I haven’t been blogging in a while because, well, I found out in September of last year that my noncancerous brain tumor had returned. At that point, all my attention was trained on:

• taking care of my clients throughout the treatment
• prepping for 30 radiation treatments over 6 weeks
• and dealing with the recovery, which has been juuuust delightful.

But, I’ve continued to take care of clients. In fact, see my latest client testimonial on my graphic design portfolio page. Oh, and I’m finding some things that need attention on this site.

I’m painting again, I’m working on a quilt (yes, I quilt), I’m watching the heat toast my balcony garden. A WordPress group I belong to is discovering the benefit of rediscovering their creative side – jewelry, painting, family time, and resurrecting pet projects.

And now, I’m back at blogging. I have a blog post coming up about webinars and accessibility for the hearing impaired (partially deaf to all the way deaf).

I’ll also be letting you know about deals my affiliates are having. I’ve been lax about that.

I look forward to seeing you again!

The room is dark, except for the glow of the TV. Business has been a little (maybe a lot) slow. You just can’t cope with the idea of doing some marketing…or paperwork…or reading some business books…or listening to some business podcasts…or following up with clients to ask them, “How’s biz? Let’s brainstorm some ways to help build your business.” I mean, how could you, when you can barely do it for yourself? You’re ti-i-i-ired!

So, you binge-watch your favorite show. And your next favorite show. When it comes time to pay your bills, you wonder how you will, because you’re not making any money.

Turn off the TV and let’s brainstorm some ways to build your business.

What have you done for your business lately?

A few weeks ago, I talked about doing a SWOT analysis for your business. Have you done it? Maybe it’s been awhile, and you need to reassess. I know I do. It’s going to require that you research and understand your industry, your local area, your competitors, and yourself. Yes, that’s a lot of effort when you can hardly get off the couch. Do it anyway. Force of will. You can do it!

Maybe you can’t afford to do Google AdWords or, frankly, any paid advertising. But, do you have a Facebook page or Instagram account? Really, it’s not very expensive to advertise on Facebook and Instagram. Put that in your back pocket for later, maybe. Now, if you can afford it.

Do you have a blog? Do you know things about your industry that you could write about? Are you working on a project that you could post pictures of it in progress? Can you create instructional posts for what you do? Come up with a variety of blog topics. I know I need to.

When you can afford it, look for opportunities to actually advertise. Local newspaper (online, too), magazine? These will nuke a hole in your pocketbook (especially the magazine ad), but if you own a spa or real estate company, an ad in your region’s lifestyle magazine would be a perfect fit.

Can you donate something from your business to a local charity fundraiser? It’ll get the word out there, and probably for very little out-of-pocket to you. Don’t go crazy. Maybe do a one or two of donations a year. See if your local chamber has a silent auction for fundraising.

How is your networking?

Introverts of the world are diving under aforementioned couch. “You mean, I have to go up to someone I don’t even know and say hi?!?” At WordCamp Orange County this year, Gary Johnson from J2 Marketing spoke on “Networking: Learn to Make Yourself Memorable.”

He suggested you not worry so much about yourself, and don’t try to pitch yourself and your business right out of the box. Go up to the person and ask them about themselves. Wait for the person to ask you about you. He described committing to go to a networking event and not talking about himself at all. Mind-blowing. I tried it at my next networking meeting after the camp. It worked! Not my favorite thing, but I thought, I can do this! I’m looking forward to upcoming networking events to develop my skills further.

My local library system has a ton of books on networking. Does yours? YouTube has 13,100,000 videos on Business Networking. The education is out there.

Offer to speak at an event about a facet of your industry

We introverts get catatonic just thinking of publicly speaking, but we are business owners, and we do have to talk to people. It’s a good way to get your name in front of a bunch of people if you can speak on a topic. As I was writing about “Imposter Syndrome,” I thought, huh, this would be a great topic for a business event. I can convert it into a slide show. I’m already familiar with the content. I now have plans to apply to present it.

Read, listen, watch business videos, take a class or two

I do love my mindless TV binge-watching, but that’s not going to help my business much, is it? Okay, “Shark Tank” might help a little. That’s still not going to help my business as much as I need.

I like to do business or tutorial-type books (I don’t read many novels). Lynda.com gives me access to thousands of business courses. Podcasts (or audiobooks) are great while I drive, work out, or take a walk. Magazines are great for winding down at night before you sleep. Take business reading material with you for appointment waits. The “People” magazine on the table across from you doesn’t count.

The opportunities to educate yourself are endless and will only increase your confidence.

Binge-build it, baby

Brainstorm in more detail things you might have come up with in the “Opportunities” part of your SWOT analysis (“Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats”). Pick a winner or two and start researching them.

Are you charging enough? Do you have a solid financial model for your business? Can you afford to be a freelancer, or will that be part of your growth plan? Do you need to get a second job to pay the bills for a bit, or not quit your job in the first place? Do you have a source of potential clients?

Work on your sales and marketing plan. If you don’t know what that entails, learn, because if you are not selling and marketing so you can sell some more, you have no business. You are winging it.

