Jose & Carlos Teach a Lesson: Find What Your Audience Wants

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Jose and Carlos are panhandling at the freeway off ramp each holding a sign.A  Jose drives a Mercedes, lives in a mortgage free house and has a lot of money to spend.Carlos only brings in 2 to 3 dollars a day. Carlos asks Jose how he can bring home a suitcase full of $10 bills everyday.

Jose says, a_?Look at your sign, then look at mine.a_?

Carlosa_T sign reads:

a_?I have no work, a wife & 6 kids to support.a_?

Carlos then looks at Josea_Ts sign:

a_?I only need another $10.00 to move back to Mexico.a_?

This above joke hits the mark like no thesis ever can: Focus On Your Audience & Their Wants!A  Or else you’ll struggle.

Action Summary:

• Find out what your target audience wants.A  And then give them that.
• Go over your “About Us” page and count how many times you’ve written “I” or “Me” or “Our” vs “You.”
• If your aim is to grow your blog into a business (rather than just maintaining it as a personal diary) - then let your blog be about your readers.A  Not about you.

Jack Welch’s Strategy to Blog Reading (The Solution to Information Overload)

Jack Welch: What can he teach you about blog reading and writing?

1.

Jack Welch is the famous Ex-CEO of GE. Under his reign of 20 years, GE went from a $14 billion in 1981 to close to $400 billion! Because of this stellar performance, Jack Welch is known as the “best manager of the century”!

Because of Welch, many management ideas like “Six Sigma” became popular. But one of Welch’s most controversial ideas was the most important pillar in GE’s exponential growth. What was that idea?

Fire The Bottom 10% of Employees

Welch bought about a culture of tracking the performance of all GE employees. And every year, the employees who made the bottom 10% were let go. Very soon, GE was left with the smartest people working for them. After a few sessions of firings, even the bottom 10% of GE was better than the top 10% of other companies!

2.

“As you read, so will you write.”
- Roy H. Williams

Does it surprise you to know that each and every popular writer is an avid reader? From Stephen King to Isaac Asimov to Roy H. Williams - all of them were voracious readers. Read well and you will write well.

But today, most people are overwhelmed with the quantity of reading. People have 200 books in their wishlists. And 150 RSS feeds in their RSS readers.

How To Go From Quantity Reading to Quality Reading?

So what should you do to read less but read well? What can you do to not be overwhelmed by the number of things you have to read? Simple: use Jack Welch’s strategy!

Fire the Bottom 10% of Your RSS Feeds!

Get rid of the bottom 10% of your RSS feeds. Do this every month until you are left with less than 20 feeds! And every time you feel like adding a new RSS feed to your feed reader, make sure you delete one RSS feed before adding a new one.

3.

But What If I Miss the Newest Big Thing?

People fear that getting rid of information equals to them missing important news. But those fears are baseless. Because if something is really news worthy, more than one person will talk about it. And you will hear about it.

Your success doesn’t depend on being the first one to know the news. Instead, it depends on your ability to focus on the quality stuff only.

By restricting your RSS feeds, you not only gain time to do more important things, but you also create a quality filter: only useful things will cross your desk.

A-Pile vs B-Pile of Reading

If you are still hesitant, you can do this: create two accounts with your RSS feed reading website. Save only the best 20 feeds in one account: your A-Pile. And store all the other mediocre ones in the B-Pile. Spend time reading the A-Pile everyday. And spend time on the B-Pile only when you have time.

You’ll soon find that your B-Pile is close to worthless. After some time, you’ll spend less than 60 minutes a week going through your B-Pile - even if it has 150 feeds!

Action Summary:

• Reduce the number of RSS feeds you read everyday. A good manage-able number is to limit them to 20.
• Delete at least 10% of your RSS feeds today. And repeat the deletion every month until you are left with 20.
• Before adding a new RSS feed, delete an old feed! This way, you’ll only add a feed that is of top quality. And your overall quality of reading will improve tremendously!

Atomic Secret to Success

Can Tiny Atoms Symbolically Reveal the Secret to Our Success?

A friend and I started talking about something esoteric he read and its deeper implication:

Take two atoms of hydrogen.

1. Mix them with one atom of oxygen and you have water: the cleanest compound known to us.

2. Mix them with one atom of sulfur and you have hydrogen sulfide: a toxic stinky gas with a rotten egg smell!

Action Summary:

• Who you mix with determines what you become.
• Moral: Keep good company.

Time Investment in Blogging

FAQ: A common question I’m asked is:

“How much time will I have to invest to
become a famous A-list blogger?”

Famous bloggers like Mike Arrington of TechCrunch.com have been known to work 16 hour days without taking a single day off. But do you really have to work that long and hard to become successful at blogging?

Not really.

Four Blog Mastery Factors

You have to focus on 4 things to become a terrific blogger and create a business around your blog:

1. Learn
Keep up to date with your industry

2. Create
Content and products

3. Promote
Your blog and let your blog promote your products

4. Network
With the influentials and you’ll find better opportunities

Thats about it. Only 4 things to take care. To work on those 4 things, you don’t need to spend 16 hours a day. But you will have to spend at least 2 hours a day on your blog in the early days. Or else, you’ll have to be willing to spend money and outsource.

My 3 Hour Blog Working Day

1. Learning - 30 Minutes a Day
Everyday, I spend about 15 minutes going over 13 key RSS feeds. And15 minutes going over my emails and tips I may have received.

Once a week, I go through 62 other RSS feeds and all the rest of my emails.

Note: I divide my RSS feeds into two categories. A-Pile and B-Pile. A-Pile contains the 13 most essential blog feeds. I read them through Google Reader. B-Pile are all the other feeds that are good but not excellent. Or those that update 15 times a day (news feeds). I use BlogLines to read the B-Pile and I don’t read the B-Pile everyday.

This may mean that I’m not always the first one to know of a new widget or website launch. But amazingly - I’ve found - that its not really necessary to be the first one to know the news to succeed <slight sarcasm>!

2. Creation - 30 Minutes a Day
One of the first things I do everyday is write. Because of past experience, I can now churn out a good quality blog post in 30 minutes.

A few days, I also spend time on product creation. (In my opinion, it is essential to create products to become an extremely rich blogger - and not just rely on ad revenue). Writing a 20 page report may take me up to 20 hours. But I write a report at a leisurely pace. I divide it in chapters and write one chapter a day. This way, its easy to write 1 report a week!

3. Promotion - 60 Minutes a Day
This is where I spend the bulk of my time. Blog promotion.

BlogClout Rule of thumb: For every hour you spend on content creation, spend two hours on blog promotion.

But again: I break the promotion down into manage-able steps. I focus on trying out and optimizing just one promotional tactic per week. This way, I don’t have to spend more than an hour or two per day on blog promotion.

4. Networking - 15 Minutes a Day
I’m not too good at networking. Its something that doesn’t come to me naturally and I strive to get better at it. Whenever possible, I try to attend workshops and seminars.

But here is one thing that I do for networking - that anyone can do too - to achieve fantastic results. I write one thank you note a day. Doesn’t take me more than 15 minutes to write a thank you note and send it through postful.com or sendoutcards.com.

Time Sheet:

• Learning: 30 Minutes a Day
• Creation: 30 Minutes a Day
• Promotion: 1 Hour a Day
• Networking: 15 Minutes a Day

Total Time Spent Everyday: 2 hours 15 minutes

In summary, I spend less than 3 hours on most days. And there are a few days that I work 6-7 hours to get a few time consuming things done.

Disclosure: I run more than one blog (I actually, I have more than 15 websites!) So I’m online about 6 hours everyday. But I do outsource a lot of work on my other projects. The above time sheet is my estimate of time spent on this blog - tracked over 7 days. I kept a log file for this blog the whole of last week and the numbers are based on those logs.

Blog Branding Strategy

Question: What is Branding?

Ask this question to 12 people and you’ll get 17 definitions of Branding. And all 17 of these definitions are total hogwash!

So, today, I’m about to give you my definition of branding. This definition might totally change your perspective and the way you think about your products.

Are you ready for it?

Ok, some prep work before you read the new branding definition… what branding is not:

• Branding is NOT designing fancy logos and spending hours coming up with catchy slogans.
• Branding is NOT a term, symbol, name, colour, or sign.
• Branding is NOT the messaging work a company does to encourage consumers to feel a certain way about their product.
• And branding is NOT some process by which you transform a commodity into a customer experience.

Marketers come up with such definitions of branding because they have no idea of what a BRAND is. They don’t know what makes a brand great. Do you know what makes a brand really great?

A great Brand does
all of your consumers
thinking for them!

