Someone Has To Write It

In the last week I’ve had at least five conversations about the importance of content to support the sales and marketing process.  It’s probably a result of the Making Marketing Work webinar we held last week, but the resistance seems to be the same with everyone.

We talk about the importance of content, the strategy to direct the content and the incredibly positive impact this approach has on sales results.  Inevitably, the person I’m discussing this with acknowledges the weaknesses they have without it, and its benefits.  Then I get the “but.”  As in, “But, someone will have to write the content, and keep it fresh and up-to-date.”

My response?  “Damn right someone has to do that!”

What do they expect?  Look, we live in an incredibly intense and competitive marketplace today.  There’s tremendous pressure on margins and differentiating is tougher than ever.  Do people really think they can accelerate profitable growth, scale a company and maximize their equity value without expending significant effort?

Companies that do not have an adequate marketing cultivation system suffer extreme limits to their sales ability. Our research demonstrates that the results of sales efforts are reduced by 30 – 70%.  The most direct way to doubling your profits isn’t hiring more salespeople, it’s implementing an effective cultivation program.  But, yeah, that takes time and effort.

If you’re struggling to find the resources to support the effort, here’s my recommendation:  allocate the expense of a salesperson to support the effort.  Think about it, if you’ve got 3 salespeople and you eliminate 1 to implement such a program, you’ll still come out 25 – 50% ahead.

Full disclosure – my company develops, implements and/or manages marketing cultivation programs for small and mid-market companies.  The reason we do it is because of the impact we’ve seen when a company has such a program versus what happens when a company doesn’t.

Creativity and Constraints

In my early twenties, I wrote a number of “philosophical fragments.” These thought-fragments were inspired by Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosphical Fragments.

Fragment #92 I wrote says this:

Creativity thrives under limits, be they natural or imposed.

Since then, I’ve seen this principle at work time and time again.

So it was no surprise when I came across similar sentiments in The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Michalowicz.

We Are Innovative When Resources Are Scarce

“It’s awe-inspiring how careful, thoughtful, and innovative we are when our supplies are scarce. But it’s also confounding how quickly we use and abuse our resources when we perceivably have a lot.”

Lack of Money Forces You to Grow the Right Way

“Money covers up problems and weaknesses. Without money, you’ve got to bring your A-game every day. Lack of funds forces you to optimize everywhere and grow the right way.”

Conclusion

Do you lack resources?

Don’t despair.

It may be a big blessing in disguise.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

CommentLuv Internal Server Error

If you’ve installed CommentLuv on your blog and are seeing an Internal Server Error when leaving a comment, here’s the problem.

First of all, your site is probably hosted with Hostmonster or BlueHost. These two hosting companies have the same owner. Both hosting companies use CPU throttling if a script or chron job is taking too long to process.

Unfortunately, I did not know this until now. This site is hosted on Hostmonster. When I checked my Control Panel, I discovered my host is throttling my site more than normal, probably because of high traffic volumes.

Anyway, there will sometimes be a conflict between caching plugins and CommentLuv. It seems like this conflict is more common if your site is on Hostmonster or BlueHost. (Ironically, I switched this site from GoDaddy hosting to Hostmonster last year because I thought Hostmonster would be better.)

Fortunately for me, another CommentLuv customer discovered that WP Super Cache was causing the Internal Server Error. When he disabled that plugin, CommentLuv worked just fine.

As it turns out, I was also using WP Super Cache, so I disabled it. Problem solved!

I tried installing the Quick Cache plugin in place of WP Super Cache, but the Internal Server Error returned. So, for now, I am not using any caching plugin on this site.

To sum up, you might get an Internal Server Error when one or both of the following conditions are met:

  1. Your site is hosted by Hostmonster or Bluehost.
  2. You use any cache plugin with CommentLuv at the same time.

Andy Bailey, the creator of the CommentLuv plugin, responded to me in the support forum. I thought his response was quite helpful:

cache plugins are notoriously troublesome for anything that requires a dynamic site. there are plenty of blogs that have commentluv and use cache plugins but because there are so many options and configurations of hosting I cannot give an exact set of settings to use. the truth is, if you are not completely familiar with cache plugins settings and what they do then it is pretty much hit and miss when you install one if it will work or not.

there are also many users on bluehost that use commentluv with no issues. it is possible that your site is saying internal server error because an error is happening when commentluv tries to fetch posts.

there is no way to tell what is going on in your case until you check your error log. that should show you what is going wrong.

I hope this post helps you solve any Internal Server Error you get with the CommentLuv plugin.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. Click here if you’d like to add CommentLuv Premium to your blog.Similar Posts:

CommentLuv: Get Keyword Backlinks Every Time You Leave a Comment

I bought and installed the CommentLuv Premium plugin over the weekend.

Now, every time you leave a comment, CommentLuv will automatically pull in your latest blog post and create a link to it.

Because I have the Premium plugin, there are some additional things you should know:

  • Once you’ve left 10 approved comments, you’ll be able to choose any of your last 10 blog posts to be linked instead of only the most recent.
  • If you’ve left fewer than 10 approved comments, you can Tweet, Like, or +1 the post to get more posts to appear as options to be linked.

Even better, I’ve reverted back to the standard WordPress Comment system. I’ve also installed and reactivated the DoFollow plugin, which means all CommentLuv links will pass PageRank back to your site.

If you’re looking to improve your site’s search engine rankings, you’ll benefit simply by commenting on the posts I write.

I hope you like the new commenting features.

And I look forward to more of your comments.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

How the Media Tries to Get You to Vote for Bad Candidates

Old media is still a powerful tool that influences millions of people every single day.

Yet the media is far from objective in its coverage of political issues. Reporting is dead; but putting spin on information is alive and well (even if you’re in the “No-Spin Zone”).

With that in mind, let’s talk about this issue of “electability.” Why is it being repeated so much by the talking heads on TV?

The reason is simple:

They’re trying to convince you that it’s better to vote for a bad candidate who might be able to beat Obama than a good candidate whom the establishment would like you to believe doesn’t have a chance.

But this is the underlying message: There is a better candidate!

His name is Ron Paul.

And if people stopped believing the lie that they must vote “for the lesser of two evils,” then Ron Paul would beat Obama by a landslide.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

Stop Daily Emails: Get Updates Once Per Week

At the beginning of the year, I began publishing five days a week on my blog. I plan to continue publishing daily, Monday through Friday, for the remainder of this year.

I also plan to send out short email notifications to let you know when new blog posts are published.

I began doing this January 1st, which triggered a higher-than-normal unsubscribe rate. This is because historically I’ve only sent out a couple emails each week. So five emails a week — even if they’re brief — is a big increase.

How to Decrease the Number of Emails You Get from Me

After about a week of the new schedule, a friend and subscriber sent me this brief note:

I love your stuff but I’m getting too much too fast, friend.

Is there a sub-list that slows it down? I hate to just unsubscribe.

Up until now I’ve not had a sub-list. I thought it was a good idea, so I’ve now created one.

When you subscribe using the form below, two things will happen:

  1. You will be automatically unsubscribed from my primary email list.
  2. You will be added to my “once per week” email list. This means you will get no more than one email per week.

So… want to decrease how often you hear from me? Just subscribe to my “slow it down” list below.

“Slow It Down, Ryan! I’d Prefer 1 Email a Week or Less…”

Sign up here to get on the “once a week” email list:

As always, thank you for being a subscriber. I value my relationship with you.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts: