8 Myths That Can Inhibit Innovation In Your Business

Starting an entrepreneurial business, or maintaining the competitiveness of a mature business, requires innovation. Yet everyone I know seems to have a different perspective on what constitutes real innovation, and why is seems to happen so rarely. Another challenge is to debunk some of the common myths that seem prevent many from even assuming they can innovate.

How to Use an Iterative Loop to Dominate Your Niche

Here at Rainmaker Digital, we’re riding an iterative loop. It’s how we do business.

We listen, we create, we offer, we improve, and the cycle goes on.

Approaching your content strategy as an iterative loop will help you create useful, in-demand information that serves your customers and builds your business.

Out in the business world, this approach is called design thinking. And design thinking is in the news right now. Harvard Business Review ran a cover story on it this past September. The New York Times featured it earlier this month.

Here at Copyblogger, we’ve been talking about design thinking since 2010.

Design thinking isn’t difficult — it’s just different. It requires a mindset shift that will change the way you create products, content, and customer experiences.

What is design thinking?

It might be easiest to answer this question by comparing design and design thinking.

Design is about making objects functional and pleasing to the eye. Traditionally, design has been a discipline that was practiced by the small percentage of people who’d studied it or those whose aesthetic sense made them especially qualified.

Design thinking is about developing products and services using a methodology that puts the customer’s needs and experience at the forefront. It’s a different way to approach the development process.

Design thinking is driven primarily by audience needs, and the fruit it bears is based on the challenges and problems they face. It’s about looking at how real people interact with your products and services, and adapting them so they truly meet their needs.

Companies that practice design thinking put an imaginary sticker on everything they produce that says, ‘Designed by our customers.’

IBM bets their future on design thinking

Profits are down at IBM, but I’m not too worried about it.

How many technology companies can boast that they’ve been around for more than 100 years? It’s only through aggressive adaptation that IBM has succeeded despite all the changes in the technology landscape since they started back in 1911.

Their latest adaptation is to incorporate design thinking as an integral part of their business. They’re using design thinking to change their culture and the way they do business.

IBM is in the process of hiring 1,100 designers, with a long-term target of 1,500. They’re training a large portion of their management staff in the principles of design thinking. They’re “embedding” designers inside product development teams throughout the company. To date, 8,000 people company-wide have received some type of design thinking training.

It’s a small percentage of the total employee population, but it represents a significant investment of resources in a new way to look at their business.

They’re banking on design thinking to improve their long-term outlook.

How to apply design thinking to your content and your business

The goal of design thinking is to make your content, your website, and your products and services inherently simple and useful.

Aim for something that is so well designed that people don’t notice the design.

The goal? Design that doesn’t call attention to itself. Design that isn’t ‘precious,’ or even very noticeable.

It all starts with one important question.

“What is a better way to do ___?”

Ask this question of any process, product, or service.

Then grab a physical object — a pad of sticky notes, some pieces of paper, a whiteboard and marker — and map out what your customer experiences now and what you’d like them to experience. Even better, get a customer or two in the room with you to tell you firsthand what they’re experiencing.

Very basic prototyping gives you insights into the important customer touchpoints in your business. It shows you where you can improve their experience either through better content, a streamlined interface, or a more robust solution.

When thinking about your content, incorporate a customer experience map. Create a content strategy that serves customers along every step of their journeys.

Design thinking. Do. Iterate.

Graphic courtesy of Diagrammer on Duarte.com

Here’s an example from our own company.

A couple of months ago, we launched the Rainmaker Labs feature within our Rainmaker Platform software.

Labs is a place where a select group of users are invited to experiment with features that are currently in development and provide feedback directly to the team that’s working on those features.

• Design thinking: We’re thinking about our customers as we develop new features — they’re often a result of direct requests.
• Do: We develop the feature enough to be tested in the real world. It’s the software version of a physical prototype that real end-users can try out.
• Iterate: Based on the feedback we get, we improve and polish the software enough to release it as part of the platform that all users access.

We’ve built design thinking right into our software. Pretty cool, huh?

The downside of design thinking

Design thinking sounds great, doesn’t it? What’s not to love?

Here’s the thing: people who live by the rules of design thinking welcome failure. Often. If you’re going to ride the iterative loop, you have to be prepared to fail and learn from that failure. You’ve got to embrace the fact that things will have to be pulled apart and re-done when the best customer experience demands it.

You’ve got to put your ego to one side, and recognize that the customer is king and their experience rules the process.

If you haven’t done business this way, it can be uncomfortable. But when you see the final results, you’ll recognize that it’s worth a little discomfort.

Design thinking makes space for emotion

Traditional design is about functionality and aesthetics. “Does it work?” “Does it look good?” These are the questions you consider.

Design thinking folds in emotion. “How do our customers feel when they use our product or service?”

This might sound a little woo-woo. But design thinking means having deep empathy with your users and producing experiences they’ll remember. Those memories are sealed in with the emotions they experience when interacting with your business.

And those emotions make your business memorable — remarkable, even.

The iterative loop and where to use it

This iterative loop — design thinking — do — iterate — is something you can use to make deep cultural changes within your business, whether it’s a one-person shop or a 412,000-employee corporation.

The iterative loop can touch every single aspect of your business, even down to elements like your shopping cart software and the copy on your invoices.

Adding design thinking to your process leads to products that are simple and human.

Every aspect of your business, from the front end to the back, can be designed around your users’ needs.

Let the iterative loop guide your strategy

One warning: design thinking often makes your future unpredictable. Planning months ahead of time is difficult. You have to be willing to ride the loop wherever it takes you.

Your customers will lead the charge, not you.

You’ll be alongside them, serving up what they need with a dose of memorable emotional appeal.

About the author

Pamela Wilson

Pamela Wilson is Executive Vice President of Educational Content at Rainmaker Digital. Follow her on Twitter, and find more from her at BigBrandSystem.com.

The post How to Use an Iterative Loop to Dominate Your Niche appeared first on Copyblogger.

The Single Best Way to Create Hit Content in Record Time

Once in a while, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to publish a piece of stunning content without writing it from scratch?

You’re in luck, content marketer, there is.

But wait … No doubt right about now you’re wondering if I’m depriving some village of their idiot.

If maybe I hit bottom and kept digging? If maybe I’m about to introduce you to the content creation version of the ShamWow?

Relax. What I’m saying is completely achievable. It’s called republishing.

Republishing is the process of updating and polishing an old article — and then publishing it on a new date. That’s it.

It’s something we do here at Copyblogger. It isn’t necessarily an easy publishing option either, if you want to do it right.

Dedicating time and effort to republishing benefits your content marketing efforts in several ways.

Today we’re going to explore five, as well as the steps to take to republish your own content.

1. Expose old content to a larger audience

When you update and republish a piece of content from the past that your audience enjoyed, your current audience gets a chance to consume and enjoy this content as if it were new.

For instance, excellent articles Brian Clark wrote back in 2007 can be updated and shared with the much larger audience Copyblogger has today.

That new exposure has positive effects …

2. Attract more links and social shares

Here’s one of those positive effects: because the URL stays the same, republished content gets a new chance to earn more links and social shares.

We all know that content receives the bulk of links and social signals during the first week after it’s published. Over time, the number of new links and social shares drops dramatically.

But when you update an old article and then republish it, the new audience you expose it to initiates a new round of linking and sharing (check out number four below to see what I mean).

3. Punch Google’s freshness button (again)

Listen, Google loves to see fresh content, particularly on certain topics. (Check out their freshness factor.)

So even if the original article was published four years ago, a republished article that has been upgraded with recent information will appear higher in search engine rankings simply because of the surprising effect of freshness.

If you would like to learn a few more reasons why Google loves republished content, watch this nine-minute video by Rand Fishkin.

And there’s more …

4. Test the success of a piece of content

Let’s look at one of my past articles on Copyblogger: Master This Copywriting Formula to Dominate Any Social Media Platform.

From a purely social media shares perspective, you’ll see this article was popular. Why? I have several hunches:

• It’s about social media.
• The headline taps into a meaningful, big promise (dominate).
• The headline is also conditional (you cannot cash in on the promise unless you do something).

I’ve since used a similar headline to test my hunch that this is a strong headline style that inspires social shares.

If you look at the social share numbers for Master This Storytelling Technique to Create an Irresistible Content Series, you’ll see I think I’m onto something.

Republishing an old article with this headline style will allow me to test it in a new way.

Will I be able to double or triple the social shares on an old article with a new headline that matches this style?

You can record an article’s social-share numbers and then monitor how your current audience responds to the optimized, republished version of the article.

5. Seize an opportunity to improve

Finally, as writers, we get better at what we do over time.

As you write more and more, your newer posts will be better than your older ones. Yet, there might be some gems in your archives that, with a rewrite, could look as good as the newer ones.

So, why not review your archives and single out some of your favorites?

Then, schedule them into your content publishing calendar. You’ll give new life to old content — and potentially republish a hit.

But there is a very specific way in which you must do that. Let me show you.

How to republish old content (without breaking anything)

We’ll look at an article I wrote on my blog, The Copybot, titled “Starting a New Blog? Assume Nothing” as an example, and I’m going to go through the steps of republishing it.

This is what it looks like from inside the Rainmaker Platform.

In the upper right-hand column under the “Publish” options, you see that this article was originally published on May 21, 2014. To republish it, I’ll click “Edit” under “Published on” …

And then enter the current date (November 4, 2015, for this example).

Your final two steps are to click “Okay” and then “Update.”

When you go to the front page of The Copybot, you will see the post at the top with the new publish date. Voilà.

We recommend you create a list of articles you’d like to update and republish some day. We keep a list of classic Copyblogger posts in a Google Doc.

For each classic article, we make a note of the headline and URL.

What exactly should you refresh?

Republishing is not a new practice. Both print and digital publications regularly republish old content.

In fact, for one week in December 2014, the digital news site Vox asked their writers and editors “to update and republish a number of articles — one each day — that were first posted more than two months ago.”

They called this “Refreshing the evergreen.” Here, they updated their articles and didn’t add notes explaining the articles were old content being republished.

