Identity/biometrics/technology marketing and writing services
In case you like to consume your information in video form, here’s a video about my Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service, for text of between 400 and 600 words.
If you prefer to read your information rather than watch it, you can do that also.
In either case, if you are interested in the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service:
I’m trying to flesh out the usefulness of the Bredemarket website.
Using bad statistics, addition of a third term to the two existing terms improves bredemarket.com by a whopping 50%.
Not bad for (more than) 5 minutes of work.
Airfocus has published an article about…well, I’m not going to reveal the title yet, because that gives away the massive surprise ending.
(Whoops; I already revealed it. Pay no attention to the title behind the blog post.)
For now, I’ll just say that the article discusses features and benefits.
Here’s how Airfocus defines features (which coincides with my own definition of features):
(Features) are characteristics that a product or service has. It is a simple statement about attributes.
For example: ‘An automated photo storage app that edits, selects and stores photos’
From Airfocus
Contrast this definition of features with Airfocus’ definition of benefits (which again coincides with my own definition of benefits):
A benefit…is why a prospect would ultimately use a product.
This key benefit provides an emotional hook point that you can leverage in helping the user imagine the positive experiences felt by using your product.
For example: ‘If you don’t waste your time editing and can store more of your best photos, you’ll keep happier memories for longer’.
From Airfocus
So again, the feature is a characteristic of a product (or what the product does), while a benefit explains why that characteristic is important to a prospect.
This is good in and of itself, and has served me well for years. I could stop right here, but I’ve just passed 400 Bredemarket blog posts and am on a roll to get up to 500.
So I’m going to tell you that Airfocus expands the feature-benefit model by defining an middle category between features and benefits.
Airfocus defines the intermediate step between a feature and benefit as follows:
An advantage is what that feature does, and how it helps. These are factual and descriptive but do not yet make a connection as to how it will make users’ life better.
For example: ‘It automatically keeps only the clearest picture of a similar set, and deletes the rest. Your photo storage is reduced on average by 80%.
From Airfocus, https://airfocus.com/glossary/what-is-a-features-advantages-and-benefits-analysis/
So now it’s time for the big surprise. The third word is advantage.
Perhaps I’m oversimplifying the analysis, but the three terms (features, advantages, and benefits) can be related as follows, using my three favorite question adverbs and incorporating Airfocus’ examples:
| Feature | What | Automated photo storage app |
| Advantage | How | Reduce photo storage 80% |
| Benefit | Why | Keep happier memories for longer |
Since I talk about benefits ad nauseum, you may get the mistaken view that features and advantages don’t matter. They do matter—in the proper context. For example, if you’re working on a data sheet or a user manual (if they still exist), you definitely need a feature list and could probably use an advantage list also.
Now do you have to use a feature-advantage-benefit model, instead of the simpler feature-benefit model?
Not at all.
But if you find it helpful, use it.
(UPDATE OCTOBER 23, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)
I’ve previously talked about the six questions your content creator should ask you. And I eat my own wildebeest food. I used the six questions to create a self-promotion blog post and LinkedIn post.
But since you care about YOUR self-promotion rather than mine, I’ll provide three tips for writing and promoting your own LinkedIn post.
Before I wrote the blog post or the LinkedIn post, I used my six questions to guide me. For my specific example, here are the questions and the answers.
| Question | Primary Answer | Secondary Answer (if applicable) |
| Why? | I want full-time employment | I want consulting work |
| How? | State identity and marketing qualifications, ask employers to hire me | State identity and marketing qualifications, ask consulting clients to contract with me |
| What? | Blog post (jebredcal), promoted by a personal LinkedIn post | Blog post (jebredcal), promoted by a Bredemarket Identity Firm Services LinkedIn post |
| Goal? | Employers contact me for full-time employment | Consulting prospects contact me for contract work |
| Benefits? | (1) No identity learning curve (2) No content learning curve (3) Proven results | (same) |
| Target Audience? | Identity companies hiring Senior Product Marketing Managers and Senior Content Marketing Managers | Identity companies contracting with content marketing consultants |
You’ll notice that I immediately broke a cardinal rule by having both a primary goal and a secondary goal. When you perform your own self-promotion, you will probably want to make things less messy by having only a single goal.
