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- Seth Godin on Blogging and Productivity
With the launch this week of Seth Godin's latest book, We Are All Weird, we wanted to share this interview we recently conducted with Seth on productivity and blogging.
Seth's among the world's most prolific bloggers, but he's also a profuse book author and serial entrepreneur.
How does he fit it all in?
Seth (image copyright Brian Bloom Photography)
One of his secrets might surprise you: "I'm America's worst attender of meetings," Seth reveals. “I don't do any of that.”
"A meeting is a very special thing: it's three or more people talking to each other about a decision that's going to be made, and probably trying to get someone else to make it," he explains. "And so I don't have those. If I need information I have a conversation with one person. That's not a meeting, that's a conversation."
He refers to Al Pittampalli's book Read This Before Our Next Meeting, which was released in August through Seth's publishing venture, The Domino Project, and which suggests more productive approaches to the traditional concept of the "meeting."
Of course, that's not the only way Seth manages to keep on top of things. As the interview reveals, his philosophy rests on a very clear vision of what's important to him. It's that vision that motivates him, helps him choose where to direct his energies, and enables him to make the everyday decisions that keep his media empire growing.
Our favorite piece of advice from the interview?
In a world where there's not a lot of scarcity of ideas, and where digital stuff isn't going to be able to be priced based on scarcity, ubiquity is a better strategy. If you can help change the conversation, if you can say stuff that's worth saying, the money takes care of itself.
—Seth GodinStart listening!
Or read the interview transcript in full:
Today I'm talking to Seth Godin of SethGodin.com. He's a blogger, he's a bestselling author of thirteen books including Poke the Box, he's the inventor of permission marketing, and founder of Squidoo.com.
Seth, if there's one word that could be used to describe your work, it's prolific. You have six websites, you blog every day, you've written thirteen books, you do plenty of public speaking, you've founded dozens of companies and you carry the weighty mantel of “America's Greatest Marketer.”
But when I emailed you about this interview, you replied. You set the appointment in Google Calendar and you sent me your Skype details. So I'm wondering, is it possible that America's Greatest Marketer doesn't have an assistant?
That's correct.
How can this be? We imagine that you're America's Greatest Marketer, and America's Busiest Man. Is that not the case?
Well, neither one of them is true, to be fair. I guess you make decisions about how you want to spend your time. What you didn't mention is that I'm America's worst watcher of television, cause I don't spend any time doing that, zero. And I'm America's worst attender of meetings, cause I don't do any of that, zero. So I know people who do five hours of each every day. So right there I save myself ten hours a day.
The part about not having an assistant has to do with how permeable do you want to be to the world. You know, I don't use Twitter, I don't actively use Facebook, because I can't do them justice. But if I hired someone to answer my email, it's be better not even to use email. Cause what's the point of having that filter? So I try to sort of strike this balance between doing some things at an insanely quick, prolific rate and doing other things not at all.
So in terms of permeability, you run a company, and you have publishers. I'm just wondering, if you don't attend meetings, then how does permeability work with those kinds of operations that you're working in?
Well, you know, we just published a book two weeks ago called Read This Before Our Next Meeting, and the author Al Pittampalli argues that a meeting is a very special thing: it's three or more people talking to each other about a decision that's going to be made, and probably trying to get someone else to make it. And so I don't have those. If I need information I have a conversation with one person. That's not a meeting, that's a conversation.
If a decision needs to be made it gets made and then followup happens about what we're going to do about the decision, but that doesn't need to be a bunch of people around a table either. So there's lots of interactions I have with people. I just don't have those things that so many other organizations have where everyone sits around looking for the tallest poppy to chop down.
Fair enough. So can you tell us a bit more about what productivity means to you, and what motivates you to be so productive? Because obviously you are very productive.
Well you know, I think that it doesn't count unless you ship it—that planning it and noodling it and refining it and thinking about it and keeping it in a drawer don't count. You might as well do nothing. I think there are lots and lots of people who put in way more time than me, who may even create more than me, they just don't ship.
No one calls up a plumber and says, "Wow, I can't believe how many toilets you unclogged this week!" No one goes to short-order cook and says, "Wow, that's your eight-hundredth hamburger of the week! That's incredible!" Right? That's their job. They ship for a living. If they don't ship, they don't get paid. And somehow we've seduced ourselves into thinking that it's okay to hide. It's okay for a playwright to write a play every five years. What was going on the other four and half years? I don't know. If no one's seeing your play, you're not a playwright.
That's interesting because I think many bloggers tend to see writing as a creative pursuit that does require shutting yourself away from the world, and having quiet time, getting in the zone, and noodling, as you say. And you're not just writing blog posts—you're writing book after book. How does the creative thing work for you? Do you take time out of your other work? Or is it just part of your regular routine? Are books and blog posts different for you? How does that work?
Okay well we need to be really careful here because a lot of times creative people want to know what other creative people do to do their work, as if using the same pencil as Steven King is going to do anything for you, ’cause it's not. I know lots and lots of productive creative people and we all do it differently. So I think at its face, it's not a particularly useful philosophy.
I will share one tactic which is that I write like I talk. The reason that's important is that no one gets talker's block. And so if you wake up in the morning unable to speak, then you need a physician. Everyone else doesn't have that problem. So if you can train yourself to talk in complete sentences, and actually come up with thoughts that are worth sharing, then writing isn't particularly hard—you just write down what you say.
That's an interesting point you make about coming up with thoughts that are worth sharing. You're a marketer so I'm thinking that you're constantly looking at the market and looking at what people need to know or want to know or have a desire for information on. Have you trained yourself or honed your thoughts to meet those needs? Or are you just coming up with ideas every day? How do you make sure that your thoughts are worth sharing?
Oh they're usually not!
What percentage would be worth sharing?
Five, maybe two.
Well how do you differentiate between the ones that are and the ones that aren't?
Well, I notice things. That's what I do. If I see something that I don't understand I try to figure it out. If I see something that's broken, I try to understand why it's broken. And then you say either in writing or out loud what you noticed, and if it sticks with you for ten or fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe it's worth writing down. And then you look at the ones that you wrote down and sometimes they're worth sharing.
So in that regard do you use your blog as a bit of a proving ground, I guess, for ideas? ‘Cause a lot of bloggers would do that—they'd use their blog as a proving ground, and then they'd go away and write a product based on what they've honed over time on their blog. Do you do that or is your blog just as finished as a book would be?
In some ways it's more finished because I get feedback as it's going. I can fix something on my blog the next day, etcetera.
I don't have products. I don't think about products. And I'm not trying to monetize any of this. It monetizes itself, which is fine, and if it didn't, that would be fine. So I think that when people start to think, "What can I hold back? What can I sell? How can I move people through a sales funnel?" they start getting themselves into trouble.
Why? Specifically why?
Because then who's the customer? Who are you serving? In a world where there's not a lot of scarcity of ideas, and where digital stuff isn't going to be able to be priced based on scarcity, ubiquity is a better strategy. If you can help change the conversation, if you can say stuff that's worth saying, the money takes care of itself. And too often the $59, $99, $499 special report is neither special nor a report.
It's true. Well, we've talked about the writing a bit. Let's talk about the bigger picture. It's very easy to look at the Seth Godin we see in the media and say, "Okay, this guy's in the business of content. He's a content producer." But you're not that. You're also a marketer, you're a business owner, and the reason you're a bestselling author is because you're one of the most innovative marketing brains in the business. So I'm wondering what do you describe as being your true passion? And how important is that passion in your level of productivity?
You know, I have way too many conversations with myself about this. I would say that my passion is having people surprise themselves by what they're capable of. And if I can be present at least a little bit for some of that internal dialog, that's a privilege and a thrill for me. And when I hear from somebody who was working as a janitor for some company, and then four years later they own it, and they give me, right or wrong, some of that credit, I'm pretty pleased with that.
Because I think that people have way, way more potential than society lets them believe, and if I can help unlock that, that's a privilege.
So that's what motivates you when you get out of bed in the morning?
It is. It's exactly what it is. I think if I was trying to make money, I would do something else for a living. There are certainly more lucrative ways to spend one's time, and I think if I was trying to work on my tan, I wouldn't sit indoors in front of a computer screen all day. So yeah, this is why I'm doing it. For that.
So how do you prioritize? That's your passion, and it drives you to do a lot of different things, so how do you prioritize the different interests that you have? And how do you decide that you're going to add something new to the list? Cause I'm imagining that the list is pretty full.
Yeah, I'm very bad at this. The answer is "poorly." I decide poorly. That's my only answer: I'm bad at it.
So what kind of internal struggle, if you like, do you go through when you're facing doing something new. For example, if you were thinking of writing a new book. You've just written a book, but how do you decide when it's time to start a new project?
Well, books are different. The only reason I ever start a new book is because I have absolutely no choice. There's no excuses, delaying or anything else left. The book forces itself to be written. That's been true for the last probably seven books. It's such a long journey, it's so frustrating, it's such a hassle, so few people read it compared to my blog. There's only going to be a book when the muse insists on a book.
Okay, so what about things like new businesses? Because you've started dozens of companies, so how did thy get onto the list?
I have, but I'm getting better at breaking that habit. The last company I started was six years ago, and Squidoo is doing really nicely—we're the 76th biggest website in the United States. But I started that because there were some people I really needed to work with and they wouldn't work with me unless I had something to work on.
But there's tonnes of businesses that someone who was willing to work harder than me would start if they saw what I see; it's just really hard to persuade myself to sign on for a ten-year project like that. I probably should get better at that.
Right, so I'm just thinking one of the things you mention is delaying, delaying projects and also the ten-year thing, the timeframe. So do you prefer to go for things that are a bit of a shorter timeframe or … I'm just trying to get an idea of how you would sift out these things. ‘Cause obviously you've got lots of ideas and lots of possibilities and I'm just thinking if, indeed, the average person has this great potential that you see, then that's potentially overwhelming to have that potential. So I'm trying to get an idea of how you would prioritize.
Yeah, the book I wrote, The Dip, I take very seriously. I think that being the best at what you do is far more important than most people think. Which means that you need to make the thing you do small, so that you can be the best at it. And I also believe that we live in revolutionary times. Which means that…
You know, Henry Ford could have done anything he wanted once he got started. He could have started any one of 500 other businesses. And you know, he did cars, then he did trucks. But he could have done golf carts, he could have done boats, he could have done motor scooters, he could have done motor cycles—all these things. At one point Henry Ford had Ford shepherds who were tending Ford sheep so they could shear Ford wool to weave it on Ford looms to make fabric for Ford seats to put into Ford cars. Because he could.
You need to make the decision about what change are you passionate about making, cause it's all a hassle. And there's no formula. You just have to have an instinct, I think, for how hard are you willing to push to be the best at that thing. That's why I don't use Twitter, right? Because I get why people think it's fun. But I also know that I couldn't be as good as it as I could be and still do everything else I do.
Thinking about Twitter, and Facebook—you said you're not on Facebook—and you don't do meetings, are there any other tools or approaches or philosophies that you have to manage all the tasks that you do? Obviously not doing, not subscribing to certain things that you can't give your all to is one of your approaches for getting through all the tasks, but are there any others that you can share with us?
Well I think, you know, I posted a couple of weeks ago about the Zig Ziglar Goal Planner that we published, and it really is my secret weapon. I mean, it saved me from bankruptcy. There were seven or eight years in a row where I was within two weeks of running out of money. That's a really long time. 900 rejection letters from publishers everywhere. Window-shopping in restaurants cause there wasn't money to buy a plate of spaghetti. And the Goal Planner saved the day.
We've update it; we've modernized it, but I don't care which version you use: there's something extraordinarily powerful. I have never met anyone who has seriously written down their goals, and done it properly, who is stuck or is considered a failure. Not one person.
Excellent. That's great. Just before you go, I wanted to ask if you could share with us one piece of advice that you'd give to other bloggers who want to increase their creative productivity to a level that they can use to generate a full-time income.
Oh, I don't think you should do that.
Excellent! And why not?
Because then you just, you're doing it to generate a full-time income, aren't you? And this is amateur media; this is not professional media. And every once in a while an amateur gets so good that people come to them and beg them to take money. But if an amateur sets out to be a professional, she starts making short cuts and she starts trading in relationships for cash. And I don't know how to tell people to do that.
So obviously for you the relationships are where it's at, not the cash.
Yeah, because if you do care about cash, sooner or later enough people who admire your work and trust you, it'll turn into cash. But in the long run, we never ever keep track of how much cash someone has. We always keep track of what their reputation is.
Very true. Well, that's an excellent note to finish our interview on. Thank you very much for your time, Seth.
Thank you Georgina, it was a pleasure.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Seth Godin on Blogging and Productivity
Переслать - 7-point Checklist For Bloggers Who Want to Create a Profitable Blog
This guest post is by Peter G. James Sinclair of Motivational Memo.
Before I aggressively started to build my Motivational Memo blog at the beginning of this year I had already owned a web design company for over seven years.
During that time I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly in web design, and now that I have entered the blogging industry I continue to see the same mistakes being made by many bloggers.
So use this quick checklist to analyze your own blog.
1. How well is your blog structured?
- Have you clearly identified your audience?
- What's in it for the client when they come to your blog?
- Do you have a call to action?
- Is your blog outstanding? What do you do differently from others?
- Do you sell the right things—most profitable and easiest to deliver?
- What are the best things you are doing in your niche?
- Have you a clear purpose for each web page?
- What action do you want your visitors to take?
- Do you provide quality information?
- Are you building a list?
- Are you selling a product or service?
- Are you gathering referrals?
- Are you building a relationship with your readers?
- Have you built credibility and authority in your niche?
- Have you promoted your success through a Press, Awards, or Featured-in page?
- Do you realize that you are building an asset that you can sell?
- Do you know that you need more than one website if you want to make money from blogging?
2. How good is your written copy?
- Do you write headlines that are benefit driven?
- Does your writing stand out amongst the crowd?
- Do you provide proof either through testimonials, comments, featured articles, endorsements, and statistics—in text, audio, and video format?
- Is your call to action clear?
- Does your offer provide great value?
- Does every page have a benefit-laden headline?
- Do you demonstrate how you stand out in your niche?
- Do you use proof of claims you make about products/services?
- Do you provide one call to action with clear instructions per web page above the fold?
- Do you make no-brainer offers even for opt-in?
- Are you enthusiastic without hype, but rather provide enthusiasm with substance?
- Do you write the way you speak?
- Do you avoid jargon?
- Do you use a double-readership path—provide headlines and sub headlines that make it easy for readers to skim your piece before reading the entire article?
3. How descriptive is your domain name?
- Is your domain name clever, quirky, or meaningless?
- Have you used your business name, unless you are well known?
- Have you used your personal name, unless you are well recognized?
- Have you used a .net where there’s a .com site available?
- Have you used the Google Keyword tool to identify some of the keywords people are searching for on the Internet in your niche?
- Have you chosen a domain name that grabs your attention through clear communication?
4. How professional is your layout and formatting of graphics?
- Do you use white writing on black or colored background that makes it hard for people to read?
- Do you have a cluttered or confusing layout?
- Is your top banner large or complex and slow to load?
- Do you use big blocks of text?
- Do you write text in all-capitals?
- Do you provide captions (where appropriate) on photos that are keyword rich and benefit-driven?
- Do you use too many fonts, colors, and sizes?
- Is your blog quick to load?
- Do you have a clean, simple, narrow banner at the top of your blog that creates the right feeling on your site?
- Do you break up text with sub headings, bullet points, and photos?
- Do you have a white background and use colored headlines and black text?
5. How easy is it for your potential customers to buy?
For blogs to make money, there is usually an attached web page that will promote products, courses, etc. So you might need to analyze these pages as well.
- Do you provide an obvious way to buy online?
- Do you use a secure payment processor?
- Do you provide a number of ways for people to purchase—credit card, ClickBank, PayPal, or even for some an printable form, depending on your demographics?
- Do you provide a money-back guarantee?
- Do you allow for payments in customers’ local currencies?
- Is your offer obvious, providing clear instruction for buying above the fold?
- Do you use a recognized payment processer?
6. Are your visitor details being collected?
- Is your opt-in above the fold?
- Do you provide an incentive for visitors to provide their name and email?
- Do you ask for too much information?
- Do you have our opt-in on your sales pages, and did you know that if you do this you could reduce sales by up to 75%?
- Do you communicate regularly with those who opt-in to your blog or newsletter, and did you know that responsiveness will halve after each three months of no communication?
- Do you get at least a 25% opt-in result?
- Do you offer something customers desperately want in return for their name and email?
- Do you make it easy and obvious to opt in above the fold—a single opt in requiring minimal details?
- Do you use an automated way to follow up?
- Do you make offers to your list—your own products/services or others in return for an affiliate commission?
- Do you give twice as much as you ask by providing good value?
7. How well are you marketing your blog?
- Do you believe in the concept of “build it and they will come”?
- Do you only using one or two marketing methods?
- Do you only use online-to-online marketing?
- Do you outsource the marketing or manage the outsourcing properly?
- Do you test, monitor, and fine-tune?
- Do you use out of date marketing methods or only use the latest craze in marketing?
- Do you use multiple marketing methods—free and paid, tried and tested, and new?
- Do you use offline-to-online marketing?
- Do you understand your marketing strategy well enough to train others to help you?
- Do you collect stats on results weekly, or per campaign?
- Are you marketing to your existing list—email, social media, sms, hard mail, etc.?
- Do you use SEO, Google Adwords, Google Places?
- Do you use paid traffic, Facebook PPC, banner ads?
- Do you build or buy lists in your niche or even pursue joint ventures?
- Have you ever thought of buying an offline list and developing an online list?
- Do you write guest articles for other blogs in your niche and even other niches?
- Do you submit articles to directories?
- Have you used offline free publicity?
- Do you seek out referrals?
- Do you interact regularly through social media—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn?
- Do you run competitions?
- Do you give things away to your database?
- Do you conduct surveys?
- Do you partner with online thought leaders in your niche?
- Do you help your readers to engage one with another?
So there you have it. Tick off all the things that you are doing well, and then begin to implement all the things that you could do better. You will be amazed at the results.
Peter G. James Sinclair is in the 'heart to heart' resuscitation business and inspires, motivates and equips others to be all that they've been created to become. Receive your free copy of his latest eBook Personal Success Blueprint at http://www.selfdevelopmentmastermind.com and add him on Twitter @PeterGJSinclair—today!
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
7-point Checklist For Bloggers Who Want to Create a Profitable Blog
Переслать - 50% Discount Ends in 36 Hours on the Blogger's Guide to Online Marketing Kit
A few weeks ago here on ProBlogger we launched a product I’m really proud of—the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit written by the Web Marketing Ninja (the guy who has helped me shape my own blogging business model over the last few years).The kit is essentially based around three things:
- a comprehensive ebook
- a library of 21 templates, documents and examples to help you develop your own blogging business model
- a 70-minute bonus recording of a Q&A webinar that the Ninja, Chris Garrett, and myself did last week for buyers of the kit.
The kit is really about helping bloggers who want to get serious about turning their blog into a business to do just that. You can read the full details of what’s included and who it’s for here.
We launched the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit with a limited-time 50% discount (down from $99.99 to $49.99).
The kit has had some really positive reviews and feedback so we’ve left the discount open a little longer than we’d anticipated, but that discount ends in around 36 hours time (this Friday, US time).
