The Headline I Wish I Wrote

HAT TIP to Seth Godin

Road Closures

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth 

may be the best thing in the world for you. 

— Walt Disney

Business setbacks haunt those unequipped for adversity.

That's just about everyone.

You slave over relationships and infrastructure, only to find the universe doesn't want another product like yours (at least, not enough to pay for it).

So you accept the lesson and move on, sadder but wiser. Or you:

• Don blinders and blame the customers
• Get angry and blame the employees
• Get stoned before lunchtime
• Keep beating the dead horse
• All of the above

Limited information, skills and equanimity all get in the way of clarity and acceptance, especially during business setbacks.

The best way to deal with them is to reconnect with your "why" (why did we start this venture in the first place?) and remind yourself of everything you accomplished along the road to failure.

Website Bogged Down?

In the past 150 years, peat farmers in northern Europe have found about 1,000 so-called bog men, those accidentally mummified curiosities now thought to have been failed kings.

Your customers have a better chance of finding a bog man than they do your website, if your site's outdated.

That's because Google feeds on freshness, says Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group.

And because freshness equals relevance to Google, you have to keep your site fresh. You need to:

• Attract new backlinks from other (authoritative) sites.
• Add new pages to your site (20-30% more each year).
• Publish new content consistently.
• Freshen up your old content regularly, revising outdated statements, fixing broken links, adding new visuals, etc.
• Encourage and respond to comments.

When ranking your site, Google loves to see steady increases in click-throughs and dwell-time. You won't earn those, unless you keep your website fresh.

Your old content may once have been king. Today it's just a curiosity.

Give and Take

There are only two types of speakers in the world: the givers and the takers.

Why the takers don't "get it" mystifies.

You can plug your ears and still spot a taker by observing his audience. Everyone's mobile comes out within the first 120 seconds.

"Reputation is everything," Chris Anderson says in TED Talks.

"You want to build a reputation as a generous person, bringing something wonderful to your audiences, not as a tedious self-promoter. It's boring and frustrating to be pitched to, especially when you're expecting something else."

TED actively discourages speakers even from subtle pitches, such as mentioning a funding shortfall or using a book as a prop.

Anderson compares the encounter with a taker at a conference to the coffee break you agree to have with a friend who within minutes reveals she wants to tell you all about her "must-invest time-share scheme."

Giving, on the other hand, evokes a response. Delivering stories, insights, humor and revelations leaves audiences ready to buy.

Content Precedes Connection

Before the web, organizing a successful B2B event was child's play, as easy as saying, "Hey, kids, let's put on a show!"

But content shock has made event organizing hard. 

Really hard.

If you want to attract a content-shocked audience today, you'd better get your own content right, says Ricardo Molina, cofounder of Bright Bull. 

"Marketing B2B brand events is basically impossible to do successfully unless you have this step done right," Molina says.

Your ability to identify content that connects can only come from one place, as Warwick Davies, owner of The Event Mechanic!, says: "Knowing what’s going on in your market from a DNA level."

"Imported" knowledge of your market won't cut it.

Scratch any failed B2B event and, under the skin, you'll likely find the organizer got the content wrong.

"Get your event content straight," Molina says. "Make sure it's the kind of stuff people want to hear about. Make sure you're offering something that's definitely going to drag them away from their desks and into a room with you."