So based upon these responses, I created…
The Bredemarket blog is primarily to promote my consulting work. I have a different blog (jebredcal) to promote my full-time employment (or attempts to secure full-time employment).
Because the primary goal was to secure full-time employment, I posted to jebredcal instead of Bredemarket.
After the introduction (pictured above) with its “If you need a full-time employee” call to action, I then shared three identity-related blog posts from the Bredemarket blog to establish my “biometric content marketing expert” (and “identity content marketing expert”) credentials. I then closed with a dual call to action for employers and potential consulting clients. (I told you it is messy to have two goals.)
If you want to see my jebredcal post “Top 3 Bredemarket Identity Posts in June 2023 (so far),” click here.
So how did I get the word out about this personal blog post? I chose LinkedIn. (In my case, hiring managers probably aren’t going to check my two Instagram accounts.)
I often reshare my Bredemarket blog posts on various Bredemarket social media accounts. In this instance I only reshared it on LinkedIn, since that’s where the hiring managers are. While I shared the blog post to my Bredemarket Identity Firm Services LinkedIn page (since the post talked about identity), my primary goal was to share it to my personal LinkedIn feed.
It was simple to write the LinkedIn text, since I repurposed the introduction of the blog post itself. I added four hashtags, and then the post went live. You can see it here.
And by the way, feel free to like the LinkedIn post, comment on it, or even reshare it. I’ll explain why below.
So how did I promote it? Via the “LinkedIn Love” concept. (Some of you know where I learned about LinkedIn Love.)
To get LinkedIn love, I asked a few trusted friends in the identity industry to like, comment, or reshare the post. This places the post on my friends’ feeds, where their identity contacts will see it.
A few comments:
I have wonderful friends. After several of them gave “LinkedIn Love,” The post received significant engagement. As of Friday morning, the post had acquired over 1,700 impresions. That’s many, many more than my posts usually acquire.
I don’t know if this activity will directly result in full-time employment or increased consulting work. But it certainly won’t hurt.
But the point of this post isn’t MY job search. It’s YOURS (or whatever it is you want to promote).
For example, one of my friends who is also seeking full-time employment wanted to know how to use a LinkedIn post to promote THEIR OWN job search.
Now you don’t need to use my six questions. You don’t need to create a blog post before creating the LinkedIn post. And you certainly don’t need to create two goals. (Please don’t…unless you want to.)
In fact, you can create and promote your own LinkedIn post in just THREE steps.
My six questions obviously aren’t the only method to collect your thoughts. There are many, many other tools that achieve the same purpose. The important thing is to figure out what you want to say.
If you don’t want to write the post yourself, then ask a consultant, a friend, or even a generative AI tool to write something for you. (Just because I’m a “get off my lawn” guy regarding generative AI doesn’t mean that you have to be.)
(And before you ask, there are better consultants than Bredemarket for THIS writing job. My services are designed and priced for businesses, not individuals.)
After your post is written by you or someone (or something) else, have one of your trusted friends review it and see if the written words truly reflect how amazing and outstanding you are.
Once you’re ready, post it to LinkedIn. Don’t delay, even if it isn’t perfect. (Heaven knows this blog post isn’t perfect, but I posted it anyway.) Remember that if you don’t post your promotional LinkedIn post, you are guaranteed to get a 0% response to it.
Your trusted friends will come in handy for the promotion part—if they have LinkedIn accounts. Privately ask your trusted friends to apply “LinkedIn Love” to your post in the same way that my trusted friends did it for me.
By the way—if I know you, and you’d like me to promote your LinkedIn post, contact me via LinkedIn (or one of the avenues on the Bredemarket contact page) and I’ll do what I can.
And even if I DON’T know you, I can promote it anyway.
