When things are great, get as much as you can out of it.
This always seems like it'll last forever while it's happening, but it never does. Double down, triple down. If business is ridiculously good lately, pour the time in to max out the current opportunities before they (likely) fade away. Bank cash, etc. The same goes for creativity. When you're having a highly creative day, run it out as much as you can. Resist the temptation to say, "Well, that's enough" and just go chill out or whatever. Max inspired time is rare. Milk that cow when you're max inspired. During bad times, re-double on fundamentals and try to avoid doing anything stupid. Fundamentals keeps you from hitting the vicious downward spiral. Super basic stuff. Decent sleep schedule, eat well, drink enough water, time in nature, time socializing with people you like. If things start getting hairy, really knuckle down on the most very basic stuff. That helps fight off the downward spiral. And then try not to do anything stupid. Don't spend a lot of money or make irreversible decisions if your judgment is faulty. Just keep gearing down on fundamentals. When you're low creatively, this is a great time to do tedious consolidation. Clean the kitchen, clean all your gear up, clean up the files on your computer, get taxes and licenses or whatever filed and renewed, deal with bureaucracy and nonsense—this will free up your time to milk the cow more when you're max creative. Okay, this is my new plan. Normal life during normal times. Milk the cow as much as possible when things are unusually great. Fundamentals and trying to avoid being stupid when things are bad. If you do those seven things—eat well, drink water, sleep on schedule, plan tomorrow before sleeping, start on what's most important, exercise, fully relax regularly, and get some time in nature—that almost guarantees busting out of a slump. If you're in a slump, you're almost certainly not doing one of those. Ikigai by Sebastian Marshall Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding.
We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You. —TOM PETERS You have alternatives, you’re just not creating them for yourself. You have to start taking ownership of managing your career. You have to start making an effort to change your brand from anonymous cog to slightly famous difference maker. "...I went out of my way to take on projects no one wanted and initiated projects no one had thought of doing. I e-mailed my boss, and sometimes my boss’s boss, ideas. And I did it almost every day. What was the worst thing that could happen? I’d get fired from a job I didn’t like anyway. Alternatively, I’d make the effort to create the job—regardless of where it was—that I thought would make me happy.” Every job I’ve ever had, I’ve made an effort to brand myself as an innovator, a thinker, a salesman, and someone who could get stuff done. When I was just a management trainee at ICI, my first job out of college, I sent a set of recommendations to the CEO. So he never responded. But I never stopped sending those e-mails. It’s just silly to think you can’t impact people’s personal and professional expectations of who you are. By making the effort, you can break the glass ceiling by expanding people’s view of your capability. To become a brand, you’ve got to become relentlessly focused on what you do that adds value. And I promise you can add value to whatever job you’re doing now. Can you do what you do faster and more efficiently? If so, why not document what it would take to do so and offer it to your boss as something all employees might do? Do you initiate new projects on your own and in your spare time? Do you search out ways to save or make your company more money? You can’t do all that if you’re solely concerned with minimizing risk, respecting the chain of command, and following your job description to the letter. There’s no room for yes-men in this pursuit. Those with the gumption to make their work special will be the ones to establish a thriving brand. You can’t do meaningful work that makes a difference unless you’re devoted to learning, growing, and stretching your skills. If you want others to redefine what you do and who you are within organizational boundaries, then you have to be able to redefine yourself. That means going above and beyond what’s called for. It means seeing your résumé as a dynamic, changing document every year. It means using your contacts inside and outside your network to deliver each project you’re assigned with inspired performance. Peters calls this the pursuit of WOW in everything you do. Develop a Personal Branding Message (PBM) A brand is nothing less than everything everyone thinks of when they see or hear your name. The best brands, like the most interesting people, have a distinct message. Your PBM comes from your content/unique value proposition, as we discussed in the last chapter, and a process of self-evaluation. It involves finding out what’s really in a name—your name. It calls for you to identify your uniqueness and how you can put that uniqueness to work. It’s not a specific task so much as the cultivation of a mind-set. What do you want people to think when they hear or read your name? What product or service can you best provide? Take your skills, combine them with your passions, and find out where in the market, or within your own company, they can best be applied. Package the Brand Most people’s judgments and impressions are based on visuals—everything other than the words you speak that communicates to others what you’re about. For everyone in every field—let’s be real—looks count, so you’d better look polished and professional. There is one general, overarching caveat in this step: Stand out! Style matters. Whether you like it or not, clothing, letterheads, hairstyles, business cards, office space, and conversational style are noticed—big time. The design of your brand is critical. Buy some new clothes. Take an honest look at how you present yourself. Ask others how they see you. How do you wish to be seen? The bottom line is you have to craft an appearance to the outside world that will enhance the impression you want to make. “Everyone sees what you appear to be,” observed Machiavelli, “few really know what you are.” Broadcast Your Brand You’ve got to become your own PR firm, as I’ll talk about in the next chapter. Take on the projects no one wants at work. Never ask for more pay until after you’ve been doing the job successfully and become invaluable. Get on convention panels. Write articles for trade journals and company newsletters. Send e-mails filled with creative ideas to your CEO. Design your own Me, Inc. brochure. Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz I am reading six books right now, which is normal for me, because I like to read various books, each one offsetting the other. I think we stay focused for about 20 minutes on a subject so I like to jump whemn my mind wanders.One fiction, one business book, one book that makes me think, etc.
I just realized I also have them broken out by four devices and five formats , and each format seems to fit the type of book it is and I am reading and I find that interesting. Each book type reads better on a certain format. Here is what I am reading right now, and on what. 1. On my cell phone I am reading Makers by Chris Anderson - a great book on the futre of manufacturing, really a great read, and makes me think and re-evaluate my business thinking. Reads great in small chunks on the go. Makers: The New Industrial Revolution 2. IKIGAI by Sebastian Marshall is a collection of his blog posts on strategy and business and I read this on my ipod around the house during quiet moments. I really like his blog, and this book gives a nice overview. Ikigai 3. On my Kindle I am reading a book of fiction, Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, an author whose work I love. Wonder Boys: A Novel 4. On my computer I am reading the Boron Letters by Gary Halbart, which is a great small treatise on direct marketing and copy writing. http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/Boron/BoronLetterCh1.htm 5. On my kindle, I am also reading Eat to Live, by Joel Fuhrman, which is totally changing how I eat. I first got hooked on smoothies, and that lead to this book. Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss, Revised Edition 6. Finally, I am reading an actual book, the 4 hour Chef by Tim Ferriss. I originally bought it for $5 for the kindle, but saw it in a supermarket, and picked it up, and it is a beautiful book with photos and color layouts, and I just had to buy it. I am improving my cooking, learning to learn, and reading a great adventure book. The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life I have tried reading each of them on in other formats, but these each seem to have fallen into a format that fits its style the best. D The ad has all the elements you would expect any space ad to have. And to understand this first axiom, I would ask my students to define the purpose of each element in an advertisement. The following is what we finally decided:
1. Headline: To get your attention and draw you to the subheadline. 2. Subheadline: To give you more information and further explain the attention-getting headline. 3. Photo or Drawing: To get your attention and to illustrate the product more fully. 4. Caption: To describe the photo or drawing. An important element and one that is often read. 5. Copy: To convey the main selling message for your product or service. 6. Paragraph Headings: To break up the copy into chunks, thereby making the copy look less imposing. 7. Logo: To display the name of the company selling the product. 8. Price: To let the reader know what the product or service costs. The price could be in large type or could be buried in the copy. 9. Response Device: To give the reader a way to respond to the ad, by using the coupon, toll-free number or ordering information, usually near the end of the ad. 10. Overall Layout: To provide the overall appearance for the ad, by using effective graphic design for the other elements. Axiom #2 All the elements in an advertisement are primarily designed to do one thing and one thing only: get you to read the first sentence of the copy. At this point, there was usually a confused look on the faces of my students. They thought that each of these elements had its own reason for existence. But I was saying, “No, they are there strictly for the sole purpose of get ting you to read the first sentence.” I know what you’re thinking. “What about the headline? Isn’t it supposed to be 16 words long and what about . . .” Stop. Just accept my word at this point that each element (of an ad or copy) has a single purpose and that is to get you to read the first sentence. If somebody asked you for the main purpose of the logo in an advertisement, you could answer, “to establish the corporate integrity of the company selling the product,” or you could answer, “to provide a degree of continuity.” But the real answer is to get you to read the copy. Really. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs by Joseph Sugarman Realize how important it is to know your product and know your customer. It is this specific knowledge that will make a dramatic difference in your ability to communicate your thoughts in copy.
The bottom line for all these approaches is that copywriting is primarily the mental process of first getting your thoughts organized in your mind and then eventually transferring them onto paper. There is no best method—just what works for you. But the best place to start, without question, is to start. That’s right. Pick up a piece of paper and a pen, and start. Do enough of it over a long enough period of time and I guarantee you, you’ll improve each year. Write articles for a local newspaper. I started writing for my high school paper. It gave me experience and confidence. Write letters, write postcards—just plain write every opportunity you can. Another fact to realize about writing copy is that the first draft of an ad is often terrible and the real skill in copywriting is taking that rough draft and polishing it. You might add words, delete entire sentences, change the order of sentences or even paragraphs. It’s all part of the copywriting process. I often pointed out to my students that if everybody in the class were given the assignment of writing a draft of an ad for a product, the first draft of my ad would quite likely be terrible compared to everybody else’s. It is what I do with the copy after my first draft that really makes the difference. In that first draft the goal is to put something—anything— on paper, the emotional outpouring of everything you are trying to convey about your product or service. Don’t worry about how it reads. Just get it down onto something you can work with like a computer screen or a piece of paper and then go from there. Copywriting is a mental process the successful execution of which reflects the sum total of all your experiences, your specific knowledge and your ability to mentally process that information and transfer it onto a sheet of paper for the purpose of selling a product or service. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs by Joseph Sugarman The best copywriters in the world are those who are curious about life, read a great deal, have many hobbies, like to travel, have a variety of interests, often master many skills, get bored and then look for other skills to master. They hunger for experience and knowledge and find other people interesting. They are very good listeners.
The thirst for knowledge, a tremendous curiosity about life, a wealth of experiences and not being afraid to work are the top credentials for being a good copywriter. Probably one of the most important keys in copywriting and conceptualizing is the ability to relate totally divergent concepts to create a new concept. You need to become an expert on a product, service or anything you write about to really be effective. Becoming an expert means learning enough about a product to obtain enough specific knowledge so you can communicate the real nature of what you are trying to sell. Say to yourself, “I am an expert or have learned enough to be able to effectively communicate this product to the consumer.” That’s what we mean by “specific knowledge.” In addition to knowing your product or service, you’ve really got to know your customer. You’ve got to be an expert on who your customer is by gathering specific information on whom you are selling to. You have a great deal of studying to do to make sure you understand who your customer is and what motivates him or her. In short, the product has a nature of its own and it’s up to you to discover what the nature of that product is in the mind of the consumer. Realize how important it is to know your product and know your customer. It is this specific knowledge that will make a dramatic difference in your ability to communicate your thoughts in copy. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs by Joseph Sugarman |
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