She was a speaker at a conference, where we met. She had been given the most inhospitable speaking spot when most conference delegates were still waking up, or busy making connections over breakfast. She had decades of experience and was accompanied by a few of her long-time clients, who clearly adored her.

When I quietly asked her, she told me she hadn’t been paid for speaking. In fact, she’d had to buy her own conference ticket, and been offered a 10% discount from the ticket price, which was supposed to compensate her for speaking.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. I’ve met several people who’ve dedicated years to their craft while being the town’s best-kept secret. People who’ve invested in extensive qualifications, sometimes PhDs, and have accrued thousands of hours, and spent tens of thousands of dollars, to become experts in their field.

Yet without any recognition, beyond their own small circle of influence, nor access to the opportunities that flows from this.

And, on the flip side, I’ve endured listening to people boasting about their 18 months or three years of experience like it’s a distinction or, worse, lied about the amount of time they’ve accrued focusing on their thing.

Before I became a digital marketer and business coach 13 years ago, I worked in Public Relations, so I always knew the value of reputation.

Especially if you’re a soloist who has no desire to grow a team, building your professional reputation makes smart business sense. Your reputation in business is far more credible and hence, valuable than branding, marketing or advertising. Your reputation in business is a bankable asset.

[Tweet “Your reputation in business is far more credible and hence, valuable than branding, marketing or advertising.”]

The value of being an expert

When you are the go-to expert in your field, opportunities come to you, including free media publicity, speaking and teaching gigs, and a steady stream of inquiries and clients, courtesy of Google. There’s less need to pitch or hustle for a break, and far more ease and flow in your business, which further enables you to do your best work.

You can’t specialise in instrumental jazz, slow cooking, crypto-currency, and a month of Sundays. Defining where you’re going to have an edge is enormously important. 

But so too is knowing how to find, identify, or develop opportunities where your skills, talents and aptitudes will fruit the most; this is part of what we teach in my Hustle & Heart program.

The right environment always beats the right effort, so before you think you’re lacking, first focus on getting into the right environment. It doesn’t matter how good you are if you’re in the wrong environment, hanging out with the wrong people who don’t get it, don’t get you and don’t like you. You’re an expert, not a miracle worker.

Stop being an island

People need people. People in business need people even more. As you’re growing your influence, you need to borrow other people’s audiences through partnerships and collaborations (we also cover this in Hustle & Heart).

Work to your communication strengths – if you like talking, focus on becoming a guest on other people’s podcasts, hosted on other people’s IGTV, or interviewed on other people’s YouTube channels. If you prefer writing, try to get your articles syndicated, contribute guest blogs, or pitch articles to mainstream media.

You can be paid to teach on other people’s paid programs or courses, be interviewed on someone else’s webinar, speak at other people’s events, or contribute towards someone else’s book.

Collaborating, partnering and contributing helps you further hone your skills by focusing on what you do best, and builds your audience by borrowing your collaborator’s audience.

Have a body of work online

Of course, nothing beats warm bodies in a room. But 2020 has highlighted the difference between those who are nimble and those who are stubborn. How are people going to find you and have an experience of you if everything you do is face-to-face?

Yes, your face-to-face work can translate onto the internet, and no it doesn’t need to cost you $10,000 in videography services.

If you’re a writer, you need a blog or a body of articles. If you’re a teacher, you need some videos of yourself teaching. If you deliver services face-to-face, you need a direct-to-camera piece introducing yourself and your business.

If you’re the ‘go to’ expert, people need a body of work that they can easily ‘go to’ online. You can’t rank on Google for a six-page website. We need more.

Be more generous in your marketing and use your website as a hub of your best information and insights, to help people reach you and experience your work. If you sell services, you sell promises, and you build trust by giving away your gold. (“But why will people pay if I’m giving it all away for free?” is the wrong question.)

Say something worth listening to

To be invited to contribute, you need to say something worth listening to.

• What is the popular discourse in your niche or industry?
• What do you think about it?
• What’s missing from the conversation?
• Where has the conversation not gone far enough, and why is this important?
• If you disagree from the topical conversation, why? And why should we care?
• How can we take a different approach to an old problem?
• How is your industry or sector relevant to the bigger events of the day?
• In mainstream media, how is your industry or sector represented in the major news story?
• If it isn’t represented, how could you make what you do relevant?
• What is likely to happen in the immediate future, what are the repercussions of this on your industry or sector, and why should people care?