I’ve never met Mary Smith in my life, but she says that she read my Bredemarket blog post “Applying the “Six Questions” to LinkedIn Self-promotion.” Because she selects such high-quality reading material, I’m resharing Mary’s post about how she wants to be the first human to visit Venus. If you can help her realize her dream, scroll to the bottom of her post and donate to her GoFundMe.
Hey, whatever it takes to get the word out.
Let me know if you use my tips…or if you have better ways to achieve the same purpose.
Does your identity business provide biometric or non-biometric products and services that use finger, face, iris, DNA, voice, government documents, geolocation, or other factors or modalities?
Does your identity business need written content, such as blog posts (from the identity/biometric blog expert), case studies, data sheets, proposal text, social media posts, or white papers?
How can your identity business (with the help of an identity content marketing expert) create the right written content?
A little over a year ago, Bredemarket announced two changes in my business scope and business hours. I stopped accepting work from clients who marketed systems to identify individuals, and I reduced my business hours to Saturday mornings only.
I had to change my business scope and business hours. On May 9, 2022, I started a full-time position with a company in the identity industry, which meant that I couldn’t consult on weekdays and couldn’t consult on identity projects.
But things change.
As of May 31, 2023, I will no longer be employed at my day job.
Which is my misfortune…um…opportunity.
Yes.
As of June 1, 2023:
My…um…opportunity is your opportunity.
Now that I can expand my business scope and business hours again, you can take advantage of my extensive marketing expertise, including deep experience in the identity industry.
This means you can obtain quickly-generated and expert content with an agreed-upon focus.
This means you can get content that increases your revenue.
Blog posts, case studies and testimonials, proposals and proposal text, white papers, and many other types of content.
Yes I also write e-books.
These two e-books explain (a) how Bredemarket starts a project with you, and (b) how Bredemarket has helped other businesses over the years.
(UPDATE OCTOBER 22, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)
Contact me.
I very well could change Bredemarket’s business hours/scope again.
Maybe I’ll find a new full-time position in a couple of weeks, and I’ll again have to reduce hours and scope.
Which basically means that you have to ACT QUICKLY to ensure you can reserve my services.
(See “how to create a sense of urgency.”)
I guess I can be persuasive. I just persuaded myself to do something.
On Saturday, I wrote the post “Six Benefits for Inland Empire Businesses from Case Studies.“
Then I asked myself, why not write a case study for my own Inland Empire business, Bredemarket?
If I could demonstrate that Bredemarket benefited a firm via a case study, that could help Bredemarket get business from other firms. I said so myself:
A well-crafted case study can be the first step in convincing a potential customer to become a paying customer.
From https://bredemarket.com/2023/04/15/six-benefits-for-inland-empire-businesses-from-case-studies/
But once I started writing the document, I decided that one case study wasn’t enough.
So I wrote four mini-case studies in the same document, briefly describing how I helped four Bredemarket clients create different types of content so that they could win more business.
After the four mini-case studies, I briefly described how Bredemarket works with clients. (Sleep is involved.)
I didn’t get into my six questions, since I already wrote an e-book on that topic, but I did provide an overview of the initial meeting, the content iteration process, and my work for hire policy (which explains why I didn’t name the four clients listed above).
Here is my latest e-book, “How Bredemarket Can Help You Win Business.”
And if I can help you win business, let me know. I have Saturday morning office hours.
As a business owner or marketer, you are always looking for ways to increase visibility and attract new customers. In today’s digital age, inbound marketing has become an increasingly popular strategy for achieving these goals. Inbound marketing is all about creating content that is tailored to the needs and interests of your target audience, and using that content to attract potential customers to your website.
At its core, inbound marketing is about helping clients make money. By creating content that is specifically designed to appeal to your target audience, you can increase your visibility and attract more potential customers to your business. This is why inbound marketing has become such an important part of the marketing mix for many businesses today.
One of the key components of inbound marketing is blogging. Writing blog posts that are specifically designed to attract potential customers is an incredibly effective way to increase your visibility and attract new business. By writing blog posts that address the needs and interests of your target audience, you can create content that is both informative and engaging, which can help to establish your business as a thought leader in your industry.
The goal of inbound marketing is to increase your visibility and attract more potential customers to your business. By creating content that is tailored to the needs and interests of your target audience, you can increase your chances of being found by potential customers who are actively searching for the products or services that you offer. This can help to increase your website traffic, generate more leads, and ultimately increase your revenue.
One of the key benefits of inbound marketing is that it is customer-focused. By creating content that is specifically designed to address the needs and interests of your target audience, you can establish a strong connection with potential customers, which can help to build trust and establish your business as a trusted partner in their success.
If you are a technology firm in the Inland Empire, inbound marketing can be an incredibly effective way to increase your visibility and attract new business. By working with a team of inbound marketing experts, you can create a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy that is specifically designed to address the unique needs and interests of your target audience. This can help to establish your business as a thought leader in your industry, increase your website traffic, generate more leads, and ultimately increase your revenue.
In conclusion, inbound marketing is a powerful strategy for helping clients make money. By creating content that is specifically designed to appeal to your target audience, you can increase your visibility and attract more potential customers to your business. If you are a technology firm in the Inland Empire, inbound marketing can be an incredibly effective way to increase your visibility and attract new business. By working with a team of inbound marketing experts, you can create a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy that is tailored to the unique needs and interests of your target audience.
If you’ve read the Bredemarket blog over the last few months, you know that I’ve talked about several topics ad nauseum:
When I meet with a client, I ask my six questions (actually more) and then create marketing content with a customer focus…for a fee.
But now some alternative, no-cost methods for content creation are available. But are they any good? Let’s test one of them.
If any of you have used generative artificial intelligence, you know that you feed a “prompt” to your generative AI engine of choice, and the engine then returns a result.
Here’s a prompt that I recently fed to OpenAI’s ChatGPT:
Write a blog post based on these six inputs: (1) Why: help clients make money (2) How: offer inbound marketing services to clients (3) What: write client blog post to attract business (4) Goal: increase client visibility (5) Benefits: increase business via customer focus (6) Target audience: Inland Empire technology firms
I’ve reproduced the response verbatim in the following post, including the title that ChatGPT supplied. I could probably play around with the prompt and get a response that is more on target; the prompt that I fed to ChatGPT ended up with a huge emphasis on inbound marketing.
What do you think? Is generative AI “good enough” to put Bredemarket and other content marketers out of business? Or do experienced and talented human writers provide enough added value so that their content stands out from the crowd? Personally, I think I could have written something much better…but I could be wrong.
If nothing else, I wrote my post (and this one) in less than 15 minutes, versus the 2+ hours I spend on my previous post and the underlying web page. So if I’m primarily interested in churning out quantity rather than quality, ChatGPT is my friend. And if my post receives incredible traction, ChatGPT is really my friend.
By the way, I’ve done this before, but this time I’m posting the generative AI post with no modifications.
I just added a page to the Bredemarket website entitled “Blog posts for your Ontario, California business.”
Now that’s Ontario California, not Ontario Canada.
Let me quote a little bit from the page I just created.
For example, let’s say that an Ontario, California content marketing expert wants to target businesses who need blog post writing services. This expert will then create a web page, and possibly a companion blog post, to attract those businesses.
From https://bredemarket.com/iew-ontario-blog/
You’re now reading the “companion blog post.”
If I’m going to talk about blogging, I need a blog post to go with it, right?
The other purpose of this blog post is to direct you to the web page. I don’t want to repeat the exact same copy from the web page on the blog post, or the search engines will not like me. And you may not like me either.
If you’re an Ontario, California business who is looking for an effective method to promote your firm, and a description of how to move forward, go to the Bredemarket web page “Blog posts for your Ontario, California business.”
Needless to say, you only need to read the web page if you’re an Ontario, California business. Well, I guess Fontana businesses can read it also; just ignore the video with Mayor Leon and substitute a video with Mayor Warrent instead.
