🚩 TRUST-able #12 - Find the Others - Sep/Oct 2022

Actionable insights for entrepreneurs wanting to become trusted advisors in their niche.

Hello!
I am Robin Good the author of this newsletter.

I write this newsletter for entrepreneurs, consultants, trainers and experts who want to become trusted advisors in their market niche by leveraging deep value creation and relationship building. 

Inside each issue of this publication I curate 21 “actionable” resources under these topics:

1. How To Create Real Value

2. How To Cultivate Relationships

3. How To Communicate Effectively

4. How To Market Oneself

5. Recommended Newsletters

In the Premium edition I also cover:

1. How To Increase Visibility

2. How To Monetize

3. How To Stay Always Ahead

   +

4. Recommended Tools

5. From the Heart

The Premium Edition provides also access to the full archive of previous free issues. All new issues stay open and accessible for a limited time for all subscribers before they are locked into the Premium archive.

Language Editions
There are two editions of this newsletter:
The original English language edition and the Italian version. 

Enjoy this issue and feel free to send me your feedback and requests by replying directly to this email.

I am here to make friends.

Robin

1) How To Create Real Value

Go Scientific

Create value by sharing insights, benefits and advantages of a specific solution as supported by scientific research. 

How? 

Get inspired by what Thomas McKinlay of Ariyh (a newsletter that translates scientific findings into practical marketing strategy) does so well. 

And if you wonder where to find the scientific sources without spending lots of money and wasting a lot of time, just look into this new powerful app/search engine: Consensus. 

You state the topic and Consensus will find all scientifically researched supporting evidence available out there. 

Consensus

Create a Checklist

Want to create real value for your readers? Create a checklist of the key steps needed to overcome a specific obstacle and enrich it with tools and resources that can be adopted to speed up and optimize the work. 

Here is a great example:
Landing Page Checklist

Create Collections of Examples

Examples are very powerful learning objects.

If you know how to find and recognize great examples of how something needs to be done, you have something of real value.

Invest time in creating examples collections, with your own comments and explanations, as these provide tremendous value to your readers, students, fans.

Here’s is one good example: a collection of examples of apps and services - created with no-code tools - that are breaking it. 

Objectives:
A. showing, instead of explaining only through words, actual examples of commercially successful apps/services built this way,

B. giving credit and authority - in this topic - to the guy who found and organized the examples (and thus desire, to sign-up for his newsletter).

No-code Examples

*In the Recommended Tools section - you can find a great app to collect and put aside the best examples of whatever “x” you find while you navigate the web.

2) How To Cultivate Relationships  

Welcome Warmly

Welcome emails are often written without much thought, as if they were a bureaucratic duty to be carried out without much passion, care or emotion. 

That should not be the case.

“You wouldn’t greet someone at your house by turning your back to them, letting them fumble with their bags and shoes while trying to figure out where to put their coat, and you certainly wouldn’t start shoving the main course in their face before they’ve even walked in the door. 

A dinner party requires a warm welcome, a friendly greeting, and lots of pacing. 

This email is the beginning of a beautiful relationship… so treat it like one.” 

Here are five simple steps to craft better welcome emails:

1. Make new subscribers *really* feel welcome

2. Introduce yourself

3. Set expectations and define next steps

4. Reward subscribers for signing up

5. Get to know your subscribers

Source: Val Geisler - The Dinner Party Strategy
Source: Rachel Burns - How To Write a Welcome Email (with 8 Examples)

Keep in Touch

In my experience one of the most productive of all online marketing activities is personal, one-to-one outreach. That means, staying in touch with former and existing clients, prospects and other interesting people.

This doesn’t happen automatically unless you reserve some dedicated time for it, though in my experience, it doesn’t require more than 10-15 minutes a day.

The tremendous upside of doing this systematically, is that for very little effort, you get to reinforce your bond with each person, while opening many opportunities for questions, discoveries and for extra paid work you had not even dreamed of. 

“Staying in touch with people is one of these asymmetric habits that require little effort, time and resources but has an unlimited upside. 