Having an opinion is important. Having a well-formed opinion is more important. Having an opinion that you can make relevant to whomever you’re talking to is more important still. And having a well-formed thoughtful opinion that’s contradictory, but not just for the sake of it, and that you’ve got the ovaries to stand behind, means you’re saying something worth listening to.

Do something worth talking about

Don’t underestimate people’s intelligence. We can see through a ruse to gain publicity easier than you may think. Hype isn’t worth talking about. Action is. So put your money where your mouth is and do something worth talking about.

I meet so many business people who are spearheading community-oriented, social change movements, without any acknowledgment or publicity, making things far harder than they need to be. Remember, you’re not an island. There are no prizes for burnout.

To secure publicity, you don’t need a formal media release. Instead, a short, sharp email to a few relevant journalists can result in thousands of dollars of publicity, and help ensure that your impact goes far further.

The media are constantly looking for stories. Do something worth talking about – and don’t forget to tell the media about it.

More money, more impact

Finally, don’t mistake working for love and working for money. This is why Hustle & Heart exists – because both are necessary. More money means more impact, more influence, more choice.

Don’t identify as an expert? But you’ve accrued 10 years or more at your craft, and invested in your education? Then you’re likely an expert. Experts call themselves specialists; other people call them experts.

If you haven’t yet accrued the recognition that your dedication allows, don’t blame yourself. It’s just marketing, branding and Public Relations. And unlike what you do, it’s not that difficult. In fact, it’s getting easier every day.

Want to learn how to create more money and more impact? Then join my flagship program, Hustle & Heart. 

Google has been good to me lately. The impact of Covid-19 means more people online, and more businesses prioritising digital marketing and online sales training. A journalist found me and featured me talking about starting a business during Covid, I’ve had new one-to-one business coaching clients, custom digital training, and course participants – all who’ve found me through Google.

Business blogging is a highly effective marketing strategy – businesses that blog generate 67 per cent more leads than those who don’t; 434 per cent more indexed pages, and 97 per cent more indexed links – all of which improve Google ranking.

Small to mid-sized businesses that blog experience 126 per cent more lead growth than those that don’t.

Blogging also makes other marketing channels, such as email and social media, far easier and more effective. If business has been slow, you want your website to rank better on Google, and you need more leads, here’s how to turn your blog into an effective lead-generating machine.

Define your expertise

The first practical exercise in my Blogging for Business course is to define your expertise through choosing your blog categories. Five to seven blog categories define the parametres of what you can blog on. These need to strike a balance between being broad and defined, as well as commonly-used, popularly-Googled phrases.

This helps to keep your blog focused on the key topics that you want to rank for.

Stop telling people how to suck eggs

A common mistake I see blogs making is trying to explain how the expert does the thing they do. If I’m looking to engage a professional writer, I don’t want to know how to write a better About page, I want the writer to do it for me.

And because the blog writer may be scared of giving too much value away, they instead write a bland, simplified version that could be found anywhere.

‘How to’ blogs are a popular category, but there’s a way to do them well, that showcases your expertise without telling people how to do something that they’re not interested in learning.

Focus on showcasing the outcomes of working with your business. Dig into the problem you’re solving for people and share data to illustrate how much it’s costing them not to solve it. Talk about trends in your industry and why they’re important or relevant to what your prospective clients want to do.

Answer the FAQs of future you

Your frequently asked questions are a great port-of-call for creating useful, valuable and relevant marketing pieces. And while these should be answered in your marketing, over and over again, it’s the FAQs of your future that are useful to evolve your business.

If you have a plan or goal to do something in the future, you should be talking about it now, on your blog.

Too often, people treat their big dreams as delicate newborns in need of incubation. Good ideas desperately need feedback from the paying public before they can become truly great.

Your big dream needs to be exposed to the elements, to invite debate and feedback, to get accountability that comes with public exposure, and to begin to build its wings to fly.

Treat your blog as a roadmap to your future. Want to work for the government? Start blogging about key issues today. Want to turn your business into a social enterprise? Start today with blogs about this area of interest. Want to position yourself as a leader in your particular field?

