Inland Empire business people, are your prospects ready for harvest? Contact Bredemarket for my content marketing and writing services.
Tag Archives: inland empire content marketing expert
Little 15…Second Reels
Last week I created two promotional reels. You probably saw the reels for my identity/biometric services and Inland Empire services.
I wanted to share the latter on NextDoor, but that service wouldn’t accept the video.
Thinking the 45 second length was the issue, I decided to create a 15 second version of the Inland Empire video…and a 15 second version of the (50 second) identity/biometrics video while I was at it.
For those of you who would like to”a nice surprise…every once in a while.”
By the way, I’m considering creating a new Inland Empire video…with an agricultural theme. (Fruits, not cows.)
Inland Empire Firms: Does Anyone Know Who You Are?
Inland Empire firms: does anyone know who you are?
Who can help your firm create content?
- Blog posts?
- Case studies?
- White papers?
- Social media?
- Market and competitive analyses?
Contact Bredemarket: https://bredemarket.com/contact/
When the Metamessage Contradicts the Message, You Need a Case Study
I recently published a post that asked three questions:
- Isn’t it wonderful when a man loves a woman?
- And isn’t it great to be born in the U.S.A.?
- And didn’t the devil get what he deserved when he went down to Georgia?
I answered those three questions as follows:
- No.
- No.
- No.
Apparently we weren’t paying attention to what these three songs actually SAID.
But what happens when we DO pay attention to the message, but there’s a “metamessage” that is also conveyed that says something COMPLETELY different?
Gracious city livers of Upland (and others in other cities), read on. This post talks about:
Let’s talk about metamessages
There is a popular practice in which people ARE well aware of the original message, but only some of them discern the hidden message, or metamessage, behind those words.
And you don’t have to look to business communication to find examples of this. Take the romantic world, in which the statement “If you go out with me I’ll treat you like the princess you are!” conveys the metamessage of predatory desperation. In the business world, “Let me take that under consideration” means that the speaker is not considering the proposal for a nanosecond.
Sometimes many of us can’t discern the metamessage until long after the message is stated.
- Remember the message that Whitney Houston gave to Diane Sawyer?
- Or remember Enron’s message about its values, from its Statement of Human Rights Principles?
Respect: We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don’t belong here.
Integrity: We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly and sincerely. When we say we will do something, we will do it; when we say we cannot or will not do something, then we won’t do it.
Communication: We have an obligation to communicate. Here, we take the time to talk with one another…and to listen. We believe that information is meant to move and that information moves people.
Excellence: We are satisfied with nothing less than the very best in everything we do. We will continue to raise the bar for everyone. The great fun here will be for all of us to discover just how good we can really be.
From Enron’s Statement of Human Rights Principles.
Now to be fair to Houston, the cocaine detected in her toxicology report may not have been CRACK cocaine, and cocaine was not the only substance detected. But now we know that while crack may have been “wack,” cocaine was OK, and marijuana, Xanax, and other things were OK too.
I have no desire to be fair to Enron, but I guess we can say that “the very best in everything we do” can be defined as “maximizing personal value,” that there isn’t an “obligation to communicate” EVERYTHING, and that falsifying records does not necessarily mean ruthlessness or arrogance.
When the metamessage agrees with the message
How often do you roll your eyes in amusement when a business says something?
Conversely, how often do you nod your head in agreement when a business says something?
Now I’ll grant that there’s not universal agreement on whether Company X is truthful in its messaging. For every person who thinks that Apple is the last guardian of privacy on ths planet, there is someone else who is convinced that Apple is an evil corporation who has (and I quote an anonymous source) “become what they accused Microsoft of.”
But it doesn’t matter what the world thinks.
What matters is what your prospect thinks.
- Does your prospect think your company is telling the truth?
- Does your prospect think your company is lying?
- Does your prospect need more information to make a decision?
How case studies help you reach message-metamessage agreement
One powerful way to convince a doubting prospect is via a case study.
