Business Growth Strategies » Blogging

Business Interviews Galore!

Ryan M. Healy — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 14:10:41 +0000

Over the past few years, I’ve done a number of written interviews with fellow bloggers.

You may have seen some of these interviews. But I’m willing to bet you’ve missed one or two of them. And even if you’ve read all of them, I think you’ll still get some value by revisiting them.

So, with that in mind, I’ve collected together links to some of the best written interviews I’ve done during the last 2-3 years. Each of these links opens in a new tab or window.

12 Questions with Ryan Healy – Kevin Rogers asked me a lot of personal questions as well as some out-of-the-ordinary ones that were really good.

5 Questions with Ryan Healy – Jason Leister asked me about business and books. This one is very recent.

Ryan Healy – The Interview – Stephen Dean fired 12 questions at me more than 2 years ago. I think this was the first written interview I ever did.

Is Copywriting Important to Bloggers? – In March 2010, Lynn Terry asked me 5 questions. One of those was, “Is copywriting important to bloggers?” This interview also includes 3 Tips for Improving Your Online Business.

How to Get Lots of New Clients in Hard Times – In this interview, Ben Settle hammered me with 12 questions all about how to get clients. Good stuff if you’re a freelancer.

That should keep you busy for a while. ;-)

Enjoy!

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. By the way, if you have a blog about business, copywriting, blogging, or marketing… and you’d like to do a written interview with me… just shoot me an email at rhealy@gmail.com.

You provide the questions — and I’ll provide the answers.

It’s the fastest way I know of to get 1,000 to 2,000 words of content for your blog. And I might even link to the interview down the road.

I can only accept 3 interview requests right now (I already have one in the queue from December 2010). So if you’re interested, please email me asap. Thanks!Similar Posts:

Brainstorm Copy with Skype

Ryan M. Healy — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:41:55 +0000

In the middle of a big project right now, hence my lack of blogging lately.

But I thought I’d share one little tip with you that I’ve recently discovered.

If you’re working with a client or partner on a project, and you want to strengthen a subject line or email or headline or whatever — Skype can be a great way to do it.

Just hop on the instant chat and bat around your ideas.

For me, I’ve found it really enjoyable — contagious even — to collaborate in this way. You generate a bunch of ideas in a short amount of time, eventually zeroing in on the best one.

Next time you’re trying to hammer out some copy with a partner or client, log on to Skype (or any instant chat program) and see what happens.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

Adsense Blogging Makeover – Complimentary Interview

Ryan M. Healy — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:30:35 +0000

Ever wanted to monetize your blog with Adsense? Then you’ll definitely want to grab the free Adsense blogging interview I’ve linked to at the bottom of this post.

I’ve tested Adsense a few times throughout the years with a modicum of success. But lately my interest has been rekindled because of some new plugins that make it super easy to put Adsense on WordPress blogs.

(This is in contrast to the old days when I had to cut and paste the Adsense code on every page of my site. Ugh!)

A couple weeks ago, Mark Allen stumbled on my blog and called me up to talk. During our second conversation, he offered to do an Adsense makeover on my blog.

Since I’ve been wanting to switch things up on my blog anyway, and my previous experiments with Adsense on RyanHealy.com have generated very little income, I agreed to the interview.

At the very least, I figured it would be a good challenge for Mark. :-)

Turns out, Mark’s advice is really good. And while the jury is still out on whether Adsense will work on this blog or not, Mark’s advice is already producing good results on another blog I write.

With that in mind, here’s the link to go download the Adsense makeover interview from Mark’s blog. I hope you get as much out of the interview as I did. Enjoy!

-Ryan M. Healy

Similar Posts:

Warning: 34 Million People Can’t Read Your Blog!

Ryan M. Healy — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:42:03 +0000

Last I checked, Apple had sold like a hundred gazillion iPods and iPhones.

Okay, just counting iPhones alone, they’ve sold more like 33.75 million as of fourth quarter 2009. [source]

Remember, that’s not counting any iPod Touch sales.

Plus, millions more Crackberries, PDAs, web-enabled cell phones, and handheld Internet devices have been sold all across the world.

I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I said that 70 million people worldwide can now surf the Internet on a handheld device. And even if it were “only” 34 million people, that’s a LOT of mobile web surfers!

Question: Have you ever wondered how many people are trying to read your blog using a handheld mobile device? And have you ever seen what your blog looks like on one?

I only recently got an iPhone in July 2009 — so I’m not casting stones here at all — and all of a sudden I realized why “the mobile web” is actually a really big deal.

One morning in particular brought this to the front of my mind. My friend was traveling and my brother had slept through his alarm clock, so all of a sudden I found myself at Panera alone… without a book. (The horror!)

But I did have my iPhone.

So I stopped in at a few of my favorite blogs.

Let me tell you: It was practically impossible to read some of them! The words wouldn’t resize, the borders wouldn’t flex, and I’d be stuck scrolling left to right and squinting to read the super-small font.

Not a pleasant experience.

Then I tried to read my blog. And it wasn’t much better!

