Ana Ottman on Three Ways to Develop Your Voice (Without Resorting to Imitation)
While I’m out on maternity leave, I’ve asked a few of my favorite women in business to contribute blog posts.
Today’s guest blogger, Ana Ottman is a copywriter and personal historian with a penchant for avocados. She lives in a small apartment at the top of a hill in Los Angeles.
Branding your online business is a process, just not a destination. At one point in the branding process, it’s common for business owners to mimic successful people in their field.
Image via WordsIGiveBy
We’ve all done it. Imitation is a form of flattery until we’re all imitating the same people and everyone starts to sound the same. When your idols are the same for thousands of other online business owners, your potential clients have no one to distinguish you from one person to the next.
Let’s change all that, shall we? Continue reading
Kate Swoboda on Digital Sharecropping: Why it isn’t Always a Bad Thing
While I’m out on maternity leave, I’ve asked a few of my favorite women in business to contribute blog posts.
Kate Courageous is a life coach, writer and speaker who teaches people why “integrity is sexy” and how the practice of courage is revolutionary. Since 2009, thousands of people have visited Your Courageous Life to learn more about working with fear in revolutionary ways through the practice of courage–with the core message being that when you’re trying to eradicate fear or pretend that it doesn’t exist, you’re working against yourself.
One of the reasons that I decided I needed to take a digital break is that I felt overwhelmed. Not by coaching clients, but by trying to “keep everything straight:” Facebook, Facebook messages, Facebook fan pages, Pinterest, Google +, Twitter…
It would be all to easy to suggest that one should simply just pare everything down, choose one place to create updates, and leave it at that. After all, say many, they can’t keep up with all of the new social media portals that are opening up.
First, a term that will be useful to learn: “digital sharecropping.”
It describes the phenomenon of growing your own crops on someone else’s land – which is what we’re all doing, metaphorically, when we build large fan bases on Twitter or Facebook or some other social media outlet.
We’re using someone else’s “land” to create a community where people will come to learn, to connect, and possibly, to purchase something.
While it can be a pain to always need to keep one’s “ear to the ground” with social media, creating ever-more accounts and seeing what happens with them, it’s worth it if you consider the alternatives. Here are a few reasons why: Continue reading
Michelle Ward on the Exceptions to the Rules
While I’m out on maternity leave, I’ve asked a few of my favorite women in business to contribute blog posts.
This is a guest post by Michelle Ward, CPC, PCC and – most importantly! – The When I Grow Up Coach. Michelle has coached hundreds of creative people discover (and achieve!) the passionate career they think they can’t have, and she won’t rest until all creative types can see the possibility in making a grown-up living doing what they love. Her first book, The Declaration of You (co-written with the artist Jessica Swift and encouraging everyone to clarify their purpose and own their uniquity) will be published by North Light Craft Books in June 2013.
I’ve had it up to here, I tell ya! Up to HERE (yes, I am putting my hand way above my head, which without that visual you’d have no idea about where I am in the up-to-here scale) with “But I’m supposed to be doing X” and “So-and-so does Y so I need to, too” and “I know I should be doing Z, but…”.
It enrages me each and every time, so please don’t mind the enpassioned (that’s not a word, but I don’t care) lady as she steps on her soapbox to bring home the point that there is no right (or wrong!) when it comes to working on or in your creative business.
For every Rule, there’s at least (at least!) one exception. There’s totally more exceptions, but honestly, I worked on this post for something like 3 hours and I just can’t bring myself to find and link to any more people. You understand.
The Rule: “I’m interested in so many things the thought of just picking one makes me feel like I’m in jail – but I’m told I can’t have a successful business unless I do just that!” Continue reading
Kristen Fischer on Moving Past the Fear of Self-Promotion
While I’m out on maternity leave, I’ve asked a few of my favorite women in business to contribute blog posts.
This is a guest post by Kristen Fischer, the author of When Talent Isn’t Enough: Business Basics for the Creatively Inclined. The book is in stores nationwide and available on Amazon.
After we muster up the courage to follow our dreams and start moonlighting or freelancing on a full-time basis, it seems that we get timid when it comes to promoting ourselves.
Why is this? I think many creatives believe they don’t want to be too corporate by tooting their own horn, or think that doing so could make them seem arrogant. That mindset couldn’t be further from the truth, because the fact is that businesses have to promote themselves. Even those with one employee.
Getting out of your own way, or breaking free from these mindsets, can help you tackle the fear of self-promotion and get on to business.
1. Legitimize yourself.