It always helps when someone else is singing your company’s praises. Especially when the subject of the case study backs up what you’ve been claiming all along.
If your Inland Empire firm needs a case study, Bredemarket can create it for you. After I ask you some questions, I can craft a case study (with your approval and the approval of the case study subject) that emphasizes WHY your company serves your customers, and HOW the case study demonstrates this.
Let’s talk. Click on the image below.
If You’re Not Saying Things, Then You’re Not Selling
Some of you are arriving here after reading about the AI CEO Mika.
Some of you aren’t.
But all of you (well, unless you’re Mika, who might not get out all that much) are familiar with how an outdoor marketplace works.
A marketplace contains two types of people—sellers, and those who aren’t sellers.
There are many different ways to tell the sellers from the non-sellers, but one key way (at least as far as I’m concerned) is that sellers are saying things.
If you’re not saying things, then you’re not a seller.
And you’re not selling.
If you want to sell, maybe you should say stuff.
Whether you are an identity/biometric firm, a technology firm, or a firm located in California’s Inland Empire, Bredemarket can help you create the blog posts, case studies, white papers, and other content your firm needs.
Click on one of the images below to start to create content that converts prospects for your product/service and drives content results.
Buzzworthy Inbound Marketing For IE Firms
Plant sex. It’s difficult, because the stationary nature of flowers complicates sexual reproduction. But as you will see, the solution to the plant sex problem can also solve the marketing problem of your Inland Empire firm.
According to Let’s Talk Science:
Flowering plants reproduce sexually through a process called pollination. Flowers contain male sex organs called stamens and female sex organs called pistils. The anther is the part of the stamen that contains pollen. Pollen contains the male gametes. Pollen must be moved to a part of the pistil called the stigma for reproduction to take place.
From Let’s Talk Science.
Because flowers cannot cross-pollinate by themselves, they need to attract bees (or other insects) to help. So the flowers just bat their little flower eyes, and the excited bees take the pollen from one flower’s anther to another flower’s stigma/pistil.
Surprisingly, plant sex has EVERYTHING to do with your Inland Empire firm. Your firm is “a flower attracting bees.” So I’ll show you how your firm can attract the bees to spread your pollen and spawn results.
What is inbound marketing?
Now you don’t need to be like a flower and have an anther with pollen to attract prospects. The business equivalent of plant sex is inbound marketing. HubSpot defines inbound marketing as follows:
Creating tailored marketing experiences through valuable content is the core of an inbound marketing strategy that helps you drive customer engagement and growth.
From HubSpot.
Unlike outbound marketing in which your firm goes out and grabs the prospects (hopefully not literally) through trade shows or cold calling, in inbound marketing the prospects come to you. And because the prospects are in your invisible trust funnel, you don’t have to log them in your customer relationship management system or track them (and their precious metrics) in your traditional sales funnel.
Or your non-traditional sales funnel with a “messy middle.”
The “problem” for those who thrive on marketing analytics is that you don’t know who is in your trust funnel. I know from experience.
- Most of Bredemarket’s work and most of my full-time employment positions came from people coming to me, rather than me soliciting people. They just popped up.
- As I previously mentioned in my trust funnel post, Kasey Jones has acquired customers who have never engaged with her in the past, but who suddently expressed a desire to work with her. Again, they just popped up.
But if your business can get that trust funnel working, the revenue will come. Not immediately, and not when you expect it, but it will come.
How can your Inland Empire firm create your own trust funnel?
Inbound marketing can attract “trust funnel” prospects to your firm by creating content that speaks to their needs.
- First, you need to create the content, or have someone create it for you. If you fail to create new content, your website and social channels will look stale, and prospects will wonder if your firm is still ongoing and viable.
- Second, ensure your content meets your prospects’ needs by asking key questions about your planned content before you create it.
And Bredemarket is ready to help your Inland Empire firm create that content and ask the necessary questions to drive results. Click the picture to learn more.
Inland Empire Firms: Drive Content Results
Does your Inland Empire firm need written content—blog posts, articles, case studies, white papers?
