In the spirit of our new course, Run Your Business Like a Magazine, I thought I’d lay out 10 observations on how great magazines (paper and digital) get it right, & how you can apply these insights to your own business brand.

How to run your business brand like a magazine — a primer:

1. Be bold. Notice the trends (or patterns or fresh insights) coming down the pipeline in your industry. Precipitate them. Name them. Show them off. Leverage them. Invite your Right People to try them in the context of what your business does.
2. Realize that you can’t do it all alone. You may need (you will need, if you scale your business past teeny-tiny) to hire an assistant, a VA, staff, subcontractors, or an intern or two. This is good. This is growth. This is collaboration.
3. Be true to your vision but make room for other people’s gifts and strengths. In truth, The Voice Bureau probably still wouldn’t be operating today were it not for Katie Mehas. I’m not saying this as mere flattery. Katie came into the business in 2012 and since then, has been like the master.
4. Get a plan for success. Work the plan. If the plan doesn’t work, get a new plan. Planful endeavors are successful endeavors. Don’t be afraid to reinvent, but do it incrementally.
5. Get a signature Thing. Be known for something. Be an original. In our business, it’s our Voice Values paradigm for branding.
6. Know what makes you different. Get clear on what sets you apart from others in your industry and niche. There’s a reason your Right People select your ‘issue’ from the ‘newsstand’ [sorry, couldn’t resist].
7. Know your reader. Magazines are a great example of a Right Person-focused business. They have to be, because every issue, and every page of every issue, matters. Home in on what piques your Right Person’s interest, and beyond that, understand why it does.
8. Be about something. Meaning: have a keen focus. You can be a lifestyle magazine or a special interest magazine, but either way, own your subject matter, your take, your strong stance, your point of view. No matter which path you choose — generalist with a POV or specialist — own it.
9. Have fun. Every magazine has its own sense of zeal, of play, of wonderment, of fascination, of obsession. Whether you’re reading Kinfolk, Science Magazine, or Elle Decor, you probably read it because their take on their topic lights YOU up in some way. They couldn’t do that to you without their being lit up first.
10. Embrace your preferred medium while being mindful of multimedia. As major magazines learned in the mid-aughts, when the world changes, you have to change with it. With the ubiquity of social media, no brand can afford to be missing from the online conversation. Find a reason to be there and get on it.

Today’s brands exist on the web through content, and content is the currency of any magazine — paper or digital.

In our new 4-week course, newly minted Creative Director Katie Mehas (yeah, we’re going to announce that officially very soon!) is leading participants through the ins and outs of creating a compelling content strategy that’s both intuitive AND planful. Learn to meld your personal interests and passions in the context of what you do with the needs and curiosities of your Right People. Make a plan, work your plan, and love it, too.

ALL THE DETAILS ON RUN YOUR BUSINESS LIKE A MAGAZINE ARE RIGHT HERE

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What’s your favorite of these lessons from the world of magazines? 

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When I listen to a client’s brand, even before we’ve put words on the page for it or before there’s a website I can look at, I’m listening for two things: voice and vibe.

Though similar in nature and certainly intertwined, they’re not exactly the same things.

I describe vibe as the energy of the abstract qualities that come through a brand in its suite of signals. Vibe shows up in the design choices: color, typography, graphic style, layout. Vibe comes through the content. Vibe is felt in a business’s relationship with its customers, its readers, its supporters.

But describing your own brand’s vibe, or desired vibe, can be slippery. If you have an existing brand, there might be a gap between what the vibe you want and the vibe you’ve got.

You might have told a designer, “I want edgy, feminine, bohemian, and sacred,” and you might have gotten something else back — something that looked to you like ‘trendy, girly, and witchy.’ A different vibe. You might have sent a designer a pinboard full of colors, textures, and images, but what you got back wasn’t the composition you had in your mind’s eye. Therefore, the vibe was off.

Here are 3 exercises you can do to describe your existing brand’s vibe, or to describe your desired brand vibe if you’re in line for a redesign:

1. Focus on Colors. Where do the colors you love come from, in nature, history, design, art, or fashion? Are they linked to an era, like these Art Nouveau-era colors, or this Midcentury Modern palette? Are they inspired by fashion? Maybe built around a hex code resembling Chanel’s cult-classic nail polish Vamp? Did you derive your colors from a photo you took at a favorite spot outdoors, like, say, Washington State’s Cape Flattery? And what do your color choices SAY about what matters to you and your brand?

2. Filter Your Copy. Reread the most important pages of your site. Read your home page, about page, and service/sales page. Read them sentence by sentence and keep a pad of paper next to you as you read. As you read, write down the ONE most important word in each sentence — according to YOU. When you’re done, review your (long) list. Look for patterns in the words. Are there themes and motifs emerging? Are you noticing something about your brand or business you’ve never seen before in quite the same way?