It’s the easiest and most effective way to make your life more serendipitous.”

Source: Jakob Greenfeld - “The simple system I’m using to stay in touch with hundreds of people”

Nurture Your Community 

Most online entrepreneurs think that having a mailing list of some thousand subscribers, or having enrolled them into a forum, chat or other social platform group is equivalent to having a community.

Wrong.

Having a community requires the same planning, preparation and care that a great party event or celebration needs. 

There must be some unique value besides the free drinks.  

And generally it is not just one thing, but rather a combination of factors and actions that make the event unique while making the invitees feel at home and part of one big tightly knit family.

Here some great suggestions for where to start:

1. Define what makes you stick together

2. Stimulate and use feedback from the community

3. Build in public

4. Friend first, mentor later

5. Have guests

6. Organize events

7. Reward members engagement

Source: Priyanshu Anand - “Top 10 Ways To Offer Value in Your Community”

3) How To Communicate Effectively

Research First

David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather, and known as the "Father of Advertising" attributed the success of his campaigns to meticulous research into consumer habits.

Here’s how he did it.

What strikes me as most valuable in his approach to preparing ads are:

1) the thorough research he goes through to have greater context, perspective and ideas

2) the abundance of writing experimentation, trials and attempts to arrive at some still to be edited drafts

3) the genuine curiosity in asking and integrating other people's feedback and comments.

Source: Alex Garcia on Twitter

Storytell

Though you may have heard it a million times, this remains one of the top key challenges that every good communicator must overcome: becoming good at telling stories.

Or better yet: understanding that any idea, concept or issue can be communicated better if conveyed through a story.

To learn more about this fascinating and very powerful art, here is a great collection of selected courses and readings curated by Amelia Zimmerman.

LinkedIn Readings

• Shane Snow on Storytelling, Shane Snow

• How to Tell Stories That Win Market Share, Big Think

• Selling with Stories, Part 1: What Makes a Great Story?, Paul A. Smith

• Selling with Stories, Part 2: Stories Great Sales People Tell, Paul A. Smith

• Telling Your Story on the Web in 60 Seconds, Richard Harrington

• Telling a Story to Build a Community, CreatorUp

• Telling Stories with Data, Paul A. Smith

• Finding Your Idea Hook, Stefan Mumaw

• Writing: The Craft of Story, Lisa Cron

• Business Storytelling with C.C. Chapman, C.C. Chapman

Skillshare Courses

• Powerful Storytelling: Strategies for Crafting Great Content, Soledad O’Brien

• Intro to PR: Storytelling Pays in Marketing, Nick Armstrong

• Storytelling for Small Business: Create a Killer Business Description that Sticks with People, Beth Mueller

• Storytelling: How to Craft Irresistible Stories that Sell, Jesse Forrest

• Storytelling for Your Brand, Stephanie Ellen Chan

• The Art of Storytelling in Communication and Presentation: Stories that Inspire Action, Ngan Tran

Udemy Courses

• Storytelling for Business, Kevin Allison

• The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Storytelling in Marketing, Alex Glod

• Business Branding: The Complete Course Part 2 — Expression, Steve Houraghan

• Storytelling for Small Business Marketing, Cathy Goodwin

• Better Storytelling for Business, communication360 online & Dominic Green

Source: Amelia Zimmerman - “The Most Comprehensive List of Storytelling Resources…”

Learn Information Design

Content used to be king.
But Format is actually much more important than Content.

With the reduced attention spans, your content still needs to be good but you also need to think about how to format it.

Because people decide whether to read and engage content increasingly depending on how such content is presented.

“It doesn't matter how awesome your content is if people can't get to consume it.”

“Let's pretend you are scrolling through Twitter. Which one of these two tweets would you 100% read and which one would you ignore?”

“As audiences' attention spans get shorter, easy-to-consume content wins.

Source: Alex Lull - Content Is Not King Anymore

4) How To Market  Yourself

Share Your Story

How to tell a founder story in an effective manner.

