People feel compelled to act in ways that are consistent with how others see them.

You Can Encourage a Desired Behavior by Giving Feedback as if They Were Already Behaving that Way.

Providing feedback—even false feedback—modifies someone’s self-image, making them more likely to confirm the perception they believe other people already have of them.

– From The Starup Daily

To survive in an era of constant change, stay focused on the core of your business; the one problem you solve for your customers.
Stick to What You Do, but Reinvent How You Do It
Remember that your customer’s world is being disrupted too. How can you make it easier for them to take advantage of the new world?

Praising the talent or intelligence of your employees can backfire. If their brilliance is continually reinforced they may put less effort into their work and take fewer risks. Or worse, when they fail they may attribute the failure to others.

Praise Effort, Not Brilliance

Encourage the behavior and processes that led to the brilliant results.
– With thanks to The Starup Daily

When launching a new business, project, or initiative, be careful about spending too much time preparing. Don’t fall into the trap of analysis paralysis.

Start Before You’re Ready

The hard part of creating something new is not getting adequately prepared, the hardest part is getting started.
When launching a new business, project, or initiative, be careful about spending too much time preparing. Don’t fall into the trap of analysis paralysis.

I’ve struggled with controlling how much I eat ever since I was a kid. Friends will tell you I also have trouble limiting how much I talk. Nothing succeeds like excess, it seems.

Except with writing. I’ve rarely had trouble staying trim, a great asset at a time when people snack on information, feasting only on subjects of intense interest.

Here are 10 tips:

1. Know exactly what you want to say before you start to write. Just as a diet involves meal planning and shopping, lean writing requires advance thinking about what you want to say and how to say it. Don’t risk rambling down long roads that won’t take you directly to your destination.

2. When you revise, delete any words that are redundant or not vital to your mission, especially jargon. Watch for fatty adverbs and adjectives. Replace fuzzy descriptions with one precise word. Keep the best; ditch the rest.

3. Reorganize words more logically, and you’ll reveal redundancies to chop.

4. Don’t try to force food, or words, down people’s throats. Entice them to follow the links, rather than making them struggle through nonessential information first.

5. Embed your links into your copy, rather than frittering away words that add no value, such as Click here.

6. Pretend you have to pay for each word you use. Or choose them as carefully as you would the food for your Weight Watchers points.

7. Keep practicing. Summarizing is a brain function that can improve.

8. If you have trouble letting go of a word or section, cut and then paste it on the end of your document. You can snatch it back if you absolutely need it, but you’ll probably end up deleting it.

9. Assume your readers have too much to read. They will appreciate your brevity. And they’re more likely to understand and remember you if your writing is lean and focused.

10. Remember, it’s not about you. It’s about your readers—and showing off your buff writing to them.

Barb Sawyers combines her love of writing and talking in her ebook Write like you talk—only better, and in her blog, workshops and communication services for business and nonprofit clients.
– With thanks to Barb Sawyers

Resource strapped startups can’t afford to make big mistakes.

Make Little Bets to Discover Where to Focus your Bigger Efforts

Constant small-scale experimentation will help you navigate uncertainty and develop your next steps. Determine in advance how much you can afford to lose in your experiments, and expect to lose it. Consider it the price of knowledge.

Don’t try to avoid failure. Failure is how you learn. But fail fast, fail often, and fail on a scale you can afford.

The longer someone is working in an industry, the less likely they are to question traditions. Eventually “Because we have always done it that way” starts to sound like a good reason.

Venture Outside Your Area of Expertise

An entrepreneur’s advantage comes from seeing things differently, asking “why?” and “why not?”, and then finding creative new solutions to old problems.

With thanks to The Startup Daily

It’s easy to lose touch with your customer’s needs when you are caught up in the day to day work of building your business.

Speak With at Least One Customer Every Day

Take advantage of every opportunity to have conversations with your customers. If you can’t find these opportunities, then it’s time to create some.

Nothing will keep you grounded better than daily contact with your customers.

Thanks to The Startup Daily

You know more about your own product than your customers. Your experience gives you insight into what works in the real world, and what doesn’t.

Don’t Just Sell Your Customers What They Will Buy, Help Them Become Successful

This may require selling a lower margin solution, supplementing your product with training or professional services, or sharing the sale with a partner.

Any short-term loss of profit will be offset by the long-term benefit to your own reputation. Successful customers will become your biggest advocates.
With thanks to The Startup Daily

People want instant results for their marketing dollars. This is understandable in the same way it would be if someone pitched a tent when what they really needed was more like a brick and mortar house.

While the tent is faster and, most notably, cheaper, it is not the kind of shelter within which to build a future or raise a family. What’s more, it has no foundation and will doubtless be swept away by the first hard rain. What is needed is an abode, humble though it may be at first, that can be added to and embellished with the passage of time and improvement in fortunes.

Just as is the case with that home, a marketing program has to be built up, but only after it has begun to pay its way. Of course, that takes time, just as a home has to be improved when doing so is advisable and affordable. However, to expect the marketing campaign to pay off “overnight” is neither realistic nor, in the larger scheme of things, necessary.

Don’t build a tent

To do so not only will be unsatisfying, it wastes money on canvas, rope and stakes when what really is needed may be more like a starter home, even an apartment. Before these comparisons get completely out of hand, lets focus on the marketing mission.

It should be about building a future, rather than gambling inappropriately on the present. Brand building is neither an overnight pursuit nor a job for amateurs. Get qualified help. If you can’t hire a marketing expert, at least talk to friends and/or associates who have proven their knowledge of it.

It starts with a plan. Though it may be a simple and basic one, the important thing is to make it a plan, with the following ingredients:
An objective
A strategy
Specified tactics
Timelines
Measurement benchmarks
Analysis (a willingness to change course if it’s not working well).

Money

. . . yes, it will take some, even if it is a humble campaign. Just make sure it’s a campaign, rather than a roll of the dice. This may mean a shorter vacation, or one closer to home, or other such unpalatable sacrifices. But they will be worth it if as a result your can get your business to the point where it is an asset rather than a liability.

Happy marketing!