I thought of stopping here

I thought of stopping here, but then that would have been a too short article. Is it a problem? Well, it would’ve been because you expect me to write a much longer article. Why? Because that’s what most people do.  But in fact there is no problems about writing short posts, Seth Godin’s blog made the Time’s top 25 blogs list this year with nothing but short posts. Ironically, that’s probably why he made it in the top 25 blogs. If Seth was just like everyone else and was simply writing the way most people say you should write to please the search engines or to get ReTweeted, he wouldn’t be on the list. Still, most bloggers will tell you you don’t know a crap about writing if you go with short posts. I know, Steth is Seth.

It’s hard

Most people are very unique when they start producing content online because they know nothing about blogging: they just have a very unique idea and approach. It all change very quickly though when they start reading articles about how they should write and how they should generate traffic. From that moment, they become like everyone else with the same formula and approach.

Traffic is usually the reason that will get you to change the way you produce your content. It is easy to change the way you write or act simply because you don’t have traffic. I think a better approach would be to build a very solid small fan base and work from there, rather than targeting 99% of the population. But that’s just me.

The bottom line is that sticking to your uniqueness is hard because of every single person/blog/website trying to make you just like everyone else.

Some examples

Because Frogstr is mostly about Internet Marketing, I received a lot of comments and emails on a lot of things blogs about Internet Marketing should do to attract more readers and traffic. Here are some of them:

• “Ben, you should run a contest and have people subscribe by email”. That’s not what I do.
• “Ben, you should have a RSS contest against another blogger”. That’s not what I do.
• “Ben, you should offer a free ebook on subscription”. That’s not what I do.
• “Ben, you should write everyday”. That’s not what I do, I write when I have something to say.

I think you get the idea. Yes, these techniques work and I could maybe have twice the amount of traffic and 10 times more subscribers at this time, but that’s not the way I do things. It might not be the best way or the right way, but that’s my way.

What’s your way?

That is my question. What is your way? Are you doing things differently because of what everyone tells you to do? Are you doing what you think is right for you? Tell me.

The second video is a speech from Steve Jobs in which he talks about a lot of things and it is somewhat related Seth’s interview. There’s a part in the video where Steve talks about the fact that he never graduated from college, but what looked like a bad decision at the time, turned out to be one of the best decision in his life: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect looking backward”.

Both videos are extremely different, but at the same time extremely similar. Enjoy!

When to quit

Connecting the dots

Passion/Reputation

Before I explain what I mean by “most people are watchers, ideas gatherer or simply don’t really care”, let’s talk about reputation. The first answer I give to the questions above is “passion”, “reputation” and “authority”. That is a pretty simple concept: I share my experiences because I’m passionate about what I do, I help other people, learn at the same time and if I do this all good, I will gain reputation/respect/authority or whatever success metric you want to use. That’s the whole goal of blogging, right? Sharing what you know and at the same time trying to stand out so that your blogging can open new doors to you. By the way, share with us the reason why you blog, I’m really curious about that!

Most people simply watch…or it doesn’t apply to them!

I will just throw random numbers here, but I feel pretty confident to say that maybe 90-95% of people are watchers, 5% are considering taking action and 1-2% will really take action. This simply mean that for every tip, advice, step-by-step guide you provide, most people will simply think “it’s a very good method, thanks for sharing!” and go back to what they were doing without even thinking how what you provided could really help them. Then, you have that other 5 or 10%  that really want to take action, but for a lot of different reasons will not do so. These reasons can be a lack of time, motivation, money or skills, but whatever that reason is, we end up with the same result. Then comes the 1-2% that will really take action and this is not what will kill your business! It’s not like 95% of the population will jump into your business sector, so if you are already well established, it is absolutely no problems for a couple of other person to join. You might even build new relationships and and bring your business to the next level.

Other thing that will is that your advices won’t apply to everyone and some persons will just gather ideas. From these ideas they’ll eventually build something and that’s great because it involves creativity and innovation. You can’t take action on every tip and trick you read and you might not want to because they don’t necessarily apply very well to what you do. So that’s another good reason: from the people you give advices to, some are gathering information to eventually unleash their creativity and this is really not a problem to your business!

Last point is that some people really don’t care about what you have to say! They might end up reading your blog for whatever reason, but don’t really care and will move to something else. You know, can’t please everyone!

Overall, because most people won’t go forward, giving away or selling your knowledge probably won’t bring you a lot more competition. Surprisingly, what you think is competition can turn into something a lot more interesting than that: partnership. Also, not everybody will see what you talk about as useful to them or are simply gathering ideas to eventually wrap them up and do something.

This is as simple as that

I won’t try to make this a 1,000 words article just for the sake of it. This really is what I had to say and I don’t want to go over the subject of “take action”, because It has been covered a lot before and you all know guys how I feel it is important to take action instead of watching things happening.

Are you a watcher, ideas gatherer, action taker…?

I’d like you to be very honest with yourself. You don’t have to comment and go public by saying: “I’m watching things happening without doing anything”, but be honest with yourself. Also, you don’t have to comment and say: “I take BOOOOLLLDDD ACCCTIIOONS all the time buddy” if that’s not true. It is OK because you might be an idea gatherer and eventually do things your own way or you might simply don’t care about what I say for whatever reason!

So, what’s your approach?

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