of the discussion and ask if they would be willing to have a short conversation with you. If they spent the time to engage with your chat, they would probably be more than happy to continue the conversation privately.

Use this opportunity to improve future chats, feature them on your blog, consider asking them to help organize the next event, or see if they would be interested in writing a guest post based on the chat (or all four). Interviewing them can provide insight, strengthen your relationship and give new information for future content.

Slideshow

Turn the questions and top responses into a 20-slide slideshow on SlideShare. Using this format will help reach a brand new audience that may become customers and Twitter chat participants in the future. This is an easy and great way to build your base of followers.

Transcript

Although I have not spent the time to transcribe our first chat or hire someone to document the entire event, others have. Providing the full transcript will attract people who want to dive very deep into a topic and will help boost your SEO.

Turn Each Question into an Article

Looking for a quick way to get a month’s worth of blog posts? If the Twitter chat was successful, you already know that the topics and questions you posed to your audience are interesting enough to warrant providing additional content. Break down each question with tweets from your audience, additional resources on the topic, and any other relevant information that will provide value to a reader. In each post, feel free to provide information on upcoming chats.

Provide Metrics & Data

People love getting statistics and quotes to use in their work and content. Give your audience information on your Twitter chat by publishing statistics from your chat. We downloaded a TweetReach report to provide us with every tweet that was a part of the chat and statistics that we can use going forward. These stats will be needed to provide to potential sponsors and can be used to measure what works and what doesn’t.

What questions do you have about live Twitter chats? If you’ve hosted a chat before, share you experience and advice for others below. Looking for someone to do it for you? Email Michael Luchies at [email protected].

--

Michael Luchies is the Founder of TrepRep, Entrepreneurship Lecturer at Illinois State University, Co-Host of the Entrepreneurs on Campus Radio Show, and Co-Host of theTrepidemic Podcast. Connect with Michael on Twitter. Michael is publishing 365 times in 2015. To find out why, read the first post of the year here! 

When being taught how important an avatar is to a business, the only thing I was able to think about was the movie. After getting the image of James Cameron's blue creatures out of my mind, I still felt like I was in the twilight zone; not because I didn't understand, but because I hadn't thought of defining a target market in this way before. 

An avatar is an ideal customer or a fictional representation of a desired person. For anything you do in life, you can create an avatar of the specific target or beneficiary of your work or an activity. By creating a story for a fictional person you wish to serve, you can focus on serving their needs, which will resonate with a very real group of people you can sell to or please.

Let's take a look at an avatar example for this article. 

James is a 26-year-old professional who has worked in a financial institution for the past four years. He's sick of working in the corporate world and has dabbled with several startups and business ideas over the past few years. He's looking for that one sign he should quit his job and seeking the perfect idea for a business to start.

He spends most of his workday reading online and searching for ways to end his day-to-day torture at his current job. James doesn't have a family yet and wants to have a career or business he loves before settling down. 

If I was writing articles to attract the James' of the world, here are a few draft article titles: 

- Time to Quit: 10 Signs You Should Leave Your Job for a Startup

- 8 Business Ideas to Start While Working a Full-time Job

- How to Ensure You Have Enough Money to Survive When Starting a Business

That's great Mike, but is an avatar really that important? Can't I just create an awesome product and people will love it and buy it without having to define a specific person to sell it to?

Possibly, but would you want to approach dating without knowing the qualities you want in a man or woman? How will you know if you've found the right one if you don't even know what they look like, their characteristics or their values? In an Entrepreneur on Fire blog post, Who is your avatar?, the importance of an avatar is summed up nicely. "You can’t start and continue to grow a successful business where you do X, Y and Z if you don’t know who you’re doing all of that for."

If you define who you are serving specifically, you can then target them directly and serve that specific target better than anyone else. For skeptics of targeting such a specific market, consider that author Stephen King writes books for one specific person only -- his wife, Tabitha King. Even by targeting every book and idea he brings to life with his craft to her, he captures a wide audience because many people share interests and characteristics. His die-hard fans love his work so much; they share with their friends, family, and network. This all started by defining an avatar and delivering amazing value to that specific person. 

If only all of us could satisfy our significant others to that degree! 

Using The Tip: You probably know who you want to help or work with, but creating a descriptive profile (avatar) will enable you to hone in on who you're serving and help you accomplish your goals. Start creating your avatar by defining the group of people you want to serve.

For example, with my business TrepRep, I want to work with young entrepreneurs and startups. These entrepreneurs either have funding or enough revenue and consistent business to hire a writer or marketer to help grow their business. I can assume that this person is most likely 25-35, comes from a middle-class family, is technology savvy, has some college education if not a college degree, is single, and is a male. 

The characteristics of your avatar do not eliminate potential customers outside of those traits, but they help you identify your most likely customer. I will work with an 80-year-old female entrepreneur who lacks technical knowledge if there's a good fit, but the likelihood of a customer of this type is far less likely. 

Now, take the extra step and create a story for your specific customer like the example of James above. After coming up with the story for your avatar, post it where it can remind you of your target market of one. Target your marketing, website content, products and messaging to that specific profile. Not only will you blow away customers who fit that profile, you'll satisfy many others as well. 

Was this helpful? If so, please share! 

Additional Resources: Who is your avatar? (Entrepreneur on Fire), 

The Tips to Get Ahead Series is a 10-part series highlighting the best tips and pieces of advice from my years of interviewing and working with influential business leaders and entrepreneurs. Do you have an amazing tip for others? Share in the comments below, or email me at [email protected]. 

--

Michael Luchies is the Founder of TrepRep, Entrepreneurship Lecturer at Illinois State University, Co-Host of the Entrepreneurs on Campus Radio Show, and Co-Host of theTrepidemic Podcast. Connect with Michael on Twitter. Michael is publishing 365 times in 2015. To find out why, read the first post of the year here! 

Imagine walking into a Macy's department store in search of a new outfit. As soon as you enter through the door, you see clothes on the floor, improperly marked shelves, unreadable price tags, and no organization whatsoever. Not only are you going to leave the store without an outfit, you're never going to return. 

Does your website look like a department store in chaos? 

Many website issues can give visitors an incentive to leave, but there's nothing more important than the content on your website. Not only does it serve as your greatest search engine tool, it's what helps guide users to a desire action. Regardless of the template or images you use for your site, the content on your website is what will determine if someone will make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, or leave to go to a different store.

While working on website content over the past several years, I've recognized many common trends that push customers away instead of pulling them in. Here are seven ways website content can scare your visitors away. 

Formatting --

• Issues

Your text paints a picture of your business, products, and services. It helps visitors understand what you have to offer them and why they should get it from you. 

Formatting copy on a website is easy, but it's often screwed up. From alternating font styles to bullet points that don't properly align; formatting mistakes makes consuming your content difficult and will result in your audience not believing in your ability to pay attention to detail -- something that's critical in a service business. Keep a simple and consistent format for your website content. 

Lack of a Call to Action

Your content has a reason for existing (at least it should). Don't be afraid to point customers in the right direction of what they should do next. Should they share this blog post with people who would also find it valuable? Should they sign up for your newsletter? Are they ready to purchase your product? Make recommendations on your website using carefully and cleverly placed calls to action. 

Ur Grammer is Bad

Online content has turned everyone into a grammar cop. It's hard to find an article without critics in the comment section ripping apart both the writer and publication for a couple of errors. 

Website copy needs to be thoroughly examined and updated to attract your target market and to avoid errors. Errors stick out like a sore thumb and are hard to erase from our minds. 

Overly Promotional 

Lacking a call to action causes people to leave your site, but so does begging. Too many calls to action or blatantly overly promotional content is similar to you personally approaching every person you meet and asking them to buy something out of your briefcase. Sales copy can work extremely well depending on your target market and what your goals are, but it needs to be used very carefully. If your audience isn't looking to be sold to, you need to avoid promotional copy and carefully lead them through the sales funnel. 

Find your call to action sweet spot (mix of asking without being obtrusive) and always err on the side of caution rather than pushing overly promotional content on your home page. 

Outdated 

Having outdated content is just as bad as having grammar errors or images that don't load. If you haven't posted a blog for six months, you should remove your blog or get to writing. People will think you're no longer in business or you don't care enough to keep things current. Update your pages regularly. 

It’s Focused Only on Optimization

If you write for robots, don’t expect humans to like your writing. Clever writers find ways to work in keywords, but stuffing your pages is a good way to offend your audience. What good is getting people to your site if they hate what they find? 

Video-Only 

Web use is shifting to mobile phones, and content is being transformed into video, but written content is still king (for now). Nobody likes being forced to watch advertisements or listen to a video when reading is more convenient. Offer several forms of content for your audience to choose from, but make sure to cater to the primary preference of your target market. 

Do you need help with your website content? Contact Michael Luchies at[email protected] to schedule a free strategy call. 

There's no debating that content is one of your most powerful tools when building or promoting a business online. According to a HubSpot survey, 62% of all businesses surveyed (over 900) have blogs, which is up significantly from 48% in 2009. 

Despite the growth in content marketing, there are still a lot of uncertainties when it comes to strategy, metrics, promotion, and the consistency in which a business should publish blog posts and other types of content. 

On the first of this year, I announced that I would publish at least one original article every day of the year on LinkedIn. I knew it would be a difficult challenge, but the information I planned to gather, lessons I would learn along the way, and the audience I hoped to build was worth the commitment. While I don't recommend businesses or entrepreneurs publish everyday posts, there are benefits to doing so. Here are seven reasons to blog daily. 

Drastically Improve Your Writing Quality 

"Miss one day of practice, I notice; miss two, the critics notice; miss three, the audience notices" 

Although I wrote for clients on a daily basis long before my writing challenge, I often went weeks without publishing for myself. I felt like I was losing my own voice as a writer and wasn't doing enough to improve my writing.

Doing something every day is bound to push your limits and improve whatever it is you're working on. Not only have I decreased the time it takes to write, my errors have decreased (I use Grammarly to track), and pageviews have increased, which all lead me to believe I have improved as a writer.  

Experiment and Perfect Different Strategies and Topics

Writing every day will push you to the limit, but you will test out a lot more than just your will power. 

I've been able to test multiple marketing strategies, write about over one hundred topics, and find out what resonates with my audience and what tests well on LinkedIn. Explore and tinker with your content efforts until it's right. The only way to find out what works is to test. Get testing!

See Your Social Media Following Rise Quickly

Daily content puts your personal and business brand in the spotlight every 24 hours. Your content is bound to gain you additional followers on social media. With still more than half of the year to go, here are how my accounts have grown over the past 150 days. 

LinkedIn Followers: 1,062 (January, 1) - 2,421 (May 27)

Twitter Followers: 561 (January 1) - 850 (May 27)

Website Views: 669/month (December) - 1,751/month (April)

Build New Relationships 

An unexpected result of writing every day has been the new relationships I've built as a direct result of my challenge. I've been asked to speak at events, featured on four podcasts, contributed to two books, and have met many awesome people. 

Increase Engagement in Your Network

In addition to meeting new people, creating new content can help uncover old connections that you've been trying to reconnect with.

If an article you publish can benefit someone in your network, send it to them in an email and ask for their feedback. Just sharing your content in your network will help strengthen relationships you already have and get people more interested and engaged in what you're doing. 

Ramp Up SEO Efforts 

There are a lot of faulty SEO practices, but publishing quality content is still the best way to build your online presence. By writing about topics your audience cares about, you'll attract new visitors who are searching for those topics. Having hundreds of searchable blog posts will increase the likelihood that you will be found in the deep blue sea of online content. 