You can use their following list to help you refresh old content before you republish:

• Edit the text to be up-to-date and accurate.
• Change the headline if the previous headline didn’t work well.
• Add new information.
• Present new ideas or opinions.
• Rewrite sections that are bland.

But that’s not all!

At Copyblogger, we also recommend that you add an image or update the current image if you can find a better choice to complement your article.

And there you have it. A simple way to create tantalizing, potentially hit content without starting from scratch … you might even have a little extra time to take a breather.

Or if you’re like me, wash and dry your car for the third time this week with your new ShamWow!

About the author

Demian Farnworth

Demian Farnworth is Chief Content Writer for Rainmaker Digital and host of the podcast Rough Draft. 

The post The Single Best Way to Create Hit Content in Record Time appeared first on Copyblogger.

Stamping Your Digital Passport

People tell me they’re too busy. When I dig into what they’re doing, especially online, it’s a lot of “noise” but not a lot of signal. No one seems happy and everyone seems harried, and yet, people keep adding to their own problems.

Think About Vacations and Passports

Imagine traveling to a different country. Would you land at the airport, stand in line, wait for the immigrations and customs official to stamp your passport, only to turn around again and get back on another plane?

Continue Reading

The post Stamping Your Digital Passport appeared first on chrisbrogan.com.

The $100,000 Challenge: October Update

The seventh month of the $100,000 challenge has wrapped up. In October, overall traffic on Nutrition Secrets was 42,822 visitors, down from 66,743 in the previous month.

The traffic drop was mainly due to social media. The blog posts didn’t do very well on Facebook in October compared to September. But the overall search traffic is continually rising. For example, October’s search traffic of 25,086 surpassed September’s number of 19,595.

The interesting aspect of October’s activities is that we finally started to monetize our product in hopes to bring in revenue.

Here’s how things are looking…

Traffic

As you already know, social media traffic is a bit unpredictable compared to search traffic. Although traffic from Facebook is down overall, the number of search engine visitors keeps increasing month over month.

Why?

Because Mike adds content each day. As long as he blogs once a day, there is more content, which increases our likelihood of being found in the search results.

The issue with the content he is writing is that a lot of it is basic. For example, he is writing posts such as “The health benefits of bananas.” Well, everyone already knows bananas are good for you, so posts like that (which are the majority) aren’t generating much traffic.

On the flip side, posts like “What happens to your body when you quit eating sugar” are unique, and those are the ones that are generating the majority of the search and social traffic.

I’ve been trying to teach Mike to blog only on unique topics instead of those that are beaten to death, but he is still struggling with it. Over time, he should get better at it, and I am sure our results a year from now will be great.

Monetization

We finally started to make money with Nutrition Secrets. We are now selling fish oil on Amazon (I’m not linking to the product as I am trying to avoiding cheating: I don’t want Quick Sprout readers to buy the product to help reach the revenue goal).

The key to generating sales on Amazon is reviews. The more you get, the better off you are. We are only at three reviews, and we need over 1,000 to see a real impact.

The tricky part is you can’t pay for reviews as that breaks Amazon’s terms of service. Nor do we have the financial ability to pay for reviews as we are trying to do this whole project on a budget.

So, what we are doing is giving away the bottles at cost. Mike is handing out coupons to anyone who is interested in fish oil supplements. They get a good price, and we potentially get a review (you can’t force people to write a review).

We were also given 28 bottles free when we did the white-labeling deal—selling someone else’s product under our label. So, Mike is also giving away 28 coupons for a free bottle…but that won’t last long.

We don’t know what percentage of the people who purchase a bottle at cost will leave a review, but we will know more in the next 30 days or so.

Once we get to 500-1,000 reviews, Mike and I will sit down and focus on adjusting the pitch (copy) on the fish oil supplement page to make it more attractive. If you look at most Amazon product pages, they aren’t written to be persuasive. We think that is a good competitive edge for us, and it should help drive sales in the long run.

Here is our game plan for the Amazon fish oil product:

1. Analyze the competition to figure out what the ideal price point for this product should be. It’s currently too high.
2. Focus on acquiring more positive reviews while following Amazon’s terms of service.
3. Adjust the copy on the product page in order to maximize sales.
4. Once the product generates more sales, focus on creating a more attractive label design.

Conclusion

Over the next 30 days, you’ll see us maintaining the current content levels and handing out more coupons to generate more Amazon sales.

Now, every time we hand out a coupon, we don’t make any money as we are just breaking even…so, of course, we still have a long way to go to hit the $100,000 a month income goal.

After a few months of doing this and fine-tuning the Amazon product listing page, we should start seeing natural sales, which will help with the $100,000 monthly goal.

The goal by the end of November is to generate 30 reviews. By the end of December, we want to have 300 reviews. And by the end of January, we want to have 600 reviews for our product on our Amazon page. If we can hit those numbers, there should be enough traction for the product to generate close to $100,000 in monthly sales.

So, what do you think of the progress so far?

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How Proprietary Tech Is Changing The Service Industry

It’s important for organizations that want to be successful to recognize that service alone isn’t enough for today’s customers. The method for delivering service — the app, the website, the subscription portal — is what will drive loyalty, engagement, and revenue.