Tag: focus

Catch Up. Reset. Continue.

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

As you can tell from the 4 week silence, our travel interrupted our blogging. Work went on, clients were pleased, clients were acquired, all those aspects kept on rolling.

It’s tricky, isolating priorities and staying focused. Entrepreneurship is a juggling act; there’s not a single day where you get everything done. (Sue keeps saying “I have so much to do and I’ll never get it all done!” and I keep saying “Good; that’s how the bills get paid.” I am an expensive dependent so I need her to stay busy.)

Now that we’re home (okay, now that we’ve been home for 13 days) I’ll be making sure one of us posts something at least weekly (instead of posting weakly. Yes, I crack me up.)

Sue spent some time filling the pipeline with a pair of live events. Check ’em out:

Why Your Marketing Should Annoy Some People

Posted on by Joel D Canfield
This is an edited version of a section from my book The Time Is Now 11:59.

Persuasion is the core of marketing. It’s easy to assume, then, that the job of marketing is to persuade folks to buy your book.

That’s half right. The goal is to help folks decide whether or not to buy the book. Even if we help them decide not to buy our marketing has done its job.

What Madness Is This?

… more … “Why Your Marketing Should Annoy Some People”

Where Should You Be Selling Your Books?

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

When I was a kid my brothers and I played a board game called Risk. The goal was to conquer the world. This is our goal as writers, so it’s a good analogy, right?

The board was a map of the world. Each player started on one continent with a number of armies. Rolls of the die determined the outcomes of battles, introducing a certain element of chance, but good strategy usually triumphed.

One concept my younger brother never grasped was that one big army defending his borders was stronger than 3 or 4 small ones. But he liked spreading things out, so he’d have 4 armies each in Mexico, Central America, and Colombia rather than putting all 12 in Mexico.

Our older brother would come down through Texas with 6 armies and blow through like Santa Ana. Or whoever would have been blowing from the north.

Like Butter Spread Over Too Much Toast

… more … “Where Should You Be Selling Your Books?”

Focus on Your Objectives

Posted on by Sue L Canfield

It’s very easy to be distracted by everything going on in social media and to lose focus on your objectives. You intended to go to Facebook to post an update about your services but were sidetracked by a post you saw. Next thing you know it’s been thirty minutes and you’ve forgotten to post your update!

How do you maintain your focus on your social media objectives and not get sidetracked?

focus on your social media objectives

Here are a couple of tips I’ve used:

  1. Type out the post you intend to share and have it up on your screen ready to go with hashtags, image, and shortlink.
  2. Set a timer for 10 minutes. Then if you have been sidetracked, the timer will remind you to get back to task and not to waste more time.

Remember what your objectives are when posting to your social media networks and don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked by trivia. You can schedule that for another time!