Why do you need this content, and what is your goal?
How will you create the content? Do you need an extra, experienced hand to help out?
Learn how Bredemarket can create content that drives results for your Inland Empire firm.
Click the image below.
#contentmarketing #inlandempire
Start Your Engines: Writing Your Non-Traditional Words
All too often, Bredemarket confines its writing discussions to the traditional ABCW (articles, blog posts, case studies, white papers) categories.
But what if your content needs are non-traditional and fall outside of the usual nice neat business writing categories?
If you are an Inland Empire business who needs words, but not in the traditional “ABCW” (articles, blog posts, case studies, white papers) business types, Bredemarket will help you with your non-traditional writing needs.
Take a look at the examples I’ve provided below, and if these spark interest within you, authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.
- Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
- Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you. For example, if you’re an Inland Empire business requiring non-traditional content, fill out the form accordingly.
- Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
- Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.
Here’s what I’m going to talk about in this post.
- The traditional 22+ content categories
- Non-traditional content: going to a car show
- Your non-traditional business communication needs
- Why and how Bredemarket creates non-traditional content
The traditional 22+ content categories
Sometimes I’m guilty of traditional thinking. Too traditional.
I won’t say a lot about this because I’ve said it before, but I’ve defined 22 fairly traditional categories of content that I (and Bredemarket) have created and can create.
I won’t go into all 22 types again, especially since some of them are internal content rather than customer-facing content. But I’d like to highlight the “ABCW” four types that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, plus a couple of others.
Articles and blog posts
I’m lumping articles and blog posts together, because while some “experts” try to draw hard-and-fast distinctions between the two, they’re pretty much the same thing.
Whether it’s a blog post on your website, a post or article on LinkedIn, or even some extended text associated with an Instagram picture or a TikTok video, what you’re creating is some text that entertains, persuades, inspires, or educates your reader, or perhaps all four. You set the goal for the article or blog post, then tailor the content to meet the goal. (I’ll talk more about goals later.)
Case studies
Case studies show your readers how your solution was applied to someone else’s problem, and how your solution can benefit your prospects with similar problems.
Maybe your prospect is a city police agency that needs a tool to solve crimes, and your case study describes how your solution solved crimes in a similar city. Again, you set the goal for the case study, then tailor the content to meet the goal.
White papers
On the surface, white papers are informational, but when a company issues a white paper, the “information” that the white paper provides should gently guide the reader toward doing business with the company that issued the paper. Using the example above, you could write a white paper that outlines “Five Critical Elements for a Local Crime-Solving Solution.” By remarkable coincidence, your own solution happens to include all five of those critical elements. Again, you set the goal and tailor the content.
Briefs, data sheets, and literature sheets
Perhaps you need to provide handouts to your prospects that describe your product or service.
Regardless of whether you call these handouts briefs, data, sheets, literature sheets, or something else, they should at a minimum contain both “educate” and “persuade” elements—educate your prospects on the benefits of your product or service, and persuade your prospects to move closer to a sale (conversion).
Again, you set the goal and tailor the content.
Web page content
If your business has a web page, I hope that it has more words than “Under construction.” Whether you have imagery, video, audio, text, or all four on your web page, it needs to answer the questions that your prospects and customers have.
You know what I’m going to say here, but it’s still important. You set the goal and tailor the content.
But…what if your business needs content that doesn’t fall into these traditional business categories?
Non-traditional content: going to a car show
I went to a car show this weekend—specifically, this year’s Route 66 Cruisin’ Reunion in downtown Ontario, California. (Yes, I know that Route 66 actually passed three miles north of downtown Ontario, but work with me here.)
While some of the exhibitors were personal, some of them were businesses. As businesses, what was the major marketing collateral that they generated?
Not a blog post, or LinkedIn article, or any of the traditional business media collateral.
Their marketing tools were the cars themselves.
So perhaps you may assume that car show exhibitors don’t need textual content. Your assumption would be incorrect.
