You need words to express what you do in a way that resonates with your people.

Oh, mama. You just might want to sit down for this one. It’s time for Stella to attack one of the interweb’s most popular darlings.

Search Engine Optimization.

The way SEO works is that you pump a webpage full of keywords that people are searching for, in the hopes that it will bump you up in the search engine rankings on google.

Now, to be clear – if you do SEO for a living, that’s great. I think you provide a valuable service to … Read the rest >

Let’s have a quick chat around what writing a website is REALLY about.

Here in our neighborhood, we’re gearing up for another round of our uber-popular Write Your Website production lab. So I always like to have a conversation around what writing a website is REALLY about:

(1) The BIG questions. When you write your own website, you’ve got to spend time BEING with the fundamentals of your business. Getting clear on YOUR answers to questions like:

• How do I actually work with people?
• What is the problem I solve for clients and customers – and do I have evidence

Shout it from the rooftops.

In marketing, as in life, you often only get half the story.

When I was a high school teacher, working at an alternative school in a church basement in the sort of neighborhood in Seattle where daytime shootings were not uncommon, this was what I taught in history class.

As my friend Rob Hallock from teacher school used to say, “where you sit determines where you’ll stand.”

In the case of history, I always told my students that there is more than one side to every event.

And often, it is the winners who write … Read the rest >

Copy isn’t magic. But relationships are.

I’m seeing too many business owners who want all the BENEFITS of having a mailing list that buys from them repeatedly…

… but when it comes to the work, the contribution, the sheer grit it takes to nurture relationships to the point where people will buy from a mere email…

… they aren’t interested, willing, or able.

So, let’s talk myths here.

Myth #1 – “I’ll just buy a mailing list.”

If I talk to another person who tells me they are working on an eBook/ecourse/group program but oh, they just can’t get it … Read the rest >

Check out what we’re cooking up in the Stella Orange laboratories.

There’s a reason why we call our programs “production labs.”

Because they’re about three things:

1) Learning to write copy as you actually get the writing done.
2) Discovering how to work with your own production process
3) Experimenting with being bolder in your message.

And because we’ve already taken hundreds of business owners through the Stella Orange laboratories, there are a few things I’ve noticed about what gets in the way.

Here they are, with some questions to dislodge yourself:

1) Not giving yourself enough time to think, … Read the rest >