Where Marketers Go to Grow

So you've created a truly awesome resource that you want to share with as many people as possible. You think, “It would be a good idea to get in touch with influencers on this topic. Maybe they’d be open to sharing it with their followers.”

But how should you get in touch?

Okay, friends. Who here loves email marketing data? Give us a virtual hand raise.

Yep, that's pretty much everyone. We all love watching the performance of our content -- the good and the bad. What was our open rate? Clickthrough rate? Our unsubscribe rate? These numbers help us improve our email marketing campaigns.

You know what gets discouraging? Sending out emails, but not receiving any responses. At all.

So how do you send a networking email that people will actually respond to?

Writing an effective networking email that gets results takes more effort than simply typing up a few sentences in a "compose" window.

When was the last time you read a book?

If you’re like me, you probably have a reading list of books and articles a mile long. It's not that you don't want to read them, but making time to actually do so isn't always easy. 

In 1951, there was a 21-year-old man who had trouble with public speaking. In fact, the thought of speaking in front of a group of people was so off-putting that it'd often make him physically sick.

Determined to improve his speaking ability, he ended up taking the Dale Carnegie training program -- an educational course aimed at helping individuals improve their communication skills and better influence outcomes. And since then, he can't stop talking.

The other day, I realized something while reading a bunch of articles about becoming a more effective content marketer. Many articles recommend certain tactics to increase an individual piece's quality, but they don't often give tips on how to be a better content marketer in general.

We all know it's important to create original, useful content -- ideally quickly and consistently. But how do we make those processes part of our mental frameworks?