In addition to the car itself, this exhibitor included poster boards with words describing the car.
Another exhibitor did the same thing.
So while these car show exhibitors didn’t choose a traditional way to convey their words, they shared written text anyway.
Your non-traditional business communication needs
Maybe you don’t have a classic car. Maybe you don’t have a car at all. Do you need to share words with your prospects and customers anyway?
Now I don’t know your business communication needs. You do. But I can guess a few things.
- Do you need to tell your clients/potential clients why you do what you do?
- Do you need to tell them how you do it?
- And last but not least, do you need to tell them what you do?
I know that this may seem like an unusual order to you. Why not start with what you do?
Because your customers don’t care about what you do. Your customers care about themselves.
If you keep the focus on your customers, the answer to the “why” question will induce your customers to care about you, because it shows how you can solve their problems.
Let’s illustrate this.
Why and how Bredemarket creates non-traditional content
You may be asking why I create content in the first place. There are countless content creators, both human and non-human. Why turn to me when OpenAI and its bot buddies are a lot cheaper and faster?
The simple answer is that I am obsessed with writing, and in this era of self-description, I self-describe as a “you can pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands” type. (It used to be a typewriter, but let’s stick to this millennium.) And with my many years of personal and professional writing, I’ve honed my ability to take concepts and make them meaningful to readers.
Which brings me to how Bredemarket works.
- Bredemarket’s service is independent of content type. I don’t have a “Bredemarket blog writing service” or “Bredemarket data sheet writing service” or “Bredemarket case study writing service.” My services are based on word length, not content type, with my most popular service targeted to customers who need between 400 and 600 words of text. From this perspective, I don’t care if you want the words to appear on your website or your social media channel or a paper flyer or a sign next to your car or a really really long banner towed behind an airplane. (Read about the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service here.)
- Before I write a thing, I ask your some questions. It won’t surprise you to learn that my first questions to you are why, how, and what. I then move on to questions about your goal for the content, the benefits of your solution, the target audience for your solution, and many additional questions. (Read about the Six Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You here.)
- Once the questions are out of the way, content creation is collaborative and iterative. I create a draft, you review it, and we repeat. The Bredemarket 400 service includes two review cycles; longer content needs include three review cycles. The goal is to ensure that both of us are happy with the final product.
Bredemarket’s process applies regardless of the specific content type, so I should be able to support whatever content you need, whether it’s traditional or non-traditional.
Can I help you?
- Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
- Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket.
- Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
- Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.
And as an added bonus, here are some additional images from this weekend’s Cruisin’ Reunion. Enjoy.
Blogging: The Secret Growth Weapon for Riverside and San Bernardino County Firms
(Updated blog post count 10/23/2023)
There are many ways for Inland Empire firms to raise awareness about their offerings. For certain firms, blogging provides quantifiable benefits. Can your firm take advantage of blogging’s fresh immediacy?
Blogging benefits
I recently wrote a post, “The Secret to Beating Half of All Fortune 500 Marketers and Growing Your Business,” that lists 14 quantifiable benefits from blogging. Here are the top 4:
- Awareness: the average company that blogs generates 55% more website visitors.
- Lead generation: B2B marketers that use blogs get 67% more leads than those who do not.
- Conversions: marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI.
- Conversions (again): 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog.
Why Bredemarket?
If you need help writing blog posts so that your Inland Empire firm stands out, I, John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket, can help.
- I’ve written more than 500 business blog posts.
- I can create blog content that has an immediate business impact, is easy to reshare, and is easy to repurpose as other content.
- I ask you critical questions before I start blogging, to ensure you get the right content.
- I collaborate with you throughout the process to ensure the blog post is on target and meets your goals.
- As the Ontario California content marketing expert, I know the territory. (But not the territory of the other Ontario; my French skills are extremely limited. Sorry.)
In most cases, I can provide your blog post via my standard package, the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service. I offer other packages and options if you have special needs.
Get in touch
Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.
- Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
- Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket.
- Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
- Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.
Should Inland Empire Companies Generate Content with ChatGPT (or other generative AI tools)?
Inland Empire companies are asking the same question that other companies are asking: “Should my business use ChatGPT (or another generative AI tool) to quickly generate content?”
Bear in mind that I have a vested interest in the answer to this question, because Bredemarket’s business is content generation for other businesses. So I don’t have a natural inclination to tell you not to buy my services and use ChatGPT or Bard or whatever instead.
Nevertheless, I’ll outline the advantages and drawbacks of using automation (in this case generative AI tools) to create written content. Then I’ll look at the three options for your business’ content generation needs. (Surprise! One of those options is to contract with Bredemarket. You’ve been warned that a call to action is coming.)
An “exchange” of questions
As I mentioned in my post about creating and populating Facebook business pages, yesterday afternoon was the first time in years that I had attended a monthly Ontario IDEA Exchange meeting. For those who aren’t familiar with these meetings, they allow small business owners from the Ontario, California area to meet and…um…exchange ideas.
One of the attendees asked me what I thought of ChatGPT.
If you’ve read the Bredemarket blog or the Bredemarket LinkedIn page, you know that I have some thoughts on this. (If you haven’t seen my thoughts, I’ll share them later in this post.)
It turns out that the attendee had a reason for asking the question that went well beyond generative artificial intelligence (generative AI), and touched on automation in general.
- Should we use ChatGPT, Bard, or another generative AI tool to generate text content, or should we contact a content marketing expert?
- Similarly, should we use a generative AI tool to generate image content, or should we contact a graphic design expert?
- Going beyond generative AI, should we use tax preparation software, or should we contact a tax preparation expert?
You can ask this same question about a variety of business services. Should you opt for the (sometimes) cheaper automated solution, or should you get a real person to perform the service?
This can be a loaded question. After all, I can’t tell you that you should always use a person for these tasks when I personally use Freepik and a well-known tax preparation software package.
So, returning to content, let’s take a (probably non-objective) look at the pros and cons of using generative AI tools for content creation. After all, some of my best friends use generative AI…and they’re still my friends (and obviously not my customers).
Generative AI content advantages
While generative AI isn’t as trendy a topic as it was a few months ago, people are still talking about using generative AI to create text content. And there are clearly some advantages to it.
- It’s very fast. No, you won’t create your text in a minute. But with properly written prompts (commands to the generative AI tool) and by using a few iterations, you can probably get generative AI text content in five minutes. You won’t get text content of any length from Bredemarket in five minutes.
- It’s (usually) free. In most cases, you can obtain your text at no cost to you. Again, Bredemarket doesn’t work for free.
- It’s easy. You don’t need to know how to write. Sure, you need to know how to write the prompt, but you don’t need to worry about the mechanics of writing the text itself, and when to use “its” or “it’s”. You don’t want to sound like a looser, after all. (That was wrong.)
- It’s “good enough.” Under most circumstances, the text created by a generative AI tool gets the job done, and is obviously better than no text at all.
Generative AI content drawbacks
Perhaps I’m biased, but I think that we can all agree on the drawbacks that I’ve listed below.
- Potential accuracy issues. Generative AI content is sourced from the Internet, and you know how accurate the Internet can be at times. For example, when I was working for my former employer, I asked one popular generative AI tool to tell me the weaknesses of my employer’s product. The tool returned two responses, one of which was plain wrong.
- More potential accuracy issues. The way generative AI tools work, most of them provide their answers as if they were most certainly true, with no attempt to provide the probability that the response is correct or incorrect. In essence, Mr. Gen AI is an automated know-it-all with complete certainty in its answers, even when they are obviously wrong.
- Potential relevancy issues. Depending upon your generative AI tool, you may not have access to the latest data and may instead rely on older data that was available when the generative AI tool was trained. At one point, several of the popular generative AI tools were trained on data from 2021 or earlier, which meant that they knew nothing about events that happened last week.
