Carve The Path

Own Your Marketing Platform:
Build Your Marketing Engine to Drive Your Business

I want to reflect on the Social Media Examiner podcast episode titled “Is Blogging Dead? Building Your Content Home on Rented Land” with Michael Stelzner, Mitch Joel and Mark Schaefer, which focused on a discussion around blogging and specifically asking the question, is it dead and will it go away? The podcast episode expands on a discussion about whether or not you should be publishing content on your own platform versus moving it over to places like Facebook or LinkedIn. You have to listen to this podcast episode, maybe even twice like I did. They really dive deep and touch on a number of very important issues surrounding rented vs owned land for your content. In some ways, I agree that publishing on platforms directly like Linkedin and Facebook are necessary and Carve The Path, although new at the time of writing this article, will very soon be posting long form content to Linkedin and Facebook, as well as here, on http://ed.gr/ef7mf

In my opinion the answer is still that you need to focus your efforts around publishing content and controlling it on your own platform and really concentrate on building out your centralized hub, your marketing engine that fuels your business growth. Every strategy you deploy externally, should connect back to your main hub from a strategic point of view, but at the same time, offer the conveniences to allow financial transactions, customer service, content consumption etc on the platforms your customers are wanting to use, when they want to use them.



https://ed.gr/ef7mg

5 Step Exercise: How and Why to Discover Your USP:
Unique Selling Proposition

5 Step Exercise: How and Why to Discover Your USP: Unique Selling Proposition: Two seemingly-competitive truths about business and marketing have stopped more startups in their tracks than nearly anything you can imagine.

Truth #1: Your product or service is not unique.
It’s nearly impossible to find a product or service that is truly “new” and “unique.” Even the iPhone, which created a multi-billion-dollar smartphone market, disrupting and creating entire marketplaces, was full of features that were available on other products that were on the market at the time.

Truth #2: Every business needs a unique selling proposition, or USP, to unlock its full potential.
Finding your USP (and being able to effectively communicate it to your current and future customers) helps you in several ways. From a marketing perspective, it helps you direct your marketing efforts towards the people who would appreciate the pros of doing business with you, not care about your weaknesses (we all have them), and have access to the money to pay you. It also helps you understand your potential market in a much deeper way so you can design your marketing messages with confidence.



https://ed.gr/ef7mi

8 Steps to Building Your Personal Brand
and Why You Need to Do It!

Everything I Know About Business I Learned from Getting Fit
personal branding find your thing
Building Your Personal Brand: For years, marketers have worked with companies to build their brand. Cementing a brand message into a consumer’s mind makes sure you’ll get a shot at their business when they need your service. Imagine your air conditioner stops working and it’s 95 degrees outside. You’ll head to your computer and do a search for a repair company. You’ll likely click on the first company you see that has a name or brand you already know.



https://ed.gr/ef9yk

5 Ways in Which Business is Like Getting in Shape

Everything I Know About Business I Learned from Getting Fit

Most entrepreneurs talk about how they’ve always been entrepreneurs even as kids, and I am no exception. But while other young entrepreneurs-in-training had paper routes, touted homemade lemonade on hot summer days, and sold candy door-to-door, I made and marketed Creepy Crawlers to the neighbourhood kids.

Even back then, I had my own style of doing things.

Flash forward to adulthood.

Not much has changed, except I now understand the work it takes to actually make money doing what you love.

In a nutshell: It’s not easy.

My career ran the gamut from the day I left college, after earning a Bachelor’s degree in nutrition. I spent seven years working as a recipe development and product development specialist for a food consulting firm.

Through various projects there, I discovered a knack for creating desserts and went on to become a pastry chef, and then a bakery owner.

Ironically, I ended up tossing aside the sugar and flour to become a personal trainer (I was always into fitness even while making chocolate mousse cakes). After 15 years of working in fitness I once again grew restless and rediscovered (I’d always enjoyed it) my love for writing.

I worked as a freelance writer for the past decade, won a couple of awards and again felt an itch to do something else.

It sounds a bit manic, but I thrive on challenge, and once I no longer feel challenged, I move on. Plus, I experienced success in each career, at least by my personal standards.



https://ed.gr/egezs