Share:

1. How did it all start? Share the story of your business/project

2. Take them back to what you did after your ah-ah moment?

3.  Tell them what you want the future to look like - Share your dreams and aspirations

Here’s a great example: 

Video duration: 7':43"

Source: Jess Ekstrom - 3 Steps to Tell Your Founder Story

Find the Others

Sometimes I focus too much on myself.
What I do, which road I will take, how I will overcome expected roadblocks and problems.

I am learning though that going out of my way to keep in touch with those on my same path and getting to know new ones is as or more valuable than trying to do it all by myself. 

“…find the others. 

This, I believe, is the most important step we can take for effecting change in the external world. 

Be courageous enough to shout your authentic creative work into the void, knowing that it won't connect with many people, but it will connect, and it will matter, to the right people. 

If there's anything that breaks The Pattern, it's finding your true fans, and knowing that your work actually matters to someone.

As the old proverb goes, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. 

This is how we cultivate shared knowledge, encourage and lift each other up during hard times, and develop scenius—or communal genius.”

Source: Rob Hardy - The Ungated Manifesto

Learn More

Top books on building communities as recommended by Jake Stott:

1. Building Brand Communities (Jones and Vogl)

   How organizations succeed by creating belonging
   

2. The Business of Belonging (David Spinks)
   How to make community your competitive advantage
   

3. Atlas of the Heart (Brene Brown)
   Mapping meaningful connections
   

4. The Art of Community (Charles H. Vogl)
   Seven principles for belonging
   

5. Where To Begin (Clea Wade)
   A small book about your power to create big change in our crazy world

Source: Jake Stotton Twitter

Recommended Newsletters

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2) Storythings
Great, insightful stories, deep-dives, videos and other non-obvious resources of inspiration. Masterfully curated by Hugh Garry.
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3) Growth Hacking Tips
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4) Stacked Marketer
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​5) Find Great Articles “on-Topic”
Refind brings to your inbox the top seven daily links on your specific topics of interest. Loved by 50k+ curious minds. Subscribe for free to get smarter.

6) Discover Best Indie Writers & Newsletters
The Sample showcases niche authors’ newsletters on a variety of topics making it easy to subscribe to those that interest you. Subscribe to find ideal sources, partners, or ad outlets.

In the Premium Edition of this newsletter:

a) How To Get More Visibility
Pay Attention To V Factors
Work on Q&H
Find Your Niche

b) How To Monetize
Curate People’s Choices
Give Pro Feedback
Sell Other’s Products

c) How To Stay Always Ahead
Ask Yourself These 5
Set Your Fears
Access Paywalled Research

plus five great tools to:

1) Collect Great Examples
One-click save and put-aside browser plugin, makes it super-easy to capture parts of or full web pages to create collections of examples.

2) Create a Public Portal for a Set of Google Docs
Allows you to bring together, organize, sequence and publish a full set of google Documents as one wiki-portal.

3) Generate Background Images To Your Specs
Create images that can be used as background to your products or promotions completely automatically. Just type what you need.

4) Translate More Accurately (100% free - not by Google)
Is not Google Translator

5) Discover the True Authority of Any Twitter Account

Personal Corner

With a few of the many good friends made on the island. From left to right: David (Canada - painter), Jordan (Canada - illustrator), me, Isabel (Venezuela - dog-carer), Benjamin (Germany - body & food artist). Most of them are not here anymore, but from time to time they have come back to visit and to share good times together.

Here on the little island of Holbox life goes on more peacefully than ever.

Fall is here and you can notice it right away from the color of the sea, the many sargassos piling up on the beach, and from the wind, which is now cooler and coming from the north.

It’s the hurricane season and it’s the low season of the year (tourists-wise). It will lasts until mid-November, when gradually the weather will improve and tourists will likely start to pour in again.

For me this place is a little paradise. It feels like something in between a small amusement park and a magic village outside time and cultures.

The perfect place for me to focus, unwind, join many good positive vibes while enjoying lots of sunshine and music.

Come visit me, sometime.

Follow a path with a heart.

The time is NOW.

From sunny Holbox,
Robin Good