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.)
We’re Brokenhearted and Helpless. Here’s How We Turn that Around…
"Sometimes I wish the apocalypse would get here, already." My younger sister said this to me while we were talking about the state of the world. She's pregnant with twins. Boys this time. (She's already got five kids -- four are girls.) The twins should be arriving on...
read more
7 Basic Story Types and Why They Matter to Your Marketing
Julia sat on the edge of her seat, leaning in toward the fire. "Mad Henry lived alone in a run down mansion at the edge of town." Her father's voice hung in the air, low and steady. "Rumors about the wild-eyed man never died. Some folks said he was a magician who...
read more
The Crowd Sale Experiment Concludes (What I Learned and Will This Work For You?)
Note: This post is Part 2 in the series. Read Part 1 here. How well did the Crowd Sale work for our Tarotic Story Prompts Deck? The results are in. In one week, we sold a total of 53 decks. (If you'd like to buy one now, you can do that here.) How did that happen?...
read more
How to Stand Out, Stand Up, and Help Change the Business World
Do you look the same as your competitors? SOUND the same? You might find this hard to believe, but even with my branding background, I've had a blind spot about HOW to stand out from the crowd. Differentiation -- that fancy word for your Unique Value Proposition -- is...
read more
Bad Table Manners: 39 Ways to Kill Valuable Business Relationships
No man is an island. -- John Donne You've probably heard the Golden Rule of Sales: that folks only do business with those they know, like and trust. It's true. The Better Business Bureau's Standards of Trust are built on this maxim. Luckily, most of my business...
read more
Get ‘er Done: Write Your Marketing Copy and Content
You're just like me. A small business owner who doesn't have their own marketing department (or who can't afford to hire an expert). Who wears all the hats and later wonders why you have a "bad case of hat head" (as one of my clients likes to say). And whose arms are...
read more
10 Totally Unique Ideas for Your Next Blog Post
Nobody ever wants to "phone it in." Our blog posts reflect who we are as a brand and a small business. The more you're able to think creatively about your content, the more you'll be able to generate engagement and interest, right? So I asked some of the brightest...
read more
Brainstorming 2.0: 15 Juicy Ways to Use the Internet
When we were kids, we had no problem accessing our imaginations. We also had no Internet, barely any TV (I remember a whopping FIVE channels!), and video games? Fuhgettaboutit. When we wanted to have fun, we had to make that sh*# UP. I remember creating whole fantasy...
read more
11 Tips for Making Your Brand a Word-of-Mouth Superstar
11 Pipers Piping! It’s Day 11 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 what needs to happen in order to get people talking about your brand. If you know me at all, you know that I'm...
read more
Yes! You CAN Stop Pigging Out on All That Information
This is a guest post by Zeus Yiamouyiannis, a reader who responded to a recent PB&J newsletter with this bit of helpful advice. (If you're a reader, too -- keep that in mind the next time you're bold enough to reply to my emails!) Okay, you and I do it all the...
read more
The Un-Sexy Side of Internet Marketing
These days, most of us would agree that in order to do business and market ourselves properly, you need a website. A digital space that belongs just to you. (Not to Facebook, or Tumblr or even WordPress.com -- for reasons that my friend Annie so beautifully explains.)...
read more
This Week’s Marketing Dish: Ice-Cream Christmas Pudding
Elizabeth Todd, the brains behind Income Trigger Consulting emailed this week’s suggestion. Here's what she had to say about this particular dish: When I first arrived in Australia I was invited to have Christmas with relatives of my girlfriend and there I discovered...
read more
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...
read more
Case Study: Creating an About Page that Works
Did you know that your About Page is one of your website's most important tools? For some of us, it's probably one of THE most-visited pages on the entire site. And that's because people want to know who they're about to do business with. Are you trustworthy? Do you...
read more
A Surprising Way to Fix the Drawbacks of Digital Marketing (and Find New Clients)
I have a confession. I used to think I was an extrovert. After all, I've never had qualms about speaking in public. I've never felt anxiety around being the new kid in the room. And there was a time in my self-employed career when I was sure that my perfect job would...
read more
From the Heart: How to Get the Best Testimonials (So You Can Attract a Hungry Crowd)
Hear this truth: Your people love you. You're conscientious. You over-deliver. You care about your clients' success. You're a big-hearted entrepreneur with the best of intentions. And hear this...
read more
Writing Prompt: Your Soap Box
What do you stand for? Questions to get you started: What's bugging you about how your competitors operate? What do you see happening that needs to stop? What positive changes need to be made in your industry or line of business that everyone else seems to overlook or...
read more
If You Had Clients Like These…
...You'd Be in Love, Too Few business owners are as lucky as I am. I don't talk about them often enough, but I have some of the BEST clients in the world. Each of them are doing amazing things -- changing and shifting, growing into more confident and glowing versions...
read more
How to Tell a Compelling Story with Your About Page
Do you dread writing your About Page (like you dread cleaning out the fridge)? You're not alone. We all know we need one. And yes, it's probably one of THE most-visited pages on your entire site. (Have you checked your Google Analytics lately? Go do it. I'll wait.)...
read more
Tipping Sacred Marketing Cows: “You MUST Have an Elevator Pitch”
Want to be different and stand out from the crowd? One of the best ways to do that is to challenge the status quo. And over at the Business Luminaries’ Roundtable, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Talking about the elephants in the various rooms of our industries....
read more
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...
read more
The Nemesis: Tell Your Marketing Story Better with a Character (or three)
One of the things you want to do is personify the problems of your customers. Why? Because it helps you tell better stories about how you fix those problems. I've done this for my own business, and was able to identify almost a dozen evil characters that stop my...
read more
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...
read more
Does this Business Make Me Look Like a Fat Failure? (Or, How to Silence That Voice in Your Head)
How're you feeling about your business and where it's headed? Hunky dory? Or just hunky? Is there a nagging voice in the back of your head screaming that your projects will never be Grade-A material? Are you constantly taking one course after another in order to get...
read more
(Infographic) If Your Blog Were a Beer, What Kind Would it Be?
I always love when food (or in this case, drink) and marketing come together. Once you've read thru this infographic, share what flavor you think your blog is in a comment below... If Your Blog Were A Beer... infographic by...
read more
Return on Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring and More (an Interview with the Author)
Mark Schaefer stopped in at the Word Café last week and we had a chance to talk recently about his new book, Return on Influence. Here are the highlights: Q: How did you decide to write this book? I have to be honest...I've been watching this whole Klout thing from...
read more
The Great Email Experiment (or, Why Your Inbox is the Best Social Media Channel to Grow Your Biz)
Last month, a couple of folks I know (yep...Carney folks!) were lamenting the fact that there seemed to be an unusual number of people unsubscribing -- or, worse! complaining about SPAM -- every time they sent an email to their lists. Feelings of panic, fear and...
read more