The fact is, a blog that’s designed to be read on a computer cannot be easily read on a screen that’s perhaps one-tenth or even one-twentieth the size of a full computer screen.

That’s when I got curious about how to modify my blog for mobile readers.

Turns out, it’s way easier than I thought — if you have a WordPress blog.

All you have to do in WordPress is scroll down to “Plugins” from within the admin panel and click on “Add New.” Type “WordPress Mobile Pack” into the search box. Click “Install” next to the plugin to install it.

From there, customize as you wish.

It’s a beautiful thing. Because immediately you will have a site that is easily viewed and read by any mobile web user.

Problem solved! (Not to mention you can now grab the eyeballs of a few million web surfers who are stuck in department stores while their wives try on clothes.)

-Ryan M. Healy

Similar Posts:

Brandwashed

Ryan M. Healy — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:09:10 +0000

You might wonder why I asked you to tell me your favorite brands a couple weeks ago. The reason I did this was to prove a point: brands are powerful.

In a world of information overload, brands are even more important. They give us a decision shortcut — a way to side-step all the choices we’re faced with every day.

We don’t evaluate dozens of different brands every time we go to buy a certain type of product. We do our evaluation once, maybe twice, then we default to our “brand of choice” for months, years, and possibly decades.

This is the power of a brand.

In a way, we are brainwashed… or brandwashed… to make certain buying decisions.

Does this mean that brand-name “image” advertising is good advertising? No. In fact, most image advertising is terrible. Yet brands thrive in spite of their advertising. The question is Why?

If you look at all the brands people listed as brands they love, you’ll find that most of them deliver more than just a product or service; they deliver a positive memorable experience.

For instance, Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks were all listed more than once. And all of them deliver an experience.

Apple offers a fun, low-stress environment where you can demo all their computers and ask as many questions as you want before you buy. (Of course, they have an amazing product, which doesn’t hurt either.)

Amazon offers a fast, convenient buying experience that is customized to you and your buying habits. Ordering is easy, prices are hard to beat, and Amazon’s personalized recommendations often lead you to new musicians and authors you would have otherwise never discovered.

Starbucks offers more than just coffee — they offer a pleasant environment where you can relax, read, study, visit with friends, or check your email. When you buy a cup of Starbucks coffee, you’re also buying ambiance.

Starbucks also showed up on my list. That’s because my wife and I used to go on dates at Starbucks. It was our favorite hang-out both before and after we got married. We’ve been going to the same Starbucks/Barnes & Noble combo for more than a decade now. That’s a lot of talks and a lot of memories.

So each time I support Starbucks, I’m buying not just the coffee (which I happen to like), I’m also buying my memories and all those good feelings I’ve associated with Starbucks.

In my view, people love brands that:

Create a (positive) memorable experience.
Stand for a certain value system or world view.

I believe a “memorable experience” is created primarily through one of two ways.

First, there is the experience that is designed to be extraordinary from the get-go. Take Disney, for instance. There’s nothing like it. And you’ll always remember the time you spend there because of that.

Second, there is the unexpected experience, usually in the form of outstanding customer service. This is why USAA showed up on my list. They’ve repeatedly given me excellent customer service. I haven’t experienced that anywhere else. So USAA stands out big time.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting because people hate brands for the same reasons they love them. We hate brands that…

Create a (negative) memorable experience.
Stand for a certain value system or world view.

Two examples…

Example #1: I hate Borders because I’ve repeatedly had bad experiences at their stores. And not just at one location — multiple locations. I was so upset by how I was treated at these stores that I literally “black-listed” them for years and refused to even step foot in one. Even today, years later, I will go out of my way to support their competitors.

Example #2: I strongly dislike Wal-Mart because of the values that run the company. Their approach to business is to save money at any cost — costs to the environment, costs to third-world countries, even costs to taxpayers. This is not what I believe in, so I intentionally avoid shopping at Wal-Mart.

So you see, we love and hate brands for essentially the same reasons. Interesting, eh?

Glenn Livingston dropped by and left an insightful comment. I’ve reproduced some of it here:

When I was a Fortune 500 consultant, we were involved with an advertising agency which wanted to promote the belief that people could define themselves by the three brands they absolutely couldn’t live without. They’d ask people what a typical day would be without those three brands. [...] Is your brand one of the 3 your customers couldn’t live without?

What a powerful question that is!

This is not to say we can all create “indespinsable brands” — but it’s certainly something worth striving for.

Remember: The more choices there are, the more important your brand is. Because a brand is how we shortcut the decision-making process. So, believe it or not, having a strong brand is important even for information marketers.

Case in point: How many blogs do you read on a daily/weekly/monthly basis?

I bet your daily blog list is short indeed. Maybe 3-7 blogs, max.

Taking a cue from Glenn, a good question to ask if you’re an information marketer might be, “Do I write one of the three blogs my customers couldn’t live without?”

Keep this in mind whenever you write blog posts… create information products… or do anything that defines (or refines) your brand.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. If you participated in my brand question from the previous post, thank you. It made this “thought experiment” much more interesting.
Similar Posts: