Get High at Work!

Author: Kevin Sandlin

  • 6 benefits of outsourcing your content marketing

    Lots of people who are way smarter than me have written about why you must blog in this age of digital communication and social sharing.  I aggregated hundreds of reasons that you should blog in this post.  So you know you should blog, and you know why you should blog, but you still are not able to get it done.

    Here are the main reasons that startups and small businesses alike don’t blog, in no particular order:

    • Not enough time
    • You’re not good at writing
    • “We don’t have enough content“
    • No resources
    • Not worth a dedicated resource
    • Budget

    OK, all of those are legit.  It’s very easy to push the idea of maintaining an active blog down the priority list, but you really don’t have to.  You, as a (or the) leader in your startup or small business, are the best at telling your story, so it really is on you to find a way to get it done.  Because of all the reasons noted above (which ones are yours?), it may be that your best bet is to outsource your blog. Here are six benefits of outsourcing your content marketing.

    • Focused resource – it’s our job to create and maintain your blog on your schedule. You’re our customer, and we’re focused on you.
    • Excellent writing – we write for a living!
    • Good use of time – You don’t have time to blog, but you know you really need to, so this 30 minutes each week is a very good use of your time.
    • Dedicated PT resource – No, you can’t hire a full time resource to maintain your marketing content, but you can hire a part time resource that is dedicated to and focused on creating the best content your audience can consume.
    • Helps you tell, hear, and see your story – As I mentioned above, you’re the best at telling your story. That’s what we’ll do each week: you’ll tell a different part of your story, and we’ll create fresh new reusable content from that time together.
    • Gets it done – We’ll set a calendar, and get it done, period.  It’s off your plate.
    Johnson Cook recommends that you outsource everything possible.  An active, goal-oriented blog that serves your business needs is one of the most important parts of your digital marketing strategy, and it’s also one of the things you can outsource.

  • Now they blog for their brand!

    At last week’s “Blogging for your Brand” class at General Assembly, I challenged the 50+ attendees to write a blog post during the 2-hour class and publish it immediately afterwards, or at least real soon after the class ended.  Guess what? They were up to the challenge!  Check out these newly educated, inspired, and (most importantly) equipped bloggers!

    There is no greater feeling than “moving the needle” in anything that you do. If you dig ditches, you get to see your progress. If you blog, you have a sense of fulfillment (if not relief) when you hit “Publish”.  When I teach a class, there is no greater reward than to see the proverbial light bulb go off when someone gets it. But then to see these people immediately put into action what they just soaked up? Priceless!

    Thank you for attending the class, listening, engaging, soaking it up, and then acting on it! Well done. Well done.

  • Don’t go to college

    Following on yesterday’s topic, “Your college degree is worthless“, I’m tacking in a different direction today. What I learned in college is serving me very well today. However, when I was in college (get ready), we didn’t have smart phones, email, laptops, or social media. The world has changed – completely – and the mindset around a college education has to change along with it.

    Even before my time, if you had a college degree, you really set yourself above the fray. If you got an MBA (which I did), then you were head and shoulders above everyone else. There are still a set of very specific areas in which a college degree (not “the equivalent”) is required, including (but certainly not limited to):

    • Medicine
    • Engineering
    • Accounting
    • Law
    If you are going to pursue a career in these or similar fields, you must get a college degree, and then some. No getting around it, and all of those are very respectable and much in demand careers that pay well, enabling you to pay back all the loans you’ll probably need to get through all that schooling.



    However, if your bent is toward technology, either software development or networking technologies or any sort of digital skills, you do not need to go to college. I’ll say that again: to work in the fastest growing sector of jobs in today’s economy, you do not need to go to college. You do not need to spend 52 months pursuing a college degree just to say you got a college degree. You do not need to spent a ridiculous amount of money over those 4+ years when you could be working and earning money.



    College ain't cheap!



    Instead, you can engage in shorter, more specific, more valuable, and more employable education, like any one of the following:

    • learn to write software in 3 months for less than $15k. Software developers are experiencing negative unemployment today, especially in Atlanta. There are many choices:
    • attend a series of computer networking (Cisco, Microsoft, RedHat, etc.) bootcamps and earn the highest level networking certifications in less than one year.
    • attend a series of part time digital classes in UX design, Analytics, Business Fundamentals & Tactics, Data Science, Digital Marketing, Product Management, User Experience Design, Visual Design (just to name a few) while you’re working and earning money and learning to be the most valuable digital master in your company. 

    Not one of the careers that result from these skills requires a college degree. None.



    Or you can spend $100k to live with little or no responsibility for 4-5 years, learn how to drink beer, and then try to get a job in the digital age. Seriously, though, if you’re not going to pursue a career that absolutely requires a college degree, spending 52 months and well over $100k just to say you have a degree is not a wise investment of anyone’s time or money.



    If you’re inclined towards working in technology, you don’t need to go to college.

  • Your college degree is worthless!

    That’s what retired talk show host Neal Boortz told me this morning (on the radio). Specifically, he said my degree in English is equivalent to one of those “BlahBlahBlah Studies” degrees. Ouch. But it made me think of two things, the first of which is the subject of this post. Follow up tomorrow.

    What learning is important in today’s digital economy?  Hint on tomorrow’s post: it’s digital expertise, in various forms.  But for today, my English degree has never served me better than it does right now.  Think about it. You can communicate like this:

    sum ppl thnk they cn alwys use txt 2 tlk 2 any1 lol

    Or you can communicate in language that anyone – not just my 13 year old daughter – can understand. There’s nothing wrong with texting, so please don’t get me wrong. I’m so very much in agreement with Jeff Hilimire that voice mail should die a rapid death. However, whether you’re a back end Java developer or a social marketer or the leader of your company, the one thing that everyone has to be able to do is communicate in writing.

    • How many emails do you send every day?
    • How many times do you tweet each day?
    • How many times do you update a project status in Google Docs, MS Project, or Basecamp?
    • How often do you update your startup’s investors and advisors?
    • What do you write on your Instagram posts?
    • Do you run your company’s blog?
    • Do you respond to and engage with your customers on social media?

    Every one of these – and this is just scratching the surface – instances requires good communication skills.  I majored in English because I intended to go to law school. Didn’t work out that way (I went to B-School instead), but my ability to write is even more valuable today than it was when I was writing and editing the first edition of the CWNA Study Guide.

    What did you learn in college that you’re actually still using today?

  • Top 3 Tech Skills to Get Hired in the Digital Age

    Cross posted from the General Assembly blog.

    When you graduate from college, you have a degree in some specific subject(s). But it is becoming increasingly important that you have practical skills when you enter the workplace, in addition to the specific knowledge you gained during your college career. When you enter the workforce, no matter who you work for, there will be some learning curve as you learn how they do business, what tools they use, and their processes and procedures. But wouldn’t it be great if on day one when you arrived at that sweet new job, you were teaching them new tricks?

    If you learn these three digital age skills, there’s a good chance that you will blow their doors off when you start work on Monday.

    1. Front end website development

    HTML5, CSS, Javascript, WordPress. For the non-developer, these terms are very intimidating, but a qualified instructor can make them music to your ears. When you enroll in one of these classes, it’s generally understood that you’ve never written software code before, and that’s where it’ll start. Then, 3-4 months later, you won’t recognize yourself as you crank out beautiful web pages and awesome functionality from your keyboard. Just think, the next time you have a great idea, you can just build it!  These classes are usually…

    • 3-4 months long
    • $3,500 – $10,000; financing is available
    • available in-person, online (on demand)
    • part time or full time “immersive”

    Why you should learn front end web development: so you can build your own websites any time you want to try a new idea.

    2. Digital Marketing

    SEO, site optimization, content strategy, social networking, paid traffic, analytics. Also might sound a little intimidating, but you already blog and use social media, right? Then you’re halfway there. Learn digital marketing, and you’ll understand that it’s not dumb luck that gets a website millions of page views, downloads, likes, and retweets. It’s a process, and anyone can learn how to make that process sing. The basics of marketing are the same as they always have been, but just that great word – digital – makes it move a whole lot faster and gives you instant data that old school marketers never dreamed of. To learn digital marketing, you’ll need…

    • A computer and Internet access
    • Free tools like Google Analytics
    • A spreadsheet software like Google Sheets
    • about 60 hours of class time (10 weeks part time)
    • approximately $3,000 if you take a formal class

    Why you should learn digital marketing: so you can market-test anything you build, gain traction and capture leads for your business.

    3. Ecommerce

    Shopping cart software, ecommerce gateways, merchant processing. When you want to find a product, you look on the Internet. When you find that product, and want to buy it, more often than not, you purchase it over the Internet. That’s ecommerce. It’s much more sophisticated than it used to be, but basic ecommerce is very much available to anyone who has the skills and knowledge to set it up on their website. With today’s plethora of shopping cart software packages, simple Internet gateways, and banks (finally) becoming very accepting of a “Mom & Pop” ecommerce shop, selling something on the Internet is something anyone can do. A very simple example is setting up your personal site with SquareSpace, which is already integrated with Stripe. All you do is tell Stripe where to deposit the funds.

    Why you should learn ecommerce: so you can easily setup an online store and sell just about anything you have or build or create.

    Combining these three skills makes you a triple threat, since you’ll be able to build it, market it, and sell it. Not many people can do that, but you can. You’ll be prepared to be the entrepreneur you’ve always wanted to be, setting up your own website and selling your widgets. Better yet, when anyone else you meet wants to do the same thing, you’ll be prepared to do it for them. That’s called being instantly employable.

    On average, it takes 52 months to earn a bachelor’s degree. Compare than to approximately 4 months it would take to learn to build your own website, create a strong following, and sell products from that website to actually make money. Not to mention the drastic difference in the cost of these two very different programs.

    Am I advocating that young people today not attend college?  Maybe. Maybe not. But in this day of $100k+ for a college degree when you can learn very marketable skills for less than 20% of that number in 1/10th of the time, everyone should at least give it some serious consideration.

    This post originally appeared on the General Assembly blog.

  • Blog or Newsletter or both?

    The more I write and speak about writing, the more I get asked this question: should I use a blog or a regular newsletter?  I have my opinion, based on experience, but here are a few arguments for each.

    Newsletter

    • Push instead of pull – when you publish an email newsletter, that email hits your subscribers’ email instantly, and they know it’s there.
    • Instant audience – you already know who your potential readers are, because they’ve subscribed via double opt-in, and they are expecting your newsletter.
    • Simple reach measurement – you can measure within a few hours exactly how many people got the email, opened the email, clicked on the email, and much more.

    Blog

    • Easier to share – the power of social media has changed completely who can and will read your content. When was the last time you shared something via social media? 
    • Indexed by search engines – Google loves fresh new content, and when Google loves your content, your site rankings improve, and more people can find your content faster and easier.
    • Reusable – when you blog, you can then reuse that same content via social media and in a regular newsletter.
    So what do I recommend?  A planned mix. Blog, share, email, repeat.  I do this to an extreme with Atlanta Tech Blogs. Every post is reblogged on atlantatechblogs.com. Every post is shared to Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and now I’m experimenting with Instagram (nothing there yet). Every morning at 9am, Mailchimp’s RSS newsletter function pulls every post that was published since the previous daily digest and emailed out to all our subscribers.  I don’t consider the Daily Digest a “newsletter” per se, because we’re not pushing out “news” and engaging our readers in a conversation. It’s a summary of everything we published the previous day.
    Like I said, this example is to the extreme. What I recommend for organizations that produce great content is the same formula, with a couple of tweaks.
    1. Blog.  Every organization should be constantly telling its story – history, events, vision, successes, failures, new products, new features, new team members, news, product training, industry teaching, support – because no organization’s story is static. You don’t have to blog every day, but you should set a pace (daily, 2-3x/week, weekly, monthly) and stick to it, thereby setting and fulfilling the expectations of your audience.
    2. Share. Every person on the team – whether you’re a 1 man show or dozens or hundreds of team members – should be engaged in sharing the organization’s content. The smaller the team, the more important it is for everyone to share. This tactic requires planning and boundaries around who shares what to where and how it’s shared, because every social media channel is different.
    3. Newsletter. All that content that’s created for your blog is now content for your newsletter, because while your blog has loyal and dedicated readers, not everyone will follow a blog or even know there’s a new post available. When you engage in an email newsletter campaign, you engage those readers who are most comfortable consuming information in their email.
    You can take on the battle of blog vs. newsletter, but I recommend you do both, and add internal social media sharing. There are so many great tools out there that will make it very simple to do so, starting with WordPress and Mailchimp.

  • My Top 5 Posts of All Time

    According to Blogger, these are the posts that have received more visits and page views than any other post I’ve made since early 2012.

    1. So You Wanna Bootstrap Your Startup? (Feb 28, 2013) – Heck I still like reading this one. I delivered this as a seminar at ATDC, and the reception was so good I decided to do a long, long, long form write up of the whole thing.
    2. Apple Keynote? What Apple Keynote? I’ve got Chromecast! (Sep 10, 2013) – I was working from home and very excited about the Apple announcement (can’t even remember what it was now), but got totally distracted when my Google Chromecast arrived. We had just cut the cord of cable TV, and have never looked back.
    3. Preparing to Launch (May 7, 2013) – Ouch! We were just about to officially launch deductmor. Then I pivoted to c|d8a. Then I shut it down. :-(  Oh, the lessons we learn…
    4. Atlanta’s Consumer + Design Weekend Accelerator (Apr 22, 2014) – The birth of Tavani’s Switchyards! That was so much fun. Nearly a year ago? Wow.
    5. Pitch Practice 11-22-2013 (Nov 22, 2013) – I still have absolutely no idea why this post is so popular. Seriously. I’ve just re-read it for about the 100th time. Typical Pitch Practice. No idea why.

    I still enjoy randomly re-reading an old post once a week or so. If I’m feeling really nostalgic about my family, I’ll go back and peruse some of the posts from our adoption adventure to Kazakhstan, 10 years ago this year.

    Think I’ll go hug my kids now.

  • What we learned in Blogging for your Brand

    We had a fantastic time last night at General Assembly Atlanta!  Thanks to everyone who attended “Blogging for your Brand”!  Even on a ridiculously cold night, we had a packed house full of people who were eager to start or get into first or second gear in their blogging.  Here’s a simple recap of the highlights of the evening.

    • Blogging is popular! As evidenced by the crowd, it’s clear that there’s a strong need for people to learn the basics of regular blogging, and get over the perceived hurdles of blogging every day or every week for your own brand or for your company’s brand.
    • Personal and/or corporate brand – blogging is blogging! There are a few clear differences between blogging for you vs blogging for your company, but for the most part, it’s the same.  Start. Write. Repeat. Anyone can get bogged down worrying too much about whether to use Blogger or WordPress or Medium or whatever, whether to tweet about your blog or post to Instagram, whether to write every day or every week or twice a week, or whether to monetize a blog or not. Your best bet is to start.
    • Start a movement – Just like in this fantastic TED Talk video. Someone HAS to start everything. Why not you?  If you’re hesitant about blogging, it’s ok, just go. Tell your story. Everyone loves a story!
    • Seinfeld did nothing – We defined what everyone’s “story” really is, and it’s everything! Seinfeld made multiple millions saying nothing. You and your company have so much more than nothing.
    • Everyone has content – Consider Seinfeld’s approach. Everything that happens to you or your company is content for content marketing. Every new hire, new product, new feature, new event, successes, failures, partnerships, news…everything. Make a list of everything that could provide value to your audience, and then write about it.
    • Everyone has their own style, cadence, and degree of content. Find yours. For comparison and contrast, consider personal/vulnerable (John Saddington) vs. regular/analytical (David Cummings).
    It really was an awesome crowd, and it was a ton of fun teaching this class. I look forward to doing that one again.

    I’ll be teaching again in a couple of weeks on how to create and execute a social marketing strategy, and then the GA Digital Marketing Class starts Jan 27, and takes place every Tuesday & Thursday, 6:30pm – 9:30pm for 10 weeks.

  • Preparation

    How do you prepare for an event that you will lead?  I think about this process all the time, and every time I lead any event.  Every Friday, when I lead Pitch Practice, I prepare to welcome newcomers and give them an overview of why we’re here and what we do, and then to help any and all who attend with the intent of improving their pitch.  Today, I’m preparing to teach “Blogging for your Brand”, put on by General Assembly.

    How will I prepare?  That’s a loaded question; however, I still go about it generally the same way I went about preparing for tests and exams in college.  Here’s how I studied and prepped in college.

    • Always attend class. Woody Allen’s famous words are applicable here: “80% of success is just showing up.”  My Economics professor prepared us for the “real world” by telling us to “get ready for the world of all 8AM classes and no cuts.” You don’t cut class in the real world.
    • Take copious notes. I wrote down every single word the professor said. Everything. My hand would cramp several times in each class. No, we didn’t have iPads or laptops when I was in college. #oldschool  It’s been proven that writing something down is the equivalent of reading it seven (7) times.
    • The same day, rewrite your notes.  My fresh, first run notes from the class looked like chicken scratch and would be gibberish to anyone else. When I rewrote my notes, they’d be neat and understandable.
    • Read the re-written notes once a week until text/exam time. Reading them a little at a time cements them into my brain, and doesn’t take nearly as long nor is it as painful as cramming the night before.
    • The day before the exam, I read my notes 3 times all the way through.  This part of the process would take a while, since I would average 3+ pages of notes per class session, but it would be the 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th time I had read the notes, so it really became more of a “skim” than a hard read.
    • Relax. There were many times that I would take a nap during the class period before an exam. I always preferred to go into a test or exam with a completely clear head, rather than cramming and stressing at the last minute.

    How does this relate to preparing to lead tonight’s class? Almost exactly, except that I’m the instructor! I spent approximately 4-5 hours creating the slide deck, then about 2 hours revising it. Again, I don’t do this all in one session, but rather over the course of a few weeks. Once I’ve decided that I like the deck, I’ll read through it once or twice each day in the week prior to the class. Today, since the class is tonight, I’ll review the deck twice more, making final notes for real world examples, humorous back stories, questions for the audience, etc.

    Then I’ll relax, and not really think about it again.  How do you prepare for big events?

  • Blogging for your Brand this Thursday at General Assembly

    I’ll be leading a 2-hour class called “Blogging for your Brand” this Thursday from 6:30 – 8:30pm at General Assembly, which is located at Ponce City Market, 4 doors down from Dancing Goats in midtown.  If you or your company are engaging in content marketing or if you know that you should be doing content marketing, then this short class is for you.

    Here’s what we’re going to cover:

    • blogging platforms
    • starting your blog
    • writing blog posts
    • best practices for posts
    • promoting your blog
    • measuring your results
    You don’t need to bring anything, though I highly recommend you bring something – iPad, laptop, piece of paper – to take notes on. This isn’t a fluff piece. You’ll be learning the nitty gritty, the basics, blocking and tackling, pick and roll of blogging for your brand. And I won’t be just standing up there lecturing you either. Instead, we’ll take what you already have and get you rolling along to regular, consistent, brand-building blogging.
    And your “brand” might just be your personal brand, so don’t think this class isn’t for you just because you’re a solo practitioner or free-lancer.
    The class is just $10, and you can register here. Hope to see you there Thursday night at 6:30pm.