Start writing on topics that future you wants to. You are a media company. Use this.

[Tweet “Treat your blog as a roadmap to your future. Start writing on topics that future you wants to. You are a media company. Use this.”]

Don’t be boring

The internet is crowded. Especially if you’re new and small, you need to stand out. You need to put your stake in the ground and declare what you stand for – and what you stand against.

Alongside the three key pillars of content marketing – your marketing should be useful, valuable, and relevant to your ideal clients – we have to put something of ourselves in. Regardless of the size of your business or the nature of what you do, your business needs to have its own personality, style and tone-of-voice.

If your business were a clothes brand, which brand would it be? If you were an ice-cream flavor, which one would you be? If you were musician, who are you? And why should your audience care? The more personality in your marketing, the better it’ll work to magnetise your ideal clients to you and repel those who suck your life force.

Turn readers into leads

Make your blog ‘sticky’ like an ice-cream by converting your readers into leads – through your freebie email opt-in, otherwise known as a lead magnet.

Ensure you’ve got at least one of the following:

• A static or scrolling sign-up or graphic that links to your sign-up form in your sidebar
• A sign-up or graphic that links to your sign-up form at the bottom of every blog post (I use this plugin for WordPress – scroll to the bottom of this post to see it in action)
• A thin, attention-grabbing bar at the very top of your site for people to opt-in
• In-text graphics or calls-to-action to opt-in mid-way through your blog

Then consider what else you can do to publicise your freebie email opt-in. You’ve gone to considerable trouble to ensure this freebie email opt-in is useful, valuable and relevant to your audience, so give it the best chance of success by:

• Blogging about the topic of your email opt-in. Don’t give the whole kit-and-caboodle away, but highlight one or two key parts to pique people’s interests and publicise it
• Guest blogging on others’ websites about the topic of your lead magnet, making sure your bio links directly to your opt-in page
• Talking about your lead magnet on other people’s webinars
• Talking about your lead magnet on other people’s podcasts

Consider a social ad campaign for your lead magnet, once you’ve exhausted your own channels.

When something isn’t selling, know what the problem is

Finally, if you’re blogging and emailing and social media-ing, and you’ve got something that’s not selling, such as an online course, or professional services package, then before you blow everything up and go find a cave to hide in, consider whether you have a traffic problem or a sales problem.

Most business owners assume that it’s a sales problem, and they blame the offering.

It’s too expensive. People can’t afford it.
The offering is too long, too short, or not bouncy enough.
The name is all wrong. The colours aren’t matching. The font isn’t crisp enough.

But with almost every client that I work with who has this issue, it’s not a sales problem but a traffic problem. This isn’t guesswork but based on metrics.

Open up your Google Analytics account. Scroll to your key page (normally your sales page, but if your email list isn’t growing as quickly as you’d like, it could be your email opt-in page). Change the time period to a month and look for how many unique visitors you’ve had on that page. Now take the number of sales (or email opt-ins) you’ve had in that time period and divide it by this number to find your conversion rate.

For example, you’ve had 100 unique visitors looking at your sales page within a month, and one person has purchased. So you have a one per cent conversion rate.

One per cent is a normal conversion rate. Two per cent is good. Three per cent is great. My conversion rates for my sales pages are typically three per cent or higher because I’m doing the majority of my selling through email. So when someone clicks through to the sales page, they’re likely all warmed up and ready to buy.

Don’t burn the house down without first considering whether you’ve done enough to warm people up, through your blog, and through your email.

Want to learn how to use your blog to attract leads, improve your Google ranking, position yourself as an expert, and sell more? Then join my Blogging for Business course.

In February 2008, I started working for myself as a digital marketing consultant. I didn’t know exactly what digital marketing was, but I had three year’s experience with digital communications, as a Public Relations consultant working closely with a multinational client, so I thought I could figure out the rest.

Within three months, I was earning the same as my PR salary, with a few committed clients, for whom I provided regular content marketing. (This was before social media was really a thing.) I spent my days researching, interviewing, writing and publishing articles (later, this would be called blogging, or ghost blogging) for clients and writing and distributing their email newsletters.

12 years later, my business (and life) looks completely different, with 95 per cent of my work now about business coaching and digital marketing training.

So here are 12 hard-won lessons over the last 12 years in business – I’d love to help you avoid or minimise some of the (many) mistakes I made.