Branding is not differentiating between your products and your competitors. No. Its making your consumers think that there is only one product in the market worth any money: YOURS!

Branding starts with your consumers brains and not with your product design. Branding is not how your product looks. Nor is it how your consumer feels and perceives your product. Nope. Branding is making your consumers think that there is no other product except yours!

How To Successfully Brand Your Blog

A whole fat book can be written on blog branding. But here are some of the high points:

1. Wireframing Your Blog
What kind of people visit your blog? What do these people really want? What do you actually provide?

Wireframing is the process by which you guide your audiences to want what you provide. You either match their wants with your current product portfolio. Or you create a desire within them to want what you sell. Or - you start providing what they want.
Wireframing is making sure that there are no leaks on your blog that turn people off. Its creating navigational pathways on your blog to guide people to take the action you want them to take.

The best time for wireframing is before you start blogging. But its never too late. Expect a more comprehensive and practical post on wireframing your blogs sometime later on.

2. Strategy of Pre-eminence
Master marketer Jay Abraham made the “theory of pre-eminence” famous. What do you mean by pre-eminence?

Pre-eminence is the perception that a person is the best or one of the best authoritative sources on a specific topic. You dona_Tt necessarily have to be the best, but people need to perceive you as the best.

i. Be the first. Be the first and you’ll automatically be perceived as the authority. If you missed being the first, then narrow your niche. You may not be able to be the first online bookstore. But you can become the first online business bookstore. Another idea is: be the first to coin new terms or showcase new angles. Jay Abraham is always mentioned whenever anyone talks about pre-eminence.

ii. Be everywhere. If you can’t be the first, be everywhere. McDonalds wasn’t the first burger chain. But yet, by being the first to expand with blitzkrieg speed, they created a pre-eminent position for themselves.

iii. Offer the best solution. Best is determined by three factors: your ability, your audiences expectation, and your competition.

3. Building a reputation
Get other leaders in your industry to endorse you. Meet your reader’s expectations every time. Exceed their expectations from time to time. Always do the right thing. Build a worthy reputation and people will flock to you.

Suggested Reading:

1. Better Blog Branding Series by Chris Garrett

2. Positioning: The battle for your mind by Al Ries & Jack Trout

3. Un-lock your Brand: How to build a magnetic Brand on a shoestring budget

The Benefits of Blog Participation

Charlie Munger is one of the lesser known billionaires. He is the right hand man of the second richest person living - Warren Buffet. And he maybe one of the smartest person living. Here is an excerpt from a speech given by Charlie Munger on the topic of “mental models” and “human mis-judgment”:

For instance, a lottery.

• You have a lottery where you get your number by lot, and then somebody draws a number by lot, it gets lousy play.
• You have a lottery where people get to pick their number, you get big play.

Ita_Ts this consistency and commitment thing. People think if they have committed to it, it has to be good. The minute theya_Tve picked it themselves it gets an extra validity. After all, they thought it and they acted oA-n it.

The Power of Participation

The power of participation doesn’t only work for lotteries. It works for blogs too. Involve people with your blog and they will keep coming back again and again to read more.

3 Ways of Involving Readers With Your Blog

1. Comments: Allowing your readers to comment on your blog posts is the easiest way to get them involved with your blog. Some people argue that comments are not worth it because only 1-3% of your readers will ever comment. But don’t ignore reader commenting because those 1-3% readers will be your most loyal readers. Encourage your readers to comment and they will stick with you longer.

So How To Encourage Commenting?

A 

i. Ask. Simply end your post with a question and ask your readers for their opinion.

A 

ii. Be outrageous. The more whacky your post will be, the more comments you’ll receive.

A 

iii. Leave your posts incomplete. Don’t talk about everything under the sun. Leave gap in your posts so that people can comment.

A 

iv. Give incentives. Give rewards to people to comment. This could simply be listing your top commenters on your blog every month. Or giving them goodies and rewards for making quality comments.

2. Polls: From time to time, create a poll - where you have one question and multiple choices for answers. And then ask your readers to vote for their best choice.

Polls are very powerful tools. Not only from reader participation point of view. But also from PR point of view. After you collect and compile the poll results, simply write a short press release with the poll results and send it to the media. They love quotes and sound bites!

3. Reader Roundtable: Another simply tactic you can use is simply ask an open ended question to your readers. And ask them to email their opinions and answers to you with a link to their website. The idea is to compile a special report or create a special blog post with the best answers you receive.

Can you think of any other idea to increase reader participation with your blogs?

The Most Important Blogging Tool

Do you know what are the two things that every ship captain always carried along with him?
(Hint: Look at the picture above.)

1. A Compass

2. A logbook

Do you know why a captain carried those two things with him on all his voyages?

A compass is easy. Captains carry it because it guides them in the right direction. (But only if the captain knows where he wants to go.)

But why did they keep and maintain a logbook?

Choose from one of the two possible options…

i. To pass time on a boring voyage.
ii. To improve their speed and safety in the future.

Its a silly quiz - I know. Hopefully, you selected the right answer (option ii.)

Ship captains kept a logbook because by knowing and comparing how things worked in the past, they can improve their performances in the future. The captains would write down every detail: how was the weather, where did they start from, where are they going, how did they maneuver their ship.

“Everything that is watched, improves.” - John D. Rockefeller

• Most bloggers don’t keep a watch on anything.
  
• There are a few bloggers that do analyze and watch their “results”. They keep an eye on a few metrics that show how their blogs performed.
  
• But only a handful of bloggers maintain a logbook to watch their “actions”! And these are the most successful bloggers!
  

Do you watch and track your actions?

Starting a logbook of your actions isn’t hard. You could start with a sharp pencil and notebook. Or you could go hi-tech and use tools like twitter.com

The 2 Question LogBook

Just answer the following two questions at the end of each day:

1. What did you write today on your blog?

2. What did you do today to promote your blog?

Once, at the end of the week or month, open your web analytics software. And compare your Actions with your Results. Take a look at your metrics 2-3 days after your specific actions. Did your traffic increase or decrease? Did your profits increase or decrease? Repeat the actions that improve your results.

Action Summary:

• If your goal is to increase your blog traffic and build a business around your blog, you could use this blog as your compass. I’ll do my bestto guide you by showing what works and what doesn’t.
  
• Start a logbook to track your “actions” today. And then compare your actions with your results to find out what actions work better.

Quote: Blog Mastery

I have about 7 half baked blog posts ready. But haven’t had time to polish and publish them. Have been extremely busy since the past couple of days. So I’ll just publish a powerful quote for today:

“I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master in that line. I have no faith in the policy of scattering one’s resources, and in my experience I have rarely if ever met a man who achieved preeminence in money making.. certainly never one in manufacturing.. who was interested in many concerns.”
- Andrew Carnegie

Action Summary:

• Focus in just one field.

Co-Opetition

Here is an article I wrote for another business oriented website. It is fairly long, but quite interesting. And the lessons are relevant to blogging too…

Co-Opetition = persuading your competition to co-operate with you for mutual benefit.

1.

Michael Winicki is a successful serial entrepreneur. He finds promising products that aren’t selling well, creates a marketing plan for them and sells them for a hefty profit.

As paradoxical as it sounds, one thing Michael learnt over the years is: if the product has no competitor, the product won’t sell well.

If Michael comes across a product that is very innovative, but finds that there is no competition selling something similar, he drops the product in a jiffy. 99 times out of 100, lack of competitors is a sign of a lack of market.

2.

“Nothing stirs the heart more than a healthy dose of competition.”

When Alexander - prince of Macedonia - was young, his father King Philip started looking for the best private tutor who could mold Alexander into a smart adult. Philip found Aristotle.

But Aristotle refused to teach Alexander alone. Refusing a lucrative offer from the king? That had never been done before!

But Aristotle remained firm: he would teach young Alexander only if Philip would find a few other students the age of Alexander who could study and compete with him. Aristotle knew that without competition, Alexander wouldn’t become all he could be.

Ptolemy and Selecus both studied with Alexander and became his best generals and trusted advisors. And they went on to create the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt and Seleucid dynasty in Asia after Alexander’s untimely death.

Alexander wouldn’t have become Alexander the Great without Ptolemy and Selecus.

3.

“One big hurricane is more noteworthy than a 100 small ones!”

Burger King followed a unique strategy when they started. Their strategy was: open up stores in close proximity to McDonalds. By opening shop close to McDonalds, they could attract people who were already going to a fast food joint to come visit them.

McDonalds were first worried about Burger King cannibalizing their sales. But they soon found that they need not worry at all. Burger King did attract customers who would have otherwise gone to McDonalds. But because Burger King and McDonalds were close together now, the combination attracted way more people to drive over to them!

