I’ve mentioned on the show before that I’ve been working on creating a short documentary film. Well, the film is finally done.

It was a ton of work, but a worthwhile experience that taught me several great lessons about how to create compelling content.

I’ve been taking note of the lessons learned along the way and in this episode I share them with you.

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Watch the Video version

In this episode of Mastering New Media…

• The most powerful way to influence someone in your content
• How to stay motivated when continually creating content
• How to finally finish a project that you never seem to get around to completing

Take Action

1. Choose one lesson that you learned in this episode and make a plan to apply it to your content/business this week

What Do You Think?

• What lessons have you learned from a creative project that apply to creating online content?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

In this episode we continue our discuss about how to define your target audience. I talk about steps three through eight of the process you can use to zero in on the best market for you to focus on.

Choosing the right target market will greatly improve how well you content connects with and influences your audience. It will also save you a lot of time and energy, making your content marketing efforts more rewarding.

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Download the Outline (PDF)

Watch the Video version

In this episode of Mastering New Media…

• How to determine if your market is hunngry enough to buy what you offer
• The one thing that will get your market to trust you (even more than your resume of skills and accomplishments)

Take Action

1. Take time to write outanswers to the eight steps for defining your target market

What Do You Think?

• What other factors do you, or would you, find helpful for defining your target market?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Here’s the deal…

Over the last several weeks I’ve been filming a documentary for a festival taking place on Dec 11. The film is about a local dance company, Polaris.

The first time I saw them perform, it connected with me in a way that no other dance has. It was surprisingly accessible — raw and emotional.

Then I found out the dancers, despite their level of skill, didn’t get paid. I knew I had to film their story to find out what could inspire such commitment to art and each other.

So naturally I filmed interviews with them. The lighting was great, the video turned out really nice and I got some wonderful sound bites.

It seemed I had everything I needed to tell a beautiful

But then I realized a glaring problem.
After watching the rough cut, it was clear to me that the film was TELLING the audience what I wanted them to learn rather than SHOWING.

There was one piece of my footage that stuck out in people’s minds during test screenings.

Everyone loved and remembered the story one of the dancers told about getting pregnant while being in the company. She was so worried that she would get kicked out.

Instead, the head directors turned out to be her most valuable resource for information about having a baby and becoming pregnant.

This short anecdote made clear one of the main themes statements of my film — these dancers have found a family in the company. They persevere because of the connection they have to each other.

I knew right then that I needed more stories. As hard as it was to have to backtrack, I decided to get the lights, crew, location and dancers together to film interviews for a second time.

I’m so glad I did. This time I asked questions like to get stories.

“Tell me about a time when…”

“Describe to me an experience where…”

I wish I’d remembered this important content creation principle the first time around. Now I have only four days to go from a blank canvas to a final cut of the film.  But I’m confident because I have stories to paint my picture with.

Stories are the most powerful tool at your disposal for building influence and teaching principles. Time spent gathering, telling and refining stories will make your content exponentially more powerful.

I highly recommend a book called The Story Factor by Annette Simmons. Her book does an amazing job of teaching how to influence people
through storytelling.

Every time you outline a blog post or episode, try to find a story to illustrate the main point of your content.

Tell me about a time when you used a story to influence someone in the comments below.

The video also contains the Deal of the Year from me as well as…

The formula for ultimate success in internet business and new media marketing.

There’s a time sensitive announcment at the end, so go watch it now.

Yesterday I had a phone conversation with one of my platinum coaching students. She’s been trying to get her show launched, but every time she’d think about creating episodes she’s hit a mental block.

The answer finally came in this statement, “I’m just not sure which direction to take it. There are so many ways I can go, so many things I could talk about. Who exactly am I trying to reach with my show?”

Bingo! That’s a question that every should ask when starting a new show or business — and then revisit regularly.

So I walked her through a few questions and helped her define the target audience for her show.

By the end of the call, she was thrilled and couldn’t wait to outline her first episodes.

In this episode we discuss how you can carefully define your target market in order to more effectively get their attention and create content that will keep them coming back again and again.

Download the MP3

Download the Outline (PDF)

Watch the Video version

In this episode of Mastering New Media…

• The one that that most content creators and businesses do completely backwards, costing them precious time and money
• How to give your market what they really want
• Two questions that will immediately help you find the best audience for you

Items Mentioned in This Episode

• Survey Monkey
• Audience Amplifier Series

Take Action

1. Set up a system of capturing content ideas
2. Do the 5×5 exercise outlined in this episode
3. Pick one of the ten ideas shared in this episode and add it to your current strategy for finding content ideas

What Do You Think?