1: There are no rules – and few precedents – so stop worrying

For years and years, I kept looking for standards or benchmarks against which to measure myself. I wanted to know where my skill set was in the general market, where my gaps were, and whether I was any good. I wanted to know how other people made money, how much they earned and spent, and how many hours they worked.

This information is difficult to find and there’s a lot of hype, exaggeration and outright lies.

The best place I found to get the inside information on other people’s businesses was podcasts, like the awesome Get Paid podcast, as well as getting drunk with fellow self-employed people and asking all those audacious questions.

Most everyone wants to talk honestly about money. And most people are too embarrassed. So that’s why I’m keen to answer questions, stop rampant undercharging, and help lift the bar through plain talk on money.

As I’ve learnt, there’s no ‘right’ way to run a business – you can make money in 243,859 different ways, most of these invented in the last 10 years. So stop worrying and let’s get earning.

[Tweet “There’s no ‘right’ way to run a business – you can make money in 243,859 different ways, most of these invented in the last 10 years. So stop worrying and let’s get earning.”]

2: Self-employment is self-development

I studied Comparative Religious Studies at university so that I could do good and be good and know the meaning of life. While I learnt a lot, it turns out that, after many years of seeking, self-employment is the most accelerated form of self-development there is.

Your visibility – on the internet and in your community – is your first big confrontation. Self-confidence is your next big hurdle. And it never stops. The more you progress in business, the greater you’ll need to push yourself – psychologically and spiritually.

Some people do an excellent job at burying their head in the sand. But if you tackle things head on, you’ll become far more skilled at uncomfortable feelings, difficult conversations, anxiety and stress. Burying your head in the sand will likely be far more painful in the long run.

3: Passion isn’t enough

I love passionate people. My ideal clients care deeply about their impact in the world and are in business for social change and for good.

And yet. Passion won’t pay the bills. Passion can kill your empathy, which makes it difficult to market to your audience. And passion can be weaponised against you – when unscrupulous people manipulate your passion to get you to do what they want.

Passion needs a lot of things to be sustainable, including money, sleep and support from others. In other words, don’t let passion blind you. You need passion to get you out of bed, but you need hustle to feed you, sustain you, and ensure that you’re using your brain, not just your heart.

4: Every day I’m hustling

I learnt this lesson fairly early, and I’m grateful for that. In the early years, I lost big clients who, at the time, were giving me 30-50% of my income. But I was always meeting people, following up, and marketing my services, so I always had other options.

Far too many self-employed people only do marketing when they’re desperate, which is the worst time to do it. And many more feel exhausted thinking about this constant need to be finding leads.

If this is you, and you find marketing or business development exhausting, check your attitude. It’s a privilege to make money from our own sweat and smarts. It’s a privilege to create a flexible lifestyle and to get to choose our own path. There’s no shame in it (and you’d be pretty privileged to indulge this).

Marketing and business development are inherently social, and as such, generous-spirited. You don’t want to be the friend who only calls when they want something. Instead, your marketing should be about regularly keeping in touch and offering value through useful, valuable, relevant information.

5: You name your price

Your price is arbitrary. You’re the boss. Stop trying to compete with McDonalds and start focusing on communicating your value, building your network, and using your branding to position your business for your prospects.

And for the love of hot chips, stop asking strangers in freebie Facebook groups how much you should charge. This never ends well.

6: Your attitude is a bankable asset – take it seriously

Don’t take yourself too seriously. Take your attitude seriously.

Do you wake up feeling good? Do you have energy to get through the day? Are you regularly excited about things you’re doing? Are you enjoyable to hang out with? Are you sleeping well? Do you see all the strengths, opportunities, privileges and luck that is all around you?

A buoyant attitude makes you resourceful. A poisonous attitude only sees hindrances, shortcomings, and lack. Your attitude will be reflected in your bank balance. Invest in it. (I lost my mojo for 18 months. This was a hard-won lesson.)

7: You need people

Especially if you’re the independent type, you need people in business. Your competitors are also your colleagues who refer business to you (and you to them). Your clients are your biggest advocates. Your great Aunt Jill can talk you up to whoever she meets (if only she knew what you did).

Take your people seriously. Stop hiding. Reach out to interesting people and introduce yourself. Find your ecosystem of support.