3. Find Your Right People. Think of your 5 favorite clients so far. Write their names down. For each client, think of 5 words to describe them and write those down. Look for patterns in your list of 25. Any recurring words? Synonyms (different words that mean the same thing)? Really interesting juxtapositions that give your brand texture?

It’s a quick trip from vibe to themes and from themes to content. There’s a bit of a hop, skip, and a jump in there, but we know how to get you from Point A to Point B. Inside our new online course, Run Your Business Like a Magazine, we’ll unpack the magic of getting from vibe to voice on the page — in the form of a content strategy you can be proud of that meets your Right Person’s needs and inspires you to keep creating and publishing.

All the details on Run Your Business Like a Magazine are right here.

In the comments, we’d love to hear you:

Describe your own brand’s vibe, or desired vibe. We’d love to hear the words you’d choose, especially if you’ve done one or more of the exercises described here!

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What do you do for content when absolutely nothing seems worth writing about?

First of all, know that I have been there many times.

I’m guessing you have, too. It’s as common a problem for writers as any other problem. You might call it writer’s block or ambivalence or perfectionism or resistance.

No matter how you see fit to label it, the problem is getting words on the page. And believing they will matter.

You know that in a business brand that markets itself online, content is essential. Essentially, it’s the lifeblood of operations. Without meaningful content going out on a consistent basis (and I don’t just mean blogging — e-newsletters, podcasts, videos, images and graphics, and social media updates all count as content), a brand’s ability to connect withers and wanes.

When writing fresh, new, meaningful content feels impossible

There are times when you don’t feel inspired, tuned in, or capable of writing content that matters to your Right Person. This is so normal. Life isn’t an endless pipeline of inventive energy. It’s just not always there, or palpable.

But you’ve got a business to run and a brand to build, and if you want to keep going, you have to keep showing up.

For the times you have to push through the sludge to get to the gold (or even just the pyrite, which is still beautiful and worthy), here are 5 suggestions:

1. REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE. You are a uniquely designed amalgam of gifts, talents, strengths, obsessions, genius, preoccupations, loves, and predilections. (Dark matter, too, of course. That’s what makes us whole.) All that is in you is there for a reason. Make a list so you can see it in front of you, or if you feel more comfy in the visual realm, make a pinboard. Pick something from that list or that board and tie it in to your business and your Right Person’s journey. Write about that.  If you just can’t see who you are (the star stuff, not the dark matter), ask someone who loves you to remind you.
2. REMEMBER WHY YOU’RE DOING THIS. This work, this business, this brand. This mission, this vision, this Right Person potential reader. Write down 5 sentences you consider to be TRUE that tell the world why your business exists. Or 5 sentences about why your Right Person needs a business like yours to exist. Let each sentence can be a standalone — a one-liner. When you’re done, pick your favorite and write about that. Unpack it. Unfold it.
3. START WITH WHAT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. I truly mean what’s right in front of you. Years ago when we were cohorts in a Master’s program, my friend Kelly and I used to take ourselves out to this place called Ray’s, a local diner. Just off the campus of Kent State University, it was a favorite watering hole for students, profs, alumni, and locals. We were both (are both) aspiring fiction writers as well as English teachers-in-training. We’d sit down over plates of grilled cheese and fries with salt and ketchup. We were there to nosh and talk and also to write. Inevitably, one of us would grab the salt shaker and say, “Write about this salt shaker.” And there we’d start. We’d end up somewhere else entirely.
4. START WITH THE VERY FIRST THING YOU REMEMBER. Go back to the beginning of your business. What’s the very first thing you remember doing/thinking/feeling? Sitting in your accountant’s office as you filled out paperwork to set up your LLC? Doodling ideas in a notebook in a doctor’s waiting room? Announcing to family at Thanksgiving Dinner that you’d be quitting your job and going out on your own? Tie that memory into something that’s meaningful to your Right Person: a need, an interest, a question, a desire. Write about that.
5. START ON THE DAY THAT IS DIFFERENT. This is how you start a short story, according to my very first creative writing professor. Don’t start way back at the beginning, when the main character was born or married or got her first job, and then work forward into the action. Start on the day that is different. She wakes up and her living room furniture is gone. She wakes up and the sky is orange. She wakes up and wants to leave the country. Something has changed and now nothing can be the same. For every Right Person customer or client, there is a day on which they decide to hire you or make their first purchase through your shopping cart. What is happening for them on that day? What point have they reached? What decision have they made? What have they perceived differently today than they ever have before? Start there and write something for your Right Person about the day that is different (for them).

Sometimes writing for your brand will feel inspired and glow-y, like a gift from the gods, arriving whole and perfect and able to breathe on its own. Other times, writing will feel pedantic or pathetic, dry or hackneyed or even ridiculous.

We hope these suggestions help you to take a second look at your experience and find a new way to talk about it — even when it’s tough.

If you could use some extra inspiration for developing content that’s meaningful to you and your Right People, check out our 4-week course, Run Your Business Like a Magazine.

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What do you do when absolutely nothing seems worth writing about but you still want to create something for your brand?

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