Welcome to the Story Bistro blog!
Our most recent posts have been cued up for your enjoyment. This month, our focus is on blooming and deepening our online relationships.
(See the footer at the bottom of this page to browse by category.)
Tipping Sacred Marketing Cows: The Hero’s Journey as Ideal Story Structure
This month, I got curious about the best practice of using The Hero's Journey (aka The Monomyth) as THE structure for our best stories. For me, the problem is that this structure comes with the metaphors of battle built into it. And those metaphors bleed out...
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Collaborate in the (Online) Kitchen and Yield Exponential Results
Just Say No to “Fast Food” Marketing: 10 Tips for Healthy Marketing on a Budget
When you're really hungry, it's easy to opt for fast-food. It's cheap and it's quick, and it gets the job done. But a Whopper isn't beef bourguignon. There's about a 2-hour difference in the time it takes to create them. The Whopper costs a whole lot less because The...
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Visual Marketing: A Review and Interview with the Authors
I recently spoke with Anita Campbell of SmallBizTrends.com and BizSugar.com and David Langton of Langton Cherubino Group -- the co-authors of "Visual Marketing: 99 Proven Ways for Small Businesses to Market with Images and Design." If you'd like to listen to the...
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How I Grew Site Traffic by 60% in Three Months: A Peek into the Small Biz Branding Contest
As many of you noticed, we recently wrapped up the First Annual Tastiest Small Biz Brand Award campaign. The event/marketing efforts lasted nearly three months and worked to accomplish (or surpass!) several goals. These were: Help establish Word Chef authority in the...
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Color Your Life Happy: Interview with Flora Brown, PhD
Spent an enjoyable Monday morning chatting with Flora Brown of Color Your Life Happy on BlogTalkRadio. Listen to this 30 minute interview and learn my 9 step process for creating your Secret Sauce so you can spice up your small...
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Closing the Deal: Building a Business that Generates Income
This is a guest post by Zeus Many of you, like me, are putting in a lot of time, energy, and money into developing an online business. And yet concrete outcomes (substantial business income, successful products, etc.) sometimes seem so far away. We're taught to be the...
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Speak Up! Why and How to Find Your Voice
This is a guest post by Zeus This week I quadrupled sign-ups for my mailing list, and re-taught myself some valuable lessons: Trust yourself. Be original in voice. Put quality first. Tap into your existing community. Write what you know. Here's what happened: My guest...
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This Week’s Marketing Dish: Apple Nachos
Keith Pillow of Caddy Marketing submitted the first dish up for examination in my new weekly series that answers the question, "What the heck can we learn about marketing from our favorite foods?" An expert on marketing and communications, career advancement, and...
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Little-Known Ways to Cook Up Great Content
This is a guest post by Adrienne Erin When writing for your blog, it isn't always easy to come up with new ideas. Posting four to eight times a month means finding effective ways to create content that will engage and entertain readers on a regular basis. When you...
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Give your community a gift… just because
This post is part of the 30-Day Bloom Your Online Relationships Challenge. If you'd like to play along, you can sign up here (don't worry -- it's FREE). We're all working through these small, powerful actions together and sharing our questions, learnings and...
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10 Solid Tips for Marketing Your Online Courses
This is a guest post from one of our Digital Dining Room members, Abe Crystal of ruzuku.com. If there’s one question we hear at ruzuku over and over again, it’s, "How do I effectively market and promote my online course?" Fundamentally? Marketing your course is STILL...
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On the Paradox of Your (Writer’s) Devotion
It was 4 a.m. on a Monday and most of the water protectors were gathered around a bonfire near the foot of a bridge in Standing Rock, North Dakota. But not Sophia. The 21-year old woman was up on the bridge with a friend when she was hit in the forearm with what folks...
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Tell a More Engaging Brand Story: Use a Villain!
One of the things I have my clients do over the course of our time together is create a persona (or three) for their customers' Big Challenge/Desire. (It's part of the Biz Story Outline.) We ask the question: Who, or What stands in the way of your client...
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Collaborations: 12 Ways to Build Your Brand
12 Drummers Drumming! Wow! It’s the last day of the 12 Days of Branding! If you missed any of the series thus far, you can find them here. In today’s installment we look at how to use collaborations to build a strong brand. When you think of drummers drumming, what...
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Small Biz Finance Forum: Interview with Nicole Fende
Nicole Fende, aka The Numbers Whisperer, interviews Tea about cooking up a killer brand. Check out the podcast on her BlogTalkRadio show: The Small Biz Finance...
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Biggest Business Lesson of the Year: Be (Gasp!) Human
Earlier this month, I talked about the Bears (and how to keep them from eating your business). That post sort of explains the comeback to small biz ownership I made last year. But it's not the whole story. Nope. See, this is the anniversary of something pretty darn...
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The Quantum Mechanics of Manifesting Your Community
I'm the oldest of 6 kids. And I've always been overly enthusiastic about my own ideas. Which of course means, I'm bossy a natural leader. Whether I was organizing a backyard production of Cinderella with my siblings (and any other neighborhood kid lucky enough to...
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Don’t Read the Instruction Manual: It’s Time to Improvise
Growing up in a Mormon family, I was encouraged to learn things that would develop me into the perfect wife and homemaker. How to make jam. How to sew. How to play with barbies. You know, girly things. And there were always lots of instructions for these things. A...
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When the Going Gets Rough, Best Have Something to Stand On
This is a guest post by Zeus Why don’t shortcuts work for the important things? Why are real friendships, productive professional relationships, well-run businesses, life callings, marriage, and parenting so inconveniently and persistently demanding? These things...
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Remember You’re Already Connected
This post is part of the 30-Day Bloom Your Online Relationships Challenge. If you'd like to play along, you can sign up here (don't worry -- it's FREE). We're all working through these small, powerful actions together and sharing our questions, learnings and...
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It’s All About YOU
(and WHO is that, exactly?) And now for something completely different. Rather than hear from me, I'd like to get to know you. Here's how to play: Introduce yourself and your business to the rest of the world in a comment below. Include any links to your website...
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Lovably Unpopular: An Interview with Erika Napoletano and a Chance to Win Her New Book
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that around here, figuring out your Secret Sauce is a pretty huge deal. That's why I was so excited about the chance to talk with Erika Napoletano (the person behind the persona at RedHeadWriting.com). She's got her own...
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This Week’s Marketing Dish: Beef Stew
Gloria Miele, a small biz coach from Camarillo, CA, emailed this week’s suggestion while she was cooking up a pot of beef stew over the holidays. Here's what she had to say: Most of the women in my family make stew this way (with some variation, like deglazing the pan...
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Table Talk Q&A: How Do I Pick the Best Marketing Strategies for My Business (and Avoid Wasting Time/Money)?
Question: There are SO many resources, opportunities for learning, mentors, etc., how can I efficiently choose the marketing technique(s) that will most likely align with my business plans, goals and industry? How do I best allocate my limited resources (time/$) to...
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Why Your Business is Stuck and How to Move it Forward (Especially if You’re Flat Broke and Jonesing for a High-Priced Program)
Are you like Julia? She signed up for every free e-course that she could find. She's downloaded just about all the free templates, e-books and worksheets that are out there (and most -- if not all -- are languishing among digital dust bunnies on her hard drive)....
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What Small Biz Owners Can Learn from Superbowl Ads (Besides How to Waste Ungodly Amounts of Money)
I must confess: beyond the pleasures that come with watching a slew of manly men in tight pants run around and get sweaty, I'm not really a fan of football. I watch to support Mr. Perfect's interests and because (let's face it) he's holding the remote. What I DO love...
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