People in the diamond industry in Antwerpen, London and Bombay have stumbled on this power of market gravity too. They found that by opening offices and shops next to each other, they would be eating up each others sales. But they would also attract more customers by being situated together than they would on their own. And all of their profits would increase together.

4.

“Divided we grow. United we grow more.”

Tony Pereira has a problem. He is the owner of a software publishing company. But his company only produces software for a very small market: the people that use IBM’s OS/2 computer operating system.

Because his target market is small, and his company is tiny too - most stores don’t provide any shelf space to showcase and sell Tony’s products.

What could he do? Tony came up with an idea. He formed the OS/2 Vendor Council.

He got two dozen other developers to come together under the council and jointly persuade retailers to carry OS/2 software.

Each company on its own was considered tiny to pay any attention to. But together, they held a lot of clout.

The two dozen vendors cooperated and created brochures that showcased all of their products. They also launched a joint advertising campaign in national magazines. They persuaded IBM to help fund the advertising.

And persuaded the retailers to carry their products on their shelves - and in return, they would add the retailer’s names to the national ads.

The council also developed a merchandising program to make it easy for the retailers to promote their products in the store - by providing them with flyers and in-store displays.

The joint effort paid off and everyone who joined the council noticed a significant increase in their sales!

5.

Gordon Currie is a web designer. When he first started on his own, he didn’t have very many clients. Nor did he have a lot of money to advertise and attract clients. So he did something un-imaginable. He contacted his competitors!

Gordon searched for other web designing companies and sent them a short email asking them to consider him for overflow work. Many companies did have more work than they could handle and did pass on their work to Gordon too!

6.

“One man’s trash is another’s treasure.”

Another entrepreneur - Richard Gottschneider - co-operated with his competition to grow his business too. Richard ran a real estate consulting firm. He actively sought out joint ventures with his competition.

He would approach a competitor and ask them if they could sell him their old and dead leads. And if they wanted, he would pass on his dead leads to them.Richard also ran a newsletter that talked about his new projects and shared relevant news. Richard initially mailed this newsletter only to his clients. But he soon started mailing it to 50 of his competitors too. The first two mailings he sent out to his competitors resulted in 2 new jobs and several new leads!

Richard soon grew his consultancy to $1.5 million a year - and a bulk of his leads came from his competitors!

Action Summary:

• Don’t be afraid of your competition. Co-operate with them to grow both of your businesses.

• Send them leads that didn’t pan for you, and ask them to send you their leads that didn’t work out for them.

• Band together with your competitors to form a huge cartel that has more power than any one of you alone would have.

Question: How will you use co-opetition to grow your blog traffic?A  Click to post your answer.

The Genius of Amateurs

Here is a fun little quiz to evaluate how well you know English…

Could you count how many times the letter f appears in the following sentence?

These functional fuses have been developed after years of scientific investigation of electric phenomena, combined with the fruit of long experience on the part of the two investigators who have come forward with them for our meetings today.

People who have been speaking English since years underestimate the number of times a_?fa_? appears in the sentence. They do worse on this test than people who have just started learning English.

Ia_Tve never met a person who speaks fluent English to count more than 8 a_?fa_? in the sentence. The most common answer is 6 or 7.

The correct answer however is 11!

These functional fuses have been developed after years of scientific investigation of electric phenomena, combined with the fruit of long experience on the part of the two investigators who have come forward with them for our meetings today.

Embarrassing disclosure: I myself just got 7 the first time!

Why do experienced English speakers do worse than beginner English speakers on a simple English quiz?

Experienced speakers pronounce the word of with a “v” sound, and because of their habit of reading like they speak, they have more difficulty detecting the occurrences of the letter f than do inexperienced speakers.

As a result:

past experience
actually lowers performance!

Missing Insights

It’s the same with all other fields of endeavours - including blogging: you will miss a lot of “obvious” insights because of your long experience and hard-to-forget habits. So can anything be done about it?

The Genius of Amateurs

The solution is simple. Gather feedback from amateurs. Ask your new blog readers what can be done to improve your blog. Ask your neighbour who yet doesn’t know what blogs are to visit your website. Ask them:

• How to improve your blog layout
• What features should you remove from your blog
• What other topics would they like to read

You’ll be surprised by the insights you receive!