So if you’re looking for some teaching from an experienced online marketer on how to make your blog profitable, grab your copy of the kit today.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
50% Discount Ends in 36 Hours on the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit
Переслать - Behind the Scenes: How a ProBlogger Product Sales Page is Made
This post was written by the Web Marketing Ninja—author of The Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing, and a professional online marketer who's sharing his tips undercover here at ProBlogger. Curious? So are we!
I tweeted a couple of days ago how wonderfully evolutionary sales page copy can be as it passes between the different people who are working on it. At the time, I likened it to Chinese whispers with a happy ending.
It's a tweet that culminated from the copywriting process for Darren's brand new book on DPS, Click! How to take Gorgeous Photos of your Kids. The book's sales page presented some interesting challenges for me and reminded me of some important lessons that I thought would be good to share with you all.
The process
This is how the sales page for Click! came into being.1. Thinking before writing
All of Darren's sales page start with a semi-workshop, usually with Darren, Jasmin, and myself. We're not at this stage thinking about the specific words we'll use—we're thinking about the core message we're hoping to convey and how we'll present it. We weigh up the core benefits of the product and pick which one we're going to lead with. It normally starts with a bit of a brain dump and ends with us exploring more specific personas—the ones for which we created the product in the first place.
With Click!, we started with a simple audience definition: "those who wanted to take photos of kids," but soon realized that it needed to run a little deeper than that. We came up with four target personas: moms, dads, grandparents, and pro photographers. Whilst the book is perfect for all of them, the key benefits of buying the book were distinctly different for each group. We discussed options to create a page that conveyed a message to all, but settled for focusing on moms. We felt they were more likely to respond emotionally to the sales page.
2. Engaging the word nerds
Often the hardest part in the copywriting process is to draw a line in the sand and put an initial draft into play. It can be quite daunting but among the team at ProBlogger we have a Georgina, and that always gets us off to a good start.
From a short brief from Jasmine, Georgina provided the first draft. This was always going to be a tricky one for her, as there was a strong emotional entanglement in the messages (Moms and capturing the memories of their kids), and that meant we'd need to tread a fine line between making an emotional connection and looking shallow. I think Georgina did a great job, and we could have run with this version right out of the box, however Darren and I always like to take things a little further.
3. The deliberation begins
I just realized something as I'm writing this post: I've known Georgina for over five years. She's used to me pulling apart her copy. But all's fair—she's changed as many of my words in the past with her editorial hat on. So the deliberation stage usually takes place with Darren and myself shooting it our over Skype. Sometimes we're only tweaking things here and there; other times we're making wholesale changes. A couple of hours later, we end up with a second version of the sales copy loaded up on Darren's blog.
With Click! I decided to re-write the whole first section, as I felt we could be a little stronger in our messaging, and a little shorter in words. I spent some time and came up with a version that Darren incorporated into the final sales page. There were a couple of things I wasn't 100% sure about, and I was keen to see what would happen in the next phase—the field test.
4. The first field test
There is nothing scientific about our field tests. Depending on the product, we'll usually pick a few connections from our networks, and get them to honestly tell us what they think of the sales page content. Formal tests would follow a more structured approach, with a little more thought put around specific questions, but we're usually running out of time, and with true blogger spirit, do what we can with what we've got.
With Click! It was pretty easy to contact all the moms we knew that were online at the time. But that was where the easy part ended! The response we got was interesting. The couple of phrases I wasn't sure about basically horrified every mom who saw them. It was back to the drawing board, pronto. Whilst I'd never call writing fun, all I can say is I'm glad we knew before we email a couple of hundred thousand people! Motivated by some of the suggested alternatives, we set about creating a second revision.
5. The second field test
Nine times out of ten we never get to this, however, in the case of Click! the moms had spoken, and we'd made some pretty extensive changes from their feedback—and hoped we were right. So we re-tested the copy. A few nervous minutes later, the feedback was much better and we had a sales page ready to ship.
6. Time to shine
Once we're happy, all our sales pages go through some pre-flight checks. A final pass at the copy to make sure as many typos are corrected as possible. Then we check and double-check that all the order buttons work, and the images are in place. Once that's done it's off to launch we go…
Whilst the lead-up is quite extensive, it's the result that matters. In the first nine hours of launch conversion rate of the sales page was around 10%—there's nothing wrong with that!
The lessons
There are a few important lessons that we can take from this latest sales page evolution:
You are not your customers
I'm not a mom, and I don't have any kids, so I need to be mindful that I'm writing a sales page for someone completely different from me. Seeing things from others' perspectives is the key to writing sales pages that will convert more people than just yourself. If you're ever unsure, seek feedback from others.
Small things can have a dramatic influence
Within the first version of this sales page, we included one sentence that struck the wrong chord with the reviews. There are over 500 words in this page, yet five seemingly innocent words could turn buyers away in droves. If there's anything that can show you the power of copy, this is it.
Revisions can be a good thing … and a bad thing
Suffice it to say my initial revisions did more harm than good. But the second revision turned things around sharply. You need to be careful not make changes for their own sake, and if you do, make sure you take a step forward rather than backward.
