YOUTILITY

Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to your company’s success.

You’re not competing for attention only against other, similar products. You’re competing for attention against everything. To win in this hyper-competitive environment, you must ask “How can we help?”

If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. This is Youtility.

Includes interviews with dozens of companies practicing Youtility, and provides 6 blueprints for building Youtility in your company.

Available for pre-order soon (get up to 7 exclusive bonuses) at http://YoutilityBook.com

26 Truths About Me and Convince and Convert

For a long time now, I’ve been writing about the power of the “Social FAQ.” It’s a simple premise, really. If you want to garner trust and overcome objections, proactively answer the questions that your customers and potential customers have about you. This idea is echoed often by my friends Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose [...]

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Cutting Through Content Clutter with One Social Thing

Besieged by blog posts, articles, and columns about social media and content marketing? I have a solution. Last week, I wrote about our new blog and editorial calendar, coming soon to this very space. Today, news of our brand-new email service….One Social Thing. (www.OneSocialThing.com) One Social Thing takes content curation to its logical conclusion. The [...]

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Redesigning Your Blog to Drive Reader Behavior

Soon, you’ll be seeing an all-new version of Convince & Convert. It’s undergoing a full makeover, led by the amazing Rafal Tomal from Copyblogger Media. We’re of course staying with the Genesis Framework that provides enormous customization capabilities with unmatched ease-of-use. Here’s an almost-ready preview: The design is based on the new Streamline child theme [...]

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Conversion Optimization School is in Session

Ultimately, almost every website is about conversion rates. That blog design that you slaved over should eventually drive conversion rates where your prospects read, download, call or otherwise behave in a way that is beneficial to your company. I know this first-hand, as my former company was a leader in conversion optimization in the early [...]

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Finally Convince and Convert Gets All Effed Up

Yep, I finally did it. After years of holding out, I launched a fan page for Convince & Convert on Facebook. “Oh great,” you’re thinking. “Another place to interact with Jay, who is already littering my life with blog posts, tweets, Google Plus musings, and an email newsletter. Enough Jay!” And I feel the same [...]

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10 Great Ideas Coming Right Up

It’s time for my annual summer vacation. This year, as a token of my appreciation + relationship reconnection after writing a book, moving to Indiana, and then embarking on a six month book tour, I am taking my wife to Vahine Island, a 23-acre motu in Tahaa, French Polynesia. There are only 9 rooms on [...]

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Content Lessons Learned From 25 Popular Blog Posts

I’ve been writing Convince & Convert for more than two years, and have produced more than 300 posts. Mostly from me, with some terrific assistance from talented guest authors. Last week, I was on a content marketing discussion panel (moderated by Jeff Rohrs) at the ExactTarget Connections conference. I was joined by Joe Pulizzi from [...]

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11 Whys I’m a Social Media Addict

Connectivity Social media brings me closer to people with whom I ordinarily would seldom interact. Family, friends, colleagues. As my co-author Amber Naslund put it once “with social media, my relationships aren’t bound by geography or circumstance.” Exactly. Humanity People always slam Twitter for people talking about “what they had for lunch” but the blending [...]

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Blastoff for My New Social Media Newsletter

Last Monday was the world premier of my new social media newsletter, the 3-2-1. 3 must-read articles about social media (plus a bonus from the Convince & Convert vault) Sent twice per week (usually Monday and Friday) Sent at 1pm pacific time 3-2-1: it’s the greatest newsletter in the history of social media newsletters. If [...]

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7 Reasons I’m Moving to Bloomington Indiana

Top 7 Reasons I’m Moving to Bloomington, Indiana: Skin too dry. No idea what a Hoosier is. Decided to find out first-hand. Want to cheer for a historically mediocre college football team. Living near Sedona, AZ for 6 years is giving me vortex poisoning. Need to upgrade quality of locally grown corn. All these pine [...]

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