Last updated on December 29th, 2018 at 03:42 pm
Have you been wondering how important it is to be able to market your dream?
One of the perks of being a top blog is that pr companies send you products to test before they hit the market.
My favorite pre-release products are books, especially if they are books that I think will benefit our readers.
On September 22, 2012, we will be celebrating National Business Women’s Day. In honor of this upcoming event I have agreed to read, review and talk about the book, Propel: Five Ways to Amp-Up Your Marketing and Accelerate Business
Every Sunday during September I will be taking excerpts from her book and discussing how they apply to 8 Women Dream and how they can help you.
If you have a dream that needs to be shared with the public in order for you to be a success (especially if you want to have a top blog or a best-selling book), you MUST think, live and breathe marketing.
As Whitney Keyes will tell you: Too often are women in business overlooked, especially those dreaming of turning a hobby into a business or currently running a small company.
Many women, from CEO’s to small business entrepreneurs, make marketing blunders and waste time, money and resources. She has 5 simple steps to help women accelerate their business.
Who is Whitney Keyes, you ask?
Whitney Keyes is a strategic communications professor at Seattle University with 20 years of experience working for the U.S. State Department and working with entrepreneurs like women meat vendors in Malaysia, micro-enterprise soap businesses in Kiberia, Kenya — one of the world’s largest slums, as well as Fortune 500 companies like American Express and Microsoft.
You might also be wondering what does a Fortune 500 company like Starbucks have in common with a small meat vendor in Malaysia? Surprisingly, a lot, according to Keyes. When it comes to marketing, size doesn’t matter.
Success for marketing your dream boils down to these 5 things:
1. Strategy
You need a plan for how to set your course for success. Marketing can be incredibly fun and creative, but at the end of the day, it needs to be smart and well-directed.
2. Story
You need to be able to build your brand story and share it with your market. According to Keyes, success is all about telling the right story at the right time, in the right way, to the right people.
3. Strength
The ability to boost your efforts by extending your reach. Collaboration is the name of the game so team up to create powerful alliances. (We like the number 8).
4. Simplicity
You need to keep your plan and process straightforward. One of the biggest marketing mistakes Keyes sees again and again is people turning a great idea into a complex plan. The key is to make marketing as effortless and uncomplicated as possible.
5. Speed
The capacity to accelerate and move forward. There are a lot of things you can do in the short-term-in fact, right this minute-to start making a positive impact on your bottom line and begin making money at your endeavor.
In her book, Keyes walks the reader through these five principles and shows us how to remove the challenges that are holding you back, along with a way to identify new marketing opportunities, and turn ideas into action by creating a customized plan.
Anyone can do marketing, but true success lies in how to do marketing.
For example, Whitney Keyes gets right to the point in chapter one by discussing how to pick your priorities. It starts with a vision statement and a mission statement, and the two are not the same, nor are they interchangeable. Does your endeavor have vision statement and a mission statement? Even if your dream is that best-selling book you are writing, or the photographs you are putting up for display at a local gallery — do you have a vision and mission statement for these dreams?
I thought 8 Women Dream did . . . then I realized that nowhere on this site do we clearly state what our vision is and what our mission is for 8 Women Dream.
D’oh!
Keyes will tell you that a vision statement is what you envision might be possible in the next 10, 20, and maybe even 100 years from now. It’s more of a dream turned into an inspirational message.
For 8 Women Dream our vision is:
To bring dream inspiration to every woman in the world.
To Keyes, a mission statement is all about action and it must work with your vision statement.
For 8 Women Dream, our mission statement is:
Our purpose here on 8 Women Dream is to openly express our willingness to be successful at dream achievement by committing 100% to the goals we set for ourselves in front of our readers. We further promise to deliver our very best writing on the subject of dreaming big and how we overcome our fears, setbacks, stalls, and sometimes even ourselves to make our dreams come true, so that we can inspire the women of the world to do the same.
And if in the process we inspire some men to dream big too . . . all the better.
Keyes states that both the vision statement and mission statement must reflect your values. And what are some of the values here on 8 Women Dream?
Here are 8 of our core values:
— To create an inviting experience for our readers.
— To offer inspirational and educational products.
— To support each dreamer’s happiness and dream success.
— To create wealth through profits and growth.
— To improve the lives of those we come in contact with.
— To create a community of inspirational websites devoted to exceptional dream experiences.
— To share our stories through publishing and media.
— To be honest and transparent to our readers.
Once you have these items mapped out for your dream you can begin to think about the goals you want to accomplish and your objectives. Planning and executing becomes so much easier once you have decided on your vision, your mission and your core values.
Next Sunday I’ll talk about setting goals and objectives and share with you my top business goals for 8 women Dream, along with a marketing goal to support it.
And yes, the 8 Women Dream vision and missions statements are now up on the website.
What is your vision statement for your dream?
Catherine
Catherine Hughes is the founder, content director and editor-at-large of 8WomenDream. She is passionate about helping women step out of their own way and strike out into a world waiting for their special talents. She’s a published author and a former award-winning mom blogger. Catherine has helped companies both large and small create engaging web content, social media narratives, and unique blogging platforms. She claims to be a redhead, but don’t hold that against her.
Note: Articles by Catherine may contain affiliate links and may be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on an affiliate link.