So there you have the life and times of a team ProBlogger sales page. And we haven't even started the A/B testing yet!
Stay tuned for more posts by the secretive Web Marketing Ninja — author of The Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing, and a professional online marketer for a major web brand.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Behind the Scenes: How a ProBlogger Product Sales Page is Made
Переслать - There Are 3 Thing's Wrong With This Head Line
This guest post is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash
As a blogger, you expect your readers to give you their valuable time that they could be spending elsewhere. If you're going to ask that much of them, don't they deserve your best effort in return?
When your posts are loaded with spelling and grammar mistakes, you're telling your readers one or both of two things:
- I can't be bothered to learn the language I've chosen to communicate in.
- My content is so vital and compelling that its form is unimportant.
Democratization has its advantages, and alas, its drawbacks. 572 years ago, Johann Gutenberg was the only person on Earth who could have his words disseminated en masse. (And even he was but the messenger, merely spreading others' divinely inspired works.) Today, anyone with a Return key and an opinion can search for an audience. Does that mean that you deserve one?
Look at the most popular blogs, the ones with critical acclaim, and/or a large readership. Technorati lists The Huffington Post, Hot Air, several members of the Gawker family, Mashable and TechCrunch among its top 20. Even the inane TMZ is on the list. Regardless of how you feel about left-wing politics, right-wing politics, general snarkiness, social media news, technology or the lives of celebrities, all the blogs on the list have something in common that also-ran blogs don't.
Proper, comprehensible English, delivered in sentences that you don't have to reread to make sense of. In 2011, with so much of the world's knowledge available to any of us, it's astounding that there exist bloggers who've advanced past adolescence yet still don't know that plurals don't take apostrophes.
When I decry this (I'm the kind of person who thinks that Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson deserve their own Nobel Prize category), I'm often met with the standard responses. These fall into three categories:
- I didn't have time.
- Who cares?
- (No response at all.)
In other words, correct English isn't that important. My one-word response to that is: garbage.
Unlike most topics of debate, there's no room for difference of opinion on this one. People on the other side of this issue are like those who defend flat earth theory or who argue that thiomersal causes autism. There's no reasoning with them. To disagree here is to say that sloppiness and ignorance are of no consequence. That insulting your readers is fine. That the rules of discourse don't apply to you.
If your defence is that you're not some fancy-pants academic who obsesses over a set of archaic rules about how to communicate, maybe you should find something to do that doesn't involve words.
One irony is that non-native English speakers are behind some of the most grammatically sound (and thus most readable) blogs out there. Take Aloysa of Aloysa's Kitchen Sink. If you didn't know any better, you'd swear she'd been writing in and speaking English her whole life. English is her third language, after Lithuanian and Russian. I'd cite examples of the opposite, native English speakers who each write like a cat walking on a keyboard, but they're easy to find. Besides, I made enough enemies with my last ProBlogger post.
My site, Control Your Cash, hosts the weekly Carnival of Wealth. It's a blog carnival in which I showcase what are ostensibly the best and most thought-provoking personal finance articles of the prior seven days. I need about 30 entrants for the carnival to be of a decent length. If I limited entry to those who spell and punctuate correctly, even if they had nothing interesting to say about their subject of choice, I'd be lucky to run three posts a week. The carnival would be less of a carnival and more of a quiet evening playing chess at the library.
I'm not talking about being able to articulate the difference between the pluperfect progressive tense and the ablative case. I'm talking about, at a minimum, activating and using the spelling and grammar features that come with MS Word, or Apple Pages, or whichever word processor you create your magic with. If you don't know that you need to do this, then you almost certainly do. No thought is so profound that it can't benefit from the right presentation. If you can think it and type it out, then you can spend a few minutes making it readable before you decide to unleash it on the universe.
This isn't about you. It almost never is. It's about your customers, i.e. your readers. They're literate enough to have navigated their way to your site, and deserve to be written to in a clear, syntactically correct manner. Otherwise, why should they care about what you have to say?
Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at greg@ControlYourCash.com.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
There Are 3 Thing's Wrong With This Head Line
Переслать - Make an App to Engage Your Blog's Readers
This guest post is by Leah Goodman of AppsGeyser.
A few months ago, when I started working for AppsGeyser, a friend asked me if I could turn her blog into an app, to which I responded, “Yes.” Then she asked me the more important question: why would she want to do that?
There are loads of reasons. Here are just a few ways you can use an app to bring new readers to your blog and give more value to your current readers.
Raise the level of engagement
Mobile users can read your blog on a mobile RSS reader, but reading a blog through an app means that they’re coming to your blog specifically. It’s a different level of engagement. They’re looking for this blog’s icon. They’re looking to interact with this blog each time. It’s not just one of a bunch of publications.
Copyright taka - Fotolia.com
Be found where mobile users are looking
Regular readers will have your blog in their RSS feeds on their mobile devices, but new mobile readers are much more likely to find your blog by searching for apps than by searching the Web. Having an app gives bloggers a whole additional avenue for discovery.