Properly Measure Results 

Launching an effective content marketing plan depends on being able to track metrics. Any metric worth tracking needs a lot of data to be measured. Publishing every day will provide daily statistics, show trends, and help you discover what works and what doesn't. You'll be able to see what times of the day work best to reach your consumers, what titles they like best and how they share and interact with your content. 

You don't have to publish everyday to get enough data, but you can't write two posts a month for a few months and expect to have enough information to properly create an effective content marketing plan for the future. 

Writing a blog every day isn't for everyone, but it does have its benefits. Consider how your consistency affects your audience and the goals you are trying to achieve when planning your content strategy. How often do you blog and why? Are you looking to build your brand with content? Contact Michael Luchies [email protected] to schedule a free strategy call. 

“The simple press release should have died years ago. In my mind they’re dead already." -- PR executive Frank DeMaria.

May 14, 2015 – NORMAL, Illinois – Michael Luchies announces he dislikes press releases due to their lack of value and void of relevance. 

Entrepreneur Magazine's Small Business Encyclopedia defines a press release as, "A public relations announcement issued to the news media and other targeted publications for the purpose of letting the public know of company developments." Developed from my years of writing press releases as an entrepreneur and writer, I have a slightly different definition of a press release.

An attempt to gain attention and media coverage by sharing self-promotional, outdated information to people who don't care about it.

The chances of you having read a press release top to bottom are probably less than the chances that you've published one. They've been a powerful tool for marketers and public relations companies for decades, but as our preferences shift and the technology we use improves our access to information, press releases are becoming the VCR of online media. Some people still use them, but there are much better ways to watch a movie (or to get your news out to people who actually want to hear about it). 

Press releases lack personality, and they fail to connect with the reader. They're written as if a computer were the intended audience (and in certain cases it might be). With important news reaching us just seconds after it happens through Twitter, Facebook, and online news outlets, is information shared to us days or even weeks after it happens still relevant?

If your goal is to entice a media member to share the information to their network or write a follow-up piece on your company, good luck getting them to even open the email. In Is It Finally Time to Bid Adieu to the Press Release?, Dan Lyons recalls his time as a Newsweek reporter and the constant barrage of press releases. 

Every morning, I’d find 50 or so messages in that Newsweek account, almost all of them press releases, virtually all of them things I did not care about. I’d glance through the subject lines and then zap them all (I’m pretty sure every other reporter does essentially the same thing).Getting media coverage is about relationship building. While spending two years as the Interview Editor for Under30CEO, I never once accepted an interview request because of a press release. I was sent dozens, but they rarely gave me the information I cared about -- the founders.

Press releases share information about sales, earnings, new CEOs, new locations, or something else that the company feels is newsworthy. They rarely cover the interesting aspects of companies that people can connect with. Instead of engaging readers, they shoot information at us hoping something will stick. Although they are trying to build their brand image with these efforts, I believe it often has the reverse effect, at least on those that see and read these hard to digest pages of information. 

I am not recommending that any company stops creating content to promote their business, but I am suggesting that there are far better ways to get information out to news outlets, customers, and the public in an engaging and valuable way. 

What To Do Instead: 

• Start a blog on your company website to share stories about your business.  
• Create a newsletter to share regular updates. 
• Focus on adding value to current and potential customers instead of just throwing information at them without any value (tips, advice, 10 ways to XYZ). 
• Build relationships with media outlets and reporters that will cover your company when you have something to share that is newsworthy. 
• Create whitepapers and case studies that people within your industry will gain value from. 

Opposing View: The Top 10 Reasons to Send a Press Release (PR Newswire)

Not sure how to create valuable content to promote your business? I can help you increase sales by connecting you with your audience through writing amazing content. Interested in finding out how? Simply comment "Message me Michael" in the comments below, or email me at [email protected]. 