• What other ideas do you have for generating content ideas?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

We had way more questions come in than we had time to answer live on the show, but I made sure to get back to as many people as possible through the live chat as I could.

For a limited time you can watch the recording of the webinar here.

It will be taken down on Sunday, November 29. Enjoy!

Despite the $6000 price tag, we were able to sell out the program before the official launch day. We never even had to use the sales page our copywriter had been toiling away on.

In this video we reveal the tools and methodology used in the launch.

It’s from the Internet Business Mastery podcast, but I wanted to post it here for you as well.

Download the Video

Click Here to Watch the Video Online

Two of the questions I get asked most about content marketing are…

1. What should I blog/podcast about?
2. Where do I find new content ideas so that I don’t run out?

After this episode you’ll have several tools at your fingertips for generating endless content ideas, whether for blogging, audio or video.

Download the MP3

Watch the Video version

In this episode of Mastering New Media…

• How to make sure that you never lose and amazing content idea
• The first content that you should create for a brand new blog or podcast to turn prospects into ideal customers
• How to create a year’s worth of content ideas in just two hours

Items Mentioned in This Episode

• Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• Google Alerts
• Google Reader
• Technorati
• Delicious
• Digg
• Survey Monkey
• 10 Ways to Find Continuous Content Ideas (PDF)

Take Action

1. Set up a system of capturing content ideas
2. Do the 5×5 exercise outlined in this episode
3. Pick one of the ten ideas shared in this episode and add it to your current strategy for finding content ideas

What Do You Think?

• What other ideas do you have for generating content ideas?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

We’ve been discussing the New Media Money Map over the last several episodes (Attention > Permission > Engagement > Influence > Action). We also outlined the Laws of Magnetism that, when used properly, will automatically attract new leads to your business.

This led us to the following five New Media Marketing Maxims.

1. Create content that will attract the attention of your target market
2. Get permission from your prospect interact with them regularly
3. Engage followers frequently to build influence
4. Leverage your influence to get followers to take action
5. Use the most time- and cost-efficient methods to produce, publish and syndicate content (streamline, automate, outsource)

In this episode we talk about how to put these maxims into action with an effective content marketing strategy.

Download the MP3

Watch the Video version

In this episode of Mastering New Media…

• How to choose the right type of content and which social media tools are best for your business
• The most important criteria to consider before starting and content creation strategy

Items Mentioned in This Episode

• Twitter

Take Action

BEGINNER

1. Choose one primary channel (blogging, podcasting or video) to begin with
2. Create a Twitter account. Start getting familiar with the basics of how to use it

ADVANCED

1. Add an additional primary channel (blogging, audio or video) to your content creation strategy

What Do You Think?

• Which primary channel are you going to (or did you) start with and why?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

After a bout of panic that I had lost an hour of writing, I hit the back button and discovered that, thankfully, my post was still there. But how was I supposed to get it published?

The biggest problem at this point was my own technical prowess. I know that may sound backwards, but it’s true.

The fact that I have an engineering and programming background led me to believe that I could solved it.

“Honey, I Think You Should Pull Over”

It’s kind of like when you know in the back of your mind that you’re lost, but you don’t want to admit it. Your spouse prods you to pull over and ask for directions, but you just know that you’ll find your way again any second so you pridefully continue wandering.

After a couple hours of pure frustration I finally turned to Google. A simple search for 404 error WordPress publish immediately revealed the answer. To sum up the rather geeky explanation, a security setting on the server was causing my post to be scanned for threats before publishing. Believe it or not, the word “from” in my post was what was causing all the havok.

Apparently that is used a lot in database commands and so my post was being blocked just in case it was actually someone that was up to shenanigans with the site.

Heroic Support

At that point I had learned my lesson. I didn’t want to mess with the technicalities of the issue. I brought up a live chat window with the self-proclaimed “heroic support” team at Liquid Web where I host this site.

In less than five minutes, they had it solved. I have to say, Liquid Web’s support is indeed heroic. I highly recommend their services. (And yes that is an affiliate link to their site, but I would recommend their services even without the commission.)

The Moral of This Story

What’s the moral of this story? There are a few.

1. I need to get out of my own way so I can create more content for this blog.
2. If you run into the mysterious ‘404 not found’ error when trying to publish a post with WordPress, contact your support and direct them to this article.
3. You should have a host with great service that you can depend on (and that won’t just point the finger back at you when there’s a problem).
4. Before you hit Publish, always select your entire post and hit Ctrl-C (Command-C on Mac) just in case. That way you’ll have your work saved if things go awry.