Form a “secret society”
Once people have downloaded the app, you can engage them in some really great ways, too. Provide unique content for app users, creating the sense that they’ve joined a “secret society,” just by downloading the app. Utilize the fact that it’s not just an RSS feed, and have them vote, fill out forms, and leave comments without having to use a different interface.
Push your message
Last, but definitely not least, is the idea of push messaging. With an app, it’s easy to send messages to people who’ve downloaded your app—even if they’re not checked in.
Push messages are just like text messages to everyone who has the app installed. For a craft blogger, this might be the way to tell people that the project everyone’s been asking about is finally completed, and the instructions are up. Are you a mommy blogger in her ninth month? Push messaging is a great way to instantly let everyone know it’s a girl! Financial blogger? This is the way to tell everyone the mortgage is finally paid off! The possibilities to connect more closely are right there, the moment a blog becomes an app.
How to make your blog into an app
There are a number of ways to make a blog into an app.
- You can have an app developer create a custom app for you. This is the most expensive option, but it will give you an app that looks perfect, works beautifully, and gives you all the special features you want to offer your readers.
- You can use a service that turns an RSS feed into an app, such as Android Apps Maker or Mippin.
- Our recommendation (and yes, we’re slightly biased) is to use AppsGeyser, because it gives you the full power of your blog in an app.
Distributing your app
Your blog app needs to be distributed in two main ways.
The first is on the blog itself. This is achieved by taking the app’s link information and adding it to the blog. It’s important to copy the QR code to make it easy for readers to download the app easily with just a click of their phone camera.
The second avenue of distribution is the Android Market. This is how new readers will find the app and, by extension, your blog. When adding the app to the Android Market, pay special attention to the app’s name and description. The name and description are what prospective readers will search when they are looking for new apps to download. Be especially careful about the name, as it’s a problem to change it later. You can change the description later if you’re not happy with it.
Don’t skimp on your icon and screenshots, either. We’ve put together a post on making an attractive icon without hiring a designer. An attractive-looking app is an important part of reaching a wider audience.
Does your blog have an app? How has it affected your readership? Share your experiences in the comments.
Leah Goodman is a Content and Community Manager at Abel Communications, managing the blog and community for AppsGeyser.com. She believes in a t-shirt economy and is an amateur juggler.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Make an App to Engage Your Blog’s Readers
Переслать - Bushido for Bloggers: What Samurais and Bloggers Have in Common
This guest post is by Aman Basanti of ageofmarketing.com.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure is the most famous text on bushido, the warrior code of the samuari. Written in an era when Japan was obsessed with warfare and martial prowess, the book offers instruction on how a samurai should live and die.
The most famous and misunderstood line in Japanese history
The most famous line in Hagakure is, "I have found that bushido means to die. It means that when one has to choose between life and death, one quickly chooses the side of death."
Modern scholars find such a statement horrifying. The author's obsession with death is disturbing. Even the Edo Confucians of the time condemned Tsunetomo's morbid teaching.
Beyond first impressions
But if you look past the shock and absurdity of the statement, there is logic and sensibility behind Tsunetomo's advice. In fact, once you understand what the statement is really saying, you realize that Tsunetomo is not preaching obsession of death; he is preaching freedom from its obsession.
What Tsunetomo is saying is that being afraid of death attracts it. Fear of death paralyses the warrior in battle stopping him from thinking clearly and acting correctly. When you accept death, however, you neutralise its paralysing effects. You become apt at dealing with the stress of combat. You become better at mobilising your martial skill, therefore increasing your chance of survival.
It is a great paradox that by accepting death you increase your chances of surviving in battle.
Samurais, bloggers and the fear of failure
But you are not a samurai. Why do Tsunetomo's words matter to you?
Whether it is dying in battle or failing as a blogger, fear of failure paralyses people. Like samurais in combat, would-be bloggers get so consumed by the fear of getting it wrong that it stops them from starting on their idea.
Copyright Galina Barskaya - Fotolia.com
After the excitement of researching the idea, of thinking of the possibilities, of counting the potential dollars in your head, doubt starts to set in. Do I have the time to do this? Will the people I have to market to or network with like my products, ideas and style? Will I be able to make this blog successful in time to quit my job?
You put off the idea for a week, a month … before you know it, another six months have passed and you are not much closer to execution of your blog idea.
I certainly felt this way when I decided to start my blog. I wanted to get the design right. I wanted to get my strategy right. While some of the planning was important, much of it was just procrastination. I wanted to launch in November 2010, but I ended up launching in May 2011—six months behind schedule. In the end I stopped trying to get it perfect and took the plunge, and am glad for it. Improvement, like education, is a lifelong activity. You cannot wait till you know everything before you start.
Even after they get started, many bloggers do not give it their all. They do not work at it seriously enough. Why? Because that way they can still hold onto the mental comfort of, “I could have made it if I tried.” Just think of how many people you have met who will look at a successful person and say, “I could have been him or her if I tried as hard.”