Jayson DeMers, in Entrepreneur Magazine, came up with a fantastic list of 50 Steps Every Entrepreneur Must Take to Build a Business. “Starting a business is one of the most challenging and rewarding things you’ll ever do. The process is simpler than you might imagine, but to try to boil it down to five or 10 steps is an underestimation and an injustice.”

Are you servicing your present clients well enough and addressing all their needs? Are you missing something? Brainstorm ideas for each of your clients. Could you do something better or differently? Take a day or two or more. Write your ideas down. Do your homework. Each of those ideas is a potential revenue stream, clients will be touched that you were thinking of them, and you’ll have an easier time paying your bills after they pay you for implementing your ideas.

Take care of yourself

Yes, it’s important to be working on your business, and as a freelancer, you have to work longer and harder to keep yourself afloat, but rest is essential. Go for a walk or bike ride, sign up for the gym or Zumba, eat better, do something unrelated to your business.

But all the suggestions above really require that you turn off the TV, get up off the couch, possibly get therapy for depression (the mental issues are real), and get to work building your business. Or you will have no business.

It’s going to feel weird to finally turn off the TV and pick up a book or watch business videos on your laptop, but do it. Be binge-building, not binge-watching.

“Social Media is the New Currency.” We’ve all heard that in some form or another. We’ve opened Facebook accounts we can’t tear ourselves away from. We compulsively post all of our pictures to Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, and any new flavor social media service that crops up. LinkedIn accounts are created if we’re business people.

We tell people where we are with Foursquare/Swarm (“I’m not home – please come rob me”). Pin cool stuff with Pinterest. We probably still have no idea how to work Google+. Our ears are to the ground for the latest and greatest social media product and we sign up, ask/beg for invitations, etc.

Then we tie it all together with an RSS aggregator (Feedly, Reeder, etc.), subscribe to a ton of feeds, try desperately to make time to read as many articles as we can, then use a tool like HootSuite or Buffer to post to all these accounts. Then we open an account with Klout and link as many of those accounts to Klout as possible. Whew. That’s a lot of work.

And we still haven’t spent one billable hour for our clients. We still haven’t learned a new skill (unless that skill is social media or being popular) that we can turn into money. If we have a book to sell (on my to-do list), or a white paper, that might help. If someone is going to invite me to speak for a hefty sum, okay. But neither of those are on my horizon. Yet.

Then There was Klout

I’m going to talk about Klout in the past tense. You’ll understand why shortly.

Invented 10 years ago, Klout was purchased by Lithium Technologies in 2014. “With Klout, Lithium fully delivers on its vision of building a trusted online connection between consumers and the brands they care about,” said Rob Tarkoff, Lithium President and CEO. “Trust is the currency online. For consumers, a trusted expert provides greater confidence in making purchases and getting advice. For brands, building a trusted reputation allows them to better find and keep customers.”

The more you posted, the more you engaged with what you read by retweeting and responding and liking and such, the higher the Klout “score” you’d get. Woo-hoo! You’re popular!

Klout was a cruel taskmaster that required me to breathlessly post stuff to all these different social media accounts during all my waking hours to get a higher and higher Klout score. That meant posting and engaging posts and photos through my lunches and weekends and evening hours. And for what? The score got me squat. They used to have perks.

“Klout was supposed to be the barometer of influence and purveyor of real world value for any given consumer on social,” says Ryan Detert, CEO of Influential. “At one time, hotels would give upgrades based on people’s scores since they were quantified as important.”

“Klout was largely based on who was most active on social versus who had an engaged audience that fit a brand’s consumer base,” Detert says. “And influencers saw that someone who simply tweeted more often than them could have a higher Klout score, so they didn’t put much stake in it.”

Klout’s Score Dropped

This past week, Klout’s shuttering May 25 was announced by the media. It didn’t help that over the years, the site and app got buggier and buggier, and would just stop connecting with various social media products. Days later, still not fixed. The loss of perks also didn’t help.

Klout’s shutdown coincides with the launch date of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), taking effect in Europe, but affecting a lot of U.S. companies doing business in Europe. That’s another blog post (I’ll have to roll up my sleeves and study it throughly so I can write about it), but it’s a pretty big deal and has webmasters stressing out. It concerns collecting and using consumers’ data, and getting their permission from consumers. Apparently it’s more complicated than that.

Lithium CEO Pete Hess stated, “Recent discussions on data privacy and GDPR are further expediting our plans to phase out the Klout service, giving us a chance to lead on some of the issues that are of critical importance to our customers: data privacy, consumer choice and compliance.”

Klout was collecting data from its users, and the new rules would create a big problem. Lithium will deconstruct Klout and use its AI (artificial intelligence) technology in their other products.

How Will We Cope?

Klout was a fun, yet exhausting, way to gamify marketing and popularity, but now marketers, business, owners, and popular people will have to find other ways to measure their popularity. We might have to dust off old-school marketing practices. Something new will come along anyway. It always does.

In the meantime, hey, get back to actual work!

If you’d like to discuss other marketing solutions, give me a call.