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My 4 year old daughter came home from preschool last week with a picture of a penguin that she had drawn.

I still can’t see a penguin in that picture no matter how many different ways I look at it.

The thing is, my daughter is very talented when it comes to drawing. At the age of four, she’s actually better to draw than I am, so I knew there was something going on when I saw that picture.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not crazy parents putting pressure on the child to be the best artist in her class, but this was obviously not my daughter’s style.

I was looking at it and going, “Look, Daddy, Casey drew this beautiful penguin at school today.”

Then Casey said, “I copied off of Jane.” (I’ve changed the name to protect the innocent.)

Aaaaaahhhh. That made sense.

I told Casey I would rather see a penguin that she drew by herself without copying off of anyone.

She quickly churned out this photo:

See the difference?

I had to try to explain to my daughter that she could do a better job if she did her drawings on her own, without copying off of anyone else. As I was explaining this to her, I realized that lots of adults still don’t get this.

If you’re marketing your business in the way that everyone else in your industry markets their businesses, just because you think that’s how you should be promoting yourself, did you ever stop and think you’re basically being a copycat?

There’s an excellent chance that if you’re trying to be someone you’re not, you’re stifling something great inside by doing so. Like my daughter’s own penguin drawing.

Market with your own personality. Be authentic. Be yourself. Make your own unique, individual mark on the world and be proud of it.

You’ll attract better clients, you’ll do better work and you’ll have a happier existence.

It’s true what they say, you know, you learned everything you needed to know about life before you finished kindergarten. Think about it. Would your teacher let you get away with copying off your neighbor?

Didn’t think so.

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I got a new blender yesterday. A totally excellent blender with a special dispensing spout for a less messy smoothie experience in the morning.

This morning I was really looking forward to treating my family to some yummy fruit & yogurt smoothies, but I was having technical difficulties.

I had washed the glass jug and the blade and had it all together, but I was getting nowhere trying to attach the spout. I was turning clockwise just like the instructions told me to but it would not lock in to place. I tried pushing harder cause that always works, right? I even thought the problem must have been the person who assembled it screwed the piece on wrong so I was rooting around to find a screwdriver to try it a different way. Believe it or not, didn’t work. (Sorry for doubting you, assembly person.)

I was getting hungry and frustrated so I decided to just put the optional little attachment thingy on and forgo the cool spout pouring option this time. I was pretty sure I’d have to call the Black and Decker people later and take it up with someone there.

When husband came into the kitchen and saw the spout sitting beside the blender, of course, he had to try to fix it for me. And, annoyingly enough, he did.

He told me that our first instinct, to turn it harder, was wrong. He said you have to barely touch it and it locks into place.

I was happy, even though smoothies had already been poured. We’ll have more tomorrow afterall. But I was thinking about how much energy I exerted over that stupid spout this morning and how if I just went against my instinct to push it harder that I would have been able to enjoy the full spout-poured smoothie experience.

Are you pushing harder in your business and still not getting anywhere? Have you taken it apart and tried to put it back together to no avail? If you were to talk to my husband today, he might suggest you just ease off and try something else. No matter how little you think it would actually help.

We tend to underestimate the power of good content as a sales vehicle.

What good is a fantabulous promotion if it leads your customers back to the same non-compelling, ineffective web content every time?

Instead of pushing harder, what if you tried calling a copywriter to review your existing content and propose if and how they might make it better?

I’ll tell you, the harder you push, the more frustrated you’re going to get when you don’t see results. Plus there’s always the chance that the whole thing will go to pieces under the strain.

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When my daughters want pigtails in their hair, they come to me because I’m more gentle and their hair gets tugged less.

When they want to play Lego, they go to their daddy because he’s the expert at building things with blocks.

I’m the one they ask for snacks, he’s the one they ask for piggy-back rides.

Kids learn very quickly how to get what they need and they learn which avenue to take to get it fastest.

It didn’t take too many times for Daddy to put the wrong sized dress on the children before they just quit asking him to help. I only made so many pathetic attempts at drawing things for them to start walking past me to go to Daddy when they wanted to make pictures.

Do you think your customers are any different?

This is why finding a niche is so important. So very, very important that it can never possibly be stressed enough.

Let’s consider a bakery for a minute. A bakery opens in a town that already has a bakery. Old bakery has been the only bakery for many miles, for many years. Their stuff is good, their prices are good. They deliver consistent quality. They sell all kinds of baked goods from bread and rolls to cookies and cakes. They sell preserves for you to put on your bread, and they have every different kind of pie you can imagine.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the bakery.

But then another bakery opens up in the same town.

Townspeople think it’s crazy – there’s never going to be enough business to support two bakeries!

But the new bakery is a very different operation than the old bakery.

This new bakery offers gluten-free products, diabetic-friendly desserts and it’s a peanut-free zone. They sell health-foods disguised as cookies, loaded with flax, raisins and other healthy things. Their jams and jellies are certified organic.

Even though there are two bakeries in town, they serve completely different customers. They each have their own niche.

Do you think either bakery would suffer from the others’ presence?

I’m thinking not.

People still wanting the gooey, sugary treats go where they’ve always gone. People wanting a healthier choice probably haven’t been frequenting the first bakery anyway so they try out the new place.

Do you make it very clear to your prospective customers what you do better than your competitors?

Do you even know what you do better than the competition. Do you know why your customers are choosing you?

If you do, are you highlighting that information in your copy?

Do your website visitors know why they should choose to work with you?

If you’re not seeing the type of conversion rates you’d like from the current marketing material you have out there (including your website), I challenge you to look at it with an open mind, as if you were a potential customer viewing it for the first time.