I announced my quest to publish 365 days in a row on January 1. 120 days into this journey, I now realize how naive I was when setting this goal. The last four months have been challenging, but very rewarding.

Instead of just sharing the statistics from the last month of publishing, which I can provide upon request, I decided to share the lessons I've learned so far. Before jumping into what I've learned, here are the specifics of my challenge. 

The Specifics

• I publish at least one new and unique article each day on LinkedIn. 
• Articles are selectively republished on MichaelLuchies.com and other sites depending on popularity and the overall focus of the article. I have also republished on Commercery.com, TheLaunchLife.com, Whatif360.com, andTrepRep.com. 
• Articles are promoted on my LinkedIn page, Twitter page, and Facebook fan page.

Lessons Learned 

Quality Still Trumps Quantity: Great content is more effective for your content marketing efforts than just producing a lot of content. I strive for quality in every single one of my articles, but writing every day doesn't guarantee results. For example, my most successful article of April received over a third of the total page views I got in the entire month out of 30 articles. I could've accomplished the same impact with three articles of this quality and popularity that I did with 30 articles. 

Concentrating solely on a couple of articles doesn't automatically provide favorable results either, but spending time perfecting posts instead of quickly writing new ones is the better strategy. 

Engagement, Not Content, is King: When a dumb picture of a cute kitten gets thousands of shares on social media, it's clear that being able to attract and engage an audience, even through simple tactics like using cute kittens, is important. Regardless of how great an article is, if it's not properly marketed and engaging to your target market, no one will read it. 

Several of my favorite posts from the last month had less than 50 views while simple interview highlight pieces accounted for three of my most successful five articles of the month. The interview articles were shared by the people I interviewed; engaging their networks as well as my own. You can spend hours writing the best article of your life, but if you fail to think of the reader, what they want, and how to reach them, you won't have an audience to share your brilliance with. 

Stubbornness and Goal Setting Can Defeat Procrastination: When stressed and anxious, it can be hard to focus on your goals. When things get hectic, I often procrastinate on things that I should be focusing on. It's much easier to make excuses and give up when times get tough, but I've been too stubborn to quit and have used my end goal as motivation to keep this journey alive even when it looks like I'm destined to fail.

I spent four hours today sick, and it's 11:30 at night, but this is something I really want, and I can't give up just because I'm not feeling well. In April, I came down with Shingles, and I'm sure that there will be other challenges down the road. If there's something you really want to achieve, set your goal and refuse to give up. For me, keeping myself accountable on a daily basis has been the key. 

It's More Rewarding When You Help Others: Before writing my first article of the year, I came up with around 100 article topics to write about. As time went by, I decided to include other people in my journey through interviews, highlighting businesses and people, and by finding ways to help others with my writing instead of just going with my planned topics. Not only have these articles been my best and most engaging, I've been able to build stronger relationships with the people I've written about. 

Whatever your goals in life are, look for as many ways to help others as possible. Not only will this help others and make you feel better about what you're working on, others will want to help you and you'll achieve your goals faster. 

Thank you for reading! What would you like to know about my blogging journey so far?

Michael Luchies is the Founder of TrepRep, Entrepreneurship Lecturer at Illinois State University, Co-Host of the Entrepreneurs on Campus Radio Show,Trepidemic Co-Creator and Co-Host, TEW 2 contributor, and writer of all things entrepreneurship. Connect with Michael on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook andTwitter. Michael is publishing 365 times in 2015. To find out why, read the first post of the year here!

I first realized the importance of content marketing in 2007 while building a business from scratch. I didn’t have a marketing budget, so I turned to writing to reach my target market. Nearly a decade later, I now write for the ever expanding number of large businesses and entrepreneurs who are realizing the impact effective content can have on their business.

Content marketing is one of the hottest trends in the marketing world. As banner ads and many other forms of marketing online start to disappear, content is showing why it’s truly king. Although it’s been around for decades in one form or another, the importance of content marketing has never been more significant and this practice is still evolving.

