How to unbore your marketing. (Or: how fun gets you better results.)

Last week I added something new & different to my ezine: a (very) short story entitled ‘Meg’s Business Adventures’. So what’s that all about? Why am I doing this? And, even more importantly: why should you care? Let’s start with how & why I got the idea: I’ve been writing my ezine since 2005. And I always loved it. But last year it started to bore me. And you know what happens when you get bored with something, right? People feel that your heart’s not really in it. Which made the ezine less attractive to read. Which made the open-rate of the ezine drop. Which didn’t add to my enthusiasm for writing it. I decided this needed to change. I wanted to find a way to spice up my ezine so that: 1. I would be in love with my ezine myself again, and 2. Have more people resonate with (and read) it again. 3. (And I also wanted to add something that’s unique for ME, not something that 6 billion others are already doing.) At first I had no clue how to do this, so I asked my intuition to bring me a cool idea on a silver platter. (Always works, by the way. Try it sometime.) And it did. A couple of weeks before, I wondered how I could write more for the fun of it. No ezines, articles, blogs, or sales pages. Just writing for no other reason than the pure pleasure of writing itself. Those two questions combined, and the idea suddenly hit me: What if I would write very short stories, a bit funny & weird, and I added those to my ezine? And you can only read them when you open my ezine – they’re not published anywhere else? I immediately LOVED the idea. I already have a ton of stories in mind and can’t wait to write them all. As a result, I’m totally in love with my ezine again. And whether or not this will lead to a higher open rate is not even important. The important thing is that I have my flow for my ezine back. That I love, love, LOVE it again. That vibe oozes through my entire business and marketing – not just this ezine. It energizes everything I do. And one way or another, my business will benefit from it. Because people ALWAYS feel if your heart, soul & excitement are in the things you do – or not. Sure, there will be people who think it’s stupid or weird or totally uninteresting. That’s fine. I’m not writing it so everyone will like it (or me). I really don’t care about that. I’m doing it because I like it myself. Which is one of the best benefits of having your own business and being in charge, right? :) Okay, now it’s your turn. What in your business bores you to tears? (Or started to bore you just a tad.) What in your marketing feels like a chore, a must, something you don’t feel excited about? Where in your business (or life) are you on autopilot? Once you’ve identified the areas of your business you’re no longer in love with, ask yourself the following questions: How can you spice it up? How can you make it fun? What would make you fall in love with it like never before? Brainstorm. Come up with crazy wild ideas. Ideas SO out there that people might seriously doubt your state of mind and common business sense. Speaking of which: leave common business sense out of it, please. For most people, that kills all creativity faster than…well, anything. Go crazy. Be YOU to the max. The more you are YOU and enjoy what you do, the easier your ideal clients will resonate with you. Find you. And want to work with you. Go play and have fun! © 2015 Brigitte van Tuijl