The web page addresses the following topics, among others:
If you’re asking yourself these questions, go here to find the answers.
Perhaps you’re reading this blog post because you learned about it on social media.
The web page includes a paragraph on promoting blog posts via social media, if that interests you.
Yes, that’s an old picture. Although some websites still reference Google+ today.
About a year ago, I wrote a two-part series of posts entitled “In marketing, move quickly.”
How can you move quickly?
If you’re an Inland Empire business that needs rapid written content creation, I’ll tell you how Bredemarket can help you create that content.
On the 99.9% chance that you didn’t read my two posts on this topic, here’s a brief TL;DR on what I (and others) said.
So let’s say you’re an Inland Empire business who needs to create between 400 and 600 words of content quickly, such as the text for a brochure, a blog post, or a LinkedIn or Facebook post.
How can you get it out quickly?
How can you avoid waiting eight weeks, or three months, or eight years for your customers to see your content?
Here are four actions you can take to get your content out.
I’ll describe these four actions below.
If you rush to create content without thinking through your needs, your content won’t be that effective. Take some time up front to plan what your content will be.
Ask yourself critical questions about your content.
(UPDATE OCTOBER 22, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)
Don’t know what to ask? I’ve written an e-book entitled “Six Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You.”
The six questions (hint: you’ve already seen two of them in the first two parts of this post):
When Bredemarket meets with a customer, I ask more than these six questions, but they’re the most important ones.
If you can answer these questions, either on your own or with the help of your content creator, then you’ll have a roadmap that allows you to create the content together.
Note the word “together” in the paragraph above.
After you meet with your content creator, your part of the task isn’t done. Or shouldn’t be.
When Bredemarket creates content for a customer, there are points within the process where the customer reviews the content and makes suggestions. Normally when I create between 400 and 600 words of content using the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service, there are two review cycles. Here’s how I explain them:
Why? (If you read my e-book, you know the “why” question is important.)
Maybe I have questions that popped up while I was drafting the content. Maybe something occurs to you after you see the draft content. Whatever the reason, these review cycles provide opportunities to improve the content as I develop it.
But to get your feedback, you have to be available. The standard process gives you three days to return your comments, although of course you can return them faster. But if you don’t return your comments for weeks or months…well, that kind of kills the idea of getting the content out quickly.
Of course, in some cases delays are unavoidable. One of my customers was dependent on a third party to complete his part of the review, but the third party was not delivering. In that case, there was nothing the customer could do, and that content was delayed.
One critical question: what if you need your content very quickly?
So when you’re planning to have Bredemarket or another content creator generate something for you, remember that you’ll need to spend a little bit of time on reviews.
You know how I said that the Bredemarket 400 process gives you three days to review each content iteration? Well, at the same time it gives me three days to draft (and redraft) the content.
Can I, or the content creator you select, hold up our end of the process?
Right now I’m going to tell you something that has happened since I wrote those two “In marketing, move quickly” posts in March 2022. In May 2022, I accepted a full-time position with an identity company, and therefore no longer spend full time on Bredemarket activities.
Therefore, if you need to meet with me Monday to Friday between 8 am and 5 pm (Pacific), I can’t meet you. I have my day job to worry about.
I have regular office hours on Saturday mornings when I can meet with you, and I can arrange to be available on weekday evenings or early weekday mornings. And of course I can draft your content and incorporate your suggestions at those times also, outside of regular business hours.
But if you need a content creator that is available during regular (Inland Empire) business hours, then you’ll need to select someone else.
Just make sure that the content creator you select is available when you need them.
When you’re ready to move, move. If you don’t start the process of creating your critical content, by definition you’ll never finish it.
So take the next step and find someone who will create your content. There are a number of content creators who serve Inland Empire businesses.
But if you want to use the Ontario, California content marketing expert, contact me at Bredemarket and I’ll arrange a meeting. Be prepared for me to ask you a few questions.
Bredemarket