- Potential privacy issues. When you feed prompts to a generative AI tool, the prompts are stored by the tool. What if you’re using a public tool, and you’re feeding confidential data from your company to the tool? What’s going to happen to your company’s private data? (This is especially critical when the data crosses international borders, something that gave Samsung serious concern.)
- Potential tone of voice issues. If your company feeds a prompt to a generative AI tool, and your competitor feeds the same prompt to the same tool, you will get similar or identical responses. If both companies use these responses, then the companies will sound like bland “me-too” providers, with no differentiation.
I’ve touched on a number of these issues in more detail in pieces that I’ve written on the Bredemarket blog (and in one case on LinkedIn). These explain when I use generative AI, and when I do not.
- Am I about to put myself out of business?
- Inbound Marketing for Tech (I didn’t write this; see the previous post)
- (Old Draft) The Temperamental Writer’s Three Suggestions for Using Generative AI
- The Temperamental Writer’s Two Suggestions and One Rule for Using Generative AI (my first policy statement)
- The Non-Temperemental Publisher WIRED’s Rules for Using Generative AI (oops)
- How Soon Will I Have to Change My Temperamental Writer Generative AI Suggestions/Rule?
- (LinkedIn) Three Ways I Use Generative AI to Create Written Content for Identity/Biometrics (and other) Companies (my second and current policy statement)
- Why Writer.com Approaches Generative AI Writing Differently Than I Do
- The Adobe Exception to the Temperamental Writer’s Hard and Fast Rule
- Generative AI Guidelines in San Jose, California
So what should YOUR business do?
Depending upon your business needs, your budget, and your marketing direction, you have three choices.
(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.)
- Use a generative AI tool to write your content. It’s fast, it’s free, it’s easy. It may be good enough.
- Use a low-cost writer to write your content. If you want to spend a little money, you can find writers who will work for pennies per word. That’s more than a generative AI tool, but you have a better chance of getting the content you want.
- Use Bredemarket. I cost more than pennies per word (the cost for my standard 400-600 word writing package is in the brochure on my Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service page), but Bredemarket’s collaborative kickoff process, including the opening six questions that I ask you, helps to ensure that your firm will get the content that you need.
Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.
- Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
- Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket.
- Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
- Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.
Bonus: here’s what Google Bard says on the topic (written by Google, not by me)
Sure, here are three advantages and three drawbacks of using generative AI to create written content:
Advantages:
- Speed: Generative AI can create content much faster than humans. This can be a major advantage for businesses that need to produce a lot of content quickly, such as content marketing agencies or news organizations.
- Cost-effectiveness: Generative AI can be a more cost-effective way to create content than hiring human writers. This is especially true for tasks that are repetitive or time-consuming, such as writing product descriptions or blog posts.
- Accuracy: Generative AI can be very accurate in generating content that is factually correct. This is because it is trained on large datasets of text and code.
Drawbacks:
- Creativity: Generative AI is not as creative as humans. It can only generate content that is based on the data it has been trained on. This means that it may not be able to come up with new ideas or insights.
- Bias: Generative AI can be biased, depending on the data it is trained on. This is a concern because it could lead to the creation of content that is inaccurate or harmful.
- Plagiarism: Generative AI can sometimes plagiarize content from other sources. This is because it is trained on a variety of text data, including some that may not be properly cited.
Overall, generative AI can be a valuable tool for creating written content. However, it is important to be aware of its limitations and to use it responsibly.
Here are some additional things to keep in mind when using generative AI to create written content:
- Always fact-check the content before publishing it. Generative AI can sometimes make mistakes, so it is important to double-check the information.
- Be clear about the purpose of the content. Are you trying to inform, persuade, or entertain? The purpose of the content will help you determine the tone and style of the writing.
- Be aware of the audience. Who are you writing for? What are their interests and needs? Tailor the content to your audience.
- Use generative AI as a tool, not a replacement for human creativity. Generative AI can be a great way to get started with a writing project, but it is important to put your own unique spin on the content.
Bredemarket 