Bill Rice Internet Marketing > writing

How I Get Ideas for Blogging

February 9, 2011 By
Blogging Ideas

How to Never Run Out of Blogging Ideas.

Blogging (or writing) everyday can be a challenge for most of us. The resistance to blog on any given day can have many causes. Often it is because you feel like you lack something—research, eloquence, knowledge. But, the one excuse I hear the most is “I’ve run out of ideas.”

I just had this conversation with a fellow blogger the other day. Although I believe it is possible to have a dry spell of ideas, my belief is that the problem is more process than creativity. I think the best solution is to create a disciplined process for feeding your idea machine. Here’s mine.

How I Get Ideas for Blogging

1. Read – This is essential. Every accomplished writer or author will cite this a the cornerstone of becoming an accomplished and prolific writer. Here’s what one of my favorite authors says:

“If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” – Stephen King

This means online and offline.

I’ll quickly talk about offline first. I think this is a lost fuel in most people’s creative fire. I see its absence regularly in the density of online memes. Everyone grabs a hold of a trending topic and soon I have hundreds of similar posts about it—with little or no original perspective. A good blogger brings in perspective from the outside.

Tip: I keep this part of my process fueled with a steady flow of new titles from my Amazon Wishlist to my doorstep. You can accomplish the same thing with regular trips to the public library.  However, I love books and filling my personal library. And, for about the price of what it costs to swing through McDonald’s these days—I invest in good books.

A good blogger also collaborates within the online community. That means more reading. The challenge here is processing the enormous volume of content being produced daily. How do you find the good stuff? How do you find new stuff?

Honestly reading online continues to be an evolving process for me. The frustration is always balancing time with quality. I am still very close with my Google RSS Reader—adding and winnowing my feeds frequently. This brings me lots of good stuff. The frustration is that I often have hundreds, even thousands of queued posts. This feels overwhelming. It also often has a high noise to value ratio. Following people that share in Google Reader helps a little bit, but it’s still too hard to show people how to do it.

  • Capture
  • Curate
  • Draft
  • Refine & Publish
  • What’s your process? Are there tools you like to use?
Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: blog content creation, blog post ideas, blogging, blogging ideas, howto, writing

Why Good Sales People Write

November 24, 2010 By
Writing for Sales - BetterCloser.com

Writing for Sales - BetterCloser.com

As sales folks we pride ourselves in improv and our quick minds, but there is something to be said for polish.

Writing is one of the ways I polish my sales delivery.

(Writing for lead generation a whole different post, today I’ll focus on writing sales scripts to improve your sales process)

With the complexity of products and services today, it’s enough to remember features, statistics, and specs. Layer on this trying to keep all the latest sales tips and techniques top of mind and your mind is probably ready to explode before you even start engaging with a prospect.

Memorizing all that information or robotically following a sales script isn’t going to give you the confident delivery to be a sales superstar.

Good sales people regular write sales copy.

Not only does writing help you remember all the nuances of your product or service, it gets you thinking deeply about its value. You end up playing with the word you use, the way you say things, the perspectives to highlight, and most importantly the stories you tell to illustrate the value proposition.

Writing hones your mind and your tongue for the next pitch.

In a day when folks are tired of the robotic tone of automated voice response systems and the cold feel of spammy autoresponder emails, a friendly conversation is differentiating.

Writing can help you smooth your sales pitch such that it naturally flows into those good conversations. And the more good conversation you have, I guarantee, the more sales you will win.

Here are some of the writing exercises I do:

  • Answer questions - Every time you hear a good or unique question during a sales call, write it down. Then regularly write out the perfect way you wish you had answered that question.
  • Respond to objections – Do the same thing with objections you hear. This will help you to minimize your frustration with these speed bumps in your scripted sales pitch.
  • Use social media to scout the competition and listen to influencers – Invariably the competition or blogger pundits are out there answering and engaging prospects with social media. Analyze their responses and write how you would have engaged differently or more clearly. Maybe even jump into the conversation or leave a comment with your writing exercise.

Do you write to improve your sales? Share your writing rituals in the comments.

Filed Under: Quick Sales Tips Tagged With: sales tips, social selling, writing

Starting a New Book Project. Will it Become a Book Deal?

January 6, 2010 By

DSC_0129I am cutting an outline of my first book. There’s no book deal, but I haven’t pitched it either. I will probably self-publish the first one. Any experienced authors in the crowd? What would you suggest?

