actionable marketing guide

Dear ,

While many Americans spent the weekend celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I fed my creative side at Vogue Knitting Live, a 3 day knitting event complete with classes, lectures and yarn shopping.

Since New York is a fashion capital, this knitting show attracts a diverse group of designers, fiber artists and yarn purveyors from the US, Canada and Europe.

Even my local knitting friends, who can buy a diverse assortment of yarn across New York’s 5 boroughs, paid to walk through the show’s exhibits and fondle the fibers.

Like me, many use the event as an excuse to indulge in shopping therapy, even though our closets and other storage areas are bursting with unknit yarn. Yet I bought an assortment of yarns I wouldn’t spent the time searching for or been able to see the actual colors via their online stores.

I attended a discussion by a panel of knitwear designers and was surprised to get advice that I could apply to my content creation.  

• Make good art. Is a quote from Neil Gaiman’s 2012 commencement speech (via this YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikAb-NYkseI) Hat tip: Martina Behm whose top design is the Hitchhiker, a shawl knitted 28,000+ times!

• Don’t be afraid to play. Many creatives need to allow themselves space to make new connections between ideas. Hat tip: Andrea Rangel whose top design is a men’s sweater called The Dude which has been knit 600+ times.

• Give yourself room to make mistakes.  As a creative, you can’t let anything you make get too precious. In writing classes, I learned to ‘kill your darlings”. This means that you must be willing to let go of your favorite pieces of your work because they’re not as good as you think.

As a marketer, I’m always looking for new ways to merchandise products. Love Knitting, for example, attracted my attention because they worked with knitting designers. Each designer curated a set of colors for specific types of yarn and patterns.  Even better, they donate a portion of each sale to support the women who create their yarn in Peru.

Lastly, tap into the community of people attending a conference. Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne of Mason-Dixon Knitting, a blog that’s been going since the early 2000s, hosted a get together at a local bar after the festivities ended on Sunday. Who can say no to drinks, food and other knitters?

Gardiner confided to me that they thought they were late to the knitting blog thing. Before you think that knitting’s a grandmother thing, I suggest you hop over to Mason-Dixon Knitting to see how this dynamic blogging duo can teach you a few new tricks.

• Make your blogging personal. Readers felt like part of the family since Shayne and Gardiner address their posts like letters between good friends.

  
  
  

• Build your community. For Shayne and Gardiner, these aren’t empty words. Mason-Dixon Knitting has an active forum on their site and Gardiner’s recent post, How To Count Your Gauge, attracted 68 comments! 

• Tell them, don’t sell them! Gardiner’s review of Slow Knitting feels like another post and meditation on the act of knitting rather than a hard sell. Even more surprising, it gathered 15 comments!

  

​​​​​​​Join me at:

Social Media Marketing World 2018

Brought to you by Social Media Examiner, this is the conference for anyone wanting to learn how to make the most of social media and meet the companies and experts in the field.

Join me at this exciting event. I’ll be speaking about Content Creation.

This year you have a wider choice of attendance options:

• All Access Pass. Allows you entry to all of the sessions and parties. It’s the traditional offering. This is good for people interested in social media who want all the networking benefits of the parties and gatherings.  Learn More.

• Content Creator. Is tailored to content creators. Its lower price point helps content creators on a budget. It limits your attendance to creation sessions (including mine) and the general sessions.  Learn More

• Virtual Ticket. Gives you all of the conference content from the comfort of your computer. You don’t need to leave home. It saves you on travel as well as other live expenses.  Learn More

Don't delay – Register Now and Save!                            (affiliate advertisement)

Blog Post Idea Generation You Can Use

Have you ever found yourself praying for inspiration to strike while you stare at your computer’s blinking cursor the night before your blog post is due?

Don’t worry—You’re not alone.

Did you know that if you learn how to generate blog ideas on a regular basis, you can avoid the curse of the blank page while providing a starting outline for your post? Continue reading

Annual Content Planning: How To Kickstart Filling Your Editorial Calendar

To understand the 2018 marketing implications, let’s examine the 5 Top 2017 Marketing Trends.

The 2017 Top Marketing Trends were driven by 3 key challenges (Hubspot 2017):

• Generate traffic and leads
• Prove marketing ROI
• Secure sufficient budget

Continue reading

The Communicator’s Playbook – Book Interview

Heidi Cohen Interviews Gini Dietrich

The Communicator’s Playbook: a Step-by-Step Process for Implementing an Integrated PESO Model Program.

Q: What’s your best piece of advice for readers looking to improve their marketing?

I’ve been spending a lot of time of late focused on WHY people buy. As marketers, we tend to focus on the logical or rational reasons someone SHOULD buy, but that’s not how humans make purchase decisions. We buy on emotion so marketers should focus on that and not on the great features and benefits of their products or services. Continue reading

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