Unfortunately, mental comforts do not put food on the table. They do not make you a celebrity. They do not win you interviews or awards. All they do is keep you ticking along until you are six feet under and not in a position to do anything.
If you are such an individual, Tsunetomo's words could not be timelier. Accept failure. See it is as another aspect of life, as another season in the year, as another colour in the rainbow. Do not think of it as an end, but another starting point.
3 people who failed miserably before succeeding superbly
Don’t buy it? Then take a look at the list below. These are famous individuals who failed before they succeeded.
- Abraham Lincoln went bankrupt running a general store. Had to surrender everything he had, including his horse and navigation gear. Then went on to become the President of America.
- Walt Disney went bankrupt after his first film studio failed. Then invented Mickey Mouse and started the juggernaut that we today know as Walt Disney.
- Henry Ford went bankrupt after starting his first car business, Detroit Automobile. Then founded Ford Motor Company and never looked back.
Failure is not the worst thing that could happen to you, it is mediocrity. Failure lets you move on, mediocrity just stalls you.
Is the fear of failure holding you back? Has it done so in the past? Share your experiences in the comments section below.
Aman Basanti has written for a number of A-list blogs including ProBlogger, MarketingProfs and Business Insider. He shares his secrets to getting guest posts on A-list blogs in his new FREE e-book – Guest Posting Secrets: 25 Tips to Help You Get More Guest Posts. Visit Ageofmarketing.com/guest-posting-secrets to download it now for FREE (No opt-in required).
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Bushido for Bloggers: What Samurais and Bloggers Have in Common
Переслать - Why Bloggers Should Pay Attention to the New Affiliate Tax Laws
This guest post is by Yasmine Mustafa of 123LinkIt.com.
The Business Insider recently reported that ten thousand affiliates were recently dropped from Amazon's Affiliate Program with little warning.
How much income would you lose if you were no longer permitted to use the program?
This is an issue that bloggers in California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Connecticut are currently facing. They were instantly cut from Amazon's affiliate program due to a new affiliate tax law.
Update: Amazon dropped the ballot fight last week and cut a deal with California on the collection of sales tax. According to CNN Money, they have not stated whether or not they will reinstate their CA affiliates.
How did it happen? What can you do to avoid this law from passing in your state?
All about the affiliate tax law
Online retailers such as Amazon that do not have a physical presence are not required to collect sales tax like brick-and-mortar businesses. Big companies like Wal-Mart who are taxed see this as an unfair advantage and are paying lobbyists to push what is now called the "Amazon tax" or the "affiliate nexus tax."
In short, this affiliate tax states that online merchants can in fact be taxed if they have a "nexus" or connection within the state. Affiliate marketers are one of the groups of people viewed as a connection. As a result, state governors in the above-mentioned states are signing a law that taxes Amazon and other online vendors through its affiliates. They are now being treated as having a physical presence and are subject to pay taxes.
Amazon has reacted immediately. Wanting to avoid being subject to costly tax inquiries from the government, they are cutting connections to every state that passes the affiliate tax by terminating agreements with all affiliate marketers, leaving many bloggers with decreased incomes and some with no incomes from their blog. As long as there are states that do not tax its sales, Amazon has stated that it will continue to avoid affiliate marketing in the states that do. As of June 30, 2011, California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have been affected by the nexus tax.
How you can make an impact in the Amazon tax battle
The war is not lost and bloggers can make a difference in fighting back or preventing the affiliate tax law from passing in their state.
- Visit the Performance Marketing Association (PMA) Tax Nexus site to further educate yourself and join one of their state-specific Google groups.
- Join PMA's fight in the reversal of the tax currently underway in certain states. To learn more, visit PMA's contribution page.
- Bloggers can write their state representative and explain how the legislation will harm their income. The best letters are concise and honest, and include supporting examples. About.com has a great structure on how to write letters to Congress that is worth checking out beforehand.
What are some Amazon Associates alternatives in the meantime?
If you have been affected by the affiliate tax, there are other options consider.
- Find other affiliate programs to join. Some of the most popular that can fulfill Amazon's inventory include Barnes and Noble, Buy.com, Best Buy, Newegg, the Apple Store, Wal-Mart, Target, and Sears.
- Sign up for an affiliate tool that aggregates all the affiliate programs and automatically embeds affiliate links in your blog. These include 123LinkIt (Disclaimer: I am the Founder of 123LinkIt), Skimlinks and Viglink.
- Relocate. This is a drastic step but worthwhile if your revenue warrants it.
Questions to consider about the affiliate tax law
Will national standards for taxing online retailers be implemented? How will all this affect bloggers and small businesses? Let us know in the comments!
Yasmine Mustafa is the Founder of 123LinkIt.com, a service that allows WordPress bloggers to earn affiliate revenue from product keywords in their content. It is currently the #1 downloaded affiliate plugin in WordPress.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Why Bloggers Should Pay Attention to the New Affiliate Tax Laws
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