8: Don’t take it too personally

Flattery and insult should both be taken with a grain of salt. I know that’s easy to say and hard to practice. Try anyway.

Some people are your people and some people aren’t; some people you instantly love and some you instantly distrust. If someone is giving you a hard time, it’s likely their problem, their bad mood, their crappy attitude. Move on – you’ve got bigger fish to fry. Focus on your Ideal Clients.

9: There are many different ways to get where you’re going

I wasted so much time, effort and money thinking there was only one way to do things (case in point: formal education). I’ve had amazing opportunities when I’ve come in the side door, hopped through the window or shimmied down the chimney. (Quick tip: speakers always drop out of conferences at the last minute, so this is a perfect time to pitch yourself.)

Don’t get too wedded to your fantasy of how your wonderful future will look or you’ll miss the opportunities all around you. Resourceful and creativity go hand-in-hand. Keep following up. Don’t swallow your words. A no from one person one day is a yes from another the next day.

10: You have to get used to talking about yourself

There’s a big difference between someone who assumes everyone is interested about them and never shuts up, oblivious to the people who are tolerating their company, and someone who responds to others’ interests by talking about themself.

As a small business owner, not only will you need to talk about what you do – simply, elegantly and appealingly – but you’ll also have to field questions about your background, expertise, opinions, and other things.

Over the last 15 years, I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of interviewing a hundred or so people for the purposes of writing their bios. With enough digging, everyone has an interesting story. And the vast majority of people don’t recognise this, and don’t know how to make it relevant and valuable for their marketing.

We are all interesting. We all have stories. The skill is to understand what other people find interesting about us and connect this to our business mission.

11: Writers write, painters paint

If you want to do something, do it now. If you can’t see how you’re going to get paid for it, do it for free. The first client I got was because, when he asked me, “so what do you do?” I answered, “I’m a writer.” “That’s great,” he replied. “I’m looking for a writer.”

Had I answered, “I don’t really know. I’ve just lost my job. I’m not sure what I’m doing but I’m thinking about starting a business but I don’t know yet, I haven’t written a plan and I don’t really know what I’m doing” then nothing would have happened.

What do you want to do? What part of it (or whole of it) can you start doing now? There’s no time like right now to take the first step. Stop waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder. Tap your own goddamn shoulder.

12: Everything is better after a good night’s sleep

Mindset is an inferior, overly-simplistic word. I prefer to say attitude, perspective, beliefs and buoyancy. Mindset assumes something is fixed. But if you’ve ever gone to bed with the weight of the world on your shoulders and woken up feeling like a million bucks, then you know just how fickle we all are.

I’ve lost money, clients, hope, dignity, joy. I’ve had sky-high expectations of a launch and had not a single person buy. I’ve woken with anxiety at 3am repeatedly, to go through my list of things I have to do.

But everything is better after a good night’s sleep. And sometimes you need a good run of good sleep to get your mojo back. And now if I can’t sleep, I’ll happily take Melatonin or Restavit or whatever else I need (and the hot bath, yes, and the novel-reading) because sleep is that important to me and to my work.

So take this seriously. You’re not a robot and you’re not the exception to the rule. We all need sleep and lots of it. Because we have important work to do and many more years in which to do our best work.

This is a guest post by Rachel Smith of Rachel’s List.

You’ve got an amazing small business. A beautiful website. Glowing testimonials from a handful of raving fans (not just your mum). And a belief that you could make more money, find more customers … if you could just reach them.

Sound familiar? You’re in good company. There are pretty much millions of small businesses out there keen to find more customers – but aren’t sure how to go about it.

So I’m going to share with you some tips for getting noticed by journos and editors, and getting media coverage in print and digital outlets.

1. Look the part

A great business, product or service is obviously essential, but don’t underestimate the need for a professional look’n’feel, either (that logo you designed in Canva ain’t going to cut it).

Your brand identity should extend to your packaging, website and copy, so hiring a photographer to take beautiful shots you can supply to media or engaging a copywriter to give your website a professional spit’n’polish can all help pique a journo’s interest.

You’ll also want to choose the face of your company carefully, says Emma Lovell, Personal Branding Specialist at Lovelly Communications. “Media outlets will always prefer to hear about personal stories and individuals than a business or organisation. To gain more publicity, put the owner, CEO or a key person in the business out into the world and show off their personality – think Richard Branson.

