I started watching the new Wham! Documentary on Netflix. Truly an excellent resource for anyone looking for differentiation and voice.
Before Wham! (George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley) became a supergroup, they released the song Wham! Rap, which was heralded as a social commentary rap.
These words hit home:
Do you enjoy what you do?
If not, just stop
Don’t stay there and rot
Wise words from a couple of kids (at the time).
What’s Your Tilt?
Content creators (at any sized company) fail at building an audience for two reasons. One is because they stop. Two is because they lack a content tilt.
The content tilt is that area of little to no competition on the web that actually gives you a chance to break through the noise and be relevant.
It’s what makes you so different that your audience notices you and rewards you with its attention.
If you don’t tilt your content just enough to make your story different, your content will fade into the rest of the clutter and be forgotten.
What’s your tilt?
If you’d like, email it to me and I’ll take a look.
AI: Must Listen Podcast
I’ve rarely listened to any one podcast episode more than one time.
This one I’ve listened to three times.
This Prof G interview with Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer at Google [X], is required listening for anyone in business…but especially for authors, content creators and marketers.
I truly believe we need to prepare now as knowledge workers for what is to come with artificial intelligence. It will all be here quicker than you think.
One interesting take: as human intelligence could be discounted with the rise of AI, in-person communication will be at a premium. This means that anyone who can speak in front of a crowd and keep their attention will have many more opportunities in the near future.
You can skip the initial overview and go directly to the interview with Mo at the 18:30 mark.
The Pricing Conundrum
Last week my wife and I spent some time in Duck, North Carolina. If you aren’t familiar with that area, Duck is an small town on the outer banks of North Carolina, a thousand people in the off season that swells to over 20,000 people during vacation time. It sits on a thin strip of land between the Currituck Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.
I absolutely loved the area. We stayed about ¼ mile from the ocean and the sound, so you can take your pick of water. We also, of course, ate the very popular duck donuts, which lived up to the billing.
Before leaving this beautiful area, we decided to stop into a somewhat famous bagel place just south of Duck. The line was out the door, but we got in line anyway. I could see the extra-large bagels from the back of the line.
While standing in line, my wife didn’t look happy. Of course, and as always, I personalized this, wondering what I did to make her so upset. I asked her if everything was okay. She said, yes, but see how well you know me.
I quickly ran through the last 10 minutes in my head to see what I could have done wrong.
Then she let me off the hook and asked me to look at the menu.
At this establishment, the menu is on the wall. All different bagel sandwiches, bagel spreads and drinks.
“No prices,” she said.
“Ah yes,” one of my wife’s biggest pet peeves. She absolutely hates any establishment where she can’t find the prices. And when I say hates, I mean loathes.
We were considering leaving, but we did stay in line to try the bagels first. They were great, but we won’t be going back, all because of a very simple and fixable thing.
In contrast, before going to the Chelsea/Wrexham match in Chapel Hill, NC later that week, we stopped by a watering hole called the Casual Pint. They had an amazing beer selection, and better yet, had prices. Each beer on the wall was color coded by the type of beer – sours, pilsners, IPAs and Stouts – and then next to each was the ½ pint price, full pint and growler price, plus the alcohol content. We stayed for an extra drink and ordered lunch as well.
I’m sure there are folks out there that believe holding back the information on pricing is some kind of amazing selling strategy, but I’m here to tell you that you are losing business.
When my friend Paul Roetzer launched his PR firm PR 20/20, he was the only one I knew that had ALL their pricing on the web, from press release creation to strategic consultation. It was all there for competitors to see. And what happened? They became the first Hubspot partner agency and were so successful that Paul sold the agency to start The Marketing AI Institute. Who knew that easily accessible pricing was a competitive advantage? It still is. I go to so many agency and creator sites where I still can’t find their pricing.
Here’s an easy fix.
What do you sell? List that.
For everything you sell, do you have the pricing clearly apparent and easy to find?
If not, do that now.
If I click on an event and I can’t find pricing, I don’t go.
If I go to an online course and can’t find pricing, I don’t buy.
More and more people are behaving this way. A lack of pricing information says something very clearly to me…that organization doesn’t care enough about the customer to share this information.
The good news is that it’s fixable. Let’s fix this together.