Online firm KAYAK recently published an infographic on the 21 New Rules of Content Marketing. Although I don’t agree with all of them as you’ll read below, there’s value in refreshing yourself on acceptable practices and discovering new ways to use the information you produce to capture a large and engaged audience.

1. Treat Keywords Like Hot Sauce

Can you taste the Tabasco?

This opening rule hooked me enough to continue reading through the additional points in the infographic. Anyone with experience in this field has seen content with an over-abundance of unnecessary keywords. As a writer, I’ve refused work that comes with a requirement of using a long list of words just to use them. Content is about providing value. If your only goal with content is to rise in organic searches, you’ll lose out on potential customers and any benefits from your SEO efforts due to empty content. Use keywords carefully; making sure your readers and fans don’t have to choke down what you’re providing them with.

2. Have a Voice (or Brand) Customers Can Identify With

Customers want to relate with you! Give them a voice they can identify with by providing transparent and behind the scenes information and opinions.

3. Build Trust With Transparency

Ties in with #2, but transparency is a rule worth repeating. Companies that only talk about being the best and act like they don’t have any competitors or problems aren’t easy to like. I admire companies that can admit their mistakes and let you know that real people are working at that company.

Example: We F*cked Up, by Ryan Hoover on Medium

4. Make the Most of a Great Idea with Multiple Formats

There are a lot of ways to share information, but to keep your message powerful, choose what you share over multiple formats carefully. You don’t need to share every article or video on all of your social media accounts. Don’t waste your time repurposing every article you write, instead, focus on producing the most valuable information to your target market and they will show you when something is worth sharing on additional channels.

5. Headlines Are Everything

Can I agree and disagree at the same time? If headlines were everything, there would be no reason to click on them, and we would all only use Twitter and nothing else. The information people are clicking to read/listen/watch matters more than the headlines, but you have to carefully entice readers while being 100% honest about what you’re providing. Having an incredible headline can work against you if the rest of the content doesn’t live up to the hype.

6. Use the News

It’s hard for me to argue with this because I’m providing my thoughts on a recently published story/infographic in this post. Curating content and tying in a story with the news is a strong way to get attention right from the start, but depending on the news you are using, the information or insight you provide may be obsolete in a matter of hours.

I thought my Deflategate related article on The Dangerously Competitive Workplacewas going to go viral. Over a month later, it has 70 views and little hope of ever catching on.

7. You Can’t Stock the Cupboards Until You Take Out the Trash

They tried a little bit too hard to be cute and clever with this one. I take this to mean you need to optimize your online presence and brand before trying to throw a ton of content out there. I’m currently experiencing this, as I’m publishing every day, which leaves a very small amount of time to do the work behind the scenes that is needed to increase engagement and improve the chances readers who find value in my articles can find them.

8. Don’t Just Post…Engage

Think about your personal network or a Twitter profile. You can know 5,000 people and have a large following on Twitter, but if they aren’t engaged and sharing what you’re providing, what value are your posts, network, or “following?” Don’t just talk about yourself, share other things your audience may like. In nearly all of my articles, I include other resources that may be of value to my readers that I don’t have any vested interest in.

9. Invite Yourself to Someone Else’s Party Once in a While

Contribute to guest blogs, interact with others on social media, etc., just make sure you are engaging in the conversation and not trying to turn it all back on yourself. Don’t just try to use someone else’s following to your benefit without investing a little time and effort yourself.

10. Remember that Great Content Invites Links

I’m not sure how this is a rule. It feels like opening up a fortune cookie to read “you are a kind and awesome person” – it’s not really a fortune. Creating great and shareable content is important, but if you didn’t already realize that, this list may be over your head.

11. Build Your Content From an Ongoing Plan

This goes back to having a content strategy. Just winging it can work occasionally, but you need to have a focused effort to provide what your audience wants and needs. Strategy and organization will also help when coming up with topic ideas.

