Your Niche is Your Cubbyhole in Life

On your first day of preschool or kindergarten, you were assigned a cubbyhole. A 2 x 2 square box attached to twenty-five other cubbyholes, painted in various colors. Each square box had a placard with a students name neatly printed on it. Everything of value would be placed in your cubby like lunch box, papers, crayons, and pencil boxes. You were told to take care of the things in your cubby.

However, this did not always work out because as Murphy’s Law would have it, cubbyholes would and could not hold everything.

Cubbyhole sounds like something cute and snugly but take away the fuzzy wuzzies and you have a Niche: 1) a snug or cramped space or room; 2) a small compartment, 3) a category, especially an overly restrictive one.

Niche’s are much like definition #3. It is written all over the blogosphere that finding and marketing your niche is very important to your business. I won’t disagree with that because niche’s can be very profitable. However, I liken a niche to a college major. Any one who has attended college knows that your major may change many times before you choose one to focus on.

Once you discover or choose your niche, are you stuck with it? No. But just as with a college major, it is OK to experiment with different niche’s for a while or even a year or two. Nevertheless, somewhere down the line you need to grow up and stay in one place for a few years before venturing off to another cubbyhole.

Write it down,

Carma

Chambers & Bloggers - A Good Mix

In my post Social Conversations, I compared blogging and social networking to chamber of commerce’s mixers. Let's take a look and find out how blogging/social networking stack up against an organization that has been around since the sixteenth century. I don’t think you can really compare the two entities fairly, however there is one important statement that fits both worlds.

The basic mission of a chamber is to create and promote a climate where business can operate in a productive and profitable manner.

Responsible bloggers do encourage and support a climate where writers, designers, copywriters, coaches and many more entrepreneurs can be productive and profitable. Instead of meeting face to face, we meet screen to screen providing factual information and motivation for learning. We are all citizens of this blogging community and communities are what their citizens make them.

Internet marketing has also made a huge impact on chambers of commerce. Click here to see a video of how this North Sacramento chamber markets to prospective new members via YouTube. Their energetic message, Lead, Serve, Inspire is riveting.

Entertainment is sometimes used to liven up a chamber mixer. Bloggers have access to all kinds of entertainment as well but this local chamber really knows how to get your blood pumping. Sign me up! I think the content of this conversation is self explanatory. Chambers of Commerce have joined the global bandwagon too.

I hope this helps those of you, (who are like me), to understand what people are talking about when they have conversations about conversation. The conversation is the glue that holds relationships together. I think I’m getting it now.

I highly recommend that you join your local chamber of commerce. All you need to do is spend a total of two hours a month handing out business cards and meeting other people who probably need your services.

Write it down,

Carma

Are You a Writer or a Salesman?

Rumor has it that some writers fear selling face to face. True or False? I am a writer who hates selling face to face. My first distasteful experience with sales happened when I was ten years old. I was required to go door to door selling flower seeds as a fund raiser for my 4-H club.

Fear of selling is not a good thing for writers, since we need to sell our ideas and projects to publishers. Is it the fear of rejection or just an aversion to meeting people face to face? For me it is more about insecurity of myself. I find it much easier to “sell” myself on paper.

In Doug D’ana’s monthly newsletter he states that in order for writers to develop their own unique selling style they should take a sales course and not just read a sales book. A sales course will help you get down to the basics of selling face to face. You will learn how to see and feel clients’ emotions and how to react to them and you will gain an overwhelming advantage over writers who take only writing classes.

Doug characterizes his success in one way when he says “Truth is, if there's a reason why I've had such great success in copywriting, it is because I'm not a writer--I'm a salesman who types for a living.”

Of course “selling” is just another form of marketing. Suzanne Lieurance of The Working Writer’s Coach suggests that if we want to keep our freelance writing career going we need to develop a weekly marketing plan. There are two important items in any plan. One is Promotional Activities. We must constantly promote (sell) ourselves and our writing in order to be a working writer. Keep your web site or blog updated, write press releases and so on. The next one is Networking with other writers and community organizations. Join your local chamber of commerce and go to business luncheons.

Also, think of yourself as a “big” business. Even though you are the chief cook and bottle washer, you have a global business on the world wide web. Don’t sell yourself short in this area.

Everyone has a selling style waiting to be developed. Develop your own personal unique selling style and you can be a “thank-you-for-the-money-in-my-pocket” writer.

Write it down,
Carma

What Do Clients Want?

The only two words that clients “want” are in the next few paragraphs. As you read, I want your mind to figure out what they are before you read them. When you see them, I earnestly hope you say, “I KNEW IT!” and ultimately that will be your invitation to go do something about it.

This may be a bitter pill for some but many clients/customers have a PERCEPTION that writers don’t deserve much pay, writers don’t work hard, and writers are a dime a dozen. This is very deceptive and NOT MY PERCEPTION at all. In fact it is a myth.

Writers are the hardest working people on the face of the earth and we should be able to beat the living tar out of that perception.

What do Clients want? They want someone to Exceed Expectations. That’s it. How do we do that? Over at Every Dot Connects, Connie Reece says it’s about Starting the Conversation.

Connie says: “My dad was a gifted salesman, I never once heard my dad use what could be called a sales pitch. Instead, he just talked to people. Struck up conversations.”

Think about it. Nothing happens until you talk to someone.

Writers are also sales people. Yes, we are. We sell our work and ourselves every day.

Drew McLellan gives some sage advice Your job as a marketer is not to sell. Your job is to help the customer want to buy. A distinct difference.

What better way than to talk to people. Have a conversation. Find out what they really want. Do they want you to be the myth-buster?

Write it down,

Carma