It’s focused on Internet marketing, but my hope is that it will depart from the feel good how-to and recipe genre that fills the stacks of most bookstores. To that end, you can expect two things:

1. A lot of cross-references to my past life as a counterintelligence guy in the Air Force and
2. Insight into how successful Internet marketers really think and do things.

How does that sound? By the way, you basically selected my first book project. Thanks for helping thus far.

You will see many of the concepts and ideas unfurl in this blog. When they do, I need more of your help. I want your thoughts, ideas, and pointers to good examples. After all, let’s be honest, I want to write a book you want to buy.

Let’s get started. What are some of your fundamental philosophies about how to be successful at Internet marketing? Not gimmicks, but core principles that guide you on each campaign you launch?

Here is a thought provoker–In the Web 2.0 world should we still be thinking in terms of marketing campaigns or conversations?

Filed Under: BlackOps Marketing Tagged With: BlackOps Marketing, book, book deal, writing

Books I Want to Write

December 11, 2009 By

Acknowledgement: This post is inspired by Chris Brogan’s hugely helpful 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write. I recommend you bookmarking this and grabbing a topic the next time you are short of blogging ideas.

Intelligence 2.0

Why Think About Writing a Book?

I have always wanted to write a book, or two.

Unfortunately, it always seems that I am on a treadmill that is set just a step too fast. You see I have had a long-term addiction to start-ups. That means I am usually in the mode of getting things up, running, and profitable. Then I have a tendency to get bored and move to the next challenge.

However, over the last five years things have changed a bit. I bootstrapped my own start-up, which put a lot more skin in the game–my money, my family, my people (second families), my company. It is sort of my legacy and the passion is sticking. That means two important things for a potential book:

  • I have a bit more free allocated time to write the book
  • I have learned a ton and made many mistakes that are sure to be valuable

With the motivation explained and the creative juices flowing, let’s take a look…

Bill Rice’s Book Ideas

Here are a few ideas for books I want to write (and why):

  1. Black Ops Guide to Internet Marketing Strategy - Having spent my early career in the Air Force as a Counterintelligence Case Officer I have a grand appreciation for tradecraft and motivating covert (but impactful) behavior.Internet Marketing is not such a different affair. We are still dealing with humans, motivation, and behavior. And most interestingly, there are little tradecraft secrets that we don’t really talk about. Things that work, but sound a little dark and sinister when said out loud. I would love to compile this sure to be powerful guide to Internet Marketing.
  2. Competitive Intelligence 2.0: Using Social Media to Eavesdrop on the Competition - This is a little of life coming full circle. Kaleidico has been taken deep into the Competitive Intelligence realm by our sales, marketing, and now PR clients. Again, the counterintelligence background comes in handy, only the targets I snoop on have changed.The open and increasingly social Web is enabling the consumer to get closer and closer to the brands they buy. Meanwhile, the companies increasingly are embracing the reduction in buying friction and free promotion it often brings. However, the same social infrastructure is leaking company intentions, strategy, and talent like crazy. Smart competitors are learning how to use this opportunity to get stronger.
  3. Social Media for Sales: Getting Your Sales Team to Engage - Boy, have I seen how hard this is to do. Sales people are either taking this strategy on their own initiative and working through the hard knocks, or simply losing opportunities. The tools are not perfect and there is a steep learning curve. I know to take a lot of the steepness out of that curve with some very specific tools and processes I have refined.
  4. How to Integrate Social Media and Web 2.0 into the Classroom - This one is a bit more personal and would be a research project. Personal because I have three kids, from elementary to middle school. Personal because they are getting little or no introduction to these skills that are going to be critical to them competing in the global economy. And, a research project because I am not sure there are many examples.All the same, as a Trustee on a Public School Board I know this is important to start working on sooner than later.
  5. When the Market Changes, What Do You Do with Your Business? - This is another very personal one, but sure to be a hit with many entrepreneurs. Seth Godin introduces this a bit in his book The Dip.I want to take it a step further and talk about recreating your business when the market changes, or in my case (mortgage sales software) literally goes away overnight. There is nothing quite like 75% of your revenue sending you bankruptcy notices inside of payments, in a single month–ice water on the back.

    What do you do?

What do you think? Which book(s) would you buy and why? I would love to hear your feedback and suggestions.

Filed Under: Reading List Tagged With: bill rice, book deal, books, writing

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