12. The Best Inspiration Comes from Several Different Sources

Another non-rule. I’m starting to think they just really wanted to have 21 rules. We can be inspired by anything…we get it.

13. Quality is as Important as Quantity

FALSE.

Quality is MORE important than quantity, and this is coming from someone who is publishing 365 days this year. One terrible piece of content will lose a portion of your audience forever.

I tend to talk a lot when I’m excited about something. The more I talk about something that my audience doesn’t think is valuable, the more annoying I am to them. Providing annoying information constantly will kill your brand. Focus on quality, not quantity.

14. Quantity Still Matters

Have you ever started a new relationship and you were hoping to get calls every couple of days, but instead you received them once a month when the other person was drunk? Being sporadic or absent for a couple of months will push your target market away. Find out how often they want to hear from you and stay consistent.

15. Take Your Time

Don’t force it, but don’t wait around for the perfect time or perfect content. Nothing is perfect, and your competition is getting better and stronger by the day. Plan, but don’t hold off your efforts just to double and triple check every aspect of your campaign.

16. Stop Buying Content from the Bargain Bin

I recently covered why entrepreneurs and businesses should be careful if choosing to hire dirt cheap writers.

It’s like eating fast food for every meal. It’s cheap and can get you by for the time being, but you know to have a healthy body, you need to eat better food. Don’t expect to vastly improve your brand by paying a few bucks for content you hope will bring in leads. The information and articles you put out into the world represent your brand. Make sure that you are proud of what you publish and have writers that genuinely care about your company and success.

17. Know Your Biggest Content Marketing Enemy

No, they aren’t referring to your actual competitors. KAYAK is referring to “being bland.” Know the personality of your business and what resonates with your target market. It’s great to use humor if it fits your brand, but if you’re a doctor running a practice, humor might not be the best idea. Make sure your content is readable and not going to put someone to sleep.

18. Use One Piece of Content to Promote Another

Promoting content in content is okay, but needs to be done carefully. As you’ll notice in this article, I’ve linked to two pieces of my own content above.

Find relevant opportunities to provide your audience with additional sources and information. When placing a link into a piece of content, ask yourself if this is going to be helpful for your reader, or if you’re just putting it in there for selfish reasons.

19. Recycle Your Greatest Hits

This is a little too similar to #4 for my liking. Re-sharing content is okay occasionally, but sharing the same piece more than five times is pushing it if you expect to build a consistent and passionate fan base.

As a consumer of content, I’m skeptical of people and brands that push the same articles or videos day after day on social media. Repurpose your content by utilizing videos, audio (podcasts), and even slides on Slideshare, but be careful of how often you’re sharing the same information again and again. Think of your content as a really good joke. You will make people laugh the first time, but if they hear it several times, it starts to get annoying.

20. Always Ask the Key Question About a Piece of Content

Is this content worth the time of the reader?

It’s a great question to ask. This will depend on your audience, as you can’t expect everyone to feel that your video or podcast episode is interesting, and you shouldn’t try to market to everyone.

21. Use Your Content to Turn Searchers, Readers & Fans, into Buyers!

We all have to sell. How is your content resulting in sales? Start by providing calls to action in your content. For a couple of examples, view this post about putting calls to action in your post footers on LinkedIn.

Thanks for reading! What’s your best rule to live by for content marketing?

__________________________________________________________________

TrepRep turns your passion and expertise as an entrepreneur into content marketing gold. To find out more, email me at [email protected].

Michael Luchies is the Founder of TrepRep, Director of Content Programming forPursuit, Interview Editor for Under30CEO, Entrepreneurship Lecturer at Illinois State University, Co-Host of the Entrepreneurs on Campus Radio Show, Trepidemic Co-Host, TEW 2 contributor, and writer of all things entrepreneurship. Connect with Michael on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Michael is publishing 365 times in 2015. To find out why, read the first post of the year here!