IttyBiz

It has been said that if you have integrity, 99% of your decisions are made for you.

That sounds true.

However, I’m not in the integrity business. I’m in the marketing business.

In the marketing business, it’s a little different.

In marketing, if you have a solid brand, 99% of your decisions are made for you.

Branding can feel complicated and ethereal and confusing, but it doesn’t have to be.

In fact, you can build an entire brand out of just one word.

That’s what we’re going to do today.

We’re going to get you one word, and that can be your brand.

Today I’ll teach you something called The 200% Branding Solution, and it’s very simple.

If you’re brave, it can take about ten seconds.

Ready?

Continue Reading

I’m going to tell you about the very first rule I created for myself when I started blogging.

Following this rule helped me grow my readership amazingly fast.

Before I do, though, I have to give you a bit of a warning.

The “rule” has a bad word in it, and in this post, I’m going to say that bad word a lot of times.

(I used to use bad words a lot, as part of my branding, which I talk about here. Why did I stop? Well, my Virgo kid learned to read and he, uh… didn’t approve.)

(“Didn’t approve” is a nice way of saying that he read my blog one day and looked kind of green and blanched at the same time and I was pretty sure he was too traumatized to cry.)

(That was not a joke, in case you were wondering.)

Anyway, if you’re cool with that, we’ll continue.

Continue Reading

Can you really figure out your brand in one sitting, before your tea gets cold? Yes, you can… once you understand the difference between “brand” and “branding”.

I’m going to give you two simple definitions which will work for the rest of your life (unless you’re a branding coach, in which case you’re into the very technical stuff).

Once you finish reading this post, you’ll be able define your brand in 20 minutes or less. Promise.

I also have a free workbook for you at the end. (Enjoy.)

Continue Reading

Not too long ago, I went on a list cleaning campaign.

My open rate was dropping below where I wanted it to be, even though traffic and sales were climbing. Since low open rates drive me crazy in a way that can’t possibly be healthy, it was time to cut inactive subscribers off of the list.

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I decided to do it the hard way.

(The easy way, incidentally, is to send 3 emails saying “Do you still want to be on my list?” to people who haven’t opened your emails in forever. Then you nuke everyone who doesn’t a) open these emails and b) click the “yes” link inside. Easy peasy.)

The hard way is to send those emails, then slowly – and by hand – manually delete everyone who didn’t click “yes”. While looking at each inactive subscriber and wondering what their story was.

Given that I ultimately deleted 16,286 names, that’s a lot of wondering.

However, I learned a few things in the process – which was the point.

I’ll share them with you now.

Continue Reading

As promised, here’s part 2.

(You can read part 1 here.)

Continue Reading