“People want to connect with people, so if they feel a connection to your business it can really attract media opportunities. You might also want to hire someone to do media training to guide the ‘face’ of the company about how to present themselves, or conduct great media interviews – that can be really beneficial for your PR campaign, too.”

2. Know your market

You’re much more likely to snap up media coverage in a magazine or digital outlet if your product/service has wow factor, or there’s a fantastic yarn behind your business. But it’s crucial you do your research first, says senior editor Lisa Sinclair, from Bauer Media.

“Relevancy is really important – if you thought your product or business would be good for a certain magazine but you haven’t actually looked at the mag, that’s going to come across. And if you’re pitching a wrinkle cream for 50-somethings to a magazine for young women that’ll just waste your time and theirs.”

If you’re pitching a product in the hopes of a write-up, make sure you know which section it’s suitable for, and give the editor a reason to run it. “Is it new, exciting, trend-driven?” she says. “Similarly, if it’s a story about you or your business – for example, say your child had such bad eczema that you invented your own eczema soap – that back story is essential.”

3. Approach the right person

To get your business into magazines, chances are, you already know which outlets you want to appear in. But what if, say, the magazine you want to approach doesn’t list emails for the editors – and just has a generic contact email in the masthead?

Don’t use the generic email (your message will shoot into the ether, to be discovered by the magazine’s intern five years from now).

Instead try email-finding tool Hunter (you get 50 free searches per month) to find the direct addresses of the editors you need to target.

Editors and budgets are super squeezed these days, so sending it to the right editor and making it easy for them to consider you for possible coverage is important, says Sinclair. “Find out who the section editor is, and make sure your approach is well-written – we get so much stuff that’s badly written we can’t make out what they’re trying to say.”

Not overwhelming a time-poor editor is also key, so think about how your email will look in someone’s inbox, she adds.

“Don’t overload it with info. Keep it simple. No funky fonts. If you’re hoping for product placement, supply good imagery; they won’t do that for you.

“Above all, keep it professional – PR companies exist for a reason and you’re going to struggle to get media coverage if you come across as anything less than super professional.”

4. Hang out where the journos are

There are thousands of journalists in Australia right now, working on existing stories – and they want to hear from brands that have products and services that are new, hip, incredibly useful and yes, have a great story to tell. How to talk to them? Sign up to sites like SourceBottle or Media Connections and you’ll be emailed requests from journalists about stories they’re working on.

You can reply to them with a pitch about your product or service, but here’s my tip: ONLY pitch a journalist on one of these platforms if your brand truly aligns with the story they’re currently writing, or you’ll just waste their time and piss them off.

It also looks extremely amateurish to pitch a journo with a story about your Thai cooking retreat when they’re looking to hear from brands that produce organic make-up. There are other channels to get that story to them… like in the tip below.

5. If all else fails, budget for a PR campaign

If you have a great business but you can’t write to save yourself, have no idea how to reach the right editors or are just too busy to figure it all out, consider outsourcing some or all of your PR. Even with a modest budget, you can engage a freelance PR to write a newsworthy media release that will grab a journo’s attention, or put it in front of the right media.

Doing so can be worth every cent, says Claire Chow from Happy Buddha Retreats, which recently hired a freelance PR. “We knew we didn’t have the publishing contacts, skillset or knowledge on how to approach PR, so a freelance consultant who understood our brand was key – and the outcome has been fab,” says Chow.

“We’ve had articles in Australian Traveller, Australian Yoga Journal, Timeout Magazine, Mindfood and various other travel/foodie digital blogs. It’s also meant any journalists or bloggers approaching us now directly deal with our PR consultant, cutting down on the time spent on this type of communication.”

About Rachel Smith
Rachel Smith is a journalist and copywriter. She’s also the founder of Rachel’s List: a jobs board for creatives in media, digital, PR and comms. Rachel likes making words behave and has to restrain herself not to correct typos in restaurant menus. Her spare time is spent hanging out with her opinionated kid and gazing longingly at the ever-growing pile of books she never gets to read. If you need to outsource PR, copy, design or other creative tasks to a talented freelancer, post a job or short gig at rachelslist.com.au