Do you have to sift through a bunch of dry information to find out the bottom line – why you’re better than the rest?

I ask you this because if you can’t find that information yourself, then how can you possibly expect someone who doesn’t know you to find it?

If you’re not really sure what that is, think back to my opening “pigtails” example. What are your current customers coming to you for most? Take a look at your most popular service and you can probably figure it out pretty quickly. Remember, you’re constantly evolving. What you do best now might be different than what you did best when you first started your business!

A “copy polish” (as I like to all it) will cost less money than you think and when you consider the ROI and the fact that you could possibly be losing scores of potential customers from the get-go right now, you can’t afford not to have your copy revised to make it clear as to why your customers should choose you.

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If you’ve been living in a cave and aren’t familiar with Twitter, feel free to “follow me” and see what it’s all about. But I’m writing this post under the assumption that you’ve heard of it and/or are already on there.

Twitter is amazing. It’s such a tremendous marketing tool it almost feels like cheating, using it to get people more interested in your product or services.

I’ve been introduced to tons of awesome new stuff by following links posted by cool people on Twitter and most of the requests for quotes I get these days are a direct result of my personal Twitter activity.

Now, what do you do when you know Twitter can help grow your business (or at least send more traffic to your website and/or blog) but you have no time to use it? Or what if you want to use Twitter but you’re aware that your poor grammar and spelling could detract from your brand (seriously, some people do still care about spelling and grammar)?

Believe it or not, you can hire people to tweet for you.

Is using a ghost tweeter ethical?

Yes and no.

If you want to reap the rewards of Twitter by hiring someone to pretend they’re you, tweeting about the sandwich you’re eating or the movie you watched last night…well…I think you might as well just shut ‘er down.

I would suggest that if you don’t have the time to invest in building relationships with your followers and you want someone to pretend they’re you so you don’t have to, that you shouldn’t even be allowed to have a Twitter account.

All it takes for you to really start doing some meaningful relationship building on Twitter is about fifteen minutes a day.

• Check in before you start working for the day, maybe with an update about what your day has in store.
• Check in before lunch to tell your followers how your day is going, or to share a link you found or to retweet something cool.
• Check in later in the afternoon and then again when you’re finishing up for the day.

That’s it. That’s all it takes.

If you want to hire someone to post stuff as you in between those times, fill your boots. If you trust someone enough to sound like you, go ahead and let that person link to one of your recent blog posts or to an article you were featured in. I just don’t think you should be outsourcing your personal tweets to someone because to me, that feels wrong.

I think it’s fine to outsource what I consider to be “corporate” tweets to a ghostwriter or tweeter or whatever you want to call that person.

I do this for several business. I will go through a company’s website, blog posts, articles – basically all existing content – and come up with cute/informative/funny/interesting tweets and send those back to the client who generally gives them to his/her assistant to take from there and enter into SocialOomph or something similar.

So that’s it. That’s how ghost tweeting works. In my opinion, ghost tweeting isn’t entirely unethical, but there’s a fine line as far as I’m concerned. My advice is to do what you feel comfortable with, but I really hope you don’t knowingly try to deceive your followers because they’re following you not me. Know what I mean?

What are your thoughts? Hiring someone to tweet for you…ethical or not? Please share your thoughts, I know you have some!

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When I was a little girl, I used to watch soap operas with my great grandmother. She lived with us when I was very young and I don’t remember all that much about her, but I remember she liked to watch hockey and her soaps.

I haven’t watched a full episode of All My Children since I started my maternity leave with my first born…four years ago. Before that, I would watch it on days I was home sick from work or back when I was going to school, I’d watch it on my days off and during the summer I’d always get sucked in.

The other day I was putting in a video for my daughter, the TV happened to be on ABC and sure enough, All My Children was on. So I watched about five seconds about it. That five seconds was enough to bring me up to speed on an entire storyline.

See, soap opera writers are brilliant.

They are constantly working entire plot lines into one script for a 60 minute show…about 45 minutes when you remove commercials.

If you don’t know what I mean, just turn on a soap opera. Doesn’t matter which one, they all do the same thing – Days of our Lives, All My Children – whichever you like.

Notice how the characters say things like:

“You can’t blame me for not trusting you, Crystal. You did set the fire that supposedly killed Rachel and remember the time you beat Naomi and left her for dead when you found out she was cheating on you with Nate?”

That’s a dramatization, but throughout the script, the writers are always weaving in bits and pieces from past story lines. That way, when a fan hasn’t tuned in for a week or a year or two, they can get caught up within a half hour.

What does this have to do with writing website content?

Lots, actually.

When someone lands on your site, you have no idea if they’re there for the first time, if they’ve landed on your contact page, your services page or your home page.

You don’t know if they understand what you do or whether they’ve ever heard of you before.

Most of us make a lot of assumptions when we write our content.

We think everyone will land on our home page, then visit our about page, look at our services then contact us for more information.

But like the soap opera writer, we should make no assumptions.

• What if someone lands on your contact page and sees nothing more than your PO Box number or an interactive contact form? Do you think they’ll navigate through your site if they know nothing else about you?

• Does your contact page have your mission statement or a brief recap of the services you provide, to bring the visitor up to speed quickly on what you do?

• What if your services page is the popular landing spot for your visitors. Do you go right into a list of the services you provide there, or do you give a little overview of why your services can help people?

Go ahead and “land” on one of the pages of your website you never imagined a visitor landing on before. What do you see? If someone had never heard of you before and knew nothing else about your business than what’s on that page, would they  be compelled enough to browse your site some more, or have you lost them due to vague information that’s meaningless if they’ve deviated from the navigation pattern you assumed they’d follow?

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