The Artemis astronauts went to the dark side of the moon this past week. Surprisingly, that name doesn’t show up on their wake-up playlist, though David Bowie’s Space Oddity does. What’s your wake-up song? (I still need to get one.)

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— Ann Gynn

🟩 attract → 🟧 CONVERT → ⬜ retain → ⬛ amplify

Q: Where do prospects actually decide to hire me? I'm never sure whether to invest time in my landing page, my website bio, DMs, or something else entirely. What converts?

A: Landing pages, bios, and DMs all have a role, but they complement what I think works best: Get personal.

I don’t mean revealing your deep, dark secrets. I’m talking about connecting with them in ways that show why you are the expert who can help solve their problem.

That can take two paths — one you control and the other controlled by third parties. In this case, you should follow both paths.

Control your expertise

Publish content through your blog, podcast, video channel or social media handles. Write or record content that addresses the top relevant problems for which your target audience seeks solutions that are related to your business. Unsure of what those are? Talk to members of your target audience, look for subreddits that get into the topic, and analyze your competitors.

You could take it a step further and include a value-added promotion with that free content. So, for example, if an audience member provides their email, you give them access to a premium offer— such as an e-book, cheat sheet, or template. That offer incentivizes them to identify themselves to you so you can continue to demonstrate your expertise. The premium content also gives you another opportunity to strengthen your expert positioning. Just make sure it’s sufficiently different from the free content. Otherwise, your audience will feel like it’s a bait-and-switch—that you just did it to get their email address.

Share your expertise

I’ve found the second path to be the most fruitful for my consulting business — being a contributor or guest. One of my clients is the Content Marketing Institute. As part of my work, I write articles with my byline. Some of those pieces are my ideas, while others involve interviews with sources. But it all works for my business.

When people see my byline on a well-respected site, that respect extends to me. One client reached out after seeing my name on several articles about writing. They hired me to do a writing workshop for their marketing team. And a few months later, their PR leader, who had attended that one, asked me to do a different version for the PR team.

I also say yes to being a guest on podcasts, hosting panel discussions at events, and being a source for articles. All those activities increase my exposure to prospects and cultivate my expert presence.

I’ve written these resources that may be helpful:

Guest Blogging Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide [Content Marketing Institute]

How To Make a Great Pitch To Be a Guest Blogger or Podcast Guest [The Tilt]

Got a question you’d like me to answer in a future edition of The Hotline? Call or text Marketing By One Hotline: +1.440.661.3984.

This week: Pick one path and take your first step this week. If it’s the controlled path, publish a piece of content with a solution to your prospects’ biggest problem. If it’s the contributor path, identify three outlets that accept guest contributions.

My client and I have been working on a shared PowerPoint deck for a couple of months. This week, I wanted a list of all the comments, including the author and date for each slide. I tried Claude and ChatGPT, and eventually went to CoPilot since it’s part of the Microsoft family.

All told me that the modern version of PowerPoint doesn’t make what I wanted possible. They didn’t even recognize them as comments. Interestingly, if I had the legacy version of PowerPoint, they could have handled my request.

I gave CoPilot a piece of my mind (and frustrations) and asked it to pass along to the Microsoft team 🙂

Have any AI tricks of your own? Hit reply, call, or text the Marketing By One Hotline: +1.440.661.3984.

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Get our Claude playbook

Look at what your most successful competitor posted this week. Read the comments to see if they can spark a fresh idea for you.

✂️ Cut and gain: Brendan Hufford adopted a contrarian newsletter strategy and found out this (among other things): “Recycling 50% of our newsletter content INCREASED engagement (and cut our workload in half).”

🤖 Unrealized AI assists: Want to know how Claude can help your marketing campaigns? Louis Cho shares nine features most marketers don't know exist.

🧪 Test-scheduling: Instagram launched Trial Reels over a year ago. It lets creators get feedback on new ideas and concepts from people outside their regular followers. This month, they’ve added a scheduling feature so you don’t have to work in the moment.

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